Allocate points to magic by:

• Give Arête one dot.
• Give Willpower five dots.
• Set your Quintessence to the same number that you have in Avatar (assuming you took the Avatar background).
• Put one dot into you specialty sphere.
• Decide what you will increase you Arête to, but do not do yet. See notes below.
• You have a pool of five dots to allocate to the spheres of your choice. However no sphere may be given more dots than the level that you have chosen for your arête. For example: If you intend to increase your arête to a total of two dots, then no sphere can have more than two dots.

The characters arête level can only be increased by spending Freebie Points (see next section). However you do not get very many freebie points, and the arête level may not be higher than three. So choose wisely.

I recommend that you "bite the bullet" and increase your arête to a total of three (the maximum) it will make your life easier in the game. You may consider that a very strong hint from your storyteller. ;-)