Beginner's Guide

If you've decided to join Shadelings, it can be kind of confusing on where to start. There is a lot of information about the world and how it runs, and we'd like to help you get started on the site as easily as possible. Of course, the admins are always around to answer questions whether it be in the cbox, through pm, or otherwise.

Here's a step by step guide on how to start your Shadelings experience:
 * 1) Read the background information and lore. Everyone here on Shadelings has put a lot of effort into creating a really in depth world for our characters to explore. There's important information about Alksheist (our fictional world), the academy, the classes, magic and then all the species and races that are available in roleplay. A lot of stuff is spelled out, but there's always room for more! Later on, you're always free to try adding new lore to the site.
 * 2) Create an ooc account. This is how you will interact on the site outside of roleplay. Choose a username in all lowercase and fill out the other sections however you feel like it.
 * 3) Create a character account. Fill in the the fields with normal capitalization and all their information. When filling out your skill points, just input 0 until your application is accepted! Avatars are 200x300px, so feel free to pick an image of your play-by, your art of the character or a royalty free stock image from the internet if you don't have a play-by.
 * 4) Start an application. When you join, you're going to fill out an application (found here). We use profile applications here, so you'll copy the code provided and fill it out in the User Control Panel. For every three humanoids you make, you must make one dragon or dragon personality. Your humanoid application should be mostly filled out, save for class, dragon, and mentor/student; if you're making a character not affiliated with Evercrest, you can take those out entirely. Dragon characters are to be filled out just as humanoid ones. If you're making a dragon personality, leave everything except: name, gender and personality blank. Feel free to ask any and all questions, but be sure to consult the information pages for basic things.
 * 5) Write an entrance exam. This is part of our application and how humanoids get accepted into Evercrest. It's basically an exhibition of their skills in hopes that one of the class heads will take a liking to them. The basic format is: enter, show off their skills, speech on why they should be accepted, wait for heads to respond. All of the information for the exam is listed here, and feel free to ask anyone about them or if you need examples!
 * 6) Submit your application for review. All done with your characters? Post them under the "Notifications" thread in the Applications section of the site or tag us in our site Discord. The admins will get you a response promptly, and your character will either be accepted, pended, or denied.
 * 7) *Denied?  The only reason this should happen would be that your character did not fit in the world of Shadelings. Completely unbalanced characters may also merit this, but if there's saving it, we will pend.
 * 8) *Pending? This means there was something in your app that needs adjusting. This can be anything, history, impossible appearance, lack of detail, OP powers, just basically anything that doesn't line up. An admin will PM you with details of what needed fixing and once you make the adequate changes, just resubmit them to notifications.
 * 9) *Accepted? Great! Go ahead and move on with the guide.
 * 10) *Have a dragon personality?  When a character comes along that the admins or you decide to pair with your dragon, you'll get a PM with the character's name. Coordinate with the other roleplayer with your dragon's species and where they will hatch from, then submit your finished application for review.
 * 11) *Once you accept a class offered to you by the admins, your character will be moved to the appropriate forum.
 * 12) Fill out skill points. When filling out your skill points, keep in mind your character's strengths and weaknesses; all skills start at 2 unless you wish to take points from one skill and put into another. When your application was accepted, it would have had the total number of skill points you can put into your character! You will also receive a specialization in one skill from your class, which you can put points into through your application proper under the "skills" header. You can buy more specializations with oolms later on in the game!
 * 13) Submit your claims. There's a nice little board for this, with templates to be filled out in each section. Please fill out the required claims as soon as possible, as it is a huge help for organization. They are also important for activity checks; any characters without their claims filled out at the end of a check will be temporarily frozen until the claims are submitted.
 * 14) Roleplay the Journey. This is only if your character is an applicant. Applicants would have been assigned a graduate student or mentor upon acceptance; this character will be your character's guide through the wilds of Alksheist and help them find their andzkin! Oftentimes, there will be small groups of people that head out rather than just a mentor-applicant pair alone. Check out more about your class to learn about how they Journey!

'''Now what? ''' There's plenty left to do besides roleplay once you've got all those steps finished, but it's all up to you! Here's a quick list of things you might consider doing:
 * Post an introduction on the members board
 * Create a thread tracker to help keep your roleplays organized (and make it easier for people to stalk your characters <3 )
 * Make a plotter! Who doesn't love character relationships?
 * Look around at cool stuff in the lounge
 * Check out the store and see if there's anything you want to buy!
 * Suggest lore after buying your lore-making abilities, because world-building is fun. Learn about that here.
 * Looking for other cool roleplays? Take a look through our affiliates.