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| Author | Newbie Guide |
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Index:
1. Basics
2. Combat level Breakdown
3. Most important game rules
1. Basics
This is a strategy game with elements of RPG which is rather complex; it features a vast multitude of things to do, and more things are added from time to time; and it is difficult to write a universal guide. There is no “best way” of playing; different people will find pleasure in doing different things. The only universal advice that is valid for all players is: play to have fun!
Your character represents a Lady or Lord in the imaginary world of LordsWM, a citizen of Empire who has been allocated a castle and a range of troops inherent to her or his faction.
The game has two main types of stats gained in combats that define the development of your character: EXP (Experience) and FSP (Faction Skill Points). The general concept is that you should optimize at gaining as many FSP as possible or even as many FSP/EXP as possible. Earning large portions of EXP in itself is rather bad than good, because apart from getting good FSP to keep the balance, you will also find it necessary to progress in different guilds over time to make your character strong.
The game features many different activities to engage in, the main of which are: Combats; Card games; Earning gold; Socializing. | A. Combats
There are 2 general types of battles: PvE (Player vs. Environment) and PvP (Player vs. Player). In the beginning Hunting is the primary PvE type. Duels and Group Battles are the primary PvP.
Participating in certain combats will earn your character bonus points, called Guild points. New levels in most guilds evolve your character. You can read about different guilds and their bonuses here:
https://www.lordswm.com/help.php?section=39
https://www.lordswm.com/help.php?section=10
Before you engage in any combat, you need to prepare for it. Make sure you have a proper army recruited (Visit Recruiting menu below Character in top menu bar to alter your creature count), and that you have built all available constructions in your Castle. Check if you have enough items equipped, but do not wear excess items as they are expensive. When you have reached combat level 5, plan on using your talent points on necessary talents (Click Character – Talents).
At the beginning of every combat you will need to settle your troops. You will start with several creature stacks, place them on any tile within the settlement grid. You can split your troops, up to a maximum of 4-7 stacks. A good idea is to place shooters behind, and melee stacks forward closer to the center.
You can remove stacks off the settlement grid for better placement simply by dragging one creature icon on top on top of another in the initiative bar. After you are done with settling them, click the button to start combat.
Combats in LordsWM are turn-based. Creature take turns based on their Initiative parameter. Detailed information about initiative may be found here:
https://www.lordswm.com/forum_messages.php?tid=1832909
On their turn, creatures and characters can perform one of the following actions:
• Move. Just point to any battleground tile you want to move your creature to. Characters cannot move.
• Attack/Shoot. Move your cursor to any enemy target that is in (melee) range (cursor will change to a Sword) and left click. It will deal melee damage according to Hero's damage range. For shooters, as long as there are no enemy units next to it, it can shoot an enemy target. Damage will depend on whether target is in or out of shooter range.
• Spell/Ability. Some creatures have spells or abilities to use. Such creatures have a spellbook or golden helmet icon in the combat menu frame. Clicking the book will bring up the character’s or creature's listed spells and abilities. If the stack has only one activated ability, the helmet button will activate it automatically. Most of the time, you will need to choose a target for the spell or ability. To cancel usage of a spell or ability, click the same button once again.
• Wait. This will make the character/creature pass half a turn. Its next turn will come 50% faster than usual. It is sometimes extremely tactically beneficial to wait with creatures, whereas characters would normally attack or use spells.
• Defend. Choosing this option with a creature stack will add 30% Defense to it until next turn. For a character though, the use of it is redundant; it is a way to just skip one full turn.
Almost all creatures and troops in this game have their own unique special abilities. Such abilities greatly differ from one to another, making almost every combat with different set of creatures unique. It is recommended to learn the special abilities of the creatures already available to you to be able to plan your combat behaviour.
To read about the special abilities of a certain creature, go to the Top Hunters page and click on the name of the creature:
https://www.lordswm.com/plstats_hunters.php
When you are in combat, Ctrl+clicking any creature will bring up the Stat dialog where you can point the cursor to any ability the creature owns to read its description. Ctrl+double clicking the creature will bring up the Effect dialog displaying any temporary effects it has.
With very few exceptions, every creature will normally retaliate against the first attack against it since its last turn. The most essential tactical hold is to use a weak stack counting 1-2 creatures to get retaliation against it, and then attacking the same target with a large stack with impunity. To be able to do that, you need to split such a stack off your main melee creature stack during pre-combat settlement. If you notice your enemy has such stacks, it is a good idea to target them with your hero to quickly kill them down and to prevent your enemy from taking retaliation of your main stack.
Most shooters have a limited shooting range where their shots deal 100% damage. If the target is outside this shooting range, the damage dealt will be reduced by 50%. Default range is 6 tiles away, so shooters start dealing full damage only when their target comes really close. This by no way means you should skip shooting, just check your options. You can see if a target is in range of your shooter by moving your cursor over a potential target during the shooter's turn. If the cursor is a bow with broken arrow, that means the target is out of range, and shooting it will result in dealing only 50% damage. If the cursor changes to a straight unbroken arrow, that means the target is in range, and full damage will be dealt.
Shooters are unable to shoot if there is an enemy standing in an adjacent tile next to it. If shooters attack in melee they normally deal only 50% of normal damage. Thus, another basic tactical hold is to try to place your sturdy creature next to enemy shooter. On the contrary, try securing your shooters from being blocked this way, for example by placing them into a corner and covering them with your melee units around them.
Sometimes it is necessary to make a special attack, such as melee-attack with a shooter instead of shooting (e.g. to take retaliation), strike and not return with a rogue (e.g. to block a shooter) etc. This can be done by holding the Shift button while left-clicking to attack. The cursor on the target will change if the creature can perform a special attack. | B. Earning gold.
One of the most important aspects of the game is the money. Gold is extremely important even though at low levels it might not seem so. As early as at Combat level 5 you have to wear equipment to be allowed to combats, and that’s just the first step, a lot of expenses are coming up.
The primary source for gold is to enroll in mines and facilities. Just open any facility that has free spots and type in the 6-symbol captcha code to get enrolled for 1 full hour. Enrolling does not limit any of your game activities; you may move and fight right away. It is easy, and enrolling a lot allows you to progress in the Labourers’ Guild (LG), making you earn more with each enrollment later on, and even occasionally increasing your characters’ combat parameters. Make a habit of enrolling as often as possible and save up for later. You will always find a spot to enroll in Empire Capital, but the wages are better in remote areas. Aim at enrolling at Production facilities as they have highest wages, down to Mining. If a facility has free slots but lack gold, you may buy from it and enroll fast before someone else do.
At Combat level 5, you need to wear items to combat which costs gold. A good idea here is to use the cheapest item set possible for combats where you do not really need to rely on good equipment. This way you save gold. At early levels, a combination of Light axe and a Defender shield is among the best options.
You get Hunter set items as you hunt, and elements as you do Mercenary quests. Both are in stable demand and may be quickly sold at the market (if you post them at reasonable prices). It is pretty much a constant source of income, and should you ever need elements or hunter items for yourself, you can always find some to buy back. So it is a good idea to sell those every time you get them.
At some point, you might think about starting to trade. Buying certain items ore resources cheap to resell them at facilities at higher prices, or at the market with some increased value, is an art that requires good knowledge of the game and of things which are in demand. You will probably need to get to combat level 8 before you feel experienced enough and have enough cash to think on a trading pattern.
Stay away from the Roulette. It is for players that set their hope to blind luck. Unfortunately, too many players have lost all their gold at roulette and quit the game when they got broke. Please remember that you will, in average, LOSE gold when playing here. If you really need to test your gambling luck, leave it for some distant future, please.
The cost to become a smith or enchanter is in the range of a few million gold. There are enough good smiths and enchanters already in the game, you can always use their services. Don’t spend gold to begin evolving those guilds and to realize later that it is going to be too expensive. | C. Card Game (Two Towers).
To play a card game, click Tavern in the top menu bar. Playing the tavern game TT (Two Towers) is really entertaining. Here is a list of card game trivia short enough to take a look at:
https://www.lordswm.com/help.php?section=42
Playing cards also actually contributes to your character strength. After winning 800 times, you also get a special drink that you can use once every 24 hours. It gives your character +1 luck for 2 hours.
You can bet gold in TT but be careful with bets until you get skilled. It is easy to lose lots of gold there. If the player initiating are standing at different map positions, the conditions of the game changes. The “standard” conditions are the ones in EC, they are used in regular card tournaments. The tournaments cost 1000-2000 gold to participate in, and it is around 1/64 chance to win against other players (higher when you learn to play well, obviously), so do not join the tournaments either, until you feel experienced enough and have a good gold hoard.
D. Socializing.
There are three main communication media: Forum, Chat and Private mail.
The forum is the most global place to socialize with other players. All most important notifications from the developers’ team are made here; and people discuss both game-related and off-game topics here. You are in the forum too, now that you are reading this guide =)
The chat is a media for more rapid and more liquid message exchange. Chat is usually a good place to exchange impressions on a game event, as well as to quickly find an answer to any game-related question that might arise.
https://www.lordswm.com/frames.php
Private messaging is designed to speak privately to the person you want to communicate with directly.
Clans are groups of players united by some feature or goal, created by players themselves. Clans have an inside private mailing system and their own chat channels visible only to members of the clan. Joining a clan opens more possibilities to find good company according to your interests. | 2. Combat level Breakdown.
Below are general advices to follow at the first several combat levels.
Combat Level 1 to 2.
You do not have to follow all the advices of Leyshoash the gatekeeper who is talking on your home page. His/her purpose is to instruct you about all possible things to do in the game, but you are quite free to choose what to do yourself, it is not a quest system, and completing the gatekeeper’s missions does not reward you with anything special.
Enroll. In fact, this advice is universal for all levels; whenever possible, enroll every hour to increase your gold count and progress in Laborers’ guild.
It is a good idea to hunt as much as possible. The hunt cooldown is extremely low on these levels (5-10 mins), and while getting low amount of EXP, you will boost your FSP to FS level 1 (20 FSP needed) and your HG to level 1 (16 HG pts required) fairly quickly, just 20 successful hunts needed for that. After that you may occasionally do a few duels to see what PVP is like (and your character will be stronger thanks to those acquired levels). The hunt timer is still the same, so keep hunting as much as possible. Do not forget to recruit extra troops when you get to Combat level 2. If you play a Knight, Necromancer, Elf, Barbarian, Demon, or Tribal, you should also build a construction in the castle to increase your creature count.
It is recommended to stay on hunts only though, despite the very slow exp progression, because the ratio of EXP/FSP you gain in this while is extremely good.
You will occasionally be getting hunter set items after successful hunts. You may keep them to collect the entire set, but the general advice is to sell them – having a solid stash of gold to back you up can answer many needs of yours, including the needs for a hunting set which you can get later if you really start feeling the need for it.
Combat level 3 to 4.
Enroll ;-)
You get a new tier 3 creature here. Also what’s important, hunts are now capped with minimum exp of 70*Combat level, which is the reason we were so zealous with hunts until now. From this point, playing hunts may be interchanged with PVP combats at your preference, whichever you like most. PVP also earns a good ratio, especially when you equip good shop artifacts. But if you want to optimize your FSP/EXP (i.e. keep developing your character to be stronger than casual players), you should make sure you do enough hunts to stay above the minimum exp of 70*CL. This means that if you abandon hunts, you will be getting more EXP on next levels scaled to the same amount of FSP for those same hunts.
Somewhere around CL 4 you should consider if your primary aim for the game is to play PvP. If it is, you should consider changing factions to get Faction Resistance. If you have an opponent with a faction that you also have faction levels in, you will take 3% less damage per faction level. Such resistance can turn the tide of a battle.
Changing faction requires you to build up a castle for that faction and that is expensive. At high levels it is very expensive to build a complete castle, so it is recommended to start playing different factions as early as possible while it is still cheap.
Combat Level 5
This is a turning point in the game. You can start doing almost all kinds of battles, participate in events, join guilds and get Talents.
Do not forget to build the tier 4 creatures and recruit them. There is also a new feature available in your castle: Upgrade a creature (tier 1)! It is expensive, but almost always worth it. Do not even doubt to upgrade if you play a Knight, Necromancer, Elf, Barbarian, Demon or Tribal. Other factions do not get that big an advantage, but still, considering an upgrade early is a good idea.
This is where you can start doing MG quests. Most are still quite difficult, but tier 1-4 raids and tier 1 monster quests are easily doable. Events are usually HUGE fun, give good benefits and have great EXP/FSP so participate and enjoy. Tournaments have severe competition with other players, you would need to have built up a good character and ensure the best possible equipment to hope for a prize (because everyone else does the same).
Money-wise, this is the level where every combat begins to cost something, so you will be happy to have been enrolling a lot thus far. From now on, to join a combat you need to equip a minimum of Ammunition Points (AP), and by all means have a right hand weapon equipped. AP is displayed on every item, but some are pricier than other. Your best option is a Light axe plus a Defender shield; it’s the cheapest set and pretty good on stats. Naturally, that is the set for the easy fights; whereas while going to PVP or playing a tournament, you would need to think about better equipment.
Talents are another RPG feature that helps you tune up your character and army a tiny bit more for an upcoming battle. You get 10 talent points which are enough to take 1-2 talents depending on faction and sector, and the best part is that you may reset the talent any time, always being able to prepare for opt for the most fitting ones for the upcoming battle.
Keep enrolling, because expenses are now part of your game, and in future you will be able to enjoy a lot more comfortable play if you have some coin to back you up.
Combat Level 6 to 8
It is now possible to buy a TGI (Thieves Guild Invitation) and join the guild. The cost is about 500k gold (in the marked) or 80 diamonds. You can get diamonds by donating real money and if you are ever going to spend money on this game, now is the time. You can get the TGI back when reaching TG (Thieves Guild) 5 and sell it to get gold. This is by far the best way of “exchanging” diamonds to gold. If you don’t want to spend real money, hopes are you followed the advice to enroll often so you can buy a TGI for gold.
There is an alternative to Thieves Guild, you can become a Ranger for free. You can change between being a Ranger or Thief, but you can’t be both at the same time. The Rangers’ guild has lower bonuses and it is more expensive to progress in it; thus, despite it being free to join, TG is recommended on all levels. Even if you cannot join it at CL 6, you would do well to make it your goal and start saving funds for it to join at most at CL 8. Either way, for whichever guild you choose, play as many guild combats as possible. It gets much more difficult with every further combat level, so gaining the first several levels in one of those guilds is a good idea.
Do not start Rangers’ guild if you think of joining the Thieves’ guild later, as you only get benefits for the active guild only.
Most mercenary quests are now possible to do and you can start doing some. Each type of quest will be more difficult after a win. Remember to report in within 10 hours to get your guild points and rewards.
At CL 7 you can build a fort to drastically increase your creature count (+25%), and that can instantly boost you past many PVE combats that seemed impossible so far.
At CL 8 you can build the upgrade for 2nd tier creature. In fact, this can be done as early as level 6 with diamonds, if you feel like supporting the game to get them early. These factions get a tremendous increase in combat opportunities with tier 2 upgrades: Knight, Necromancer, Elf, Dark elf. Again, for all other factions the upgrade is still worth its gold cost.
You will be getting elements from MG quests from time to time. Those are needed for enchanting items. You may keep them to have enough materials for enchanting later on; or sell them in the market to raise cash. Combat level 8 is very demanding on gold cash, so it is a good idea to think about enchantments later.
Combat Level 9+
You can now join the last guild that was out of bound: the CG (Commanders’ Guild) This guild rewards for PVP combats, so if you prefer those, this is your golden hour. CG is generally harder at high levels so it can be a good plan to gain some points early. You have to wear the best set of artifacts available to you, and preferably also have diamond upgrade troops, just because your opponents will aim at the same thing. It does cost a lot of gold, but the guild rewards are really good.
Enchants will start to be useful from this level. Don’t spend fortunes at them at lower levels because when you level up you need to replace the artifacts to stay competitive. If you’re planning to use enchants a couple of times, try buying a cheap enchanted shop arts in the market. Shop arts have much lower repair cost when compared to rare arts. If you only plan on using enchants a few times, you should rather rent enchanted arts in the Artifact Shop.
By this time you will probably have experienced everything there is to in this game. Follow your style, remember to have as much fun as possible, and, of course... enroll ;) | 3. Most Important Game Rules
There is an extensive set of General game rules that you, no doubt, have familiarized yourself with during registration. Here is a link back to the entire edition:
https://www.lordswm.com/help.php?section=5
There are many games where you are unlimited in your actions with every character, being able to have them interact with each other, exchange property or enrich one main at the cost of others. In this game, it is different.
Any transfers, combats, card games and other ways of interaction between two characters of one player are forbidden. Your characters are supposed to remain absolutely independent from each other through the entire process of playing the game. There is also a limit on allowed character number. Every player is allowed to have one main and up to two secondary characters. Main characters aren't limited in any way during the game process. It is your avatar that fully represents you in the game. It is possible to register more characters; however, they would be classified as secondary characters.
Below is a short list of the most important rules to remember. Breaking any of these rules can, and often eventually WILL, get your character(s) permanently blocked or heavily penalized!
• 1.13. Financial assist is forbidden in all aspects of the game. Financial assist is a dedicated assistance of one character to another in any way meant to increase the possessions of the latter.
• 3.7. Password transfer to a different user and collective account managing are forbidden.
• 3.8. The fact of logging multiple characters in the game from one PC must be be fully described in the profile page of all those characters with explanation of reason (relatives, friends, playing from a computer club etc).
• 3.9. Additional characters created for any kind of support to the main one, (e.g. resource and artifact keeping, trading, assists in combat or finance) are forbidden. All extra characters found will be banned, and the owner will be subject to penalty.
• 3.10. It is allowed to create additional characters to familiarize yourself with features of other factions. (...) One player may have up to 3 characters (up to one main and two secondary).
• 3.10.1. If you register an additional character, you are bound to show that fact in the opening line of the "character information" of both, commenting who is the main character and who is the additional one. (...) Indication of nicknames of them all is obligatory.
Registering too many characters, or failure to sign them in accordance to the rules may lead to serious measures up to blocking the characters.
• 3.11. Any transfers, (including those through the market or through a third party), combats (including those with other players involved) and "Two Towers" games between multiple characters of one person are prohibited | | closed by Arctic (2013-11-22 04:39:25) |
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