Post by Pylat on Aug 3, 2008 4:56:11 GMT -8
Congratulations, you have joined the few elite who play MxO. Now that you've joined chances are you are confused and wondering what to do now. This guide is for to give a basic direction as to what to do. For more specific stuff it is better to ask someone in the faction but hopefully this will point you in the right direction.
Getting started.
Depending on how far along you are when you read this guide, some of this may or may not be relevant to you.
Starting Quests - The initial quests you do collecting Chopper keys can be educational but the loot you get from it isn't all that good. Most crafters in the faction could easily make you something better. So there's not much purpose completing the collector quests if you want just the buffs.
One quest that is very much worth the time are the collectors outside of Mars Industrial Storage in the Uriah Docks, they should be marked on your map. The hat is useful for gunmen and the looks, especially for female characters where stylish hats are hard to come by. Hair Colours 1 and 2 are dropped on levels 2 and 3 respectively. No need to go to any lower levels in that area unless you want to get the glasses.
The headless glasses are probably the best low level glasses in the game, and will last you right up until lvl 30-ish where you get the next glasses that increase IS regen. The extra 10% IS regen may not seem like much until you understand how the combat system works. Out of combat your IS regen is at 100% of normal. In combat you take a -80% penalty to IS regen, which means you are at 20% of your normal Regen. The bonus from the glasses is a flat bonus of 10%. So out of combat your IS regen is at 110%, but in combat your IS regen is at 30%. Which means it's actually 50% higher than what it normally would be without the glasses. To farm them go down to lvl 4 and find a nice quiet area to stand around, soon enough some headless NPC's will spawn on you, kill them and loot the frags off them. It is highly advise you do this before you reach lvl 11 cause after that the difficulty of the NPC's increases quickly to the point where they are very hard to kill.
I'm going to take the time out to clear up a very common mistake nearly everyone makes, even level 50's. % Bonuses granted from items and abilities are not as simple as they seem. % Bonuses only apply to an exisiting bonus/buff you have. Like the bonuses/buffs granted by Title Buffs, the martial arts style you are using (Self Defense, Kung Fu, Handguns, Spy, Hacker, Coder etc...), the hyper defense you have on or any buff used from the patch tree. The actual % bonus itself does nothing unless there is a relative value to increase.
For example, if you are wearing pants with a +2% bonus to melee accuracy any bonus/buff you have on you is increased by 2%. At the lower levels these % bonuses may not be all that useful, cause the base number you have might be so low that 2% will make no difference (ie Melee acc 20 + 2% bonus = 20.4 which would be rounded down to 20).
This means you have to be careful with certain buffs. Like resistances. An actual resistance bonus will help (Written on your clothing as "Melee/Ballistic/Viral/Thrown Resistance(xx pts)"), as it's a flat bonus added to your resistances. However a % bonus to resistance will do nothing unless you have a corresponding buff affecting you (Like the personal firewalls in Upgrade artist or the temporary resistance increases in the awakened tree). This also applies to IS and Health Regen items. It needs to have an actual increase the IS or Health Regen Rate (Written as "Inner Strength/Health Regen Rate (xx%)") and not be a bonus to it otherwise it will only affect an active buff that increases your IS or health regen (Which are few and far between).
Loadout Use - As for loadout use, at the lower levels I find Martial Arts and Sims are probably the best to use. Martial Arts gets a hard hitting state special early on (Guard Breaker, requiring off balance), where guns has to wait until lvl 20 to get its own state special. Sims give you an extra person to do the fighting which is very useful in missions where you are constantly getting swarmed by enemies. Hacker has a very hard time due to the lack of IS regen clothes to give you the IS you need and the lack of attacks in and out of interlock. Spy is difficult to use mainly due to NPC bugs which make it very hard to sneak up on them, unless you use disguise.
There are a few key things to all loadouts. No matter what loadout you use. You should load up a few Hyper Defenses, you can only have one active at a time, and in the early levels may only be able to spare the memory to load 1 or 2. Hyper Dodge and Hyper Deflect increase your ballistic and viral defense respectively and are the best for using in missions. If you have the spare memory load up hyper block aswell for when you fight MA's. A good tip for missioning is to pick on hackers first, they have the most strength out of interlock and having one of them hamper you while you're in IL is very annoying, use Hyper deflect if there are any hackers that aren't in interlock with you. Once you have finished the hackers turn on hyper dodge and go for gunmen, the MA's will fire at you with guns from out of interlock so you will keep your defense high against all the ballistic attacks. Once the gunmen are finished clean up any MA's that are still around. Don't really bother with hyper sense cause very few NPC's use thrown attacks, Tengu is one exception. But the only time you'd want to fight him from out of IL is if you are a hacker, and hackers have a high thrown defense so you're in luck.
Evade Combat is also an ability you want regardless of class, even though you might be an interlock specialist and think getting into IL ASAP is a good idea, an evade shield helps you to determine the terms in which you interlock your opponent. Ideally with them already stated so you can open up your interlock attacks with state special Guard Breaker or Dim Mak strike or, at the later levels, Wooden Dummy Drill and Dim Mak strike in a row (Just one example) which will basically guarantee a win. Also once you start PvPing Evade Shields will be your best friend to stop spies from Sneak Attacking you so it's good to get into the habit of using one.
Hyper Sprint isn't that good, it drains IS like you wouldn't believe, I find there is no point to loading it until you're level 10 and can use Hyperjump aswell.
As for each loadout, it's pretty simple up to level 10 as there are basically no deviations within each tree. MA's should use and love Guard Breaker, unload Cheap Shot and Head Butt to make room for it if you have to.
Disarming shot for gunmen does a fair amount of damage, use firearms skill with it for impressive results. Body shot is also quite useful.
Spies should use poison knife early on, its damage is good for its level but its damage quickly becomes rather pointless after lvl 10 or above. Neuro darts debuffs are quite good. I found that headbutt and cheap shot were very useful to add more power in interlock early on before you could load up better moves, though you might want to unload those in favour of disguise, which makes it vastly easier to sneak attack people. Don't bother with flash bomb, it's pretty ineffectual.
Hackers should remember that UI Lag 1.0 can be activated in interlock and charges independent of the cue of attacks. It's short range makes it ideal for use in interlock to counter the low accuracy you have. Gaussian blur is a bit pointless. Though luckily for you, you can load Download Mission Map and get hacker for free, both make missions much easier. The green code around you means you successfully DL'd the map, if you don't you can restart the mission as many times as you want to try again. Slow also debuffs your enemies Ballistic Accuracy, so it's worth using for the debuff alone, which lasts a long time.
Most people are also at a loss as to what attributes to increase. It's quite simple in the end. Dump every attribute point you get into the relevant accuracy attribute. Belief for MA's, Perception for Spy's, Reason for Hackers and Focus for Gunners. Once you've got that attribute to 30 put all your points into the relevant damage attribute. Focus for MA's, Reason for Spy's, Belief for Hackers and Perception for gunners. Get this stat to at least 25, then put the rest where you like, most people like to increase their ballistic or viral defense with spare points, if you're into PvP it's a good idea to look into increasing your Thrown defense instead. Vitality isn't as good as it seems. As described earlier the extra Health and IS % bonuses only affect active buffs on you. Which means it will only affect the title buffs (Which only grant around 100 HP at lvl 50, so even with max Vitality you're looking at another measly 50 HP) you have or any buffs from the patcher tree, which makes vitality only good for a dedicated healer, and even then you'll have no flexibility to take up another tree.
Clothes - Clothing selection is pretty simple too, due to a lack of options. Just put on as much melee, ballistic and viral resistance you can (Very few enemies use thrown attacks). Headless glasses are the only item of clothing that really stands out in my mind.
Missioning and Other Stuff - At the lower levels you get xp very quickly, it's not uncommon to get to lvl 10 or close without running any missions. It's always a good idea to do the first missions from Tyndall which introduce you to all the missions types. You'll be running all your missions in Richland hopefully. Take the time to look around for hardlines, or ask a friendly lvl 50 to take you on a hardline tour of the area.
Getting started.
Depending on how far along you are when you read this guide, some of this may or may not be relevant to you.
Starting Quests - The initial quests you do collecting Chopper keys can be educational but the loot you get from it isn't all that good. Most crafters in the faction could easily make you something better. So there's not much purpose completing the collector quests if you want just the buffs.
One quest that is very much worth the time are the collectors outside of Mars Industrial Storage in the Uriah Docks, they should be marked on your map. The hat is useful for gunmen and the looks, especially for female characters where stylish hats are hard to come by. Hair Colours 1 and 2 are dropped on levels 2 and 3 respectively. No need to go to any lower levels in that area unless you want to get the glasses.
The headless glasses are probably the best low level glasses in the game, and will last you right up until lvl 30-ish where you get the next glasses that increase IS regen. The extra 10% IS regen may not seem like much until you understand how the combat system works. Out of combat your IS regen is at 100% of normal. In combat you take a -80% penalty to IS regen, which means you are at 20% of your normal Regen. The bonus from the glasses is a flat bonus of 10%. So out of combat your IS regen is at 110%, but in combat your IS regen is at 30%. Which means it's actually 50% higher than what it normally would be without the glasses. To farm them go down to lvl 4 and find a nice quiet area to stand around, soon enough some headless NPC's will spawn on you, kill them and loot the frags off them. It is highly advise you do this before you reach lvl 11 cause after that the difficulty of the NPC's increases quickly to the point where they are very hard to kill.
I'm going to take the time out to clear up a very common mistake nearly everyone makes, even level 50's. % Bonuses granted from items and abilities are not as simple as they seem. % Bonuses only apply to an exisiting bonus/buff you have. Like the bonuses/buffs granted by Title Buffs, the martial arts style you are using (Self Defense, Kung Fu, Handguns, Spy, Hacker, Coder etc...), the hyper defense you have on or any buff used from the patch tree. The actual % bonus itself does nothing unless there is a relative value to increase.
For example, if you are wearing pants with a +2% bonus to melee accuracy any bonus/buff you have on you is increased by 2%. At the lower levels these % bonuses may not be all that useful, cause the base number you have might be so low that 2% will make no difference (ie Melee acc 20 + 2% bonus = 20.4 which would be rounded down to 20).
This means you have to be careful with certain buffs. Like resistances. An actual resistance bonus will help (Written on your clothing as "Melee/Ballistic/Viral/Thrown Resistance(xx pts)"), as it's a flat bonus added to your resistances. However a % bonus to resistance will do nothing unless you have a corresponding buff affecting you (Like the personal firewalls in Upgrade artist or the temporary resistance increases in the awakened tree). This also applies to IS and Health Regen items. It needs to have an actual increase the IS or Health Regen Rate (Written as "Inner Strength/Health Regen Rate (xx%)") and not be a bonus to it otherwise it will only affect an active buff that increases your IS or health regen (Which are few and far between).
Loadout Use - As for loadout use, at the lower levels I find Martial Arts and Sims are probably the best to use. Martial Arts gets a hard hitting state special early on (Guard Breaker, requiring off balance), where guns has to wait until lvl 20 to get its own state special. Sims give you an extra person to do the fighting which is very useful in missions where you are constantly getting swarmed by enemies. Hacker has a very hard time due to the lack of IS regen clothes to give you the IS you need and the lack of attacks in and out of interlock. Spy is difficult to use mainly due to NPC bugs which make it very hard to sneak up on them, unless you use disguise.
There are a few key things to all loadouts. No matter what loadout you use. You should load up a few Hyper Defenses, you can only have one active at a time, and in the early levels may only be able to spare the memory to load 1 or 2. Hyper Dodge and Hyper Deflect increase your ballistic and viral defense respectively and are the best for using in missions. If you have the spare memory load up hyper block aswell for when you fight MA's. A good tip for missioning is to pick on hackers first, they have the most strength out of interlock and having one of them hamper you while you're in IL is very annoying, use Hyper deflect if there are any hackers that aren't in interlock with you. Once you have finished the hackers turn on hyper dodge and go for gunmen, the MA's will fire at you with guns from out of interlock so you will keep your defense high against all the ballistic attacks. Once the gunmen are finished clean up any MA's that are still around. Don't really bother with hyper sense cause very few NPC's use thrown attacks, Tengu is one exception. But the only time you'd want to fight him from out of IL is if you are a hacker, and hackers have a high thrown defense so you're in luck.
Evade Combat is also an ability you want regardless of class, even though you might be an interlock specialist and think getting into IL ASAP is a good idea, an evade shield helps you to determine the terms in which you interlock your opponent. Ideally with them already stated so you can open up your interlock attacks with state special Guard Breaker or Dim Mak strike or, at the later levels, Wooden Dummy Drill and Dim Mak strike in a row (Just one example) which will basically guarantee a win. Also once you start PvPing Evade Shields will be your best friend to stop spies from Sneak Attacking you so it's good to get into the habit of using one.
Hyper Sprint isn't that good, it drains IS like you wouldn't believe, I find there is no point to loading it until you're level 10 and can use Hyperjump aswell.
As for each loadout, it's pretty simple up to level 10 as there are basically no deviations within each tree. MA's should use and love Guard Breaker, unload Cheap Shot and Head Butt to make room for it if you have to.
Disarming shot for gunmen does a fair amount of damage, use firearms skill with it for impressive results. Body shot is also quite useful.
Spies should use poison knife early on, its damage is good for its level but its damage quickly becomes rather pointless after lvl 10 or above. Neuro darts debuffs are quite good. I found that headbutt and cheap shot were very useful to add more power in interlock early on before you could load up better moves, though you might want to unload those in favour of disguise, which makes it vastly easier to sneak attack people. Don't bother with flash bomb, it's pretty ineffectual.
Hackers should remember that UI Lag 1.0 can be activated in interlock and charges independent of the cue of attacks. It's short range makes it ideal for use in interlock to counter the low accuracy you have. Gaussian blur is a bit pointless. Though luckily for you, you can load Download Mission Map and get hacker for free, both make missions much easier. The green code around you means you successfully DL'd the map, if you don't you can restart the mission as many times as you want to try again. Slow also debuffs your enemies Ballistic Accuracy, so it's worth using for the debuff alone, which lasts a long time.
Most people are also at a loss as to what attributes to increase. It's quite simple in the end. Dump every attribute point you get into the relevant accuracy attribute. Belief for MA's, Perception for Spy's, Reason for Hackers and Focus for Gunners. Once you've got that attribute to 30 put all your points into the relevant damage attribute. Focus for MA's, Reason for Spy's, Belief for Hackers and Perception for gunners. Get this stat to at least 25, then put the rest where you like, most people like to increase their ballistic or viral defense with spare points, if you're into PvP it's a good idea to look into increasing your Thrown defense instead. Vitality isn't as good as it seems. As described earlier the extra Health and IS % bonuses only affect active buffs on you. Which means it will only affect the title buffs (Which only grant around 100 HP at lvl 50, so even with max Vitality you're looking at another measly 50 HP) you have or any buffs from the patcher tree, which makes vitality only good for a dedicated healer, and even then you'll have no flexibility to take up another tree.
Clothes - Clothing selection is pretty simple too, due to a lack of options. Just put on as much melee, ballistic and viral resistance you can (Very few enemies use thrown attacks). Headless glasses are the only item of clothing that really stands out in my mind.
Missioning and Other Stuff - At the lower levels you get xp very quickly, it's not uncommon to get to lvl 10 or close without running any missions. It's always a good idea to do the first missions from Tyndall which introduce you to all the missions types. You'll be running all your missions in Richland hopefully. Take the time to look around for hardlines, or ask a friendly lvl 50 to take you on a hardline tour of the area.