I've never written a guide before. But I started playing this game about a month ago and learned a lot and I think it's good to have this knowledge out there. 1. Technical stuff. First and foremost this game struggles a lot under newer operating systems and it will take you a while to optimize it for yourself. Basically what I'm saying is use ddwrapper, read what each option does, experiment with all options until the game feels best for you, do the same for dxwnd. In Cthulu's post he has his dxwnd config posted and it uses primary surface renderer which for me works for about 1 launch of the game then it starts glitching out and I have to switch back to gdi. All the fps that you see in game is 'fake' so you have to go by feeling of performance. Do not try and run the game in virtual machine if you have to, just install an older os instead. Virtual machines also (usually) don't use your gpu. When you're ready with ddwrapper/dxwnd settings you want to make as many login/characters as you want to play (if you die in order to not lose xp you alt+f4 from the game for 5 minutes or until map changes, if you're new it's likely that you'll die often) In dxwnd you want to click options and allow expert mode. There's a setting I found on the internet that worked for me. Under Timing - skip msec and experiment which works best for you, in that post it was 8 msec. Under ratio - again experiment in that post it was 2. Under directX - Auto primary surface blit ON and Forced mode ON. You must have multiple instances of the game installed on your system, 1 for every character you play and 1 for map editor. If you only use 1 folder if you log in multiple characters on the same map you'll run into the error of sprite.256 missing which kicks you out of the game every now and then. In your map editor folder you don't want to have ddwrapper in or no matter what you do you'll run into color issues (everything being purple). In all of your game folders you want to have the game run as administrator and under "reduced color mode 8bit" When you're ready with everything you want to log in in each of your acounts and set up your keybinds, then find the log file in your folder and copy it to the rest of your folders or every now and then your keybinds will get messed up. (File name will be something like allods2 and a bunch of numbers behind it) 2. Beginner guide. Before you start playing check onsite's beginner guide and frequently asked questions. (Playing a mage is great for farming potions and gold early on, tho it's super easy just to ask a player to give you potions, players get em as a drop on quest maps so they're likely to have a lot of them, stat potions are a huge boost early on) (Middle map is insane for potions and gold, once you have a decent astral level you can easily get 200 potions or 200 mil gold an hour [very click intensive]). Later on you'll need gold for scrolls on your warrior, it's likely that you'll never need to actually farm gold cos everything you kill gives you drops and gold but good maps to farm gold are "Jack of death" (in the middle above shop there's 4 bats that drop 2 astral books 10m each and respawn every 2 min 45 sec, so you get about 400m gold every hour) Or Hol'mgang top left corner, there's a king that drops 14.5m gold and 2 elves that drops 20m worth of staves but they respawn somewhat slowly. (This is also one of the best places to get xp) Find cthulu's guide and follow it however check maps in rotation, currently a few of the maps are not in rotation so you'll have to find another way to get the item mentioned in his guides (Wieder de is a good example). Also, you can easily skip some parts and/or do things differently which will save you a lot of time and effort. (I'm likely to make some vids later but) good examples are "purgatory" map for gloves, it's far easier to burn the trolls and lure archers and kill at least one of them before attempting to kill the mage and/or use fallen valey set (600 def) to completely ignore some of the attacks there. Another place where you can do things a lot safer compared to guide is "bad place" and just burn the trolls to death, slower but much safer. A map that you can completely skip is crazy islands. helm and body are easy and fast to get however shield requires a lot of rng and npc control for a specific npc to follow you to its death. 3)Bugs and Mechanics to be aware of. As I mentioned before you want to fix your keybinds and save your log file before playing because sometimes keybinds get messed up, which may lead to you being unable to cast, which in some locations is instant death. What happens is, say you have a weapon switch bound on f4 and then you change that keybind to a spell, say teleport and you try to teleport around, every now and then your character just starts walking and refuses to use the spell. Under the same category you want to always leave the game/account with "make camp" if you exit to windows and log back in it might mess your keybinds up. There's an invisibility bug of npcs where they just stay invisible and the only way to hit them is to auto attack them when you're next to them you don't see the npc or even numbers when hitting them. You just know they're there and that they're attacking you. The only way to fix is to exit to main menu and come back to game. This rarely happens and on most maps it's not 'invasive' like you're not likely to die because of it. There's a bug where you cast a curse on an npc and you see it on top of them but they still do full dmg to you. To fix just recast the curse. When playing warrior you want all of your scrolls to the left of your inventory starting with teleport ones and all of your items/loot to the right of your inventory and you want to scroll all the way to the right when looting on every map. This is because sometimes the game doesn't properly recognize the scroll/item. Which can lead to 2 situations one is the game trying to cast things but not doing it and burning the scrolls and the game trying to cast things but burning an item instead resulting in loss of that item. You also want to have both teleport scrolls on different keybinds. The game doesn't just detect the spell and distance you want to teleport to. Casting speed is both weapon and character dependent. For warriors fastest cast speed is spears and swords. followed by axe/bludgeon and I think last is crossbow. Mage is slower in general. This is important because warriors have 'fast casting' or I think in one place on the forum it's called 'double casting' it's an important mechanic especially when teleporting or cursing things. Double casting is a rhythm/feeling based thing that's somewhat easy to get and as long as you have a stable internet connection you'll be able to do it. To do it just equip your spear and attack something, another player or a troll/ogre with a lot of hp and listen to the sound of the hit. It's the same timing to cast things. All enemies in the game have 'weaknesses' an example for warriors is Axe is strong against Skeletons. Bludgeon weapons are strong against zombies. You're likely to almost never use sword and the only sword you'll probably use is the one that casts firewall from ancient town map. Orc shamans take more damage if you're not using a weapon. For Mage ogres/dragons are easiest to kill with blizzard Trolls with firewall But there's another interesting mechanic, you can hit things with your fists as if you're fighting as a warrior. To do so you want to unequip your staff. Add auto casting on healing and use your magic shield to attack enemies. You can control which target you're hitting by casting a spell like fireball first. This is great for things like skeletons that you can tank (1 on 1), urds. orc shamans.etc. it's super powerful cos it hits faster than staff with damage, can hit any target and hits super fast using body as a damage modifier. The only drawback is that it's melee distance and leaves you vulnerable.
