[BloodyBeer]

Begginers guide to 9dragons

9dragons is martial arts mmorpg based on chinese history.

What is MMORPG?

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, where you basically play a character that will ascend, get new skills, gain levels and be stronger over time of playing.

What is Martial Art?

Martial arts (literally meaning arts of war) but usually referred as fighting arts are systems of codified practices and traditions of combat. Martial arts all have similar objectives: to physically defeat other persons or defend oneself or others from physical threat. Some martial arts take a great deal of their underlying theory from beliefs systems. Most specifically,Buddhism, and in Asia have been practiced in harmony with others, such as Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism or Shinto while others follow a particular code of honor. Martial arts are considered as both an art and a science. Many arts are also practiced competitively, most commonly as combat sports, but competitions may also take the form of "forms competition" which is an integral discipline in most arts but is seen by the uninitiated as dance.
(from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia....i/Martial_arts)

Now that we have gone trough the basics that every 9dragons player should know, let me continiue with 9dragons.
US/EU 9dragons currently has 3 server, Nirvana and Pheonix (will be moved to EU) and Yin. Nirvana and Pheonix are Pve (Player VS environment) and Yin is PvP (Player VS Player). For newbies i'd suggest Nirvana or Pheonix untill you get atleast some experience of the game.

Clans

Now to the clans. Currently 9dragons has 6 clans. League of Beggars (LoB), Shaolin (Shao), WuTang (WT), Brotherhood of Thieves (BoT), Sacred Flower (SF) and Heavenly Demon (HD). A newly made character can join any of them. Although i'd suggest you to go with Either BoT or LoB and deffinetly not WT or HD. In LoB, Shao, BoT & SF you can join in clan preety fast, while in WT and HD you will be clanless til Gathering Chi 8 (level 20).
Abit about clan specialites:
LoB - main weapon: staff, secondary weapon: gloves
WT - main weapon: sword, secondary weapond: gloves
Shao - main weapon: polearm, secondary weapon: gloves
BoT - main weapon: spear, secondary weapon: axe
SF - main weapon: wheels, secondary weapon: daggers
HD - main weapon: saber, secondary weapon: gloves

We devide clans to black and white. LoB, WT and Shao are white clans, while BoT, SF and HD are black clans. If you kill a member of opposit color clan (white  black, black  white) you will gain good karma, if you kill a member of same color clan (white  white, black  black) you will gain bad karma, but more about that later.
A word about levels before we move on. In 9dragons we have a sets of minilevels. You have to achive 12 levels (1 – 12) in order to gain better form of level. I'll just point out few »super levels«: losing self, gathering chi, opening chi, revolving chakra, raising light, five dragons, …

Attributes And Elixires

Moving on to attributes and elixires. In 9dragons (from now on i'll shorten it to 9d) we have 5 attributes (stats) strenght(str), constitution(cons), dexterity(dex), essence(ess) and wisdom(wis). Every stat will give your character a different bonus. Str for instance will give you melee power, while Wis will give you chi kung (ranged power), Ess will give you vital energy (mana) and it will set your chi kung critical hits (more about that later) and cons will give you hp (life). While ess will give you 2 bonuses, melee character will need 3 stats, thats where dex kicks in. It will set you critical hit bonuses. Every role has a week stat, which will need 2 attributes points/chi points for 1 point on the stat. Elixir is like permanent bonus to the stat it belongs to. Maximum for now is +26 to every stat. But dont be fooled, it can also fail and your stats will go in minus.

Skills

At first few levels you can learn basic clan skills (the skills your ma teacher has to offer, wt – sword, gloves, bot – spear, axe) at your martial arts teacher (sifu). Those are rather week skills which you shouldnt use very long. Instead rather join the clan you like and at gathering chi 1(13) take whole new set of skills. The first set of skills you can get at level 0 doesnt cost much, kill few monsters and sell their drops to npc. In contrary you cannot buy your skills once you join a clan, you have to earn them with donating stuff. You can practically donate anything except quest items (mob drops, weapons you dont need, chlotes, food, liquor,…). Not to forget, at gathering chi 1(13) you will get a quest in your clan base which will teach you 1 of these three skills for free: basic *clan* meditation, *clan* buff (more about buffs later), clan lightfoot. It is strongly suggested to learn lightfoot from that quest. While you gain levels, you will also gain new kung fu, which will be quiet stronger and more usefull than the one you left behind.

Lightfoot

Since we dont have mounts in 9dragons, this is our FREE way of quick transportation. We have (currently) 3 different versions of kung fu, one of them is a glitch so i would avoid using it (Peng You lightfoot), they are called *clan* basic lightfoot and *clan* advanced lightfoot. With every level (in 9dragons skill level is called cheng or with abbrevation just c) that your lightfoot will gain, you will run faster. You can use lightfoot by pressing right alt key + steer with cursor keys or rightclick on mouse.

Active Skills

Every melee role has an active skill. It will kinda be your lifesaver when you'r fighting hardcore bosses and really need cofee ;P Its actually the basic skill you use for fighting, ofc you will get better looking and stronger skills when you level.

Smashes

That's mostly warriors skills which do huge amounts of damage and paralize, stun, sleep, slow down and rest of the stuff on monsters.

Buffs

Well known buffs, what should i say here… Well in 9dragons every role has some buffs. Healers and Hybrids most of them (strategists and holists). We have many kinds of buffs. There'r heals, stat buffs, *sopposed to be* speed buffs *which are missing right now >.<*. You can use them to buff yourself, buff your friends, buff random people that give you hard time (or not to buff them =D)

Shields

Shield is nuker kind of »buff« it is used to prevent damage to be taken from either monsters or players. It can also be used by a nuker to shield other players! League of beggars also get the mastery shield, which will do basically the same as nuker shield except that everyone in LoB can use it. (now i know what i forgot, we'll be working on that tomorrow) =D

Chi Kung skills

Well these are the skills of so called nukers (ranged class of 9d), usually hard to level, but they hit very good. It takes some time to recast though.

Clothing

Well in 9dragons you will probably notice people running around with cool clothes. Yeah we have some we have quiet few sets. But i do not suggest you to buy anything untill atleast Five Dragons 12 where you can get 400 def set. Why? Becouse if you do all quests you will get the gear there. If you cannot afford it or you can run low on cash cuz of it, simply do not buy it. You will be better off with mansion/wild tower sets.
When you buy clothing you have to look for pockets (we will discuss that later on) and for attributes that they give. I think cheapest set will cost you around 3 or 4k gold. It can be bought at chlotes NPC in every town.

Theres also clan clothing, which will cost you a bit more and is just for »good looks« mostly.

Decos, nice thingies you can buy from either npc in every clan base or from item mall for quiet unreasonable price Those can be slotted and clothes ornaments can be put in them. Putting dodge for PvE and chi kung dodge or resistance ornaments for PvP (that's just what i would do, but your hands are free on this). Not to forget, deco will cover up your clothing and make it invisible.


Roles
I think we covered up preety much everything you should know before you choose your first role. In 9dragons we have 4 roles. Warriors, Chi Kung Artists (Nukers – ranged), Strategists (Healers) and Holists (Hybrids, preety much a mix). Ofcourse every role has its pros and cons, therefore i suggest you to go with warrior for your first character as it is easiest to play and has more pros that cons (in PvE ofc, you shouldnt PvP untill you know atleast something about the game). If you do select PvP server to be your home server, beware of nukers in Jinan/Datong which are crazily overpowered at the moment, and healers are kinda depowered and nerfed. Anyhow lets talk a bit about pros and cons of every role

PROS
Warrior
Huge defence and dodge
A lot of hp
Fairly good hits
A lot of Smashing skills

Nuker(pro role which takes alot of time and money)
HUGE power
Speed
Great in PvP
Ranged attacks

Hybrids
Ranged and Melee attack
Area over effect attack at chrimson snake 9 level
Few bugged skills that are insanely good once they get fixed

Healer
They have loads of good buffs (4 of them are missing in the bushes)

CONS
Warrior
Low Vital energy
Low on chi kung defence and dodge

Nuker
Low on defence and dodge

Hybrids
They have to be properly built to be usefull at all

Healer
Huge nerfes
Missing skills
Suck in PvP

Anyhow warrior is the first role to be on your character.


Please correct me if i was wrong anywhere, also please feel free to point out the stuff i forgot about and please feel free to correct my bad english =D

This post has been edited by BloodyBeer: 22 October 2010 - 09:59 AM

[iMegas]

Shields are not only for nukers specifically.
Want me to correct your bad English?

-Megas >

[BloodyBeer]

AmazingMegas, on Oct 22 2010, 06:33 PM, said:

Shields are not only for nukers specifically.
Want me to correct your bad English?

-Megas >

Aww i'll rephrase that, can be used to shield others too is ok with you?

[iMegas]

BloodyBeer, on Oct 22 2010, 05:57 PM, said:

Aww i'll rephrase that, can be used to shield others too is ok with you?

I meant the LoB mastery shield, but I see now that it is there.
Did you edit or was it always there? I probably read it badly.

-Megas >

[BloodyBeer]

AmazingMegas, on Oct 22 2010, 09:42 PM, said:

I meant the LoB mastery shield, but I see now that it is there.
Did you edit or was it always there? I probably read it badly.

-Megas >

I edited