5punk

Here are some tips from stuff I found and current players (mostly Sheriff) have mentioned, which might be handy for characters starting out.

Controls

I find the default to be the most amenable, but with A and D set to Strafe left and right, rather than turn. Auto-run on \ is handy, but it's very easy to run off cliffs while using it. Holding the middle mouse button lets you look at something other than your own arse.

Pressing T by mistake reverses the mouse-look RMB action, so your cursor disappears, press it again to return to sanity.

Toolbars and windows

They're all movable if you put the mouse on the edge of them and it changes to a move cursor. Not sure how to lock them, as I've thrown them around by mistake a few times during furious clicking.

The toolbars (aka action bars) have a couple of icons on them, one to rotate 90 degrees, the other to pop out a new toolbar. I had a bit of trouble with this, as the silver-edged toolbar is the one that maps to the number keys, but it kept changing when I made new toolbars. The trick to remember is that you set the number on the dial first to the number you want the new toolbar to be, then click the pop-out button to make a new gold one, then set the silver one back to #1.

When you die

A big window pops up (which can be moved, because it's in an annoying position). If you click it, you'll be back at the last tavern you spirit-bound to with next to no health. While you will regenerate health slowly in town, you have a five minute time limit to get back to the instance before it resets. It's a good idea to visit the barkeep, get repaired and grab some cheap food (which can only be eaten in the tavern) before legging it back.

If you're with other people though, it's worth not clicking OK, and hanging around. Some classes (including mine, weirdly) can use a healing kit on you to revive you, but that only works if you're incapacitated, not dead and they can select your body on the ground.

Even if dead though, once that big window's out of the way you'll see you're a ghost. If you're within about 5 seconds of a Resurrection shrine you can spook over to it and use it. If you're not that close, another party member can pick up your Soul Stone and carry it in their inventory until you are next to a Res stone - your ghost will rubber-band after them, then you can activate it when you get there. The game seems a bit picky about things like this, so often you have to hard-select the stone (RMB), then use it (LMB/E).

I have no friends

Poor you. Luckily Hirelings exist for sad fucks like myself that play all through the small hours.

They're actually rather good if used well, can do quite a number of things and can work out cheaper than health potions, if like me you need a bit of healing now and then. While they only last an hour real-time, they can be resummoned as much as you want during that hour, although on free accounts only at the start of a dungeon. Visiting towns only dispels them, not destroys them, you can use them again in as many dungeons you can do in that hour. The timer doesn't start until you summon them, so you can even buy a few duplicates in advance.

The cheapest L1 clerics are around 2pp, which considering the cheapest heal potions are 6pp for a measly 2-9HP (1d8+1) healing, are a bargain even if they only heal you once per hour. The dwarf one has Remove Fear, which is handy for those Kobold Shamen.

They have their own toolbar, which roughly from left-to-right includes:

Follow/Stay toggle - default is follow, which is usually okay but can be a problem with big bunches of mobs - it's best to stop them getting surrounded
Get here now! - makes them come to you as best they can, teleporting if blocked
Active - makes they do whatever they think is helpful, attacking, casting buffs and running off in random directions - they need keeping an eye on
Defensive - the default and most useful, they will heal you and attack anything hitting them, their heals don't generate threat so much as in other games
Passive - won't do anything, probably only useful as a diversion where you don't want to kill mob X, defensive should cover most scenarios
Use/Activate - a picture of some cogs, used to make them interact with something
Their spells - you can cast them manually as you see fit

They can use Rest Shrines, like you. Select the shrine and click their Use button. Their health and mana regens, which is handy.

They drop Soul Stones when dying, like you do. You can pick them up and their ghost will haunt you all the way to the Res shrine. Select the shrine and click their Use button. This can take a few goes.

They even can (theorectically) raise you. If you select your Soul Stone and their Use button, they should pick it up. I don't think they will follow your ghost, but if you set them to Active should run to the next Res shrine with your stone where you can res yourself. Hopefully they'll pick a route that's been cleared.

Please add anything you've found, which might be helpful.

I'll flesh out FJ's topics and add more as it occurs to me.

Controls

By default the game uses auto-targeting; whatever is under your cross hairs is your target. This is generally fine if you only have to worry about being pointled vaguely in the right direction and swinging your chopper. For casters trying to hit a specific target, it isn't so much fun. Pressing G toggles auto-targeting.

The function keys will select your party members. Your own character is F1, next on the list is F2, etc. For mobs you can use the Tab key to cycle forwards, or Ctrl+Tab to cycle back.

Q will cycle through interact-able targets, such as levers, doors and chests. This can be useful if you are struggling to find a pesky switch or lever somewhere (yes, they do sometimes hide them behind things). Unfortunately, whilst it does select stuff, it doesn't give you any idea on the map where it is. To find it you will need to look for the name highlighted on-screen.

Toolbars and windows

The option the lock the icons and taskbars is under UI Settings in the Options menu.

AFAIK, all hotkeys on all hotbars can be assigned a keyboard short cut. So if you are that way inclined and have a few spare digits, knock yourself out. For those of us not from the West Country, the hotbars can be selected by holding Ctrl and pressing the corresponding number key. This makes that the active hotbar, and the number keys will activate whatever ability/spell/item you have in there.

Holding Ctrl and mouse-wheeling will cycle through the hotbars. Handy if you are running out of screen real estate, or not a fan of lots of stuff on screen.

When you die

Death is an odd one in DDO, so I'll steal someone else's explanation:

In D&D Online, player characters and hirelings do not die until they reach -10 hit points or lower. Getting reduced to anywhere from 0 to -9 renders you merely unconscious and dying. If you are dying, you lose 1 hp every ten seconds from blood loss until either you die or you stabilize, in one of three ways:

* Another character can heal you or grant you temporary hit points with any usual spell, item, or ability. Incapacitated Warforged characters can also be rescued with magical repair. This healing has to offset your negative hit points first. Once you rise to 1 hp or greater, you become conscious again (and stop bleeding).
* Another character can attempt to use the Heal skill on you. This uses up a healing kit. On a successful skill check, this immediately makes you conscious again and sets your hp to 1. Failure only uses up the kit. Warforged characters must be rescued with repair kits and the Repair skill instead.
* There is a 10% chance every time you would bleed that you stabilize on your own. You don't recover instantly, however. There is a brief delay, then you begin recovering 1 hp per 6-second round instead of bleeding. You don't become conscious until you reach 1 hp. Warforged characters and characters with the Diehard feat stabilize automatically, but they still go through this recovery process.

Incapacitated characters are still vulnerable to attacks and to damage. They can easily die from getting caught in area attacks or from enemies that deliberately keep attacking them once they're down.

An unconscious character cannot move or take any actions.

Heal is a skill that anyone can take but not many people do. Let's face it, if you are spending points on skills that are only useful after somebody "dies", then perhaps you might have spent them on a skill that stopped them getting killed in the first place.

/editorial

That said, it is Wisdom based. So characters such as Clerics, Monks and possibly Pally's might consider carrying a few heal kits around just on the off chance the bonus from their Wisdom+any bonus from the relative quality of the heal kit, might stop someone having to make the long walk.

Another thing to note is that Warforged do not heal like fleshies. Normal pots won't work and heal spells are much less effective on them. However, any half decent WF will know this and should have taken steps to either heal themselves, or take the Healers Friend feat which offsets the penalty somewhat.

If you do find yourself back in a tavern it's a good habit to go and talk to the barman/woman straight away (remember, re-set timer is ticking). Grab some food, and drink if you are a caster, and get your gear repaired. One or two deaths shouldn't make your gear unusable but items do take day-to-day damage. Skellies are a particular bugger, and of course, Slimes and Ooozes will fuck your shit straight up.

I have no friends

I can't offer anything beyond what Jack has said, never used one. I do know that you can get "Gold Seal" hirelings from the DDO store. These are of a much higher ability than the shmucks you find on the streets, and will remain with your forever (subject to the one hour rule and, I assume, a cool down period).

Collectables

These are the little bits and bobs that you find in piles of rubble, bookcases, in mushroom stalks - anything that has the twinkly effect, basically. Most of it is simply for trading to Collectors around Stormreach. See here for a full list.

Items of note here are the ones used in "Rituals". These are your crafting mats and some go for big money. Lightning-Split Soarwood, in particular, will go for over 60k PP a pop. Selling these is a good way to make lots of money early on, but if you plan to craft epic gear later on you will have to buy your own or farm them again. See here for a list by rarity (although this is listed alphabetically, the order of rarity is: Common>Uncommon>Rare).

Dual-Wield

Woo-yeah, everyone wants to be a swirling dervish of death, things to note:

You will want the Two-Weapon Fighting feat and to make sure the weapon in your off-hand is a light weapon (dagger, light mace, kama, etc) Even in this situation, you have a -2 penalty to both your hands.

If you don't use a light off-hand weapon (and you don't have the Oversized Two-Weapon Fighting feat, which removes the light weapon requirement), you suffer an additional -2 to both hands. If you don't have Two Weapon Fighting, you'll have -2 to your main hand attacks and -6 to your off-hand attacks. These penalties will stack.

In simple terms, without (at least) the TWF feat, you will not hit anything with your off-hand and therefore gimp your main hand for no reason.

Weapon Finesse

This feat allows the character to use his dexterity modifier instead of the strength modifier when making melee attack rolls with light weapons, rapiers, and unarmed strikes. The highest of the strength and dexerity modifiers will be used for attack rolls with qualifying weapons. The strength modifier is still used as a bonus to the damage roll, however.

Useful Links

The DDO Wiki

Revisiting Paths - I strongly advise that anyone thinking about playing reads this before you roll your first character.

Sheriff Fatman wrote:Dual-Wield

Woo-yeah, everyone wants to be a swirling dervish of death, things to note:

You will want the Two-Weapon Fighting feat and to make sure the weapon in your off-hand is a light weapon (dagger, light mace, kama, etc) Even in this situation, you have a -2 penalty to both your hands.

If you don't use a light off-hand weapon (and you don't have the Oversized Two-Weapon Fighting feat, which removes the light weapon requirement), you suffer an additional -2 to both hands. If you don't have Two Weapon Fighting, you'll have -2 to your main hand attacks and -6 to your off-hand attacks. These penalties will stack.

In simple terms, without (at least) the TWF feat, you will not hit anything with your off-hand and therefore gimp your main hand for no reason.

I can attest to this, and it's particularly significant for Rogue types who commonly emply the tactic. It's the same as in the P&P game, but despite me playing a Rogue in Grimmie's game and knowing this in detail, I didn't realise it applied here too. Swapping my second magic rapier (of fish slaying, no less) for a mundane shortsword saw a massive increase in my effectiveness as I didn't miss 80% of the time.

That bloody DDO store pop up bug thing made me blue screen.

I'm at the point now where I'll either play this again and get addicted, or hate it with a passion. Or go play Aids again.

Wait another week or so until we get bored and we'll all come play Aids.