This guide is intended to take you from character creation to your first successful NPC hunt. Anything beyond that, including PvP or space combat, will be handled in the advanced guide page.
From the horses mouth
It's HIGHLY reccomended that you join the IRC channel - #gundamonline @ irc.zirc.org - if you a have a question, someone probably knows the answer. Also, there's usually someone around who's willing to share some money, equipment or just advice with a new player - perhaps even help you during your first hunt.
A Brief explanation of the skill system
For those of you who have played Ultima Online, it's exactly like that. For those that haven't, it's quite simple.
Basically, there are no levels and no classes. Every action you take, from firing a gun to manufacturing a hat will gradually improve the skill it is associated with, irrespective of whether the attempt was successful. Each skill is rated from 0-100, and they increase in 0.1 point increments. You can have a total maximum of 800 skill points - once you hit that limit, you can choose to 'unlearn' some skills in order to raise others.
You should barely ever have to worry about your stats. The only points where you really even need to look at them are when you're at the big 800, or when you're trying to hit specific requirements to use certain hardware - for instance, the MS-07 (Gouf) requires a Mobile Suit skill of 3, and a CQB skill of 15 to pilot correctly - you can use it without this level of skill, but your agility will be badly affected.
Creating your character
This part should be fairly self-explanatory. For Zeon players, Adelaide is a good starting city due to its relatively high population and relatively low chance of getting jumped by wandering enemy players just outside the city limits.
You have two character slots, so if you want to make a second later, either on the opposite or same side, there's nothing stopping you. You can't delete a character until they've been alive for two weeks, however. This means that you can't just keep generating new characters, harvesting them for their starting money and deleting them.
You'll be asked to choose from three character stats. Here are what they affect:
Strength: Damage
Spirit: Accuracy
Luck: Evade/Critical rate
Don't worry too much about these. They gradually increase over time. However, it is apparently common practice to put all your starting stats into Luck, and many players swear by it.
Customizing your options settings
You have now started the game. You currently own 1,000,000 credits in the bank, and have a tank parked in the city hangar waiting for you. In the bank vault is also a set of basic equipment for your tank, including gun, ammo and emergency repair kits.
You should now be in-game, standing somewhere in your city of choice. The first thing you'll probably want to do is tailor options to your personal preference, and (most importantly, as the defaults are rather difficult to use) reconfigure your controls.
Refer to the options menu translation page here for specifics. I personally reccomend you leave most gameplay-related options as they are, although definitely toggle 'Always run' mode in the first panel. Tweak detail options and such until you're relatively happy with performance.
Most importantly, you want to rebind the controls. Go to the control binding panel (see screenshot below for location), and I reccomend switching the the setup I illustrate below, too.
Here's my personal reccomended basic control setup:
Controls and movement
Assuming you're using my control listing above, here's the basic controls:
W & S - Forward/Back
A & D - Strafe
Q & E - Turn (Also done by holding the right mouse button and dragging)
Z & C - Roll (When in space)
F & V - Pitch (When in space, also done holding right mouse and dragging)
Shift - Walk/Run hold-toggle
Space - Jump
X - Toggle Autorun
R - Reload
Tab - Combat/Peace mode switch
1-7 - Select weapon
8 - Toggle shield on/off
To select a friendly, when in peace mode (Green cursor), click them when nearby. In a vehicle, you can click quite distant friends, but on foot you need to be standing right beside each other.
To target an enemy, switch to combat mode (Red cursor). When within range (each weapon has a different maximum range), click on an enemy to lock on. Then hold LMB to fire.
Camera controls are:
Numpad (general) - Turn/rotate camera from chase position.
Numpad 5 - Reset camera to default
Numpad +/- - Zoom in/out
Hold middle-mouse and drag - Orbit camera
Essential '/' commands
These are absolutely vital commands, used by pressing enter (or clicking the chat bar at the bottom of the screen) and typing them. Memorize them.
/transport - This is your all-purpose 'travel' command. Use it to summon a transport aircraft to carry you to any pre-marked (either default or manually) location. Costs 1500 to use.
/auto - Auto-cruise. When in any vehicle, you can use this to travel (albeit in a straight line, so it's not usable in cities) to any bookmarked location. Advisable in certain situations, but generally it's better to fly.
/taxi - If you're in town and not near a hangar, then it's best to use this. It rents you a little car to wander around town in, as otherwise it'd be a very long walk to your destination. This command only works in cities. Costs 650 to use.
/getoff - Get out of your current vehicle. If you're in a taxi, it just deletes it from existance. If you're in a proper vehicle, it ejects you. Generally speaking, you're better off parking vehicles in a hangar (double-click on the hangar building) than leaving them out in the open.
/mark - Bookmark your curent location, for future use via the /transport and /auto commands. It's advisable to put down a bookmark at every hangar you find, even if you already have a fairly close-by default bookmark. This cuts down travel time dramatically, and allows you to go anywhere you've been before simply by parking at a hangar, transporting to your new location and getting back into your vehicle.
/trade - Target a friendly unit (click on them in peace mode - a green hand pointer should appear on them) and type this to open the trade window. You can drag and drop anything from your inventory (backpack or container), or any nearby objects/vehicles you own into your trade panel.
Communicating with other players
To talk with nearby players (the distance you can be heard from is remarkably high - maybe a couple of city blocks), you just have to press Return, or click in the chat-bar at the bottom of the screen and type. Your basic chat-log is in the Journal panel, which cah be opened from the top interface bar.
To add someone to your friends list, get close to them, target them (in peace mode) and open the Community panel, then press Add. If they accept, you'll be added to each others friend list. Now you can open a chat panel with this (or as many others as you like) player at any time by clicking Community/Chat. In the Group Chat window, click who you want to talk to in the Community panel, and then Invite.
Once you're in a squad, you can talk easily with team members by clicking Team (again, top bar) then Chat. If you don't have this panel open, then you'll get a flashing blue notification every time someone says something in the channel.
Navigating about town
Navigation is very easy, due to the town maps being in full english. A simple click of the 'Map' button should show you where you are, and where you want to go. If you're not within easy walking distance, use the /taxi command to get around quicker.
Each town contains the following buildings, all of which are interacted with in the same way - double-clicking on them:
6th Bank - Where your money lives. Also has a vault with 30 item slots (a single gun will take up one slot, but so will 1000 bullets) for both Backpack (man-sized) and Container (Vehicle-sized) items. You should be alright leaving your money here, as your bank account is (usually) debited directly when you purchase items.
Hangar - You ideally want to put a /mark down at every hangar you find. This is where you can store and immediately get into any vehicle you own, assuming you've stored it at a hanger beforehand - your hangar can hold up to 7 vehicles total.
Machines - Where you buy vehicles. These are only stock models - fancier suits and tanks with custom engines, improved armor and the like have to be bought from players with crafting skills.
Weapons - Buy your weapons, ammo, shields and repair kits here.
Apparels - Buy clothes for yourself here, including rank-specific uniforms, if you want to be all fancy.
Toys - Boxed scale-model Mobile Suits and ships and magazines on sale here. Just for show/laughs, really.
Repair - Get yourself patched up if you're damaged.
Command Post - Form squads here. It's free. You can only be in one squad/team at any time, though.
Logistics Center - If your rank is high enough (if you're reading this, it probably isn't), you can buy pre-packed forward bases here, to deploy out in the wilderness.
Materials/Mechanic Tools/Tailor - Crafting gear sold here.
Sewings/MS MA/Raw Material/Weapon Factories - Ply your crafting trade here. Turn base resources into saleable goods.
There's one special building - the Terminal, located at the Spaceport - but there are only two of them in the game (one for each side). The Zeon one is located outside of Darwin. You can use it to travel into space, obviously enough. This costs 2000.
Buying your first unit
If you're unsure what you're doing at the moment and haven't found any teammates, just travel to the Hangar and get out your Magella tank, then skip to the next section.
Otherwise, travel to the Machine Store and buy yourself a plain vanilla MS-06 Zaku 2. This suit is the standard model workhorse of the Zeon army, and there are a great many variants of it available. It has no minimum requirements to use (although the 06s space-combat variant requires 1.5 Mobile Suit skill), so it's a good first choice.
Note that you can't be in a vehicle when buying one. If you're in a Taxi, use the /getoff command first.
Also, you should be able to buy this without withdrawing any money from the bank (debit cards of THE FUTURE!), but if it won't let you, then you should travel to the bank and withdraw your money. Don't worry - your human avatar can't die, so there's no threat of it being stolen. To withdraw cash, open the bank screen (double-click on the bank building) and your Backpack panel, and then drag the money from the bank money tab to your backpack money tab.
Moving on...
Equipping your first unit
You're now either in a Magella Tank or a Zaku 2 Mobile Suit. You've probably noticed by now that it's naked - totally unequipped.
If you're in your Magella:
Travel to the bank and withdraw the cannon, ammo and repair kits from the bank vault, putting them in your Container window (your tanks inventory).
If you're in a Zaku 2:
Travel to the Weapons store, and buy the following.
Weapons:
1 x MMP-80(MS-06) Machinegun
1 x Zaku Bazooka
1 x Heat Hawk
1 x Shield(MS-14)
Ammunition/Tools:
1000 x MS/MA Machine gun cartridge
200 x Bazooka cartridge
20 x ZEON MS/MA emergency tool kit
Now to equip your gear. This is largely the same for Tank or Mobile Suit. Open your Weapons tab (via the button on the top bar) and click 'equip.'. Now, click through each of your weapon slots, and assign a weapon to each. If you have a shield and shield slot, assign that too.
Now click Apply, and you'll equip your weapons. If you're in a Zaku 2, you can now switch between them with the 1-3 buttons. You're now ready to fight.
Fighting NPCs
And now to put everything into action. Open up the following panels, and arrange them as you see fit:
Machine (Health/Weapon & Shield Damage/Ammo)
Radar (Set it to maximum range)
Container (So you can see how much ammo you have in reserve, plus use repair kits)
Now travel to the edge of your current city with the map open - you should see some faint arrows on the edges of town pointing to 'battlefields'. If you follow one of these arrows for a time (it may take a minute or so) you'll eventually spot a camp, and a cluster of friendly radar blips. This is going to be your hunting base. Make sure you use /mark right beside the hangar here.
A camp is like a small town. It has a bank, vehicle/weapon stores, hangar and repair facility. They're located around every city, and there are frontline supply bases to be found (much) further out in the wilds, which you can /transport to quite easily, as they're pre-bookmarked.
Once you've gotten your bookmark down, you'll want to wander further out - travel in the opposite direction to the city (it should still be visible on the horizon from here) until you encounter red blips on the radar.
Switch to combat mode and engage - Bazookas/Cannons have high range and power, but middling accuracy and low fire rate. Machineguns naturally have middling power, middling range, fast fire rate. Your Heat Hawk (if you're in a Zaku 2) is a powerful melee weapon, but it wears out quickly compared to other weapons, and requires you to be right up close - this may sound obvious, but if you charge in too eagerly, you can run right into the sight radius of other NPC enemies.
A couple of tips for combat:
- Keep an eye on the radar. Don't get pulled too deep into a fight, and don't get surrounded. Fight on YOUR terms!
- If your shield is destroyed (or nearly destroyed) and/or your damage level hits 50% or higher, immediately begin autorunning back to the camp. If you don't know where it is, use /auto to help you find your way. At this point, you can't afford to lose hardware to stupid mistakes.
- The moment you hit over 50% damage (you can't use them unless you're this damaged), begin using those Emergency Repair Kits - to do so, just double-click on it in your Container panel. As you currently have little-to-no repair skill right now, this will almost certainly fail. Don't give up, and keep trying until you've patched up some of the damage. You can do this while running back to base if you've decided to retreat.
- Learn how each enemy works. Hovertrucks are weak and easy targets, but Guntanks will shell you from long range and do a lot of damage unless you can return in kind, or (if the opportunity presents itself) get into melee range and chop them up.
- Enemies respawn quickly. Don't dawdle. Play it safe whenever possible - once you've got more money in the bank (you get a bounty on every NPC slain), you can afford crazy heroics, but not now.
The spoils of war
If you've actually won your fight, and there are no immediate threats to your person, you can begin to think about looting. Some enemies leave containers behind - they look like blasted piles of wreckage - just walk up to one, switch to peace mode and double-click it. You can now loot it.
At this point, most enemies will drop very silly things. Toys, hats, maybe a handfull of bullets. Just drag an item from the list onto your unit to automatically put it in the correct slot (Backpack or Container). Occasionally you'll luck out and get something nice like an MS/Tank engine which can be sold at the Mechanic Tool store, or used (in part) to craft vehicles.
Once you're full up on loot, a return to camp to store this stuff in the bank (for later selling in town) is advisable. Rinse and repeat until you're profitable.
Also, by killing enemies, you gradually increase your rank. The higher your rank, the more you get paid on fridays (your military salary), but the more tasty and valuable a target you are for enemy players. Watch yourself.
Fighting other players
Don't even think about it - at least not yet. If you see an enemy player coming at you, chances are that you're already dead. If you're still at camp and have the opportunity, quickly dive into a hangar and store your vehicle. That'll save you. Other than that, hope that he deems you too small fry to even bother with.
Death, defeat and dishonor
So, you got clumsy. Enemies swarmed you, you forgot to run, or perhaps you just lagged out. Or worse still, you were flattened by a passing enemy player. So, what have you lost?
Well, your current vehicle and everything it contained for starters. Don't worry or panic, though. Just /transport back to town or your nearest camp and load up again, and give it another try. If you don't want to risk money, just use a Magella - both the tank and cannon for it are sold for 0 money, allowing you to use them as a risk-free training setup.
Don't give up. Things are tough at first - if you can't handle things solo (it's never easy to), then just contact your fellow players on the IRC channel, or your Team Chat (if you're part of a squad) and ask for help. And if the worst comes to the worst and you bankrupt yourself, don't hesitate to ask for cash. You're more useful to your fellow players equipped and fighting fit than tooling around in a free Magella.
Alternatively, you can use use a Magella for a while until you're got more money.
Crime, punishment and shooting your friends
Ideally, you want to avoid friendly fire, but occasionally you'll click the wrong guy in a heated battle, and accidentally shoot him in the back. To him, your name has now turned grey, and he is able to retaliate against you freely, so it's best to apologize.
While your name is grey, you are a hostile target to NPC guards - hence, you'll want to get the hell out of dodge, and fast.. Thankfully, grey crimes are minor, and you'll return to normal within about five minutes. I haven't found out for sure yet, but I believe actually destroying an allied unit will turn your name red, and make you an open target for all players for an extended period of time.
Avoid doing this. PvP is meant to be factional. By all means, spar with friends in the desert, but avoid teamkilling if at all possible.
And that's about it, as far as basic play mechanics go. May the glory of victory be yours. Good luck, and good hunting.
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