From n00b to newbie: A beginner's guide to Kal Online (22/04/2005)
No-one minds a new player in a game and, frankly, some people even welcome them
with open arms. But let's face it - no-one likes a n00b. This is a guide that
will hopefully turn the n00bs into newbies, and give them enough info so they
won't annoy the rest of us.
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1. ETIQUETTE
(Curtsey while you're thinking - it saves time)
I cannot stress this enough: Just because you're new doesn't give you the right
to go around annoying people, being rude, or just basically being stupid.
There are certain things you just don't do if you don't want people to swear at
you, organise assassins to come after you, or simply just not helping you out
when they easily could. To this end, the following rules are a good place to
start:
- Don't beg for money/items. If you ~have~ to ask, ask once. Asking a
dozen times or more might give you the impression you're reaching more people,
but chances are if someone was going to help you after the second time they
won't be so willing after the tenth. Annoying people gets you nowhere, and
neither does swearing. Sometimes people will be nice enough to help you out
just 'cause (A big thankyou to the pair who gave me a shield and some cash - I
don't remember your names, unfortunately, but thanks none the less).
- If someone else does help you out, be polite. No-one ~has~ to help the new
guy, be it with information or money/items. We all (OK, maybe I don't) have
better things we could be doing with our times than helping out some ingrate
who's probably going to wind up Botting anyway.
- Don't steal people's kills. If someone else is attacking it, and they don't
seem to be losing or asking for help, leave them alone. Because two of the
three current classes are ranged this will require some diligence on your part,
but everyone understands that accidents happen - just don't do it too often, or
it'll look deliberate.
It's also a good idea to remember that Kal Online is a worldwide thing so not
everyone is going to speak the same language. Tonight alone I saw people
speaking English, German, Polish, and really bad English, so chances are you
won't understand a number of people and they won't understand you either.
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2. BUILDING CHARACTER
(Should it be glowing like that?)
This seems to be the area I see the most questions about, so this is probably a
good place to go next. Basically, building up your character is done in 2 ways
- earning experience and spending points. The first part is the no-brainer:
you get experience for successfully putting the pointy end of your weapon into
the bad guys and for completing quests. The second part attracts the questions,
though - especially when it comes to skill points. Here's the basic rundown of
your points:
- Stat points. Each levelup, aside from restoring your health and energy, gives
you 5 points to allocate to your stats. Bring up the character menu using
either the menu in the upper right or pressing "C" and you'll see, in the
middle-left of the new window, your 5 main attributes, each with a plus button
now beside it. Clicking this plus will, quite obviously, add a point to the
stat in question, thus making your character more powerful. Choose carefully,
though, as there is no "undo" option here.
- Skill points. With each levelup also comes a bonus skill point. You cannot
allocate yourself more skills on your own! This is what causes the confusion.
You need to talk to one of the masters in order to learn new skills - one of
each is standing on the raised platform at the South of the town you begin in,
though I'm certain there's more elsewhere (I haven't found them yet, but I'm
sure they're there). Make sure you talk to the one who corresponds to your
character class, and you'll be given the option to train under them and learn
new skills. Note that not all skills will be available to you from the start,
and some skills have requirements both in character level and the level of other
skills before you can earn them. Holding your mouse over a skill will give you
a description including its type, attributes and requirements. Again, clicking
the plus will add a point to the skill and there's no "undo" option.
I believe there is a way to have your stats and skills reset, but from what I
can gather it's an expensive procedure. This is one of those things I haven't
tried yet and probably won't.
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3. ITEMS AND TREASURE
(There's gold in them there hills)
Let's face it: everyone wants more money and better items. Problem is that some
people aren't willing to earn it, and a lot don't know how. So how do you get
money? By killing enemies and selling items. And how about items? By buying
them or killing enemies. There really is no other way about this unless you
want to cough up some real-world currency and use the item shop as provided on
the website. In the beginning, you ~won't~ make a lot of money and you ~won't~
find spectacular items, but that's basically the same deal for any RPG - MMO or
otherwise. Think back to the 28th crappy sword you found in Diablo, or yet
another pile of sticky mucus in RO, and it's hardly surprising that a low-level
character won't be taking in a huge haul. All I can suggest here is that you be
patient and stick with it - all those level 30+ characters with full suits of
spiffy armour and that neat'o creature ability started as level 1 characters
with pockets full of moths, just like you did.
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4. MY ADVICE
(So who do you like in the 5th?)
- Choose your targets wisely. You've probably noticed that some enemies' names
are written in different colours. Well, there's a reason for this, and it's
something like the following:
Red: Unless you're attacking as part of a team or loaded up with healing items,
I wouldn't touch this one.
Orange: Defeatable solo, provided you've got the right stats, decent weapons and
plenty of health.
Yellow: A good challenge, but you should manage just fine.
Green: Safe bet you'll win this without any real dramas.
Blue: No contest - you'll win for sure.
Pale blue: Not worth bothering with - you'll win, but you won't get anything for
it (no items or experience).
Note that as your level goes up the colours will change, so that red-labelled
big-handed inhabitant will eventually become pale, just like all the rest.
- Right-clicking is used to activate your current "active" skill, such as
beheading. If it's a recursive skill, like the lightning strike, you need only
click once and it will repeat, just like a physical attack, until the enemy dies
or you run out of energy.
- Don't fear getting killed. Run if you can, but if you get killed it really
isn't that much of a deal for a fresh character. Sure you lose a bit of
experience, but it's not so bad with how little time it takes to get back early
on.
- Once you get a few small potions, assign them to a hotkey. This will make
healing in a panic a lot easier, and taking on some of the stronger enemies
more possible.
- You can't drop items until you reach level 11. I don't know why, but you
just can't, so stop trying.
- All those yellow lines of text you see are private shops. These might have
their use, but mostly I just find them annoying as they make it very hard to
find quest-related NPCs.
- Your character can't negotiate corners on their own, so you'll have to show
them the way. This means no clicking behind a building and expecting to wind
up anywhere but running against said building.
- If you can help it, look away from those huge groups of people by the
waterfront. Near as I can figure they're all fishing. Fishing is an alternate
method of income as you can sell the fish. No doubt some of the people there
have been at it for days, if not weeks, and probably make a tidy profit for
their troubles. The main reason I suggest you look away is because the
performance takes a ~huge~ nosedive as you get closer to them, even with a high-
speed connection and a computer that will score 10K in 3DMark 05.
- If someone promises cheats, hacks, bots, or the like, it's probably too good
to be true. The fun is in actually playing the game, and most times these kinds
of things wind up as links to virii and such. Sometimes they're legit, but if
you wanted to sit back and watch someone else play you might as well sit back
and watch a real human playing instead - at least that way you might get some
conversation while you're at it. And if you're not even watching you might as
well leave your computer folding or doing something else that's actually useful,
or, heaven forbid, actually turning the thing off.
- If you don't want to keep starting at the same town, find the statue in the
middle of another town. Just clicking on it is enough to change your respawn
location from then on. As you get stronger, this will save you a lot of running
time trying to get to decent targets again. Make sure you've done all your
quests, though, as it can also add a lot of time to backtracking.
And, lastly...
- Kal Online is, essentially, ~free~. This means that if something goes wrong,
or something's not working right, or if a server goes down, you should learn to
hold your tongue - and your fingers. Unless you want to start paying someone
to debug a problem you've encountered, or financing a new server, you should
just learn to accept that things can and do go wrong at times. If something
happens, be constructive about it - "I was headed East at _____ when I fell
through the ground over by the Northern edge of the canyon," is a lot more
helpful than "You stupid *$#!)%s - Your %@#$*# game just %#@#$ed up!."
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5. FINAL WORDS
(My, my, my... look at the sun - it's time to go!)
As of the time this guide was written, I have two characters in my account -
"Thalyn", a level 11 warrior, and "Maeretzalna", a level 8 sorceress. What
this basically means is that I haven't been playing that long and I am very
much a beginner myself. To that end, there's a lot of things I haven't
discovered yet: I haven't found any uber-class items, nor gotten myself an egg,
made my first million or even gone much further from "home" than the second town
you encounter.
Obviously I can't write about what I don't know, but that's not the point of
this guide. I never meant it to be a fully comprehensive, be all and end all
solution - just a reasonably good point of reference for all those people who
download the game, get a character up and running, and think, "OK - what now?"
The whole idea of videogames is to have fun (OK, MMORPGs are also quite social),
but how can you have fun when you don't know what you're doing or you're
constantly being hounded by people who don't know what they're doing?
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