Dependable
Wanderer
How to make your very first character
I've explained this a few times the last couple of days, so I thought I'd better make some kind of guide for it... Saves me (and I hope a lot of new players) a lot of time.
When you create your first character you have almost nothing: no money for reagents (regs) or other resources for gaining crafting skills (boards, ingots). You can't GM magery, alchemy or resisting spells without reagents. This means you have to build a character that makes money or one that gathers resources. You thus have a few options for templates to make:
1. The Miner or Lumberjack
This can be a VERY boring character to build and to play. All you actually can do is chop trees or mine for ore, then sel those to other players. They also take a VERY long time to get to 100 skillpoints. You could make this character a crafter/miner but the problem with that is not being able to raise the crafting skills before anything else. With the recent changes in skillgain you will need a massive amount of wood and ingots to Grandmaster any crafting skill unless you train it as your first skill, but this is impossible since this is your first character.
If you choose to take lumberjacking you can make it an axer after you've made money by chopping wood, but still the chopping is very boring and takes a long time to Grandmaster it on trees. (LJ gives a damage bonus to axe weapons) A faster way to GM it would be to hold an axe and fight someone (find a sparring partner) until you gain. This way gains are faster, but you'll still only be a lumberjack, unable to kill more difficult monsters.
2. The tailor
Starting a tailor is quite easy, and so is raising the skill up to the begin-mid 90's. You just need to gather wool or cotton, spin it on a spinning wheel, use the balls of yarn or spools of thread on a loom and cut up the cloth. Check http://www.uogamers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21142 to learn what to make when (under tailoring).
The problems with this character arise only when you want to reach the 100 and right after that: you need leather to make leather and studded armor. Those 2 tailoring items are needed to make money (you can sell them to other players, or you could need them to fill Bulk Order Deeds (BODs)) since taking 1 BOD every 3 hours to sell wont raise your balance too quickly.
You can farm leather with a fighter/tailor (which costs no money), but you can't take on a lot of 'more difficult' monster or animals with just a fighting skill. Conclusion: this character is very limited too.
3. The Peacer-Warrior
This character needs following skills:
A starting location should be a place where you can safely gain skills and maybe even a bit of gold. Animal spwawns are good because you can harvest leather from them (don't forget to bring scissors to cut up the hides after skinning the animal with a bladed weapon). My personal preference of starting town is Yew, because there's an immense guarded zone with animals for you to kill. There's also a lot of sheep there so you can get wool for bandages. Your only problem will be making cloth (there's no loom in Yew), so you'll have to make some trips through the moongate to another city which does have one of those.
The first thing you have to do before you start training is LOCKING ALL SKILLS. This is because the closer you get to a total of 700 real skillpoints, the harder it becomes to gain skills. This means you better Grandmaster the hardest (or most expensive) skills first. Now unlock magery again. You don't need to gain it rightnow, it's a support skill which you don't really need to use in a fight except for a casual cure or heal. you also need it to be able to recall and later to gate (which gives you money when doing escorts).
Your first thing to do is making bandages, so go to the farm fields and shear the sheep there (double click dagger, target sheep). Put the wool in your bank and shear some more. When you have enough wool in your bank, go to another city (Skara Brae is close by its moongate and has a tailor...) Don't forget to leave everything in your bank, so if you get killed outside you don't lose a thing. When you're done spinning and weaving, buy a pair of scissors and cut up your bolts of cloth, then cut up the cut up cloth again to get bandages. Put those in your bank and return to Yew.
Gaining Skills
The first skill you're going to train is healing. There are 2 ways to do that:
1. Just wrestle small animals and cows while constantly healing yourself (slow, delay of 10 seconds between 2 heals because it takes that long to heal yourself)
2. Double client: start another account and have that account attack a cow or a bull, then put it out of war mode. Start healing the other character. (faster, healing another character only takes 4 seconds)
This is the fastest way to GM healing, when you see gains slow down, do the same with a second bull and have 2 bulls attack the new character. GM Healing in an hour or so.
When you're GM healing, set tactics to raise and go wrestle animals. This time you can kill them doing so. Don't forget to bring a dagger and scissors for wool and leather. (Leather sells at 6gp/piece to other players)
When yo have 100 tactics, set your fighting skill to raise and continue fighting animals, but this time with a weapon matching the skill you chose. When you're at about 50 fighting you probably can handle a bull on your own. bulls give you 30 leather and 10 cuts of ribs (3gp/cut, sell these to the butcher). Now you're already making some money.
When your fighting skill is GMed go to a tinker (there isn't one in Yew but almost every other city with a gate has one). Buy yourself some musical instruments (lutes are great, lap harps are the cheapest) and record a macro with razor saying:
Then withdraw 400 from your bank and find a Bard NPC. Buy Peacemaking up to 30 skillpoints and then let the macro run a while, you don't even have to pay attention to it and you're GM musicianship and Peacemaking in no time. you can also continue to harvest leather for later while macroing.
Anatomy is also quite easy to gain: just use the skill on animals and players to gain. You also gain by physically attacking things.
When you're done with anatomy it's time to raise your stats which is an easy thing to do when you're at skill cap:
Set a gaining skill to raise, gain 10 points, set it to lower and then raise another gaining skill. Here's a list of what skills to use to raise your stats:
Strength: Mining, Arms Lore, Anatomy
Dexterity: Snooping, hiding, lockpicking, fencing
Inteligence: Evaluate intelligence, Item identification, Meditation, Spirit speak
If you're not at skill cap yet, just set your meditation to raise, comes in handy later when you'll be training magery, then cast some spells and let your mana refill (don't use the skill yet!).
I prefer having 40 Intelligence (for heals, cures, gate travel), 100 dexterity (for fast heals and fast weapon swings) and 85 strength (giving you 92hp and 337 stones you can carry)
When that's done you can start killing more difficult monsters, don't forget to have your anatomy skill pointed "up" and the gaining skills pointed down so you can gain the last bit. How to use Peacemaking: use skill, target the monster or animal you want to calm, and when your calming succeeds, attack it and it won't even do anything back. great way to kill wisps and most magery based monsters on your own. just don't forget to put on Magic Reflect while fighting them, incase they come out of the peacemaking before they're dead.
When you've made some money, go buy regs and GM your magery or start any new character. Remember that this character isn't built to do PvP with and most PvPers have a 100 skilpoints advantage over you.
Some final pointers:
* Have a look on http://my.uogamers.com/factionstats.php . That site tells you which faction controlled towns are cheap to buy things. Don't buy when the tax rate is set to +300%!!! If all the towns are set to +300%, go to a town that isn't under faction control (Delucia, Papua, Nujel'm, Serpent's Hold,...) to buy your things.
* Check these forums for more information about the game, there's often info that can be found to make skillgain or gameplay easier for you. You better use them.
* If you can't win, you better run. This counts for monsters but also for when another player is attacking you. Keeping your runebook open at safe page is always good, specially when you suddenly see 3 or 4 red names appear on your screen.
* Carry some potions. A quick heal, cure or refresh often come in handy.
* Don't forget to restock bandages and regs before you go out of town.
* If you make a second account make a temp tamer to tame horses or other mounts for your other chars to save 421+ gold each time. Taming most mounts take very little taming. Make a new char and set taming to 50 and you can choose what other skill you want, 50 taming without animal lore will tame most mounts after a few tries. After you tame a mount or two log on with both characters (dual-client) and transfer.
*Instead of buying scissors set healing to 1 point when making you char and you'll get newb scissors and bandages that will stay with you when you die.
*For tailors ask someone to gate you to delucia. The cotton field there spawns rather quickly and there are bulls in the guarded zone. you don't even have to kill the bulls yourself since most of the time theres people there killing them to train some skill, just wait for the bull to turn grey so you can cut it for hides/leather.
Any comments on this guide are welcome.
I've explained this a few times the last couple of days, so I thought I'd better make some kind of guide for it... Saves me (and I hope a lot of new players) a lot of time.
When you create your first character you have almost nothing: no money for reagents (regs) or other resources for gaining crafting skills (boards, ingots). You can't GM magery, alchemy or resisting spells without reagents. This means you have to build a character that makes money or one that gathers resources. You thus have a few options for templates to make:
- Miner / Lumberjack
- Tailor
- Peacemaker / Warrior
1. The Miner or Lumberjack
This can be a VERY boring character to build and to play. All you actually can do is chop trees or mine for ore, then sel those to other players. They also take a VERY long time to get to 100 skillpoints. You could make this character a crafter/miner but the problem with that is not being able to raise the crafting skills before anything else. With the recent changes in skillgain you will need a massive amount of wood and ingots to Grandmaster any crafting skill unless you train it as your first skill, but this is impossible since this is your first character.
If you choose to take lumberjacking you can make it an axer after you've made money by chopping wood, but still the chopping is very boring and takes a long time to Grandmaster it on trees. (LJ gives a damage bonus to axe weapons) A faster way to GM it would be to hold an axe and fight someone (find a sparring partner) until you gain. This way gains are faster, but you'll still only be a lumberjack, unable to kill more difficult monsters.
2. The tailor
Starting a tailor is quite easy, and so is raising the skill up to the begin-mid 90's. You just need to gather wool or cotton, spin it on a spinning wheel, use the balls of yarn or spools of thread on a loom and cut up the cloth. Check http://www.uogamers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21142 to learn what to make when (under tailoring).
The problems with this character arise only when you want to reach the 100 and right after that: you need leather to make leather and studded armor. Those 2 tailoring items are needed to make money (you can sell them to other players, or you could need them to fill Bulk Order Deeds (BODs)) since taking 1 BOD every 3 hours to sell wont raise your balance too quickly.
You can farm leather with a fighter/tailor (which costs no money), but you can't take on a lot of 'more difficult' monster or animals with just a fighting skill. Conclusion: this character is very limited too.
3. The Peacer-Warrior
This character needs following skills:
- Anatomy (cost: 0gp)
- Tactics (cost: 0gp)
- A Fighting Skill (cost: weapons) - Mace fighting, Swordsmanship, Fencing or Archery
- Healing (cost: bandages)
- Musicianship (cost: musical instrument)
- Peacemaking (cost: musical instrument)
- Magery to get around (choose as starting skill: 50, cost: 0gp)
A starting location should be a place where you can safely gain skills and maybe even a bit of gold. Animal spwawns are good because you can harvest leather from them (don't forget to bring scissors to cut up the hides after skinning the animal with a bladed weapon). My personal preference of starting town is Yew, because there's an immense guarded zone with animals for you to kill. There's also a lot of sheep there so you can get wool for bandages. Your only problem will be making cloth (there's no loom in Yew), so you'll have to make some trips through the moongate to another city which does have one of those.
The first thing you have to do before you start training is LOCKING ALL SKILLS. This is because the closer you get to a total of 700 real skillpoints, the harder it becomes to gain skills. This means you better Grandmaster the hardest (or most expensive) skills first. Now unlock magery again. You don't need to gain it rightnow, it's a support skill which you don't really need to use in a fight except for a casual cure or heal. you also need it to be able to recall and later to gate (which gives you money when doing escorts).
Your first thing to do is making bandages, so go to the farm fields and shear the sheep there (double click dagger, target sheep). Put the wool in your bank and shear some more. When you have enough wool in your bank, go to another city (Skara Brae is close by its moongate and has a tailor...) Don't forget to leave everything in your bank, so if you get killed outside you don't lose a thing. When you're done spinning and weaving, buy a pair of scissors and cut up your bolts of cloth, then cut up the cut up cloth again to get bandages. Put those in your bank and return to Yew.
Gaining Skills
The first skill you're going to train is healing. There are 2 ways to do that:
1. Just wrestle small animals and cows while constantly healing yourself (slow, delay of 10 seconds between 2 heals because it takes that long to heal yourself)
2. Double client: start another account and have that account attack a cow or a bull, then put it out of war mode. Start healing the other character. (faster, healing another character only takes 4 seconds)
This is the fastest way to GM healing, when you see gains slow down, do the same with a second bull and have 2 bulls attack the new character. GM Healing in an hour or so.
When you're GM healing, set tactics to raise and go wrestle animals. This time you can kill them doing so. Don't forget to bring a dagger and scissors for wool and leather. (Leather sells at 6gp/piece to other players)
When yo have 100 tactics, set your fighting skill to raise and continue fighting animals, but this time with a weapon matching the skill you chose. When you're at about 50 fighting you probably can handle a bull on your own. bulls give you 30 leather and 10 cuts of ribs (3gp/cut, sell these to the butcher). Now you're already making some money.
When your fighting skill is GMed go to a tinker (there isn't one in Yew but almost every other city with a gate has one). Buy yourself some musical instruments (lutes are great, lap harps are the cheapest) and record a macro with razor saying:
Code:
Double click instrument (target by type)
wait 1000 miliseconds
Use Skill Peacemaking
Wait for target
Target self
Wait 5000 milisecondsAnatomy is also quite easy to gain: just use the skill on animals and players to gain. You also gain by physically attacking things.
When you're done with anatomy it's time to raise your stats which is an easy thing to do when you're at skill cap:
Set a gaining skill to raise, gain 10 points, set it to lower and then raise another gaining skill. Here's a list of what skills to use to raise your stats:
Strength: Mining, Arms Lore, Anatomy
Dexterity: Snooping, hiding, lockpicking, fencing
Inteligence: Evaluate intelligence, Item identification, Meditation, Spirit speak
If you're not at skill cap yet, just set your meditation to raise, comes in handy later when you'll be training magery, then cast some spells and let your mana refill (don't use the skill yet!).
I prefer having 40 Intelligence (for heals, cures, gate travel), 100 dexterity (for fast heals and fast weapon swings) and 85 strength (giving you 92hp and 337 stones you can carry)
When that's done you can start killing more difficult monsters, don't forget to have your anatomy skill pointed "up" and the gaining skills pointed down so you can gain the last bit. How to use Peacemaking: use skill, target the monster or animal you want to calm, and when your calming succeeds, attack it and it won't even do anything back. great way to kill wisps and most magery based monsters on your own. just don't forget to put on Magic Reflect while fighting them, incase they come out of the peacemaking before they're dead.
When you've made some money, go buy regs and GM your magery or start any new character. Remember that this character isn't built to do PvP with and most PvPers have a 100 skilpoints advantage over you.
Some final pointers:
* Have a look on http://my.uogamers.com/factionstats.php . That site tells you which faction controlled towns are cheap to buy things. Don't buy when the tax rate is set to +300%!!! If all the towns are set to +300%, go to a town that isn't under faction control (Delucia, Papua, Nujel'm, Serpent's Hold,...) to buy your things.
* Check these forums for more information about the game, there's often info that can be found to make skillgain or gameplay easier for you. You better use them.
* If you can't win, you better run. This counts for monsters but also for when another player is attacking you. Keeping your runebook open at safe page is always good, specially when you suddenly see 3 or 4 red names appear on your screen.
* Carry some potions. A quick heal, cure or refresh often come in handy.
* Don't forget to restock bandages and regs before you go out of town.
* If you make a second account make a temp tamer to tame horses or other mounts for your other chars to save 421+ gold each time. Taming most mounts take very little taming. Make a new char and set taming to 50 and you can choose what other skill you want, 50 taming without animal lore will tame most mounts after a few tries. After you tame a mount or two log on with both characters (dual-client) and transfer.
*Instead of buying scissors set healing to 1 point when making you char and you'll get newb scissors and bandages that will stay with you when you die.
*For tailors ask someone to gate you to delucia. The cotton field there spawns rather quickly and there are bulls in the guarded zone. you don't even have to kill the bulls yourself since most of the time theres people there killing them to train some skill, just wait for the bull to turn grey so you can cut it for hides/leather.
Any comments on this guide are welcome.