Permanent pre-Searing character

A permanent pre-Searing character (or "perma-pre" for short) is a dedicated character that remains in pre-Searing Ascalon (the tutorial area of the Prophecies campaign) permanently.

Reasons for staying

Typically, people stay in pre-searing longer than necessary for several reasons:

• Because they prefer the smaller community.
• To obtain the Legendary Defender of Ascalon title.
• For nostalgia reasons (e.g. to enjoy the special flair and beauty of Ascalon or for a change of scenery and intensity from the rest of the game).
• To recruit new players to guilds
• Helping friends and guild mates
• To farm:
  • Gifts of the Huntsman are a cheap way of earning consumable-based titles or earning income.
  • Some farm dye in pre, because monsters are trivial to kill and players believe the drop rate is higher in pre-Searing.
  • Hunter's Ale

Restrictions

Perma pre-searing character have to deal with the restrictions and limitations of the tutorial area, most importantly:

• There is no storage; you cannot transfer items from Post-Searing characters.
• There are no armor crafters. You can only upgrade armor slightly using local collectors.
• There is no access to PvP in pre-Searing. (Your first opportunity via the Ascalon Academy requires that you have already committed your character to leaving the area.)
• Your skill bar is extremely limited:
  • There are very few skills available per profession.
  • Once chosen, the secondary profession is fixed until the character can Ascend.
  • The local skill trainer does not teach any skills other than those obtained via the local skill quests.
  • Your character will be unable to obtain 30 Attribute Points, since the relevant attribute quests are only available outside of pre-Searing.

Notes

• Perma-pre characters often accumulate large collections of dye.
• They also tend to accumulate significant wealth, as there are no significant gold sinks in pre-Searing and very limited items to trade.
  • Due to the above facts, Vials of Black Dye are commonly used as a form of secondary currency.
• The only way to store items in pre-Searing is to create another character and either use that character to export some inventory to post-Searing or as alternative storage.
  • Many players frequently send these mules out on a regular basis, deleting and recreating their storage character as needed.
  • In order to transfer items, you will need the help of a friend, guild member, or your own secondary account.

• Charr Salvage Kits (that drop only from the four Charr bosses) are the only tool available for salvaging weapon or armor upgrades.

Trivia

• Charr Bags were introduced as part of the February 14th, 2007 game update. Small equipment packs were added in the April 23, 2009 game update.
• Before the March 3rd, 2011 update, perma-pre characters did not have a way of adding titles to their Hall of Monuments Reward Calculator. The update added Kimmes The Historian to fix this.