@McTrinsic - you are so right about the time investment. Here I am about 1.5 weeks in and it has been crazy.
I was blown away by the start of the game and the character creation, but quickly died of poison and had to start over. That was a fighter class. The whole game is poisonous!
My 2nd character was a "Tinker" which is a weird name for a blacksmith of sorts. With this character I've made some significant progress for two main reasons.
1) I learned how to create a Cure Poison spell. (In one instance - not knowing how to cure myself - I dragged my useless body losing hit points on every step to an Inn to replenish with only 7 points left, recharged, only to discover I was still poisoned when I woke up!).
2) I discovered where to buy new reagents to make more Cure spells. This was a MASSIVE achievement, as the store was hidden behind a false wall, and I'd completely run out of reagents. I had been rebooting for days after every poisoning until this discovery. Talk about a huge sigh of relief! I bought so many of one reagent (99) that when it was time to buy the 2nd, it said I was carrying too much. OOPS! (God damn it!) I was so jaded (and excited) over being poisoned all of the time that I was about to carry enough for 99 spells, but had to backtrack and eat some of the lost money spent.
So, the game is a bit weird. I've had to read the manuals and study them like a college class. I pity the 10 year-olds who played this game back in the day! It was at this time I realized the Runes in the manual allowed me to decipher my map (partly) like a secret decoder ring! Kind of amazing and cool, but also slightly annoying. But I have to keep reminding myself that I am not from this world - I was transported there at the beginning of the game. So it makes sense that I couldn't simply read the map. But come on!
Anyway, the next couple of things I've "learned" is when I'm in a city or town I have to literally search every single movement square. And I mean EVERYWHERE. I've found four of the eight runes this way. Then I have to talk to almost every single person in every town. I've only found two mantras. I've only solved one single shrine. (Just finding them is tough!)
And like you said, I've had to write almost everything down. I have been actually been taking pictures of my screen and transcribing the notes later. Actually more work this way but laziness will do that to you at 9 o'clock at night.
Anyway, I feel like I'm making progress, just very very slowly. Last night Lord British made me 3rd level, which gave me a whopping 100 extra hit points. I have to figure out how to get to some of the islands at some point.
I did buy two books from back in the day that were "clue books" on how to play the game. But get this - they don't really help! Bizarrely, they are written as novels. One of them is over 80 pages long, and is written as if in pure story form. In some ways that alone is pretty amazing as it's so strange. My guess is that was the only way Richard Garriott would allow anyone to make a book perceived to help explain how this game should be played.
In any case, I've only skimmed them. It was a bit entertaining to read the beginning pages - and it did offer me some relief in learning no matter what character you play the game is totally fine. Other than that, you're really on your own with this game.
I wish the cloth map had more detail, but I do find myself using it a lot regardless (it's pretty accurate in terms of rivers, land formations, etc.). Glad it's cloth, too, otherwise most of them probably wouldn't have survived to this day.
Grueling. Fun when I find something of note (like the runes) but grueling!