Alice_Bluu
Active Member
Downloading the game
Make sure you download the game to the location you want. After you get the game downloaded, run it as admin, or go in and set it to always run as admin as well as checking your firewall or security and allowing it to be run.On the launcher there are a couple things to note. Top right corner has the build selection. Live and test server. The test server or QA will only be available at certain times when the devs want us to test something before they push it to the live server. Top left corner you have options. – you can erase builds, force check and choose to automatically close the launcher after you launch the game.
Log in screen.
One thing I love about the long screen is it does reflect the time of day in the game. You have your menu down in the bottom right corner. You can go back to start in the bottom left corner. At the bottom it will tell you if you are properly connected. And you can check the little box to remember your user name.Menu
On the menu you have a feedback button at the top which will take you straight to the feedback section of the forums. Next you have options. Then you have exit to selection, this will take you to the character selection camp. Next one down is the exit to the login screen and then exit game and at the bottom you have return to game. At the very very bottom you will see the build number.Options.
I recommend opening up the graphics tab in the options. and either setting everything to low and off or at least setting your shadows and distances down low and locking fps to 30. To start with. then working your way up incrementally to find the sweet spot or find what you need to tweak. All the settings in the graphics tabs have tooltips. Do not turn on grass shadows unless you really wanna fuck around and find out if your pc can handle it. The exposure is the darkness at night. Setting it all the way down will make night brighter.Keybinds
you will want to come check out your keybinds, familiarize yourself with them a little and there are some things are unbound by default that you might want to use, and if you have a non-American keyboard you might need to switch some things around.Input
This is your mouse sensitivity. You don’t need it to be super high, this isn't a game where you need to whip your camera around a lot, you may find you want to tweak this to your liking once you are in the game.Gameplay
The gameplay tab has your quality of life options. Just take a minute to check them out a bit. After you play a little you might want to come and change some of these.Audio
And in the audio tab you have a few different sliders for different sounds. The music is very lovely, but I find it to be a bit loud so I like to keep it at a nice low background noise level. Environment and auras can come in handy sometimesLog in.
This is your camp. You only get 3 character slots and you can do a couple of things here. You have your character name plates there indicating their portrait, name, level, class, location and whether or not they are missing their belongings.You can right click on them and change portraits, there are quite a few to choose from and a few of them are one of the first things we had in game many many moons ago.
You can also edit your appearance; this is free of cost and can be done at any time as many times as you want.
The only race so far is human, but you have quite the variety of body types and colors to play with. More customization options and such are still on the to do list.
You can also move your characters around the camp
And you can delete characters.
You have three classes to choose from. Striker. Defender. Supporter.
Each class has three sub classes.
Striker - Brigand, Warden, Berserker.
Defender - Knight, Marshal, Juggernaut
Supporter - Duelist, Sentinel, Warlord
At level 6 you will be able to choose a sub class. Go to newhaven city and talk to a trainer to start your class quest and get your spec.
Enter the world.
User interface
You can move everything around except for the action bar and the mini menu icons. You can resize and move the chat box and the combat box. You can use the mouse to move your camera and to run, to do this without a mouse you will need to adjust your keybinds accordingly. You can also lock most of the windows.Nameplates
You can move them around, right click to change your portrait or reset the position. You have health and a stamina bar. A shield icon that’s armor status. And you also have roles at the bottom of the portrait. You will also see white icons under name plates that indicate whether or not someone is in combat, missing belongings, at an ember ring, looting, in a group or in lfg.The chat box and combat log
You can add and remove tabs, they can be chat tabs or combat tabs. You have the little settings icon to choose what you want in each tab. Now you can not name the tabs or move them around yet.There will sometimes be important messages from the devs when you log in so make sure you keep an eye out for those.
Now the little globe icon, if you hover over it it displays some information for you. It will tell you the date, time and season in the game. Your connection to the social server. And what instance you are in.
Mini menu icons
Up in the top right corner you have your little menu. From right to left you have; Settings, notifications, social, map, quest log, recipes, skills, inventory, gathering bag and your backpack.In the notifications you will find things like friend requests and guild invites.
Social menu you can find your friends list, guild, lfg tools and your online status in the top right corner. This is bound to O.
On the lfg tab you can see anyone who has listed themselves or their group in the lfg tool. You can set all kinds of tags here, location, levels, activities. You have a few filter options. To join groups or pick up players into your group you need to do it manually, the lfg tool doesn’t auto group people so you need to message people who have listed themselves and see if they want to party up. There is one tag I want to point out here, there is a mentoring tag. These are people who are offering to help others so don’t be afraid to take them up on it!
Quest log.
This is where you can see all your completed and active quests. It is written like a journal and is quite nice. There are no quest markers or anything of that nature, to find quests you have to just talk to npcs to see if they have anything for you to do. You must pay attention to what npcs are saying and your dialogue options. Choices matter! This is bound to L
Recipes.
You will find your gathering and crafting professions here. This is bound to K
Inventory
This is where you see what you have equipped and your stats tabs. This is bound to I
Skills
Here you can see your base level and specialization level, what skills you have, you can drag them to your bar, hover over them to see a tool tip and see what abilities you have coming with the next tier of levels. This is bound to J
Gathering bag
This is where all your raw harvested materials will go, as well as harvested scraps that can be sold to a vendor. This is bound to G
Backpack
This is where all of your loot and money and everything else goes. This is bound to B
Action Bars
These first four are consumables otherwise known as your pouch the other four are for your reagents. Otherwise known as your belt. They all have keybinds and the reagents also have little checkboxes.Below that on the left you have your auto attack and some little bubbles. You can click these little bubbles. This one with your class icon is weapon sheathe, this one with a little light bulb is for the torch and this one with a chair icon is for sitting. And they do have keybinds as well. Z for weapons T for torch and C for sit and the little tick key just above the left tab key im not sure what its called for auto attack.
To move things on your bar you need to first make sure your weapons are put away and then shift click and drag.
Wounds and Fatigue
You will start the game with some wounds and fatigue. You need to sit near an ember ring to heal these. Wounds on your health bar come from being knocked out in combat and dying. Fatigue is on your stamina bar and it comes just from using abilities and accumulates over time the more abilities you use.Inventory
You can press I to open it. You have three stat tabs here and your title. Armor class which is how much armor you have and weight which is how much you are able to wear. Gear slots, you will not be able to fill every single slot, but you can get pretty close. To unequip things you just drag them into your inventory. To equip them you just right click. If you are having trouble doing this make sure you have your weapons and torch put away and are not interacting with anything else.You have two bags. A gathering bag and a backpack bag. Your gathering bag is where your harvested materials go. Everything else goes into your backpack.
You will start the game with some training weapons. These are all the weapons your class can use, they can not be sold and must be destroyed by dragging and dropping onto the ground when you no longer need them. And the same goes for your muddy starter clothing and the starter food and smelling salts as well.
After you do the quest for Rhonda and heal your wounds, talk to Darrimar there near the first ring under the hut. He will tell you about the different harvesting skills you can choose. You have three to choose from. Forester hunter and prospector
Forester harvests wood, plants and mushrooms.
Prospector you harvest ore and gems
Hunter harvests skins and deer leaves
Choose one and he will give you a quest.
Stats
General Stats
Movement - Determines how fast you move out of combat stance.Combat Movement - Determines how fast you move in combat stance. Only active in combat.
Haste - This determines how long your auto attack and other global cooldowns are.
Safe fall - Reduces the damage you take when you fall off of things.
Health Regeneration - The rate at which your health regenerates.
Stamina Regeneration - The rate at which your stamina regenerates.
Healing - modifies heal bonus. This ONLY applies to heals YOU perform.
COMBAT
All combat stats are only active in combat.Defense
Resilience - Saving throw. Rolls for a chance at not falling in combat upon reaching 0 health. Has an unknown cooldown.Avoid - Chance to avoid an attack. Negating all damage and effects.
Block - Chance to block an attack. Negating all damage and effects. (defender only)
Parry - Chance to parry an attack. Negating all damage and effects.
Riposte - Chance to counterattack after a successful parry. Does nothing if you have 0 parry. (essentially an extra auto attack)
Offense
Hit - Increases chance to land a glancing, heavy or critical hit and reduces the chance of getting a miss.Penetration - Ignores some of the enemies armor dealing more direct damage to health.
Flanking - Increases your weapon positional bonus.
Damage
1 Hand Weapons - Modifies your damage with 1h weapons2 Hand Weapons - Modifies your damage with 2h weapons
Ranged Weapons - Modifies your damage with bows and crossbows.
RESISTS
Damage
Physical - reduce amount of physical damage takenMental - reduce amount of mental damage taken
Chemical - reduce amount of chemical damage taken
Ember - reduce amount of ember damage taken
Debuffs
Physical - reduce duration of physical debuffsMental - reduce the duration of mental debuffs
Chemical - reduce duration of chemical debuffs
Ember - reduce duration of ember debuffs
Movement - reduce duration of movement debuffs
Behavior
Confuse - reduce the duration of confuse effectsDaze - reduce the duration of daze effects
Stun - reduce the duration of stun effects
Other things to note
COMBAT LOGABS - absorb. damage absorbed by armor from all roll sources. damage absorbed by armor contributes to the armor total % durability.
THR - threat generated.
Miss - attack missed and did not hit. effect does not take hold.
Glance - very little damage done, low chance of effect application.
Heavily Hits - extra damage. effects applied.
Critical Hit - lots of extra damage. effects applied.
Advantage - rolls an extra set of dice and chooses the higher roll
Disadvantage - same thing but chooses the lower roll.
Health and Armor weight gain per level is on a scale and can not be calculated precisely however you can do some simple math (x-y)/a=z by looking at your class/spec tooltip to get a general idea of how much you will gain per level. This is where is says for example Defender level 1 +25 health (25 to 45), by the time you reach level 6 defender you will have gained 45 health (without gear etc boosting it) then your specialization for example Juggernaut +50 (50 to 100) by the time you reach juggernaut level 50 you will have gained 100 health. These are made up examples. The same applies to armor weight. If at level 1 defender it says +25 armor weight (25 to 45) it scales from 25-45 between levels 1 and 6 (and then from levels 6 to 50) (45-25)/6=3.333 per level, and it rounds down so you would gain roughly 3 armor weight per level.
Enemy nameplates
On the enemy nameplate you're gonna see a portrait, name, health bar. The blue shield icon on the left is armor. On the bottom of the portrait is your flanking position and next to it is a little arrow indicating which direction they are in and on the top left corner you have the chevrons.The positional arrow will change colors based on what weapon you are using and what position you are in. Red means you are in a position that is least beneficial to you flanking bonus on that weapon, blue is the middle ground and yellow means that you are in the optimal position for the base positional bonuses on your weapon. White is totally neutral. Now as you level and stack certain stats these arrows may not be entirely accurate because they simply reflect the base stats on the weapon not an accumulation of all your stats so just keep that in mind as you level and get better gear.
Chevrons.
This little arrow thing on the top left corner. You will see enemies with one chevron, two chevron or three chevron and even sometimes four chevrons. The number of chevrons indicates the appropriate group size for this mob. One chevron is designed for one to two players. Two chevrons is designed for three to four players. And three chevrons is designed for 5 to 6 players. Four chevrons is designed for nothing less than a full 6 player group.The color of the chevrons indicates their level. If they are gray they are 11 or more levels below you. If they are green they are 4-10 levels below you. If they are blue they are 2-3 levels below you. White is on level with you. Yellow is 1-2 levels above you and red is 3 or more levels above you. The higher they are above you the more resistances they will have. And the lower they are the less resistances they will have.
Chevrons do have tooltips so you can hover over them and see what kind of a challenge it is.
Experience.
Both the number and color of chevrons affects the amount of experience given by that mob. Singles have less and triples have more. Green will yield a diminished amount of exp and so will red. Grey will yield no experience at all. So you want to stick with blues whites and yellows for the most experience.You can track your experience by using the little bar underneath your action bar. If you right click on the icon in the center you can switch between class/harvesting/crafting exp bars.
Combat
To target things you can press TAB and you will see the red circle under your target and their nameplate on your screen. To start attacking either use one of your abilities or engage with auto attack. You can swap primary and secondary weapons with X.You will need to be mindful of your auto attack so that you aren't hitting extra mobs or breaking cc and keep an eye on your stamina and practice good stamina management.
Your health and stamina regen are affected by combat. They will regenerate very slowly in combat and can be boosted very slightly by sitting down even if you are in combat, however sitting down will increase your threat generation so be cautious of this.
Your armor will take damage as you fight and when you get knocked out or die. You can repair it by finding an anvil and clicking on it.
Reagents
Reagents are consumable items in game that you pick up from killing animals. Different animals have different reagents. Each class has two abilities so far that use these reagents. To use them you need to first make sure they are on your belt bar, then enable them with the keybind or the little check box. You will see the corresponding stack number appear on the ability. Abilities that use them do not require you to have them to use them but they make that ability more powerful, so you will want to seek out your reagents. There are different levels of reagents too so your ability keeps getting better as you level.Death
When you get knocked out you will take 5% wounds, and you will have a timer on your screen until you respawn, if no one is able to res you you can just hit respawn now. You can not interact with anything on the screen until you are revived but you can type in chat.When you die you will take an additional 10% wounds and you will drop your backpack where you died. To retrieve your bag you have to go to where you died and pick it up. There will be a skull and crossbones icon on your portrait that points you in the direction of your bag. If you can not or do not want to get your bag you can forfeit everything in it and get a fresh empty one. It is important to leave your money and other important valuables in your stash. Now when you are missing your bag you can still harvest because you retain your gathering bag. You also can still loot anything that is on your consumable bar and you can loot gear if you have an open slot for it. You do not lose your equipped items when you die, only your backpack. You can also repair it if you are missing your belongings and have money in your stash.
Navigating and maps
The map can be opened with M. there are no markers or indicators of where you are and things of that nature. There are however points of interest or POIs. these will only show if you have discovered them. But the map will uncover in sections as you explore. Some of the pois like ember rings will highlight blue if you are very near them. So you can get somewhat of an idea about where you are when you are near them. You must learn to navigate on your own. The big blue planer in the sky is your north star. It is always positioned in the north but the shadow on it will change depending on the time of day so i can kina be used a clock as well once you get familiar with it. Something that i find helpful when navigation is looking to the zone walls which are usually mountains and finding distinctive markings or shapes and things like that. You will also need to pay attention to land marks like farms, trees, mobs, things along the side of the road etc. It takes a little practice but as you adventure you will become quite familiar with the area and it will become easier.Harvesting.
If you don’t know what harvesting nodes look like you can tell them by hovering over them with your cursor and the icon will change and you will get a tooltip pop up telling you what kind of node it is and what level it is. You need to have your tools equipped and make sure they are not broken before you can harvest. Once you harvest you will see the result in your gathering bag. Sometimes you will harvest junk. This can be sold to a vendor. And you level you will get less junk and more materials on lower level nodes. You can get better tools at a tools merchant or by having a provisioner craft them for you. Imbued tools get a really nice harvesting time decrease.Crafting
After you have harvested some raw materials you can go to a crafting station, which looks kinda like an alchemy table, and refine your materials. You will get more junk to be sold to a vendor which will get better as you level just like harvesting. Think of it as “mastery” of that level of material. They will no longer be stored in your gathering bag. When your first gathering or craft gets to level 6 you can choose another. You can choose any combination of gathering or crafting as you see fit. After your first two get to level 12 you can pick up a third. Three gatherings or crafts is the max per character. Your professions can not exceed 10 levels above your base adventuring level.I'm not going to go super in depth about crafting but here are the basics. You will start with some basic recipes, at the crafting table you can see what materials you need for each recipe. To get more recipes you can buy them from a vendor or find rare imbued recipes out in the world.
Imbued recipes are more powerful versions of some basic ones. You need the rare ember material called flux for these. You get flux from animals or chests and nests only. And crafted items will say that they are crafted and by whom they were crafted.
Ember Stone
You will not have an ember stone right away, you will have to do a quest to obtain it. And dont worry i wont spoil the quest. Once you have gotten your stone you can fill it with essence by killing ashen mobs. Ashen mobs can spawn in Ember Drift Dungeons or near Ember ruptures. The essence can be used to fast travel between zones and eventually to make yourself even more powerful. When collecting essence you need to fight ashen mobs within your own level range. Mobs that are too far below you will give you little to none. It works similarly to exp.Monoliths
Ember monoliths are the big pillar looking things with an orange glowy top. These are used for fast traveling. You must discover them before you can use them and you need to have enough essence to use them. The further away you want to travel the more essence it costs.Ember Drifts
Drifts are roaming mini dungeons. You will see lightning and glowing orange ember things sticking up out of the ground. It looks kinda like a teleportation device, which is exactly what it is. Walking into the center of it will take you to a dungeon where ashen mobs have a chance to spawn. There will be a hallow, ember ring and exit. The exit looks like big glowing crystals sticking out of the ground and ceiling.Ember Ruptures
These are similar to Drifts but are not dungeons. Instead you simply kill creatures nearby them and they might turn ashen. Ashen mobs also have a chance to drop Ash, ash is a consumable that can be used at an ember ring to increase its regenerative properties for 30 minutes affecting anyone who sits near it.Changing your class or professions
If you decide that you wish to change class, gathering skill, crafting profession or even your base role, you can do that. But it comes at a cost. You will lose all experience gained in whatever it is you choose to forget. If you forget your spec you will lose spec exp, but NOT base adventuring role, so you can still wear all of your gear. You will not lose exp in your harvesting or crafting if you do this. The same rules apply to gathering and crafting. If you want to change your base role though, say from supporter to striker, you can also do that but you will be reset back to level 1, the benefit of doing this is you don't have to repeat quests or exploring you just have to level up again. You will not lose exp in gathering or crafting.To forget something simply open your skills menu and right click on the thing you want to forget. You will have to go to a trainer to pick up a new one so don't do this out in the wild!
Interacting with other players
You can press H to hail other players. You also have emotes you can use to see a list type /emotes in chat. Some emotes are rare drops from mobs like the flex emote!You can also right click on peoples name plates or names in chat to do things like whisper, block or invite to group and guild.
Trading
To trade first you must be near the player you wish to trade with and right click on their nameplate or person and select trade, or if they initiate trade you will get a pop up on the screen. A window will appear and you can drag things from your inventory to the trade window or put money in by right clicking the little money icon at the bottom of the window. You need to have the money in your bag to do this. Same goes for items you want to trade; they must be in your bag. If you want to trade something from your gathering bag you need to move it to your backpack first. And to split items you must shift and click the stack. When trading stackable items they don't not automatically stack so you will have to stack them yourself. You also can not trade if you are missing your belongings or if your backpack is full.Grouping
Once you are in a group you will have a group frame displaying your group members. At the top you will see a +number this is telling you how many group members are in range of you. This affects experience and loot if people are out of range they will not get exp or loot. It also indicates how many people the exp will be split amongst. It's better to kill 2s or 3s when in a group since they will give more exp. You will also see a gear icon this is where you can set auto roll for greed or pass. I highly encourage you to use this feature when you are in a group you can trust and especially if you have hunters in the group they can not skin until everyone has looted. And then you have a little X if you click this you will leave the group. If a party member is out of range their nameplate will simply show their name and location. Don't forget to use the gps icon to know which direction your group is in. the group leader will have a crown icon above their level. You can target a group member and press F to assist and target their target. You can also set the keybinds for targeting group members.Thank you!
I think that just about covers all the basics of getting started. I hope you found this to be helpful!I am an official Embers Adrift affiliate! Use this link to buy embers adrift and support me as well as I do earn a commission with each purchase using my link! After you purchase using the link you will get a code in an email that you will need to plug into your account page to ensure that i get credit i will be eternally grateful <3
For yourself - https://embersadrift.com/a/Alice_Bluu
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