Useful Knowledge

General Game Knowledge

A list of general information for new players.

Websites

While the purest of the pure will only rely on in game text, the rest of us use a lot of supplemental resources.

• Rodpedia. The primary resource for all game info. You'll be here a lot.

https://rodpedia.realmsofdespair.info/

• Tokai's site
  • This is super old and now obsolete, has basically been moved into Rodpedia, but used to be the main help site.

http://tokai.ws/

I do really like his Misc Info section and his map is really good for wandering around without specific directions if you're into that: http://tokai.ws/misc/map.htm

• Silverwolf EQ Database
  • This is super old and super janky, but it DOES work.

http://silverwolf-den.com/cgi-bin/db.cgi?db=equip2&uid=default&view_search=1

They also have some basic eq examples outlined on the bottom of this page:

http://rangers.silverwolf-den.com/tips.php

There are other eq databases available, some maintained by private groups. Ask around you might be able to find one.

Death

• Upon death, you will awake in the Temple of Notre Dame. See 'help map'. It is #5 s; e; e; se back to Darkhaven Square.
  • The Academy, where you may have been initially exploring upon first entering the game, is #3 e, s; d from Darkhaven Square.

• If you die while under level 10, you keep all your gear and can just get right back to doing whatever you were doing.
• If you die after level 10, your corpse with all your gear remains where you died. You have 2 options:
  • Return to your corpse and get all your stuff out of it
  • Utilize your deity to 'supplicate corpse' and they will bring your corpse to you so you can get your stuff.

So, it is HIGHLY advised that you devote to a deity as soon as possible (level 5 I think) so you can die a ton and its easy to recover your stuff.

Deities

The deity system here is robust, but I'm going to oversimplify it for you: Deities bring you your shit when you die.

You devote to a deity by walking to their room and using the command 'devote <deity>'. Upon devoting:

• You will have 'favor' with your deity. Displayed in 'score'. See 'help favor_levels' to view all of the favor levels.
• You must have 'praised' favor or higher in order to 'supplicate corpse'.

Gaining favor with a deity varies by deity, however there are 2 that are basically easy-mode. You should use these at first (and kinda always honestly)

For Good align: [A'enari]       (Really all classes can be Good)
For Evil align: [Vl'aresch]   (Vamps, Nephs, Thieves typically are Evil as a newb.)

For these two, all you need to do is visit them to gain favor. Each time you walk into their room you gain favor. You can simply walk in/out/in/out of their room a bunch to reach "Praised" favor level and then will be able to supplicate your corpse.

So:

• Go devote to one of those (just follow the linked directions above to their room, and do 'devote <name>'.
• Walk in/out of their room a bunch until you're at 'praised' favor level.

Then you can go and explore and die whenever, when you do, just use 'supplicate corpse' and get all your shit back. Then go re-favor again back to praised.

When you're ready for more overwhelming information, see https://rodpedia.realmsofdespair.info/wiki/Deity

Skills/Spells

• Type 'practice' to view the list of things you can or have practiced.
  • You can learn new skills/spells inside the Academy right where you started the game (after the intro area).
  • From Darkhaven Square this is #3 e;s;d;n;e and type 'prac THING' to learn it.
• You will be able to learn new stuff each level. Type 'slist' to view the full list. Can also do 'slist 10 20' for example to view ranges.

You will learn EVERYTHING. This is not a game where you pick a specific build of skills/spells. You may have a shortage of practice sessions for the first 5 or so levels, but you'll quickly have an excess and can learn everything.

• You can adept your skills/spells in two ways:
  • Use them
  • Return to the trainer and continue to use 'practice THING' and it will increase your percentage adept of that thing.
    • Wait until you AV (level 50) and then blow all your excess practice sessions doing this.

Game Mechanics

Experience & Leveling

The leveling system here is currently super broken because an immortal jerked with it a few years ago, and its now dead simple. Here's what you gotta know:

Fight Tactics & XP

• In many cases, especially if your char gets the skill "enhanced damage" you will get more xp from melee hits than secondary hits
  • This means you may want to literally 'do nothing' and just let melee churn along to gain the most XP possible.
  • This also means you should dress with eq that maximizes HR and DR so that you actually land melee hits, and they do good damage.

Intelligence & Kill Buffer XP Penalties

• If you are in a fight for too long, you will stop getting xp. This is based on an Intelligence stat check between you and the mob.

• Flee'ing does lose xp. As does dying.

• There is a kill buffer that remembers the last 25 things you've killed. The more a mob is listed in that list, the less xp you get.
  • "Clearing your buffer" is a thing you'll hear about. Go kill 25 tiny/easy mobs to flush it, and you should see 'fresh' xp from mobs again.
    • Suggested areas to clear your kill buffer: The Warehouse, Green Forest, Shattered Refuge

Equipment & Stats

• The Constitution stat determines how many hitpoints you gain per level.
• The Intelligence and Wisdom stats both influence how much xp you get while fighting.
• Your Hitroll & Damroll determine how much you hit, and how hard, both of which therefore gain you xp.

Ideally you would want to find gear that maxes all of those in order to level as fast as possible, and get you the best hitpoint gains per level.

• Spells will buff your stats:
  • Until level 20, you can walk into the Academy to receive the spell "Thoric's Blessing" which gives a +3 to all stats
  • After level 20, you can have a mage/cleric cast 'leveling spells' on you which will give you a +2 to all stats

• So, find gear that puts your stats to a point where once you get spelled up they are maxed. Then find gear to pump HR/DR.
  • I would focus on max'ing CON always. Then, just whatever gear you can get that has some hr/dr/int/wis and pump all that as much as you can.

• If you need help identifying gear, you can see my Lowbie Eq page, or look up items on Rodpedia, or use the in game 'identify' spell/scroll to id an item.
  • Identify scrolls are available #2 s;#3 w;n from Darkhaven Square. Buy id, have item in inventory, rec id <itemname>.

Clerics:

Clerics get different spells depending on if they are good/evil align. If you're evil, at level 14 you get a spell named Necromantic Touch

This spell both heals you (cuz it sucks life from the mob) and is also just utterly mind blowing fucking devastating to all mobs and gets you a shit fuck ton of xp.

If you're a cleric, get to level 14, go kill friendly gnome children/men/women in Shattered Refuge until you're evil, then go learn Necro.

You can AV a cleric using necro without even ever changing your equipment from the starter stuff. Just go necro everything's fucking face off until you're av.

Fight Mechanics

Little is known about how things 'actually work'. Please closely read the help files for every character stat, hitroll/damroll/ac, saving throws (help saves), resistances/suceptabilities (help resist) for official information on how those work. Here are some theorized inner workings based on myth, rumor, and extremely old public SMAUG 1.8 code. Long story short... its like D&D so make some assumptions and it's basically the same type of system of rolls.

Hitroll: HR seems to impact melee damage. In SMAUG 1.8 code your hitroll was computed against a mobs AC, in a way that is basically straight out of D&D ala its "thac0" (To-Hit AC 0) system if you're familiar with that. For each X of HR you have, it negates Y mob AC. If your hitroll is sufficient to drop mob AC to 0 or less, then you will land a melee hit.

AC: Armor Class should theoretically work the same for players as it does for mobs, so this would roll against the mob's Hitroll. In the SMAUG 1.8 code, that happens on a 1/10 basis, so 1 AC negates 10 AC and vice versa. Whether this is still how current game code works is unknown, but, its likely that AC and HR are still in some sense rolled against one another. High AC will prevent you from taking so much melee damage. As your AC falls due to equipment damage, you will eat more melee damage.

Damroll: DR is a theoretically a modifier of basic weapon/skill/spell damage. If your weapon hits for 10, your DR may get incorporated (somehow) onto that to determine how much damage you land on the mob. It is unknown if/how/when DR is used for offensive skill/spell damage modification, this likely is configured on a per-skill/spell basis. The quantity of damage landed on a mob impacts the XP you gain, so you do want to have high DR to maximize the XP you gain per hit where DR was a factor. Some skills are KNOWN to be DR based attacks, the Thief attack 'circle' most famously.

Saving Throws: Some equipment gives you "Saves". These are not visible in 'score' or anywhere in the game, you need to manually identify your items and add up your saving throws. These work just like in D&D as far as I can tell. When faced with incoming damage of a type for which you have some saving throw points, your character rolls a dice which is modified by your saving throw value. If you win the save, the damage you receive is reduced, likely by a percentage such as 1/4 or 1/2. Mobs also have saving throws. There did appear to be a 'cap' in the old code where above a certain value additional saving throw points did not have any further impact on the roll. I believe this was around -23, but I forget and suck at reading code, and that code is long outdated anyhow so who knows if that still applies at all. Long story short, 'the Ice Girth' is an item your AV characters will want if you are finding yourself stunned/paralyzed or your containers scrapping a lot.

Resistances/Susceptabilities: See 'aff by' for your list of current resistances/susceptibilities. These will reduce the damage you take from those types of incoming attacks. Despite recent changes announced in "news 1168' these are still capped at 40%, and that's not actually reducing your incoming damage by 40%. These are scaled down after the first 10%, so what you see in the game is a lie after 10%, you're not reducing damage that much. At the max resistance cap of "40%" in-game, you're actually only reducing damage by 20%. So, the first 10% is true, but then you have to go the whole way to "40%" to even reach a true 20% actual resistance.

Constitution: Con works a lot like resistances, only it applies to ALL incoming damage. The Con stat is not capped, so even though your 'stat' command will only ever show it at a Max value appropriate for your class (18/20/22/25) if it is higher than your max that still helps you. At a Con of 20, all incoming damage is reduced by 5%. At a con of 29, that's 10%. After that, diminishing returns make it not super worthwhile to try to add more.

Healing & Potion Usage

REALLY the main mechanic of this game is managing healing yourself during a fight.

• Quaffing potions fills your stomach. Your stomach can only hold X potions (based on your CON stat).

   CON -- Stomach Capacity
  < 11 -- 6
 12-14 -- 7
 15-17 -- 8
 18-19 -- 9
  > 20 -- 10

• Once full, you need to drink from a mystical spring to empty it.
  • Many magic classes get the 'create spring' spell which creates this
    • Can also be brewed into 'create spring' potions
  • The item 'an icicle staff' can create these, level 5, bought in Darkhaven Town Hall.
  • Paladins also get a magical fountain, same thing.

This means the real fight mechanic is, 'DO ATTACK'... Quaff a bunch of heals, drink spring... REPEAT.

HOWEVER

• Note that edible heals also exist, and those do NOT fill your stomach. You can eat an infinite amount, without needing to pause to drink spring.
  • These exist in several forms, which are either relatively expensive to buy from shops, or require some slow farming over a period of days.
    • Therefore, not great for everyday use, but fantastic for a mob that you're having trouble with and just need an edge.

Alpha Attacks

At Avatar level (50), these will be your primary attacks.

I've included what is believed to be the primary modifier where known.

• Augurer: Spiral Blast (HP Based)
• Mage: Quantum Spike / Paradox Flux
• Nephandi: Qlippothic Shift
• Cleric (dev): Virtue (CHA Based)
• Fathomer: Vindur Gong
• Thief: Circle (DR Based)
• Paladin: Shieldbash (WIS Based)
• Ranger: Gash (WIS+STR Based)
• Warrior: Smash
• Barbarian: Rend (CON based)
• Vampire: Grasp (INT & DR Based - See 'news 1149')
• Druid: Nadur Dorn (MANA Based - See 'news 1171')

Navigation

• The directions and maps of Areas on Rodpedia are your primary resource for getting around.
  • Setting up speedwalk aliases in your client will be a major assistance to you, if you're into that kinda thing.

Darkhaven Gates:

The Darkhaven Gates close overnight. If you are very low level this can pose a problem, and can even be an annoyance at higher levels when trying to speedwalk somewhere. There are a few ways to get out if you're unable to kill a guard for the key, and a master key you can obtain to always have your own key to the gates:

• Tagerte's Conveyances: For characters under Level 25 this store #3 s, #3 e, n from DH[] sells transportation tickets to 17 different areas, including a free recall scroll. Simply 'buy <area>' to be sent to the area, and 'recite return' to recall back to DH.

• The Servant:

Along Justice Ave. typically between Vertic and Falcon is a Servant who will send you outside the north wall if you nod servant.

(Grey Aura) A short man dressed in ragged clothes stands against the north side of the wall.

This sends you along the trail outside of the DH in the NW corner of the city. Going #4 east would take you back to the North Gate of Darkhaven.

Sometimes he will prog when you enter the room to announce this feature. They do not need to prog to use their services however. They also give you a recall scroll.

• The Skeleton Key:

There is a quest available inside Darkhaven Art Gallery which will get you a Skeleton Key to the Darkhaven Gates. It is tagged to your player specifically, and is a permanent key item that saves when you log out.

This quest has 4 stages that are available at level 10-20, 20-30, 30-40, and 40-50. Completing each stage gets you a key modification that unlocks 1 more gate. So, at level 10, you can get the key and it will open 1 gate for example. Every 10 levels you can do another task to modify that key so it unlocks another gate. Complete all 4 tasks and your key unlocks all DH gates.

To begin the quest, go #4 s;w;n;n;give 5k coin recep; un n; op n; n;open w;w to meet Damian

I won't spoil how to complete this quest here, but it's fairly easy to follow Damian's clues and is worth doing if you find the locked DH gates an annoyance.