Fallen Earth Beginner’s Guide

Fallen Earth Beginner’s Guide by Sally Smith

If you’ve just picked up Fallen Earth, or you’re thinking about trying it out, I’m going to, with this article, attempt to bundle up as much helpful information in one place that I possibly can. Naturally this thread will contain some spoilers (though very little on actual content I hope) and if you’re the kinda person who likes to figure things out for themselves (I’m like that) then either ignore it totally or cherry pick!

Second thing to say is. Welcome to Fallen Earth! It’s a good choice as MMO’s go if you’re after something a little different.

Third thing is, I’ve “winged” this entirely, haven’t based it on anything but just what tumbles from brain cell to keyboard. It will therefore be a bit ropey at times. As for me, my qualifications for typing it are er…well been in the game off and on since a month after launch, I’ve hung out and helped in the /help channel most of that time, so I’ve seen the kind of questions that are frequently asked.

So, with that said, need to point out that, apart from the sticky, there is nothing “official” about this waffle. There might be errors and personal opinion in it! Needless to say if you spot anything wrong or missing let me know for revisions/additions please. Or if you’d like me to format stuff better/clearer.

One final disclaimer is that I have a particularly comedic form of dyslexia, such that I won’t spot my own errors and typo’s no matter how often I proof read it. So expect some dodgy English!

Have to say a big thanks to everyone who puts the time in to make FE the game it is, from players to the development team.

Going to be splitting it up into the following sections.

I: Game overview.
II: Where to find the game.
III: Helping you to help yourself.
IV: The community.
V: Getting started.
VI: Character creation and development.
VII: The user interface.
VIII: Basic combat.
IX: Navigation, missions, mounts, fast travel and achievements.
X: Currency, gambling, loot, inventory, storage, mail, merchants, reward point system and the auction house/channel.
XI: Harvesting, refining, crafting and dyes/paints.
XII: Chat box, / commands and emotes, voice com’, social tab, clans and roleplaying.
XIII: Factions.
XIV: Player versus environment (PvE) content.
XV: Player versus player (PvP) content.
XVI: Skills and Mutations. (Temporary)
XVII: Building a character. (Temporary)
XVIII: Preparing for the combat revamp. (Temporary)
XIX: The public test server.
XX: 101 things I wish I’d known earlier.

I: Game overview.

Fallen Earth went into development in 2003, and launched in 2009. http://www.fallenearth.com/company
In June 2011 the intellectual property rights to Fallen Earth were bought by Gamersfirst and most of the development team folded into Reloaded productions. http://www.gamersfirst.com/
It stands out amongst the MMO herd for its setting and blend of first person shooter and traditional roleplaying game mechanics, and more.
Fallen Earth is set in the year 2157 on an alternate planet Earth where all sorts of nasty things went wrong. Suffice to say there were two apocalyptic type world events, the “Shiva” Virus being unleashed onto the globes population and as a result a nuclear weapons exchange. Still, got to smile right?

The game takes place around the Grand Canyon area of the United States where a number of the survivors are attempting to rebuild what society they can, except they often seem to have a rather different outlook how that society should be….no, it seems, we can’t all just get along!

For more information on this the games main website is great.
http://www.fallenearth.com/thegame

And there is also a time line of events leading upto the games present day explaining some of the main movers and shakers in the Canyon area, found here.
http://www.fallenearth.com/node/58

Here is a spiffy unofficial video trailer made by a community member on the subject as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWjEay7KHiM

Fallen Earth is a subscription based game. EDIT. Since Gamersfirst acquired the game they have made a commitment to moving the game into a tiered Free-to-play model somewhere in the fourth quarter of 2011. There is an info-blog now up about this topic. Found here. http://fallenearth.gamersfirst.com/

A Macintosh beta version of the game is also supported.

1/ System requirements. http://www.fallenearth.com/node/16

2/ Getting the trial. You can try the game for free for thirty days by going to this link and making a trial account. https://www.fallenearth.com/trial
The trial has a number of limitations on it, designed to ensure they are not used by folks to farm in game currency to sell for real world currency. Sorry, but them the breaks! You can see the limitations on the trial here. http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?…ry&EntryID;=488

To upgrade the trial you must purchase a retail version of the game, which can be done digitally, you will not need to further download any more data though to upgrade. Though a full relog of the game once you upgrade is recommended to remove the restrictions.

3/ Buying the retail version of the game. If you’re in the United States you can buy a boxed version of the PC (not the Mac) game from high street retailers. There are also many ways to purchase the game digitally from a number of websites. You can buy directly from the games independent developers Icarus Studios from the games main website here. https://www.fallenearth.com/buy

The usual suspect online stores will also have it, Direct2Drive, Steam etc. Often different sellers have different promotional items and if that’s something that interests you it might be worth shopping around.

The retail purchase comes with the first month of game time included, but you will be required to set up a subscription when you make your game account or upgrade a trial account. But you will not be charged before the first thirty days have passed.

You will be able to edit all your account details if you log in at the main website. Found here. https://www.fallenearth.com/user

4/ Subscription options. The game offers a variety of options for subscription plans, which become cheaper if you buy a larger block of time in advance. Compared to the standard repeating monthly option. Prices detailed here. http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?…ry&EntryID;=208

The game also has “game time cards” which can be purchased for yourself or as a gift for others. Details of them can be found in the games online store. (Which has some other items on it as well, most of a “fluff” like nature. None are game changing). Details of that here. http://www.fallenearth.com/store

You may also elect to subscribe using the Paypal and Click ‘n’ buy services.

5/ The Mobile Phone App. Fallen Earth also has a mobile application that allows you access some features of the game remotely. Details of that here. http://www.fallenearth.com/mobilefaq

6/ Downloading the game. The current client software size is around 6gb’s in total. If you’ve bought the game from Steam or a similar website you’ll have the option of downloading it from them of course. Otherwise you can get the client via a small download of an initial install and then running the games patcher. Found here for the PC version. http://l3cdn.fallenearth.com/FallenE…allenEarth.msi Or here for the Macintosh version. http://www.fallenearth.com/macbeta

There is also a Fallen Earth torrent file which can be found here. http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…ad.php?t=32664

Finally if you have any problems with the download, some general tips on why you might be having it and what you can do about it can be found here. http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…ad.php?t=36983

7/ Non English language users. The game has not been translated out of English. However it does have a global player base and folks from all around the world do play it and form clans designed to help each other out.

The lack of translation can be problem though. You’re allowed to use the /help channel to ask questions and look for speakers of your language to help you out. But once that help has been found they encourage people to take the help and chatting into private message. Because the moderators can’t hope to moderate all those different languages.

8/ The EULA and Code of conduct.

http://www.fallenearth.com/eula
http://www.fallenearth.com/codeofconduct

VI: Character creation and development.

1/ Character creation. You may have up to four characters per Fallen Earth account by default, you may also purchase two additional character slots from the games online store, found here. http://www.fallenearth.com/store

When you make a character you are given the choice of gender and then a myriad of options to alter their physical appearance from varying from their size all the way down to if they have chest hair. There are click-able dice icons to randomize these various elements if you wish as well. Here is a you-tube video showing a few of these elements for a female character http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKj8Bc8lsyM

Regarding naming your character you may select two names if you wish. That is to say you are permitted to use a space text character once. Otherwise punctuation and numerals are not allowed in naming. You may also generate a name randomly if you wish using the dice icon to the left of where you type.

A character name must be unique to the server and if it breaks the EULA and/or Code of Conduct expect it to be changed by Game Master staff.

2/ Editing your characters appearance and name, post creation.

Currently, beyond swapping between hair styles of a similar length there is no way to re-alter your characters physical appearance after initial creation. So choose well! You can if you wish purchase a name change from the Item Store. This is valid for one character, one time. http://www.fallenearth.com/store Currently it is also necessary to inform your friends of your name change as it will not update on their in game friends list.

3/ Experience points and leveling.

Above is the health bar of one of my characters. In addition to her name and the three coloured bars indicating her health, stamina and gamma, it also tells us a bit about her progression through the game. Her level is 26. She has amassed a total of 571 Attribute points (AP’s for short).

In the middle of the circle on the left is the amount of Attribute points she currently has saved up that she might be able to spend on additional skills and stats. Around that central number are the experience bars.

The inner, cream coloured, experience bar indicates the amount of experience points that have been earned towards filling one segment of the outer orange coloured bar, which in turn indicates progress towards an entire level. Upon earning one of the orange segments the character receives 2 AP. So 20 AP are gained per level from basic experience point gain.

Experience points can be gained from a variety of sources in Fallen Earth.

• Competition of missions. (The amount varies based on the difficulty of the mission relative to your characters level).
• Killing of monsters. (Experience points will be shared with team mates if teamed and the tougher or weaker the monster relative to your level the more or less you will receive).
• Killing of players in Player Versus Player when in the world at large, not in Bloodsports.
• Harvesting nodes that yield crafting materials, such as scrap or skinning animals. (The amount gained varies according to the difficulty of doing so for your character).
• Crafting items. (The amount gained varies according to the difficulty of doing so for your character and the time it took to craft the item).

It is possible to increase the amount of experience you gain via a few methods.

• One is to hang out in a Bunker Bar. This will give you a scaling buff that increases your XP gain from all sources so long as you have it, the intensity and duration of the buff increase the longer you stay in the Bar. Details of that here. http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?…ry&EntryID;=497 Nearly all friendly mission hub towns will contain a Bunker bar. They are always underground and you can find them by looking for the brown outline on your radar and a round hatch with a ladder to descend.
• If your faction in sector two and three have ownership of “Faction control points” (More on those in the PvP section) then you’ll also receive a sector wide buff with a small increase in XP gain.
• Sometimes food and drink items given away at seasonal times of year by Icarus staff, or booster items given away in promotions can increase XP gain as well.

Progression in Fallen Earth is not linear, it is moderately faster to achieve the first levels in the game than the later. The current maximum level achievable in the game is 50. With plans to extend that to 55 in the near(ish) future, and beyond 55 in time.

3/ Attribute points. These are what you spend on your character to alter and develop them. In addition to those you will earn from leveling they can also be earned from the competition of certain, specific missions. You can if you wish to find out the location of these missions using the guide on the Suspicious Cheese clan Wiki page, found here. http://www.suspicious-cheese.com/wik…title=Missions

In addition to this source of “bonus” AP, game patch 1.74 also introduced a system where our characters will on occasion earn a bonus AP for going about their day to day business in the Canyon. The system by design is supposed to be slightly random and unpredictable.

This patch also introduced a spend cap on attribute points. This was put in to make the game fairer and more balanced for all players. You may continue to earn as many AP as you like, when you like, as you progress through the game, however you may only spend 25 per level at most. Additional AP you have earned are “banked” ready to be spent as soon as you like when you achieve a new level. Thus, the total amount your character can have spent on them by level 50 is 1250 AP. Though you may earn more still, ready for when the level cap increases.

4/ Skill system, not class system.

In Fallen Earth players are not required to pick a “class”, that is to say, a predefined archetype of avatar from a limited list. Instead players are given far more freedom to develop a character in a way that appeals to them.

MUCH More on how to get the best out of your character later in the Character Build section.

Above is the Attributes UI panel for Emma again. There’s quite a lot going on in this panel.

1. The Stats tab. Stats affect the potential amounts you can raise a skill or mutation by, they also affect other derived character features, such as your health or your saving throws. It requires 5 AP to raise a stat point by 1 point. More details on what they do here. http://www.fallenearth.com/node/51
2. The Skills tab. This page is currently open in the screen-shot above. It shows a list of the combat and non crafting skills you may raise. It requires 1 AP to raise a skill by 1 point. More details on them here. http://www.fallenearth.com/node/52
3. The Mutations Tab. All our characters have been mutated a little bit by the Shiva Virus. We begin the game by knowing just one form of mutation common to all characters. The Alpha Mutation. It is unique in that is requires no AP spent in it to raise and is simply double your willpower stat. After level 15 in the game you can begin to learn the more advanced mutation lines, which do require AP to be spent on them in order to raise them. It requires 1 AP to raise an advanced mutation by 1 point. More details on that later, but also found here. http://www.fallenearth.com/node/53
4. The Tradeskills Tab. This tab will show you the progress of your crafting and harvesting skills, if you’ve learned any. Crafting skills do not require AP spent directly into them, instead they progress by using them to harvest items in the world or create them. Much more on this in the crafting section later, and here. http://www.fallenearth.com/node/12
5. The Character build drop down menu. This gives you a list of pre-selected rough guide character builds that the game suggests for you. They are not classes, and if you select one you are not locked in to following it. Selecting one merely places a vertical marker on your stat, skill and mutation bars indicating where you should raise them to. I personally have NO love of this feature. The suggestions are a VERY poor substitute for planning your own character and would highly recommend that players ignore the menu and plan their own character.
   
6. Name. Clicking here will order the tab by name.
7. Progress. Clicking here will order the tab by the amount of AP you have spent in any given skill, stat or mutation. The number on the left of the bar is the minimum or base amount the attribute is at. The number on the right is the total amount, or cap, you can currently raise the attribute too. The bar in the middle is a visual indication of how much you have spent. If the bar has a red addition to it at the end it means the attribute is being debuffed, and lowered by something. If it has a green end to it it means it is being buffed and raised by something. These somethings can be abilities, or equipment, or buffs from another source. So for instance, with Emma’s Group Tactics bar. We can see her minimum amount is 54, and if I wanted to spend more AP I could raise that all the way upto 108. The current cap on the skill based on her level and associated stats.
8. Total. This shows the total amount of points from various sources for any given attribute. So Emma’s Group tactics is 81(+3). The +3 indicates it is being buffed. If you mouse over any given number in the total column it will give you a tool-tip break down of where those AP in total are coming from.
9. Base percentage. Different skills and mutations have their base minimums and total possible spend caps affected by different stats. This indicates which stats affect which skills and by how much. For instance, Group Tactics is 25% Perception and 75% Charisma. Emma has both of these stats maxed out and as a result you can see her base Group Tactics is 54. She has no AP spent in the Melee stats of Strength and Co-ordination, so the base is much lower at just 36.
10. Total AP currently earned and those ready to be spent. If the spend cap allows you to spend them all.
11. The AP allocater. This is how you actually spend the AP. You select with a left click which stat, skill or mutation you wish to raise by clicking on it’s bar. Then click this widgets up arrow to increase the amount of points you want to spend. You then finalize or cancel these choices with…
12. ….The Apply/Close buttons. You’ll be given a final pop up box confirm check listing the AP you are about to spend.

5/ Resetting your AP.

For the first er..I want to guess, seven or so months of the game there was no way to do this. The decisions you made about AP spending were locked in. This changed with the 1.4 patch, which, because it changed a good deal about the combat systems in Fallen Earth the developers gave all players who could log in to claim it an item that would allow them to reset ALL their AP one time.

When large revisions are made to core game-play elements of the game we will receive such an item again. They can be banked for later use.

You may also now buy a full respec’ from the games $ store. Found here. http://www.fallenearth.com/store

Later on they also introduced a more limited means to reset your AP, that is un-spend them allowing you to re-spend them, in the form of an item you can buy from “Mutagenics merchants” in game. When used you are allowed to reset 5 AP per injector. They are divided into level ranges and it’s important to buy the one suitable for your level and to note that it gets proportionally more expensive to reset your AP the higher level your character is.

More details on them here. http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?…ry&EntryID;=602

It’s important to note that if you respec in such a way that you lower your tradeskills, you WILL retain the knowledges but simply be unable to access them to craft items until you spend AP again into INT/PER to raise them.

1/ Getting tooled up! Planet Earth post apoc’ is a dangerous place, you’ll be expected to defend yourself as you explore. You’ll be given some starter weapons as you progress through the game, to equip them press I to open your inventory and either right click on the icon of the weapon/armour and select “Equip” or in addition press the G key to bring up the paper-doll and drag and drop the item over to equip it.

You can swap your active weapon(s) by using the Control key+1-6 keys by default, or by the Control Key and scrolling your mouse wheel.

Needless to say it’s a good idea to always be on the look out for better sources of weapons, armour and goodies as you progress in the game. Many have minimum skill, stat or level requirements before you can equip them. These are the base amounts of your skills etc, not the buffed amounts.

2/ Targeting. Unlike most other games of the genre Fallen Earth does not have a hotkey to target enemies. In order to do so you must either left mouse click on the target, which will bring up it’s details in part of the UI and highlight it’s name above it’s head OR if you shoot your target (or very near it and miss), or swing at it with a melee weapon you’ll also acquire it as your soft target. Once you have an enemy as soft target you may use various offensive based icon abilities on it. If you switch targets though you’ll need to reacquire it by the same means.

Targeting team-mates, and yourself, can be achieved with a hotkey. If you intend to take part in Player versus player content if is very advisable to remap the target self key to something you like and get into the habit of self targeting when you use a targetable healing icon ability. If you don’t do this, because PvP is free for all you’ll end up healing your enemy.

In player versus environment this does not occur and targetable heals will always be self cast and not end up on the non player character monster.

3/ Aiming. Excluding non prepared weapon ones, icon abilities will automatically work, if in range, (although hostile ones can be “resisted” in which case they wont take affect.) on a target, friendly or foe.

Weapons however require manual aiming in Fallen Earth, Like a first person shooter game. You enter and exit combat mode, where you will get an aiming reticule, using the Tab key by default. When in combat mode moving the mouse will move your aim, when not it will give you a standard mouse pointer.

There is only one special point on the “hit boxes” of enemies in Fallen Earth currently in terms of reward. The head. Head shots/swings will do more damage (some Player versus environment enemies don’t seem to have heads though, best not to ask!). Accuracy is rewarded in Fallen Earth combat in general!

4/ Using icon abilities. To find the abilities that you character currently knows press the N key by default or click “Actions” from the main MENU. They are grouped up into the various kinds that you acquire from the games various skill and mutation ability groups. Can expand them and then click ‘n’ drag the icons down onto your hot-bar. Using the options you can then redefine keys to fire these abilities off if the default keys are not to your liking.

Icon abilities come in a few broad types. The tool-tips for the ability often give you a good idea of what they’ll do anyway, and how long the “cooldown” on the ability before it can be used again will be.

• Prepared weapon attacks. When you click these, the next shot or swing with your weapon will attempt to use this ability. If you miss with the swing or the shot the ability is wasted.
• Targeted benign affects. Such as heals and buffs.
• Targeted hostile affects. Damage or debuff abilities.
• Self affecting buffs or healing abilities.

It is recommended you not only use icon abilities in combat, but also try and upgrade them to better versions of them from “Trainer” non player characters when ever possible.

5/ Buffs. A buff in computer game parlance is positive affect on a character, they can be short or long duration. Until the 1.4 patch in Fallen Earth people could use a lot of buffs all at once. This was changed and we now have a system of buff “slots”. Which is to say you may (by and large) have one kind of each affect on your character at once. There are the following Buff “slots”. Buffs and hostile negative affects will appear on a bar that is by default next to your radar.

• Primary Skill. These come from the First Aid skill line or the Athletics skill line.
• Secondary Skill. As above.
• Aura. These come from the Group Tactics skill line and one advanced mutation is also aura like in nature.
• Stance. These come from all types of skill lines, including the weapon based ones.
• Primary Mutation. The alpha mutation line all characters have will have examples of these. Running one of these devotes a portion of your total gamma. Lowering your gamma pool.
• Secondary Mutation. The advanced mutations that become available after level 15 will have examples of these. Running one of these devotes a portion of your total gamma. Lowering your gamma pool.
• Contingency plan. These are short duration “emergency” like buffs and can be found in a number of skill lines, but not mutations.
• A food item. These often affect stats but primarily give you a healing over time affect, which can be very useful. They last for one hour.
• A drink item. As above but they replenish stamina over time usually. They last for one hour.
• A long term other consumable item. These are things like Medical and science boosters/drugs. They tend to last for one hour.
• Camp buff. The construction trade skill makes camps, that will last for three hours when placed and give hour long buffs of various types. You must be in the party of the person who placed the camp to receive the buff.
• Other short term affects. Many other buffs do not have slots, but because they are short duration can be run together. Many consumable items are short duration as well but often share the same “cooldown” so can not be used together at the same time.

Again it is highly recommended that you try and utilize as many of these affects whenever you can and upgrade them to better versions from “Trainer” non player characters.

6/ Dealing and mitigating damage. Dealing damage is pretty straightforward, go into combat mode keep the aiming reticule over your enemy and click or hold down the mouse button[s] (when you dual wield two weapons the right mouse button attacks with the second hand). If you’re using a ranged weapon, keep an eye on your ammunition of course!

Mitigating damage is more complex and we’ll go into it in more detail later, but increasing the “Dodge” and “Armour use” skills will have a direct impact on how much less damage you will take. All characters start with the targetable, self or on others, First Aid healing ability called “Staunch wound”. It requires a bandage reagent to use. It’s a very handy icon ability!

7/ Death.

Death is to a clone in Fallen Earth a mere set back, not the end of the line by any means. Upon being defeated you will reappear at the nearest cloning bunker. This might mean you are some distance away from where you and your mount were last. However you often re-clone near a garage, allowing you to tow your mount and get back to whatever killed you that bit faster!

Players will also be able to resurrect their fallen comrades using a number of icon abilities or consumable items. So sometimes there is no need to re-clone.

The penalty for dying in Fallen Earth is, after level 5, that you will receive a five minute long debuff to your experience gain and your equipped armour and weapons will be damaged, causing them to be needed to repaired sooner. You will also loose and need to reapply any buffs.

1/ Where/when am I?

If you type /time in the chat box you’ll be told the in game time. The total day night cycle in Fallen Earth is a bit shy of four hours long real time for one full FE day. Days are longer than the nights.

There is no in game clock UI feature in FE. However you can if you wish set chat tabs to have a time stamp on them. Can right click any chat tab and select from the Edit Tab menu.

If you want to get a fixed location of where you are, sometimes it’s needed to help GM’s help you, or when filling out a /bug report you can type /loc into the chat box which will give you a a set of X, Y, Z axis co-ordinates. It will also copy it to the clipboard so that the Control+V keys will paste it back into chat for you.

If you right click on the maps (more on them soon) you can also see the Co-ord’s for the point at which you’ve clicked.

2/ The Radar. This is on by default, if you accidentally have closed it it’s Alt+M to renable it. You can select three sizes for it by right clicking on it. It will show NPC’s near you, red dots are hostile, yellow are sometimes neutral and sometimes hostile, white dots are friendly. It will also show the way towards your way-points and your mount at the edges of it, well until you get close to them!

Players appear as triangles on the map, white if they have no faction or coloured to indicate your factional relationship to them. More on that later.

Additionally the radar and overhead maps will show you out of bounds areas, where you can’t take mounts, or travel in general (such as water) with a red line. If you see a brown line surrounding an area it generally indicates an area underground, such as a bunker bar.

1. This is where an icon will appear if you are inside a conflict town. More on those later in the Player Versus Player section. Clicking it will bring up information on the state of ownership of the town. It will also show you if the mission hub town you’re in has a town “event” like feature, and the status of it.
2. Clicking this brings up the main map. The M key is just easier.
3. Options to zoom in and out. This is very handy when you’re trying to locate an interactive object in the world that the Red X is guiding you to.
4. Clicking this icon fixes the radar in place so north is always up or lets it rotate as you move around.
5. The bars on the side of the radar indicate the noise level your character is making. This is an approximation to how stealthy your character is being in the “stealth” or crouch stance. C key by default. The meters are used in PvE detection only.

3/ The sector map. M key by default. Technically it’s called the strategic map, which is a bit of a misnomer but it shows the entire current sector of the game you are in. It can be scrolled about by left click holding and dragging on the map itself. It can also be resized by click, hold, dragging the bottom right hand corner.

1. The drop down menu to view the other sectors in the game.
2. The Overhead tick box
3. Zoom icons.

4/ The “Overhead” Map. The overhead is like the radar, only larger and with a few other neat features to help you find stuff you’re looking for. It too can be resized but unlike the sector map it can’t be scrolled around most of the time. Sometimes when you are in a mission PvE “dungeon” like area though it can be.

So here it is with the funnel icon in the top right clicked showing the various icons that can appear on the map, you can filter these on or off to help you find bits if necessary.

If you’re looking for a specific vendor or mission related NPC this is the map view for you. You can mouse over the merchant chip icons and you’ll get a tooltip telling you what kind of vendor they are, likewise with the mission symbols it’ll tell you the name of the mission giver.

5/ Missions. There are reckoned to be, last time I heard, between five and six thousand missions in Fallen Earth all told, perhaps more. For the most part they are given out by Non Player characters.NPCs with missions have Hazmat like symbols over their heads. The colour of them reflects the state of the mission.

• Yellow=Mission ready to be picked up.
• Green=Mission ready to be turned in.
• Red=Mission already picked up and waiting for you to get out there and do it.
• Grey=Too low level for a mission or you don’t meet the requirements.

Missions can sometimes also be acquired from objects in the world, like books, and in very rare cases items in your pack can give you a mission if you use the item.

Once you have acquired a mission you can view the details of it by pressing the J key, default, to bring up the missions UI panel. You may have twenty maximum missions in at one time. If you left click highlight one then the mission tracking information if you have it open will change as will the mission way-point, if it has one.

If you fail a mission, perhaps you ran out of time, deleted the relevant item, or died, or you just want to drop the mission and pick it up later you can always do that in Fallen Earth. You must return to the last point in a mission chain to find the source of it again to reacquire it though. You can’t out level missions.

6/ The red X! Most missions when you select them as your active tracking one in the J key UI screen will have a way-point map marker associated with them, telling you were to go to achieve that stage of the task. The Red X way-point will appear both on your radar and on your maps. Sometimes when the mission requirement is above or below you vertically the Red X will have a small up or down arrow next to it to let you know. You may only track one mission actively at a time. So if you’ve picked up a lot it can be good to flick through your journal noting their position and work out an efficient route to encounter them all.

7/ The green X. Instances. The green X on the radar/map indicates your current open mission instance. This can be a small building or “dungeon” like area that only you and your team can explore and mission in. They are seamless in FE and don’t require a load screen.

8/ The yellow X. Player made waypoints.

Pressing the Alt+P keys by default will bring up the way-point manager UI panel. This allows you to create up to 100 (they are unique per character) way-points on the map. Which is pretty darn handy. If you find something you want to remember how to find again in the world. Like a good scavenging node or something a bit weird you just want to find your way back to!

You can share way-points with others by typing out the X and Y axis numbers to them, and likewise you can create them by entering the numbers and not just creating one on the spot you’re standing.

You can only track one created way-point at a time. But in addition to the mission way-point.

9/ Getting around and getting unstuck.

The Auto-run key in Fallen Earth is Numlock on the Number pad by default. You may alt tab and continue to move forward using this when on foot or in a vehicle, but not on an animal mount for some reason. There are three speed settings at which your avatar, and when mounted on an animal mount can move about at it. To cycle them press the / key on the keyboard numpad by default.

Water is off bounds in Fallen Earth, you may not enter it (with one exception) and you may not swim.

You can if you wish just run about in Fallen Earth, but it’s a pretty big place so having a mount is very much advised. You’ll be given your first starter horse in the extended tutorial at level 1! Although it’s better than nothing it’s highly advised that you replace it as quickly as possible because it is very fuel inefficient and doesn’t carry very much. 15 Nature crafting skill and around three blue chips will allow you to craft a “Riding Horse” which is much better.

Should you ever find yourself stuck on terrain or unable to move in general, you can elect to use the / command /unstuck. This however will kill you and send you to the nearest cloner. Game Masters, if you should see one online, are often very willing to help free you as well if you send one a /tell because they can also take details of where you got stuck to help the developers.

10/ Mounts.

Some general pointers about mounts.

• Mounts begin life as either a “key” or “bridle” item in your pack. Once used (right click to select) to generate the mount they can NOT be repackaged into the inventory item.
• You can mount and dismount by right clicking on the mount itself, or you can hotbar an icon to do it as well from the “General” section of the skills tab under the N key panel.
  
• Mounts can not be out right killed or destroyed unless you take them to a Garage or Stable manager who can delete a mount permanently. You will always be able to heal or repair your mount.
• You may have five mounts in total. One in the world with you at a time. The active one logs in and out with you. You must store the other mounts at a garage and you can tow them between garages for a chip fee.
• Mounts can’t be stolen by other players, but they can be damaged in PvP combat, and also some PVE critters love to attack your mounts. Other won’t.
• If you want to use a new vehicle key or animal mount bridle you must store your current mount at the garage first.
• Vehicle mounts can also be dyed different colours. Animal mounts can not, yet. More details on that here. http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?…ry&EntryID;=642
• Mounts also have storage, we’ll cover that in more detail in the inventory section, but you can find it by clicking on the “Info” button on the mounts health bar and then going to the inventory tab.
• You can also rename your mount. To do so, target it and then use the /renamemount “insertname” command. Minus the ” ” there. Or just by right clicking on the name of the pet on it’s health-bar. The name must be unique to the server.
• If a mount is classified as “Combat” or “Combat Hybrid” this means you can fire a ranged weapon from it, you can’t use melee weapons from mounts. Animal combat mounts allow you to use a rifle or two pistols where as an ATV or a Bike allow for one pistol. Buggies and Interceptors are enclosed and you can’t use a personal weapon from them.
• The chip cost to tow a mount to a garage from somewhere in the world, or from a garage to garage (this is cheaper), is altered by the level of the mount and the distance involved in the tow.

Mounts come in two broad categories. Animals and vehicles, and four sub categories detailing how they function a bit. Info’ on that found here. http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?…ry&EntryID;=518 Horses can be bought at vendors, crafted or be given out as mission rewards. Vehicles are crafted only, though one mission does award an ATV. The Blight Wolf is awarded from a mission only, and the Prairie Chicken is a promotional item but you can also now pick it up via the games store. Found here http://www.fallenearth.com/store

Animals have an advantage in that they can be healed without using repair kits, they will regain their stamina over time (and can be affected by buffs to this end) and high quality horses never need feeding, saving you a few chips. Animals also tend to make excellent terrain traverses. They will climb hills well, they can side step and jump and are often willing to enter buildings (but you can get stuck doing this).

As such they often make good mission hub mounts, where you’re getting on and off your mount a lot anyway. Also being on the back of a combat classified animal mount means you can use a rifle or two pistols from them. However, they tend to be slow and unlike vehicles get no speed bonus when on road ways. You can see a table of the animal mount statistics here http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?…ry&EntryID;=454 to compare them. Higher numbers are better for fuel efficiency.

Vehicles by comparison tend to be faster, and when on most road ways can achieve greater speed making them ideal for longer journeys, but they are less maneuverable in general. Buggies and ATV’s tend to be good at rough terrain and hill climbing, but pay for it with raw speed. All kinds also require repair kits to heal them and Gasoline to fuel them. A table of vehicle statistics can be found here. http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?…ry&EntryID;=452

A special mention has to be for the “Combat buggy”, which is to date the only armed vehicle in the game. It has two side machine guns, which to be fair don’t do a great deal of damage, but the damage is based off your rifle skill and will increase a little if you have more of that. You can see a wee small youtube video of two Combat Buggies going at each other here.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPSUK9o9Jc

10/ Finding a Garage/Stable. They are nearly always on road ways, usually not to far a distance from a major town, Oilville and Odenville in Sector 1 are the only towns to have ones actually inside them. You can find a map of the Sector 1 ones here. http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?…ry&EntryID;=416

11/ Exploring, PvP areas, “Easter Eggs” and the limits of the map.

It can pay to go off the beaten track sometimes in Fallen Earth, but not too far off. The off limits map areas are radioactive and you will die if you attempt to head into those areas, you will receive a warning that you are approaching one. They are marked on edges of the sector maps.

PvP areas are also marked on the sector map, likewise you will be given a warning you are about to enter one long before you arrive at it allowing you to circumnavigate them if you wish. More or those later in the PvP section.

If you head out into the middle of nowhere you’ll sometimes find things that aren’t marked on the map, maybe some good scavenge areas for harvesting or maybe just something a little odd. My favourite little Easter Egg for instance is just north of Blaine in Sector 2. Mind the Ants though!

12/ Fast Travel.

Until patch er..1.5 iirc, there was no way to move about the Canyon area quicker than your mount could take you there. However this patch introduced a system where by players could travel between each of the games, current, four sectors instantly. Provided they complete an associated mission on each character at each location. The FT system is handy for reaching player, or game run events amongst other things.

The missions may be done on behalf of either the Tech faction (go with them, no one likes to help hippies after all) or the Vista faction though no faction points are gained or lost with the missions. There are four destination points and three missions that unlock access to them, at them, with the following minimum levels. They are flagged as group missions and often involve fighting Veteran class monsters.

• Watchtower. Has no mission, as it’s the first location you may transport to and from.
• New Flagstaff. Level 15.
• Trader’s Flat. Level 30.
• Los Alamos. Level 47.

Once you have completed the missions you may access the FT system from a terminal in the special clone bunkers with the large antena like object with green lights on top of them, or in Watchtowers case a large bunker like structure.

There is an associated chip cost between the destinations and also an hour long debuff before you may use the fast travel system again, this debuff ONLY times out while you are logged in. If you also need to tow your mount between sectors this can be expensive and some players leave old mounts behind in other sectors.

There are also fast travel items that may be purchased from Reward Point vendors (more on those later) that will take you instantly to the associated location on the item. They are one use only and can’t be used when you have a PvP flag active.

13 Achievements.

Patch 1.5 introduced the Achievements system, which maybe familiar to folks from other games of the genre. When you complete a certain criteria you will be informed you have with a pop up UI display.

You can earn them for a large variety of things in game, killing a certain amount of a certain monster type, crafting, consuming items, exploration, completing certain missions or “dungeons” etc.

Earning them in turn earns a character “Achievement points”. Currently these points can NOT be exchanged for anything else, though we have heard that they will be linked into a system where you can spend them on more pixel-tangible rewards for your character at some point.

1/ Currency. Regrettable as it is, even the apocalypse didn’t manage to wipe out Bankers. There is even an NPC faction regarding them. But the Canyon survivors have decided to use poker chips as the de-facto currency in the wasteland (don’t ask where they found so many of the things though).

There are four colours of the chips, white being the least valuable and yellow the most. 100 White=1 Blue. 100 Blue=1 Red. 100 Red=1 Yellow. The most amount of chips one character may have visible at any time is, I believe, one white short of ten yellow chips. However a character can have more than this amount, it’s just the displayed amount stops there.

Chips have no weight.

Chips are used to buy items from vendors, from other players via the auction house (more on that later) or via direct trade and in gambling (more on that later). Chips may be posted through the mail system to other characters as well. They are awarded from missions and selling items to NPC vendors will also generate chips. Also selling items to other players if bartering isn’t your cup of tea. By design, monsters in Fallen Earth do not yield chips directly when killed and looted. Though their other loot can be sold onto NPC’s to generate them.

2/ Gambling. You can if you wish in Fallen Earth gamble your chips, not against other players in any official programming code terms though. Instead you use machines as found in casinos. A one armed bandit, slot machine and a Blackjack machine. Bet sizes range from a minimum of 10 white chips to 1 red chip. Payouts are determined by a number of factors, should you win. Detailed here http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?CategoryID=67 for slots, and http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?CategoryID=68 here for Blackjack.

These machines are located in some, but not all “Bunker Bars”. Generally speaking if a town is more favoured by the Traveller faction, who set the bars up, it’s more likely to contain the gambling machines. Conversely if the town is more favoured by the Lightbearer faction the bars will not contain them.

Nearly all friendly mission hub towns will contain a Bunker bar. They are always underground and you can find them by looking for the brown outline on your radar and a round hatch with a ladder to descend in the world.

Currently, the Blackjack machines are not functioning in game.

3/ Looting. Looting is the common gaming term for collecting whatever is on a defeated enemy. Provided you did the most damage to an enemy you’ll have the rights to see what they were carrying and collect it, pack space and weight permitting. When in a team there are three options for loot rules, you can set these if you are the team leader by right clicking on your health bar in the team UI panel.

• Free loot. Anyone can loot anything in the team, if they were in range of the combat when it died.
• Rotating loot. Each team member is allowed to loot a defeated enemy in turn.
• Master loot. Here the team leader sets one person as the only one that can loot.

Loot on monsters can vary from crafting ingredients, ammunition and sometimes finished items like weapons and armour to mission required items. All loot has a weight factor.

There is NO looting of other players when they are defeated in Player versus Player combat in Fallen Earth.

To loot a corpse you right click on it (out of combat mode) where you will be presented with a menu showing what it was carrying, if anything, you can then choose to loot just certain things with a double left click or the entire contents.

You can auto loot a corpse by holding down the shift key while right clicking, if you wish to stay in combat mode you can do so by using the shift+Y keys by default to loot your current target. When auto-looting it will attempt to take whatever from the corpse will fit into your inventory, weight or space wise and leave the remainder on the corpse.

3/ Bound items. Some items in Fallen Earth will “bind” to your character when you acquire them. They then can’t be traded, mailed, put on the auction house or stored in clan vaults. Mission reward items, items required to complete missions and some others fall into this category.

4/ Inventory.

Here we have yet another low rez’ (apologies for that) screen-shot of the inventory of one of my characters. The inventory contains 64 slots. There is no way currently in game to increase this amount. Different types of mounts have additional storage and you are usually never too far from your mount.

1. Across the top are various tabs, into which the various kinds of items of those types are automatically placed as you pick them up or move them into your pack. Your inventory will not start with these which is where…
2. …the funnel icon comes in. If you click this you’ll be presented with another UI screen where you can create the tabs. I highly recommend just using the default settings here. Click “Auto Fill Tabs” and make sure you check “Filter to top” and then Apply it. You can if you wish ignore this feature totally or set up your own tabs with your own text.
3. This displays the weight total of your current inventory on the left and the maximum weight you can carry on the right. Increasing your Strength Stat’ will increase your carry weight, but unless you are making a melee focused character it is not advised at all you raise your Strength stat just for this. Weight of items is a little strange in FE at times. Sometimes it’s way off, car engines weigh next to nothing. Sometimes it makes sense, like lead weighing a lot.
   
4. A display of your current chip totals. (No, you may not have mine!)

5/ Splitting stacks and moving items.

Items of the same type in Fallen Earth will usually stack, so many of the same kind will just take up one inventory/mount/vault space. Ammo’ stacks to 1000 per space. Other consumable items usually stack to 20. Craft skill ingredients usually stack to 100 and mission related items can stack to very variable amounts. Large more singular type items such as weapons, clothing and armour generally do not stack at all.

You can move items between containers, your inventory, your mounts or vaults by dragging and dropping, or by right clicking the item and selecting from the menu where you want to move it to.

In order to split up a stack of multiple items of the same kind you can right click on the item and select the amount you wish to separate. You must split into the same container the stack is in to begin with before moving the separated amount into another container.

6/ Linking items in chat. To do so press return to open up the chat box ready to send a message and then control+left click on the item (the item can be the icon in a craft skill recipe) to put it details on the item into the chat box so that other people can click it.

7/ My precious.

Fallen Earth has no “buyback” feature in game. If you sell something to a vendor it’s gone, for good. To ensure you don’t do this by accident with items you would rather keep you can set the item to “Precious” by right clicking on the item and selecting. Then that item will no longer even appear on the vendors trading UI panel at all, until you un-select “Precious”. You can also not delete Precious items.

When an item is set to precious a small padlock icon will appear in the top right corner of the items larger icon.

One final thing to point out about this is that if you set crafting components to “Precious” it will not appear as if you have them on your recipe UI panel. Nor can precious set materials be used up in crafting.

8/ Storage. Or, how to be an effective squirrel.

Fallen Earth has a lot of item types, a lot. Many of which, if you intend to be a crafter especially, it can be very valuable to try and stash away for later. Inventory management is for most players of Fallen Earth a joy, a “feature” or something to hate. Few can get away without trying to be more efficient in the way they manage their pixel possessions though.

To help you towards that end the game has a number of vault types where you can store your belongings. All vaults of the same type are shared across physical location. That is to say if you put some Ragged Leather in a Sector vault in North Burb you’ll be able to pick it up out of the Sector vault at Kingman for example.

The names of the vault types are often confusing to new players because they are suggestive of things that aren’t in fact the case.

• Sector Vault. Ignore the name. These are just simply the most abundant vault type in the game, pretty much every settlement and mission hub will have one of this type.
• Barter Vault. Again, ignore the name, they have nothing to do with trading. These are rarer to come across than Sector vaults with fewer settlements having them. They are usually found right next to Sector vaults in the locations that have them.
• V.I.P. Vault. Again…name isn’t relevant. These used to require a certain amount of NPC Bankers faction before you could use them. They are only found in each of the Sectors Capitals. Sometimes they are not close to the other types of vaults, just to make life more “interesting” for you. Embry Crossroads, New Flagstaff (Blaine also in S2), Trader’s Flat and Los Alamos all have a V.I.P. Vault.
• Utility Vault. This only appears currently in the Deadfall Sector at the Los Alamos settlement.
• Clan Vault. If you’re in a clan then the clan shares a duplicate of each vault type. It can be accessed by the tab at the top of the Vault UI. Clan leaders can set permission types to access the vault based on the rank of the clan member. The clan vault is relative to the size of the clan, I believe for every two members a clan has it has one additional space over the default 64 slots. Upto a maximum of 256.

Each vault type, by default, has 64 slots and no upper weight limit at all. It is possible to upgrade the amount of storage that personal sector and barter vaults for any given character has. NOT V.I.P./Utility/Clan vaults, yet. There are a few options to do this and a few types of each upgrade, this is where it all gets a bit confusing. But this official FAQ is very good at explaining it but read it well to avoid and problems please. http://www.fallenearth.com/storagefaq

The FAQ now also includes information on the crafted vault upgrades that were introduced with the 1.74 patch. These are crafted by players and although the finished article is not trade-able, the sub-components necessary to make them are trade-able and the finished article upgrades need only 1 Construction skill and the necessary craft book to complete them. The craft knowledges to construct the sub components are contained in books that drop from Veteran/Boss/Master class monsters in the Deadfall sector. The books are trade-able as well. These will stack with the other vault upgrades mentioned above.

Here are some other tips on storage.

• Generally store things you use most often in your sector vault.
• Deciding which things to stash away and which things to sell to a vendor or just ditch can be tough when starting out. For instance, the “cooking” crafting line has a huge amount of item types associated with it and keeping all the early kinds you find can be difficult. It’s something you’ll come to learn as you play more ‘fraid.
• Use additional mounts to hold your stuff, then tow them around if you need what’s on them. This can be expensive.
• Make other characters and move them to a town with access to as many vault types as you can, mail them stuff and squirrel it like a mad person!
• Abuse the mail system! Post items out to your other characters and then post them back. Using the mail box to store your ammo till when you need it can be very effective.
• If you really want a lot more storage and an easy way to transfer items between your characters consider establishing a personal clan, a little help from other players can be needed for this. More on this in the social section.

9/ The Mail system. The canyon has a group of NPC’s who are called “The Franklin Riders” who have taken it upon themselves to act as the postmen and women to the canyon. Provided you are not on a trial account you will be able to use the mail boxes in game to send text based mails or items from one character to another, either your own or other players.

You can always find a mail box near a vault, nearly all garages also have one. They are the blue American style ones and on the radar/overhead map are marked with an envelope icon.

1. The various functions. From left to right, Open mail, Write new mail, Reply, Forward, Delete and er..
2. The filters to order you mail box. From left to right. If the mail contains chips, if the mail has a “Cash on Delivery” item attached to it, if the mail has an item attached to it, if the mail is a reply, if it’s forwarded, sender, subject, when received and when it will expire.
3. The mails you have, if they are in bold it means you are yet to examine the mail.

Some general things to note about the mail system in Fallen Earth.

• You can not mass mail all at once. If you wish to inform a lot of people about something you can copy and paste into the text body of the mail though and alter the name each time.
• Currently you may only send ONE item or item stack per mail as an attachment. To do this drag from your pack into the main body of the text when creating one to attach it.
• There is a charge of 10 white chips per mail sent.
• It’s possible to fill up your mail quota per character, I’m unsure what this is but I would guess it’s well over 100 mails before some will need to be deleted by the players you’ve sent them to.
• Likewise this limit applies to your in-box as well, so that the mail system is not an infinite means for additional storage.
  
• You may send chips through the mail via the drop down menu to the right when you create one.
• You can charge for items via the mail service by making the mail a “Cash on Delivery” (CoD) and setting the chip amount from the same drop down menu. If the recipient of the mail then wishes to take the item they will have to pay this amount which is then returned in the mail to you. You can not set a mail as CoD without an item attached.
  
• When a mail “Expires” it is first returned to it’s sender, where it will then stay for another thirty days before it, and any item in it, will vanish for good.
• If you attempt to delete a mail with an item still attached you will first get a pop up confirm box.
• The Lost ‘n’ found mail system. On occasion as you move items between containers you will overfill them and the overfill will appear to have vanished, instead it will be returned to you sometime later (it’s quite random and a relog sometimes helps turn them up) in the mail system.

10/ Merchants and the social skill.

Fallen Earth is choc’a’bloc with various helpful NPC’s that are queuing up to try and sell you stuff you might, or might not really, need. In turn you can also sell them the crud you find while out and about in the wasteland.

Generally speaking the name of the merchant is usually a good give away as to what you can expect to purchase from them, it’s often tied into the crafting skill lines as well. But it will naturally take some time to get a feel for whom sells what.

Whereas the majority of things vendors sell can be harvested from the world or crafted (more on that later) certain items can ONLY be purchased from vendors. This includes combat skill ability knowledge books from trainers, certain items of clothing and factional related items and various other oddities.

The price that a merchant offers you an item for, and the price they will buy items from you is modified by a couple of factors. Firstly a comparison of your social skill, the one raised by attribute points, to theirs. The greater the difference the cheaper you can buy something or the more chips you’ll get when you sell.

Secondly, NPC merchants are usually tied into one or more factions (more on that later), if you have a higher factional standing with them you’ll get a slightly better deal from them.

11/ The reward point scheme/merchants.

This addition to the game rewards players who subscribe to the game with er…reward points…you may also earn them by getting other folks to subscribe to the game as well.

Anyway, these points are account wide, that is to say the total points you see on the vendor display are shared by all characters, if Emma spends 500 points of my 1000 point total Rick will only have 500 left to spend as well.

The merchants to spend these points at can be found at Watchtower, New Flagstaff, Trader’s Flat and Los Alamos.

The official FAQ on the scheme is very good and found here. http://www.fallenearth.com/rewardsfaq

12/ The auction house/channel.

The /auction channel can be used by players to trade to each other. You can link your goods or recipes in there and get haggling if you like. The advantage of selling your things this way is that the auction house won’t take it’s slice.
The auction house is where players can set up non bound items to sell to one another. Auction house NPC’s are generally found in all NPC towns and settlements now, since the 1.74.1 patch. The icon on the radar/overhead is a brown gavel. Auction houses are global in the way they function, all auction houses are shared between locales.

http://i52.tinypic.com/2mi2ofp.jpg (Bit too large to host as an image so clicky please).

1. Various search and filter options.
2. The tabs along the top indicate the various functions of the auction house. From left to right, searching the entire auction house, any bids you may have made, any items you might have put up for sale yourself and lastly the means put an item/stack of items for sale.
3. These buttons horizontally will order the search list according to them.
4. These buttons are the ones you actually click if you wish to place a bid or buy an auction out right.
5. When your search result has multiple pages you can skip between them here.

Some things to note about the auction house in Fallen Earth.

• You can’t cancel a bid.
• You can fudge cancel your own auctions only by buying the item out, if you can.
• When you create an auction you will be charged an amount to place it. This varies according to the time scale you pick for the auction, between 12 hours and 5 days and the value of the item(s). If the auction fails to sell this will be returned to you.
• When you win an auction the item will be mailed to you. This usually takes less than a minute at most.
• The makers mark that appears on crafted item, currently, does not show up on the tool-tip of the item in the auction house if you mouse over it.
• You may if you wish choose to place an auction anonymously by ticking a box on creating it.
• Trial accounts may browse the auction house but not place auctions, bids or buyout items.

Crafting and gathering raw materials in Fallen Earth is a rather in depth process and plays an important role for most players, as the game is based more on acquiring gear from this method than from dropped, lootable, items from monsters. That said, if you really hate the idea of crafting it is not necessary to do any, and still proceed throughout the game. However if you really have that much of an aversion to it, it’s recommended you choose melee as your primary weapon skill.

Because you do not spend Attribute points (see section on character creation) directly into trade skill lines, but rather just make things in order to raise them, everyone in the game, no matter how they make their character can craft. If you’re using pistols or rifles it is highly advised you, at a minimum, learn to craft ammunition. The most economic forms of ammo’ require 120 skill in ballistics which is achievable without spending AP into the INTelligence stat but just having max’ PERception (often raised for other things).

All Tradeskills are based on the INTelligence and PERception stats. Which is to say if you max out these two stats you’ll be able to raise all the trade skill lines to their maximum and have access to the best possible crafted items in the game. As PER is often raised for other skills (like Dodge) the additional AP on maxing out INT (150 AP out of 1250 currently at level 50) does not mean that a craft focused character is incapable of, or significantly weaker in combat. Especially as INT is the primary stat in two mutation lines and the first aid skill, allowing crafters to have higher potential skill caps in these.

That said, some folks prefer to split their crafter and PvP characters apart, making one of each, the crafter often with a high Social skill as well. More on this under the character build section later.

2/ Getting started. The two tutorials will introduce you to both scavenging and crafting proper. But here are a few broad tips.

• Raise your combat skills first still. Dodge, Armour use and one of the three weapon skills. Once these are at cap for your level (without their associated stats if you want to craft maximally early), then consider raising your INT and PER stats.
• Set your trade skill kits to “Precious” with a right click.
• Hoard what raw materials you can in your vaults/mounts.
• Prioritize. Invest your time, materials and chips into the craft lines that’ll help you progress through the game. Weaponry if melee, Ballistics if ranged, and Armourcrafting are good first picks. Ones to perhaps consider leaving to later would be Construction and Mutagenics.
• Look out for equipment that will boost your scavenging skills, commonly these are melee weapons, eye wear and storage slot items.
• Most items when crafted will give you 30 points of skill gains at most from the base minimum it takes to craft them, there are some exceptions to this rule such as belts in Armourcrafting and fast refines.
• If you can craft something you can “salvage” it. This will break the item back down into some of the materials you used to make it. More on this later.
• Unlike some other games you do not need to stand still, or stay out of combat to craft. It’s always good to try and have something crafting as you play, consider it like background noise.
• You will continue to craft anything in your active, un-paused, crafting queue list when offline. You will also keep the associated 20% bonus reduction to crafting times if you log out in a workshop. (More on those later).
  

3/ Crafting recipes and harvesting knowledges.

Before you can craft or harvest anything you must know the associated recipe for crafting, or knowledge for harvesting. Your recipes are shown in the crafting panel (L key by default). Much more on that later. Your harvesting knowledges are listed under that knowledges panel. Alt+K by default.

Recipes and knowledges are acquired by right click using the associated books, these books are acquired either as mission rewards (new players get many books like this to help them out to start with), crafted from existing recipes or bought from “trainer” vendors. If you can’t find the trainer you’re looking for like a geology trainer look out for a “Tradeskills trainer” instead as they often carry a wide selection of recipes and harvesting knowledges.

4/ Gathering raw materials.

Although many raw materials can be purchased from a vendor, this is naturally the expensive route and when you’re starting out every chip counts. So better to harvest your raw materials whenever possible. Three of Fallen Earths crafting skill lines are also harvesting lines. As you can maximize all the crafting lines in Fallen Earth with just the outlay on the INT and PER stats you can likewise gather everything in the game for yourself too.

Raw materials come in the shape of nodes on the ground that will reappear in the same rough area after a pre-determined time. That time can vary depending on the type of node. Mission related nodes for example tend to spawn faster. Although many mission related items require a small amount of harvesting to gather some require more, so it’s suggested that players try and raise their harvesting skills even if they are not intending to be a crafter as such.

Using Way-points (alt+P) to mark great sources of materials is good idea.

1. Scavenging. Scavenging is unique in that it is purely a harvesting skill. You can’t craft anything with it, not even refine materials. You harvest junk and refuse like nodes with it, that appear as gold squiggles on your radar/overhead map.
2. Nature. Nature is also a crafting line and also has refines (more on those later), primarily to do with poisons and various concoctions and also the training of horses. You harvest plant life that appear as green leaves on your radar/overhead map. Nature is also used when harvesting dead animal life. Note you must loot the animal clean before you can harvest it.
3. Geology. Geology has no crafting beyond refines (more on those later). You harvest geological nodes like iron and copper, they appear as orange rock like icons on your radar/overhead map.

Some other things to note about harvesting.

• When you mouse over a harvesting node a tool-tip will appear giving you some information on the node, if any part of the tool-tip text is in red it will indicate why you can’t harvest that node. It could be too low skill, not the required knowledge or a missing or too low craft skill kit.
• Harvesting nodes takes a default amount of time, which can’t be decreased. During this time your detection level to monsters increases making you more likely to be attacked.
• If you are attacked during the harvesting process it will abort and you won’t be able harvest successfully till you deal with your attacker.
• The amount you receive from most raw material nodes is 1-3. This can be 1-10 for certain more treasure like nodes or mission nodes. To improve your chances of getting more items from a node having greater skill than the minimum that is required helps. So buffing skills by equipment can be handy.
• Like crafting you will gain upto 30 points from the base minimum needed to harvest a node before you will need to search for tougher nodes.
• Nodes appear in 15 skill point increments.
• Experience points will be gained from harvesting nodes if the node is close to maximum possible you can harvest for your skill and level. That is to say if you’re level 25 and have maxed your INT/PER to have a 105 possible maximum in harvesting/crafting nodes of 105 will generate a lot of XP, 90 nodes some and 75 and lower, none.

5/ Craft kits.

Excluding scavenging all the craft skill lines have an associated kit that must be in the players inventory in order to harvest and craft something in that line. You’ll be given some “Starter” kits in the tutorials, the more advanced craft kits called “Basic” you can often find as loot, craft or buy from vendors and the last current kind called “Intermediate” must be crafted.

6/ The craft skill lines.

Below is a list of the craft skill lines. I’ve colour coded their names to give you an indication of how easy I consider them (personal opinion here!) relative to one another to level up. From dark green being easiest, through yellow to dark red being toughest/most P.I.T.A! Also, a rough guide to what you can expect to craft with them, and some of the best ways to perhaps level them up if you’re in a hurry.

• Nature. Nature is probably the easiest craft skill to level, harvest plants and dead animal life as you go. Nature contains recipes for poisons, various concoctions and training of horses. Horses can have lengthy craft times, though not as bad as vehicles.
  
• Scavenging. As above, scav’ as you go. These node types are usually very plentiful.
• Geology. Not quite as easy as the above as the nodes tend to be rarer and finding ones to suit you for gains can be troublesome. Near all crafting patterns for geology are refines, which no longer give gains.
• Science. Science has a number of “Create” recipes that can give gains. It also has some low material recipes to start off like “Bleach” under the Dyes sub section. With Science you can create/refine a large amount of other materials, it also feature grenades, all vehicles some advanced chest armours and boosters that give you hour long buffs.
• Ballistics. Ballistics is relatively easy to level until around the 150 skill mark as you can make various forms of ammo’ for gains. Zip gun/X-bow–>Pistol Ammo—>Rifle ammo—>Shotgun ammo and then the more economic types. In addition it also makes firearms.
• Weaponry. Although it’s fairly material heavy to skill up in the materials often tend to be of the same kinds making it easy to stash for. It makes all kinds of melee weapons. For easier gains than most I suggest knives.
• Medicine. Like Science it has a number of “Create” recipes that can help you level up, however it has fewer low material recipes in general. It makes all kinds of benign consumables, the odd grenade and weapon, bandages and such.
• Armourcrafting. Can be heavy on materials and later stages require materials that are often a pain to find in the world (I’m looking at you Ragged Synth’ Cloth). Belts and gloves can be good for gains but do note that they only give 10 points of gains from base minimum. Helmets are often relatively material cheap too.
• Construction. I know lots of people hate construction. It’s very material intensive and the finished camps use a lot of sub components (which you can make for gains). It’s advised to consider this one later when you can throw chips at it via vendor bought materials. Currently construction makes camps that will give you and your team buffs or spawn merchants/vaults/mail boxes. It will be the skill that will focus on player housing, one day.
  
• Mutagenics. Mutagenics is a pig. It can require materials that are not found on vendors at the levels you need them, or if they are are expensive to buy. Compounded that they are either not dropped in the world much or have insane Create/Refine materials and it’s all a bit nasty. Salvaging your products (if you don’t intend to use them) will help a lot with this one. Mutagenics makes the injectors that teach the ranks of mutation skills, both Alpha and advanced. They can be expensive to purchase from vendors making this craft skill attractive….to a point.
• Cooking. If you’re a masochist this is the craft skill line for you. Simply in the amount of different raw/materials and sub-components it can take to craft the numerous, numerous different types of food and drinks. If you’re looking to skill up in it, I would recommend Brewing and perhaps Frying only.
  

7/ Right, can I make something already?

Pressing L will bring up the main crafting UI window of the game. Provided you’ve learned at least one recipe book you’ll be able to make something. You’ll need the materials in your pack and then it’s just a matter of finding the recipe, selecting it from the list and clicking create. Once the recipe is ready (remember you’re free to move about and go into combat) you’ll have to finalize the by clicking “Complete” in the active recipes window. This will, inventory space/weight permitting (you won’t be allowed to complete the reciepe if not) deposit the item into your pack.

1. Along the top are the various tabs that correspond to the 10 crafting skill lines and the far right Star icon is the favourites tab. Scavenging has no tab as nothing is crafted with it.
2. The left icon here will minimize all expanded recipe sub menus, the right icon is the filter icon. Using this you can search within a skill line tab using various parameters including a key word search. Very handy.
3. The main list of your recipe patterns under any given skill line tab. They are grouped up according to general function with various sub menus to expand to find the recipe pattern you want.
4. This shows you the minimum skill required to craft the item. This must be the base amount in your skill, you can’t buff your craft skills in the same way you can your harvest skills to craft higher level items than your base skill. If the number is grey it means you will get no gain or experience points (XP), if green you will get a gain and reduced XP, if white a gain and better XP, if red you lack the skill to craft the item.
   
5. The raw materials/sub components required to make the item. When you have the items in your pack these will turn green to indicate. Note that items set to precious (apart from the kits) will not appear as ready to be crafted with and you will need to un-precious them.
6. The time it will take to craft the item and the time it would take if you are inside the associated craft skill workshop building.
7. This shows you want kind and the level of crafting kit you will need, if the outline is red you don’t have it yet.
8. The stacked cards like icon brings up the active recipes UI window if you’ve closed it.
9. The speech bubble icon allows you to link a recipe into chat. Ready a chat line with the return key and then click this to put the recipe, and what it needs to craft it, into the chat box for other people to see.
10. Here you can set how many of an item you want to make and create sets the process going.
11. The active recipes window, this shows you how your current 20 maximum crafts. More on this next.
12. Features to manage your active recipes, again more on this next.

8/ The active recipe window, canceling crafting.

You may have a maximum of twenty things set to craft, per character, each will be worked on in turn, in the order you added them to the list. When one finishes the next in line will start. The time on the right indicates how long the recipe will take to finish and will update if you enter/exit a workshop.

When an item is ready you can highlight it in this window and click “Complete” (the “Abort” icon changes to this) and it’ll be put your pack, space/weight permitting.

If you wish to abort crafting you can work backwards, so that you can begin by aborting anything on the active recipes list that isn’t the current active pattern. You will loose no materials if you abort a craft process in the active list unless it is the one that is currently being made. You will get a pop up warning asking you to confirm if you wish to cancel this one.

The “Pause” icon is of dubious use, you can if you wish pause the currently active and crafting pattern. Note that there is NO way to currently re-order the priority of your craft list, to move some items ahead of others including the one you’re crafting. The pause button has one use as such, if an item is just about to finish crafting and you wish to abort the others in your list (because you want to craft something else entirely) but will run out of time to do this you can pause.

Items will stay in the queue indefinitely ready to be “Completed” it can be a handy way to store extra ammo till you need it as they are not yet in your pack adding weight.

9/ Workshops.

Workshops are found in towns, not all towns have all kinds of workshops. They are represented on the overhead map/radar by the icon of the craft skill tab for each kind. Standing inside of one will reduce the craft time of any active recipe by 20% if it corresponds to that type of workshop. So ballistics workshops speed up production of ammo. Logging out in a workshop will see that bonus kept and be applied to other crafts further on in your craft list as well.

10/ Salvaging.

Provided you know how to make an item you can attempt to salvage it and break it down for some of the raw materials or sub components that are used to create it.

To do so right click the item and select. Some things to note about salvaging.

• You need the required trade skill kit in your inventory to salvage.
• Unlike crafting being in combat will interrupt the process, as will taking damage from other sources like falling.
• You can’t set up a queue to salvage nor can you do this offline.
• Salvaging will destroy the item and GM’s wont help you get back items you salvaged.
• The amount you get from salvaging maybe (I’m not sure) governed by your craft skill relative to the amount you need to craft it. Though I’m pretty sure it’s just a default amount.
• Workshops do not speed up the salvaging process.
• The items you receive will appear straight into your pack on completion, if they can’t be placed in there due to space/weight they will appear in the mail system later as “Lost ‘n’ found”
• The time required to salvage something is a direct proportion of the time it takes to craft the item.
• You gain no experience points, nor skill points from salvaging.

11/ Creating/Refining.

This changed in the most recent 1.74 patch somewhat. Both processes are considered crafting and you set it up like any other crafting recipe and they can be affected by workshops.

“Creating” is considered to be when you take one kind of raw material and turn it into another kind. So taking Impure Botanical Chemicals and turning them into Standard Antiseptic would be considered a “creation”. Creations have longer crafting times, may yield experience points and skill gains.

“Refining” is taking one kind of raw material and converting it into a better form of it. So Impure Antiseptic into Standard Antiseptic. Refines are now five seconds to complete as standard but do not yield experience points or skill gains. As such it’s also very fast to salvage higher forms of raw materials into lower kinds now.

Many of the craft skill lines have create/refine recipes in them, Science, Geology, Nature and Medicine chief amongst them.

12/ Which weapon skill works best for a crafting character?

Melee has a couple advantages, namely if you also raise your strength stat you’ll be able to carry more, weight, not pack space. You’ll also not be crafting your own ammo’ allowing you instead to focus your craft time/list on other stuff.

Pistols or rifles, however, have an advantage in that 50% of their skill requirements/caps are based on the PERception stat which you will need for crafting as well. Which means you could elect to save AP and spend them elsewhere if you use either of these weapon lines.

More on this in the character build section later though.

13/ Some general tips about crafting.

• When starting off consider crafting “Basic” crafting kits for each of the craft lines, these are fast to make, usually pretty cheap on materials and good for about 20 initial gains.
• Always try to make sure you’re crafting ammo if nothing else if you’re a ranged weapon user. Buying ammo from vendors is a sure fire way to get broke quickly in Fallen Earth. More economic forms of ammo crafting will appear later in the Ballistics skill.
• You can add upto 20 items to your favourites tab by right clicking any recipe pattern in your lists and selecting.
• Don’t forget the filter icon at the top right of the main UI window, it’s search feature is very handy.
• Basic chemicals, the Botanical, Biological and Geological ones can not be created or refined.
• Some mission items can often “Count as” another raw material item. This can be very handy when attempting to find materials on a large scale sometime. The “Count as” portion of text, it it does, appears on the items tooltip. Although not the tooltip of chat linked items currently.
• Pens and Paper, needed to craft recipe books, can be expensive when starting out. Pens can be crafted with 45 science skill, using copper and plastic. Plastic can be found in S1 rarely, the mission nodes around the bunker east of Terrance have it and do some refuse like nodes around Pass Chris. Scrap paper can be acquired in the form of a mission item “Counts as” item from the aggressive Gully Dog bandits near Terrance. The item is called a land deed and it is bind on pick up.

14/ Dyes and Paints.

Added in the er…er…1.6 patch I believe, these are essentially the same thing, a dye when applied to clothing (and some armour) and a paint when applied to a vehicle mount (most vehicles take paints, the exception is the Badlands Rider from the $ store).

Nearly all “clothing” can be dyed, but at the moment not many types of armour can be at all, though there are plans to expand the range that can be it’s a lengthy process for the developers.

In order to dye a piece of clothing you must have crafted a dye/paint kit. These are made in the Science tradeskill vary from 1-180, the highest kinds offering more colours and hues, these however require very rare (and therefore expensive) Chemicals. If you should come across one of these Pale/Dark/Bright Chemicals they will be worth a small fortune to you as a new player. Sell them on the auction house! First you have to remove the item into your pack if you were wearing it, then right click and select dye when you will be greeted with this UI element. With a tooltip from a dye kit visible too.

The kits in question are too low level to dye that particular item so the three sections into which you could drag them aren’t available. If the kit was right you can just drag ’em over and select from the colours, then preview it and how it’ll look on your avatar before confirming.

To paint a vehicle, same deal except you take your mount to a “Garage Manager” and click on the big Paint Tin icon to bring up the UI element again.

Below are the hues that each kit can contain, massive thanks to Beardy Dan for this original picture.

1/ Getting the most out of the chat box.

Even if you’re familiar with chat boxes from other games of the genre Fallen Earths has a few quirks and features you might like to know about that are not obvious at first glance.

1. Clicking this little + icon here will bring up the options menu for the chat box.
2. The output area, where you can type and too the left in which chat channel it will end up.
3. Chat Tabs. You begin the game with just one of these and it’s called “All” and er…it contains er…all the chat/combat text output you generate…But if you right click on it you can start to get up additional tabs and set the filters for what will appear in them. In the screen-shot there you can see I have one just for Region and one just for Team. Private messages from other players will always pop up in fresh chat tabs. When a tab has new text in it, it will flash. It is highly advised you set up additional chat tabs for things like combat data and your clan/faction/team chat in order to that you don’t miss text out in other spam.
4. Here you can select the default output any given tab will go to. If you don’t want to switch tabs but still talk into a different output you can use a slash command. Like /local Hello!
5. Various options to do with the chat box, setting colours of text, font size, filters. The Channels section is where you join/leave optional channels like the Help and Faction ones. Don’t get it confused with the filters section which is to do with which ones you can actually see in the box.
6. The games inbuilt emotes, more on them in a mo’.

Some other things to note about Fallen Earths chat systems.

• To send a private message to another player use the format /tell name name, Hello! If they have two names, a comma must be placed after the name. Or left click on their name in the main text body of the chat box to bring up a menu.
  
• We can not create our own custom chat channels in Fallen Earth.
• Region chat is not sector wide and is a smaller area. It is not always clear when you leave one region chat area and enter another. If in doubt send a /tell to anyone you were chatting with in region.
• The faction channel will become available to characters once they have earned 3k+ faction points for any given faction, if you switch factions it maybe necessary to relog to be assigned to your new channel. You will be in the faction channel with which you have the highest faction points.

2/ Using / commands and emotes.

A typed slash command is a shortcut to achieve something in game. For instance if you type in /help with no additional text after it you will get a menu informing you of all the other possible / commands in the game if you type out the sub sections.

Most commonly used to set chat output there are many other handy ones in Fallen Earth. Like /time /loc /timesync /pvp and all of the games built in emotes (an emote is a physical action generally). You can find these at the top of the menu when you click the + icon at the bottom left of the chat box. Once you know an emote by name the / command for it will work, like /charleston for the dance.

If you wish to make a custom emote, which won’t have any associated animation/noise however, you can use the /emote command. For instance if I were to type /emote raises an eyebrow. The text in the /local region of chat will appear “Sally Smith raises an eyebrow”. Custom emotes are often beloved by roleplayers.

3/ The games in built Voice com’ system.

The games in built Voice com’ system is like a cut down version of other wider used net’ based ones, like Teamspeak or Ventrilo. You can find the options for it er…well the games options (Alt+O) by default. It only covers those in a team with you and naturally only if they too have it enabled. You’ll be able to tell if they do because there will a speaker like icon next to their name in the team window. Needless to say if you intend to use this to speak with and not just listen you’ll need a working microphone set up in your basic operating software.

As far as I’m aware this is currently non functional in Fallen Earth.

4/ The Social UI tab.

This is brought up by using the O (not a zero) key by default. Along the top are the various tabs for various functions.

The “Who” tab. This is for finding other players/game masters. It’s not as in depth or really as user friendly as some /who options in other games but it’ll do the job. You can alter min’ and max’ levels to search between and either to search in your current “County” (I’m afraid I can’t tell you what one of those is in map area terms, because I have no idea) or “Any”, which is the entire game.

The list it generates is truncated to er..I believe thirty names, maybe a bit more at most remember though.

Other than their level it doesn’t give you any other information about the player, such as their clan or faction, yet. It can be a good tool to see who is near you, at your level who you might be able to approach to form a team to do something in game with. Will cover teams and raids in the PvE section later.

The Who Tab is often used by players engaged in PvP. Often left open to see who might be near them, as they often know players who like to take part in it by name.

If you use the / command /who in the chat box it’ll also generate a list of players near you currently.

The “Friends” Tab. You can add characters to this list by using the /friend add name name command. Or by right clicking on their avatar if you are near them. Or by clicking on their name in the chat box and selecting. You can also remove friends from your list by clicking on the name in the list and selecting.

Currently the friends list is limited to 50 names, and is specific to any characters of your own, so they can end up being different between your own characters. Friends that are online have their names highlighted in white, those offline, in gray.

Again, PvPers often consider their friends list more like an enemies list. Because you can’t stop anyone adding you to their list, nor as there is an /anonymous command in FE the friends list can be used to track the online movements of your most wanted.

The GM Tab. If there is a GM online they will be displayed here. You can right click the name to send them a private message if you need GM help. (Try the /help channel first is still good advice).

The Clan Tab. See below.

The Ignore Tab. Much like the friends list, here you can add characters and remove them if you wish to your ignore list. If you add character to your ignore list via the /ignore add name name command you will not see any chat generated by them in any channels. Again, you can do this by right clicking on an avatar up close, or by clicking on someones name in the chat box.

If you wish to report another player for offensive behaviour or the kind that breaks the EULA/CoC you must talk to a Game master about that if you can find one online.

5/ Clans. The games “guilds”.

Clans are player made social units. Guilds from other games of this type. Players can join them by invitation from another player in them, or create one of their own. We’ll cover the creation process in a bit. To find a clan that might suit you using the /region or /local chats in game can be a good way. Or by browsing the clan part of the forums, found here. http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…splay.php?f=14 Fallen Earth has quite a number of active, specific language speaking clans from around the world as well.

There is an option under the General Tab of the Alt+O options UI section to automatically decline clan invites should you wish to do so.

Players on trial accounts can not make clans for themselves. Otherwise in order to establish one you must have 10 blue chips to cover the initial fee, find a “Clan Manager” NPC. They can be found Oilville, Embry crossroads, New Flagstaff and Trader’s Flat. They have a silver mechanical nut like icon on your radar/overhead map. You’ll be asked to input a name for the clan, that must be unique and not break the naming rules covered in the Code of conduct.

The clan is then in a probationary period for ten days. During those ten days you must recruit ten characters into the clan before it’s status changes to a more permanent form. Should that not happen, after the ten days are up the clan will automatically dissolve and any items that were in the clans vault will be mailed to the clan leader. Once ten characters have been recruited, that number can be reduced down to just two and the clan will remain active and stable.

Which means, players can if they wish, with a little help from a friend, establish their own personal clans as a means for extra storage and easy transference of items between their characters.

Currently clans can accept members from all factions.

Below is a screenshot of my anti-social clan tab.

1. Various social tabs, covered above.
2. Clan status. If it’s in it’s ten day probationary period or not.
3. Ticking this box will make your character flagged for any clan war(s) your clan is currently involved in.
4. This is how you set up, and manage clan wars. Much more on those under the PvP section.
5. Here is where you clan leader and officers (if permitted themselves), can alter certain aspects of the five ranks in a clan that members can belong to. Such as access to the clan vaults, ability to talk in the /officer chat channel, to set the message of the day and such. Via this members can also be promoted and demoted through the five ranks. Needless to say it is a good idea to be careful who you give access to your clan vaults.
6. Here you can leave a clan, or if a clan leader, choose to disband it entirely.
   

6/ Roleplaying.

You’ll get a fair range of opinion on what roleplaying exactly is if you ask a fair few people. So I’m not going to attempt to define it myself, but rather link to a thread made by a Fallen Earth developer on the entire subject who does an excellent job of it. http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…ead.php?t=1374

If you’re looking to meet other roleplayers in Fallen Earth a good place to begin is here on the official forums in the Last Haven boards. http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…splay.php?f=20

There is also a fansite dedicated to it as well. Found here. http://fallenearth.rp-haven.com/

There are a number of clans that focus on this aspect of play and you’ll be able to get in touch with them via one of the above websites, or in clan section of the forums, should you not bump into them in game first.

If you want more reading material on the “lore” of the game as to help base your character some of the official fiction written by developers and the unofficial ones written by players on the “Sparks” board is great too. Found here. http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…splay.php?f=21

The 1.74 patch made it that the handful, it was around half a dozen, of unique icon action abilities each faction had at their disposal are now commonly available to all clones. This was done to ensure better balance in the game, and stop factions acting like “classes” and correct a few oddities in the system regarding what a faction was supposed to be good at, in fact, not being the case.

However, if you read a little more you may also get the impression that certain factions are overall better at certain broad elements of the game. For instance, taken from the Tech section of the official website here. http://www.fallenearth.com/node/48

Or from the CHOTA section here. http://www.fallenearth.com/node/45

Now from that you might well have some expectations about being a CHOTA that as a player character you might well not experience at all when you get in game and find them. Likewise you might get the impression that if you wanted to make a crafting focused character that the Tech faction would be ideal for you, when in fact faction choice has a tiny, and I mean tiny, impact on the crafting system.

It’s not all doom’n’gloom. Factions do have some differences, notably in the way players interact with each other in them. However without better incentives for them to come together at a factional level/scale, which the game has lacked for a very long time, their interactions are often few and far between, factionally. But we’ll cover that later.

3/ “Joining” a faction and the faction wheel/points system.

Why the air quotes there? Well again that particular piece of language is used on the main website, and personally, I find it rather a misnomer.

To me it smacks of the connotations that you are making a commitment, and decision that will see your character be a part of the faction for potentially a long time. Even some of the introductory missions for the factions in Sector 2 give the impression you’re about to make a lasting commitment to them. Which is..again..not necessarily the case at all. I prefer to use the word “belong” when referring to a player characters interaction with the NPC factions at large.

Ok, so how do I “belong” to a faction? Although you will encounter some of them quite heavily in Sector 1 (levels 1-15+), many have settlements where they have a distinct presence, no actions you take for them will end up seeing you belong to one in Sector 1. You’re free to do as you like.

It’s not until Sector 2 (levels 15-30+) that doing missions from faction specific towns will see you start to acquire “faction points”. These are the game mechanism which determines which faction you currently belong too. To that end I now must introduce the faction wheel. Urgh.

To bring this UI element up is the Alt+F keys by default. This is the faction wheel of one my characters and when starting out it will look a little different in that there will be no red or green bars filled in. These indicate the levels of faction points accrued for any given faction. It’s called the wheel, not least because obviously it’s circular but also because it can move, rotate around and generally alter over time, also because essentially the factions are like spokes on a wheel too.

The faction at the top of the wheel is the one which you have the most points for, and currently belong to, this is also indicated by the icon in the middle. Belonging to any given faction gives that character potential access to that factions chat channel, a choice of titles that will appear before your characters name if you enable them based on the amount of points accrued and access to safe passage in factional towns which you friendly with, and finally access to specific factional equipment and weapons.

Your factional point totals will change, that is you can loose them as well as acquire them by some actions, via four primary methods currently.

1. Completing missions for factional NPC’s. Needless to say you must have a neutral or positive amount of faction points with any given faction before they will give you missions. Some missions can be repeated for factional gains, usually those found in conflict towns. (See the PvP section).
2. Defeating factional NPC’s.
3. Defeating players who themselves belong to a faction in player versus player content. (Although not in Blood Sports matches).
4. Capturing faction control points in sectors 2 and 3 for the faction you currently belong to. See the PvP section for more on these.

How factional point gains and losses work. If you gain faction points with one faction you also gain or loose them with all of the other five at the same time.

Let us say I complete a mission for the Techs that awards me 1000 Tech faction points. Because the Enforcers and the Travellers are the allies (more on this later) of the Techs I’ll also gain 500 faction points with each of them. Because the Vista are the arch enemy of the Techs I’ll loose 2000 Vista points. In addition because the CHOTA and Lightbearers are the allies of the Vista, I’ll loose 1000 points with them.

Now the eagle eyed amongst you will have already noticed one rather odd thing about the wheel. That any factions two allies are themselves techincally enemies. Such that as a Tech if I go and help my Enforcer allies, and complete a mission for them awarding me 1000 Enforcer reputation (and 500 Tech) I will loose an equal, 1000 points, with my other ally the Travellers.

This will mean that if you want to keep both your factional allies on side it is very important to first build as much faction with your main faction, to build up a cushion with your allies and then “ping pong” back and forth mission between the two allies. So that you do NOT fall into amounts such that you can’t acquire missions from them. Sector two faction missions require at least 1000 positive faction points with a faction, and sector three 10,000 to acquire.

4/ The “Wheel spin or flip” and changing ones faction.

The wheel was, as I best understand it (which I never have) a mechanism put in game to allow players to change which faction they belong to, if they wished. As I’ve introduced the faction wheel, best move on, swiftly past the er…anomaly (if it ever was an intended one, we don’t know) within it known as the “Wheel flip”.

Now some other players who’ve been around for a while will wonder why on earth I’m including a section on this, when the need to do it has been significantly diminished recently. Two reasons, one the main website, again, continues to refer to it and in the bad way frankly. Secondly because, like it or not it, with the advent of the faction reset NPC (more on them in a bit) it is still a very viable way for players to acquire AP, probably more so than ever.

The first part of the paragraph is simply false. If you wanted to change your faction from Enforcer to CHOTA you would NOT need to work around the wheel via the Techs and the Trav’s. Before the faction reset NPC (we’ll get to them in a bit) you could indeed just “flip” diametrically across the wheel if you wished. By killing an (potentially, based on your faction point totals) inordinately large amount of Enforcer NPC’s, eventually you would belong to the CHOTA.

The second part of that information however is true. Due to the nature of losses with some factions when you gain points in other being doubled.

Now what is vaguely described in the first part of that quote is referred to as a “wheel spin”, quite quickly after (and before) the games launch players worked out that they could use the nature of the wheel to move around it and acquire extra AP that are awarded as a result of factional missions, from all of the factions before finally ending up in the faction they wanted to belong to.

The “spin” was an inefficient way to do this. Players quickly altered it to a “flip” approach. Whereby they would work one side (three factions) of the wheel that were opposed to the final faction they wanted to end up as. Do only the bare minimum AP missions in those three factions, and then grind a LOT of factional NPC’s to end back positive with their final faction. Then move onto completing the missions for them, including the AP ones. Doing this could, if I recall correctly (which I might not), net a player around an extra 60-80 AP. In addition wheel flipping allowed players to learn all the mutation paths taught by all the factions.

It is important to note that recently the game has had changes made to it to limit the benefits from wheel flipping. Such as making all mutation lines available to all factions. And by “De-factionializing” the skills and capstone abilities that only a certain amount of positive faction points would let you use. Also the introduction of a spend AP cap at 1250 points maximally at level 50 means that players no longer benefit from chasing down every last AP in the system.

That said, it still can be one way to get extra AP while leveling, especially if you use the new faction reset NPC. This NPC, called the “Disgruntled Outsider” can be found in the central park area of New Flagstaff, in sector 2, will give you a quick mission requiring you to drink an item that will reset all your faction point totals to 0. Note that is a reset, not a respec to a different faction. It is important to note you may only do this ONCE per character.

You may now buy additional faction reset items from the games $ store. Found here. http://www.fallenearth.com/store

Now, you may be thinking I’ve just told you about a game exploit, or encouraged you to use one. Firstly, there really isn’t much need to wheel flip anymore, you can achieve the spend AP cap of 1250 without resorting to it. Secondly, it has never been called an exploit by the powers that be. Frankly because they couldn’t call it one, it’s inherent in the nature of the wheel as a mechanic to change faction.

5/ Factional allies and enemies, how the factions interact.

By this point in time you’re probably very, very, very fed up of reading what I have to say about factions so the good news is I can link you to an excellent bit of handwritten work by another player who has done a great job of describing how the factions feel about themselves and each other.

Mad props to Friedman for this guide. You’ll need to link your forum account to a game account (details as ever in the Community section) to see this thread.

http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…ad.php?t=32134

Now, regarding the relationships of the factions here we encounter another slight problem (although it’s often not viewed as one by many) with the wheel and the way factions interact. The “lore” and historical ties and ideology of the factions makes, as you read from the main website, some of them “allies”. That is the word that is used to describe their relationship as a whole. For instance.

Now the NPC’s in the game will by and large honour this alliance, sometimes you’ll find the odd mission where something a bit underhand is going on between two supposed allied factions, but generally, provided you haven’t done anything to annoy them a Tech is welcome in an Enforcer or Traveller NPC area.

Now, regarding player interactions with each other, specifically to do with PvP this might well not be the case. Players are under no obligation whatsoever to honour the factional alliances, or even the ties to their OWN faction that the game has told you about. Tech players, for instance, could potentially find themselves at odds with Traveller players, often this is exasperated by commitments to clans who have a history of conflict. This is compounded that players often find a clan first in the game and their loyalty is to their clan and their clan mates above their faction mates. Secondly the game had no faction channel for the first 7-8 months and it meant that factions did not build up a social/sub community presence in the game, and frankly, still struggle to.

That players can, and without significant penalty, harm their own faction mates and their apparent “lore” allies on the wheel has meant that faction mates are often wary of each other in PvP areas. Some even shoot first precisely because they don’t know how their faction mate might act. There are two other, what I personally think are, large problems with the way factions interact as potential allies and enemies inherent in the wheel.

One I call the “Piggy in the middle” syndrome. Let’s say that an Enforcer wants some help from a Tech to kill what is the Enforcers factional enemy, a Traveler. The Tech is basically stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can either choose to not help at all, perhaps annoying their factional ally the Enforcer. Or they could choose to aid them and potentially alienate their other factional ally, the Traveler.

The other is related, and I call it the “Would you both just bloody well behave for five minutes” syndrome (I’m not very good at naming things). If a Tech wants to achieve something and calls on the aid of both their allies they might have to spend a lot of the time just trying to stop them conflicting in the first place, if in a PvP setting, or because of “bad blood” from previous encounters between them.

More on how factions and PvP “work” in the PvP section under Conflict towns and Faction control points.

Again, it’s not all doom ‘n’ gloom. Some players respect faction, what the game is telling them and try their best to view their immediate faction as their “team” mates and their allies as just that.

6/ Do I have to belong to a faction?

No, not if you don’t want to. Making that choice can limit the amount of the game you will see some what. You’ll obviously not be able to do missions for the factions out of factional based towns. You will be able to PvP and in the open world if you are careful. Since the 1.7 patch you can’t acquire faction points from PvP kills so long as you don’t have any to start with. However should you “tag” a faction NPC with a stray round when PvPing, you might be in trouble. You will have to be very careful about not picking up faction points by accident. Teaming with other people around factional NPC’s or places where you one can acquire faction points in general is something you’ll have to think about.

7/ The Faction channel.

The faction channel was introduced around er…er…the 1.5 patch if I recall. It spent a long period of it’s life fairly buggy, but it’s been fixed and is now working fine.

You can be in, you can disable it from the Channels section in the + menu option bottom left of chat box if you wish, the faction channel of the faction you have the most points with, and over 3000 minimum.

Some faction channels are more active than others. Personally, I believe players can and should treat it a bit like a second or (if you’re not even in one) a first clan. Somewhere to chat, trade, help each other out, find teams. Other people, because they don’t believe faction is important in the game, and because they haven’t chosen to associate with their faction mates take a more dim view of the channel.

8/ Where to find the factions, and where/how to gain faction points.

The main faction towns in sectors two and three respectively, are below. Missions from these towns require 1000 points to pick up in sector two, (there are missions that require 0 points to pick up that will give you 1000 to get you started) and 10,000 in sector three.

CHOTA: Fracture and Warhall.
Vista: Thorne’s Bluff and Gaia.
Lightbearer: Haven and Saint Sebastians.
Enforcer: Post 23 and Black Hill.
Tech: Picus ridge and Chem Town.
Traveller: Credit Bend and Banker’s Hole.

Other good sources of faction points are Conflict towns, which contain repeatable missions (provided you’re in the level range of the conflict town). Capturing FCP’s in sectors two and three can also reward them. More on this under the PvP section.

If you want to see an excellent map of NPC’s that can be killed for faction point gains than look no further than here. http://exilegamers.wikia.com/wiki/Faction_Camps Thanks to Hammy for all the work they put in on that and many other maps and to Exile for re-hosting them now that Hammy is no longer with us.

Finally, late in the game, in the Deadfall region of the province at levels 45+ generally there are two good sources of repeatable missions for more faction points. Both picked up initially from the Rothium Ridge mission hub. One is PvP focused, the other PvE.

9/ NPC Factions.

At the top of the faction wheel UI (alt+F by default) you’ll see a tab for NPC factions, so named because players can’t join them.

• Town person faction refers to general neutral towns in the province. If you were to attack town guards at these towns you would go into negative amounts with them. This is a reaaaaalllly bad idea. You gain this faction only by killing “bandit” like NPC groups that are usually harassing these towns.
• Bankers faction. A minimum amount of this needed to be acquired before you could use the V.I.P. vault time. Believe (not 100% sure) this is no longer the case. Bankers faction can be increased only by completing missions for them.
  
• Franklin Riders faction. Increasing this faction will allow you access to Franklin Rider NPC merchants who often sell nice goodies and at cheaper prices than other vendors. Franklin Rider faction can increased only by completing missions for them.
• Shiva’s favoured. This refers to a bunch of rebel, friendly Shiva’s favoured in the Deadfall region. Helping them can get you the Blight Wolf mount. Level 45+ for this content.
  
• Human League and Outsiders reputations currently have no function in game, but are on the UI.
  

10/ Some general things to note about factions.

• When you belong to a faction on your first character, you are not (unlike some other games) required to belong to that same one on other characters.
• Clans may invite members from all factions if they wish to.
• The faction chat channel requires you have 3000 points positive faction standing with any faction before you will be allowed into one. You will always be in the faction channel to wish you have the most points.
• Killing a player (not in Bloodsports) who belongs to a faction will see you potentially gain or loose faction points depending on your factional relationship to them IF that is you already have some factional points. If you are still neutral a PvP kill will not by itself gain or loose you points.
• You will not gain Deathtoll from killing your own faction mates. But you will from allies.

XIV: Player versus environment (PvE) content.

1/ Non player character (NPC) opponent categories.

Monsters/critters/NPC’s. Whatever you call ’em, you’ll be doing deathly harm to a LOT of them over the time you play Fallen Earth. (Unless you make a pacifist crafting character!). They come in a few broad categories it’s useful to know about. Usually if a monster has something special about it it’s indicated under it’s name text.

Experience points gained (XP), and sometimes the loot the critter holds is generally better on tougher opponents.

• Standard. Most common critters, these don’t have any extra bits under their name and are generally the weakest, easiest form of NPC’s to face. Though in number, naturally, they can overwhelm an unsuspecting player.
• Veteran. One step up, generally much tougher, larger amounts of hit points and damage. Can sometimes be solo’ed depending as always on your character build and the gear you have to hand.
• Bosses. Another step up. Tougher still. Usually being grouped is advised for these.
• Masters. The final nasty stage. Usually very tough in their ability to soak and often deal damage. Pack a team of players if they’re about your level.

2/ Missions.

Although I covered these a bit in the Navigation section it’s worth bringing them up again as they make up the core majority of PvE content in Fallen Earth. Familiar to folks who have played other games like this as Quests, they serve broadly the same function. Get given a task, usually by an NPC, but sometimes by other means, go and out complete it…or don’t.

There are a huge number of them in FE and although they can broadly fall into a number of categories, more types missions that see you being tasked with different activities are being developed all the time (like the recent Road Rally Missions). Some missions award bonus AP remember. Some missions may be repeated, though often this means they have lesser rewards than the first time you complete them.

Some missions have requirements needed to pick them up, minimum level is an obvious one, but also you might need to be friendly with a faction or in some very rare cases have a good CHArisma stat, though in the later case you can usually just come back later when your base CHA has risen enough.

Some missions have a little orange er…stacked people icon on the left of their name in the mission journal. This indicates that a team of players is suggested for the mission. If you’re much higher level than the mission you may find you do not need a team. More on making a team in a while.

If you’re the kind of player, coming into FE from other games, where you just pick the mission up and don’t bother to read the text, you’re missing out here. The writing on FE missions is very good.

Some general things to note about missions, some of which covered in the Navigation section.

• You can have upto 20 missions at maximum in your mission journal at once. J key by default.
• You can only track one mission at a time. That is have the Red X waypoint shown. It’s a good idea to get as many missions from one mission hub as you can at once, then cycle through their locations/tasks in your journal and plot out an efficient route to encompass them all.
• You can never out level nor totally fail a mission to the point where you can not go back and require it. If you fail, or choose to abort a mission, you will need to back track to the last point where you were able to pick it up.
• Currently there is no way find out which missions you have already completed.
• Some missions are found “off the beaten track”. Away from obvious NPC population hubs marked on the map.
• Faction town missions in sector two have a minimum faction requirement of 1000 points to acquire. In sector three that raises to 10,000 points.
  
• Conflict towns in sectors two and three have (repeating) missions in them that can often reward you with faction points and ammo. Though these are PvP areas remember.
• “Ambush” missions, where you are directed to a Red X waypoint and NPC’s spawn close to you can be tough in Fallen Earth. A good trick is when the first wave spawns back off the Red X and deal with them away from it. So that you have time to recover should another wave be spawning soon.
  

3/ Instances.

This is a bit of gaming parlance, it refers to a part of the world which players can enter where only they, and perhaps their team mates, will be present. Divorced, temporarily, from the world at large. They are often small, mission focused places where you will be presented with a distinct challenge.

One interesting thing about Instances in FE is that they are seamless, you aren’t faced with a load screen.

You will know when you have entered an instance in FE because a fresh piece of UI information will pop up, with the name of the most important mission (instances can sometimes contain many missions in them) as the title for the instance. Additionally this UI panel as a “Reset Instance” button. Which does exactly what it suggests. You, and your team, will be removed from the instance instantly and it will be reset, all monsters and objectives in it will go back to how you first entered it. Use this with caution!

Some instances in FE are simply to do with little plot/mission story lines and have no actual combat associated with them.

Should you die and have to re-clone, you’ll be directed back to where you were with a Green X waypoint on your map. The instance will still be in the condition you left it in, some NPC’s can respawn, mostly however that is not the case.

If you’re familiar with instancing from other games, you might expect that you’d be repeating these things a lot. That is generally not the case in FE because of the way the game handles loot and gear. You’re often doing instances for one time rewards from the competition of missions associated with them. FE is NOT a game where one must “grind” a dungeon in order to acquire some equipment to then grind a slightly different dungeon in order to acquire some slightly different equipment to gri….

…you get the point. 

4/ Teams/raids and how to make them.

You can invite players to be in a team with you in Fallen Earth (it’s nice to ask someone first if they’d like to team with you if they aren’t expecting it) via a few methods. One is use the / command /tinvite name name (Note the T at the start). Another is to left click on someones name in the chat box and select from that mini menu. Another is just to right click someones avatar when you are close to them and select.

The fourth is if you click MENU and bring up the team UI interface. Though it wont look like that to start with, with no one in it.

1. The players in the team. You’ll note that my character being the team leader is at the top, you can also see my health and gamma (but not stamina) bars and what buffs I have running. Mona, my team mates information is grayed out because they are a long way away from me. If we were to get closer I’d see their info too.
2. If you type a name into this little slot here and then press…
3. …Invite you can invite people to your team.
4. If you right click on your name in the team bar you get this mini menu. If you’re the team leader you have more options, like setting the way loot is handled in the team, and choosing to convert it to a raid. If you right click on someone elses name you can choose to remove them from the team or promote them to team leader.

How to go about finding potential team mates to help you out. The tools for this, currently, are a bit limited in Fallen Earth. But asking help from your /clan mates, or your /faction mates or those on your friends list is a good place to start. If you have none of those things yet, using the /region chat channel can sometimes help you find other players willing to help you, or needing the same team focused mission or instance done as well.

You can also use the Who search feature in the Social UI panel (O key by default) to look for players around your level in your vicinity. You can then try sending them a /tell asking if they also need to do whatever it is you need.

Some things to note about teams and raids in Fallen Earth.

• A team can be up to eight people strong before it must be converted into a raid to invite more, raids maybe up to forty eight people strong. The team/raid leader can move people around the teams that make up the raid by dragging their health bars around.
• You can expand and minimize individual team lists in the raid window by double left clicking on the top of each team panel.
• /team chat covers the entire raid. /raid chat currently is non functional.
• The games in built Voice com’ system (see the Social section) covers team mates.
• Your team mates on the map will be indicated with yellow dots. And by yellow triangles on your radar when they are close. Currently, it’s a known issue that the yellow map dots can “lag” and not update when team mates move. Remaking the team can cure this sometimes.

5/ Town events.

These are small objective based events that focus on fulfilling a number of other, repeating missions in order to trigger a scripted event nearby. The missions can consist of handing in goods, or killing certain amount of specific NPC types, like normal missions. Because it can be quite an effort to trigger the event for one player, can be a good idea to get into a team for it. Also the final trigger event can be team focused as well!

Below is the UI panel for the town event at Embry X-roads in Sector 1. If you’re in an area that has one then the black icon with the two white triangles will appear in the top left of your radar, clicking it will bring up the larger UI panel with the progress of the event.

In addition to possible rewards from the final trigger section, players earn tokens from taking part which can be traded into NPC’s for rewards.

They are found in or near the following mission hub PvE focused towns and balanced around the level appropriate for those areas.

Clinton FARM. Sector 1.
Embry X-roads. Sector 1.
Oilville. Sector 1.
Burnside. Sector 2.
Bankers Hole. Sector 3. (Positive Traveller faction needed).
St. Sebastians. Sector 3. (Positive Lightbearer faction needed).

6/ Locations of team focused PvE content and instances.

I’ll try in this section to give out some of the more common areas where players often group up to complete team focused missions and content. It’ll take me a while to update it fully, so bear with me please!

Sector one.

Junk Fortress, 5-10. This is often the first “dungeon” like place players encounter. It’s situated north nor east of Embry X-roads and a good number of missions picked up around Embry will eventually direct you there, including some AP rewarding ones. Depending on the size of your group it’s best tackled in the level 5-10 range.

Kingman Prison, 10-15. This is situated north east of Kingman town. Many missions from the town, will in time lead you here. Again, some containing AP rewards. Depending on the size of your group it’s best tackled in the level 10-15 range. It has two master class bosses in it, and some lesser ones as well.

Deathspore, 10-15. This isn’t an instance, but it’s in a bunker complex near Needle eye. Won’t spoiler what it is, but a group is often advised for him.

Toro Bend power station. 15-20. Situated north of Trumbul, again this place is not an instance but it does have quite a few team based missions associated with it and the main plot mission line takes you here.

Spider Hill cave/complex. 12-17. Spider Hill in general has some fairly tricky PvE content for some, a team can sometimes be welcome here.

Sector two.

Mother Larissa (spelling). 20-25. Bit of a “cult” thing going on south of Barret Manor with missions concerning it. This contains an instance that it’s advised to team with.

New Flagstaff University, 25-30. This is west of New Lagstaff, south of Last Stop, there is a mission in there that doesn’t award AP from what I can recall. I would advise in addition to a team, a lot of ammo for this one!

7/ The Serendipity monster system.

This was introduced in the er….1.6 patch if I recall. There are a number of rare spawning Veteran class monsters in the world that if killed will always have an item on them that’s a bit unusual and can’t be crafted. The items themselves are usually not significantly more powerful than crafted items of equal level, but they can often be much different visually.

The majority of the NPC monsters themselves are usually associated with a specific location, and if you thin the numbers of the other NPC’s in the area there is a chance that the Serendipity monster will spawn.

There is a list out there on the web of the monsters, their item drops, and their locations. But you’re going to have to go find it for yourself if you want to use it.

The items can be traded and sold. Needless to say, due to their rarity and sometimes effort required to acquire these items, they can fetch very large chip sums on the auction house.

Recently the system was augmented with new NPC’s that spawn in truly random places in the world, these are so rare we haven’t even found them all yet I believe.

8/ Progress towns (PTs).

Introduced in the 1.9 patch these are areas on the map where players can attempt to wrestle control of an area from hostile NPC’s in the area, then build a number of structures and defend them against raider like attacks by more NPC’s.

There is a PT situated in sector two, three and Deadfall. Called respectively, Progress, Stronghold and Citadel. They are marked on the sector wide map.

Whenever there is a server reset the towns themselves also reset to their default state, being occupied by hostile NPC’s. If players can clear out the area it will fall under player control and they can start to build various structures in the area, including defenses to help protect the area. These are crafted under the construction tradeskill and are different for each town with crafting skill numbers relevant to the sector the PT is in.

If sufficient buildings and players are in the area to attract the wrath of the NPC’s they might launch an attack on the area every one to two hours. The next predicted attack time is given by an NPC in the town called the “Town Crier”.

The following types of building can be crafted and placed inside a PT.

• A mission building. Which creates an NPC with a mission to help defend the town, which can be undertaken a maximum of once per day. It can award experience and defense tokens.
• A merchant building. Which along with a general vendor also allows you to turn in the defense tokens.
• A storage building. This creates a mailbox and all the four kinds of vaults in the game.
• An auction building. Er…well makes an auction house.
• Social building. This is acts a bit like a bunker bar, granting or topping off the XP buff that you can normally get inside of one.

In addition there are some defenses that players can craft and place to help them defend the town. Namely.

• Bunkers. These in addition to providing some cover spawn humanoid guard NPC’s.
• The medic bundle. This makes a small health center that will heal nearby bunker guards.
• Landmines. These have a chance to explode and do AoE damage when enemies come near them.
• Hydra Weeds. These will attack nearby hostile NPC’s.

Currently, I am unsure what the pixel-tangible rewards will be for taking part in Progress Towns, what the “Defense tokens” will actually get players. Watch this space.

9/ Some general PvE tips.

Some, hopefully, handy things to keep in mind when starting out in Fallen Earth about PvE play.

• High levels of dodge, armour use and at least one of the three weapon skills form the core of most character builds. It’s advised you max these skill lines out early in your character development.
• Always use as many possible buffs if you can, food and drink is widely available and although minor it can be the difference between life and death.
• Try and keep your icon abilities at the highest ranks you can get. Combat skill books can not be crafted and are generally bought from NPC’s (a few in sector are offered as mission rewards, but not many). Mutation injectors can be crafted and traded between players, or bought from NPC’s.
• Keep the best version of patch on your hotbar. It can be used in conjuncture with Staunch wound, giving you a kick boost of healing when you need it.
• Don’t forget contingency buffs, Buckle down is handy and you’ll find more as you proceed through the game.
• If you’re fighting much lower level critters than you and you want to save some ammo’, using base, non-raised levels of melee with a couple of low level weapons can be surprisingly effective.

The very first thing to say about this hot potato of a topic, and it’s worth making perfectly clear from the off, is that, ALL player versus player content is entirely consensual and NO player versus player content is mandatory in Fallen Earth. Such that should you find yourself in a place where you are taking part in it it’ll be because you put yourself there. It always takes two to tango!

1/ PvP server?

Nope. Not yet. There is mention of specific rules governing them in the Code of Conduct, however we know of no plans to open a server like this in the near future.

2/ Dueling.

Dueling is when two avatars decide to have a personal fight in game. It is a private fight and no one else may intervene. You may challenge another players to a duel (it’s nice to ask them first if they aren’t expecting it) by using the /duel chat command with them targeted or right clicking on the player and selecting from the menu. It’s a great way to get a bit of one on one practice.

Duels have a radius, if one player steps outside of it they forfeit, it’s pretty large. Each player also has a duel rating, which is determined by their win or loss ratio. This information currently can’t be seen except on conclusion of a duel.

A player will not die on completion of a duel, they are just reduced to one hit point. At which point they are able to heal themselves back up and carry on about their business, items will take degradation from dueling however.

However, be careful if dueling around hostile monsters or if you’re flagged. Someone may take the opportunity to attack you after the duel is finished and you’re low(er) on health than normal.

Dueling has no “flag” associated with it, nor any “griefer debuff” (more on this later) as it’s entirely consensual between the two players.

You can elect to automatically refuse duels and select which kind of loosing animation to play on defeat in the options menus.

3/ Friendly fire.

This is an important topic to bring up early in this section because unlike some mmoRPg’s Fallen Earth has full “friendly fire” and anyone who is in a player versus player situation (or “flagged” for for it) is attackable by anyone else who is. The game engine can not determine who attacked whom first but can determine who did the most damage to a target. Such that rewards and penalties for killing targets (yet not for the actual damage incurred in real time) are awarded on this basis.

Friendly fire is in game to add an extra element of danger, caution and skill in Fallen Earth when PvPing, as you must watch your Area of attack weapons and abilities and generally check fire and respect the line of sights of your comrades when teaming.

However of course it means that anyone is the potential enemy of anyone else when flagged, in short it’s “Free for all”. Some folks may choose to respect their clan and faction when PvPing, others might not. We’ll cover this more in the faction section.

4/ Getting or being “flagged” for PvP combat and how to disable them.

A PvP “flag” is an effect on an avatar that marks them as able to engage in PvP with anyone else who also has this flag. This can happen in one of four ways.

1. First is to take part in Bloodsport matches, much more on these later, but suffice to say they are instanced (they take part in arenas away from the main world) matches were all those taking part are flagged so long as they are in them. They have no lasting “flag” once you leave them.
2. You can choose to enable your open world PvP “flag” by simply typing /pvp into the chat box. This will make you open to attack, and be able to attack any other player in the world at large who also has enabled this flag. Although it is currently instant to enable this flag it takes 15 minutes of in game time (not when logged out) to disable the flag when you type /pvp for a second time. This is to stop people unflagging without the chance for retribution. An avatar with this flag enabled will have (PvP) after their name tag above their head and their name will be in red.. This flag extends to a players mount and any pets as well.
   
3. Lastly you can enter an area in the world that is marked as “PvP” on the map. Although you receive no indication on your screen that you are flagged in these areas you will be, as will anyone else you see. On leaving an area you also pick up a debuff that lasts for five minutes of logged in time. During this time you will remain flagged. Again, unlike the /pvp flag, there will be no indication to others that you have this flag (you’ll have an icon though on your buff/debuff tray of the countdown). If anyone’s taken a few pot-shots at you at a vault this will be why, they’re trying to determine if you’re carrying this flag.
4. Being engaged in a clan war. More on this later.
   

5/ Death toll (DT).

Death toll is a points system, they are rewarded for taking part in PvP content. They can be redeemed on specific vendors, found in most major towns, for various equipment including ammo’, weapons and armour. The vendors sell items that are generally in a level range specific to the area you find them in. So areas designed for higher level players will have DT merchants with higher level gear.

You can earn DT from killing other flagged players, (although as of 1.74 you will receive 0 points for killing members of your own faction in “open world PvP”) from participating in Blood Sport matches and by capturing Faction Control points in Sector 2 and 3. DT from kills is shared amongst team mates if you are in one.

Prior to the 1.4 patch you used to loose DT if you died, however now you do not and just accrue it until you spend it. The amount you currently have it displayed on the gear UI panel (G key by default), you may need to maximize the window the arrow on the right side of the panel. Mouse over the bar for an exact number.

6/ Bloodsports.

Bloodsports were introduced with the 1.4 patch. They are instanced (they take part in a separate part of the world) small scale battles between players with none of the usual associated penalties with PvP combat in the “open world”. To take part in Bloodsport matches you must be over level five and must have registered. You can find register NPC’s in large towns, there is one outside the north Embry X-roads vaults for instance.

The register process is very short mission that just involves you using an item. Once this is done you’ll find you can click the Blood Sports icon from the main MENU. This will bring up the Bloodsports panel. You can select from one of the four kinds and queue for that one individually. Selecting the “Random” option does NOT queue for one of the four randomly but rather queues you for ALL four at once. A team leader may elect to queue everyone in the team together (provided no individual is queuing solo).

Matches fall into level brackets, which are 5-9, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49. 50.

The four kinds of matches available currently are.

1. Deathmatch. The clone with the most amount of kills at the end is the winner. This is Free for all, there are no teams.
2. Capture the flag. Clones are split into two teams, blue and red (your armour will get a temporary hue to indicate this) and you must bring the enemies flag back to your own to score points. Combat is still FFA and friendly fire can occur though remember.
3. Survival. The clone with the fewest deaths is considered the winner.
4. Assault. Assault is a team based game that mixes PvE objectives with PvP elements. Each team is required to try and complete a series of tasks with the other team trying to stop them. Then the roles are reserved. For a good break down of exactly what is required of players check out the post by a developer on the subject in this thread. http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…ad.php?t=45348

Some things to note about Blood sports.

• Once registered you can queue from anywhere in the world and you will be returned to the place you entered the match from on it’s conclusion. As you have 30 seconds to accept entry into the match it can be a good idea to get somewhere safe first.
• Your gear will not take a condition hit on death but will have general wear and tear still from use.
• You will not gain or loose faction points in them from killing players.
• Reloading of ranged weapons is free in Bloodsports. With the exception of grenades and the rocket launcher. Such that you should use no ammo’ in them.
• You do not gain experience points from PvP kills in Bloodsports unlike from Open world kills.
• Being /pvp flagged or not makes no difference in Bloodsports.
• It requires 6 people queued for any given type of match before one will begin, 8 however are needed for the Assault game. However they will start even if some of those 6/8 choose not to enter the match. Once one is running there is a period of time still for others to join in before that gets locked out. Even if you don’t want to take part, queuing in them to help them pop for other people can be a nice thing to do.
• On completion of a match everyone taking part will receive bonus Death Toll. The individual(s) or team that did better will get more.
• They are an excellent source of Death Toll in general.
  

7/ Clan Wars.

Introduced in the er….1.5 patch if I recall it allows a clan to declare war on another. It’s an often under used feature in Fallen Earth frankly and can before the open world /pvp flag it was a way for people to get fussin’ and fightin’ in areas on the map that weren’t then used for it.

The UI element below is brought up from the clan section in the O key social panel. Provided you have the clan permissions to utlizie it you can arrange to set up clan fights. It’s important to note that this is still an opt in system. You won’t have to get involved if your clan is at war with another. But to opt in you can tick a box to join the “wargroup” and that will flag you for PvP against any in the other clan(s) that has also done this.

8/ Sector 1 PvP areas.

There are a number of these dotted around Sector 1. They are not related to factional control at all but are simply areas on the map where you’ll be flagged if you enter them. Very few have missions associated with them at all, but on occasion you might find a mission that takes you into one. They contain better than average harvesting nodes and you may see in /region chat that a “Globaltech supply crate” has been deposited into a nearby PvP area, this is harvestable node that contains significantly better loot than normal for the level range. Some of the areas also contain NPC’s monsters, some don’t. Remember you will continue to carry a PvP flag for five minutes after you leave one of these areas.

These areas are often devoid of players and the rewards for entering them can far out weigh the minimal risk of a potential trip to the cloner.

9/ Conflict towns.

Conflict towns begin to appear in sector two and onwards, though not all PvP areas in sector three and onwards are conflict towns. Some remain like sector one areas. They are different than sector one PvP areas in that they are also mission hubs and tied into the factional system.

They are designed (and if, to be brutally honest, fail in my opinion) to be fought over by the factions. While this is strictly true there are some shortcomings with them, or the faction system at large, that cause them to sometimes fail to live upto expectations, we’ll cover those problems later.

When you enter one, like the Sector one PvP areas you will be free for all flagged and not have any indication that you are, you will also carry a flag debuff with you for five minutes after you leave an area too. When you’re in one there should be an icon in the top left of your radar to indicate which faction currently is in charge of the area. Clicking the icon will bring up a panel similar to the one below.

Here we get a bit of information about the towns status and what will need to be done in order for it to change control. This is from the Fenders Gate conflict town in Sector three. As you can see it says it’s a “Timed” one. Some are, some are not. Timed ones are generally easier to swap control of, that is to say they can require less input from players for that to happen. So on the right we have the “Countdown” bar, this indicates when control of the town will change. It can vary from town to town but I believe it’s always in the ball park of 1-2 hours at most.

Sadly that screenshot is not that great to work from. The town is currently held by the Travelers (radar icon) and were nothing to change when the countdown reached 0 it would still be held by them. Were any of the other factions to successfully undertake missions from the faction camps that always ring a conflict town then the UI display bars would alter. The faction with the highest % at the end of countdown period would then take control of the town.

The missions at the factional camps around the center of the town proper have level requirements in order to repeat them, you can do them once if you’re above these levels but then not repeat them. So making some towns designed for some level ranges. More on these later.

The other bars there relate to the status of various elements of the town, the NPC guards (who although will attack hostile factions attempting to enter the middle of the town, will not get involved in disputes between clones who are themselves friendly or allied with the current controlling faction) the merchants and such. It’s rare for players to bother to upgrade these (it’s done by completing repeating missions from the town center when it’s held) on timed towns because you have a greater chance of loosing the town when you can’t be around to defend it….

…however, non timered Conflict towns can be a bit different. They have no Countdown and they swap control only when enough effort has been done by one faction to undo the effort of the current owners. It used to be the case that if one faction built up a massive amount of points in the system than the task of changing control would be daunting, to the point that some stayed in control of one faction for er…half a year+…(Twista!) Now however there is a decay element as well, although the decay is not like the countdown in a timered town it’s there to ensure that they can at least swap control easier.

Many of the non timered Conflict towns also contain Faction Control Points (see their own section below) which will add a constant trickle of % points to the bars if they are held by any given faction. This in addition to turning in the repeatable missions.

So, what’s in it for you to be in a faction that controls a conflict town? It’s a good question….well…hmm. Before the repeatable Rally Missions and the AP spend cap they were a valuable source of AP, and players often changed them as part of a Wheel Flip (see the faction section) to earn even more. They still contain AP missions, some have an AP mission(s) that are doable for each faction that could control the town, and some only have AP missions(s) that are doable no matter who controls it, just the once. There are also other missions available once the town is under friendly or ally control that you can do to earn XP or faction points. Lastly some conflict towns have factional salvage nodes, that require a certain amount of faction points in order to harvest. These nodes often contain quite nice goodies.

So, what’s in it for the faction that controls the conflict town? It’s another good question and er….er…well….most conflict towns also contain vendor(s), which can be upgraded via more mission running and these often sell goods that can only be bought there. Making them attractive to nip into the town and stock up. However…

….because players are permitted to have characters from all the factions on a single account it’s often the case that folks will simply just relog to take advantage of this rather than actually do any real conflicting to get at the vendors. But really, that’s about it, there are no other lasting or larger benefits for a faction as a whole to control a town.

Below are the conflict towns and their intended level ranges, that is to say the levels you must be in order to actually repeat the repeatable missions (you can still do them once at any level higher remember). T=Timered. NT=Non timered. FCP=contains faction control points.

• New Gallows, central sector two. 15-20. T
• Tinkersdamn, east sector two. 15-20. T
• Hollister point, northeast sector two. 20-25. T
• The Dump, northwest sector two. 25-30. T
• Wind Farm, northwest sector two. 25-30. NT FCP
• Waste Farm, northwest sector three. 30-35. T
• Fender Gate, central sector three. 35-40. T
• Haietta , central sector three. 40-45. NT FCP
• Park City, southeast sector three. 45-50. NT FCP

Some things to note about Conflict towns.

• Do NOT expect all your faction mates or those players in “allied” factions to respect these connections when inside one. Conflict town are free for all. Some players, however, might.
• Currently, short of going into one or asking around there is no way to know who controls what.
• Likewise, without going into one and having a good nose about, or asking someone else there is no way to know if someone else is in one, or there is actual conflict going on.
• The repeatable missions from Conflict towns are an excellent source of Ammo, and faction points. They will only really reward large amounts of experience points the first time however.
• Due to the nature of factions at large, it might be unwise to advertise that you’re in a conflict town in a public chat channel (including your /faction channel) unless you’re looking for a fight, when it can be very wise!
• In order to harvest faction nodes inside conflict towns you must complete a mission from one of the faction camps that surround the town. You need only do this once in any town, for all towns.
• Just like in the sector one areas the potential rewards for going into a conflict town can out weigh a bruised ego and a trip to the cloner.
• Many conflict towns are large enough to sport their own cloners inside the actual area, they are surrounded by a PvP safe area where players are not permitted to attack each other. In addition some cloners contain a console that will allow you to sometimes respawn to a different cloner. This can be useful if you feel you’re being camped.

10/ Faction control points. FCPs.

These were introduced in the er..1.7 patch. They are a game tool to essentially help generate and focus PvP, help advertise it’s taking place, and they’ve been pretty successful at that. They are at odds somewhat with the faction wheel as a whole though. Essentially they are small tower structures that contain both a large flag on top of them and a factional NPC guard. Sometime after one is captured factional nodes similar to those found in conflict towns will also appear near the FCP.

As said above, some FCP’s are tied into conflict towns and capturing and holding them will help change control of the town, others are situated outside of conflict towns and in order to capture these you must enable your world PvP flag with the /pvp command before you are permitted to do so. http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?View=entry&EntryID;=696 That tells you where they are, but there are also three new ones in the Terminal Woods area all situated in a large fort like structure.

They are contested by factions, but unlike conflict towns where the guards respect ally factions these have nothing to do with factional alliances. The guards attack any faction not their own, and factional allies gain no benefits from allowing their allies to hold the points.

In order to capture you one you must first dispose of the guard, they are Veteran class critters and usually know a few mutation tricks. But very soloable to someone intent on PvP anyway. The moment the guard takes damage though he shouts out in /region chat. This is the advert! Then get to the flag and interact with it. Then you must hold down the FCP for five minutes, so that’s five minutes of being near it, wander too far from it and you must start over again. That’s how they generate PvP! Of course you can always tickle the guard and then find a position more suitable to surprise someone and if anyone takes the bait!

If your faction should hold some FCP’s then you and your faction mates get a sector wide buff that buffs experience point gain and the offensive weapon skills, the magnitude of the buff is dependent on how many of the sectors FCP’s your faction holds. In addition to this you as an individual or a team get awarded DT and faction points on successfully contesting an FCP, and the chance to loot the nodes when they spawn later on.

One final note is that in addition to the default guard additional guards can be crafted (best not to ask) via the construction tradeskill and positioned nearby to FCPs.

11/ The level equalizer (or “Griefer”) debuff.

The section in the knowledge base is very good on this. http://kb.fallenearth.com/index.php?…ry&EntryID;=499

It should be noted that this only applies in PvP map areas, NOT when flagged for world PvP with the /pvp command.

12/ PvP conduct and some PvP tips.

Now this really would be a case of the blind leading the blind, so I’ve asked for some help here from our communities leading lights when it comes to PvP. But for now these tips will be mine, and therefore quite broad in their scope.

As for the conduct thing….now that’s a topic that’s just too hot to handle really so I’m not going to get into it much. You often see folks, in these types of games, bring up things like “honour” in combat and such. All I think I want to say on this is perhaps consider the old Golden (and Silver) Rule . “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If you want to try and play factionally and respect faction, then wait and see what the other person does and treat them the same going forward. If you like to er…”smack talk”, for instance, then fully expect it back of course.

That said, if you like your PvP in general, if you respect your opponent broadly speaking then there is a greater chance of seeing them again in the future, so more PvP for you.

Would recommend on this topic everyone reads and digests the games code of conduct. http://www.fallenearth.com/codeofconduct

As for some tips well….

• Find a clan that likes to get involved. Not only will they help you prepare in terms of equipment but will be able to help you…
• ….practice, practice, practice. There simply is no substitute. Be careful not to “practice” to the death with those opposite you in faction terms too often and repeatedly or you will be considered exploiting for faction point gains. Duels of course are great for 1v1 practice anyway…..failing that….
• ….Just do it! Get stuck in early, Bloodsports from level 5 and onwards and if like turn on your /pvp flag as you run about leveling.
• PvE like you intend to PvP. That might seem like a strange thing to say but it’s not too bad advice. PvE in FE doesn’t really tend to prepare you too well for PvP, due to the nature of the A.I. of course but also in that it sets you up to play fundamentally quite differently. So, get into the habit of treating every critter like a PvP fight, don’t just stand around and wail on it, move about, get into the habit being accurate on the move, pull more than you can handle and get into the habit of using cover and healing, etc. In short, don’t get comfortable, PvP sure isn’t.
• Key-binds/UI set up. A good set of key-binds are imperative. The keys around the WASD are prime to be bound to your most used abilities. Get your icon hotbar and your keys and UI/controls full stop just the way you want them, then try not to change them much. This is all about finger memory, reflex. Knowing which icons to bind and which to not will become apparent over time. But obviously strong attacks and defensive abilities are top of the list, as is….
• ….your target self bind. In PvP, targetable heals (which are most of them) will require you to self target first before you use them, or you’ll end up healing your enemy. Which is a bit when you do it for the first time. In PvE heals are reflected back to you automatically if the critter is a target, so again, get out of that habit and always into the target self first habit when you go to heal.
• The Athletics skill has a unique PvP feature in that it can help hide your characters blip/dot/triangle on the radar of other players. The calculation is based on a check between the Athletics skill of one player to the PERception stat of the other. I don’t know the exact numbers involved ‘fraid.
• Consumables. Food/Drink/Camp buffs. Often not used in solo PvE, however most PvPers will use this. Which might well require you to take advantage of them as well.
  

12/ I think I’ve seen someone cheating/hacking/exploiting, what now?

Although this is going to sound horridly patronizing it needs to be said, if you’re not feeling very calm when you think you’ve seen someone doing something naughty, do first of all calm down before you do anything else.

Some game bugs can be confused as a hack. A classic example from FE is the vanishing mount bug. Basically sometimes a players mount will not appear to the other player and you’ll see them running at Interceptor speeds, Zing! Speed hack! Except it’s not. Other times there are perfectly legitimate ways to improve ones characters that can fall into the same trap when viewed by others, speed stacking =/= speed hacking.

Ask around (probably not to the person you think you saw doing something), in a non inflammatory way about what you’ve just seen, in case it is a bug/feature. Now I know exploits are a gray area, taking advantage of a bug can be viewed as dodgy. But it’s up to the people who set the rules to determine what’s an exploit and what’s not at the end of the day.

If you’re content that what you’ve seen really is a problem then at this point I’ll leave it upto our lead scripter (and porn writer, it’s not like AFFA is ever going to read this!) to explain what’s what.

We don’t want cheaters in our game. But we must be certain a player is cheating before we do a permanent account ban.

And our lead developer to say what happens once you do make a report.

We take every accusation very seriously and investigate them thoroughly. Gathering proof that a player has been breaking the rules is a time consuming, but necessary process and once it’s complete, if infractions are found, we take all necessary measures to ensure that the offending player receives the appropriate consequences, depending on the severity of the incident. We do not discuss these consequences with anyone other than the offending player. We will continue to do this to protect all parties involved and ensure Fallen Earth remains a fun, fair gameplay environment.

1/ Some waffle.

This is just a placeholder of a post really. With the forthcoming revamp to combat it feels a bit “Meh” to write a large amount of stuff on this topic currently. When the changes are on live I’ll revisit this part and do it justice. THAT SAID, CHECK OUT THE LINKS!

There are, not to put too finer point on it, a LOT of skills and mutations that go to make up icon abilities you can hotbar and use on friends or foes in Fallen Earth and right now at this point I wish I could just link you to the fantastic TAOwiki website that had an awesome set of tables showing exactly what each and every icon ability at each and every rank could do….
…sadly that website is no more. But!….

http://fesaints.servegame.com/fe/wiki/fe-skills.html

…..the Saints clan saved it and redid it for us. Thank you to Dai’ and the TAO folks for all the work they did on it, and the Saints for saving the data and re-hosting it for us.

Also, don’t forget the character planner that is currently still upto date for our version of FE. This too will be out of date in the 1.9/2.0 revamp patch, but for now it’s a great tool to get to know.

Set your maximum level to 50, bonus AP points to 270 for a total of 1250 and play around. The maximal amounts in stats are 90, or 30 points added, and for skills/mutations its 180 or 90 points added.

http://globaltechplanner.info/

Again, thanks to the folks who have designed and hosted it over the years.

Whenever large scale changes are made to the combat systems in game such that they affect character builds each and every character will receive a full and chip free AP respec item to use. To date the items have been mailed to all characters and have to be picked up from the mail box within 60 days of the mail out. The item can then be banked/stored until required.

XVII: Building a character. (Temporary)

As above prior to the forthcoming combat revamp that will shake things up a lot on this topic I’m just making a bit of a placeholder post and starting off information that will be good before and after. Very much a work in progress again this post.

1/ Skill system, not class system.

As I said up in the character creation section this is really a key feature of Fallen Earth. We, unlike other games of the genre, do not pick a class at character creation. We operate in a much more free-form system where we mold a character to suit ourselves and potentially be different to anyone elses frankly. Now that freedom can be a bit daunting/overwhelming because you start off not totally sure what is “good” or what might suit you as a player.

Going to try, and it’s quite a complex thing to unravel, in this section to help guide you through the minefield.

2/ Do it yourself!

I’m very much of the opinion everyone should have a stab at building their own character, rather than just copying (exactly) someone elses suggestion. Because I feel it’s a big part of the game, and you’ll get a nice kick out of doing it for yourself. Not least because sometimes you might want your character build to reflect the character that is your avatar. For instance if you want a mad scientist Tech doctor type then the First aid skill might be very “them”.

3/ Can I get it “wrong”?

That might look like a stupid question to even field but in a way, but the answer is almost “No!”. It’s actually quite difficult to get it so wrong that you can’t even play the game. I once made a character (Intend to do it again one day) who spent all their AP randomly using a random number generator. They got themselves to level 19 without too many troubles frankly.

That said of course building a character to be good at certain elements of gameplay is another matter. The game can be very much Min-Maxers (that is trying to get every last advantage they can from the system) paradise.

Before the er..er…1.4 patch you have to remember that Fallen Earth had NO way to reassign AP at all. We all had to plan our character quite religiously and if we made “mistakes” we had to live with it!

We’ll cover respec’ing (that is reassigning your AP) your character later on.

4/ Where do I start?

For me there are a few big questions you need to ask yourself when planning a character. Once you’ve decided these you can start to get at it.

• Do you want them to be a “full on” crafter? Due to the nature of the game everyone can craft some stuff. However unless you invest AP into the Intelligence and Perception stats you will not be able to craft maximally. That is to say the best stuff. For me, crafting is very much an all or nothing type of affair. Either commit to making a character to do it all, or build them for another reason. Although having just some amounts in INT/PER can be good if you’re chasing down certain ranks of certain combat abilities just putting some in to be a “middle of the road” crafter doesn’t make much sense, to me.
• How much interest in Player versus Player content do you have? This is another “big” question to ask as PvP builds are often very focused and designed certain ways. Some players like to split a crafter character and PvP character apart. Others take their crafters PvPing as well.
• Which weapon type do you want to focus on? People often say that the weapon lines in FE act like de-facto classes, I wouldn’t go that far myself but it’s certainly an important aspect of a character build and although you don’t have to take just one (in the revamp you’ll be more rewarded for taking more than one line) currently the general advice is to just focus on the one. Mostly because you can only have one weapon (set) in your hands at a time anyway.
• Do you like a certain play-style? This is quite an interesting topic in FE character planning because unlike many other games we don’t really have the “unholy trinity” of archetypes in Fallen Earth. Tank/Healer/Damage. It’s all much more blurred than that, folks often design characters to be all of them, at once, that said you can certainly choose to focus your builds for more support type play or damage type play, soaking damage is something you build for but it’s tough to focus on it in a way to the exclusion of the others.

I’m making this post on the fairly safe assumption that the forthcoming release of Alpha County on the 6th of July will also contain the second part (Patch 1.7 contained the first, and we believe there will be a final stage that looks at equipment still to come) of the combat revamp.

Also making the post because as far we know the Public Test server will not be up ahead of the patch. As such the combat revamp could be something of a total surprise to some people, or only something they’ve heard about and aren’t sure exactly what will be going on. So, just aiming to pop down some information about it all, good chance I will forget some stuff so I’ll be asking for help from the rest of the gang and editing up more information over coming days.

Finally, the information is what I and others will have witnessed on the PTS last time around, that might well have been subject to further change none of us currently know about.

Finally, finally. In order to see some of the links in this thread you might as ever have to link a forum account to a game account (trial one should do). You can find details on how to do that here.
http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…ad.php?t=30803

If you’d like to know why we’re getting such a large make over to combat then I’ll let our lead developer field that one.

Or more recently from the Blog.

The other complaint revealed a lot more about what we had implemented – too many redundant buttons. It wasn’t simply that players had a full hot bar. They had the full hot bar but only relied on 6 buttons. This isn’t as much of an issue as players gain familiarity with the system, but for new players it was overwhelming and prevented them from connecting with their character and the world. FE has a bit of a learning curve, we didn’t need to make it harder.

How:
In the new system, skill and mutation lines are each designed around filling a purpose. Each one has a different niche to fill, and we tried to include everything we feel needs to be there. To facilitate making more specialized build types (offensive, defensive, support) we assigned base statistics to those roles. For example, Endurance is defensive, and won’t have a role in offensive skills – it will only increase maximums of defensive or mixed lines. A character with Endurance is either a defensive or a hybrid build.
It is possible to still build “jack of all trade” characters, it’s also possible to have other unique builds as well.

Now it’s important to say that the revamp will be different but much of what makes combat in FE combat in FE will stay the same. We’re still not “tab targeting”, accuracy will still be rewarded, we’ll still have elements like mitigation, healing and icon abilities. However we are loosing many icon abilities and it might be a shock how empty your hot-bar(s) will be after these changes.

Let’s start with the headlines.

• All characters on your account created before the patch will receive two full respec’ injector. The last two times we have had these they have been sent out in the in-game mail system for us to claim and if we like store for future use or use there and then. They will be no-trade items.
• The way AP works is getting changed. We will have 30 AP from leveling per level instead of 20 (this will be applied retroactively of course) and the spend cap has been increase to 35 per level for a total spend cap at level 50 of 1785. Remember also that the level cap will be increasing to 55 as part of Alpha County. Level one characters will start with 30 and have a spend cap of 70 for that level.
• The frequency of Random AP might (think it is, not sure if there are more increases to come or not ) be set to increase.
• The way stats affect skill and mutation lines is being radically altered. Putting points into stats, or when stats raise naturally from leveling no longer affects the base amounts in skill/mut lines but instead only raises the upper caps. This will mean that we have no “free” low rank abilities anymore. We must spend AP in order to acquire any rank of any ability now.
• The advanced mutation lines will be available to all characters from level 1.
• Characters under level 10 will be given access to a lot of temporary abilities designed to help them and give them a feel for the way many of the skill/mutation lines work. These will vanish at level 10. By which time players should have earned enough AP to acquire some real abilities.
• The overall amount of icon abilities in the game is getting reduced, want to say at least halved. Many skill/mutations lines now have between two and at most about four abilities.
• Many of the derivations for which skills/mutations are based on which stats are changing. For instance Group Tactics will be changing from CHA/PER to er..INT/COO.
• Weapon lines are being made to scale in a similar way to the way armour use scales. We will be able to equip most weapons (not heavies, see below) simply according to character level and then the amount of points we put into the lines will affect their performance/damage.
• Some skill and mutation lines have been renamed, split, or new ones simply added. Some feature all new abilities inside of them.
• There is a new weapon line called “Heavy weapons” that will only be available to players over level 40, and unlike the above, it must have AP spent in it in order to equip the weapons. We don’t know what weapons will feature in this line yet.
• Some mutation lines now feature “aimed” mutation abilities which require you to get the X-hair on target.
• Ranges on some icon abilities have been increased dramatically from the usual 10-20m.
• Some icon abilities have “dual uses”, that is to say they can have additional FX when the target is an NPC but not when they are a player. Like stuns.
• Stuns and knockdowns have been removed from PvP.
• Many abilities that could be “stacked” to improve run speed have been removed.
• Prepared weapon attacks, from any of the weapon skill lines, are being made to be able to be used with any weapon type equipped. To encourage people to look at building characters with more than one weapon line.

So let’s see if I can answer a few questions that might well be popping up because of all of this.

1. Will I have to respec? My guess would be probably, yes, because of the AP changes if nothing else. Although if it’s a low level character and you feel you want to respec’ it might be a good idea to do it with chips and save both your full respecs for later on, because at higher levels it gets VERY expensive to respec using chips.
2. How should I respec? Well that’s a six million dollar question right there. Sadly without the aid of the PTS to test builds, and because I’m no build expert it’s very tough to give advice here. Hopefully some of the rest of the gang will help.
3. Is combat going to feel different? Yes, I think so. Perhaps a little less interactive, with more focus on first person shooting stuff and less on icon abilities. PvP might be a good deal faster and more furious.
4. Can I still make a build that does “everything”? I think so, it’s going to be easier to make a build that focuses on raw damage I suspect, but you can still make one that balances offense and defense if you like.
5. Can we get more for our new AP spend cap or not? Interesting question, without the “free” low rank abilities it felt on the PTS last time out that you get a bit less bang for your buck if anything. Old builds will be out the window and all new ones will be “in” naturally.
6. Do we have a new character planner? Yes. It’s based on the information we last had from the PTS remember. But it’s still WAY better than nothing. So thanks to Mallas for the work. http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…049#post665049 We now have another one courtesy of Hollywood Undead as well, thanks! http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…ad.php?t=81304
7. Do we have a list of all the new abilities and skill/mutation lines? These numbers taken from the dev’ blog. It only gives the AP amounts needed for ranks, not their functionality.
   Quote:

   Originally Posted by Blog Following this is a complete breakdown of every skill line, its abilities and when each rank becomes available. The Skills:

Armor Use provides a passive bonus to damage resistances, as well as:
• Dreadnaught – This is a stance ability that increases Primary armor and decreases speed.
Ranks at: 54, 69, 84, 99, 114, 129, 144, 159, 174, and 189 Armor Use.
• Soak Elements – This is a stance ability that increases Secondary/Tertiary armor and decreases Primary armor. Ranks at: 75, 90, 105, 120, 135, 150, 165, 180, and 195 Armor Use.

Dirty Tricks is a skill line for debuffing opponents. It offers:
• Dirty Steel – This is a prepared attack that reduces the target’s armor and does damage over time. It will also stun NPCs. Ranks at: Training, 33, 63, 93, 123, 153, and 183 Dirty Tricks.
• Kneecap – This is a prepared attack that reduces the target’s speed. Ranks at: 34, 75, 105, 135, 165, and 195 Dirty Tricks.
• Sabotage – This prepared attack reduces the target’s armor. Ranks at: 70, 90, 130, 160, and 190 Dirty Tricks.

Dodge gives a passive bonus, opposing the extra damage provided by the Precision, Power and Weapon skill lines. It also offers:
• Duck And Weave – This stance ability converts a portion of damage taken into stamina damage. Ranks at: 57, 87, 117, 147, and 177 Dodge.

Escape Artist is a defensive skill line that affects your stealthiness on the radar map. It contains:
• Dash – A short speed increase. Ranks at: Training, 57, and 132 Escape Artist.
• Shake It Off – This ability removes negative status effects and snares. Ranks at: 12, 72, 102, 132, 162, and 192 Escape Artist.
• Lucky Break – This raises your save values for a short duration. Ranks at: 69, 99, 129, 159, and 189 Escape Artist.
• Misdirection – This increases your primary, secondary, and tertiary armor values for a short duration. Ranks at: 81, 111, 141, and 171 Escape Artist.

First Aid is a support set, with:
• Resuscitation – Resurrects your target. Ranks at: 39, 99, and 159 First Aid.
• Stanch Wound – This heals your target and increases their health regeneration for an hour. Ranks at: 1, 36, 66, 96, 126, 156, and 186 First Aid.
• Suck It Up – This ability will counter weak status effects and has a short cool-down. Multiple applications will remove stronger status effects. Ranks at: 12, 72, 102, 132, 162, and 192 First Aid.
• Renew – This ability will remove strong status effects and snares. Ranks at: 84, 114, 144, and 174 First Aid.

Group Tactics is also a support set, focused on auras:
• Give ’em Hell – This aura increases your team’s Power. Ranks at: 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 Group Tactics.
• Offensive Coordination – This aura increases your team’s critical chance and stamina regeneration, but reduces their ranged and melee defense. Ranks at: Training, 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 Group Tactics.
• Combat Endurance – This aura increases your team’s maximum stamina and gamma, as well as their stamina and gamma regeneration. Ranks at: 42, 72, 102, 132, 162, and 192 Group Tactics.
• Overwhelm – This lowers the target’s armor, ranged defense and melee defense. Ranks at: 69, 99, 129, 159, and 189 Group Tactics.

Heavy Weapons offers the player the ability to use grenade and rocket launchers, as well as:
• Soften ‘Em Up – This reduces the fire and piercing resistance of those in a small radius around your target. Ranks at: 150 and 180 Heavy Weapons.
• Caltrops – This ability slows those in a small radius around your target. Ranks at: 195 Heavy Weapons.

Melee, together with Precision and Power, determines your bonus critical chance and damage percentage when using Melee weapons and also offers:
• Charge – A short duration ability that gives a bonus to movement, speed and damage. Ranks at: 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 Melee.
• Provoke – This ability will increase your threat and reduce your opponent’s ranged/melee defense. Ranks at: 45, 60, 75, 90, 105, 120, 135, 150, 165, 180, and 195 Melee.

Pistol, together with Precision and Power, determines your bonus critical chance and damage percentage when using Pistol weapons and in addition contains:
• Incendiary Strike – This prepared attack adds a fire DoT onto your regular attack damage. Ranks at: 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 Pistol.
• Concentration – This toggled ability increases your Precision and Weapon skills, but decreases your melee and ranged defense. Ranks at: 60, 105, 150, and 195 Pistol.
Power, together with the appropriate weapon skill, determines your bonus damage percentage and has:
• Attack Posture – This stance increases your damage. Ranks at: 63, 93, 123, 153, and 183 Power.
• Dent Armor – This prepared attack temporarily reduces your target’s armor. It will also stun NPCs. Ranks at: 51, 81, 111, 141, and 171 Power.
Precision, together with the appropriate weapon skill, determines your chance for a critical hit and provides:
• Precise Hit – This is a prepared attack that does additional damage. It also reduces the speed of NPC targets. Ranks at: 51, 81, 111, 141, and 171 Precision.
• Perfect Timing – This is a short duration buff that increases your chance of a critical hit. Ranks at: 63, 93, 123, 153, and 183 Precision.

Rifle, together with Precision and Power, determines your bonus critical chance and damage percentage when using Rifle weapons, plus:
• Agonizing Wound – This prepared attack slows your target. Ranks at: 54, 84, 114, 144, and 174 Rifle.
• Bullseye – This prepared attack does additional damage. Ranks at: 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 Rifle.

Social, in addition to its financial benefits, is a personal aggression control set and has:
• Flag Of Truce – This stance prevents faction NPCs from seeing you as an enemy. NPCs who have already begun to attack you will not be fooled. Only one rank, at 165 Social.
• Inconspicuous – This ability greatly lowers your threat from a targeted enemy. Ranks at: Training, 45, 75, 105, 135, 165, and 195 Social.
• Diplomatic Immunity – While this short-duration ability is active, you are unable to take other actions, but you have increased armor, melee defense and ranged defense. Ranks at: 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 Social.

Alpha Mutations are intended for the early game, when players do not yet have a full skill bar. They will only increase up to rank 4. The available alpha mutations are:
• Disrupt – This targeted ability reduces your target’s melee defense, ranged defense and save ratings for a short time. Ranks at: 9, 30, 51, and 72 Alpha.
• Patch – This is a healing ability that also cures status ailments. Ranks at: 9, 30, 51, and 72 Alpha.
• Gird – This toggled ability raises your maximum health. Ranks at: 9, 30, 51, and 72 Alpha.
• Bolster – This toggled ability raises your maximum stamina and your damage. Ranks at: 9, 30, 51, and 72 Alpha.

Empathy is a support set with:
• Share Life – This combat resurrect ability brings a friend back to life faster than other such abilities, but it does so by lowering your own health. Ranks at: 48, 66, 84, 102, 120, 138, 156, 174, and 192 Empathy.
• Benevolence – This is a direct healing ability which will restore health to you or a target, but the amount restored is greater when used on someone else. Ranks at: Training, 45, 63, 81, 99, 117, 135, 153, 171, and 189 Empathy.
• Restoration – This is a single target, short duration heal over time. Ranks at: 75, 93, 111, 129, 147, 165, and 183 Empathy.
• Preservation – This ability removes status effects from the target. Strong status ailments will require more than one application. Ranks at: 54, 72, 90, 108, 126, 144, 162, and 180 Empathy.

Enhancement is a support line with additional personal defense:
• Calibration – This aura increases your team’s primary armor. Ranks at: Training, 48, 66, 84, 102, 120, 138, 156, 174, and 192 Enhancement.
• Ablate – This stance raises your armor. Ranks at: 72, 90, 108, 126, 144, 162, and 180 Enhancement.
• Resilience – This aura raises your team’s saves. Ranks at: 60, 78, 96, 114, 132, 150, 168, and 186 Enhancement.

Illumination is a support line providing additional resources and regeneration:
• Endless Reserves – This toggle raises your maximum gamma and stamina, but lowers your maximum health. Ranks at: 60, 78, 96, 114, 132, 150, 168, and 186 Illumination.
• Meditation – This aura raises your team’s stamina and gamma regeneration. Ranks at: Training, 51, 69, 87, 105, 123, 141, 159, 177, and 195 Illumination.

Nano-Manipulation is an teammate-focused support set:
• Reconstruction – This resurrects teammates in a cone-shaped area. Ranks at: 48, 66, 84, 102, 120, 138, 156, 174, and 192 Nano-Manipulation.
• Filtration – This ability requires you to aim at your target, but if you hit, it is a very strong status removal that also restores health. Ranks at: 57, 75, 93, 111, 129, 147, 164, and 183 Nano-Manipulation.
• Vital Osmosis – This is a team-only heal in a cone-shaped area. Ranks at: Training, 45, 63, 81, 99, 117, 135, 153, 171, and 189 Nano-Manipulation.
• Revitalize – This ability raises the health regeneration of all allies close to the caster. Ranks at: 72, 90, 108, 126, 144, 162, and 180 Nano-Manipulation.

Patho-Transmission is a support set that debuffs your opponents:
• Sapping Sickness – This is a small targeted area of effect ability that reduces the speed of those hit by it. Ranks at: 72, 90, 108, 126, 144, 162, and 180 Patho-Transmission.
• Wracking Pains – This ability lowers your target’s regeneration. Ranks at: Training, 48, 66, 84, 102, 120, 138, 156, 174, and 192 Patho-Transmission.
• Debilitating Weakness – This causes those around you to suffer lowered Power and weapon skills, reducing their damage. Ranks at: 60, 78, 96, 114, 132, 150, 168, and 186 Patho-Transmission.

Primal is a very physical mutation with:
• Primal Vigor – This toggled ability lowers your maximum gamma to raise your maximum health. Ranks at: Training, 48, 66, 84, 102, 120, 138, 156, 174, and 192 Primal.
• Beast Might – This prepared attack costs health, but deals extra damage and has a short cool-down. Ranks at: 72, 90, 108, 126, 144, 162, and 180 Primal.
• Rampage – This ability raises your damage and health for a few seconds and then leaves you weakened. Ranks at: 60, 78, 96, 114, 132, 150, 168, and 186 Primal.

Sonic Influence is a damage-focused set with:
• Sonic Lance – This ability must be aimed at your target, but if you hit, it will cause sonic damage. Ranks at: Training, 48, 66, 84, 102, 120, 138, 156, 174, and 192 Sonic Influence.
• Rending Vibrations – This ability sends out sonic waves that cause damage over time in a cone-shaped area. Ranks at: 72, 90, 108, 126, 144, 162, and 180 Sonic Influence.
• Catastrophic Dissonance – This ability does damage to those nearby. Ranks at: 60, 78, 96, 114, 132, 150, 168, and 186 Sonic Influence.

Suppression is a redistribution support set containing:
• Denial – This lowers your target’s maximum stamina and gamma. Ranks at: Training, 48, 66, 84, 102, 120, 138, 156, 174, and 192 Suppression.
• Sap Stamina – This steals some of your target’s stamina and adds to your team’s. Ranks at: 72, 90, 108, 126, 144, 162, and 180 Sap Stamina.
• Siphon Energy – This steals some of your target’s gamma and adds to your team’s. Ranks at: 60, 78, 96, 114, 132, 150, 168, and 186 Suppression.

Telekinesis is focused around aimed mutation attacks, with:
• Bend Metal – If you hit with this attack it will reduce your target’s armor. Ranks at: 72, 90, 108, 126, 144, 162, and 180 Telekinesis.
• Propel – This has a long cool-down, but does high damage if it hits. Ranks at: 60, 78, 96, 114, 132, 150, 168, and 186 Telekinesis.
• Always Armed – This is a shorter cool-down attack that does lower damage when it hits. Ranks at: Training, 48, 66, 84, 102, 120, 138, 156, 174, and 192 Telekinesis.

Thermal Control is a damage skill set:
• Cold Snap – This will damage your target with cold. Ranks at: Training, 45, 63, 81, 99, 117, 135, 153, 171, and 189 Thermal Control.
• Hypothermia – This will cause your target to take cold damage every second for a duration. Ranks at: 48, 66, 84, 102, 120, 138, 156, 174, and 192 Thermal Control.
• Napalm – This will cause your target to take fire damage over time for a short duration. Ranks at: 57, 75, 93, 111, 129, 147, 165, and 183 Thermal Control.
• Molotov Cocktail – This will cause fire damage to your target, but has a long cool-down and requires standing still while activating. Ranks at: 72, 90, 108, 126, 144, 162, and 180 Thermal Control.

• What about all the skills/mutations I trained and the chips I spent on them, do we get them back? I don’t know yet. It’s possible.
• What about achievements that are based on using a skill a certain amount of times? What’s happening to them?
  Quote:

  Originally Posted by Aro Sei Players who have earned achievements based on skills will keep all achievements earned. There will be new ones based on the new skills. M

• What about crafting patterns that use skill books in recipes? I assume those are getting reworking to need different things.
• Should I be doing anything to prepare for the combat revamp? Er…not really, I would suggest you ask about potential good builds from friends or clan-mates that might have been testing them on the PTS. If you see anyone who isn’t sure what’s going on, please do direct them to this post. I would also suggest that you do NOT respec’ in haste when the time comes. Take your time, ask around, consider your options. Oh and I would consider making sure the number of characters on your account are maxed out. To take advantage of getting the respecs.
  
• I’ve never respeced before at all, what’ll happen? Well you’ll be given a UI menu to work through. If you’re respecing a crafting character and wish to respec and safely retain your crafting knowledges, can re-post something AFFA our lead scripter wrote on the topic.
  Quote:

  Originally Posted by AFFA You shouldn’t lose any tradeskill points if you do the respec correctly.

1) Press Respec.
2) This takes you to a Preview of your new build.
3) Spend points in Int and Per now. Make your final build now. If any Tradeskills are above the limit given by your current Stats, they will show up in red. Make sure you have enough points in Int and Per to support your current Tradeskills.
3) When you are satisfied with your build, press Preview.
4) You will get a window showing what you’ve spent and then another window with all the Knowledges you will no longer qualify for. If any of these are knowledges you want to keep, DO NOT TYPE “ACCEPT” AND PRESS YES. Press No and double-check how many points you have put in Int and Per to make sure you don’t lose any Tradeskill points. Make sure none of your Tradeskills show up in red.
5) When the preview warning no longer shows any crafting knowledges, type “accept” and press Yes. You should retain all your Tradeskill points through the respec.

You shouldn’t lose Knowledges (recipes, abilities, etc) at all. They are just unavailable until you qualify for them again.

XIX: The public test server.

Currently, as of June 2011 the PTS is not available since the move of the servers to Gamersfirst.

1/ What is the public test server (PTS)?

The public test server was (re)introduced around the 1.4 patch if I recall. It’s a place where us players, and the developers (though they also have an internal test server of their own naturally) can get together to test out game content that will appearing on the live server for us to enjoy soon.

I can’t stress enough how important this process is, for us players and for the developers. I strongly urge all players to get involved, leave feedback and give them your opinions.

If you’re wondering why you should bother then I know for a fact that the developers in FE not only read the forums but do listen to the playerbase, and do implement/try suggestions from the players out.

We’ve recently had a day when a large amount of the developers joined us together on the server and were happy to test content alongside us, answer questions and generally gauge opinion, pixel face to pixel face. I can’t think of another game off the top of my head where I’ve ever heard/seen that happen.

2/ Where/how to get on it.

The official FAQ on this is very good. Found here. http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…ad.php?t=35658 (You’ll need to link forum to game account again to see that, details, as ever in the community section above).

The good news is you don’t have to re-download the entire client again to get involved on the PTS. First you just need to download a small application (4.1mb) then run it, it will copy over your entire FE folder into a new one, which will then be patched up with the latest PTS version when you first run the PTS exe. The process won’t take long, but you will need to have another 6gb of room free on your hard disc is all. You can find the link to the download in the FAQ link above.

You can find details of how to get on the PTS if you’re a Macintosh user found here. http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…ad.php?t=45501

3/ Tools to help you test.

First thing to say on this subject is that your characters, and their possessions from the live server will probably be on the PTS to greet you, however they might be older versions than you’re used to, or not there at all yet if you’re very new to the game. The developers take a “footprint” copy of the database from time to time and transfer it over to the PTS. This is usually redone just before there is a new, fresh, major patch waiting to be tested on it.

You’ll note in the FAQ above that there is reference to these tools, and there are quite a few of these on the PTS. If you open your abilities panel, with the N key, and look at the General Mutations section you’ll find “Bus stop” icons, one for each of the game’s sectors. If you pop these on your icon bars and use them you can teleport to a number of locations in the game. If you get on/in your mount before you use the bus stop you can take it with you as well.

Under the General Tab of your skills tab you’ll also find an option for fast crafting. That will make any recipe started after you toggle it just take five seconds to craft.

Additionally when they want us to test out new equipment or items in general these are often found on NPCs. There are also NPC’s that will give away chips in large numbers and full AP reset items, making the PTS an ideal place to test out new skill/mutation builds for your characters back on live.

4/ Ok, I did some testing. Where do I report?

Using /bug is a good place to start if you’ve found something that seems to be er…well bugged. You can also leave feedback and general opinions on the PTS forum sections, in the relevant one to the particular piece of new content. Again, these forums are on the semi-private forum sections and to see them you’ll need to link forum to game account, details in the community section.

5/ The Decon’ team.

The Decontamination team are, like the Hazmat team, player volunteers who in this instance busy themselves with testing, looking for bugs and reporting them. To help them along they additional tools to help report.

Details on how to join them, and their responsibilities can be found here. http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen…ad.php?t=36614