PlaneShift Newbie Guide

PlaneShift Newbie Guide by emeraldfool

Anyway, this guide isn’t a full, in-depth, quality “How to play” guide. This is more of a collection of some tricks and tips that a newbie should know if he wants to survive in this world. I’m assuming you’ve read other guides, and know how to play to a certain degree. And now you want to know how to get an edge.

Right, here we go:

1. Imperviousness is fleeting…

You should remember this one. Sometimes the NPC client – which is the doodad that controls all the NPC’s functions, including combat – will go down, usually when a GM/Dev is fixing something. While this is happening, you will be unable to attack any NPCs (e.g. rats, rogues, gladiators, etc.), and will receive a is impervious to attack! error message whenever you try.

Just stay calm, wait a few minutes, and it should be back on again. Sometimes it may even go down for hours or even days (though this is quite rare), the key is to wait. Remember it’s like that for everyone, so you should occupy yourself with a trip to the mine (see Number 3 below) or a nice Roleplay event (see Number 4 below) and check back every so often. No need to post another of the 100 ‘Rats are impervious to attack?!?!?’ threads.

2. Help others, and help for free

This is important, since as a newbie, you’ll need a lot of help, and will have a lot of questions, and
may not have the money to hire someone to help you, or the patience to find a kind soul who has the answers you want.

Often people will always need help with certain things, whether they’re veterans or newbies. This could be things like directions to a certain place, help carrying stuff around or transferring items to other characters on their account, etc.
The thing is, if someone needs help you should jump at the chance to help them, as it helps you in the long run. Now, some people may offer a reward for helping you, and its okay to take it, but NEVER demand money for helping. That will only turn them off you.
Besides, in a lot of situations, helping for free can be more beneficial to you. If you refuse a reward, this will make people feel indebted to you. They’ll owe you a favour. So add them to your buddy list, and the next time you need something, all you have to do is send them a /tell and they’ll jump at the chance to pay you back. Usually.

3. Cold, hard Tria.

At this point in time, there is really only two ways to make moolah (not including seducing a GM and using their account to generate it): Selling rare loot/crafted items to players, and mining for gold. However,  mining is far more effortless, and far more accessible to newbies. All you need to mine is a pickaxe (100 trias at Harnquist), a decent mining skill (3+ is good enough, but the more the better) and a knowledge of where the best spots are (either ask someone, or find someone with a pickaxe in their hand and stalk them until they lead you there). Then all you have to do is walk around typing ‘/dig gold’ repeatedly until your backpack is full (the more strength you have, the more you can carry) (Instead of having to use the chat window, you could bind the ‘/dig gold’ command to a single button via the shortcuts menu). The best part is, there’s no dying or kill-stealing: you dig up your own stuff, and there’s enough for everybody. Each nugget of gold ore is worth 240, so with enough strength (around 100) you could easily make 5000(+/-) trias a trip!

Don’t have the time or money to invest PPs into mining? Simply make a new character who’s dedicated to mining gold (Remember they should be strong, and have had a lot of exposure to the trade). Don’t worry about the anti-RP idea of creating a character solely for making money. If you’re a good RPer, the character will develop on its own (A character that started out being a mindless money-maker for my other ones has since become one of my favourite characters, with his surly, tactless humour)

4. Don’t be discouraged from Role-playing

Role-playing is an important part of this game, but it’s easy to be put-off by the dreaded ‘blank character description’. Don’t worry, nobody starts out knowing exactly who their character is, what their goals are and how they fit into the world. Most people barely know what they look or act like, even after playing them for weeks. And don’t worry about memorising every last minute detail about the Planeshift world. It’s a good idea to be familiar with the different races and terms, but remember your character is usually as new as you are, so you shouldn’t know everything. (At least your first one should be)

The key is to take it slow, and improvise, letting the situations effect the character. If you work hard all day in the mines, you might have a gruff, stoic attitude, or a lack of social awareness (all those long nights breaking rocks definitely wouldn’t help your table manners…)
If you’re not sure what to do in an RP, don’t just sit and stare blankly. But don’t go overboard either (like spontaneously deciding to kill everybody to liven the RP). Action is best used in moderation – too much action and everyone gets confused and left behind.

Start out by going to the pubs, finding some guy sitting in the corner and having a little conversation. Ask them questions – if all else fails, ask questions. Most RPers will jump at the chance to divulge their character’s pasts. Ask people questions like “So, you live here? How long? When’d you move? Where’d you come from?”, or find even more creative things to talk about. I find it helps to have your character ask questions that you already know the answer to, so you can form an interesting and quick response. (e.g. “What’s that blue glowing thing in the sky?” “That’s the Azure Sun. It powers the city and gives us light.” “Huh. So… what happens if someone were to destroy it?”)

5. ALWAYS TAKE QUEST NOTES!

There’s nothing worse than going ALL the way from Hydlaa to Ojaveda or vice versa, and forgetting what exactly you were supposed to do. That’s why whenever you get a new quest, you should immediately open the quest window, highlight the new quest, and take down any important information in the ‘Quest Notes’ box and hit ‘Save’. That way, whenever you forget what to do, you can just open the quest window again and read your own notes. (Heck, if you wanted to, you could write down stuff that has nothing to do with the quest such as “Note to self: Sell ores” or “Found some Tefusang by the floating rock”

Important things to take down are names of people, places, items they need and specific phrases to use. Here’s an example of a quest. (I made it up, by the way, so don’t think you’re getting free quest hints off me). The words and phrases you should jot down are underlined.

“Hi, my name’s Xander. My sister is very ill, and I’m trying to make a potion for her… but unfortunately, I’ve run out of supplies. Do you think you could find me five piki herbs so I can finish my antidote?”

You: “Sure.”

“Great! Travel to Ojaveda, the Enkidukai city, and talk to Ragnar Turnquist. He should have the piki herbs. He owes me a favour, so you should be able to get them off him for free if you tell him Xander sent you. Godspeed.”

The note in your quest log should now look something like this:

“Need to find 5 piki herbs for a potion for Xander in Hydlaa. Says to tell Ragnar Turnquist in Ojaveda, that ‘Xander sent me’. Herbs are free – don’t need to raise money.”

But if you forget to do this, there’s always the chat logs (in the ‘logs’ folder of your main Planeshift directory). It can be a bit of a hassle to have to minimize your game and wade through everything everyone’s ever said to you just to find what you need for a simple quest though, so get in the habit of taking notes, even if you know exactly what to do and where to go at the time.

6. Materialism is for World of Warcraft

Never let greed or desire for money and items get in the way of having fun. If you find yourself constantly bashing monsters or mining gold or acting busy and ignoring other players, stop, and think about what you’re doing. Some people use the excuse that they want to have higher skills and a decent amount of cash before they get to the serious RPing. It’s easy to get swept up in the blitz to get even more money and even better equipment, but it never ends – that’s what makes MMORPGs so addictive – but sooner or later you’ll burn out, get bored of the game altogether and leave.

It’s okay to want some money and equipment, so long as you take time to stop and smell the roses. It can even improve your RPing – with money you can bribe people, set quests with rewards for other players to do, and hire people to help you with different things… it’s not just for buying stuff from NPCs.

You just have to keep in mind that any day now you could find your character completely wiped of items and exp – the only thing they’ll have left is their personalities. That’s why it’s far more fruitful to develop your character and his connections with other members of the community than develop their ability to mine or fight.

Anyway, that’s it for now. This guide may be subject to editing and additions depending on new ideas or comments in this thread at any given time, so stay tuned for more!