Firefall New Player’s Quick Guide

Firefall New Player’s Quick Guide by NeverDT

Your first good decision was trying out this game. Your second was reading this guide. I will attempt to be as concise yet informative as possible; all info is accurate to the best of my knowledge. Remember: THIS GAME IS STILL IN BETA. This is not a “pre-release betas” that you can find elsewhere. This game is still being developed and is changing and expanding rapidly. Those who say “it’s a beta” do not mean it as an excuse, but as an explanation.

Also, please note that PvP will only be grazed in this guide, as I am a PvE-focused player. However, most info in this guide applies either way.

Once you’re in the game, your first choice is: what frame to play? Best answer: pick the one that appeals the most to you. As for “easiest to play”, Assault and Dreadnaught are probably the best choices – Assault is agile with a strong splash damage weapon, and Dreadnaught is a bruiser; its minigun is unbeatable at close range. It doesn’t matter too much what frame you pick, you’re not permanently locked into it; you’ll have the ability to buy other frames for 1000 crystite (money), which is not a particularly large amount. More on this later. Now press start, or whatever it’s called.

If you’re planning to play at native resolution, the first thing you should do when the dropship lands is press Alt+F1 and type “screenmode 3” without the quotes. This will put you into borderless windowed mode, which allows you to alt-tab between the game and other things, like this guide. Note that if you change any video settings, you’ll need to do this again, so do it when you are done with the rest. Make sure you read the tutorial popups, and run through them all – you have primary fire, secondary fire, jets, flashlight, abilities, stuff like that, learn about them.

Let me make one thing clear: Quests are not the point of this game. Yes, there are quests, but there isn’t a tutorial included in any large way with the game as of yet. The early quests will “teach” you about a few things: sonic detonators, the scan hammer, and thumpers. I say “teach” because from my experience, it’s not always clear to people how to use these things. These items are all resource-related calldowns; access the calldowns menu with “C” by default, then scroll to the appropriate item. Once you’ve selected it, press 4 to use it.

Next, the chat, a very important part of the game.

You open the chat by pressing enter, type your stuff and press enter again to send it. Commands you should know:

  • /z – switches you to zone chat
  • /s – switches you to squad chat
  • /w NAME – switches you to sending private messages to NAME
  • /invite NAME – invites NAME to your squad
  • /friend NAME – adds NAME to your friends list
  • /joinleader – if you are not currently in the instance of your squad leader, transfers you to their instance
  • /rui – if the interface breaks for any reason, try this first. If that doesn’t fix it, restart the game.

If someone sends you a squad invite or friend request, you’ll get a prompt. Press N, then either LMB to accept or RMB to decline.

On “buildings” that you’ll find in Copacabana and other civilized areas:

  • Battleframe Garage – for customizing your battleframes. (Does not allow you to switch frames.)
  • Battleframe Station – allows you to switch frames. Phew!
  • New You – allows you to change your appearance and buy Red Bean cosmetic items (Red Beans are this game’s real money currency)
  • Molecular Printer – located only in Copacabana, Trans-Hub and Sunken Harbor, these allow you to build things such as the resource collection calldowns noted above, as well as health and ammo packs; it also allows you to refine resources, which will be described anon.

There are two main types of “currency” in this game:  

XP and Crystite (CY). XP is what you use to unlock parts for your frame, and eventually enough XP invested will allow you to unlock the next tier of frames. You can access your tech tree with “T” (default). To unlock a Tier 2 frame, you’ll need to reach the end of the middle tree and either the top or bottom tree in Tier 1, then unlock the frame itself for 18k XP. After that, you’ll need to buy it in the battleframe garage for 7500 Crystite. You’ll need an empty slot for this. Then switch to it using the battleframe station. Congratulations and a barrage of golf claps are yours once you’ve done this. Everything else related to Tier 2 is beyond the scope of this guide.

Now, you may be wondering “but where do I get that 7500 crystite?”

The best way to get crystite is to refine minerals you don’t need – usually minerals of grey or white quality, or anything you have too much of. Crystite can be refined in stacks of 100, 500 or 2500 minerals, and will output an average of 100% to 120% of the minerals you put in. Sifted earth refining allows you to get crystite and other resources from the otherwise totally useless sifted earth (gained through thumping).

Going back to my “quests are not the point of this” spiel, here’s what you can do:

  • Get a team and thump.
    Stock thumpers are easily soloable, but anything bigger and you’re going to want a group of 3-5. Generally you’ll be looking for areas with high concentrations of resources, >50% or better. You can use the scan hammer to check for resources. A little hint: the best resources aren’t found next to civilization.
  • Get a team and kill Chosen.
    More dangerous, on account that the Chosen have guns and plasma cannons and they HURT. Do NOT stand still while fighting Chosen, mobility is your best advantage. Unless you are confident you can pull off the revive, attempting revives usually leads to…more deaths. Chosen are worth more XP than the insects and crustaceans you’ll fight while thumping (on average). If you’re looking for Chosen, press “M” to access the map and look for anything red.
  • Get a team and wander around.
    Sometimes you don’t really need a goal to have fun. Firefall’s world, even at this stage of the game, is big and beautiful. You may just find resources while you’re milling about…or have a Chosen drop pod fall on one top of one of your squadmates.

Note the similarity in those three activities – get a team. Firefall is very much a team-based game, and one of its huge strengths is your ability to contact and access other players quite easily through the open world, rather than the endless caverns of instancing that separates players in MMOs. Make friends and have fun!

Oh, and the PvP info I said would be in this guide…press K to access the PvP window, or use one of the PvP terminals in Copacabana and…off you go!

Congratulations on finishing reading this guide.
If you need further help, feel free to post here or /w NeverDT ingame – I’ll probably be on a lot this weekend, and when I’m not busy I try to help new players out as best I can.

You can also ask around in the Firefall IRC: irc.globalgamers.net #firefall. A web IRC client is available here: http://webchat.globalgamers.net/?channels=firefall

Special thanks to Ced23ric for helping out with the super fancy formatting of this guide

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