Mortal Online Beginner’s Guide

Mortal Online Beginner’s Guide by Cerberius

(Most of the examples given in this guide are from my own horrible experiences, er meaning i learned most of this the hard way)

GAME INSTALLATION
The game says it takes up 16GB on my hard drive, but for some reason you will want to make sure that you have at least an additional 16-20GB free space on the drive with your temp folder to download patches. The patch system is messed up and you end up using way more space than is required to download and install a patch. If you are stopped any time during the patching process due to a lack of space, be prepared to restart the entire process or uninstall and re-install the game. SAVE YOUR PATCHES incase you have to re-install the game to fix a corrupt patch.

LOGGING IN FOR THE FIRST TIME
Ok so you’ve managed to free up enough space on your hard drive to install and patch the game. Now put in your login info and try to log in. Do not be discouraged if you get an error or message “username of password is incorrect”. Your password/username is likely correct and the servers are probably down, keep trying to log in over the next hour or check out the server status posts on the forums at http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/47651-server-status.html

CREATING YOUR FIRST CHARACTER
Now that you’ve finally made it past the login screen it’s time to make your first character. You will want to keep in mind a few important things when deciding what kind of character you want to make. Reference the skill calculator for help making your build http://mortal.thamal.de/SkillPlanner.php

1. You only have 1000 skill points, this will prevent you from mastering multiple archetypes (i.e. Swordsman, Armor smith, Engineer, etc.) So you need to focus on just one type. Weaponsmith is too broad, you need to focus on either swords or axes kind of specific. Not all skills take skill points, just the primary ones.

2. Mages are extremely hard to play right, there is really only one mage build that can survive pvp, they can’t equip weapons and cast spells at the same time, and the reagents for casting spells are expensive and sometimes hard to get, depending on where you start out at. It is strongly recommended that you have a supporting miner/extractor alt first, or have the support of a good guild before making a mage.

3. If you want to be a thief: Prepare yourself for a horrible skill grind, accept the fact you will always be in rags since thieves are killed ALOT, and be prepared for everyone to hate you.

4. Engineering is currently unfinished and geared towards advanced players, so don’t bother with that.

5. You get bonus skill points in skills that you have high attributes in. for example if you have 100 intelligence you get a 10% skill point bonus of 10 points in any skill you have that primarily relies on intelligence. Currently almost all crafting skills are based on intelligence so it’s very important if you’re going to be a crafter.

6. Remember to always leave yourself 100 skill points to learn horse Riding, its important if you plan on venturing outside of a town to mine or cut wood. It also helps you escape from PKers.

7. Once you figure out what you’re going to do with your skills pick a background that has the most skills already given to you. If you plan on being a Miner pick “Slag Hauler” This will give you the skills that you would otherwise have to spend a lot of money on purchasing from a librarian.

8. Since the recent thievery changes, you will want to just drop all your starting attributes into intelligence to keep thieves from stealing from you once they see your new.

9. Try to plan out what all 3 of your characters are going to be, this way you can have them work together (although bank accounts are not linked, and the only way to trade items between your characters is by a 3rd party) for example you could make a miner as your first character, then a sword smith as your second character, and a sword fighter as your 3rd. Or you could have a woodcutter as your first character, a bow crafter as your second, and an archer as your third.

10. A Warrior character compared to the mage is an easy way to get started in the game. They have high hit-points, higher strength for carrying loot, they’re faster on foot so they don’t neccissarily need a mount right away, once they max their primary combat skills after a few days killing pigs they can pritty much farm wisents with rags & starter swords. Dex is kinda wierd in the game (right now it only affects movement speed) also Warrior builds can be made easily into archer builds and rogue type builds with a few weapon skill changes.

11. So if you take my advice and your first character is a warrior or a miner, you’ll be able to make some cash and collect some metals/leathers to transfer over to the next character you make (sword smith or plate armorsmith etc.) or just use that miner/warrior to sell everything and just buy the items.

Once you’ve finished making your character you’ll have to pick a starting village. You can do some research, look at the player made maps etc. Some villages don’t have certain ore extraction appliances, some have different skill book vendors, etc.

Bakti http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Bakti
Fabernum http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Fabernum
Gaul’kor http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Gaul%27kor
Kranesh http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Kranesh
Meduli http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Meduli
Moh-Ki http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Moh-Ki
Morin Khur http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Morin_Khur
Tindrem http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Tindrem
Toxai http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Toxai
Vadda http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Vadda

Usually your starting village is based on your character’s race. But there is a random button which I believe has the option to plop you down in any of the villages I listed above. If your friends all started in Meduli for example, and you want to make a Sheevra, you might have to randomize and delete your character several times before you get to Meduli.

*** Remember if you select a village or randomize it and you hit the finalize button and you crash to desktop, most likely the server just crashed.

TAKING YOUR FIRST STEPS IN THE GAME
(This is based on a new player who is starting out their first character as a miner)
Now the first thing you will want to do is find the Storage Keeper in your starting village and drop off the starting axe. Even if you’re a miner, you will need to kill some weasels and crap to build up some cash to afford extra pickaxes and catalysts for extraction. Plus if you try to fight with your pickaxe equipped in your off-hand, you will just waste swings and damage the durability on your pickaxe. Also currently off-hand weapons deal 0 damage.

So go and kill weasels or pigs until you have about half of your carrying weight. Don’t collect too much because you might get PKed. Be careful for idiots running in front of you when you’re fighting because they’re trying to get you to hit them so you’ll turn grey and then they’ll be able to kill you without penalty.
Repeat this for a few days: Kill stuff, sell the fur/emajil, bank the cash and keep the bone tissue that can be used in armor/weapon crafting. If you don’t plan on makeing an armor/weapon crafter then you might be able to find a new guy starting one of those that may make you a set of cheap armor or weapons with the bone tissue for skill practice.

*** Your starter sword will eventually run out of durability with use. Pickaxes will break alot sooner, just make sure you have extra in your bank or some silver saved up for new axes/swords. You can purchase these for 1 silver at the Utility vendors.

MINING ROCKS
Then get your pickaxe out and start mining rocks. (***the mining ability can be dragged to your hotbar from the skill window) Rocks closest to town will be very poor quality and give you almost no rocks per durability on your pickaxe (your pickaxe takes durability damage each time you get rocks from a resource). Rocks far outside of town can give you a lot more, but you may be killed while trying to mine them. You have to decide if the risk is worth the reward. I recommend not mining rocks outside of town until you get your attributes up by mining rocks or blocking attacks from pigs. Horses are also very important tools to mining outside of town.

*** To get a horse you need the riding skill and then you need a tamer to sell you a horse ticket, make sure you don’t get scammed since horse tickets are named after the animal’s name and not their creature type. Take the ticket to the stable and exchange it for your horse. Also when riding a horse in town be sure not to run full speed into someone or it will flag you grey to them and they can call the guards on you.

*** Do not purchase multiple pickaxes from a vendor at a time, it’s currently bugged and you will lose all the money you spend on the axes. If you want to buy multiple pickaxes only buy them 1 at a time.

*** Do not try to complete stacks by dragging items from your bank onto the stack in your inventory. If you want to complete a stack (1000 units) first move the 2 stacks to your inventory then combine them and then move them back into your bank. If you try to complete the stack from your bank to your inventory in 1 step you will lose any excess materials.

EXTRACTING ROCKS
If you picked up the Slag Hauler skill, you will have the basic knowledge to use the simple extraction tools like a grinder, if not you’ll have to buy the skill book from a librarian http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Workbench#Grinder You should also have the basic Materials Lore to be able to extract the ore from the rock. (***the extraction ability can be dragged to your hotbar from the skill window)

Extraction works most efficiently when you use 1000 units (a stack) of rock and 100 catalysts.(10:1 ratio) Check the Mortal Wiki to see which catalyst and extraction tool you should use here http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Extracting
For Example: If your mining Saburra and you want to maximize the Bleckblende you get, you would use a Grinder and Coke, if you can’t get coke then Calx Powder is next best, then Catalyst Coal http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Bleckblende

**** Remember to keep an eye out when using extraction tools that are outside of the guard’s protection, PKer’s camp these areas the most.

**** You can sell the extracted ore and rock powder strait to a vendor at this point, or you can save the ore and use it to skill up refining, then sell the metals later to a vendor or player. You should always make more money selling to a player than to a vendor. Rock powder is usually always sold to a vendor though (except calx which is a good catalyst).

REFINING ORE
Once you refine a bunch of rocks you will end up with a bunch of ore. Once again check the wiki to see which extraction tools and catalysts will give you the best yields. http://www.mortalwiki.org/wiki/Category:Resources Make sure that you have the Material Lore of the metal you want to refine the ore into. (***the refining ability can be dragged to your hotbar from the skill window)

**** What I do in Meduli: I mine saburra and make saburra powder, bleckblende, and malachite. I sell the powder to the venders. Then I refine the malachite into Cuprum and the Bleckblende into Bleck. I take the Cuprum and Bleckblende and refine them into Bron metal. (2xcuprum 1xbleck 1xsaburra powder).

ADVANCING YOUR CHARACTER
Player advancement in Mortal Online (MO) isn’t like other games in the sense that you don’t have levels or experience points. Your character will be maxed out once you have distributed all 1000 of your skill points and you have learned all of your primary and secondary skills. Once you work yourself into a rhythm of mining, you will want to start making more advanced metals, so you will want to purchase books from librarians to learn more about those types of metals and materials.

**** Be prepared for it to take a very long time to build up enough cash to buy all of the books to learn how to make all of the metals to fully complete your miner character.

WHAT IF YOU DIE?

Your screen will go all black&white; and trippy looking. You will see these giant pillars of light shining down from the sky to the ground in different locations around you. If you make your way to the closest pillar of light there is a priest at the bottom of it.

It is not always easy to tell what the closest pillar of light is since the screen is all wavy and distorted. Its best to head into the nearest town and find the priest inside there. If your gray you won’t be able to rez at any priest inside of a town, just wait 2 minutes for your flag to turn back to blue. If your flag is bugged then you will have to run outside of town to rez.

the suicide button in your player window turns into a “return to a nearest shrine” button, This was fixed and it does take you to the nearest priest, but you may not know which priest is closest to you so this could make you very lost.

DEALING WITH THIEVES

Welcome to Mortal Online, where almost any form of griefing is possible. Here are some easy steps to make sure thieves don’t rob you blind, over and over.

1. Have a high intelligence, this makes it alot harder for thieves to steal from you.

2. Keep your items in large stacks when you can, try to avoid pulling out small stacks of money (less than 50). especially if you see alot of thieves around you. Also try not to walk around with player-made armor or weapons in your inventory, because these are all easier for thieves to steal than large stacks of stuff.

3. run around with empty pockets and remember the thieves that run up to you and snoop in your pockets. Then avoid them when you actually have stuff.

4. if you must pull out a small bit of cash to buy some stuff, pretend that you are doing it a few times and wait for the thieves to get tired of snooping in your pockets before actually getting your cash out.

5. Watch out for thieves camping near merchants or the librarians, they may act like they’re afk only to run up to you when you have the trade window open. If you see a fishy character (in rags or naked) just chilling looking in the general direction of the NPC but not actually moving, Pretend to go up to the NPC and open the window then wait a minuite for the thief to run towards you, then run away from him and try again later.

6. The chat window is bugged, it does not show the first line of text sent to you for some reason (maybe the chat bar is blocking it) so if you are snooped you may not notice it until the next line of text bumps the snooping text into view. If you are about to pull out cash and think you may be snooped just type a period and hit enter. But if your intelligence is low enough a successfull snoop will not give you a message, but the animation will still show on the thief snooping you. Same goes with succesfull steals.

7. If a thief fails at stealing something from you, you will get a message and the thief will go global grey, you can call the guards to kill him immediately. BUT if a thief successfully steals from you then you get NO message, your shit just dissapears and you cannot call the guards on him until you or someone hits him with a weapon or if you push him (press and hold right mouse to block then press left mouse to push but don’t try to push over and over again very fast or you may accidentaly start swinging your weapon around).

8. Thieves are getting more clever with their method of robbing people blind. Always be cautious of looting thieves bodies in town. Even though they turn gray and are lootable, any items the thief has stolen will have a [S] before its item-name and you will go gray if you loot it. If the thief dies stealing from you, you will not see any [S] and you will be able to loot your stuff back. If a player dies in town that is not gray, their loot bag will have a blue flag if you target it and anything you loot from it will turn you gray. Blue/Gray loot bags can sometimes lose thier flag graphic and if you try to loot it you may or may not get flagged gray.

RIDING HORSES

Riding a horse in MO can be fun, it can enhance your gameplay experience and make it easier to transport materials and find new resources. But it can also be a huge pain in the ass if you don’t handle your horse properly. As far as the basics go, you press “R” to mount, and then the up arrow or “W” key to start to walk your horse forward. Pressing up arrow or “W” a second time will start you off at a slow trot, and up a third time will make you full out run. Follow these guidelines and you shouldn’t have much problems.

1. After reading the practice book, ride your horse around in a safe and open area until your riding skill is at least 35, this is about when your horse will stop throwing you off.

2. Never ride your horse through an NPC town at full speed, if you hit someone you will knock them down and you will turn gray.

3. Always keep your horse set to passive if you have creature control skill, people can exploit this feature to cause your horse to attack them and flag you gray if the horse is set to defensive. If you don’t have the creature control skill, the only way to prevent them from exploiting this is to be ready to spam “follow me” button or program a macro hotkey on your keyboard to automatically type it in the chat window, so that they don’t have the horse chase them out of your command range before you call back your horse. if they get the horse out of y our command range, you will have no choice but to use the abandon command, this works no matter how far away your horse is.

4. if you need to log out for the night, leave your horse with the stable guy (spend 1s and turn him in to the stable guy and get a ticket) Or, find a spot away from populated areas of town and log out while riding on top of the horse. This will prevent your horse from staying in the game and possibly being killed.

5. Griefers like to kill horses that are parked around town, try to have your horse follow you as much as possible, don’t make your horse stay in an area where he can easily be killed.

6. Don’t try to ride your horse into deep water, he will explode all over your face, instead if you must cross deep water, get off the horse and have them follow you. If you get out of the water on the other side and your horse is still gone you will have to re-log to be able to see him again.

7. Make sure you have enough room when you dismount, or you may find yourself stuck between your horse and a hard place.

8. Remember that PKers will target your horse first, they will try to disable your escape transportation so that they can kill you easier. So keep your horse close to you when your out of town and be ready to jump on it at a moments notice to get out of harms way. If your horse is hit while your riding it, there is a chance it will throw you off.

9. Your horse may dissapear when you dismount it from time to time, just wait around for a few minutes and it should re-appear.

10. If you get a bug where your horse dissapears, and waiting/re-logging dosn’t help, you will need to go to a stable with 1s and try to stable the pet to fix the bug, or try to use the “abandon” if your not near a stable.

FINAL TIPS

*** Check prices on the forums before selling your stuff http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/selling/

*** Be prepared for the servers to go down several times a day.

*** If you accidentally wasted skill points by letting your skills go past 100, pick up a primary skill like woodcutting and change the skills that have excess points to the minus “ – “ sign until they are back to 100 then change them to a locked sign (click on the symbol next to them in your skills window)

*** Don’t go afk while in game, nowhere is really safe to afk at unles you have friends watch your back.

*** Numberlock is the auto-run key

*** Banks are not linked , each storage keeper has a separate storage for you.

*** You wont’ be able to swim unless you skill up swimming in survival, there is a bug where you can just sprint across a river with no swimming skill (just hold shift)

*** Torches can be life-savers if you get stuck outside a city in the dark. Always carry one incase you don’t make it back in time. (or turn up gamma on your video card/monitor)

*** Maps are completely player-made, check this one out http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/6125/momap.png

WHATS NEXT?
Now that your miner is finished, you move onto your next character. Most likely this will be one of the 2 combat characters (if your miner is purely a cash mule) or it will be your crafter (if your miner is the metal collector) If you choose to join a guild, you might want to see if they need a specific type of crafter or if they need a certain kind of combat type.

You can find into about guilds looking for players here: http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/guilds-looking-players/

or to post that your looking for a guild here: http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/players-looking-guilds/