General Hints and Tips

This is a collection of hints and tips that I have learned either from reading through websites or from playing the game. These are arranged into three basic sections covering the client interface, using and increasing skills and general gameplay tips. However within these sections there is no particular order to the information, it just gets added as I think of it or find it in my notes. One day I might get time to come back and sort it out a little better!

Game Interface

• If you're dealing with stackable items in your inventory holding down the control key when clicking on a pile will let you select just one item without having to work down the slider bar.
• When setting up a hot key to teach language skills you only need to include a single character of text on each line for it to work. To further cut down on spamming the person being taught can put the teacher on their ignore list for the duration. This also means that the skill improvement messages will be easier to see. To communicate with your student while on their ignore list, use an emote line.
• In order to drink alcohol or use most other 'usable' items, they must be sitting in a main inventory slot when you right click on them. Consequently you should always keep at least 1 main inventory slot free of bags. Some items (eg: a ring of levitation) can also be used on other people besides yourself, so make sure to target yourself before using it.
• Any main inventory slot can be set up as a hot key for fast access - very useful to access those 'usable' items.
• When other players inspect your character they can only see the items you are wearing and not those that you are carrying. In place of your inventory slots they see a description box that will list your guild if you belong to one, and can be used to enter a short bio for your character. To access this box you need to change to a third party view of your character by using the 'F9' key, and then right click on your character as you would to inspect someone else. In this mode you can enter any relevant text into the description box.
• You can change the default view of the client interface by using the 'F10' key. One 'F10' will give you the full screen display with all spell icons and party information available. This view gives you a much larger picture of the world around you. You can also remove the shading from the text and control boxes by hitting the '`' key. A second 'F10' will give you a full screen display with no client controls showing - ideal for taking screenshots of those classic photo opportunities! Note that hot key controls will still work in this view even though you can't see them. A third 'F10' takes you back to the original windowed display so you can cycle through again.
• In your client option settings there is a control for 'particle density'. Turning this up to 'high' will give some spectacular displays of things like spell effects, but this can cause a lot of lag on your system or just cause you to be rather blinded in combat if there is a lot of spell casting going on! If you are having a problem with this turn the setting down to 'low' or 'off' as appropriate.
• The more objects your client has to draw on your screen the more resources it requires and therefore the more prone you are to suffer from lag. One of the worst contributors to this problem is large numbers of corpses lying around so get into the habit of clearing up your corpses as you go. If you don't want the loot either destroy it or drop it, but never leave it lying on the corpse to decay. Decaying corpses in the vicinity of your battle area can also make targetting a nightmare.
• In your client option settings is a control for 'sound effects'. Once this gets to about halfway up it will enable environmental audio if your sound card and system are up to playing it. This can be very useful to have turned on as you can then not only hear mobs approaching you before you can see them but with a 4 speaker sound system can even tell which direction they are coming from!

Character Skills

• Unlike other skills the Sense Heading skill will only improve based on the number of successes you get with it. Consequently this raises very slowly at low levels when you are failing a lot. Keep hitting the button! On the plus side, you can practice this skill while meditating and even while in combat.
• Unlike most skills given at first level, Taunt does not seem to increase through use until you have a point in it. Invest 1 practice point here before leaving your guild and then use constantly in solo battle for fast increases.
• Skill improvements on spell schools will happen as long as you cast the spell - including on yourself or green mobs or even on corpses, so these can be practised in downtimes. Weapon skills and offense/defense skills will only improve when you are fighting mobs that will give you experience.
• Once you reach the level to gain your spell specialisations choose the one that you wish to train to the highest level and train this repeatedly until it reaches 51. If you inadvertantly let one of the others reach 51 first you will have to do the Sol Ro temple quest to reset them to get the correct skill to the higher levels. All but one of these specialisations are capped at 50, your primary specialisation is capped at 200.
• Class skills gained above level 1 all require you to use a practice point on them before they will start to increase with use. However, most of these skills will actually start at the same value as your level from using a single practice point, so if you gain your skill at level 8 and use one pratice point on it at the guild that skill will begin at 8 and increase from there. Note that this does not apply to trade skills! Additionally, trade skills can only be increased to about 20 with points from your guild trainer.

Gameplay

• When generating new characters always select 'agnostic' for your religion if it is available. For some reason NPCs have an uncanny ability to spot your religion just by looking at you and if they don't like that religion it can be very difficult if not impossible to get on their good side.
• Up to and including level 3 you will always respawn from a death with your newbie weapon and a full set of food and drink.
• Up to and including level 5 you will not lose any experience when you die, however any corpses you have will decay in a mere half hour. Once you reach level 6 corpse decay time increases to 24 hours online or a week offline. Note that 'online' means the player being logged in playing any of the characters on the account, not just the character that has an uncollected corpse. Downside to this is that you start to lose experience for your deaths.
• When using the /loc command note that the first number given is the N-S co-ordinate and the second is the E-W. This is contrary to the normal (x,y) cartesian graph system and can take a bit of getting used to. The third co-ordinate is the normal z-axis that tells you how far up or down you are.
• Although meditating can be a bore there are things that you can still do in this state. Fishing will work and you can practice sense heading. You can also indulge in any trade skills that require a portable container such as tailoring, fletching, jewellery and even baking if you have a spit with you.
• For weight restricted classes with low strength, carrying large sewing kits instead of backpacks can be beneficial as they weigh much less. They can also hold things that are too large to fit in a backpack eg: halberds. Just make sure you never hit the combine button or you will lose everything!
• You don't have to run around killing lots of greens just to improve faction. A single hit or cast on a mob is sufficient for you to share the faction hits once the mob is killed, as long as you stay within the zone. A quick way to build faction is to run around a low level zone casting heals and buffs on players already engaged with the relevant mobs. Or load up a non or low damage spell or weapon and take a single swipe at the mob they're fighting then move on to another one. Hang around long enough and you'll receive all the faction hits when they kill their various targets. Bear in mind that if you're going to do some damage to someone else's kill that it is only polite to ask first and make sure you only do a very small amount of damage, particularly if it is a very low level mob!
  Additionally, you will take a faction hit if a mob attempts to attack you and is then killed by someone else while you are still in the zone. This can sometimes be a problem, so if for instance Mangler tries to take a chunk out of you while in Rivervale zone rapidly before some unsuspecting fool offs the poor mutt and you find yourself sharing the bad faction!
• If you're travelling a lot check out the locations of the various bards around Norrath that hand out mail quests (see the Ak'Anon quest details on the Allakhazam site). Delivering the bard mail gives rewards in various amounts of gold but more importantly gives some useful faction adjustments. Do this quest often enough and you'll get enough good faction to ensure better than average prices at any of the bard guilds around Norrath.
• The prices you get for buying and selling can be improved greatly by having high charisma. If you can raise your charisma to 106 you'll get the best prices available and save yourself a small fortune. The best way to do this is to get hold of pieces of charisma jewellery to carry around with you. Never wear it at the expense of better or more useful items, but always remember to put it on before buying and selling at merchants.
• If you have a pet to command try and find a rusty weapon that does 8 or more damage and give it to your pet. This should help to increase its damage output but a long delay factor on a weapon will not slow down its hitting rate. At higher levels pets get dual wield so if you give them 2 one handed weapons they will start to get 2 hits instead of one.