Arete Landing

Arete Landing is the current Playfield where new players arrive, added in Patch 18.7 which was released on April 21, 2015. Because of the extensive work done in the previous starting area, it is recommended to read the ICC Shuttleport article for tips about starting out; the facts that are not specific to the area are generally still valid, for example the Health and Nano Kits section.

Quests

Quests are always little complicated by the question of "where?" due to the orange indicator on the Compass. The Compass, like most everything else on the screen, can be moved as desired. The Landing area is probably one of the more complicated, due to the vertical element of the map and a maze of walls at the ground level and a few invisible textures on scaffolding that looks as though you should be able to walk through it when you can't. AO is a game where you are rewarded extravagantly for taking your time and thinking things through, so this is as good a time as any to get in that groove. The AO Universe walkthrough linked to below should be sufficient if you find yourself stuck on the main quests or want to be sure of getting all of the side quests, but there are some Notes below here too. The Vendors section of the AOU guide has info on quests and crafting, including our old friend Antonio Stacklund, who has like us moved on from ICC Shuttleport; not just what you can see for yourself in the vendors' inventory.

• Marcus Stone has a sidequest not noted by AOU; helping his wounded workers. The quest says to right click instead of left clicking as with the extinguisher, but you must place the icon on your quickbar and target the wounded worker.

Notes

• If in a team, one person will talk to Marcus Stone and get the firefighting quest. The other must wait until they put out the fire to talk to Marcus.
• Personalized Basic Robot Brain, which adds to Sense, is not increased in effectiveness every Quality Level. So AOU's "higher is better" advice, given the low levels of Robot Junk available, is pretty misleading. In general, higher QL is better, but certain quality levels, where the requirements are as low as they can be and the bonuses are as high as they can be, are better still. These are called Breakpoints and there is a whole article here, with a list of Breakpoints on some of the more useful items in AO. The levels of Robot Junk you want to watch for, for the foreseeable future, are 1, 10 and 26, unless you are making Junkmetal Armor and that is more fun than it is effective. Note that the level of the MasterComm is irrelevant to the quality of the finished product but VERY relevant to the total cost, and that this is your first opportunity to attempt that time-honored AO skill of Waiting Until The Right QL Is For Sale (in this case, QL 1). There will be plenty of MasterComms available later anywhere on Rubi-Ka if that does not work out.
• Most likely you will waltz in and pick the lock on the Storekeeper's strongbox without even thinking about it, just like all the other insanely dangerous things that have gone before. But in the unlikely event that the guard dog is not busy fighting the ICC Peacekeeper, you will have to wait for that or arrange it.
• If combat did not become real with the guard dog, it will on the way to Find the Thief. The monsters aren't just around every corner, they spawn incessantly and leap at you. Get the Newcomer's armor and level it, and be prepared at any time to fight at least two fleas. Stacklund's stuff might help but is expensive.
• "The Credit Card": If you have played before, you probably roughly know your priorities on the choice of 15K credits or the valuable full Omni-Med Suit. If not, note that you will want the suit anyway so you can have better Implants, ten thousand is not that much money later on, and taking the suit now will save a lot of time. Clanners would have to make an Omni character, transfer money at Borealis or somesuch to buy the suit, traipse around Omni-1 and market etc to buy all the pieces, and go transfer again. That's why you can still make a bit of money selling suits in Clan cities: suits, even at inflated prices, cost next to nothing in intermediate and late game terms, but obtaining them takes a fair bit of time.
• Quick checklist of NPCs with side missions: Marcus Stone, Alex Gibbs, Patrick Sun, Antonio Stacklund, Remi Gallois, Greedy Desert Reet, Leet King, Shady Guy, Leonora Marty (unless you pocket the money) and the alien Karli Cappelleri.

Mini Toolbar and Specials

Lower left hand side, top button: Commands. Choose Help/Settings. Choose Settings. (Preferences tab, default) Expand GUI. Click on the red dot next to Control Center. Scroll down to the bottom; activate the empty dot called, "Mini Toolbar". Look up the top right of the screen, and you will see a very thin bar with icons: this is your new best friend, and you could do worse than have the Wear tab up all the time for hot-swapping equipment for your entire career; this only becomes more rewarding as the challenges increase, whereas you will be changing gear more often at lower levels, so there is really no bad time to start learning it. The other windows should be opened and closed as needed.

Special Attacks such as Fast Attack, Fling Shot, or Burst fire are hidden away much more than they were before. There are dedicated hotkeys by default for these actions, and you can find what they are by navigating the same as for the Mini Toolbar, except instead of the Preferences tab, you look at the Fixed Keys and Key Bindings tabs. Or you can take a route that is easier to implement, but builds up habits that lead away from the quickest, most efficient gameplay, and add icons to your quickbar. The icons can be found at Commands > Control Panel, which toggles a window of icons including Specials.

Windows

They are best taken off of the chain. To do this, right click on the top of each window; it will now be stuck to your cursor, and you can place it back anywhere on the screen by left clicking. A tab will appear at the top of the window. Do this again with the tab, dropping it onto the top of another window, and they will now be stuck together, and you can tab between them. Combining the windows saves some space, obviously, and if the windows are not too dissimilar in size and shape, there will be no downside. You can even use the "Programs" window as an alternative to the Quickbars for nanos that are cast less often and out of combat. Same goes for the "Inventory" window that is not found on the Mini Toolbar, but on the lower left: you can click on meds here instead of using them from the quickbar, if desired, and managing backpacks of loot is a lot easier if the inventory is always up somewhere. Conversely, there are a lot of popup windows you may wish to reduce in size or move to places other than covering up where your character is fighting, especially if you are a melee fighter. And there is nothing wrong with making the chat window a little less intrusive; the rows of buttons on the left and right can be partially covered and still function, so chat on one side, inventory on the other may be an option. Even loot windows can be resized and moved, and they are not a single generic location, but there is actually a Loot Window 1, 2, etc, and if you get a pile of dead enemies, as can happen sometimes, you can adjust a reasonable number of them to overlap less, be smaller, or whatever and thus be easier to manage.

Leveling

Note that Anarchy Online is a game that rewards players of lower levels with opportunities specific to those levels: most common is Quests to level higher, like other games, but there are also three reasons to care less about experience than other elements, or even turn off experience gains altogether

1. AO gives you the opportunity to gain power by going up levels, of course, but also grants wide scope to gaining as much power as you can at any given level
2. Money-making opportunities are often level-specific (see Clicksaver and Buff Weapons); players will create Mission bots to run specific levels of missions for specific levels of item rewards
3. More rarely, players will make characters of a specific level to compete in Notum Wars battles

Links

• AO Universe - recommended - a very detailed walkthrough complete with dialogue. Possibly missing one sidequest.
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Anarchy Online - Arete Guide & Tutorial Part 1 (New starting area). Starting guide, with an overview of professions and skills, by a WoW player.
• Anarchy Online : Arete Starting Area complete playthrough. No intro, straight to efficient quest completion
• Anarchy Online - 2016 - Episode 1. First in a series