NewPlayerGuide

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So, our little boy is leaving home to start his military career? Very good, I’m sure you would bring fortune and fame to the family. I’ve always been proud of you and I assure you Uncle Denning would support you in whatever ways I can. Here’re a few gold coins to help you starting up, and bring some of our family guards with you….wait! I know you are eager for adventure, but before you go, spare a few hours with your Uncle, I’ll tell you what you must know as a troop leader…and trust me, you will find this advice more helpful than the few gold pieces you are holding on your hands.


Building up your Troops

The first thing you ask after heading out would probably be: What should I do? Where should I go? The answer is simple, head to the realm’s capital. Your realm’s capital is the only place you could recruit troops as a soldier, and you would want to recruit more men then bring just your personal guards to the battle. If you are not sure which place is the realm’s capital, check with your councilor. Ask him for ‘information’ and check the ‘realm list’ he could offer you, you will find every detail you need to know there.

Once you arrive at the realm’s capital, you would find different kinds of soldiers available to be recruited, given you can pay the price of course. You will find most of them having better training and equipment than your personal guards, which is normal. After all, they are the professional who fight for a living while our family guards mainly deal with guard duties or maybe hunting a few rogues once in a blue moon. Don’t get too excited and hire them immediately, do some Maths first and determine how many men you could hire while being able to pay them at least for a week. You may in fact wait a few days until you got more gold because once you hire you need to start paying them. (Oh yes, you will get more gold, I’ll tell you more about it later) Mind you my boy, if you don’t pay them for more than 7 days, they would start to be upset, and they would even tie you up and rob all your gold before deserting you. Even if you are lucky enough to avoid that, they would definitely run across the realm spreading bad words on you, which would make you a dishonourable person in everyone’s eyes.

When deciding what troops to hire, do not simply pick those that are best in training. You want the new recruits to teach your existing troops more about fighting? Give it up my boy. New recruits won’t improve your existing troops as much as you expect, but if they are worse than your existing troops, they will definitely bring down your training. If you want to make the best use of the very few gold pieces you have in your purse, recruit those with similar training with your personal guards. Keep in mind that you can always recruit those strong guys after your men have grown stronger through actual combat, or after they got entirely wiped out.


Buying Paraphernalia

Behind any successful troops, there is a successful team of Paraphernalia. Paraphernalia are those who do not take part directly in the fight, but could assist your soldiers after the battle is over. I would introduce certain paraphernalia that is especially useful and can be seen virtually among any successful troop.

Healers

As simple as it sounds, they help you heal your wounded soldiers or just prevent them from dying. Their wages are 5 gold per week. However, having one of them often proves to be saving you money.

Scout

Will give you professional scout report, with troops combat strength as well as movement for this turn to be shown, also help your troops travel faster. Eat you 1 gold per week.

Cart

Help you to carry at most 6 wounded soldiers without slowing your troops travel speed, need 2 healthy soldiers to operate.

Help raises troops’ morale in close combat, a must for troops type like infantry or cavalry.


Saving Gold

Although you could be more generous in your spending at this point, sooner or later you will find yourself in lack of gold. There is no easy way in managing your financial situation. However, I will provide you some tips that may be useful to help you save a few gold pieces.

You should only recruit soldiers that you are able to maintain. As a young troop leader you could command a maximum of 40 men. You can maintain such a number of troops for a week or so with the gold your family gives you. But once your unit has been wiped out or suffered heavy casualties, you may have difficulties in rebuilding the unit to 40 men as it used to be. That’s fine, you don’t need a fixed number of at least 40 men in order to fight effectively. Having troops of at least 40 men is not a golden rule or what is ‘supposed to be’. Recruit according to what you have in your purse and how much tax income you are expected to receive each week. Make sure that you can pay all of your men for at least a week, even if a large battle is comming. You still have to pay the dead man's wage to his family.

Your men expect to be paid every 7 days. I would advise you to pay them then. Paying them too early is never a very wise choice. For example, a caravan demands 2 gold each week. If you pay them on the second day you hire them, it takes you 1 gold. If you pay them everyday, you end up spending 7 gold a week on payment instead of 2.

Paying your men before a large battle has both good points and bad. For one, if your paying your men early, you could be wasting gold, such as in the previous eample. On the other hand, everyone enjoys getting paid and morale will rise significantly. The choice is ultimately yours to make, but you need to pay attention to the cost vs the gain. In other words: is it worth paying extra gold to increase morale by only 3%?

Well…I’m still broke finally

Yes, that happened to your uncle before. In that case if your prestige is still 3 or below, do some paid work within cities. Alright I know what’s in your mind, think that’s peasant’s job and you are too noble for that. But admit it, you got no money! Although it is dishonourable, who cares as long as it can bring you gold? (With 10 honour you can already command at most 40 men, which is far more than you can maintain in the foreseeable future!) Also, honour is not too difficult to regain while prestige is. Oh I remember! Your aunt won’t enjoy hearing you do paid work. But don’t worry, uncle Denning will say some good words for you, though still she may be mad after hearing it for a few times and stop you from doing too much of it.


Read Realm Plan and Greet Everyone upon Joining Realm

As a young troop leader you’ll have very little idea on how your realm works, who are your enemies and where are the battles taking place. Read the Realm Plan carefully, it gives you whatever you need to know about your realm, and so you won’t act like a fool in the eyes of your realm’s noblemen. Also, greet everyone and be active to voice out your opinion. Remaining silent makes people think you didn’t read the realm plan and have no idea what you are doing, it could make you on top of the ‘to-be-kicked-list’. It may also make others think that you have problems with reading comprehension or a lack of interpersonal skills. Keep in mind those in your realm will be the ones who fought with you side by side on the battlefield. Do try to make friends with them. You may find them offering you more valuable advice than you uncle Denning could give in return.



Be Proud, Be what you want to be

Time flies and it’s 2 hours already. Well I guess it’s time for you to leave my boy. Keep in mind that you are an indispensable part of our noble family. Exercise your good judgment and keep having the moral courage to speak the truth and set wrongs right, if there are wrongs within your realm. Your king is your superior, but you are not his slave. Do not follow orders without question if you smell something’s wrong. Hold true to your belief, no one could make you do anything you don’t want to. (Yes, so you can ignore what I’ve told you in this 2 hours if you wish =P) Safe travel to you my boy. Fight well, and do come back and visit us whenever you are free.



Acknowledgement (OOC)

I have just joined this game for about 2 weeks. I find it to be a very complex one and I actually feel quite confused for the first few days. So I message everyone in Darka, Perdan and Itorunt and ask for ‘newbie advice’. Most of the comments/tricks I’ve written above are actually what I received from other players. Credits must be given to them. (Many of the messages are over 7 days old and sorry I cannot dig up you guys names) As for the ‘facts’ mentioned above, I either take them from the game manual or Wiki. I find much valuable information there. What I tried is to gather the most important one and write out a guide that hopefully new players will find it useful

Special thanks must be given to Mr Jones, king of Darka. I met him on IRC and he answered many of my stupid questions, after that he dragged me into his realm.:) Whenever I’m not clear about anything, I would simply message him and he always tried his best to answer.:)

By Denning of the Cheung Family

Update/clairification of Saving Gold by Fredrich of the McDugan Family.