Guides/Dear Ariella New Player Guide


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Dear Ariella, What do we do?

This is the dilemma of the new player often referred to as a "Newbie". After four tales of playing I will attempt to give some helpful hints to get started and continue in your everyday life. Good luck my fellow Egyptian as this is a wonderfully complicated game and enjoyable socially. Our Egyptian slang will be in ().

Love thy neighbor is a good virtue and keeps you from getting poked with sharpened sticks.

One word about Test of the Obelisk. Each region has a queue to sign up for building obelisks to pass this test. Check the wiki and get signed up. You will also need to pass principles for Test of the Obelisk. When you build an obelisk to complete the list of principles you only need to build a size 7 obelisk (the size 7 obelisk may be torn down afterwards and the mats recovered). The message is not very clear about what size is needed to pass principles only! PLEASE BUILD A SIZE 7 OBELISK TO PASS PRINCIPLES ONLY or it could be construed as jumping the queue in that region. For Test of the Obelisk a player builds the biggest obelisk in that area (you lose all mats if you tear down your obelisk if you have passed this test). As the game progresses more types of obelisks are able to be built. In other words, if the current type of obelisk in that area reaches too ridiculous a size for you to easily pass the test, just wait for another type of obelisk to be unlocked.

In Egyptian society there are a few things that are not polite. Please do not take resin from trees without Nicking with a Resin Wedge. It's difficult for new players to know that resin does not respawn like coconuts and wood if you take the former. A tool called a Resin Wedge must be used to Nick the trees for them to produce more resin.

I need help! And I need it now!

Are you in distress and need a helping hand or found a possible bug in code? Click yourself -> Special -> Call a Game Master.

Game Masters (GMs) - General distress call. Your call disappears if you log out.
Developers (Devs) - For a potential bug or serious issue. Your call stays in line after you log out.
World Builders (WB) - Terrain problems.

Miscellaneous Tips to make you look savvy

Put up your F3 map right away. You can stretch it and move it all over.
/cmd or click Self -> Utility -> Information -> Show the Command List
/afk to show yourself as... AFK
/chat <whomever>
/clockloc to turn on your Current Year and Month/clock/present location or Self -> Options -> Little window -> Clock/changes to Clockloc so click again.
/ignore <whomever> or /silentignore <whomever> or /squelch <whomever>
/info <whomever> to see that avatar's information box.
/tell <whomever>.....to talk to someone in Main, but beware that most don't notice!
/join <channel tab>
- New Channel Tab names to come
For Current Events Calendar....Click Self or hit Escape -> Utility -> Show Calendar.
To minimize Items/Skills/Principles Tabs, click on the active tab.
Camera views F5 - F8. F7 is most commonly used. F8 has two settings, hit once (not used often) and then twice. This second view is great for prospecting and for camp decoration. Click self -> Utility -> Camera.
Hit F11 to bring up the Friends List. Hit F11 to reduce Friends List to only those friends online. Hit F11 a third time to make it go away. Click bottom field box where it says "Enter Player Name" and type a player name to enter it or delete one you already have.
To change your appearance...click Self -> Appearance.
Guilds. You are not limited to only one guild. They are like social clubs, learning and regional clubs, test clubs and skill clubs. The Goods guild is excellent to do trading.
How to dig a hole. Have a shovel on you. Make sure the dirt icon appears, usually in the upper left. Click yourself -> Skills -> Dig a Hole.
Pick up your winebook at any School of Body. Before you drink wine, please ask your host which quality wineglasses are best to get points from his particular wine instead of randomly grabbing glasses. One to Two glasses of wine is considered a polite amount since wine bottles give only 7 glass fulls. The host may say otherwise. Three glasses of beer per person is fine because beer kettles give 21 glasses each time.
When eating food, put up a chat with your alt or spouse as a notepad and record the duration of time so you know when the stat boost will wear off.
Iron pots for machines are made in Master Casting Boxes (600 Charcoal to fire) for 20 Iron and 20 beeswax in 10 minutes while Iron COOKpots with 3 Iron and 3 beeswax for Kitchens are made in a Student's Casting Box (100 Charcoal to fire).
Consider paying for a year at once and getting free camp decoration (do a World Builder ticket), a sheep(male or female at School of Worship) papyrus seeds and fireworks(at School of Art), a medium stone (at School of Architecture), and 4 cornerstones(put immediately in your inventory).
A good browser function is Ctrl+F to bring up a Search tool to use when you have a Foraging page up.
Macros are wonderful to use but BEWARE! If you do not respond to a chat and are macroing you can be thrown in game jail.

Critter Care

Camels stud...1 male 4 female (Max camels in pen is 10). Lure a camel into the pen by loading straw. Make sure the door is open (click the pen, should say 'Close the door'). 'Check the pen for wild camels' and if it says 'They even nibbled at your straw' so you're getting closer to the amount needed.

Sheep in pairs...3 male 3 female is best.

Rabbits breed...like rabbits. They do not stud. Keep 2-3 of each sex in a hutch with about 300-500 carrots. ALWAYS remove your rabbits from your hutch at night or they may multiply too much, eat all the carrots and escape!

Beetles are good at 2 males and 4 or more females.

Get Hens from Examining Pale Pampas Grass and Roosters (but rarer) from Dark Pampas Grass. Building 4 Chicken Coops is a good idea. Put Hens in one (roosters eat too much and are not needed to make eggs) and then move eggs to hatch in the other 3 coops. Eggs are hatched and Hens lay at 6 o'clock so check then and remove the live cheekins from the 3 egg coops so they don't munch all the food.

Where shall I live?

Take your time! Don't rush into building your home at the first place you land. Yes, everyone is hurrying around doing things like busy little bees. But patience is a virtue also.

Egypt is divided into regions (each tale the number changes). There are 3 faction areas: Kush (south), Hyksos (central), and Meshwesh (north). Each faction has a capitol city with a chariot stop and all 7 types of Schools. Universities are scattered around the map with one set of the 7 in each faction area.

A polite citizen of Egypt will ask the current residents if it will be encroaching into their camp to live there. Please never build right next to anyone or crowd others already there. Leave plenty of space (your own whole green area) for yourself to expand with more compounds, warehouses, flowers, etc coming later into the tale. Always clean up the 'Newbie' beginner machines like your small distaff, brick racks, flax combs.

Chariot Stops (cs) are not up and running at the beginning of the game. There is a University Tech that will need donations so we citizens can repair them. They are the transportation network in the game, instantly transporting you to different regions. So building decently near a chariot stop saves a huge amount of play time in the game.

Consider that papyrus planting (pappy) must be done along the Nile. This makes living by or near the Nile a good choice for compound (cp) building.

Good components for your home sweet home... Quite a few higher wood-giving trees (Bottle Trees give 5 wood each for example), water (for kettles), mud/sand (for bricks), silt (for firebricks) nearby. Put up your F3 map (you can stretch it way out from the bottom right corner). Look for large green grass areas.

If you speak a language other than English there are communities that gather that speak mainly one language like French or German that might be handy to live in or join their guild for ease of play.

What's the best way to set up camp?

Time saving building ideas below.

Build one compound right up against water. Why? You will be building many machines inside your compound. Before building a compound, stand where the fish or water icon appears in the top left(have a jug and/or fishing pole in your inventory). Build kettles and toxin kitchens near water so you can stand without moving and use those machines without running back and forth to a water source. Leave room to build at least one warehouse for grabbing and then storing the mats needed to run these machines. Building like that allows you to overload yourself and cook away in your kettles or your toxin kitchens.

Build another compound so it is over mud and sand where you can stand and see both those icons at once. Permanent brick racks are best built where you can stand in one spot, grab mud and sand and also straw from your camel pen and be overloaded. Overloading yourself is a time saving feature. Then build a camel pen up against that side of your compound within reach of that mud/sand standing point (camel pens must be built on sand). Camel pens are straw storage (consider keeping an empty one for this purpose). Build 4 warehouses(wh) within reach of this mud/sand spot. One wh is to store silt for firebricks, second wh to store bricks, third to store clay for making clay bricks and the last wh to store the clay and fire bricks. Build your flax hammocks around the sides of your camel pen. Eventually build your greenhouses within standing reach of your flax hammocks to be able to harvest grass from greenhouses, dry that grass into straw on your flax hammocks and then stuff the straw into your camel pen for bricks. You will be building brick racks to make tons and tons of bricks and firebricks (fb).

Build your Glazier Benches over sand so you will not have to move to use those machines. Maybe in the same cp as your permanent brick racks.

When building beehives (apiaries) and serpentariums (cobra pits) try using /crowd to check to see the crowding percentage. The less crowding percentage the better for a queen bee to settle in or cobras to slither in. Try for 1% crowding which is a good 30 coords from any other buildings. Crowding also affects how quickly beeswax and honey production renews. You must take the honey and beeswax out for it to renew again. Higher Speed on your avatar keeps less bees from escaping. These facts are another reason not to build compounds (your camp) too closely to others.

Build forges together with carpentry benches, pottery wheels, rock saws, mason benches, and flax machines. Forging takes time, so while you wait between batches if you have other machines nearby you can get other things made like boards, jugs, stone products and flax chores. Again, arrange warehouses within reach for supplies. You can build a Bonfire (only built outside of your compound) within reach of your carpentry benches to grab wood to make boards.

Build a compound for parties! It could have several wine tables in the center, lots of kitchens near the outer walls and lots of chests for supplies.

Talking about your home sweet home...what is this Cornerstone?

https://www.desert-nomad.com/Game/Subscribe

Monthly payment receive one cornerstone right away, a 2nd one after 6 months, a 3rd one after 12 months and your last one after 18 months.
Prepay for 6 months and receive 2 cornerstones immediately, and then same as above.
Prepay for 12 months and receive 3 cornerstones immediately and your last one after 18 months.
Prepay full tale and receive all 4 cornerstones imeediately plus you are entitled to Camp Decoration. Place a World Builder call under Self -> Utility... -> Call a Game Master... -> World Builder Call. To see what you can choose:

https://wiki.desert-nomad.com/index.php?title=Pre-pay_Camp_Decoration
https://wiki.desert-nomad.com/index.php?title=Requires::Trees
http://www.atitd.org/wiki/tale7/Plants

After you build your compound you need to add your Cornerstone to the compound to keep it from deteriorating and having to repair it. Click your compound -> Utility -> Install Cornerstone. You can do this at any time before or after you expand but it is good to install very soon after initially building or the compound will start deteriorating without it.

You can also Remove your Cornerstone if you want to move.

See where your cornerstones are installed by clicking Self -> Special -> Show my Cornerstones.

Occasionally portable cornerstones are given away in Events. You will be able to give or sell these to other players but you cannot do that with normal cornerstones.

Universities, Schools, Techs, Skills...what's the difference?

Universities have Technologies (tech) that we must all donate to so we can learn to do new things. But when Technologies are first opened for donations, they are expensive, so it is each Egyptian's duty to pay in materials (mats) that are required. Once a Technology is unlocked then that tech is free to all citizens of that faction of Egypt. Taking over regions for your faction involves donating to tribute posts. Find regions that have Universities and that will lower the cost of the donations for Technologies.

Universities also provide Tests and Principles for each of the seven Disciplines as time goes by. To open a Test for your faction someone must Demonstrate and provide the necessary materials. That Test then shows up in System for you to get it IF your are high enough in level.

Schools have Skills you can buy. Schools also provide the same Initiations (or starter tests) for the seven Disciplines the same as Universities do. You will find a set of the seven different types of Schools at each faction capitol.

To see which Tests and Disciplines are open click the gold pyramid in the top left of your screen.

Both Universities and Schools have avatar level requirements to be able to add the Technology or Skill under your Skills tab. So be careful to check the wiki and NOT ruuuuun before you know if you are high enough in level to get the skill or tech.

To check what level you are and what you can currently buy at a School or obtain free at a University, click the clipboard icon on your screen. You can type /info <your name> to check your level too.

Teach what you know! Once you have learned a Technology from a University, you can teach it to other players. Learn from your buddies. Click someone else to see what you can teach them. You may teach or receive a lesson once every 5 minutes. You may teach or receive only one Technology at a time. You cannot concurrently learn and teach at the same time. Social gatherings like digs are excellent times to teach.

Expedition Sites....Waypoints...Which is Which?

First, go buy Exploration Travel at the School of Harmony for 2 Leather.

Second, you need to set your Home Location by standing in the spot you want as home. Click yourself->Navigation->Set your Home Location.

Third, find the closest Expedition Site so you can set it as "Make this my Expedition Site".

Now you can warp back to your Expedition Site for less cost than if you set a Waypoint at your home. Once you get to your Expedition Site you can also click it and choose to warp to the Home Location you set earlier (at a less cost than if you Waypoint home). So save on Travel Time by using Expedition Sites.

Setting Offline Chores

Click Self -> Options -> Offline Chores -> Offline Options.

After completing the required amount of manual production you can choose to magically produce mats while offline. BEWARE -- TO GAIN THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF TRAVEL TIME, DO NOT CHECK ANY OTHER OFFLINE CHORE. Each offline chore reduces the amount of travel time gained while offline.

Picking up the pace on bricks and boards and flaxing and veggies

Boards...build several wood planes in a circle so you can stand in the center of them. Let's get rid of the chat popups, shall we? Click yourself then Options then scroll down to Notifications then choose "Use the Chat area instead of popups for many messages so it doesn't obscure your view when the stone blades break.

Next let's learn to minimize the chats so we can use hotkeys. YOU MUST MINIMIZE CHATS TO USE HOTKEYS. Options->Chat-Related->Scroll to Minimize->Choose both options in there SO YOU CAN ALSO SEE YOUR BUDDIES TALK.

Second, we need to enable hotkeys for things. Options->One-Click and Related->Go ahead choose Make Tab like a Mouse (you'll need this to save your clicker finger), Enable hotkeys on Brick Racks (we'll get to that in a minute), Enable hotkeys on flax, plus any others you'd like.

Last, MINIMIZE CHATS BY HITTING THE ENTER KEY. Hold down your P key (not just click) and swipe your cursor in a circle around all the wood planes. Voila! Tons of boards in a few seconds. It's also a good idea to have a bunch of stone blades on you to Repair.

Bricks....build several Flimsy Brick Racks. Since you can carry only 500 Items, 225 Mud plus 150 Straw plus 75 Sand is a good plan for a set of bricks at one standing. It is good to have extra Boards in your inventory to replace the brick racks you lose. Hit Enter to minimize chats. Hold down the B key and swipe over the Flimsy Brick Racks to quickly make many. When the bricks turn white, hold down the T key to Take them all up as you swipe over the whole lot.

Flaxing...<< DOES NOT WORK TO KEEP YOU FROM RUNNING IN TALE 7---DO NOT enable Options/One Click and Related/Enable hotkeys on flax. UNCHECK that one or your avatar will lose time running to every flax bed.>> You already made Tab like Mouse for boards. Right click to pin your Plant flax box. Place your mouse so it hovers over the Plant flax box. Use the Tab key to plant and the up and down arrows to move as you plant. Practice with rows of 3x6 and then try more later.

To grow then harvest what you planted stand in the center of your beds. Hover your mouse over the first flax bed and Tab, then move cursor over middle of box and tap Tab until you can select Weed and/or Water. Do that for each flax bed quickly and come back around for another go if your type of flax requires it. Then do the last round to Harvest flax.

To grow seeds from flax you WILL want to enable hotkeys...Click yourself -> Options -> One Click and Related -> Enable hotkeys on flax (check that one). Plant flax as above, but when harvesting seeds, hover the mouse over the first flax bed then hit the 'H' key and continue to the next flax bed. Your avatar will run to each bed.

Veggies...click Self/Options/One Click and Related/Choose "Plant all crops where you stand".

Who's yer Papy?

Or more accurately what is papyrus (papy) and how do we get more of it? The School of Worship gives out 10 free fertile papyrus seeds to prepaid subscriptions of at least 6 months. For optimum growing, take 30 seeds and ask in regional chat what the coords for the starting and stopping points are for papy planting along the Nile. Someone has usually put signs to mark those points. There are dead growing zones along the Nile that will not grow papy and experienced players know this. Announcing your papy growing in region chat will warn other players not to pick your papy.

Stand right next to the Nile(or you cannot find the Papyrus Seeds option). Click Self-->Right click the Plant menu to pin. Click a shoreline spot ahead of you and run north. Click Papyrus Seeds every coord or two to drop a seed in the Nile. Continue planting seeds until you run out of seeds. Twiddle your thumbs for a few minutes.

While you are twiddling, run back to about 100 coords north of your beginning seeding spot...and wait...and wait, twiddle some more. Is it really going to show up? And voila! You see your thin-stemmed yellow papy plant along the edge of the Nile about 10 minutes after planting your first seed. Run north, click and pick, try to click and miss the papy and run back to click again. Continue until about 100 coords north of your last planted seed.

And guess what? Run across the Nile to the other side, run south and click and pick and miss some more! It grows on both sides of the Nile.

Still more! Papy magically shows up in the nearby lakes and ponds to the east too, commonly called papy traps. It's up to you whether to take the time to pick that extra papy.

Time to dry it! But again, look to the experienced players in regional chat and say, "I am but a new citizen and know not where the papy mountain is!" The locals will be happy to give coords. Fertile papyrus must be dried at high altitude to maximize the seeds. Public drying racks and flax hammocks are already there because our Egyptian citizens are so thoughtful!

Wassup with this Acro thing?

Acrobatics (acro) is a Test from the University of Body. Your avatar will be gyrating in 28 different odd ways (eventually). You will receive four Moves to begin with when you pick up the test. Go up to other players, ask politely "Acro?" then click the player -> Tests ->Test of the Acrobat so he sees the Acro list.

Click the Main tab and see what type of teacher you are after you both click an acro move that you have on your acro list.

You will need to be a certain distance away from any others to acro or you will receive a message in Main saying others are in your way and it won't work.

The little Acro icon in the upper left will tell you when you can acro again and not "Go too fast".

If the other player is your Master it means that you WILL either 1) be taught a facet of that move after one or more attempts or 2) you will Follow if you keep trying. If you Follow then you will not be taught a facet by that other player.

In order of most likely to teach a facet: Master, Great, Pretty Good (pgt), Last Resort (lr), Blur.

Immediately tell the other player which teacher type they are for you.

It is advantageous for you to list in your Info (click yourself -> Utilities -> Edit my Info) the avatar name that was YOUR Master or Great teacher like so...Master: Ariella Great: Pascalito.

You will at first need to teach 7 facets to pass Principles of Acrobatics. You can only learn 1 facet per move per player until that point. Then you need to teach 7 more (a total of 14 Facets Taught) so you can learn 2 facets per move per player. After that point it is good to contact your Masters and Great teachers to retry the moves so you can learn a second facet from them.

Watch on the Egyptwide channel for Acro Parties. Consider helping to teach for even quicker progression on this acro test.

You gain 1 Dexterity point as you gain more Moves. Dexterity improves how quickly you can run offroad. It takes 7 facets to have a complete move.

A Master will ALWAYS either teach you a facet or you will Follow their move...ALWAYS. So keep acroing a move until you do one or the other. This applies for the second facet too.

Knowing the above, take a day to go around Egypt and ask player by player to acro ONE time so you can see if they are your Master. Then revisit those Masters once in awhile. This is the quickest way to gain facets.