No reagents to buy. No pet to feed. No song to play. You walk up to the thing and you hit it until it stops, and you bandage yourself when it hits back.
A knight is a dexxer — short for dexterity fighter, a warrior with no magic. You pick one weapon skill, learn to hit things with it, and learn to patch yourself up afterwards. That's the whole job, and it is extremely good at it.
What makes the knight the best starting character isn't power, it's forgiveness. A mage who runs out of reagents is a man in a dress. A tamer whose dragon dies has lost two weeks of work. A knight who gets in trouble drinks a potion, bandages up and swings again. Your mistakes cost you seconds, not fortunes.
The trade-off is reach. You have to be next to the thing you're killing, which means everything it does, it does to your face. You handle that with a shield, with armour, and with Chivalry — holy prayers that heal you, cure poison, bless your blade and get you home. Chivalry costs no mana and no reagents; it runs on gold you donate at a shrine.
You get 700 skill points in total, which is seven skills at 100 (Grandmaster). Here is a sheet that works, and why each line is on it. You can load this exact spread on the hero sheet in the magazine and slide the numbers around.
| Skill | Points | Why it's here |
|---|---|---|
| Swordsmanship | 100 | Your weapon skill. Decides whether you hit. Swap in Fencing or Mace Fighting if you prefer those weapons — the sheet is identical. |
| Tactics | 100 | Flat damage multiplier on every swing. Never skip it, never train it partway. |
| Anatomy | 100 | More damage, and it makes Healing work properly. Half of your bandage speed lives here. |
| Healing | 100 | Bandages. Heals more than most spells, cures poison, and resurrects your friends in the field. |
| Parrying | 100 | Your shield blocks whole hits. The single biggest survivability skill a dexxer owns. |
| Resisting Spells | 100 | Shrinks incoming magic damage and shrugs off paralyse. Without it, any caster can freeze you in place and take their time. |
| Chivalry | 100 | Healing, cure, blessed weapon, and Sacred Journey so you don't need a mage to travel. |
| Total | 700 | of 700 |
The two sheets are nearly identical. Read the Paladin file if you want the holy-warrior version with more combat tricks.
It sounds like a fighter skill. It is a crafting skill, and 100 points spent there is 100 points not spent on Parrying. Leave it to the smiths.
Skills go up by using them, and they go up fastest on a task that is just barely hard for you. Climb the rungs in order — each one stops paying off, and that's your cue to move up.
Find an NPC fighter, blacksmith or healer in town and say train <skill>. For a few hundred gold they will push a skill up to 30 instantly. Do this for Swordsmanship, Tactics, Anatomy and Healing on your very first day. It skips the slowest, most boring part of the game and it is the single best use of your starting money.
Jhelom has fenced pens full of cows and bulls. They hit back just hard enough to train your Healing and Parrying, and they can't chase you out. Fight, bandage, repeat. Bring 200 bandages and expect to go through all of them.
Head to Despise or the top level of Covetous. Fight orcs, ratmen and lizardmen. The rule from here on: if you're taking no damage you've stopped learning, and if you're dying you've gone one room too deep. Stay where it's uncomfortable but survivable.
Deeper Covetous, Deceit, the orc fort. Around now your weapon skill will slow to a crawl while Tactics and Anatomy catch up — that's normal, not a bug. Keep a second weapon type in your pack so you can train the other skills on the same trip.
The last ten points are the slowest in the game. Don't farm them in a field — do them somewhere that pays. Destard for dragon scales and gold, Deceit for undead loot. You'll hit Grandmaster while actually earning something.
Buy this before you do anything else. Total damage to your purse is small, and every item on the list earns itself back in an hour.
| What | Where | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| A decent weapon | Any blacksmith or weaponsmith | A katana or broadsword to start. Don't spend big — you'll outgrow it in days, and a smith friend will make you a better one for free. |
| A shield | Blacksmith, or an armourer | Required for Parrying to do anything at all. A heater shield is the usual pick. |
| 200+ clean bandages | Tailor, or cut them from cloth | Your life depends on these. Buy more than you think you need, every single trip. |
| Plate or chain armour | Blacksmith | Buy cheap NPC armour now; replace it with smith-made or looted pieces later. |
| A Book of Chivalry | Paladin NPCs in Trinsic | Unlocks the prayers. Cheap, and you only ever buy one. |
| Gold for tithing | Any shrine | Chivalry runs on tithing points, not mana. Drop gold at a shrine and it converts. A few thousand lasts a long while. |
The right room makes training three times faster. These are the spots worth a rune.
Safe, enclosed, endlessly respawning practice. The best 30-to-50 training ground in the game and nobody will bother you there.
The new-player town. Trainers, cheap gear, a bank and a beginner dungeon all within a short walk. Start here.
Your first two dungeons, both an easy ride from Britain. Orcs and ratmen that fight back without being cruel about it.
Where your gold becomes tithing points. Keep a rune to the nearest one — you'll come back every few hundred prayers.
Bandaging speed is driven by Anatomy, not just Healing. A knight with 100 Healing and 50 Anatomy heals noticeably slower than one with both at 100. Train them as a pair, always.
Swordsmanship, Fencing and Mace Fighting are three separate skills that do not share progress. Pick one on day one and commit. Switching at 70 means starting that skill over.
Swinging a weapon burns stamina, and at zero stamina you barely hit at all. A few red refresh potions turn a losing fight around faster than a heal does.
In Felucca other players can kill you and take everything you're carrying. In Trammel they can't. Learn which one you're standing in before you walk into a dungeon wearing everything you own.
Britannia runs on favours. These are the people you want in your party and on your friends list.