Some tips for new players

I am a relatively new player (I have been playing a few months) and along the way I found a few simple things that really helped make the game more enjoyable. Nothing earth shattering, and some may already know these, but I thought I would share and hopefully help a few new players out.

Night Vision (moon tree) - I didnt know about this when I started, and the night and underground scenes drove me nuts. With this you get a green tinged view in the dark that can make life easier. Hit K on key borad to bring up skill tree to find it, under moon. I think you have to train it, so go to an adventurer traininer in one of the towns near where you start. Worth the price to have it.

Skill tree - Hit K to see it. When I started I had skills that were not on my hot bar and I didnt know it for a few days.. This may have changed, but I recommend looking through the skill trees to get an idea of what you have, and what you might want. The system is a bit complicated, but reading the forums and asking around helps. Early on taking anything that sounds interesting to 40 is a sound practice and wont really hurt your future progress in any way.

Get a place to live - Having a place to call home makes a uge difference in my opinion. You dont have to a lot of money. There are Inns with free rooms, and even some player owned towns like Knights Watch that offer free row houses. Not only is it a place to store your loot, the Player owned towns (POT) often have great communities. Veritas Sanctuary near blood river is a good starting place. Berans Reach North of Brittany has free rooms. Knights Watch in Hidden Vale as I mentioned is good as well. Check out the player market lace in the forums for rooms to rent, and also the guild town section on the forums.

Make friends - Even if you are mainly a solo player, get in a POT and/or join a guild. People will help you out with questions, items etc.

Use discord - There is a general channel for the game, but also many guilds and POTs use it. All the POTs I mentioned above have channels and the people are very helpful and firendly.

Pay attention to the skull levels - The skulls on the scenes (areas) make a difference. When you are new, stick to 1 and 2 skull areas. You do have to grind in this game.

Make Money - Sell base resources. Look at NPC vendors for buy orders. Ore sells well, as does wood and other core resurces. Shop around a little though as some of the buy orders in the beggingin cities are low ball prices.

Use the map - You can access the map outside of the game. It helps a lot. https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/map/

Use the Lunar rifts - Until you can afford to stock up on Recall and teleport scrolls, the lunar rifts are your traveling friend. Saves having to try to survive the control points. Use this link to know when and where they will go. https://sacrifice-guild.enjin.com/lrchronometer

Use the oracle - Round building with clowing eyes. Go evry day and click on test. If you answer correctly you get 500gp and 500xp. If you have been following the vitrtues answer is always yes.

Click on the town crier - Most towns have them, and on your first visit you will get 100gp. Easy money.

Sotawiki.net is your friend- Not perfect, but has most of the answers. I use it all the time and would be lost without it.

Expert and benefactor crafting stations - These give a bonus to crafting and are in most POTs of any size and in a lot of the NPC cities. Resolute for example has a set just a little ways past the regular no bonus crafting area. Always look for them as it will help you out.

Devotionals, Use them - They look like fancy fountains or little pools with light coming out of them. They give bonuses and cost nothign to use. Jump in to take advantage of them. You can have 2 different effects active at any time. If you want to change, jump in anothe rone. The first one you added will be replaced by the new one. Look in the starting towns and POTs for them.

Have fun- Play the way you want and have fun. Dying isnt that big a deal in SOTA, and there is a lot of things to try out. Early on choices wont impact long term a ton, and becuse fo the flexibility you can change direction pretty easily.

Hope this helps. Enjoy!

 

I want to give some other hints about the chat windows.
They confused me at the beginning in a lot of ways
Take the time to toggle them in the way you need it!

By clicking "ENTER" the chat window opens, named "Tab1".
Our problem: there are so many information flooding the chat window...

Try to make at least 2 Chat windows, I recommend 3.
You can drag the tab at your favor place on screen.
Decide, if you need it always open (pin symbol on the right next to X)
I usually let them closed.
For example:
COMBAT (you can rename the "Tab")
click the left gear-wheel and mark:
Loot
Combat (Self)
Combat (Party)
Combat (Others) --> Good decision in Solomode.
Logos


CHAT (you can rename the "Tab")
click the left gear-wheel and mark:
Local to see what people around are saying
Zone to see what people elsewhere are saying/asking for
Party to see information when you're with partymembers
Guild to see information with your Guild members
Whisper
Nobles
Emote


Especially for Questing I recommend this one: (you can read a dialogue without disturbing "misc" information...)
NPC (you can rename the "Tab")
click the left gear-wheel and mark:
NPC
Emote

ALSO click on the right gear-wheel and "DISable clickable keywords".
Why? The keywords are on the bottom of the dialogue window.
The underlined words are shown in addition!
That's just distracting when reading text inside the Dialogue box.
Our eyes are "jumping" around from one underlined to another underlined word.

To have a better reading flow disable clickable keywords - try it


So there is ONE last option you can toggle on/off:
"MISC".
Your decision to put it additional to "CHAT" or make another window.
What's MISC about?
--> Misc shows different information while in game, also crafting information, Questinformation (received XP, gold), and, last but not least:
technical information, like: Player XYZ is now online/offline. It gives a lot of information, especially the bigger your friendlist grow

Important: You can toogle "MISC" off inside the chat window, but you can't do it inside the dialogue window ... yet !
This means: your dialogue window will be flooded with "Player xyz is online/offline", while you are talking to NPC
That's really distracting and disturbing and makes it difficult to keep in touch with the text and the whole story ...
Still in hope this will be changed very soon

 

Nice addition. That helped me with some chat window frustration I have been having. Thanks!

 

The red wagon/boat is the exit to the world map.

Always use scrap for timber and ingots.

Your starter armor will last a long time. Immidiately upgrade your weapon.

Eat food that regenerates your health and/or focus over time.

Put away your weapon to regenerate health and focus.

The use key can be used for looting and "take all". Double tap it when mousing over a corpse.

 

Also, you can eat 2 different kinds of food at the same time for more regeneration buffs.

 

Always talk to Arabella. She is here to help guide you.

Even if you think she has nothing new to speak about, she possibly will....

 

Go to your Options menu and select the Controls tab. Find the key bind for Toggle Nameplates. Change that immediately to something like CTRL+N

This will save you from hours of confusion.

 

Before entering the world map, try a potion of Wolf Speed. You will zip around the world map at blazing speed.

 

since the update I do not have the clickaable words at the bottom of chat and having to google for keywords as a new player is really frustrating to spend an hour looking for right keyword or pharases when taking to nps there is nothing at bottom of chat window for hits to right keywords