OT: Anarchy Online

[deccan]

I understand now. Yeah the programmers made the animals say nasty and funny things like "R U nubi?", "Why did you loot me?", "Phat lewt!" etc. Nasty sense of humor Funcom has.

[Atrocities]

Yes, but funny. LOL. I just need to find my way and spend some time with the game. Its really hard for me to get into games like this given my love for Tribes. Not that Tribes was anything like AO. Tribes had as much of a feel to it as any on line game like AO or EverQuest, but lots more. Its hard to explain this to non Tribes fanatics. Too bad the last game was a joke. Tribes could have been so much more. In fact, Planet Siege (Sony) was made by some of the same folks who made Tribes.

I seldom if ever dream about games, but I do dream about Tribes as if I am really in that game, playing for life and death. Amoung my dreams, those are the ones I enjoy the most. No other game has given me such a thrill ride as Tribes, and I guess I am just a bit on the dense side for not wanting to learn other games.

Hell it took me months before I would even play Half Life 2. Now that I have just finished that game, and what a dismall ending it had indeed, I might move onto the reading working alternate RL games like AO.

I just need to take it seriously and give it an honest shot. With so many people saying its a load of fun, to pass it up would be a shame...

Say how do you make that dialog screen smaller? Its hard to see through it.

[deccan]

Atrocities said:
Say how do you make that dialog screen smaller? Its hard to see through it.

Chat windows start in borderless mode by default. If you change its mode, you can move them around and resize them at will. Personally, I have the main chat window, a combat messages window, and a tells window.

[deccan]

Since I managed to snag some people into this game, here's my take for powergaming newbie isle (assuming that you don't have the expansions):

1) Do the starter quests for identifying and killing the animals to get the light bar and the NCU belt. The light bar is available nowhere else in the game and if you don't get the starter NCU belt, you will have to buy something functionally equivalent for like 5k credits outside newbie isle.

2) Once done, go to the recuiters' area and join omni. Then go back to the beach and kill nothing but Island Reets (those parrot things). Ignore the monster parts and reet beaks they drop. Keep the "Take Me to the Shop" and gems / jewellery they drop. Selling the "Take Me to the Shop" is the main way of making money on newbie isle. Selling them to the main vendor or the Clan vendor gets you 160 credits. Selling them to the Omni vendor gets you 200 credits. Continue to kill reets and sell the stuff until you hit level 5 from killing reets. You should have about 20k cash.

3) Go to Antonio and buy a full set of Newcomer armor, selecting the lowest QL of each piece available for sale. Go to the Omni vendor and buy as many side badges as you have armor pieces for. Use the badges on the armor pieces to turn them into sided armor. The armor is a levelling item, meaning that when you gain a level, you can use it and it will upgrade itself up to a maximum of level 15. This is the best armor at low levels bar none. I checked and found that even Carbonum, the best generally available armor below level 100, only starts being better than QL 15 newcomer armor at level 20.

3) Buy the omnitek sunglasses and the omnitek technical library. You should be able to sell them on the mainland to other players for about 500k each.

4) Do the Unicorn commanders' quest twice to get two omni shoulderpads. You won't find better shoulderpads for a long time.

5) Depending on your profession, upgrade your starter weapons by getting the correct parts to upgrade them. Talk to the vendor Antonio to find out what you need to hunt to get the parts you need.

6) Kill cargo droids to collect the parts needed to make a range meter. Again, you won't find a better replacement for this until much much later in the game.

7) Remember to buy your starter pack of profession specific nanos from the terminal next to Antonio. Otherwise you will have to buy them individually on the mainland at inflated prices.

8) If you are an engineer, remember to buy an extra solar pistol before you leave. Otherwise you will have to hunt for parts to remake it to make your engineer specific pistol.

Once on the mainland, sell the sunglasses and technical library for good starting capital, and you're well on your way to making a powerful character.

[Gandalf Parker]

deccan said:
Since I managed to snag some people into this game, here's my take for powergaming newbie isle (assuming that you don't have the expansions):

Wow, nice list of tips. Thanks.
Gandalf Parker

[David E. Gervais]

Yes indeed, very nice tips. I started a new character and followed your directions.. I now have an amazing character compared to my previous starts. (Name: Valorgardian)

I have not sold my sunglasses yet, because they are well, cool, and It took alot of work to gain enough credits to buy them. I upgraded my pistols and man I manage to survive harder fights and thus gain more xp.

BTW My new char is at level 9 after about 4 hours, not bad considering 3 of those four hours were spent on Newbie isle collecting enough credits, and all the required parts.

If you catch me online I have a few 'novel' items found on newbie isle that you might have some use for. I don't remember the names but I have 4 power supples and a large group of CPU clusters or something along those lines.

Anyway, I like this game, but it really shines when you team up. Solo, is a pain and I can see how AT is having trouble getting past newbie isle. But hey, If he makes it past that and finds the joys of teamwork, then I think he'll be hooked.

Nuf said, Cheers!

[Atrocities]

Thanks for the tips.

[deccan]

Hey thank you! I'm just glad people found my advice helpful. Um, here's some more random stuff:

1) Definitely get and keep a Morphing Memory from subway. This is a levelling item as well and goes all the way up to QL 200, providing NCU and Nano Resist bonuses.

2) In subway, you should notice a lot of junk drops like "Burnt Out Memory Chip", "Spool of Wire" etc. Don't bother getting these if you don't intend to get Shadowlands. They're for a quest to get direct access to SL areas from Rubi-Ka.

3) The Striker Foreman in subway drops the "Boots of Infinite Speed" which can be a good newbie item. When used it locks your Run skill for a time and gives you a boost to Run speed, useful when you're running for your life.

4) Eumenides, the smallest of the three subway bosses drops the "Ring of Nucleus Basalis". This is also a levelling item and can be sold to other players for maybe 500k. I found that I could easily solo Eumenides with Yatima at level 20 (well, me and my bot anyway). I killed him three times though, but I never got the ring to drop for me.

5) The construction workers in subway drop construction sleeves, which are very useful for tradeskillers. They sell for about 50k a pair.

6) Many areas of the game are instanced. These include all dungeons and shops, to prevent them from becoming overcrowded. This is why when you try to meet someone in a shop, you can both be inside and not see each other, because you're in different versions of it. All members of a team will always enter the same copy of instanced areas though, and you can see which copy of the instance you're in by seeing the "Group Select" number when you hit Shift-F9. Note that even Newbie Isle is instanced, so not everyone you find talking on Newbie chat channel will be on your copy of Newbie Isle.

7) Omnifiers and clanalizers are used to make armor pieces into sided armor versions. They appear to drop randomly in any mission, regardless of mission level. The standard price for one of them is about 50k each, so don't sell these to NPC shops. However, I've been known to go to Clan areas, listen to the Clan shopping channels to buy omnifiers for 50k each, then go to Omni areas and sell them on the Omni shopping channel for 150k apiece. Ah, the advantages of being neutral...

8) Notum fragments / chips sell for about 1k per ql, so don't sell these to NPC shops either. They're used in many tradeskilling processes. Notum pellets on the other hand, aren't worth much as they can only be used to make nano rechargers.

9) If any of you manage to find an Instruction Disc (Summon Grid Armor) or Instruction Disc (Nullity Sphere), congratulations, you just hit the lottery. Never sell these to shops. Auction them to the highest bidder. The Grid Armor I (GA1) sells for at least 25 million credits. GA4 sells for anywhere from 250 million to 500 million credits. I'm not sure how much Nullity Sphere sells for, but certainly many, many millions. Unless of course, you want to use them yourself. GA is for fixers and NS is for Nanotechnicians.

10) Remember to use helpbot and recipebot! Type /tell helpbot help and /tell recipebot help. Lots of useful stuff there.

[deccan]

In case anyone is interested in in-game events here's the latest issue of the ARK prepared TAG magazine:

http://ark.anarchy-online.com/tag/tag5.pdf

The interesting part is an invitation to all neutral characters to attend a meeting at Neuters R Us on 25th June.

Anyway, my main "Deccan" has just been recruited into Shattered Dreams. I've been trying to get a hold of their guy in charge during Australasian time zones since last week, but had bad luck getting online at the same time as him, finally, their org president fhinn made a point of staying online specifically to wait for me.

We had a short interview in Newland City and then I got accepted in the org. Then fhinn took me on a tour to their city in Newland Desert. It's really cool, and I got bonuses to all nanoskills and some other stuff like run speed from the org's city buildings and notum towers.

They have special org only shops where they provide a variety of good stuff for practically free to org members. In their hq building is a workshop that boosted all my tradeskills to 200+ even though I never spent an IP on them, and they have a silo that effectively acts as a private arena to do friendly practise pvp fights. And oh yeah, their bar is way cool and is decorated with real carborich rocks. Some went up to ql 200+!

I notice too that their org channel gives additional information on notum tower fights. Normally players only get notification of outcomes of tower fights, but the org channel also gives information on tower fights starting, which I presume is to give org people the chance to rush to defend.

I'll see if I can into some org based activities today.