Darkfall Beginner’s Tips

Darkfall Beginner’s Tips by KinkyGoblin

I have consolidated the previous consolidated list and also checked the sources for latest contributions (though by no means have I copied them all). Please continue to add to the tips as needs be. Thank you to EVERYONE that has made constructive contributions.

Key Binding/ui/commands

/help (brings up all commands; if you start typing a command and hit TAB you will cycle through them)
/annotation_add (mark map with current location)
/annotation_remove (removes mark)
/annotation_list
/bindstone_recall (takes you back to bindstone)
/msg name name or /tell name name (private message using first and last name)
/gui_persist_save (in case of crash it saves your settings, logout after to save)
/gm_help message (report a game issue)
/partycreate (puts you as “leader” of party)
/invite name name (invites player by first last name)
/partyleave (for when your party wants to attack you for fun in city make them go gray hehe)
/waypoint “name” to make a waypoint to a location – your party members can see it too! great feature!
-F (Main use to loot, get on mount, talk when sheathed.)
-G (opens trade/party invite when player is close; Also opens clan bank if you are in one; Also puts away mounts)
-NUMLOCK (auto-run)
-Z (revive when sheathed and aiming at target left click)
-X (gank when weapon out and aiming at target hold down button until bar full then release) TIP – (thanks AmonDominus) rebind these to avoid confusing and killing friends.
-V (parry)
-C (crouch; left-alt+C toggle crouch (space to stand up);dive when in water)
-T (toggle between horizontal and vertical melee attacks)
-R (sheath and unsheath weapon for combat/looting)
-Left-Shift (Run)

Emotes List
(thanks HawksBrigade for sending me a tested list).

/warcry (no sound yet, only animation)
/war_cry_02 (Not in yet)
/drink
/laugh
/salute
/greetings
/wave
/shrug
/yawn
/mock
/thumb_up
/thumb_down
/no_no
/taunt_01
/taunt_02
/taunt_03
/taunt_04
/taunt_05
/show_off
/point_back
/point_front
/point_left
/point_right
/thinking
/air_guitar (don’t spam this one, people will risk allignment if you do )
/sneeze
/doh

Starter Advice (thanks Drazmic).

First thing to do is read the intro tips. Most people do not even pay attention but it does give a bit of info. After you read it go ahead and right click to look at how the UI is set up. When you get into the UI open up your skills window and expand general skills. Scroll down until you see Rest and drag it into your hotbar (I use 0 but that’s up to you). This is how you sit and regenerate faster than standing still.
After you look over the UI and figure out where some things are, (Journal for friends/kills/quests listings), your bag should be open. If not click Backpack in your UI options. Drag your starter weapon (Leafblade for everyone) into your hotbar so it is easier to put it on after you die and/or switch from weapon to weapon. You cannot pick up a new starter weapon until you have 20g or 100g to buy a second starter weapon. In order to use magic you must buy a staff and when you equip it, you need to load the spell then you can cast.
When you are ready to move out, There should be an NPC near you which hitting F when near and unsheathed, brings up their menu and pick up quests. This shows you where your first mobs are. At this time you cannot zoom in the world map, but if you go to your UI and click mini-map, you can zoom that from 60%-300%. Do not be afraid to walk around town to the dots on your mini-map to get used to where the NPCs are and what they sell/teach.
That should set everyone up for the first bit of playing, after that just explore and talk in race/race alliance chat.

General Advice.

Starter quests will give you basic harvesting equipemnt (pick axe and axe) get these first rather than buy them.
Starter quests:You don’t have to go to the closest goblin village! I took the starter quest in Flayed Elf and went for a run to Metal Heart and the Iron Orks city [about a 20 min run]and along the way markers for goblin villages sprang up quite often on the mini map.

Have no fear, you are naked with a undropable weapon – nothing to loose and plenty to gain.

Drag your weapons onto your hotbar to enable quick changing rather than go through the paper doll.

If you have been killed by an npc hit spacebar For the “self-gank”. you cant do it immediately, have to wait 15sec maybe more, but its still shorter than waiting the entire incap time.

Resting in this game is a huge time saver. However, the rest skill is not initially bound to a hotkey. To begin resting, grab the rest skill from your “skills” menu and drag it to your hotbar. Sheath your weapon, ready the rest skill, and click LMB.

Change your swing style, from a broad left and right swing, to a narrow vertical swing. by pressing the T key (default). to fight in close quarters with friends, or with blues around trying to grey you

Disable mouse smoothing. It’s a HORRIBLE option that makes it feel like 300+ ping is added to your mouse movements

To create a party with someone nearby, target him an press “G” , now you have trade/group option for this person.

Arrows really feel the effect of gravity. If you are shooting at a long range, make sure you lead the target and to aim above them!

Bank Everything. Bank Often.
Don’t take ANYTHING out of the bank that you’re not fully prepared to lose.

Be aware, If your grouped, your “buddy” can now kill you with no alignment hit. Just be ready to hit /partyleave if they turn on you…. (There’s a glitch with parties right now – party members can freely kill you. So don’t actually party with them. Still, you can work WITH someone without grouping with them. Use the public channel for local communications)

In Journal you have a worldmap with Zoom function!

Stamina is Vital run out at your own risk… read: Be careful

Food is a great way to conserve stamina. It acts as a SoT (Stamina over time) spell.

Press “C” ( crouch) to dive underwater. Stop swiming, and you will auto float to the top.

Be careful when sneaking up on a player that is resting. This is the only time a player can survey a 360 degree circle.

Alignment colours: If a blue walks up, smacks you, and goes gray, DO NOT ATTACK! They’ll go back to blue in ten seconds, leaving you to take a real beating if you can’t stop soon enough to avoid a full two-minute gray penalty. So If someone hits you once they turn grey for 10 seconds but revert to blue if they do not attack again. ONLY during this 10 second penalty are they attackable at no risk. If someone hits you TWICE they are grey for 2 minutes.
Alignment colours:”Grey is someone who has gained criminal status by attacking a member of their own faction (race, whatever – a friendly). They can be attacked without penalty, but usually the grey only lasts for a short period of time.
Blue is someone who is in good standing with their own faction. Note that this COULD be an enemy – it has nothing to do with whether or not they can kill YOU without penalty.
Red is someone who is not in good standing with their own faction, normally due to killing people from their own faction. They can attack and be attacked freely. They may or may not be an “enemy”.

You cannot have a second toolbar visible at the same time, but you can switch between ten toolbars using left shift+(number from 0 to 9). The number at the top of your toolbar ui shows which one is currently active. The Switch can be rebound but not to the mouse wheel (yet)

When adventuring, if you see something that looks like it might be a chest, a toolbox, or a weapons rack, its possible that it is exactly that. Walk up to it and try using it with ‘F’.

If ninja looters are a problem. counter this, by having your backpack open when you go into combat mode. This way, when you are finished and its looting time, you don’t waste precious seconds opening your backpack… by then the gravestone is practically empty.

Even if you’re not into magic, you can get a second (and third!) ‘starter’ weapon slot to get a staff for the heal self spell. It’s 100g for a new un-losable weapon slot. (at 5-10g per ‘beginner enemy’, it won’t take too long to make that). To do this go to your starter quest giver the slot means that on death you will still have the item.
For 20 gold you can change your default item in the starter slot… typically people change to 2 handers but there are several options including magical staves.

Anytime you go to a new town, make sure to check the Quests tab on any NPC’s you come in contact with. A lot of them have quests that you usually wouldn’t notice.

Some crafter ‘gather’ skills have hidden bonuses (they also improve other skills)
While gathering/crafting, ALWAYS carry a 1h weapon and shield (for some reason you can’t parry with a shield without a weapon in hand, a mining tool doesn’t work), EVEN IN TOWN. People WILL attack you anywhere because crafters often have lots of resources/equipment. Having a shield up will give you a few seconds to figure out your best move, where the nearest guard tower is or, if in town, will give the guard towers time to finish off your assailants.

Ever notice when looking at other players they appear to be naked, then when they get closer their armour pop’s up? Well you can identify armour types from MUCH further away. Simply go to the Video options and UNCHECK the Object Clipping option. This is enabled by default

Also disable the Post Screen Effects option. this removes the weird black lines around eerything and increases FPS. (No clue what this option is really used for)
Change chat font color with Ctrl+k, and chats are in different tabs. So you must click to see different chats i.e. public, race, race alliance.

Turn off all shadows and post processing, this will improve fps and actually makes the game look better, the shadows can be overbearing.

Learn to cook, it will save you time in the long run when resting for stamina and health. Another good option is leveling magic up enough to use the mana to stamina spell.

Attacking the backside of anything gives a bonus to damage.

Never mount/dismount near anyone, ever!

Run with your melee weapon out when not resting, this is mostly personal preference but I feel safer seeing slightly behind me.

When PvEing try to never go below half health, there may be a racial enemy just waiting behind a tree to gank you when you go to loot.

An extensive discussion about the viablility of shields can be found at: http://forums.darkfallonline.com/sho…d.php?t=151997

Potions are not Instant they are all DoTs (over time)

When exploring for the first time go naked and with an expendable mount, you never know what your getting yourself into. The world is massive and takes about an hour to run directly across half of it.
If you see a lone racial enemy deep with in your lands, chances are hes not alone. If they are hitting you from long range away, most likely his friends are standing behind a tree waiting to gank you. Always think about all possibilities before attacking someone blindly. This goes with any mmo, but holds especially true in darkfall!

Technical: A Tip from “Miggl how To: Fix Sounds Appearing to be Close
I’m sure this solution has been posted before, but I discovered it for myself this morning and wanted to share it while the servers are down / patch being downloaded.
I’m sure you have noticed the annoying sounds of other players sounding incredibly close, and you turned to look to find that no-one was there, and the sound is coming from players much further away.
The problem here is that the game is not applying 3D effects (distance, etc.) to these sounds, and indiscriminately playing all sounds at full volume in a certain radius.
To rectify this, you can adjust the number of sounds to be played using 3D effects. Open console-mode (right-click by default), open your Options menu, and select Audio. Adjust the slider of 3D sounds to something much higher (provided you sound-card can handle it). I set mine to 256 and haven’t yet experienced any lag. Once done, click OK and return to the game. You should now notice that sounds are fading appropriately as you distance yourself from them.

Technical: A thread about what settings people play on can be found here http://forums.darkfallonline.com/sho…d.php?t=152105 (may not be useful thought I would include it)

Technical: if you get a 14001 Error. There is a .exe in your darkfall folder named vcredist_x86.exe run that exe. It should solve the issue.

Specific Advice

Spell components/reagents.
Lesser Magic
Mana to Stamin – Resin
Eldritch Sphere – Sulfur
Lay on Hands – Resin

Greater Magic
Rend – Bones
Unburden – Mandrake
Beacon – Ash

Witchcraft
Sluggish – Resin

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Sabbathius’s How to Level Lesser Magic

Requirements:
Food
Sulphur

Skill 1-25
Reach 25 skill in Lesser Magic by spamming Mana Missile and Resting, then purchase Health to Mana skill, and Lesser Magic Durability skill.

Skill 25-50
Fire 3 Mana Missiles.
Fire 1 Health to Mana.
Consume 1 food.
Repeat 3 Mana Missiles followed by 1 Health to Mana until nourishment buff from food fades, or you are out of health, then Rest. Repeat as necessary. Then purchase Lesser Magic Mana Efficiency skill and Mana to Stamina skill (useful for running away/chasing).

Note: Not all food is created equal. Some food gives 60 second buff, other food 3 min buff, use wisely.

Skill 50-75
To be continued…

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Sabbathius’s How to Level Greater Magic

Requirements:
Food
Bone
Sulphur

Skill 1-25
Purchase Greater Magic (100g) skill, then purchase Greater Magic Rend (200g) skill. Rend has a requirement to cast, 1xBone, and has a cooldown.

Fire 1 Rend
Fire 2 Mana Missiles
Fire 1 Health to Mana
Consume food.
Repeat as needed.

Note: The only other Greater Magic skill you can gain until skill level 25 is Beacon (200g), it is NOT a damage spell, it is simply a pointer, and requires TWO reagents, one of them Ash. Highly recommended you skip this skill.

Skill 25-50
To be continued…

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Alari’s Earning gold:

Combat:
Fighting the beginner monsters will get you 5g in cash and about another 5g in loot. Harder monsters give more, team up with someone to fight them.
Go to one of the more distant locations if the nearby ones are over-camped.

Crafting:
Don’t do manufacturing just yet, it’s a gold sink. Do gathering to earn gold.
You can find basic crafting tools on the beginner monsters. Also there are “toolboxes” near the beginner monsters with some crafting tools in them. You can save a lot of money by gathering these tools.
Otherwise, gathering tools are sold by the Merchant NPC for 20g a pop, and will return many times that if you’re careful. (And 0 if you’re careless and get killed while harvesting. =)

Stay in town to harvest first. Wood and stone is most plentiful but least needed currently. Wood comes from trees, stone comes from rocks with “stone” in the name. Herbs are less common, but still abundant in town, look for orange bushes that say “herb” in the name. Metal is least common, look for rocks named “metal”. (They look a LOT like stone =) Not very common in town, but definitely needed most. Fish can be gathered from any water.
Sell some of what you gathered (to players!) to buy crafting tools to process the rest into refined resources to sell to players. Keep in mind under certain circumstances that processed materials may be worth LESS than unprocessed materials. This is because you are extracting an intangible resource (potential skill gain) from the unprocessed resource when you process it. Check your local market conditions first.

NOTE: Resource nodes are instanced! The person next to you gathering will NOT take resources away from you! SHARE! (at least in noobie towns not sure about rares and out of these areas at this time).

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Mercnets Armour Guide
Armour Crafting.

Skill Level – craftable armour
01-24 Chainmail
25-49 Banded mail
50-74 Scalemail
75-99 Plate and Trueforge
100 is Mastery Unlock

Levelling to 25.

Get wood, you need 100 timber about to make 40 wood.
Do your quests to get tools.
If you don’t have 40 leather off the goblins buy 10-20 for 40-80g off the merchent.
Now go make 40 shields.

Levelling to 50

Getting to 50 needs considerable amounts of iron wood and leather and gold. 10g 1 ingot wood and leather. Make 200 of them (am assuming 200 shields), and you have 50 skill.
Also to speed things up… when do your quests, mark metal nodes with /annontation_add metal. This why you wont waste time finding the next node.
When mining in an dangerous area, never mine past half stamina. Take 2-3 swings and look around. DO NOT GET TUNNEL VISION ON THE NODE.

These tips will help you get to 50 and to scale in armorsmithing quickly.
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