Darkfall Day 27
David X. Messer provides guidance for newcomers to Darkfall.
This post is basically a checklist of things I did as a new player and either got dead right or got wrong. Essentially I thought it might be useful for other people completely new to Darkfall, as I was.
* You've just logged into Darkfall and there's some graphics glitch, or something doesn't work quite right. Spend 20 minutes or so wandering around and getting used to the city you start out in, and then read the Darkfall newbie tips thread in the Darkfall forums. Half of it won't make any sense until you've played the game a bit more but if there's something specifically wrong this would be the first place you might look for a solution :
http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=149310
* Although it didn't look like it, there are actually starter quests. All I did here was wandered around my starting city and spoke to all the NPCs to pick up starting quests. Working these through a couple of times got me free gathering tools. A Mining axe, a Wood axe and a sickle and the quests taught me how to use them. Thrilling though this sounds, they're free and really if you're a new player this is the helping hand you want.
* I should have picked up the Bowyer skill much earlier than I did. All I needed to do for this was to buy saw, mining tongs and a wood working knife. The mining axe and the wood axe (which I was previously given free by doing some of the starter quests) are the two tools needed to gather materials for your own arrows. Then it's just a case of smelting the ore with the tongs, cutting the wood into timber with the saw, and then working the arrows with the knife. Although a lot of the mobs in the starting quests drop these, they're a pain in the arse to collect as you'll only get 3-4 at a time. Being able to make your own arrows en-mass by using
gathering materials is damn useful.
* One thing that wasn't too clear to me was the whole 'what weapons can I use' thing. The simple answer is all of them, but you need to switch from your default starter weapon as early as possible. I spent way too much time bumbling around with the leaf blade and thinking I needed to 'train' new weapon skills! In reality what I should have done was switched to the first new weapon that dropped from the mobs I was killing for quests.
* Getting my own mount was a good deal easier than I was led to believe it was. Essentially when you're gathering herbs (you picked up your free sickle earlier right?) just keep on farming until you get that steed grass. I worked out it'd take me about 30-40 minutes to farm one steed grass. Given the way gathering works in DF it's not like you need to be hands on mouse/keyboard the whole time. After you've got your steed grass just buy the tamer skill, and a tamers whistle and you're done!
* Don't carry too much around with you. Just out gathering? No point in wearing armour then. Would you be pissed off if you died
right now with what you've got in your pack? Bank it then. Don't assume that because you're standing by the bank with a bunch of other people that you're safe. I've seen instances where a PK has come along and killed me as well as the other six people stood there AFK.
* If you're feeling brave and you want to explore, use these two links.
If you're in a Clan The Darkfall political map will tell you which cities should be safe for you to visit :
If you're wanting to travel any distance across the map but don't want to lose too much progress if you get ganked, the Sinister darkfall map has a filter to tell you where the Chaos Stones are. So basically if you get killed you'll respawn at the last Chaos Stone you bound yourself to.
http://www.afraidyet.net/forums/misc.php?do=page&template=Darkfall_Map
If you're on twitter the offical Darkfall twitter account is @DarkfallMMORPG, that's http://twitter.com/DarkfallMMORPG if you'd rather have a URL.
Lastly, the official Darkfall forums are an interesting place to hang out but engage with the locals at your peril :
http://forums.darkfallonline.com/
* The most important thing I did to help myself as a new player was to join a Clan. This was a real lifeline beyond what the newbie channel offered me and I could get right down and ask all the silly questions I wanted. The trick to this is that the answers I got were all in relation to where the Clan I had joined were on the map. If I wanted to do some farming to boost my stats they'd tell me where some good spots were, which other Clans were in the area and what mobs to avoid and what mobs I could solo etc. Later on when we had a couple of other new players join the clan I could repay this debt by passing on the information that I'd been given when I first joined.
* Darkfall is one of those games where to get things from it you need to work at it. If you want to go and do some PVP in a group, ask in the Clan channel if anyone has an existing group or if anyone is interested in starting one which you can join. If you want to go and farm some PVE mobs for loot or cash, ask your Clan if anyone knows of a group going or start one yourself. Ask
where some good spots might be. If you want to take part in sieges, ask in the Clan alliance channel if there are any planned, if there are any Alliance raiding parties forming.
I got as much out of it as I put in and in some cases much more.
Posted by Drew Shiel at December 22, 2009 8:57 PM
