So, you’ve decided to give The Saga of Ryzom a try. The very first thing you should know is that Ryzom is not a very newbie friendly game. If you have no pervious MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) experience, your first log-in can be a bit daunting. However, that’s what this guide is aiming to prevent .

I’ve split this guide into a few sections. They include the following;

Character Creation
What To Do When You First Log On
What And Where To Kill
When To Run, And When To Fight On
How To Make Some Friends
Training
Money And Equipment
How To Play Nice
Tips For Experienced Players
Character Creation

Character creation is where you can go crazy and pick exactly what you want your character to look like. On the left there are four or five boxes, start from the top to the bottom. Make your choices for race, sex, and appearance. Once you get to the bottom box (labeled “Actions”) you have a couple choices.

What you decide here is your template. This decides what beginning skills your character starts with, and usually, what they will excel in. You have four choice and three sliders which can each hold one choice. Some common templates are fight/fight/fight and magic/magic/magic. However you can mix and match it up a bit and go magic/magic/fight or fight/fight/magic. However I suggest going full fight or magic for your first character, it will make things a lot easier.

Tip: Crafting and Foraging will be covered in a later guide. For your first character, I don’t recommend choosing either of these options.

Starting skills will be explained for each template on the bottom of the screen. The skill icons are explained to the right.

Once you’ve created your character, you’re able to choose a starting area. All of these areas are basically the same. They all offer the same merchants, trainers, and monsters to kill. Choose one, and click on play now on the bottom right hand corner.

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What To Do When You First Log On

Once you enter the world, a lot of stuff will appear, along with a back view of your character. All of the windows can be a little confusing, but don’t touch any of them yet.

Chances are you will get some graphical lag when you first log in, as your computer will be loading all of the other players and NPCs (Non Player Characters). This can be a bit hard on your computer, and it may take some time to load everything, because they are constantly moving.

As I said, don’t touch any windows yet, using the arrow keys, turn and find the way out of town into the area with newbie monsters (don’t worry, you wont be attacked). Move out there and face away from the town. The lag will probably stop, as there are a lot less people here than in town. Now the mouse will be a bit more manageable (I apologize for anyone with a computer that would blow mine away, but this is what I had to do ).

Key Configuration

If you prefer different keys than what they have set for you, hit the K key to bring up the key configuration. This is a huge list, and I suggest leaving most of it alone. You’ll learn it all in time. Right now, just change to the movement and targeting keys to whatever you want, or keep them the same.

Tip: Remap the actions panel key before anything (Default is A and it’s under the windows category, if your having trouble finding it.) You will need this to see how fast you’re leveling and what level you are in a certain skill. I recommend setting it to Ctrl+A. Also, re-map the S and W keys to Ctrl+S and Ctrl+W, as they represent the system info and your journal.

Next, arrange the windows on the screen, most can be resized and moved to your convenience. If there is not a window on the screen that you want on there, look at the key configuration (see above) and look for the key to show the window.

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What And Where To Kill

Fighter

Templates

Fight/Fight/Fight
Fight/Fight/Magic
Fight/Fight/Forage
Fight/Fight/Craft
If you’re a fighter type, then you’re all set to go out and kill some rodents. Here’s what you will need to do to slaughter some poor defenseless rats in Ryzom (J/K, they’re not defenseless)

Make sure your weapon is equipped. If its not, look at the top of your screen. There is a panel with your current skills; there should be two hand graphics on the left and the right of that panel. Right click on the right hand; this will give you a list of items currently in your inventory that can be equipped.

Run up close to a monster.

To attack: On the bottom left of your screen, there will be a window labeled “Pad”. On the top of this window, there are several tabs. Click on the tab that is labeled Actions. There is an attack button here. You can also attack by clicking twice on a monster.

Your character will begin to attack the creature. There is no visible or audible way to tell that you hit or have been hit, you just have to watch the health bars of both the monster and yourself.
Tip: If the monsters health does not show up in a window on your screen, hit the T key (default) to show the target window.

Either you will kill it or it will kill you.

If it kills you, you have a choice to respawn wherever you want (you have to have been where you want to respawn already, so just click on the area where you started).

If you kill it, you will have gotten experience in the fight skill. Once you gain enough experience in the skill, your fight level will go up. When this happens, you gain 10 skill points. To spend these skill points, you will have to visit a trainer. Ill explain that later.
Once the creature is dead, you have two options to loot it or to quarter it.

Quartering is for animals only. It is the process of scouring the animal’s body for usable resources. Usually you will get several items, including bones and skins.

Looting is for humanoid opponents, these include anything that the creature was carrying, be it cash, weapons, armor or anything else.
You only need to worry about quartering right now however. So, to quarter your recent kill, click on the corpse, and hold the pointer over it for a second. An icon will attack to your mouse that says Quarter, click the corpse again and you will begin the process. Once you are finished, click the “loot all” button and move on to the next creature.

Fighters have special abilities that they can employ to turn the tide of a battle. You start out with several such abilities.

One is a maneuver that will allow you to hit harder for one hit, and to attack faster for one hit. To perform these abilities, click on the respective button on the panel on the top of the screen. It will cue up and take affect after the current attack that is already being performed. You may gain more abilities through training, which will be explained later in the guide. That’s all for a fighter type. Now, onto a mage type.

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Mage

Templates

magic/magic/magic
magic/magic/fight
magic/magic/forage
magic/magic/craft
A mage is a bit different from a fighter. They are usually do not excel in melee combat and must rely on their spells to survive. You already have a few spells learned when you start, they are on the top panel.

To kill a rat with a mage, you must take a few different steps than a fighter.

You usually don’t have to get close to a monster to kill it with a mage. Most spells have a certain range that they can be cast in. If you’re too far away to hit the monster with the spell, it will tell you in red text in the system chat box.

Once your close enough, click on your acid spell. You will begin to cast, once the casting is finished, a bolt will fire from your hand and do damage to the monster. Naturally the monster wont appreciate acid being rained down upon it, so it will charge you. Don’t worry, you can still cast while being attacked.

You can cue up spells just like combat abilities. Click the acid spell once more and it will cue up and cast directly after the first cast is finished. You may only cue up one spell at a time, so you will need to continue clicking the spell to continue casting it.

Once the creature is dead (or you’re dead) the procedure is exactly the same as a fighter. Except you will gain experience in the magic skill instead of fight.
Continue this method to your satisfaction.

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When To Run And When To Fight On

Never be ashamed to run away, it’s a necessity in MMORPGs, and will save your life numerous times. But the hard part knows when to run and when to keep fighting.

When to run

When another monster joins the fight, usually this means certain death if you stay and fight.

When a monster that greatly over powers you attacks you on sight, just don’t run into more of them .

When a monster is tougher than you thought and there is no way to win the fight.

If you’re severely low on health. Better safe than sorry.

When To Fight On

When the monsters health is lower than yours (naturally).

When the fight is about equal.

When you can call for help and actually get it from others.
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How To Make Some Friends

Basically, talk to people!

In greater detail, hit the enter key and say hello to anyone you see. Anyone who you want to be your friend will say hello back, if they see the message that is. Don’t be offended if someone doesn’t answer, chances are your message was lost in spam (lots of text flowing across the screen at once).

Another way is to talk to someone specific. If you see someone in chat or around the game that you want to talk to, hit the enter key and type /t [their name] (text). It will open a new window that is specifically for your conversation with that person.

You can also join a guild. A guild is a grouping of players that are usually on at the same time and like to play together. It can also act as a personal chat room for a group of friends.

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Training

So, you’ve killed a few rats, and have leveled your primary skill a few times. Hit the “P” key to see how many skill points you have. As long as you have 10 or more, you can train a new skill.

Head into town and look for an NPC with green text that spells your class trainer.

Run up to the trainer, target them and hold the mouse button over them. After a second, the pointer will have a “develop skills” icon attached to it. Click the trainer again.

A skill list will show up, explaining what skills you can train at your level. To train a skill, left click on it, and click the “learn skill” on the bottom of the window that pops up. The skill will automatically be placed onto the panel at the top of your screen.

The skills window also shows how many skill points you have at the bottom of the window.

You can also right click skills and click on info on the list that comes down to see a description of the skill.

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Money And Equipment

Killing things is all well and good. But killings things with bigger weapons is much better!

After you train, look in your inventory (The “I” key by default) and look below the items you have equipped (marked by a yellow “*” on the top right hand corner of the item icon) and you should see all the items you quartered from the rats.

Head over to any merchant, I recommend you go to the weapons merchant as you can buy a weapon right after you sell.

Get to the buy/sell window the same way you got to the training window.

On the left is your inventory, you can sell anything here. To sell the junk you quartered off of the rats, left click on it, and click “sell” on the window that pops up. It will show how much the item will sell for and how much money you received. Continue this process until all of the junk is gone.

At this point, depending on how much you looted, you should have between 1,000 and 10,000 cash to spend.

Look at the right of the merchant window. This is the merchant’s wares. Most of the items in the newbie village’s weapon shop don’t cost more than 500 coins, so buy whatever you want from there and go back out into the field and kill some more monsters.

If you travel a bit farther out from the gates you will run into some higher level, tougher monsters to kill. They present a higher risk, but also provide a bigger reward.

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How To Play Nice

Even though this is a virtual world, there are some spoken and unspoken rules that you should follow. I will list a few here.

Please restrain from swearing, although it might not be offensive to you, I guarantee someone will be offended.

Don’t kill steal. Kill stealing is the action of killing a monster that someone else is already attacking. Not only is it rude, but it’s not necessary, there are lots of monsters to kill.

Don’t ignore people, answer them if they ask a question or say hello. You don’t have to start up a conversation, but it’s always polite to acknowledge someone.

Harassment is never allowed, in any game. If you see it, or are being harassed yourself, report it to a GM immediately.

Never give out your user name and password. Chances are, game companies will never ask you for these, as they already know them. So if someone is asking for them, claiming to be from the company, they are probably lying.

Try to help those in need whenever possible. If you see someone running, and don’t think they’ll make it to the guards, kill the monster chasing them, if you can. Also, if your pockets are over flowing, it always feels good to help a newb out with a little cash here or there.

Don’t beg. Plain and simple. It’s annoying and immature. People work hard for what they get (unless they are begging too) and it’s immature to just ask for something that they worked for. Chances are you’re likely to get more when you don’t beg, than if you do anyway.
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Tips For Experienced Players

This section is for people who have played a few of these games before and are curious as to how things work in this one. Here are a few tips to help you familiarize yourself with some of the common features that you’ll probably recognize. It also has some features that will surprise you.

Hit L to light a “torch”.

Before resetting the movement keys to WASD, remap the keys that presently reside in these places. I recommend remapping them to a ctrl+ variation.

Yes, you always run that slowly.
Hit the “M” key for a map.

Use the scroll button on your mouse to zoom into first person view, and to get back out into third.

You can only buy the armor you already have in the newb village. You will need to buy crafted after you out grow that. That is, until you reach the mainland (recommended level 35+) and can buy better there.

Armor is divided by quality. Level 10 armor will be quality 10 armor.
Mages use light armor and fighters use heavy.
Ctrl+F10 to take a screen shot, it will drop a jpg into your main game folder.

Use universal chat for any in game questions.

When you send someone a tell, it opens a new window specifically for that conversation.

To get to the options menu in-game: there is a computer icon on the bottom right of the screen on the tool bar across the bottom of your screen.