Post by Tanaric on Jan 24, 2016 12:10:46 GMT
Avabur New Player Guide / FAQ
Last updated Feb 18, 2016
Please note that this guide is highly opinionated. Maybe you'll disagree with me and that's fine -- please comment and I'll try to include it in the guide if what you're saying seems sane.
Also please comment if you have other questions, happy to help!
Finally, for a stricter FAQ-format list of questions, see Xandor's FAQ. There's some overlap for sure, but in general we cover different things.
I just started. What do I do?
Avabur is a game all about auto-attacking enemies and taking their loot. Head to "The Living Forest" battle area (second button in the "Areas" section), pick the first mob, and start beating up some ants.
You start as a naked person punching ants to death.
What is stamina?
Every fight takes away a stamina point. You start with 20 stamina and it goes down by one after each fight. However, you can refill your stamina for free anytime by clicking the "replenish stamina" button or hitting the "R" key on your keyboard.
When you're out of stamina, you become fatigued. You'll keep fighting even if you're fatigued, but your action timer will get slower. The slowdown increases every fight while you're out of stamina, to a maximum of 4x the default action timer. The 4x slowdown happens when you've been fatigued for as many fights as you have stamina (e.g., 20 fights with the default stamina of 20).
What about quests?
You should almost always have a quest active when you're battling. You get them from the quest center, which you can find via the City Square, the first button in the "Areas" section. Battle quests are based on mob type, so be sure that your quest and the mob you're fighting match.
Quests start out easy, but each quest gets harder than the previous one. Quest rewards aren't based on what mob you're fighting though, so keep doing them as fast as you can and enjoy the rewards.
What are these stats I'm getting?
There are eight stats that can drop while battling. Four core stats (strength, health, coordination, agility) and four skills (counter attack, healing, evasion, and a weapon skill). You can learn more about what they do by hovering over them in your character panel at the top of your screen.
Drop rates are roughly equal within a category, and your stats will basically stay within 5% of each other, so you don't have to worry about optimizing for specific stat drops.
The weapon skill is based on which weapon you have equipped (or unarmed skill if you have no weapon). They all do the same thing: they increase minimum damage and improve your accuracy with that weapon.
What are these weird monster bits I'm getting?
They're crafting materials and they don't do anything yet, as crafting is not yet implemented in the game. Hold on to them.
I'm tired of being naked.
Bet you're real fun at parties.
You can buy gear from the forge at the City Square, but... probably don't. Forge gear is garbage and relatively expensive.
You can buy gear from players using the Market (area button #3). This is usually cheaper and you can find higher-quality loot. But pay attention to the gear level! You can only equip gear of your character level or below.
You also infrequently get gear drops while battling. Gear drops can range in quality from "Poor" to "Refined" -- you can tell the quality by the color of the name or by hovering over it.
Which weapon should I choose?
There's no global best choice. Even using no weapon is viable.
Unarmed has the best bonus from high strength, but of course you don't get to apply a weapon's attack value. You also get an additional 10 percentage points in counter attack while unarmed.
Swords have the second best strength bonus and increases critical hit damage by 10 percentage points.
Staves have the third best strength bonus, increase healing by 10 percentage points, and provide a chance to "spellcast", which randomly does a small amount of extra damage in combat.
Bows have the worst strength bonus, but have much higher base damage. You can't wield a shield with a bow.
Generally it's recommended to use a bow at the beginning because you don't have much strength to worry about. As you improve base damage in the training center and increase your strength, consider switching to a sword or unarmed. Staves are fine too, but right now healing is a bit underpowered. But if you find an amazing staff by all means use it.
With very high base damage upgrades from training center, currently unarmed is the most damaging choice past the first few levels. But that could change any time with updates.
What's the training center?
If you're not in a clan, the training center is where you'll be spending most of your gold and platinum. You can use gold to up your base damage and armor, which is really important and should be done whenever you can.
You can use platinum to buy a lot of other buffs, both to secondary combat skills and harvesting bonuses. Among the combat skills, it's generally agreed that critical hit chance and toughness are the only two worth spending a lot on. I personally support a high crit chance build -- especially if you're using a sword -- but we don't have really good data yet on what's best.
Harvesting?
Go to the forge and you can buy harvesting tools. You should buy all of them, even if you only intend on leveling one of the skills, before you leave the first game area. You can't buy the base tools anywhere else.
Instead of battling, you can choose to harvest. Mechanically it's identical, but you get harvest XP and materials instead of character XP and gold. Stat drop rates are reduced while harvesting, but you have a small chance at finding gems, which will be used to improve gear once the system goes live.
Harvesting materials will eventually be used for player housing upgrades, but currently their only use is in clans.
Clans?
Clans are the major resource sink in the game currently. Once in a clan you can donate (or be taxed) resources to construct buildings which give all clan members a buff.
Clans by default suck away 10% of all XP, gold, and resources gained by their members. Clan buildings require gold and resources, but also crystals and platinum to build. Since crystals and platinum aren't taxed, clans necessarily rely on donations from their members to grow. If you join a clan, be a good citizen and contribute.
Clan taxes can be adjusted by clan leaders to whatever they want, on a rank by rank basis. You can also voluntarily up your own tax in the account management screen. This is especially useful if you want to contribute XP, since you can't donate XP directly.
Clan buffs are basically the same as the crystal shop buffs. See the wiki for building descriptions and costs.
What are crystals?
It's a free game, so it's got to make money somehow, right?
Crystals are the premium currency. They drop infrequently and can be rewarded by quests, but the primary source of crystals is through real-money purchases. It's no more than a dollar for 10 crystals -- check the crystal shop for current promotions and bonus rate for bulk purchases.
Crystals are used mostly to buy upgrades, which are also in the crystal shop. These are *really important* and you should get some. Most people spend their initial free crystals on getting 10 more stamina.
Crystals are tradeable (except for newbie starter crystals) and you can find them on the market for gold. You can also buy them from the crystal shop for gold, but it costs 2M for one and gets more expensive if you buy more in one day. The market has been the cheaper source by far, so far.
Also, clan buildings require a small amount of crystals too. Donate one and look cool to your friends.
What should I spend my crystals on?
This is a hard question to answer as crystal upgrade costs scale up pretty aggressively. The simplest answer is "a little of everything."
But, since you're asking for my opinion:
First, buy 10 more stamina. The first 10 is cheap (you can buy it with free starter crystals) and makes a big difference.
Next, decide if you're going to focus on battling or harvesting.
If you choose to harvest, most of the crystal shop upgrades are less useful for you. The "Battle Experience" and "Gold" upgrades are useless for you. The "Stat Drop" upgrade is less useful, as drop rates are diminished while harvesting. The "Drop Rate" boost is also less useful currently, as only gems drop while harvesting, and actually using gems is not in the game yet. Finally, "Training Cost Reduction" is also less useful as it takes ungodly amounts of platinum to get your harvest boosts up to anything useful.
If you're following along, that means the most useful crystal shop upgrade for harvesters is "Quest Time Reduction". As it stands, it's a damn useful upgrade for battlers too, so I'd recommend spending crystals there first.
If you're a battler, sprinkle crystals relatively evenly among the other categories after pushing quest time up a bit. "Drop Rate Boost" is helpful but only if you're near the top of the level leaderboard -- otherwise gear is so cheap on the Market, due to all the other players ahead of you selling things, that it doesn't much matter.
These ants are really easy, when do I move to the next mob?
Whenever the one you're on is too easy
Most people shoot for a 95-98% win rate on whatever they fight. The battle stats panel can help you figure this out. Just reset it and try fighting something harder for a turn or 20.
What are areas?
Eventually you'll kill all the mobs in the list at 100% win rate. When this happens, it's time to move to the next area. You do this via the "travel area" section from the City Square.
Moving areas is expensive (1M gold for the first one). Don't move unless you're really ready to move past the last mob in area one.
Also, I'm repeating myself, but be sure you bought all the harvesting tools in area one first. You can't buy them later. If you have to come back to pick them up, you'll have to pay the 1M to go back to area 2 again.
The second area is structured the same as the first, but some names have changed. The City Square is now the Marsh's Edge, and the battle area is now the Marsh.
If you're focusing on harvesting, you should know you can buy an upgrade to your harvesting tools in each area beyond the first. It's 50 minimum skill and 25 crystals for each area beyond the first. So, when you want your second upgrade, you'll need to go to area three, have 100 skill, and have 50 crystals to spend.
How do I send someone something?
If it's equipment, hit the "more" button next to it in your inventory, and use the window that pops up to send it.
If it's currency or resources, use the /wire command in chat.
Feel free to try it out! /wire Tanaric 1000 platinum
(no returns or refunds)
What is housing?
Housing is another upgrade path for your character. It works together with equipment, the training center, and the crystal shop as another way to grow more powerful.
You need to be level 10 for housing to be available.
Unlike the other upgrades, some housing upgrades add unique new features to your gameplay. For example, at housing level 5 you can build a workshop, and send out a harvestron to gather resources for you (costs gold over time).
Housing is a relatively expensive upgrade path. To even start, you'll need 20,000,000 gold or 200 fame points. And that just buys you an empty plot of land! Each room or upgrade you build costs gold and resources. If you're just starting out, it's probably best to wait on housing until you're sure you can afford it. ~35,000,000 gold and 200,000 of each resource is a good starting estimate.
For detailed info on housing upgrades, check the housing thread.
I got other questions.
Then ask elsewhere in this subforum or in chat. If you see a question being asked a lot, reply below and I'll edit it in here. The wiki is also a good source for more detailed information on any topic: avabur.wikia.com/wiki/Relics_of_Avabur_Wikia
Last updated Feb 18, 2016
Please note that this guide is highly opinionated. Maybe you'll disagree with me and that's fine -- please comment and I'll try to include it in the guide if what you're saying seems sane.
Also please comment if you have other questions, happy to help!
Finally, for a stricter FAQ-format list of questions, see Xandor's FAQ. There's some overlap for sure, but in general we cover different things.
I just started. What do I do?
Avabur is a game all about auto-attacking enemies and taking their loot. Head to "The Living Forest" battle area (second button in the "Areas" section), pick the first mob, and start beating up some ants.
You start as a naked person punching ants to death.
What is stamina?
Every fight takes away a stamina point. You start with 20 stamina and it goes down by one after each fight. However, you can refill your stamina for free anytime by clicking the "replenish stamina" button or hitting the "R" key on your keyboard.
When you're out of stamina, you become fatigued. You'll keep fighting even if you're fatigued, but your action timer will get slower. The slowdown increases every fight while you're out of stamina, to a maximum of 4x the default action timer. The 4x slowdown happens when you've been fatigued for as many fights as you have stamina (e.g., 20 fights with the default stamina of 20).
What about quests?
You should almost always have a quest active when you're battling. You get them from the quest center, which you can find via the City Square, the first button in the "Areas" section. Battle quests are based on mob type, so be sure that your quest and the mob you're fighting match.
Quests start out easy, but each quest gets harder than the previous one. Quest rewards aren't based on what mob you're fighting though, so keep doing them as fast as you can and enjoy the rewards.
What are these stats I'm getting?
There are eight stats that can drop while battling. Four core stats (strength, health, coordination, agility) and four skills (counter attack, healing, evasion, and a weapon skill). You can learn more about what they do by hovering over them in your character panel at the top of your screen.
Drop rates are roughly equal within a category, and your stats will basically stay within 5% of each other, so you don't have to worry about optimizing for specific stat drops.
The weapon skill is based on which weapon you have equipped (or unarmed skill if you have no weapon). They all do the same thing: they increase minimum damage and improve your accuracy with that weapon.
What are these weird monster bits I'm getting?
They're crafting materials and they don't do anything yet, as crafting is not yet implemented in the game. Hold on to them.
I'm tired of being naked.
Bet you're real fun at parties.
You can buy gear from the forge at the City Square, but... probably don't. Forge gear is garbage and relatively expensive.
You can buy gear from players using the Market (area button #3). This is usually cheaper and you can find higher-quality loot. But pay attention to the gear level! You can only equip gear of your character level or below.
You also infrequently get gear drops while battling. Gear drops can range in quality from "Poor" to "Refined" -- you can tell the quality by the color of the name or by hovering over it.
Which weapon should I choose?
There's no global best choice. Even using no weapon is viable.
Unarmed has the best bonus from high strength, but of course you don't get to apply a weapon's attack value. You also get an additional 10 percentage points in counter attack while unarmed.
Swords have the second best strength bonus and increases critical hit damage by 10 percentage points.
Staves have the third best strength bonus, increase healing by 10 percentage points, and provide a chance to "spellcast", which randomly does a small amount of extra damage in combat.
Bows have the worst strength bonus, but have much higher base damage. You can't wield a shield with a bow.
Generally it's recommended to use a bow at the beginning because you don't have much strength to worry about. As you improve base damage in the training center and increase your strength, consider switching to a sword or unarmed. Staves are fine too, but right now healing is a bit underpowered. But if you find an amazing staff by all means use it.
With very high base damage upgrades from training center, currently unarmed is the most damaging choice past the first few levels. But that could change any time with updates.
What's the training center?
If you're not in a clan, the training center is where you'll be spending most of your gold and platinum. You can use gold to up your base damage and armor, which is really important and should be done whenever you can.
You can use platinum to buy a lot of other buffs, both to secondary combat skills and harvesting bonuses. Among the combat skills, it's generally agreed that critical hit chance and toughness are the only two worth spending a lot on. I personally support a high crit chance build -- especially if you're using a sword -- but we don't have really good data yet on what's best.
Harvesting?
Go to the forge and you can buy harvesting tools. You should buy all of them, even if you only intend on leveling one of the skills, before you leave the first game area. You can't buy the base tools anywhere else.
Instead of battling, you can choose to harvest. Mechanically it's identical, but you get harvest XP and materials instead of character XP and gold. Stat drop rates are reduced while harvesting, but you have a small chance at finding gems, which will be used to improve gear once the system goes live.
Harvesting materials will eventually be used for player housing upgrades, but currently their only use is in clans.
Clans?
Clans are the major resource sink in the game currently. Once in a clan you can donate (or be taxed) resources to construct buildings which give all clan members a buff.
Clans by default suck away 10% of all XP, gold, and resources gained by their members. Clan buildings require gold and resources, but also crystals and platinum to build. Since crystals and platinum aren't taxed, clans necessarily rely on donations from their members to grow. If you join a clan, be a good citizen and contribute.
Clan taxes can be adjusted by clan leaders to whatever they want, on a rank by rank basis. You can also voluntarily up your own tax in the account management screen. This is especially useful if you want to contribute XP, since you can't donate XP directly.
Clan buffs are basically the same as the crystal shop buffs. See the wiki for building descriptions and costs.
What are crystals?
It's a free game, so it's got to make money somehow, right?
Crystals are the premium currency. They drop infrequently and can be rewarded by quests, but the primary source of crystals is through real-money purchases. It's no more than a dollar for 10 crystals -- check the crystal shop for current promotions and bonus rate for bulk purchases.
Crystals are used mostly to buy upgrades, which are also in the crystal shop. These are *really important* and you should get some. Most people spend their initial free crystals on getting 10 more stamina.
Crystals are tradeable (except for newbie starter crystals) and you can find them on the market for gold. You can also buy them from the crystal shop for gold, but it costs 2M for one and gets more expensive if you buy more in one day. The market has been the cheaper source by far, so far.
Also, clan buildings require a small amount of crystals too. Donate one and look cool to your friends.
What should I spend my crystals on?
This is a hard question to answer as crystal upgrade costs scale up pretty aggressively. The simplest answer is "a little of everything."
But, since you're asking for my opinion:
First, buy 10 more stamina. The first 10 is cheap (you can buy it with free starter crystals) and makes a big difference.
Next, decide if you're going to focus on battling or harvesting.
If you choose to harvest, most of the crystal shop upgrades are less useful for you. The "Battle Experience" and "Gold" upgrades are useless for you. The "Stat Drop" upgrade is less useful, as drop rates are diminished while harvesting. The "Drop Rate" boost is also less useful currently, as only gems drop while harvesting, and actually using gems is not in the game yet. Finally, "Training Cost Reduction" is also less useful as it takes ungodly amounts of platinum to get your harvest boosts up to anything useful.
If you're following along, that means the most useful crystal shop upgrade for harvesters is "Quest Time Reduction". As it stands, it's a damn useful upgrade for battlers too, so I'd recommend spending crystals there first.
If you're a battler, sprinkle crystals relatively evenly among the other categories after pushing quest time up a bit. "Drop Rate Boost" is helpful but only if you're near the top of the level leaderboard -- otherwise gear is so cheap on the Market, due to all the other players ahead of you selling things, that it doesn't much matter.
These ants are really easy, when do I move to the next mob?
Whenever the one you're on is too easy
Most people shoot for a 95-98% win rate on whatever they fight. The battle stats panel can help you figure this out. Just reset it and try fighting something harder for a turn or 20.
What are areas?
Eventually you'll kill all the mobs in the list at 100% win rate. When this happens, it's time to move to the next area. You do this via the "travel area" section from the City Square.
Moving areas is expensive (1M gold for the first one). Don't move unless you're really ready to move past the last mob in area one.
Also, I'm repeating myself, but be sure you bought all the harvesting tools in area one first. You can't buy them later. If you have to come back to pick them up, you'll have to pay the 1M to go back to area 2 again.
The second area is structured the same as the first, but some names have changed. The City Square is now the Marsh's Edge, and the battle area is now the Marsh.
If you're focusing on harvesting, you should know you can buy an upgrade to your harvesting tools in each area beyond the first. It's 50 minimum skill and 25 crystals for each area beyond the first. So, when you want your second upgrade, you'll need to go to area three, have 100 skill, and have 50 crystals to spend.
How do I send someone something?
If it's equipment, hit the "more" button next to it in your inventory, and use the window that pops up to send it.
If it's currency or resources, use the /wire command in chat.
Feel free to try it out! /wire Tanaric 1000 platinum
(no returns or refunds)
What is housing?
Housing is another upgrade path for your character. It works together with equipment, the training center, and the crystal shop as another way to grow more powerful.
You need to be level 10 for housing to be available.
Unlike the other upgrades, some housing upgrades add unique new features to your gameplay. For example, at housing level 5 you can build a workshop, and send out a harvestron to gather resources for you (costs gold over time).
Housing is a relatively expensive upgrade path. To even start, you'll need 20,000,000 gold or 200 fame points. And that just buys you an empty plot of land! Each room or upgrade you build costs gold and resources. If you're just starting out, it's probably best to wait on housing until you're sure you can afford it. ~35,000,000 gold and 200,000 of each resource is a good starting estimate.
For detailed info on housing upgrades, check the housing thread.
I got other questions.
Then ask elsewhere in this subforum or in chat. If you see a question being asked a lot, reply below and I'll edit it in here. The wiki is also a good source for more detailed information on any topic: avabur.wikia.com/wiki/Relics_of_Avabur_Wikia
