A - GUILD RULES OF CONDUCT
1 - Ok, i'm in, now?
First thing, say hello and introduce yourself. In short, have some manners. If the first thing you do after joining is asking for buffs or items, you're already on the shortest path to be kicked straight away. Yeah, we're evil bastards.
2 - Noob guild rights and duties
As a new member, you'll be ranked TRIAL for a week. During that period, you'll have no guild rights like access to the guild store, neither you'll have access to guild tagged sets. Exceptions on this last rule MAY happen, at the complete discretion of guild admins, for unusual cases (like high level trials). All in all, anyway, you have to understand that guild tagged sets are a bonus for our members, but everyone must do his best to be as much self sufficent as he can, and it's in the trial period that you have to show us you joined 'cause you were interested in the guild, not only in its benefits for you.
On TRIAL you can already ask for buffs. Of course, by following the rules (see further down)
While on TRIAL you have to show your skills, willingness to learn the game and be helpful to your guildmates, and your manners. In short, don't be an asshole, and you'll soon get past the trial period.
The first ranks after trial will progressively have more rights, like access to the guild store, tagged sets, etc.
3 - BUFF rules
First of all, refer to this thread http://asphaltanza.forumgratis.biz/ftopic207.html for all the details. In short, you have to ask for buffs only when you have enough stamina to get real advantage from 'em, and you have to be specific when asking. "Buffs plz" generic requests will result in warnings, then punitive measures up to kicking. Also remember that there's really no point in asking for certain high level buffs when you are extremely low level. Refer to Kanjie's post for details, or either ask someone experienced about it.
Finally, you MUST ask only for buffs you don't have yourself, and as well you should state at least on your bio which ones you have rised to at least 100. Being found at asking a buff you have yourself will get you punished. Badly.
And, of course, as you ask for buffs, you have in time to be willing to buff yourself other people when they ask for it (if they ask for a good reason). And a thank you after receiving what you asked for is more than welcomed. Buffs are free, manners too.
Oh, and don't ask for doubler unless you have MAXIMUM stamina, and it would be best if your stamina max is AT LEAST 1000. It would be wasted otherwise. If you don't meet these requirements, don't expect to ask every day for a doubler and get away with it. Buy 'em in the AH or from some indipendent cheap buffer if you really have to (wasted money, but that's your money, so suit yourself).
4 - Tagged sets and recall system
After the trial period, you may ask to use a tagged set, or some tagged items. Keep in mind that :
a) You shouldn't use more than 1 full tagged set at once. We can't do EVERYTHING for ya, right?
b) You should help improve our sets by forging/crafting the one you wear. Considering how much money you spare by using a tagged set, you really should have some fsps to do that.
c) Tagged sets are everyone's, NOT YOURS. You are only taking them on loan for hunting purpose. This means that when you are offline, those items may be recalled for another player who need 'em. Thus, as soon as you can, you should provide yourself a defensive backup set to wear before logging out. This is for your advantage, otherwise there's the risk of being undressed. We know that low level players usually haven't enough space to keep a backup set, and we try to manage recalling to create the least issues possible, but still there's not too much we can do. Thus, at least, if you are highly dependant on a tagged set, take care of logging out without too much gold on hand, so there will be no trouble even if you get naked overnight.
d) Tagged sets are everyone's, NOT YOURS. Yeah, again. Whining 'cause some items were recalled from you, will show us that you haven't understood the guild cooperation spirit. And may grant you a punishment.
When you need a tagged set, and it's not available right away in the store, ask to anyone whose rank is Idiot Savant or higher to get one recalled for you.
5 - Bank Deposits
While you are at a very low level, the amount of gold you can deposit is quite unimportant, so you haven't to bother yourself too much with deposits. They will be of course welcomed, but you should focus in investing your resources to grow quickly, and then contribute when you'll have enough to be worth the effort. In any case, when you want to deposit to the guild, send an alert through mass message some minutes (5-10) before depositing, so that other people willing to contribute but without a deposit available ATM will be able to send you their gold. Once you deposited the total amount, of course, you'll have to send 'em back 75% of their contribution.
6 - Teh Punished? WTF?
So, you did something wrong kiddo. Bad, bad boy. Being ranked as The Punished is one of the punitive measures you may incur into for unfair behaviours and breaking the rules. While punished you'll have no right for tagged items, buffs, and you'll be under the max taxation rate. Be careful pal, this means you're already on a thin rope... whine about the measure taken, or keep breaking the rules, and the kick is around the corner.
7 - Going up in ranks
The basic way to climb the rank ladder is by accumulating XPs for the guild (it happens automatically while you exp). This is true, however, only up to a certain level. After that, your overall behaviour and involvement in the guild life will be taken into account before promoting you to ranks which grant you higher rights. Yeah, you should be here to play with us, not between us.
B - GAMEPLAY SUGGESTIONS
1 - The first steps
In the first levels your greatest concern should be get to around lvl 50 as soon as possible. Under that level there's not much else you can effectively do apart from exping. These are 3 links to great resources that will help you a lot in your hunts :
http://onemanmob.page.tl/Home.htm?PHPSESSID=dc2cd915975ac3d24493f82571f2a8f0 - A site full of resources.
http://www.fallenswordguide.com/ - unofficial guide for maps, mob stats, quest details, etc.
http://forum.fallensword.com/viewtopic.php?t=39559 - a nice guide on the first levels, where and how to exp.
There are few basic things you have to keep in mind to get started in the best way :
a) Spend your level up points ONLY in Attack and Damage. The best ratio is 1 atk point each 3-5 dmg points.
b) Thus, most of the low level defense skills are worthless. Don't waste your skill points on 'em. The first skills you should rise up are, in order : Adept Learner, Treasure Hunter, Librarian, Merchant. You'll need these buffs every day, thus it's best to be self sufficent on these as soon as possible. Attack buffs will become really precious later in the game, way after lvl 100, so there's not much need to bother over them at start.
c) Your aim is to be able to always oneshot the mobs (this is until lvl 140). This means you should always have more ATK than the mobs DEF, and more DMG than the mobs Armor+HP. This is why DMG and ATK are the most useful stats. If you find yourself unable to oneshot the common mobs around you, this means you have to change/upgrade your equip.
2 - Now the real game starts!
Ok, you're lvl 50, you are nicely equipped, it's time to learn how to make real money. There are various ways to make money, here are some suggestions for each one :
A - Free Offers
Yay, they are a pain in the ass, but it's the fastest way when you are low level to get that initial capital of fsps to invest later on. Usually, the ultrafast and easy offers are those which pay more often. Remember to : Use IE and not Firefox while trying 'em; Always use a different email for each one (many offers are from the same circuit, thus if you already get paid once on that circuit, you'll get no more until they think you are a new client... and don't worry about "fairness" of this system, this suggestion comes from the game admin himself
; Do latest ones (the ones upper in the page) first, the more recent they are the more likely they are to pay; Avoid offers which require you to download anything, they are dangerous.B - Bounty Hunting
The point in BH is to optimize your chances and stamina. First of all, avoid bounties if they haven't at least 1 FSP prize, it's just not worth the bother. You have to understand, though, that since most people follow this same conduct, FSP bounties will be taken few seconds after appearing on the board. Thus you have to be fast. Thus, again, you should be sure of having the best equip for your level, so you are sure that you'll be victorious against anyone of your level or lower. That way you haven't to check their stats (losing precious seconds) before taking the bounty. If you're not sure if a bounty is already taken or not, check the equip of the bounty head : if it's damaged, then 99% someone is already after him and he's in the lead, not worth the bother, since most of the times the one who started the bounty will always be the one finishing it first (unless exceptions, like a lucky deflect or something like that).
Also, don't bother about "only XXXXXX can take my bounty" / "don't take my bounty if" and crap like that. You can't win a bounty if you lose your time reading the kid's whinings. Sometimes this means you'll be back bountied, yeah. Risks of the business, but if you win the bounty and get the fsps you wanted, who cares?
C - Farming
Another good way to rise up a capital, is farming elites of a lower level than you, thus those elites you can kill yourself without a group (which means you're not spending 20 stamina for the group each time). Choose an elite which spawns in small maps, and whose drops sells for a decent price (fsps). The Girath is a good example. You need at least 5 AH slots to be effective, and you should use the cheap FI250 and four leaf (the four leaf potions are really cheap now, go for 'em, you'll spend way less than getting buffed for a price by someone).
Then, start the hunt. Keep in mind that unique elites like the girath (those elites of which there's only one at a time in that small map) respawns every 10-15 minutes after being killed. Thus, once you found and killed it once, keep an eye at the clock, and you should always find it again before the others who are hunting like you in the area, and most of all you'll be using the least amount of stamina.
Now, sell your drops on AH. Be relatively cheap : you have to make a profit, but you also have to sell your drops fast to free space for the next ones.
D - Adam Smith's Capitalism : Auction House
This will be anyway, by far, your main source of income : speculating. Buy low - sell high, it's simple as that, but it takes patience, and some... tricks.
First of all you need a starting capital and enough backpack and auction slots. Depending on your level this requirement may change, i'll just say to make an example that i have 5 auction slots, and keep a spare capital of no less than 200 fsps always at hand. Yeah, if you're low level, now you fainted. Don't worry, it's true, you'll get to those numbers rather soon if you follow my suggestions.
1) Focus on high priced, noob items. The highest the medium price, the highest the profits margins, the lower the level, the most likely is to find noobs who don't know the real value of the item, and thus will be selling it way underpriced, or buying it way overpriced. Good examples are shields of girath (for starters), empowered plague helms, the lesser santa set (especially the claws), the cockatrice set, et cetera.
2) Prices are dynamic, they depend on various factors, like the actual disponibility of the item, the actions of the big merchants who try to monopolyze the market, and so on. Keep always an eye on this, adapt yourself to the daily prices. Look at which prices people is willing to BUY!
3) Don't rush. If you plan to get the most profit from an item, 2 days will often be the minimum time needed.
4) Think like a noob. Noobs loves that "perfect" yellow word over their items. If it grants 'em only a worthless stat point on a worthless stat more than an excellent one, they don't care, they will be willing to open their purse just to have the "perfect" piece. At the same time, most people don't do that, and thus are more noobs than noobs : they will be in a hurry to sell their very poor drop at a way lower price than usual. See where i'm going? As an example, buy that very poor item at 2 fsps less than the usual price, then craft it with 1 fsp. It cannot get worse than it was, right? If you aren't lucky, it will get poor or average : you'll sell it back at +1 fsp, thus no profit, but no losses either. If you are rather lucky, it will get good or very good... it should grant you 1-2 fsps profit. But when you're really lucky (and it happens rather often even with 1 fsp crafts), you'll get an excellent or even perfect result. This will be the real profit source.
You can already put the item back on auction for a 5-6 fsps profit, but, weren't we talking about noob items?
Every item of lvl 50 or less, will cost you 12 fsps to full forge (10 fsps + ~200k gold). So, let's say we would have put our perfect item back on sale at 25 fsps to have good selling chances, investing 12 fsps to FF it will need us to put it at 37 to make the same profit. Nice thing is that the noobs digs those 5 yellow balls just as much as they dig the yellow "perfect" craft, and often they don't know the real price of forging (or they don't bother). This means, in fact, that if we were able to sell that item at 25 for, let's say, 5 fsps profit, FForging it we will be usually able to sell it for 40, or even 45 fsps in a relatively short time, netting a profit of 8-13 fsps instead of "only" 5.
5) of course, apart from this psychological games, another great source of profits will be errors. Keep a close eye on items which price has increased a lot in a short time : it's likely to happen that someone doesn't look at that, and sells them for the price they bought 'em one month before... which may grant you easy and fast 20, 30, even more fsps profits. That's why you should always have at least 100 spare fsps : what will happen if you see a great occasion, but you haven't enough fsps to secure it immediatly?
6) When you are rich enough, you may start to do the same as someone already does on some sets : monopoly. Too many items of that kind around? The price is getting too low to grant you enough profits? Well, the solution is simple : buy everything which price is rather low, and sell them back to an higher price. This works better, of course, for items that already are not so common but always requested (like some SE sets). The more fsps you have to invest, the more weight your actions may have on the market price. Exploit your buying power to make even greater profits.
E - Sell your body, bitch!
There are various other ways to net some income. From selling your buffs to offering services, like avatars. Be original, find something people may need and you can offer. You have to understand that the world is full of idiots willing to pay for the most worthless things instead of learning how to do it themselves. Offering services you'll be able to exploit the lack of other's brain, as well as having the chance of meeting for business those rare players who have a brain and manners, which will become your allies. This will let you build a network of friendships and cooperations, which, in turn, will give you more profit opportunities.
This is the way to be successfull in the game. Going around begging for favours will only make you hated or ignored by everyone, closing all the doors before you.
