Player Basics - Basic Skills that will be helpful to every New Player

This guide is specifically for a new player to help them train and develop some very basic but very useful skills when playing and developing a new character. These skills will be useful for any chosen play-style. In Shroud of the Avatar, you can play as an Archer, Melee, or Magic User or even a combination of all 3. And other combinations as well (such as a non magic using Melee character). That choice is entirely up to you! Always play in the way that you like to play. That is always how you should approach this game.

The following basics I am going to suggest in this guide* will cover some very basic questions I have heard from new players repeatedly in all the years I have been playing:

The basic stats, carry weight, dash skill, health, focus, and Purify. Also 2 optional skills: Ignite Weapon and Follow Through.

Just developing these simple, but basic skills will help any new player, and also provides a great base for a the character they are playing to continue to advance.

Before continuing on with this guide, you need to clearly understand the basics of Adventure XP and Crafting XP and Maintaining Skills as well as Creating and managing a basic combat deck. Do read these guides before continuing ahead, if you are unfamiliar with these basic concepts.

Following this guide will start to deplete your Adventuring Experience Pool. To help mitigate this loss, you will need to complete the tutorial area, known as Battle of Solace Bridge, and then you will arrive in Solace Bridge Outskirts. The various NPC's in this area will offer you quests you can complete that will then help fill back your Adventuring Experience Pool. As well as killing the various creatures found within this area, will help with that as well. And then you will need to also finish the other 2 Outskirts areas, Blood River Outskirts and the Highvale Outskirts.

Completing all 3 of these Outskirts areas and completing all of the quests located within them, will provide you with plenty of Adventuring XP to advance these suggested skills, and others as well. And will also help to continue to teach you how many of the basics of the game work.

The Basic Skills to Develop

Finish the Battle of Solace Bridge and then you will arrive in Solace Bridge Outskirts.

Press the k key and turn off all your adventuring skills.

We want to focus and develop only a few skills at this time. Also by not training a bunch of skills at a time will allow you to level these skills faster.

In the Skills Window click on Tactics. Find the Healthy skill. Set this skill to Training. Developing this skill will provide you a nice basic level of Health. This is of course useful to everyone.

In the Skills Window click on Air. Find the Gust skill. Set this skill to Training. Developing this skill will allow access to the Dash skill. We only need to advance this skill to 10.

In the Skills Window click on Focus. Find the Heightened Awareness skill. Set this skill to Training. Developing this skill will provide you a nice basic level of Focus. This is of course useful to everyone.

In the Skills Window click on Life. Find the Healing Touch skill. Set this skill to Training. Developing this skill will provide you basic healing. This is of course useful to everyone.

OPTIONAL - If you are playing a Melee, Ranged or Magic User Character

In the Skills Window click on Fire. Find the Flame Fist skill. Set this skill to Training.

Spoiler: More Information

Developing this skill will allow access to the Ignite Weapon skill. This is a skill that is very useful to new players that are playing a Melee or Ranged character. The Ignite Weapon skill will put a Fire Damage over Time effect on various creatures as you fight them, when you have this skill activated. And most all of the creatures in the outskirts areas are low level, this skill will also help you to quickly dispatch enemies.

Also, the Flame Fist skill (as well as the other elemental fist skills) are the basic skills a Magic User uses to kill creatures.

In the Skills Window click on Earth. Find the Stone Fist skill. Set this skill to Training.

Spoiler: More Information

Developing this skill will allow access to the Strength of Earth skill. This will give Melee users more strength. This also allows us access to the Sympathy of Stone innate skill. This innate when leveled up gives you more Damage Resistance.

Also, the Stone Fist skill (as well as the other elemental fist skills) are the basic skills a Magic User uses to kill creatures.

And now select 2 skills that are for whatever method you are using to kill creatures, and set them to training.

For the remainder of this guide, I will be leveling my Melee character Heru. And he will be using the Polearm skill and dual spears to kill creatures. So I will set the Push and Puncture skills to training, in the Polearms tree.

I will now set up my Combat Bar to allow me to level these skills:



Now, continue on and start completing all the quest and fighting creatures in the Solace Bridge Outskirts area. As you continue to use your skills, you will see the various notifications that your skills are leveling up in the Chat Window and also displayed on the right hand side of your screen:



Keep an eye as your skills level up on the right side of your screen and manage them by turning each skill to the - Not Training status as the following skills get to these specific levels:

Healthy - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 40. This will now provide you with a nice base of Health.
Gust - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 20. This will allow us access to the Dash skill. Also this is actually a handy spell for Archers and Magic Users.
Heightened Awareness - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 40. This will now provide you with a nice base of Focus.
Healing Touch - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 20.
Fire Fist - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 10.
Stone Fist - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 10.
When the 2 skills you are going to be using to kill things reaches 20, set them to Not Training.
(For this example, I will be leveling up the Puncture and Push skills to 20).

Once all the above skills are at these levels continue to the next part below.

Basic Skills Part 2

Head back to the base camp and speak to the Adventuring Trainer there. Now lets learn and level up some new skills! Speak to the Adventuring Trainer and click the bar labeled Train Skills, and learn the following:

In the Skills Window click on Tactics. Find the Train Strength skill. Set this skill to Training. This skill is useful for all characters.

Spoiler: More Information

The 3 basic stats used in Shroud of the Avatar are: Strength, Intelligence and Dexterity. ALL 3 of these stats are useful to every character as you play, because each of these stats are tied into the various other functions of the game. Training Strength give you more health and allow you to carry even more things on your character, and will also allow you access to the Heavy Lifter skill.

In the Skills Window click on Focus. Find the Train Intelligence skill. Set this skill to Training. This skill is useful for all characters.

Spoiler: More Information

The 3 basic stats used in Shroud of the Avatar are: Strength, Intelligence and Dexterity. ALL 3 of these stats are useful to every character as you play, because each of these stats are tied into the various other functions of the game. Training Intelligence will give you more Focus and also effect spell damage.

In the Skills Window click on Life. Find the Purify skill. Set this skill to Not Training. For now you just need to have this skill trained to remove some debuffs like confusion on you. Now find Healing Touch and Set this skill to Training. We will just continue to train this as this provides your basic healing.

[Optional]In the Skills Window click on Focus. Find the Quick Swapping skill. Set this skill to Not-Training (we will turn it on at a later time). This skill will start leading us to be able to unlock the Follow Through skill.

Spoiler: More Information

If you plan on casting spells, you are probably aware by now that spells fizzle (and fail to cast) most the time when trying to cast various spells. The Follow Through skill helps a bit with the fizzle chance on ALL spells.

[Optional] In the Skills Window click on Fire. Find the Ignite Weapon skill. Set this skill to Training. OPTIONAL: Also learn the Highly Flammable skill to make fire damage over time effect from the Ignite Weapon skill do a little more damage and last longer. It will also effect many of the other fire skills in the fire tree.

[Optional] In the Skills Window click on Earth. Find the Strength of Earth skill. Set this skill to Training. OPTIONAL: Also learn the Sympathy of Stone skill. This is an innate skill, that when leveled up will provide you with a little bit of Damage Resistance and Damage Avoidance to anyone.

[Optional] In the Skills Window click on Air. Find the Dash skill. Set this skill to Training. This is more of a convenience spell to allow you to run faster while running around the outskirts areas or even the Overland Map. This is useful to everyone.

And select 2 defensive skills you plan on using, or 2 more offensive skills to level up.

Now adjust your Combat Deck to use any additional skills you want to level up.


For this example, I will now have Heru level up Glancing Blow and Parry as my 2 defensive skills. I also added Strength of Earth, Dash and Ignite Weapon to my Combat bar.

Now continue on finishing up all the quests in an Outskirts area, and continue to fight creatures. If you finish all quests in an Outskirts area, just head off to another one.

Again we will be keeping an eye as your skills level up on the right side of your screen and manage them by turning each skill to the - Not Training status as the following skills get to these specific levels:

Train Strength - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 40. This will now provide you with a nice base of more Health and allow you to carry more items in your inventory.
Train Intelligence - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 40. This will now provide you with a nice base of more Focus and effect spell damage. [Optional] Now if you wish to go toward Follow Through, you will need to now set Quick Swapping skill to Training. - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 40. This will now allow us to unlock the Inner Calm Skill, which unlocks Follow Through.
Dash - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 20.
Healing Touch- Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 40.
Strength of Earth - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 20.
Sympathy of Stone - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 20.
Ignite Weapon (and optional Highly Flammable) - Set these skills to Not Training once it reaches level 20.
The 2 skills you are going to be leveling up - - Set these skills to Not Training once they reach level 20.

Once all the above skills are at these levels continue to the next part below.

Basic Skills Part 3
Around this time, depending on how you have been developing your character, you probably are noticing your character is doing very well. And hopefully, you are. You are also probably in a second outskirts area at about this point (I was when I was testing this on the QA server).

At this point we are now almost done!

We will now however, need to go to some of the Towns now to learn tier 3 Adventure Skills.

If you speak to an Adventure Trainer in an outskirts, and speak to them and click on train skills, and hover your mouse over the Heavy Lifter skills, you will note he won't teach you this skill, so we will however have to go elsewhere.



Currently my character has finished all the quests in the Solace Bridge Outskirts and now headed off to the Blood River Massacre and then the Blood River Outskirts. One of the larger Towns named Aerie is near by. Enter Aerie using the default entrance. If this town is currently under a siege, click the bypass option to enter Aerie. Once you are inside Aerie, just go to this location (This just is one of the easier to find Adventuring Trainers***):



Now speak to them and click on the Train Skills option.

In the Skills Window click on Tactics. Find the Heavy Lifter skill. Set this skill to Training. This skill is useful for all characters.

[Optional]In the Skills Window click on Focus. Find the Inner Calm skill. Set this skill to Training. This skill is useful for most everyone who casts magic. Also it is the last skill required to unlock Follow Through.

Now click good bye and now press the k key to bring up your Skills Window.

In the Skills Window click on Subterfuge. Find the Distract skill. Set this skill to Training***. This skill will allow us to unlock Train Dexterity. Which will be useful for all characters.

And now pick 2 more other skills to level up to around 20. For this character it will be the Reach and Polearm skills.

Now adjust your Combat Bar to use the Distract skill:



We are going to do something different here. Head back to the outskirts area and go to the Adventure Trainer and just have them near by. We are just going to stay in the area the Adventure Trainer is and level up the Distract skill to 10. Go into combat mode and click the Distract skill, a circle shows up and then just click on the near by ground. Keep doing this til the Distract skill is 10 and then set the Distract skill to - Not Training. Now go back to the Adventure Trainer and speak to them and learn the Train Dexterity skill which is in Subterfuge. Now set Train Dexterity to Training.

Now continue on finishing up all the quests in an Outskirts area, and continue to fight creatures.

Again we will be keeping an eye as your skills level up on the right side of your screen and manage them by turning each skill to the - Not Training status as the following skills get to these specific levels:

Heavy Lifter - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 40. This will now provide you with a lot of carrying capacity for your character.
Inner Calm - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 40. This will allow you to finally unlock the Follow Through skill. It will also help reduce the focus cost of casting magic glyphs.
Whatever 2 other skills you are choosing to level up. Get them to 20 then set them to - Not Training.
Train Dexterity - Set this skill to Not Training once it reaches level 40. The Dexterity stat is used for many things and will again be useful for all characters.

Once all the above skills are at these levels continue to the next part below.

Basic Skills Part 4

At this point you now will be finished (except for the optional Follow Through skill if you wanted that)! And congrats! You now have a character that has some very basic and useful skills and also has a very solid base to build from when continuing to develop your character.

Now finish up the remaining outskirts areas to gain more Adventure and Crafting XP, and continue to develop your character.

OPTIONAL - Follow Through skill

If you have been following this guide and are wanting to now finally train the Follow Through skill, this will require you to find a Master Trainer. The higher tier skills can only be taught by Master Trainers. There's a Master Trainer for every single Skill Tree in the game (like Sun, Life, Heavy Armor, Light Armor, Bludgeon etc...). You can see a thread on the forum that has all of them listed and the locations of each one: Master Trainers List

For the rest of you that like to explore and see new and interesting things we are going to do something. We are going to go to the Town of Owl's Head. (If you are not sure how to go there just use the World Map Website).

Enter the Town of Owl's Head from the default entrance (if the town is under a siege, click the bypass option to go to town), and follow the road northwest, go across the bridge and past the sheep and go to the Adventure Trainer here:

Spoiler: Map Location

Speak to them and ask them their name. This is Mervyn. He's the Adventure Trainer that is in Owl's Head. He also happens to know every single Master Trainer. In the dialogue box, type any word of any of the skill trees, like for example type in the word focus. He then tells you about the Focus Master Trainer Deborah, and a general description of where to find them. Feel free to ask him about any of the other skills.

Thanks to Mervyn, he told us to find Deborah near the Moon Tower. Now perhaps look around and find this Moon Tower....

Spoiler

Or just head to the round white image on your map

Right by the Moon Tower is the Master Focus Trainer. Speak to them. And now train the Follow Through skill and set that to Training.

And that is it! I now leave whatever you want to do to develop your character further up to you.....

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Feel free to ask any question or any feedback about this guide, I'm happy to do so.


*As with every single MMO game on the planet, every single person has their own opinion on what they feel is "the best" way to do something. This guide is my own opinion on what I feel is beneficial to every new player (regardless of their chosen play-style), based on over a year of paying attention to very common questions new players repeatedly ask either on the Forum or in Universal Chat. This guide will help eliminate some of these common questions.

My other guides:
Anpu's Guides to Getting Started - The Outskirts and Beyond
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Bugs:
*** in Aerie, no point of interest indicator for the compass is shown for the adventure trainer, as well as Barbra Neil isn't reporting the current location of trainers in the town and providing a marker to them.
*** The Distract skill is learned and is level 1 by default, and is marked maintain for new characters.
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Updates:
Original Post post and information is based off of Release 73 patch 1101, Offline and Online.
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Another one? Wowza! Man, I'm serious -- thank you! You're doing a fantastic job with these tutorials.