Newbie Questions

bonobotheory

I installed the free trial, but I'm still letting it patch. So I thought I'd use that time to get a little orientation.



Is it all about the endgame?  I've read a lot of posts about people getting powerleveled to maximum level, just so they can get into RvR battles. Is there some PvP or RvR action at the lower levels? Is the journey to maximum level worthwhile?



44 classes? Is every one completely different, or are there some similarities? In other words, does each realm have its heavy fighter, its light fighter, its summoner, and so forth?



Are the roleplaying servers any good? I've read that the roleplaying policies are enforced, but I've also read that customer support has all but vanished from DAoC. How's the RP holding out?



Which server types allow me to play characters of different realms? Or should I just try different realms on different servers?



All in all, is it too late to get into this game? Will I be all alone as a newbie, killing rats with a pointed stick, while the old-timers are off having their epic battles?

Werppa

First off, don't believe everything that is said on forums...

 

RvR: A lot of RvR action in BG's too

Classes: They have similarities. Eg Albion's Paladin is close to Hibernia's Warden but there are still big differences between them. Every realm has it's own scout and stealther class. There are still unique classes which you can't find from anywhere else, eg Heretic or Bonedancer

Roleplaying I haven't played in any of RP servers, thus I don't know anything about them.

Not sure if I understood your realm-question right but you can be in different realms in same cluster but it has to be one realm per server, eg Bossiney cluster has Gareth, Lamorak and Ector in it which means that you could play mid on Gareth, alb on Lamorak and hib on Ector if you wanted to.

There's loads of newbs in Daoc atm. You will find groups or you can solo if you want to but the old farts will be in RvR doing their epic battles, yes (which is fun btw) . Anyhoo, you  will always fibd something to do if you're low lvl.

bonobotheory

Thanks.  I might not have explained my realms question very well , but you gave me the answer I was looking for.



The controls are getting on my nerves. I cant use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out, and I have to continually re-orient the camera so it faces the same direction as my character. Any way to change that?

JulianDracos

/resetcamera



or you can move it to whatever position you like and then do /setcamera and that will be your default until you reset again. 

hogscraper

A few things to know about DAoC and the way to get around including making the mouse a much better tool.

Firstly, if you are new to the game it will make this easier to learn, but open /keyboard and change everything. I played Dark Age for 4 years using the default setup, and even having had that ingrained into my brain, it took only a week or two to adjust to the new setup. I play a lot of dif games crossing back and forth from FPS to MMORPGS all the time and have settled on the new keyboard layout I use on all of them. Why would you bother to rearrange the interface? Well, the first that happens is you learn the interface much faster if you decide where everything is. The simple act of making a certain key do a certain thing adds one more layer of memory to the process.



I currently use RFDG instead of WSAD for my movement keys. When you play a game like Dark Age, most of your time adventuring or RVR'ing will be spent with your left hand on your movement keys. If you set it up to use RFDG as your front, back, turn left, turn right movement keys, (where your hands will usually be), you make it so that you have a lot more keys ALL AROUND of your movement keys for options instead of just to the right and bottom. Having more readily available options makes it much easier to survive battles and using the old way with limited close keys means using the SHIFT key along with other keys to get the job done. I have definitely found that pushing 1 key instead of a combo of keys has sped up my reactions a ton. I'm 6'6" tall and have really big hands, so moving to the center, at first, was  a necessity for me. After trying out a center of the keyboard setup I can't see going back to the far left setup. A few things that made it a  much better choice for me was that the keys available to the left of WSAD are lacking in many ways. Several of the games I play will jump out to desktop if you accidently hit the START/WINDOWS key found on many keyboards. This is found between CTRL and ALT on my keyboard and I always seemed to accidently hit it. Same for CAPS LOCK. It is huge and sits right in the middle of TAB and CRTL. Even if you don't use it, having 2 dozen nerds yell at you because they decided CAPS is unacceptable in chat gets annoying fast. So does apologizing for doing it in the middle of a fight.  A great alternative? Move your primary movement keys to the right.



A few of the keys I use the most, and therefore enjoying being close together and easy to push:







                                              W                  E                  R                  T           

                                        health potion    left strafe   forward     right strafe



                                                       S                   D                   F                  G               H

                                                 /stick             turn left     move back     turn right      /face



                                           Z                     X                                          V                     B

                     nearest enemy     Nearest ally                              Sprint                  Sit





As for the mouse, I love the way I have it set up now. The left mouse button, when held down, allows me to swing my camera around my character. The right button, when held down turns my character which ever way I move the mouse.I have my middle mouse button set to reset camera. That allows you to use the left mouse button to quickly see around yourself in 360 degrees. When you get out to RVR or the battlegrounds, seeing what's behind you becomes almost as important as seeing what's in front of your character. Using the right mouse button to occaisonally steer my guy is great because this steering is SO MUCH FASTER than using the keyboard. With a press of the right mouse button and a quick movement of the mouse, you can make your guy, or girl, do a 180 in a heartbeat. When you become used to being able to have your camera and your character facing any angle you want at any time, the camera reset becomes that much more important to have handy.



I know these things might seem like advanced things for the game considering everything you have to learn about mechanics, spells, classes and everything else, but learning them early will make you a much better player in the end. There have been many, many times I have been able to sneak right up on a another  solo or group and my group was able to destroy them because we got the drop on them. The reason that was possible was because people don't use the mouse pan and never saw us coming.

Kyleran

Originally posted by bonobotheory

I installed the free trial, but I'm still letting it patch. So I thought I'd use that time to get a little orientation.



Is it all about the endgame?  I've read a lot of posts about people getting powerleveled to maximum level, just so they can get into RvR battles. Is there some PvP or RvR action at the lower levels? Is the journey to maximum level worthwhile?



44 classes? Is every one completely different, or are there some similarities? In other words, does each realm have its heavy fighter, its light fighter, its summoner, and so forth?



Are the roleplaying servers any good? I've read that the roleplaying policies are enforced, but I've also read that customer support has all but vanished from DAoC. How's the RP holding out?



Which server types allow me to play characters of different realms? Or should I just try different realms on different servers?



All in all, is it too late to get into this game? Will I be all alone as a newbie, killing rats with a pointed stick, while the old-timers are off having their epic battles?

Many players these days stay entirely in the key battlegrounds, (there's 3 major ones, Thidranki, Molvik and Cathel Valley) as they feel they can be more competitive vs the players who started 2 years ago.  I had a level 50 for end game (big boy RVR) plus alts in all of the BG's...

Some folks will argue that many of the classes are the same..but I found many unique classes/abilities in each realm...

I doubt you'll find much enforcement on role-playing servers....but most players there probably comply... for a real role-playing experience consider joining Shadowclan on the Mordred FFA PvP server.... (hard core RPing, trust me)

Not too late to get into the game... Classic servers still have the most lowbie players to group with...but Mordred I hear is busy now that it has +200 or 300% experience...many are re-rolling there right now...

Yaros

Originally posted by bonobotheory



The controls are getting on my nerves. I cant use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out [...]

It's strange, I use mouse wheel to zoom with no problems

dreamer05

Believe it or not the classes are actually quite different. You're right where each realm has its own types, but when put together they are very different. If you play on the classic servers its not always about the end game. As a newbie you won't be a lone, at least I wasn't and I first started DAoC about three months ago for the first time. The lower level battlegrounds can be very crowded and a ton of fun. So the lower levels have great pvp as well. even the lvl 5-8 battleground is hella fun.

Ogrelin

To Zoom I hold down Ctrl and use the mousescroller.

Werppa

Originally posted by dreamer05

Believe it or not the classes are actually quite different. You're right where each realm has its own types, but when put together they are very different.

Especially the catacombs classes are all different, bainshee, valk, vamp, tic, warlock, they're all unique and I played all of them and also like them all