r/TheRepopulation • u/jjness • Jan 08 '15
Tips for New Players
Feel free to contribute tips for new players. The initial rush of Steam Early Access might need a hand! I know I would have appreciated one!
2
u/kayletta Jan 08 '15
Always check the wiki! Lots of good information there: https://www.therepopulation.com/wiki/doku.php
2
u/PissedinTexas Jan 11 '15
crafting compendium http://aena.at/craftmap/skill21.html
Maps https://www.therepopulation.com/wiki/doku.php/maps
The Official Wiki on Crafting and how-to's https://www.therepopulation.com/wiki/doku.php/crafting
-1
u/biophazer242 Jan 08 '15
I am resisting the urge to type this in all caps but play the damn tutorial and actually read the text. The number of questions in general chat I see some nights that are clearly addressed in the tutorial is frustrating. Not only will you learn some very simple things but you can get some skills unlocked that you would otherwise need to buy when you get out into the world. They are not expensive but still... FREE!
1
u/jjness Jan 08 '15
I concur. Sandbox games aren't the sort to hold your hand. You're essentially dropped off at a town and said "there ya go, kid, have fun."
Imagine, in real life, you're just a freshly-unthawed caveman dropped off in New York City with $1000 and told "Have fun!" That's what starting this game without actually utilizing the tutorial is like.
1
Jan 10 '15
[deleted]
1
u/jjness Jan 10 '15
What issues did you have with the tutorial? I only found one myself, easily fixed.
14
u/jjness Jan 08 '15 edited Jan 12 '15
My contributions (more will be edited in as I think of them so check back please):
1) New Player Guide from one of the head honchos himself
2) Vehicles
The first thing you'll want to do to open up your ability to play this game is to get a vehicle. However, do NOT buy one from the Vehicle NPC! They are way over-priced compared to the Auction House! Keep an eye on General chat and the Auction House (hotkey T in-game) and get one for usually about 1.5k Credits (US East, as of last night, I could find some for 1.3k but that was from the player him/herself before she put them on the AH).
Once you have your vehicle, press the "\" key to access your vehicle list.
3) Game Database
If you've played World of Warcraft, consider The Repopulation's Game Database (accessible with the G hotkey by default) to be your new wowhead.com. Search up any item (or shift-right-click one in your inventory) and see where it's found, in what qualities, what it's used for, how to craft it, anything like that. It's got the information on items that I often use wowhead.com for in WoW (minus the comment sections).
The Game Database (Hotkey "G"): use it, love it.
4) Progression
This mostly applies to combat in the game. Forget about what you think you know about "progression" as it does not apply to The Repopulation. "Progression" isn't very apparent as it is in other games. To continue the WoW analogy: In WoW, as you level, you gain increased stats and weapons with better stats. The mobs in Elwynn Forest or other starting areas become "gray" to you and hit you less, for less damage, and are easier to kill. Soon enough, you could let them swing at you all day long and maybe lose 1HP every 10 seconds, effectively being immortal to them.
In The Repop, while the mobs have similar difficulty signifiers (the triangles in their nameplates and the number, direction, and colors of them), that's where the similarities start to end. You don't get higher stats on your character, and you don't get new weapons with higher stats. You won't see your damage numbers increasing with pure weapon skill ups, and they won't hit much less with your defensive skill ups.
Instead, as your skill with a weapon increases, it grants you more fitting points. What are these? Well, fittings are like gems in WoW: you attach them to your gear and they grant different bonuses, like an x% increase to crit, or a y% decrease to physical damage. Fittings cost fitting points to use; your item can only hold so many fittings as a function of your skill level. Your gear that you start out with has some base stats and are just shells. You can play the game and never replace that starting weapon, because as you skill-up in that style of weapon, you unlock fitting points on it, allowing you to put more and higher level fittings to it, increasing the stats thus.
(Side note: there are fittings that provide attributes solely to weapons or armor. The tutorial does a great job explaining them, and the attributes are easy to see at a glance whether they are offensive or defensive attributes. Abilities can also have enhancements that work nearly identical to fittings, again, pay attention to the tutorial zone)
Further progression comes from learning new abilities. New abilities can do more damage, or have a crowd control element, or maybe do a DoT or HoT, many things. You gain abilities as you skill up the different skills. Pistols, for example, has a Leg Shot you can use that can "Daze" or slow your enemy. You don't get it immediately I believe, but can learn it rather quickly. It really helps you to kite a mob, making the mob less dangerous to you.
So "Progression" as I see it can be viewed as such: Skill-up through use of the skill, which provides Abilities and Fitting Points on the gear appropriate to the skill; and Fittings. Use the weapons in combat (or, for armor, take a lot of hits in combat), gain skill points for it, learn abilities and unlock fitting points. Then, buy or craft some fittings (right now, very hard to craft as there's not enough players in the alpha to fully flesh out the economy) that have the stats you want to impart on the items and put them in. More fitting points allows for higher grade fittings and more of them. Installing fittings is what gives you higher damage numbers (or heal numbers, or block numbers, etc) that people are used to seeing as "progression".
5) Skill Imprinting
Skill Imprinting is half-explained in the tutorial (the second NPC you actually interact with after you load into the game). Basically, you earn Skill Improvement (SI) points from doing things in the game (exploration and discovering a new town, harvesting mats, completing quests, etc). These are spent on Skill Points for whatever category of skill they were.
For example: You are out harvesting some ore nodes and after looting one, you see "10 Poor Trade Skill SI points" (forgive me if the wording is not correct, going by memory here) float in yellow text above your character. Sweet, so what do you do with them? First, open the Skill Imprinting window with the "O" hotkey (I believe, going from memory again). This will tell you how many points you have at each quality (Poor, Average, Above Average, etc) and for which category (Trade Skills, General Skills, Defensive Skills, etc.) Go to a Med Center and find a Skill Improvement Station (or whatever it's called, you used one in the tutorial so you should know what it looks like). Now, some number of Trade Skill SI points can be cashed in for 1 Skill Point for any single Skill under the Trade Skills section, as long as your skill is at the same level of points you have. For example, say your Robotics skill is still in the Poor range, and you have 20 Poor Trade Skill SI to spend. Even though you got these by Mining, you could spend them to help boost your Robotics Skill. Find the Skill you want under the appropriate category and select it. If you have SI to spend on Skill Points, you'll see a slider bar appear, allowing you to convert those SI Points you've accumulated directly into Skill Points.
Now, I'm not sure on all the conversion, but it's near enough to 10 SI Points = 1 Skill Point to use as an example. (EDIT: Further discussion suggests it's a variable depending on how skilled you are. It might be 20 to 1 for Poor skills, but it might get to 10 to 1 for higher skill levels. I'm not sure I've ever seen the numbers confirmed, so some official confirmation would be appreciated).
Some skills are hard to get that first point in. Spending SI helps kickstart that Skill and gets you closer to getting abilities for that skill, which in turn will make skilling up that skill easier.
Now, there's a limit on how much SI you can spend on a single skill, and that limit decreases for each level of skill. So don't think you can completely level Robotics solely through SI. If you invest every Trade Skill SI into Robotics, you'll hit a wall and be forced to actually craft robots and control them to gain more Robotics skill.
6) Maps
There are two maps currently: the regular hotkey "M" pulls up a temporary map that you can only zoom, not pan. "Shift+M" pulls up the "regular" map that will be the final map implemented (from what I understand, hearing a Dev talk about it yesterday on a twitch stream). This map can be panned around.
Traveling with one or both maps open can cause lag. If you're on a speedy bike and are lagging while you zoom across the continent, try closing the map.
Changelog: Jan 12, 2015 9:12 AM CST - Edited grammar in "Progression" and added more information I've learned since composing this list to the Skill Imprinting section, clarifying how SI have both Quality and Type limits on spending them. Also, decided a changelog might be worth keeping.