As a new player you'll start out in one of the four new cities; Fort Alice, Green Haven, Murphy's Town, or The Trench.  Any one of these is a great space to get your bearings in safety and to start finding your way in the world.  You'll find well-stocked stores for gear and equipment, reasonably-priced accomodation, and lots of options for entertainment.  They're also the hubs for guild recruitment, and for training and levelling tutorials run by both NPCs and by other players.  Of course there's nothing stopping you from staying right there, but you'll find higher-level gear and options start to run thin at a certain point, which means you'll want to see what the wider world has to offer eventually.

Fort Alice is a friendly town surrounded by high metal walls and offers excellent education and training for healing and support classes.  Green Haven is a major hub for manufacturing and business, and if you're inclined towards becoming filthy rich then it's probably a decent place to start out. Murphy's Town is a rougher spot where the pure combat classes often start - if you want to learn to deal destruction, then you could make a worse choice even though it's not as safe and well-ordered as the others.  The Trench is where the technical starting classes like Engineers, Scientists, and Psi-tech specialists will find plenty of things to keep them interested.  That said, you can gain a decent start wherever you like, so don't fret too much if your friends all want to set out in a town that doesn't focus on your own planned specialities.

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Free Settlements

Many guilds have their own free settlements where they have started out with fortified positions which they have expanded into small towns with farms, factories, stores, and much more.  By joining a major guild you will of course have access right away to their common quarters and to the safety and resources they provide.  Some major guild settlements are as big as any of the starter towns.

But if you're feeling up to it you can go anywhere you like and try to make it your own - though of course nothing is ever that simple.  Wildmen and Raiders might not like your choice if it conflicts with their own lives, and mobs are always a threat.  You'll need to think about defensibility and access to resources, among many other priorities.

If your choice of a location conflicts with other players, well, that could be a problem too.  Nobody said life was going to be easy in the new world.  Players are encouraged to settle their disputes by whatever means seem most productive to them.  Violence is certainly an option, but you need to weigh the costs and benefits - but as a new player you're not totally on your own, either.  If you feel like you're being targeted or griefed, every major town has Vigilante guilds who will be only too happy to even the odds for you, if you can make the case that you deserve their help.  For certain types of people, dealing out overpowered justice is what they live for.  Isn't it nice that they get to have fun too?

Towns and Settlements

Welcome to Dead Earth Online, Axiom Systems, 2027