Hello, I am currently downloading the patches for Istaria. I first played at release (was following since before the blackout). I heard that Istaria will now work with Vista which is one of the reasons I left.

So it has been a long time since I have played, does anyone have any advice for a newly returned player on the Chaos server? My highest classes are Reaver and Weaponsmith. How about money making advice? Do people still pay to have work done on their plots? Whats an active town where I can get a plot for pretty cheap? I don't have a lot of gold :). My main characters name is Bathnor.

I am looking foward to seeing old faces as well as making new friends.

So cool that you're thinking of returning.  Be sure to contact Virtrium with a support ticket so that they can add some trial time to your account once you get everything downloaded (support.istaria.com).  That's probably the first step toward a good way to get restarted.

My second piece of advice is to not dive right in with your old characters, but to start a new character and play the game at least through until you get to Bristugo and do the quests up to the 30's.  There's been so much that has changed in those levels, and more changes with every patch, that depending on where you left your "old" characters and how long ago you played, you may feel so lost that it's frustrating to just try to return and pick up where you left off.  Loot was even recently revamped so that players get both new types of loot items and can get coin faster when they want to be hunting just to get enough coin to buy what they want (be it a plot or gear).

Remember that Istaria is a very cooperative game, so one of your best bets is to join the chat channels in game and start talking to people there.  You should soon find a group of people that are online and playing at the same time you are and have probably created a guild.  If you do, building in a guild community is the absolute cheapest way to get a plot.  But there are non-guild plots all around the world that vary greatly in price depending on the size of the plot and how far it is from a portal.  

With the recent portal revamp, for example, the island of Genevia may have just the size and price of plot to fit your needs, and is much easier to get to now that Genevia is a "second hub".

The other thing to note is that depending on how long ago you left, many quests have been changed, updated, etc, in the last few years, so if you do decide to play your old characters, start by cancelling any quests you have active because the quest has probably changed since you played last.

And again, the best piece of advice that anyone can give anyone who has recently returned to Istaria after being away for even a few months is to join the player chat channel that has the highest number of people online (this is usually Marketplace and New Player) and start talking to people in game.  Istaria has one of the best (if not the best) communities of any MMO out there and it is the players that have built that reputation. :)