Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Conquering Korthos

Ok...you've run the tutorial and decided to stay in snowy Korthos. My little rogue Trappers and I will help you get going.

Trappers: Remember to equip your armor, outfit, whatever. Someone forgot mine at first...how's anyone going to take me seriously as an adventurer in those rags. Sure, they were kinda' sexy, but I'm up for adventure, not romance.

Right...to equip your armor, double click on the icon in your inventory/backpack. Monks will want to put theirs on a hotbar as it's a clickie.

Trappers: Uh....can someone enlighten me as to what a clickie is?
Trapizia: Welcome to the family, cousin Trappers! It looks like you were named after me ... good choice! And, on clickies, definitely a good idea to learn about those early. I was probably level 7 or 8 before I knew what they were (thanks Blak and Vitt!).

Excellent thinking girls! Clickies are items that you activate (usually by clicking on them on a hotbar) to get a particular effect. They need to be equipped in order to work and you'll need to have them on your hotbar to use them. When activated they do things like buff (cast protective/helpful spells on the player you have targeted - er, showing in your focus orb) or throw something nasty at a monster or an area you think a monster will enter. The nastiness might be a spell to make their attack less effective or something that does actual damage to them.

Roko: Monks start out with the Disciple's Cloak, which gives the targeted toon about 5 minutes of mage armor. Trust me, mage armor is awesome! You'll become addicted. Wait to throw it on yourself until you're in the quest. Is it time to talk about Black Widow Bracers yet? I love my new bracers! Sold my mage armor clickies soon as I got those.
Player: I was thinking we'd talk about the bracers when we get to Waterworks (WW), since that's the only place to get them...
Roko: Oh, right...good thinking....carry on...

A couple of important things to note about clickies:
  • They have a limited number of uses "per day" (between rests/tavern visits). That number is found in the lower right corner of the icon.
  • They are only renewed by resting at a shrine or in hanging out in a tavern for at least 30 seconds.
Trappers: Can you tell them about using multiple hotbars? I'm really feeling the need for another one.

Good idea! As a rogue, Trappers has a rather full starter hotbar. You have two options here. You can scroll to another hotbar using the arrows on the right of it or you can detach a second hotbar. I haven't used the first option since learning of the second. To get a second bar on your screen:
  1. Scroll to another hotbar using the arrows on the right end (you don't have to, but it's a major pain later if you don't). The idea here is to keep the #1 hotbar as your main one, because the main hotbar is the one that is connected to your number keys.
  2. Click on the box on the left end (the one with the diagonal arrow). This will cause another bar to pop out.
  3. Click on the arrow on the main bar (the new bar won't have these) to set it back to bar #1.
  4. Add items to the new bar and click/drag it to where you think you want it. You can move items from the first bar to the new one. Items on a bar will swap spots if you drag one over another. Items loaded onto a bar from anywhere else will remove the previous item from the bar.
  5. To change the orientation of a hotbar (can't be done with the starter bar), click on the u-turn arrow on the left end of the bar.
  6. To put a hotbar back into hiding, click on the diagonal arrow on the left of the bar.
Back to conquering Korthos...

Trappers: lalalalalalal....I'm getting really bored standing here! People are going to start poking me soon....
Player: We'll talk about emotes in another post...

Now you need to decide if you want to venture out on your own or with others. If you want to play with others, there are two or three options for this.

Carliee: Please teach them invitation ettiquette! As a cleric, I can feel bombarded and I hate blind invites!
Player: Of course I will...you girls really could stand to learn a little patience...
Trappers: I'm learning patience right now... *taps foot obnoxiously*

Ok...you can wait for someone to invite you to group, invite others or find a group. Waiting for an invitation might take awhile, so I'd recommend being proactive. Here are your options:
  • Indicate that you are looking for a group (LFG). To do this, click on the picture of the two faces in the upper right bar and either setting up an LFM (looking for more) on the first screen that appears or clicking on the box next to "I am looking for a party."
  • To find others who are LFM, look in the main part of that pop-up box and see if anyone is looking for people to group for snowy Korthos.
  • To join a group, you can click on the group then the "join" button or the "tell" button. Clicking Join will let the leader know you'd like an invitation to their party. If they're paying attention, they'll either invite you or send you a tell. Clicking Tell will put /tell theirname in the first tab of your chat box so you can type a message to them.
Note: To reply to a tell, type /tell playername message you want to send. So, if you want to send a message to Carliee, type /tell Carliee hi!

Carliee: Shouldn't that be /tell Carliee hi, your majesty? Just kidding!

Etiquette for grouping:
No blind invites! Almost everyone hates them and won't group with someone who sends them. What is a blind invite? Sending out an invitation to a party without first hearing from the invitee that they're interested in being invited.
Reply to inquiries. Whether you're the group leader or someone sends you a tell asking if you'd like to join their party, a friendly reply is a good idea. If being invited and you're not interested, simply say "no ty." Also try to be prompt with your response.
Respect Permadeath players (PD'ers/permies). Sorry, but permies only play with other permies and most guilds only allow us to play with guildmates. If you see permadeath in the guildname, don't bother inviting them. Of course, if you send a tell, every PD'er I know will send a nice reply. Some will explain why they're turning you down and others will just say "no ty." Don't beg us to join you. We can't.
Only send one request per toon. Party members should communicate to avoid sending multiple tells to the same character.
Don't beg. It's simply annoying, even to non-PD'ers/Puggers. Offering clerics plat to help your group isn't begging. It's letting them know you're not just out to suck their resources.
Warn the group if you're not a typical build. Groups looking for a healing cleric will get rather annoyed with a battle cleric who doesn't heal and didn't warn them ahead of time. Same goes for a rogue who can't disable or a bard who can't or won't play songs. Build what you want and play how you want, but realize that puggers expect certain things from some classes. Heck...I used to warn groups of my tendency to get lost.

Trapizia: lol ... I remember when you warned Blak and Vitt that you get lost a lot before we went into STK and Vitt said she did, too. Those were fun days...
Trappers: I see a group! Can we join them? Please?!
Player: Sure ... click on their party then "join."

Softener>

Trappers: Well....that was certainly fun/interesting, though I think a new player woulda' been a bit flabbergasted at how fast we ran it.
Player: Definitely...maybe I should try a run pretending I'm new...
Trappers: hmmmm....think you could pull it off?
Player: Sure...I can act a little...
Amarakai: And I'm sure you can remember some of your stupid questions and remarks from our early days...
Roko: She won't have to go back all that far...
Player: Ahem...remember, you're a PD toon...

Well...Trappers ended up playing with a rather experienced player. That run reminded me of the importance of communicating. We had some good communication as to how to run the quests. He did ask if I wanted to run it fast and I said that was fine. I would recommend a new player let their party know they're new and would prefer a slower run.

I did forget to visit the trainer before embarking on the quest, which isn't the best idea since you have an action point (AP) to spend when you arrive in Korthos. To spend an AP, find your trainer, double click on them to talk and choose the second option on the list. Click on that and view the list of options. On the bottom of the pop-up window, you'll see how many you have spent this opening, how many you've spent total, and how many you've got to spend. To select one, click on the enhancement you want, click the arrow pointing left. If you want to put one back, click on it then the arrow pointing right. When you're done, click "Accept."

For a rogue, I think there's no choice that even comes close to taking rogue skill boost. It helps your basic rogue trap finding and disabling, searching, spot and unlock skills work significantly better than without it. Since it's what's called an active enhancement, you'll want to load it on your hotbar. The easiest way to tell if something is active or passive is to note the shape of the icon. Active skills are square. Passive skills are hexagons.

For me, the choice for fighters isn't as obvious. Of course, I have a lot more experience building rogues than I do fighters. My rogues also tend to be significantly more successful than my fighters.

Truffle: As you've noted before, I suck...
Player: I didn't say you suck. I think I said something like you're not a great build. To your credit, you do pretty darn well for how I build you.

Anyway....For a fighter, I'd probably go with toughness. The other enhancements that interest me for a fighter are active skills that require activation in more heated situations than the rogue skill boost (human versatility - for human fighters - and haste boost). Once you get your basic skills down, you might want to try those. They'll still be available later. Before choosing fighter toughness you'll want to make sure you have the toughness feat (go to your character sheet-press Ctrl + C or click on the pic of the open scroll in the bar on top left of screen/click on the feats tab/scroll down looking for the toughness feat). If you don't have the feat, the enhancement will do you no good.

That's it for now. Once I figure out how to post pictures here, I'll convert some of my screenshots into helpful visual aids for the blog. Yep...I'm as new to blogging as some of you are to the game!

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