So, I am thinking of rolling a dark elf necro as my main when the new Ragefire progression server comes out. I've done some reading and have seen it mentioned multiple times that in many places I will be KOS due to being a super hated race and class combo. How much will this hinder my ability to explore the world? I have seen mention of being able to do faction work to get people to hate me less. What does this "faction work" usually entail (bear with me, I'm still a pretty huge newbie here due to sporadic playtime)? Can dark elves be agnostic, and if so will that even help at all considering I have two strikes against me already (being a dark elf and a necro)?
An enchanter can be agnostic, I don't believe a necro has that option. (I don't know about the other classes as I haven't played those combinations before) I just got in the habit of conning pretty much every NPC so I knew if I should keep my distance or not. You will need to stay out of truly "good" cities as a necro and even in the neutral ones you may find some vendors who won't sell to you and once in a while you'll find an NPC that just wants to kill you. You learn what/who to avoid and sometimes you have to take a different route to get somewhere but you get used to it. It's fun, and over time you'll learn which areas you can sneak through and how to get around the faction issues. Enchanters can alter their races with illusions which can help in some cities, but not all and/or there may be some NPCs that see through the illusions. It keeps you on your toes! Faction work can be things like grinding mobs that give the positive faction that you want, there may also be items you can turn in at the guards for certain cities that will give you faction. My experiences are from way back though, if things have changed since then I'm sure someone will speak up.
Faction work usually involves killing hundreds of mobs, even before you can do faster faction improvement via quests. And some factions within opposing faction cities may still want to kill you. And the results of improving faction with certain groups may kill your home town factions. It can be done, but can't be taken on lightly. You will need a lot of research first on allakhazam, and studying posts by those who have done it before you. Having bad faction can be a good thing: it gives you another good grinding spot!
It's been ages but I seem to recall being KOS only created a handful of issues: 1) the "good" guards aren't so good, if you run to them to save you from the fire beetle, it may not end well. (Qeynos, Kelethin, Freeport, etc.) 2) in the zones near the newbie areas for the "good" races there will be random npc's that will not like you, learn where they are. Druids in the commonlands, dwarves in butcherblock, random NPC's running around the Karanas, etc. If (and that's a big if) I recall correctly, once you get up past those first two tiers of zones, (newbie zone in city and 1st zone away from city) the KOS issue drops off as the zone tends to have fewer and fewer mobs that aren't supposed to be killed. Then you just learn to con pretty much anything that isn't a mob until you learn the zone and travel invis just to be safe.
First rule is don't destroy your Guildmaster faction and for DE Necro that is The Dead, efforts to improve factions in Felwithe can involve counter against your innate faction, so using Origin and having your teacher attack you is not good. I built an enchanter many years ago, and worked to be non KOS in most cities, it takes time and illusions sure help, but the trick is to find a path that traces back to non friendly trash or items, Deathfist orcs, Blackburrow gnolls, bone chip or fire beetle eye hand ins, etc. Should you go to Crushbone and take faction hits expect to become KOS to Neriak warrior guild. It goes on and on, i suggest that you start a DE necro on the Beta server while test mode is available and see what you think, a some what safer option is to go Gnome, though either race necro has a long way to walk out from Origin to get back to doing stuff. Still there is one thing about your desired choice, you hate everyone, you are a psychopathic sociopath (if roll played), the key thing is to have fun and preferably not alienate fellow players.
Thanks for the great advice all! I will probably give it a shot on beta first to see what I'm up against. ;P
