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
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
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. |
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After some thought of either choosing an Enforcer, a Martial Artist, or a Soldier for their combat abilities, we decided that big guns were awesome so we decided to go with a Soldier for our orange haired Solitus.
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Choosing a Name
While the choice of a character name is ussualy personal, remember that you need a name that isnt offensive in some way. Additionaly, if you want to PvP you might want to use a name that is not based on a profession theme, such as 'Ihealall' for a doc or 'Fullautoshtr' for a soldier, because those names allow people to pick you out very quickly in combat. If you are having trouble finding the name you want, consider adding a number to the end of the name. Once you have a name that you like you can start playing the game. If you have the Shadowlands expansion you can choose to start in the Jobe training area, or go to the ICC shuttle port on Rubi-Ka. If you have a free account you must go to Rubi-Ka. |
The User Interface
The main article for this topic can be found at: User Interface
Well now we are on the beach, ready to kick ass and chew bubble gum but... We should probably give some note to the snazzy hud we have going and explain how some of it works. The User Interface in Anarchy Online is very customizable, not only in the form of new interface 'skins' but also simply by the sheer virtue that many of the interface elements can be turned off or moved around with a couple mouse clicks so that everything works how you want it to. We are going to review some of the basic elements of the default interface though, and how to use it to navigate the world.
Chat Box
The chat box is your main link into all the chat channels of the game, system messages, damage read outs, and news feeds. The default window currently only has a hand full of public channels and all of your combat channels. by default the channel you speak to is the vicinity channel, but you can change that by either clicking on the name of the channel you want to talk to in the window, or when the cursor is in the text bar, pressing 'tab' to bring up a list of channels you can talk to. You may also open a private message box to a play by clicking their name in the chat box.
Some useful shortcuts include:
/v <message> or just / <message> which talks to the vicinity without changing channels.
/t <message> sends a message to your team channel without changing your default channel
/o <message> posts a message on your organization channel without changing your default channel
Shift + R responds to the last private message in the chat bar
Right Command
Left Command
Scroll Bar
Quick Bar
Pool Indicators
Compass
Inventory
Source
http://www.anarchyonline.com/content/guides/beginnersguide/gettingstarted.html