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Avalon to Achaea Survival Guide!
Hello! I'm writing this for those of you recently starting to play Achaea who have come over alongside the group converting over from Avalon. As a former Avalon player myself (Elmaethor/Salvador) if you knew me or care to, I know what it can be like switching over to a new commandset and ruleset so I hope this is helpful!
First, some stuff on items:
1. This seems super simple but will trip you up no end: instead of GOODS, you type WARES here. Make an alias (that's what I did).
2. Pouches don't exist here, instead you use the rift - you don't need to buy a rift, everyone has one with a fairly solid capacity for storing curatives (herbs or minerals), various other commodities and also liquids. The help files HELP RIFT and HELP LIQUID RIFT will be useful!
3. Wielding doesn't take balance here.
4. Curing and defensive potions have their own balances here, as does FOCUS (Avalon equivalent: concentration). This has pretty big combat implications which means that damaging someone out while routinely afflicting isn't possible here; instead, afflictions are very viable to stack towards a "lock", or alternatively there are "prep" classes whose focus is on limbs (think Knights in Avalon hitting your limbs with precision but taken to a far more engaging and detailed level).
5. Charming items do not exist here as they do in Avalon, instead there's a mix of enchantments (such as magic resistances, water walking, and so on), and TATTOOS (HELP TATTOOS) - tattoos are where you will find things like your pentacle (shield), summon (brazier), and diffusion (cloak) analogs.
6. Runes don't exist in the same form here - item protection is native to a lot of equipment already (theft is somewhat difficult), and sigils exist for limited protection situationally. One thing to note: pyramid runes = monolith sigils here.
7. Gold drops on death - put it all in your pack or use the bank if you don't want to lose it.
8. Theft is far less threatening in Achaea, but still exists. All cities/houses have guides on how to prevent against it, take them seriously.
On organisations and communities:
1. There are no guilds, instead each city has two or more houses, each typically themed to a certain goal and not bound by class restrictions. There are also two neutral houses that aren't part of any city. HELP HOUSE LIST and HELP HOUSE <house> for specific information.
2. Channels are used by -T format, e.g city channel is CT, House is HT, Order is OT. Gone are the days of CCC and OOO!
3. Certain classes are limited to certain cities, these are known as "factional" classes and are: Priest and Paladin (Targossas), Infernal and Apostate (Mhaldor), Occultist (Ashtan, sometimes Hashan), Sentinel, Druid, Sylvan (Eleusis, which is a village equivalent to a city, not a town that you should spend months fighting over with troops anymore!)
4. Druids here are not pacifists by nature. Expect angry trees.
5. Clans are player-created organisations which are akin to friendship groups or secondary associations that you can join to pursue various things. Each city has a combat clan for instance, or a novice clan, and numerous other clans exist depending on your interests and roleplaying style (such as clans of Dwarves or Pirates of Meropis and so forth).
6. Cities have hard-written laws that citizens are expected to follow; these vary dependent on city and are always worth perusing so you can stay within the law!
6b. City powers also extend (in some cases) to removal of skills should you break oaths to them and try to go rogue and use the abilities against them - notably these include Priest, Paladin, Apostate, and Infernal.
On combat:
1. All classes have the capability of bashing ("hunting") and there are dozens and dozens of areas that this can be done in. No more begging knights to take you through Kenkria!
2. All classes are combat capable, some are very similar to Avalon, most are entirely unique. Explore in depth or ask here on the forums, plenty of people are willing to help.
3. Class abilities generally aren't kept secret from non-class members for their own sake. Cures are widely known. Countermeasures and defences are universally applied.
4. Achaea has a built in curing system (HELP CURING SYSTEM) which will help keep you alive while hunting or PvPing.
5. Achaea is not open PK - you cannot attack anyone for any reason, instead you must have a justified role playing reason, be on a plane that allows open PK, be defending/attacking a city, or be one of the Assassin/Champion organisations. Don't take this to mean Achaea lacks PK - it is quite the opposite. City on city raids of 30+ people happen almost every day. Assassinations are common. Duels are frequent.
6. Levels actually matter. They determine your maximum health and mana, your rate of critical hits, and low level = squishy. Fortunately, experience loss is much less punishing here and once you hit the higher echelons, becomes much easier to ignore if desired.
7. Damage types, armour type, and resistance exist and are worth exploring in detail. This applies to denizens (cccs/npcs) as well as players. For instance, a magi using stormhammer causes electric damage measured against the target's electric resistance, while a monk using punches and kicks deals blunt damage, measured against blunt resistance. The classes you would expect to be "tanky" generally are; knights, and anything in strong armour.
8. STRUGGLE/BREAK FREE are WRITHE in Achaea.
9. Olvar and life potions don't exist, instead starburst tattoos, certain class abilities, and artefacts are what you use to come back from the dead.
9b. SUMMON SHIP -> EMBRACE DEATH
9c. Instead of bathing bodies in the pool of life, you can IMMOLATE them at the Flame of Yggdrasil.
10. WHATCURES <affliction> and WHATISCUREDBY <cure method> are very helpful to learn how things cure.
10b. Herb cures have a random curing order to avoid predictability.
11. "Herb" cures exist either as actual herbs or as minerals. Both are functionally the same, though for example Mhaldor bans the use of herbs and insists on minerals. The only differences are flavour and the relevant city-feelings about them.
Additional misc notes:
1. Multi classing exists, this allows you to hold numerous classes at once and switch between them with delays dependent on whether you have any artefacts to reduce the time.
2. To see information about another player, use HONORS <person> - no HELP <player> here!
3. Achaea is RP enforced and encouraged, this means that OOC chatter on public channels is VERY frowned upon and should be confined to other methods. Take this opportunity to immerse yourselves and get stuck into the game!
4. The game world is MASSIVE, with literally hundreds of areas to explore and uncover.
5. Movement has limits, so you can't spam 100 directions in an alias, you'll need to pace yourself as you go.
5b. Most classes have some sort of travel ability, and in place of ZOOM and FIND there is WALK TO (this works on destinations, denizens, and players if you are in the same city) and LANDMARKS.
6. Lessons aren't gained passively, instead they're gained by levelling up or converting credits (see HELP CREDITS).
6b. Credits are earned via levels, can be bought with gold in game, given as rewards from events, and various other methods. Alternately, they can also be purchased via RL money on the website.
7. Seafaring exists! Yes, that means you can be a pirate. Many islands can only be reached by ship, and there is a whole crew/wages/trade/battling system to explore.
8. Achaea does not have a fully fledged war system. YET.
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Apart from that, let me say WELCOME! While Achaea is a lot different from Avalon, there are some similarities which should help make the transition somewhat easier. I'd also point you to the NEWBIE channel, as well as your cities for general advice. Good luck!
I'll keep this thread unlocked - feel free to use it to post any other useful hints I might have missed!
"If you build it, they will come."
37
Comments
1. CHANT EQUILIBRIUM -> CONCENTRATE in Achaea.
2. ROLL -> TUMBLE in Achaea.
3. The Gods here are purely RP-driven, they aren't administrators in any shape or form except insofar as they're part of the team that creates and drives events for everyone. As such, conversations akin to those you might expect with Genesis or Cornelius are nonexistent.
4. INTOLERANCE -> SELFISHNESS in Achaea.
5. AUTOWAKE -> METAWAKE in Achaea.
6. The Wiki has a detailed breakdown of almost every skill and ability, along with a whole host of other useful articles.
7. MYSTIC BARRIER -> CURSEWARD in Achaea, and is available to everyone in Survival.
8. The PERCEPTION skill is known as VISION in Achaea.
More as I think of them!
Tecton-Today at 6:17 PM
WHAT
The learning curve is pretty intense, but just 6 months in, I feel like I have a decent handle on it. I almost never think about Avalon anymore. If only I had discovered Achaea sooner!