Beginner Guides

Welcome to Anarchy Online! The group of guides found on this page and linked into this page are meant to serve as a guide to your first experiances on the game to help you get orriented with how the game is played and how the different systems work.

Creating a Character

The first step of playing Anarchy Online is to create a character. You will find offical instructions on how to do so in the chapter about character creation in the online manual. Note that you can store eight characters on your account at the same time, and delete characters to make place for new ones. Don't be afraid to experiment a bit.

Through this guide we will make an example character to walk you through many of the low level quests and events found early in the game.

Choosing A Breed

After starting the character creation process, the first choice you need to decide on is the choice of a breed. A breed is similar to a 'race' in other games, although all the breeds in Anarchy Online come from the same groups of human ancestors, and many are genetically engineered, but they are all essentialy 'human'. The choice of a breed effects several things in game. The first thing is influences is how much each of your base abilities cost. Some breeds favor certain base abilities like Strength or Agility, and have to spend fewer points on improving it; on the other hand, those same advantages come with abilities that are disfavored and are more expensive for characters of that breed to buy. The second thing that breed has an effect on is the amount of health and nano pool a character gets for each point in the skill that controls them. Choice of sex has no influence on game mechanics, females are equivalent to males. Here is a basic overview Solitus are a direct decendent of humanity and are balanced in all abilities. Opifex have been bred for stealth and speed, as such their favor their Agility and Sense but count less on their Strength and Stamina. Nanomages were created as Nanotech research assistants and as such they have more Intellegence, Psychic, and have more nanopool because of their greater command of nanobots. They are more frail though, depending less on physical abilities like Strength, Stamina, Agility, and have less health. Nanomages are considered harder to play at high levels due to their lower health. Atrox were specialy created as mine workers and were made sexless (though most identify as male). They are large hulking beings that favor Strength and Stamina over Intellegence, Psychic, and Sense. Also, Atrox are much heartier and have greater health, but less Nanopool due to their less than intuitive control of nano technology. Atrox can be good to play because of their high health but suffer as casting professions, and sometimes find it difficult to get into better equipment earlier that requires one of its many unfavored abilities. you can find more indepth information on Breeds here. When you have decided on a breed and gender for your character by clicking on the model you want, click on the button labeled 'next' While some of the options are very tempting, for this character we are going to go with a Solitus Male to get an even spread of different attributes for what ever profession we choose.

Choosing Appearance

The Appearance screen does not effect the way a character behaves in the system of the game, and are largely for aesthetic purposes. Each of the different breeds has a different set of faces based on its gender and rolling the mouse over the face arrows will zoom your view into the face of the character. Height and Weight change the model in similar ways for each character. The choice of how your character appears can be important though, since there are very few ways to change it once you have decided in character creation.

For our Solitus we decided that we wanted him to be tall and thin, and that the orange flat top had a millitary look about it, since we want our character to be a shooter.

Choosing A Profession

The choice of a profession is all important in character creation because it determines how much your skills cost, what your list of abilites (defined by your nano programs) will be, and several other features related to the expansions such as Perk sets and Research lines. Some professions are more difficult to play that others due to a combination of cost of equipment or the need for special stategies for playing the character. While more indepth information can be found in the Professions guides, an over view will be give here. When reading through the information given in character creation, remember that many things have changed since the descriptions were written so you may wish to do a little background research before you commit to a profession. There is no law against experimenting though, and some times that is the best way to find out how a profession plays. If you do not have the Shadowlands expansion the options for Keeper and Shade will be greyed out and unusable since they can only start in the Shadowlands.

Adventurers are generalists and have a wide span of abilites ranging from weapon buffs, defensive programs, healing, and the ability to calm monsters. Adventurers specialize in two weapon fighting with either swords or pistols and have the ability to transform themselves and others into animals to gain special abilities. Agents are masters of deception and espanoge, often working as spies. Agents work with Damage over Time (Dot) programs, snares, calms, and aiming buffs. Agents specialize in rifles and have the unique ability to mimic other professions and use many of their programs at an increased difficulty. Bureaucrats work as intermediaries and specialize in crowd control and subtle team enhancement. They have groups of nano programs that can enhance the team they work with, or hinder enemy abilitie as well as having a wide range of calms and snares. Crats are also a pet class that gets other creatures to fight for them and has a special group of programs to charm mobs into working for them. Doctors are the best healers in the game but also have a wide command of abilites that effect the body. The program list of a doctor also includes programs that slows down an enemy so they hit less, many DoT type 'poisons' as well as health buffs. Enforcers are the meat tanks of the game and specialize in drawing aggression of mobs on themselves. They are diverse melee fighters and have a wide range of weapon buffs, as well as health buffs to keep themselves alive longer. Enforcers have special Area Effect (AE) taunts that draw the aggression of all the monsters in range. Engineers are a pet class that uses the strongest battle pets in the game, as well as being accomplished tradeskillers and specializing the all forms of protective nano programs. Engineers often use pistols or grenade launchers and have special nano programs to nullify special attacks.

The User Interface

The shortcut bar allows you to have everything action you need easily available at all times, without having to keep several windows open on the screen. It has ten layers, accessible by left-clicking the arrows next to the layer number or by scrolling the mouse wheel up or down. You can jump directly to a layer by holding shift and clicking the corresponding layer number, 1 to 0 (10), on the keyboard.

Each layer can hold ten shortcuts, linking to attack actions, nano programs and more. To activate a shortcut, left-click it, or press the corresponding number, 1 to 0 (10), on the keyboard.

Upon entering the game shortcut bar will already contain some shortcuts; Start Attack (1), Walk/Run (2), Sit/Stand (3), Follow (4) and Exit (0). Follow is actually a macro - a chat command made into a shortcut, and allows you to follow your current target, whether friend or foe, until you press a movement key.

How to add different actions to the bar will be explained throughout the guide, as it varies slighty with what you want to add. To remove a shortcut, move the mouse pointer over it and hold the left mouse button down. The shortcut will attach to the mouse pointer. Move the mouse pointer away from the shortcut bar and release the mouse button. Right-click once, and the shortcut will be gone.

You can toggle the visibility of the shortcut bar by pressing y on the keyboard. The shortcuts will work through using the keyboard even if the bar itself is hidden.

Mini-Map

The mini-map in Anarchy Online is a very handy tool that can be used both indoors and outside. It provides a local map of the zone you are in. To activate it press CTRL + 6 or select mini-scroll bar option 6. The map will should appear along the right side of the screen. The stores map terminal provides additional maps and upgrades to the map.

Source

http://www.anarchyonline.com/content/guides/beginnersguide/gettingstarted.html