Ryzom Starter’s Guide

Ryzom Starter’s Guide by selmor

Introduction:

At first, this guide in english is done by demand, it already exists in german language, my mother language. So, if there is any bad grammar, please don’t blame me.

This Guide describes how to do an Alround-Char, who is able to go for his own and on the other way, is welcome by every party around. This guide specialised for the very first 30-35 Levels. If i feel to expand it for the later levels, i maybe do so. It also mirrows in most ways my own experience, so if you find anything written wrong, feel free to blame me. This Guide is done for the Apprentice in Ryzom – not for Veterans (if you can call anyone a veteran after 2 weeks after Release). Ok, lets get started.

Character-Decision:

The race really doesn’t matter (at this time)*, feel free to select anyone you favor most. At the starting point, only the action-packs takes into count. I chose the small ones for magic, harvesting and crafting, as it fits best for our purposes. Combat is a very bad decision to choose, because we won’t benefit by the starting dagger. By choosing magic, we get our magician stave and “heal other 1”, with harvesting our digging-pike and basic-extraction and with crafting the ability to craft our first boots and we get some raw materials (50).

Before we launch into the phantastic world of Ryzom, there are some Conclusions to be done and to keep in mind when we play in parties. This is very important, due to skill(-points) decisions!

*Note: When you start with Fyros, don’t select the middle-town as your starting point, because you don’t find any trainers around! The corner-towns are pretty ok.

The Fighter:

Do i go for the Full-Tank or for the Damage Dealer?

The Full-Tank needs the very best protection he can get, as many HP as possible, Taunt & Imunity-Skills, a shield and a 1-handed weapon. He is always in the first line of action and always choose what foe’s to go for. The damage dealt by him is secondarily and is only done to keep the foe’s attraction to him. It is him, who protects and lead all possible threats off of the supporters/magicians within the party (most commonly done by his Taunt-Skill). He is a very skilled and wake player. This is definately not a character to start with!

The damage-dealer wears up to medium armor types (only when he goes for his own), and, when within a party, he choose the light version. He is always on the hunt for the best (highest damage possible) weapons and skills (like inc. Damage, bleeding, berserker, war cry etc.) which increase his inflicted damage. He comes first into action after battle has begun and is the assister of the Full-Tank. He wears exclusively 2-handed weapons. His truely nature is his damage he inflincts to his enemies, thereafter HP, Stamina and Regenaration (try to increase HP and Stamina by the boosts through your equipment). This is the one to start with.

The Magician:

Do i go for a full offensive or do i go for a mix of offensive and supporting?

The full offensive concentrates on one elemental Damage-based skill (acid, cold or rot) and it’s DoT-Version (DoT = Damage over Time). He wears exclusively Light Armor and his magician stave depending on his skills (its better to get one crafted by an experienced Crafter). He consumes relatively much Sap and is comparable with the damage-dealer. This is the one to start with.

The mixed magician choose an offensive spell (like above), heal other and a support-spell (like root, slow or stun). He concentrates mostly on supporting the party by his very best either with his healing or his defensive abilities. You try to get as much HP as possible (because dead healer = dead party!) and also Sap in the same way (try to increase both via your equipment). He also wears light armor every time and his magician stave depends on his skills (like above, get one crafted for your purposes). This is, like the Full-Tank, not a char to get started with, because he always have to keep an eye on his surroundings, his enemies, his comrades and have to react with lightning speed while in action!

But, as we want to go as an arrounder, there’s only one decision for us. The Damage-Dealer combined with the mixed magician. If this is not your way you like to play, feel free to directly jump to the harvesting-/crafter-part or simple do whatever you like to do.

So, let’s go:

The screen loads and we are just a few seconds ahead from entering our home-island. The first thing we do, is to craft boots with the raw-materials we got from our starting-crafter-pack. The tool we needed was implemented in the action-pack, too. Equip this tool, scan the action-bar for the appropriate icon and follow the steps as seen on the screen. Keep one pair of qu10 boots, others are sold to local merchandiser around (qu5 is ok for the moment). With the money we just earned, we buy a sword, axe or whatever weapon you like to choose for upcoming combat-events. The Skillpoints (from now on called “SP”) in crafting were left untouched yet.

The Fighter + Magician up to level 20:

Now it’s time for some action and we start hunting suckling yubo’s. They are pretty easy Opponent’s we should kill with 3-4 hits. We continue to do so until we reach Level 5-8. Collect every craftable Loot (which we can sell), the other materials (like skulls, meat and hairs) are mission items. Don’t care about this until you have a specific mission for those stuff, else leave them because you can’t sell it and can’t keep it for upcoming missions (they count only after you received the mission!). Well, with the first earned SP in combat we visit our trainer and we invest them into Constitution, Stamina and Increase Damage 1. This should work pretty fine, as we now go for the first missons (look out for the Corporals found in every village twice). Missions are important in two ways, first we earn pretty nice money by fulfilling the mission and secondly we earn Fame by doing so. At this early stage, we accept only missions with collecting animal raw materials (take care, the demanded qu-lvl shouldnt be higher than our current skill-lvl). Normally this is yubo hairs of qu-lvl 2 and or capryn’s//messab meat of qu-lvl 8.

That we do for the next 3-4 Levels. You should have reached level 12 yet and you also should have earned some money (dappers). Now it’s time to invest in some better equipment. Just ask around in the region-chat. Qu20 Weapons are not that expensive (i think around 6-8k would fit, light armor set is around 15-20k (depends on the boost on it) and the magician stave is around 8-10k (all prices are for basic materials, items with “choide” materials will more expansive, check it out by yourself). We concentrate on a better weapon for now, so we can benefit from our inc.-dam 2 (if you can afford a light armor set with hp-boost on it by now, but don’t buy any without boost, it’s waste of money) and lastly the magician stave.

So, combat are taken by side and we will raise some magic levels now. But to do so, we need some help of a high-lvl fighter (20+ will work pretty fine for our purposes), because we can’t do for ourself yet, as heal-other 1 only works in party to accumilate experience (from now on it’s called “Exp”). We need 45 SP in Magic to buy our first elemental offensive spell (cold, acid or rot), so it’s 5 Level we have to be in party to acomplish this. Maybe it take some time to find any nice person around, but this can be speeded up, if you declare, that you only want the exp and NO Loot. The time spend in this party should be around 15-20 minutes (depending on the fighter). If your companion is a very kind person and you like the party, stay in it as long as wish after you have done the first 5 levels. But with Level 10 you should leave (we are ready to hunt for our own by now), but you don’t have to. Spent the SP in Intelligence and Regenaration. There are in all skills two ways how you can regenarate, either by constantly regenaration or by self-heal-blabla. Always head for one decision, either constantly or self-heal, but in no way in both unless you have to many SP left.

Well, after this, we raise both skills (combat and magic) up to 20, more and more missions are fulfilled by ourselves as we raise levels (up to carnivorous kill-missions, but no kipee-missions under Level 20!). We collect every lootable stuff we can get and sell every loot under qu20, which we keep for crafting issue’s. The SP earned in Combat are flying in constitution, stamina and regenaration, hp-credit and one expansional skill (like bleeding, armor piercing, etc.). Check the description (best informations are found in your action-menu (press key “a”) and check each skill on the right side (there are options, first the skills, and secondly the upgrades), if you are unsure about, what skill to choose. The expansional skills depends on the weapon you actually have equipped and you only should advance in one skill, not every one! In the magic-tree, we buy the upgraded elemental spell (acid 2, cold 2, rot 2).

Now it’s time to think about your future magician life. As said above, we want to be an allrounder, so you to decide what skills to choose. If it will be your healing abilities first or the supporting spells, it’s up to you! I decided for my own for stun, as this will help fighters in tough situation, because an opponent who can’t move/act, won’t inflict any damage to them. They will be very thankful, also the other healers in party will be! And it is a good decision when i go for my own, by always switching stun and elemental, most opponents are dead meat before they can come close to you (but be careful, this costs loads of Sap!). Again, always decide for only skill, because the higher the mob and the lower your skill, the chances of negating your spells will increase!

Ok, now money shouldn’t be any problem in any way, so we can complete our finaly equipment. Either we buy it from the local crafters around or we build it by our own, if we have all componants to do so. If not, we have to look for them, which now brings us up to the relaxing parts of the game. Harvesting.

The Harvester up to Level 30:

Basically, with harvesting we have all time not enough SP for all those useful Skills, and nearly every Skill herein is useful. Unlike like all other skill-trees, harvesting first splits up in different, specific parts after Level 51. Therefore we lack in SP the early days, but fortunatly we advance pretty fast in this skill-tree (as your skills raise, this is an optimal way to negate your DP (Death Penalty) later on). Well, we have basic-extraction to start with and thats all we need to get started and our digging-pike (you got one while choosing the small harvesting action pack, check your inventory). We seek out for the general, free sources in every village (you can recognize them by the green clouds and are called “raw material source”). We do so for the first 4-5 Levels in harvesting.

After reaching Level 5, we head for our trainer and buy basic prospection. With this we are able to find sources out of the town and other material sorts than oil and sap. The next skills to buy, is to increase our Focus and fokus-regenaration (not self-heal focus, as it only restores 50 points, don’t ask me why this is only 50 and all other 100, blame nevrax not me). We don’t sell the just extracted oil and sap, because we use it for the upcoming crafting-parts. The next skills went into harmful extraction qu25, 20 degree prospecting and 5m range. This is useable for decreasing the time spend for seeking out new sources out of town. Other useable skills for the moment are prospecting for fine and choice materials, 30s + 35s source time and extraction speed and rate. Don’t forget to increase your focus-pool, as you need more focus the more you advance in harvesting. If you forget, your DT (downtime) will be very long. Take a look on the other skills as well, we will need em, when we left our island. All material sources found on our island are qu-lvl20, except the mission-sources. Those are qu-lvl 50, and those sources we are going to find for now, as they help us to raise levels much faster than any other sources.

Your prospecting plan should look like this:

– Basic Prospecting
– 20 Degree(angle) Prospecting
– 5m Range

Your extraction plan looks like this:

– aggressive speed 1
– aggressive rate 1
– harmful extraction qu25

the bad thing with mission-sources is, that we can’t sell them to the village-vendors, even as they say, they would pay a good price for em. So after extracting em, don’t pick em up, it’s only waste that increase your bulk unnessarily, but as those sources provides us with qu50, we earn the most exp possible here. Another advantage with these mission-sources is, that we only need basic-prospecting. This will keep our focus-pool nearly at full, and we can harvest at a very nice speed. You can find those sources around each village, but it’s up to you to find them. If you unsure about having the correct source, check the quality level of the source or do a right click on the material in the foraging-progress-window. Unfortunately those sources deplete as well as their craftable material-source counterparts, so it’s time to learn how to place “landmarks” onto your map-window. This will help us to find those source-locations for later times. We should go for around 3 mission-sources, so we are able to harvest without any breaks in between. We go on with this until we reach Level 25.

After this, we concentrate on finding good spots for our equipment. And this will be no other than “Choice-Materials”. Check your crafting-plans, if you don’t know what exact componants you need. Basically, you can find all and every material at each village-surroundings, but not all specific parts (e.g. one time you find fiber, at one village it is “buo-fiber” and at another village it is “dzao-fiber”). Check the stats of the material, so you learn about the differences of each material parts, which helps you to be a skilled-crafter in the future. But for the starting-isle it’s not that important than later on as the game proceeds. The upcoming time is a pain until you find each source you need for yourself. Put every important reallife-things at a side, get yourself enough food and coffee, because this will take some time. On the other hand, you find out if harvesting is a job for you and you will learn where to find specific materials at specific locations. You will get skilled and not only with your SP, be sure. But our final goal is to reach Level 30 in harvesting. At this stage, harmful extraction qu50 can be learned, and this comes handy on the main-world. (There we will be able to be as efficient as possible, because all surroundig sources are qu50 and we extract em with maximum quality. So it’s no longer a waste of time, as we get all materials we need in maximum quality, btw. We earn maximum exp possible while prospecting for those materials. Nice, isn’t it?)

Back to Topic, all Choice Materials with qu20, we don’t need by ourselves, you should keep and sell them via the Region-Chat. Don’t hestitate to sell all other below qu20 to the village-vendors, or, if you want, craft em if you are able to use em. That is up to you.

The Crafting-Part until Level 40:

Well, as stated above, we have 3-4 Levels made with the starting raw-materials. And, as in most other cases, first think about what you like to craft in your career. Do we craft for our own purposes only (as 90% do) or do we craft things, that are quit uncommon. Well, i think we head for our own purposes, but you will recognize very soon, that it is impossible to craft every thing we need by ourselves. Therefore we concentrate on aproximately 2 parts (one armor and one weapon) as we should keep in mind, that we want to be able to have a nice hp-boost (or Sap, Stamina or focus) on our crafted-equipment as well (and each boost costs 50SP !). but what equipment do we need as an allrounder? Look at this.

– a good weapon (2-handed)
– light armor set (for the harvester + magician)
– medium armor set (for the damage dealer)
– a magician stave
– HP-Boost as high as possible

So, if you visit your craft-trainer, you see, that it is really impossible to craft all by ourselves (maybe later but this is unproven by myself for now). Don’t wonder, 2-handed weapons can be craft at lvl 20 and not below. As stated above, concentrate on 2 thingies and on one boost.

Hmm, but this costs a lot of dappers, doesn’t it? … you will find yourself running out of money very quick while buying all materials from the raw-material-vendor. Well, you can avoid this, by going on loot-expedittions combined with missions from the corporal. On such expeditions, our goal is to hunt ‚n kill easy opponents who provides good loot and are wiped out easily, so exp is secondarily. Any “puny”-foe will fit. Therefore, no kipee’s yet, they are for exp-safari’s later to raise our fighting//magic-skills for our estimated goal of 35-38.

The provided loot is divided up into 2 catagories. First, all loot we need for increasing our crafting-skills is kept, the rest will be sold to the vendors, including all “weeny-loot” as it is onyl qu10-11. All missing parts we need for crafting will be bought from the raw-merchant. By doing it this way, you should always have more money than before each loot-expeditions, and pretty nice tho‘, some increased craft-skills. Then it’s up to, if you choose power-crafting (means, you craft as much you can afford and sell each piece to the vendors, willingly accept the losses made by doing so) or you spend some time and sell each complete set or weapon via the region-chat (what could take some minutes/hours). If time doesn’t seem to be a problem to you, this is the way to do. But it’s not my way, btw. Our final goal is a crafting-Level of 40 in each catagory, so we can build qu50 parts on the main-world. Well, there is one common question by most starting crafters. Why, the heck, do i always get aproximately qu10 items while using the correct qu20 components? This is pretty simple. Again, check your action-bar and the craft-icon. E.g. you have to buy armor crafting 2 to craft qu20 items. If you choose by accident, armor crafting 1, the aproximate limit is qu10. And therefore, most people (99%) choose the wrong crafting plan. So, if you feel, there is something wrong, check your icons!

Crafting Success Chance xx%:

During your career as a crafter you have noticed the percantage success-rate in the upper left window on the component-window. But what does it mean exactly? Well, it’s not the rate of successfully create an item. It tells you about your chances of creating a maximum quality-item by the crafting-plan chosen. E.g. you choose armor craft 2 and want to create a qu20 light pants with a success-rate of 80%. Then your chance of getting a qu20 pants is 80% and 20% for any lower than quality 20. As you advance in Level and on the main-world, this comes handy, when you get orders by other people. With this rate, you are able to calculate the number of tries you need to do his favors and with this knowledge you can give your customer a good idea of how many money he has to spend. With the above stated 80% for qu20 you know, that you have at least 6 tries for the 5 part-set (in the craft-armor case, it doesn’t matter if you craft 5x times gloves or one time for each set-part, the success-rate is for the armor-craft-skill, not for the parts itself).

Well, after completing your level-goals, you are ready to enter the main-world, or if you want, you can stay some more time and earn more dappers. I went to the main-world with around 250k dappers, combat-skill 35, magician-skill37, craft-lvl (armor 46), weapon 40, harvest 30, in case you wanted to know. The following parts are some basic information gathered by me so far, so you may continue to read if you want, but you are pretty ready for the main-world now.

Additional Informations:

Combat and Experience:

To receive the maximum possible experience, we should have the following in mind, when combating any foe’s. When you combat with your melee-weapon, then strictly do it with your melee-weapon to increase combat-skills, when you want to raise magic-skills, then do it always and in no other way than with magic-spells of the selected spell-tree (e.g. acid-dam when you want to increase the offensive-, later elemantal-skill-tree, or heal other, for the defensive-tree). Surely, there is a good reason to do so.

For example we have the following skills and the opponent provides the following maximum Experience.

Skills: Combat 16, Magic 10, Enemy provides aprox. 2000 Exp

So, you wanna raise your magic-abilities, so you use your Acid-2 spell on that foe. After doing it 2 or 3 times, you recognize, damn, it delivers too much damage to me. Well, better lets switch to melee or you start melee-combat with your magician-stave. Uh nice, the damage taken are less than before. Nice thing, lets continue this way. At the end you gain 736 Exp and not 2000. But for what reason not the full 2000?

Let me try to explain.

When calculating Experience by the game (The amount of your party and any Level-Differences within this party is left untouched in this example), all skills used are accumilated during the fight. And the maximum Experience(736) gained depends on the highest used skill during the fight (in our little example, this was combat 16). Afterwards, this exp is divided up by the damage output done by each skill. As we have done less damage using our magician stave as we have done with our elemantal spells, we get this final message by the game. You earned 216 in combat and 520 in magic. But, if you had defeated this foe by only using your magic abilities (which is skill level 10), we had earned the full 2000 exp. The maximum possible exp is granted when using ONLY the lowest skill(-tree).

Therefore, in really no circumstances mix magic and melee abilities in one fight. Expecially if you want to push some lower skill-tree’s (like the defensive one, after entering the main-world) unless there is no other choice in the given situation. If both are at the same Level, than it doesn’t matter. I hope you got it (bah, my english sucks).

Crafting/harvesting with or without Armor?

We receive a penalty when wearing medium or heavy armor. This should remind us, that we suffer some restrictions when wearing it. Therefore when we go harvesting for example, we are not able to extract any maximum quality provided by the source. (e.g. source qu is 50, and we will get max. qu49 out of it), same takes into count with crafting-issue’s. So, there’s one question, wearing light armor or no armor.

Well, i think it’s a question of money and your bulk-weight. Lately i see many nude persons while crafting and/or harvesting. I think, those people have either no armor or only the medium//heavy-variants. So, to get no penalty, they wear nothing. But, i think, at least when go for harvesting, you should wear light armor. Light armor suffers no penalty, but presumes any possible HP-Boost on it. This can become handy when the source explodes or you set up a toxic cloud. So, if ever possible, wear light armor types when harvesting. Crafting? Who cares about life while crafting. Do it your way while crafting (but no medium//heavy-variants as you suffer penalties then).

The Magician Stave:

Well, in few words, this is a religion for it’s own. First of all, a good stave with all perfect bonuses for our skill-tree is our main-goal. But its a hard to get. You have to be a very very very skilled crafter who tried several variants of all components available to know, how to get the demanded bonus on it. Therefore, at our starting point, we try fo find such a skilled crafter rather than craft one by our own. Never the less, at the starting isle, its not that much important than later on in the game. Our estimated goal is to receive a bonus with 60% power and 60% cast-speed for the elemental-part on it (when taking a closer look at the staves abilities, you may get a clue what i mean, at least after craft the first one, you will know). As we already know, we have to get choice-materials for it. This goal isn’t that high to craft, so nearly any available componants may fit, but only nearly. If you have the time, try a bit around with several seperate componants to learn more about this. Noobi island is the perfect place to learn…

So far, so good. I hope you could get some usuable information out of this guide and have learned a bit of your surrounding world, if not, thanks for listening to me.

If you have any questions, critics, proven mistakes herein, feel free to let us//me know. Flames and spam via PM pls, especially the grammar spam o_O

Have a nice day