How to
From Arindal Wiki
How to...
This list contains questions and answers about lots of things newbies might wonder about, it´s a little FAQ about Arindal. It is supposed to be ooc and should be written in this way.
Help! - I just logged in, what to do now?
Welcome to Arindal! In the beginning Arindal will be quite confusing but after some minutes you get used to it. First you need to select a language, which is done by typing /options language german, /options language french or /options language dutch into the textbox in the bottom left corner of your client, then press return. Now there should be an affirmation in the infobox right above the textbox. Here you will be informed about every important news concerning your character.
To begin walking around you simply have to click at the location you want to reach. Maybe you want to walk to a NPC (you can recognize them from the label with blue background). If you now want to talk to this NPC you simply have to bump into it. Most NPCs will ask you a "yes" or "no" question which you have to answer in the language you chose. To walk through a door or leave a snell (current area you are in) just walk into the door and you´ll appear on the other side.
By walking down the ladder you reach the "Newbiewalk", a tutorial area introducing the main principles of the world, which is highly recommended to total beginners. After you completed it and chose a gender, you can enter the world. Here you will eventuelly meet other strange looking creatures or some looking quite like you who run around and may greet you. These are the other players (with a white name label). You may have lots of questions (many of which are answered somewhere in this wiki) but never hesitate to ask one of the players. Most of the community are very helpful and will help you with any questions you might have, be it with commands for the client or which profession to choose.
If you are wondering about the different looks of the other players, it´s because they´ve already chosen a race aswell as skin- and haircolour. Before you choose yours, you should get a little used to the game and maybe decide which profession and race you like most, changing it later will not be possible. To choose a race, go to the meditation tower in town center and enter the OOC-area in the ground floor (the stairs in that room lead back to the tutorial if you forgot something). If you walk into the mirror you can choose your race. Of course you may hide your origin forever under your cloak.
What is this ooc about?
OOC means "out of character" and basically means everything which doesn´t fit into the character you are playing but in the real world. Preferably you should stay IC ("in character") all the time and roleplay as much as possible. But if you have questions in the beginning or some time later, don´t mind asking them, maybe with a little warning like "Sorry, this is ooc, but..." in the beginning. More about ooc is described in the article about it.
How can i communicate with others?
In Arindal there are several ways to express yourself. If you type something in your textbox and press Return, you will say this text and everyone within your sight will "hear" (see) it. To communicate through a whole snell you have to add a /yell in front of your text.
Communicating with players far away is achieved not by strong vocal cords but by thinking crystals. Once you enter the world you have one for free (the yellow egg in your inventory). Be sure you have it equipped (by doubleclicking it or typing /equip thinking crystal (replace thinking crystal with its name in your language)), if it is, it is underlined. Now you will receive all the "thinks" of other players and can send your own by typing /think text.
For more information about this visit the page about speech commands.
What is a "share"?
Arindal is a pretty much socially orientated gaming system, just as its twin games Alchera and Clan Lord. Teamwork is the most important factor and is rewarded in many ways. One is the possibility to share your experience with others. But this "sharing" does not really mean that you get less experience - no - you even get a little bonus if you share someone. This way sharing even increases the amount of experience won from an action, not only for you, but for the community in general. This act is simply called "sharing" from the players. You can share your experience with up to 5 people. Another good reason to use the shares is that your shares (doesn´t matter if you crossshared the other person, if you share the person or are shared by the person) see when you fall and eventually come to help you. More about this in the section "What to do when being fallen?" further down.
To share someone you can use the command /share <name> for example /share Reizende. Another option is to select a player in the playerlist and use the keys CTRL-S (Windows) respectively apple-S (Mac OS). The windows client has the additional option of rightclicking someone in the playerlist and select share in the dropdown menu.
To "unshare" another player you have to use the command /unshare <name> or the combinations CTRL-U respectively apple-U.
Especially Mages and Healers strongly rely on shares to advance as they are often not able to hit the monsters that are being hunted. Sharing a healer also has the advantage of being healed faster while the healer loses less Spirit.
Also have a look at the article about sharing where this is described in more detail.
How do i avoid getting lost?
Firstly it is recommended not to go alone in unknown regions, this way there´ll most likely be someone who knows the way back in need. To remember the way, you can either keep in mind how often you turned in which direction or keep orientated by remembering unique spots in the landscape or safes. Also see snell to get an idea about navigating in Arindal.
Of course there are also maps of nearly all regions which is extremely helpful, especially in the beginning.
How to log out?
Of course you can log out anytime and anywhere while playing by simply closing the client. BUT if you do this on a arbitrary spot in the world, your character will stay about 5 more minutes where he was until he finally disappears. As you have no more control of him, there is the risk of your character being attacked and killed, if you haven´t been in a safe place.
Therefore you should know where the meditation tower is located and what it is about. It is located in towncenter, the big tower in the northeast of the fountain. In the upper floor you can meditate, which means your character logs out immediately after typing /sleep. Another huge advantage is that you gain experience while sleeping there (which helps falling not too far behind your friends if you can´t play for some time) which is not the case if you sleep somewhere else in the world.
How to avoid unwanted log outs?
After a certain time of no action by your character he will get tired and logs out. To avoid this, there are some afk macros which run an action after a designated time. This can be a pose or the command /money or something similar. This way the server won´t see you as doing nothing and won´t disconnect you.
How to choose a profession?
In Arindal we have three professions: healer, fighter and mage. In contrast to other roleplaying games, where every profession simply kills the monsters in another way, in Arindal the professions have huge differences. A fighter is able to battle even the most fearsome beast but if he falls or finds a fallen somewhere he can´t do anything. The healer can heal himself and others, even fallen can be revived with the right training. On the other hand they will never be able to fight against more than the weakest monsters. Mages work mostly as the supporters in hunting groups. They can open portals to far hunting regions, chain a monster for a short time or enhance the skills of the group. But mages can neither heal nor fight bigger beasts. So your decision should be well considered, if you don´t know what suits you best you can try every profession as an apprentice first. To try a profession and eventually join it you have to talk to one of these persons:
- T'Elum: This fighter lives in a house in the southeast of town center. If you are interested he offers you a fighter apprenticeship and gives you a training dagger in order to symbolize that. If you feel strong enough you can try to become a member of the fighters guild by passing Sarques' Quest.
- Salia: You should talk to this skilled healer living in a house in town center if you are interested in the life of a healer. You´ll receive the splinter of a healing crystal, which you can use for healing yourself (by typing /use or just uu; if you want to have several healing pulses at once you can add a number like /use 3) or healing others (by bumping into a wounded with the splinter equipped). To become a real healer you should heal as much as possible.
- Vetha: Vetha is a mage living in a hut in south forest. Mage apprentices can get a musty staff. But how you finally manage to become a full mage is a well guarded secret only the mages know of.
How do training and character development work?
To transform your experience won from killing some monsters or from shares into ranks you have to talk to a trainer before. To do this, you have to talk to the trainer and answer with yes if he asks you if you want to become a student of his. After you did this, every time you have gathered enough experience to get a rank, it will be one from this trainer until you talk to the next trainer. As this is a roleplaying game you won´t get any information about how much which skill is improved by a certain rank and the messages you get are not really informing either, but are unique for every trainer. They read like "• Your body feels stronger." if you are training with Corpus. How to get an idea when the next rank will finally be achieved or how many ranks you have in total and what a trainer actually teaches you can be found at the trainer-article.
Of course there are many ways how to train and be successful. As there are no exact stats all your ranking is based on your own knowledge or that of others. Mostly experienced players of your profession can tell you which way you can train and which trainers are best for this way or even give you the name of a person training in a way you are interested in and give you further advice. Most important is that you feel good with your training and train in a way you like and which fits to your style of playing.
What are "vanq", "disp" or "kill"?
New players may wonder about these terms which were adapted from Clan Lord and are now common in Arindal. "vanq" is short for vanquish, this term is used if you helped or overwhelmed a tough monster on your own. Therefor the vanquish-message (of course given in the language you are playing with) signalizes especially much experience. Monsters which are less tough are those you "kill", this gives the normal amount of experience. Critters that shouldn´t be much of a problem for you are usually dispatched, this gives only little experience. If you "slaughter" a monster you don´t earn any more experience from killing it.
As you know now these terms tell you how much experience you get when killing a critter, with vanquish giving the most and slaughter giving no more. Which is nearly as important is the fact, that you get the same experience if you kill a beast alone or if you only tag it and it is killed by a group! It doesn´t matter who made the first (or last) hit or who dealt how much damage!
Where can i check how many ranks i got?
To know exactly how many ranks you have you can either keep a list of your ranks or use a rankcounter. Not that accurate but helpful anyway is the term a trainer uses greeting you. This greeting differs depending on your amount of ranks with this trainer.
Another indicator are titles. These are given for reaching a certain amount of ranks from trainers of your profession, which means ranks from public trainers like Pellia or Corpus don´t count here.
How do i fight?
To be able to fight you need a weapon equipped in your right hand. To do that, you have to double-click the weapon in your inventory or type /equip <weapon>. If you now bump into a monster while holding your weapon (or into a player when being in the arena) you swing at your opponent. When doing so you should always have an eye on the middle bar (the blue one) which indicats your balance. If this goes down you are more easy to hit, which is the reason why you should keep it as high as possible.
How do i fight other players?
Basically fighting other players works the same way fighting a monster, but it is only allowed in special places like the arena 1E 1N. Although this is a place designed for player versus player fights be sure you only fight players who agreed in a fight to avoid anger. You should ask a healer coming with you to observe your duell beforehand to avoid no one being able to help the loser of the fight.
Where to hunt in the beginning?
As a beginner you should mainly hunt in the "rat huts" (common name for the conical straw huts) all around town center, aswell as the batcaves in the mountain north of town and the onatrees in the surrounding snells. Killing the mice and vermine, the Bats and the Ona there gives you the most experience, some items needed for better equipment and you can be rescued quite easily. Be sure you shared 5 people as you may fall quite a lot in the first time and this way they get informed about your fall and can help you. It is even better to tell some people where you go to avoid long lying as the others have to search you.
When you are sick of slaying hundreds of mice you should go to vermine tree, preferably with a small group. Lots of vermine will wait for you there.
How do i organize a hunt?
To do that you should simply ask some people being about your strength, for example those sitting in tc with you or via thinking crystal. Of course there can be groups of differently experienced players but it proved most fun to hunt in groups with people about the same strength. If you organize a hunt it is best if you know the region you hunt in or it should at least be a region matching your skills. To hunt in harder regions you should better leave leadership to a more experienced player.
Some basic instructions about being member of a hunting group or being leader of a hunting group can be found in the article about grouptactics. The main point is that the leader should always keep the overview of the situation and group behaviour.
What to do when being fallen?
First and most important: Stay calm! If you kept an eye on sharing some healers or always hunting in a group it won´t take long for someone to notice your misery. Avoid constant yelling or switching shares until someone notices, as this only maims your body further. People will notice your fall only sometimes they have to search you first or control a dangerous situation. Of course it is okay to answer the yell of someone looking for you in your snell. As soon as you are being healed you can start sharing the healers around you. A word of thankfulness to them is never wrong aswell.
Now you may ask: why all this cause for alarm? The problem when being fallen is - except you can´t do much in this time - that the longer you lie around the more you will rot making it harder to heal you. Scavengers poking in your guts, yelling and (un-)sharing even accelerate this process. After a while you will notice your spirit leaves your body. From now on you can only talk in Lore the language of spirits and you won´t understand the normal language anymore. Only other spirits or skilled healers can understand you now. Of course it is far more challenging to heal a ghost/spirit than a freshly fallen body. If there is no hope for you being rescued you can choose to depart (with /depart) as soon as your spirit left your body. You will be revived in the Arindal north of tc. But the act of transporting you there and healing you will cost some of your gathered experience (though you can´t lose a rank). If you depart several times in a short while you will have to struggle with a malus affecting all your skills. Therefor you should always think twice before departing.
What is "toggling" and "localising" about?
If you are fallen and no one knows where you are, a healer may try to locate you. To do so he has 3 possibilities:
- The healer can ask Locus, a kyttyn residing in town center, who gives informations about the whereabout of another player for the fee of 5 coins. Locus skills only reach about 10 snells around town center which won´t help much later. It is considered nice if you pay the healer who asked Locus to search for you.
- The healer is skilled in localising with the help of the Finna, a special healer tool. Depending on his skills he will see more or less accurate where to look for you. This is quite fast and comfortable for the fallen, but for the healer it requires quite a lot of training. Therefore the most common solution is the toggling.
- Toggling works like this: The healer sends you a thinkto in which he asks you to perform a certain action depending on where you are. An example could be the thinkto "thank if you are in south forest, curse for kittyland, anonthank for somewhere else" if you are fallen to a Cougar. Now you may have fallen in south forest so you thank this healer. Because south forest is not that small there may be another think like "thank for sf west or river, curse for sf east". Now you should thank/curse the healer depending on your location as soon as this is possbile. Locating may take a while, as you can´t thank again after having done so for some time and depending on the quality of the questions you receive. These answers you are giving are called "toggles". The healer could inform others searching you by saying "xy is toggling for south forest" or something similar. The term is adapted from Clan Lord where this is done with shares, which would be kind of suicide in Arindal.
How can i thank or curse someone?
To thank/applaud someone you can use the command /thank <name>, if the person is selected in the playerslist you can also thank him via "Commands - Thank" in your client. The Windows Client has the additional option of right-clicking someone in the playerlist and selecting thank in the menu there. To thank someone anonymusly you need the command /anonthank <name>.
To curse someone or show your dissatisfaction of someone you can do that with the commands /curse <name> respectively /anoncurse <name>.
The anonymus commands should only be used for toggle-locating, not for public actions, which is considered unpolite.
If the other person is in the same snell as you, you can always add a reason to your thank/curse, for example /thank Reizende for healing me.
How can i find items?
Mainly there are two categories of items:
- One part can be found anywhere in the world with a bit of luck. They lie around on the floor and can be picked up by running over them. Items of this category are all kinds of berries, some fruits, wood and ore or crystals. Mainly it is pure luck if you find an urgently needed item or not, though looking in the right area may help. Of course it is much more likely to find a piece of wood under a tree in a forest than somewhere in the desert.
- The other items are being dropped by monsters and are mostly parts of their bodies. Furthermore there are items you only get in exchange for something else, mostly dropped items. These are basically all items listed here. You can also see there which material is needed to get which and where you can sell or exchange them. For nearly every equipment you need a specific number of some of these materials in addition to the coins they cost. Of course you need some luck to gather dropped items aswell, but with concentrating on killing a specific monster you will eventually find them items you are looking for.
Where can i buy better equipment?
Weapons and other equipment can only rarely be bought for some coins. In most cases the sellers need some kind of items to make the equipment or want them in return. A sabre for example does not only cost coins but also silver and lorr-feathers. After having gathered all materials needed for the equipment and having all the coins you have to talk to the seller to purchase it. Sometimes you have to hold a specific item in your hand, if this is the case the seller will tell you so. Due to this time and effort needed to buy something you should think twice what you want to buy and maybe ask someone having it if you may test it for a little while and what their experiences with this item are. Some hints about the attributes of an item and what is needed for it can be found in the articles about it, like weapons, armour and other useful items.
Where to get a new thinking crystal?
After a while your thinking crystal will wear out from your use and you will get hurt if sending a thinkstone message. As this may even be threatening your life in a dangerous situation you should buy a new one as soon as possible, as no one can repair them. Swindly sells new thinking stones in a tower at pirate beach (16W 1N) for 50 coins. Swindly lives in the left tower at the ford.
How to dye my clothes?
To dye your clothes you have to find berries which the dyers can use to dye or bleach your shirt or trousers. The dyers live in a little settlement 4S 5E of town center which is simply called dyers. In one of the huts you can get a preview how certain dyes or bleaches will look when being done to your clothes. If you are sure you want your clothes dyed you have to go into the right hut and tell the dyer to do so. A well working method is to buy clothes with a colour closest to what you want to wear so you need as few dyes as possible.
How can i enter a clan?
Before entering a clan you should get an overview over all clans existing and their aims and requirements. If you now found a clan suiting you you should get to know its members and if you understand each other well, they can decide to make you a clanmate. There is no general rule how this works, every clan has its own. To become a member of a clan 3 of its members have to agree to that at the clan house. This procedure costs 1000 coins. Again it differs if this is paid by the clan or by you.
If you want to found a clan you can do so with 4 others. You have to pay 1000 coins to get a builder for your clanhouse and after this is finished another 2000 coins to be officially approved.
How do i become a bard?
Bards are players who proved worthy componists and musicians at a bard audition. You can´t become a bard just because you want to. Bards can make music anywhere in the world, apprentices can only practice with lend instruments in the bard house in beergarden. Bards are still members of their profession, so you don´t have to give up your entire life for it.
If you are interested in becoming a bard you should have composed 3 songs and play them at an audition. They are announced here. The rules are basically that you have to play your own compositions (neither stolen form another bard nor from ooc music) and that they shouldn´t be too short, but they don´t have to be of epic length.
