Welcome to Armageddon.
The first thing to realize is that when you start, you suck. You will be good at pretty much nothing. Armageddon is a very harsh game. That is why we play it. It is the sort of game where a maxed out godlike character can be quickly overwhelmed and killed. If it is any consolation, the mistakes you have made are pretty much in line with what most new people do. I know I made those exact same mistakes when I was new. Very few people are able to get right into the game and ‘get it’. I know of a few people that started right away and had long lived characters, but they are few and far in between. For most people, it takes one good long lived character before they see how to do it again.
First mistake you probably should avoid repeating is leaving Allanak alone. If you leave Allanak alone, you will die, without exception. You might get lucky the first few times, but you eventually will die. Everything around Allanak is a desert wasteland, and nearly everything in that wasteland is big and mean. That beetle that killed you was actually one of the smaller and more pleasant creatures you could have run into. There are also Gith out there that will attack in groups of a half a dozen, desert tarantulas as big as a car, insects called scabs that are bigger then a man, and a horde of other very nasty creatures. I have watched skilled warriors get ambushed and killed in a matter of seconds outside of Allanak. If for some reason you do go into the desert, never go on foot unless you stay close enough to the city that you can run back.
Next, Armageddon is very high on realism. Perhaps not realism in terms of not having fantasy elements, but realism in terms of how the environment responds. Walk out into a desert and you will die of dehydration. Get caught stealing from a guard, and the guards will try and capture or kill you. Commit a crime in a populated place (even if there are no NPCs), and your crime will be reported and you will be hunted down. Being a pick pocket is very hard, perhaps one of the hardest classes in the game. I highly suggest understanding the game a little better before trying to be a pick pocket again.
Don’t sleep unless you have to. Sleeping is all around bad. The only time when it is wise to sleep is when your character has been hurt so bad that he won’t heal without sleep. Use the sit or rest commands to rest a tired or slightly injured character. Also, when asleep anyone (or anything) can easily kill you or steal from you. A lot of the people you meet will be nasty and mean individuals who will happily steal from or kill you.
In order to sell things to NPCs, use the ‘offer’ command. ‘offer sword’ by a weapons merchant will cause you to offer the sword to him. He will give you a price, and if you like the price, you type ‘barter’, and the goods will be exchanged. Weapons merchants will only buy weapons, armor merchants buy armor, exc. I highly suggest reading the faqs, ‘help faq’, as it goes over a lot of the basic commands.
As to how to actually learn how to survive, there are two ways to do it. Either keep making characters and dying, or join a clan. I learned by dying, a lot. I wish I had joined a clan when I first started, as it would have made the game much less painful. Joining a clan is probably the most painless way to go. Fortunately, there is a clan in game that is unofficially set up to deal very well with newbies called the Byn. That is not to say it is a newbie clan. I have been playing many years, and my current character started in the Byn. It is just that the nature of the clan makes it very newbie friendly. The clan always has a large player base and a healthy mix of veteran and new players.
The Byn is a mercenary clan. They basically will take in any scum off the street and give them a job. The only real requirement to join is that you have 300 obsidian coins. The slang people use for talking about obsidian coins is ‘sid. Go to the Gaj tavern, it is located on caravan way, the road that leads to the desert. Go in there and sit down at the bar.
To sit at the bar, type ‘sit bar’. Also, you can type ‘l tables’, and get a list of the tables in the room. ‘sit at 3’ will sit you down at the 3rd table listed in ‘l tables’. ‘sit with
’ will sit at the same table as another person. To talk to people at a table so that only people at the table here you, type ‘talk Hi my name is Joe’. Typing ‘talk (with a sly grin) Hi my name is Joe’, will show up as At your table, the blue eyed man says in Sirhish, with a sly grin. “Hi, my name is Joe.”I highly suggest reading ‘help emote’, ‘help tell’, ‘help say’, and ‘help talk’. Armageddon has a very powerful emote system that takes some time to get used to.
Once you are in the tavern, look around at the different people there. At peak times, the place should be crowded. You want to look for people wearing a ‘military aba’. People wearing a military aba are members of the Byn. Once you find someone wearing one of these aba’s, tell them you want to join up. They will direct you to a Sergeant who will allow you to join. Make sure you have 300 ‘sid (slang for obsidian coins) on you, so that you can pay to join.
Once you are in the Byn, they will take care of your needs. They will train you, give you a uniform, feed you, and give you water. Before you join, they will lay down a few basic rules you need to follow. FOLLOW THESE RULES. The rules they lay down are for your benefit. People who break the rules end up dead almost without exception. Don’t sneak off into the ‘rinth (the run down northern part of town), as the ‘rinth is as dangerous, if not more dangerous then the desert. Do not leave the city.
As a member of the Byn you will leave the city, but you will leave with your fellow mercenaries. You will train in the desert on occasion, and you will run missions for various employers hiring out the Byn. On these missions you will get paid. If you stay in the Byn, you will make up the 300 ‘sid you spent getting in, especially if you stay on long enough to be prompted to Trooper. If you stay long enough, you will eventually have a skilled character making a fair amount of coin.
One last bit of advice I have, is if you ever run into a Templar, do exactly what he says. Armageddon is mean and harsh all the way around. A lot of the people you met will be looking to screw you. It is a desperate world where people do anything to survive. The enforces of the law in Allanak, Templars, are no exception. In fact, that are meaner and harsher then almost anything else in the game. Allanak is not a nice and happy fantasy city run by a benevolent ruler. It is run by an ancient and powerful God-King whose enforcers have absolute power in the city. The law enforcement is corrupt, and has little regard for fairness. If you should run into a Templar (he will have the word Templar in his short description), bow when you approach him, refer to him as Lord Templar or Lady Templar, do exactly what he says, and for the love of all that is good, don’t argue, no matter what he says. He has the ability to order a dozen soldiers to beat you to death, and they generally show little restrain in using this power. Arguments that he is acting unfair always go upon deaf ears.
I also suggest reading the following pages: information on Allanak, and what an Allanaki citizen would know and a list of people who are helpers and can answer your questions if you have them, although posting questions here is also fine.
Taken from a GDB post by Account Rindan
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