Your favorite starting area and why?

Factions by far,
i love the begging Shing Jea, its so beautiful and lovely...
besides the exploding nasty afflicted later on :3
Factions also gets you to 20 fast and gets you going with the game, i also like the character models.

i also agree that NF is forced grind, i hate that.

Favourite - NF: Love the campaign, great character models, quicker access to heroes, and gets you to a major city (Kama) almost instantly. The extra att. quests I found to be fairly quick; I didn't find the sunspear rank as much of a farm at that point. Being able to travel to LA and KC fairly quickly is a plus as well.

Worst - Factions: Hate the campaign, awful character models, monotonous starter island, mainland looks awful (with the exception of the Jade Sea and certain parts of Echovald forest), etc. I avoid this campaign like poison. It's only redeeming quality is that it can get you to 20 fairly quickly (not that it matters to me as I would not want to start a character via Factions).

If I were to start another base class character, I would start in Factions. Its the fastest way to lvl without a lot of grind, considering the numerous quests on the starting island. I also find it slightly more upbeat than NF's starting island. Once I hit the mainland, and level 20 its a quick jaunt to either of the other two continents to quest, farm, w/e I want to do.

I do enjoy pre, but like others have said, after builind multiple Prophecies characters and going through the storyline as it was "intended" to be played, no thank you. It gets boring very quickly. Still, I love pre, which is why I have 2 permapre characters. I can go, spend a few hours grinding, have my fill, and then go back to my normal play.

For me...I love Prophesies for the nostalgia and the "simpler times" feel, but I think the best place to start in is Nightfall.

Once you know what you're doing there and can do multiple quests at once (my first char took ages - but that was also created at NF release, and I hadn't noticed the armour crafters so I was still running around as a Dervish in starter armour at level 15 *lol*), it's almost as fast (if not faster - for me) to level as in Factions. And I prefer the scenery in Istan.

As for the Sunspear points...I've usually got my 30 att points by level 8 (which is much faster than I can get them in any other campaign), and have reached the 1000 cutoff for leaving the island around level 12ish. I must admit that I didn't even realise there was a requirement of 2500 points for the quest "And a Hero Shall Lead Them" to continue the story in Kourna until reading this thread - it's never been a problem for me. Together with the ferry for max armour at level 3 and EotN heroes easily accessible at level 10...it makes your combat power much higher and easier to work with.

I've done a few Factions characters for the speed...and I find that there's a couple of nasty difficulty jumps in that campaign (one being the first move to Jaya Bluffs - particularly if you didn't go through the Ran Musu Gardens explorable first). That and the need to get through the first 2 missions before you can get across to KC for armour/EotN/etc I think make Factions somewhat harder (can people ferry you to KC from Seitung Harbour if you haven't got "A Master's Burden"? - I've never checked). Factions from KC is fabulous for getting UP to 20 with the high xp quests - the Wajjun Bazaar quests in particular are great to level yourself & heroes, but running the same circle 3-4 times does get somewhat monotonous.

Great Temple of Balthazar.
You start at lvl 20, no pve involved.

pre sear was the best out of all three, however post sear was probably the worst starting place of all of them.

Factions..
1) assassin
2) ....idk it's just cool, i liked the art.


obvious troll is.... not at all obvious.

QFT and 12charrrrrr

Prophecies has pre-searing, which is lovely and very nostalgic, but it's a pain in the ass getting your attribute points, compared to other regions.
Factions starts out great, it's my favourite campaign and the starting area is beautiful.
I dislike Nightfall overall.

I'd say prophecies, even though I've created them in every campaign.

For leveling fast though I like to create a character in pre-searing, get to post as fast as possible, get a run to Lion's arch, then do sunpears quest to get over to nightfall, pick up heroes there that are at level 15, get a ferry to consolate docks, grab up max armor, then jump over to factions and grab up all the 3000xp quests and not finish welcome to cantha quest for a while to have extra henchies in my group in bukdek byway to wipe all mobs.

Prop: not so old player to have some form of "nostalgia", and reach any other place starting form Ascalon is quite boring, even buying a run.
Nightfall: nice models and landscape, but the unavoidable grind for the SS title...meh.
Factions: not so great models, landscape or anything...but level you fast and drop you ready for anything else.

So, unless you're going for a certain look or perma-pre nostalgia and so on, i'd say factions, even if it isn't a so great expansion..

Whenever i hear Factions or Nightfall i think "What starting area?". The first time I did both campaigns and was trying to 'soak it in' or whatever, i still was off noob island in a matter of hours. In prophecies, if you ever leave searing, you are still a 'noob' for a good amount of time. I remeber only reaching lvl 20 after ascension, 10+ missions, Maguma jungle, shiverpeaks, kryta, old ascolon, new ascalon, etc. All the while making new armor, weps, etc. Now in nightfall/factions, you make a char and 3 hours later your lvl 20 with max armor + 3 lvl 20 OP heros.

shaking my head

Don't you still have to slog your way to the desert and droks at some point to get your attribute quests?

Shing Jea is my favorite place to be when there's a festival in town. Pre-Searing otherwise, because of its exclusivity and stark contrast to post-Searing Ascalon.

I like Nightfalls starting area because it's more open and it's easier to get your heroes early and plow through the boring newb game. It has the fastest opening to get to level 20 armor and even off the island if you want. Get over to Prophecies and get your Olias necro hero and back again if you want. Nightfall also has a free treasure in the last espisode area of newb island, you don't get that from the others.

The question has two parts for me:

1) Which area was my favorite one when I actually started there.
2) Now, after having played the game for so long, where would I start again.

Regarding 1), nothing beats Pre-Searing. Stepping out of the city, seeing Gwen dance around, exploring the area (not in any danger, but always worrying that "little girl tagging along" might die), learning about the char all had a kind of "real" feeling to it. Plus, the transition to Post-Searing is very well pulled of and you are part of a very diverse storyline soon.

Factions looked beautiful, but felt TINY. I mean, how many non-foe, non-trainer NPCs do you meet there? Four? Five? Before I could connect to any of these, I was already ferried to mainland Cantha and stuck in some ugly dystopic urban horror.

Nightfall was a lot closer to Prophecies than to Factions. Plenty of nice NPCs, all those fun little quests that make up a good starting area, and of course, early heroes. However, I prefer the Pre-Searing look to the jungles of NF.


2) If I were to start a character now, I would only go for the better looking models. I *did* start secondary and tertiary characters in all regions and it pretty much plays out always the same: You rush through the area, go get your heroes and play where ever you like it best after reaching the port.

- Xeeron

Nightfall. Why? You can get to all major hubs almost at character creation. Also, you have access to all your attribute points very early on. You also can get Max armor at a very early point. There really is no comparison. I always take a new character at level 10 to EotN and then use LB scrolls in the Dwarven Boxing and get them to 20. It is by far the best way to get a character where you want so that you can do the things you want and not have to do missions you have done countless times like in Prophecies or Factions where you are stuck in low level areas and can't get max armor as easily or attribute points.

Favorite starting point?

Pre-searing always. It's purdy and peaceful and I like the music. I keep a perma pre there because I like it so much. The hidden garden where Nick is makes me wish it were real. And it's so sad when you go to post searing. I remember being a bit freaked out and bothered by the fact that Ascalon got nuked when I first played through the game. I'm into storylines and looking at the scenary, so the slowness of the game didn't bother me a bit. As a matter of fact, I didn't want it to end.

Easiest starting point? NightFall.

Because it's fast to:
1) level
2) get max armor
3) get attribute points
4) heros

Worst? Factions.

I absolutely despise Faction's storyline,the afflicted and that horrible horrible slummy Kaineg City. It took me forever to finish that campaign the first time around because I disliked it so much. I will do anything to avoid that campaign. (Oddly though, my rit is my best character and on her way to GWAMM.) I don't even like the island very much. The only thing good about it is that it's easy to finish. At least Jade Sea and Echovald have beautiful areas. Melandru's Hope comes to mind with Mourning Veil Falls.

NF is a bit boring as far as scenery goes, but the explorable area of the Hidden City of Ahdashim is amazing. Hate the torment area quests.