Estiah Intro

[lessigfan]

When I first joined I was confused by all the stuff to do, the numbers, etc. Since I've started to figure some stuff out, I had been writing a little introductory blurb to estiah each time a I noticed a monk joining estiah. So I thought I'd just put an intro here, and save myself the effort of repeating it. If you have any questions, feel free to message me here on in game. This is me: http://www.estiah.com/character/41152 . If you have corrections for this document, let me know, and I'll revise.

I really like estiah.
- It is time limited, you get a certain number of action points a day, and I've never spent more than 30 minutes in a day on the game.
- The game has so much more to do than duels, I haven't been bored yet.
- The strategy is quite deep, unlike Sect where the game is just gathering sectants and outfitting them with good gear.
- Everyone has an equal shot at doing well, unlike DoH where a lucky pull or lucky class/type selection determines winners.
- You can't buy an advantage over others: the "charms" are not limited run (unlike duels), gear is not randomly generated & distributed (unlike DoH), and good charms can't really be bought.
- The game has virtually no grinding: you're always doing something, and leveling is just the natural consequence of that.
- You won't hit top level any time soon, and the main game isn't at the top level, so don't rush to level.
- You can't trade with other players, so you won't benefit from alt farming.
- Guilds actually have a purpose, other than guild fights & sieges, you work together to create buildings, you get guild charms, etc.
- Upper levels seem to have far more classes and specialization than duels, though I'm still only at level 20, so I can't say from experience.

Most Basic Introduction:
Collect cards (charms) from a variety of places and put them together into decks (loadouts). Use these decks to beat other people and conquer dungeons. Your character level, skill levels, and attributes let you use bigger and better charms, but don't change the charm's effect (e.g. the same charm does the same damage no matter how much power you have). Easy easy.


Basic Fighting:
· You can win a fight in two ways.  1st, knock your opponents health to zero.  2nd, have your opponent run out of charms before you're dead.  You can lose the same ways.  Some dungeon opponents can't lose by running out of charms.
· Estiah has 3 main types of damage - physical, magic, and spirit.  The first two reduce your health; the last makes you discard charms.  Estiah has 3 main types of defense - armor, ward, and will.  These combat the 3 main types of damage. 
· %P is percent of damage which will pierce defense.  If you have 20 armor, and my twin blades do 10 (50%p) damage, you'll lose 10 armor (full value of attack) and 5 life (the % which pierced).  
· Only cumulative armor/ward is added to your existing armor/ward, other armor/ward replaces your existing.  If I have 5 armor, then play a charm with 10 armor, I end up with a total of 10 armor - I got only 5 additional armor.  If the charm says cumulative, then I get the full value on top of any existing ward/armor.   
· Some charms destroy armor/ward and do damage.  Destruction of armor/ward comes first, so if I have 10 armor and you play a charm which removes 10 armor and does 5 damage, all 5 damage will go through. 


More Complex Fights:
· When fighting with allies, protect charms make you the only target your enemies will hit for a few rounds.  Works well with weaker allies and with heavy armor/ward. 
· In group battles, focus picks a single opponent for you & allies to hit, rather than spreading damage around.  This is really handy. 
· You only get 4 decks; you'll probably change them a lot.  I ended up making a persistent defensive deck (ward, armor, spirit damage), an offensive deck (mostly damage, some armor, & ward), a skills deck (with charms from each skill I want to upgrade), and a specialty deck I remake for each tough dungeon. 
· Set decks as default - attack default is the deck that shows up by default when attacking (not a big deal), defense is the deck you respond with when others attack you (this is important), and guild is your default deck for guild battles. 
· If you really get into estiah, consider investing in a damage meter - it costs 10 phoenix feathers and is very nice.  The notepad may be worth investing in too, but neither features are necessary to play well, so make sure you like estiah before investing. 
· If a charm has an ability you don't understand, look it up on the estiah wiki or ask me ( http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Main_Page or http://www.estiah.com/character/41152).  Some are really useful, some aren't. 


Stuff To Do:
· Do a job every day you're on.  Early on, you will probably want to do normal type jobs. Later you'll want to mostly do travel jobs -conveyor or messenger - to get to more dungeons & such before you level. Eventually you can't get more stat points from jobs, but that's a long while down the road. 
· Doing academy (only available in some towns) to complete a skill makes sense as well. 
· Explore, get out of Inachis.  You'll see different shops, new dungeons with different challenges. 
· PvP is important because you get soul dust/shards/etc.  These turn into good free charms.  You can find dust traders anywhere PvP is disable: Inachis, Lumina, and I think Zeal.  PvP a lot. 
· The arena is only useful for building a particular skill, and earning gold.  If you don't need gold and you're not using a set of charms designed to level a skill set, don't bother. 
· Do dungeons repeatedly for charms, gold, and certain items.
· Avoid gathering unless you need something specific: you'll have plenty of time later to do that, and you'll do it more efficiently when you don't lose battles
· Get a pet.  You can get them from the general markets or dungeons.  Feed it 20 runes (you can buy these in each city market), and compete in races & fights while its morale is good.  When morale falls, feed more and race/fight less.
· It doesn't matter what pet you get, some come with more charms & stats than others, but in the long run they can all be equal.  Winning battles is really hard until you've got 20 runes and decent stats, winning races is purely luck based. 


Getting Charms:
· PvP a lot.  PvP gives you soul dust/shards/etc, get lots of it for dust traders in Inachis, Lumina, and Zeal. 
· Charms in the shops are your bread and butter.  They're weaker, but don't require certain skill levels, and only require character levels and certain attributes.  They're handy for building up an important skill you've left behind. 
· Dungeons drop good charms, do them repeatedly.  Some of my favorites under level 20 are the cursed forest, the ghost mine, and rogue colossus.  If you ever need a decent partner to do the colossus a few times, let me know and I'll jet over. 
· Craft shops have a lot of really handy charms and a lot that aren't worth getting.  It is often tough to get the items you need to make a charm, so be choosy, and find where to get missing items on the wiki.  


Getting Charms Level by Level: [thanks to BoS for this section]
· From levels 5-7 concentrate on getting soul dust to cash in at the dust trader for charms available at level 7
· From levels 7-10 build up some gold reserves so you can afford charms on the market available at level 10
· From levels 10-12 concentrate on soul fragments to trade in at the dust trader for charms you can use beginning at level 12
· From levels 12-15 get a nice stock of gold for the charms on the market available at level 15
· And so on, have gold ready for every level which is a muliple of 5, have soul stuff read for every level X7 and X2


Items:
· Don't let items expire – take a look at your inventory every day or so for items with red/orange timers
· If you reclaim items, they'll never expire, but they'll take an inventory slot. 
· Gray stuff is common, if it isn't pet food or useful for a guild building, just sell it
· Green is usable in crafts, you can get them in shops or gathering, sell it if you can't use it. You can see what crafts use which item in the wiki
· Blue is unique to dungeons, may be usable in crafts, sell it if you can't use it, it is often valuable
· Brown is soul dust/shards/etc, don't sell these unless you're certain you can't use them
· Red is an item you can eat for stats when you're a higher level


Building your Character:
· Pick your jobs based on what you need for your charms.  Look at the charms you've got but can't use before picking. 
· Extra Action is the best attribute for a charm. Do whatever you can to get & use extra action charms, and build your quickness skill
· Pick a main attribute (e.g. pow, int, dex, con), a secondary attribute, and a tertiary attribute. For a nice graphical representation, look at this: http://forum.estiah.com/index.php?topic=1777.0)
· Watch your charms.  When you can't use a good charm you've seen/bought/found, figure out why, and see if you can fix whatever the problem is (e.g. get a bit more of a stat, level up a skill, whatever). 
· Specialize into a few types of charms eventually, but make the decision consciously, not accidentally, so it lines up with your main/secondary/tertiary attributes.  Don't worry about it until level 12 or so when charms start coming with skill requirements. 
· Watch your skills.  If something is falling behind, see if the skill attribute requirements line up well with the attributes you're building - if it does, then work on that skill.  You'll want both armor & ward skills eventually, though not at first. 
· Don't specialize in one type of damage.  Building decks specializing in one type is often useful, but building skills only in one type of damage will make you weaker. 
· Join the monk guild!  We're always building something new, so the more contributors the better: http://www.estiah.com/guild/381

[Lasciva]

Post confiscated by Howie:

A question was asked regarding stat distribution, after typing it all out in the shoutbox, I decided to copy it here since it might get asked again.

Q:having some trouble trying to understand how many points I am going to need in my sec, third stats but I will figure it out eventually


A: It depends on what class you are going for and what strategy you want to use. Right now, the highest requirement for any of the charms is right around 700. So that is the max you want any stat to be (if you can help it/plan that far ahead). To use the highest level charms available as you level, you really want to stats to be more 1, 1a, 3 and 4. with 1 being say 100% 1a 95%, 3 60% and 4 whatever ends up there as you level.

If you level without working, your stats will end up pretty balanced. Thats fine, you can work on you primary stats once you get to level 40 with elixers. Usually if you go the don't work route, you end up using a spirit attack strategy because of the relatively low spirit charm requirements. Additionally, if you think you want to go the no working route, I suggest starting a 2nd character and level that one somewhat quickly so you don't get bored with the game and you learn a lot by leveling quickly that will help you improve your other.

[Semaphor]

Nice one lessig!

· When you hit level 10 (or is it 15?), join the monk guild!  We're always building something new, so the more contributors the better: http://www.estiah.com/guild/381

My Mutex joined with lvl 5, I don't think there is a level limit.

[busterbros]

Okay, I'm really going to have to do this now.

[DnD]

Nice! I'm inclined to give it a try now, since I was daunted by having to figure out everything from scratch

I might try it also.

[Apollo Rath]

i wish we had this when i first started.
great summary of pretty much everything. and it looks like were getting some new recruits . more people to hug

[SinMan]

I joined up last night after lessigfan spoke about it to me. It seems like something I'll definitely get into a lot more when I have more time to understand everything but this write-up certainly helps.

[Rebarbichus]

we need to expand the guild hall

[lessigfan]

we need to expand the guild hall

Or kick out a few of the many many alts. You could start with my alt whanana, I'll dump what gold I've got, then give him the boot.

[Rebarbichus]

we need to expand the guild hall

Or kick out a few of the many many alts. You could start with my alt whanana, I'll dump what gold I've got, then give him the boot.

Agreed. We can always leave one guild spot open for alts to come in and dump what is needed than boot them out of the guild.

[Apollo Rath]

we need to expand the guild hall

Or kick out a few of the many many alts. You could start with my alt whanana, I'll dump what gold I've got, then give him the boot.

Agreed. We can always leave one guild spot open for alts to come in and dump what is needed than boot them out of the guild.

how rude, they have feelings too

[lessigfan]

I stumbled across this tutorial: http://forum.estiah.com/index.php?topic=2693.0 . It is more explanation than advice - it doesn't tell you what to do, but more how everything works.

It is probably more interesting for experienced players - level 15 or so - but I learned a whole lot reading it. It is long, so you may have to take it in chunks.

[Belthazzar]

very good tutorial Id say lessig classic ^^

So far im lvl 5 and im enjoying the game.
It seems like PvE mmo and tcg, which combines
my favorite styles of play
My question is:
are there multiplayer dungeons? I mean like one is using healing cards, someone is tanking etc, basic PvE, but done in a grp of players?

[Howie Feltersnatch]

very good tutorial Id say lessig classic ^^

So far im lvl 5 and im enjoying the game.
It seems like PvE mmo and tcg, which combines
my favorite styles of play
My question is:
are there multiplayer dungeons? I mean like one is using healing cards, someone is tanking etc, basic PvE, but done in a grp of players?

Yes, there are multiplayer dungeons, 4x4 pvp battles, 4x4 pvE and everything in between. Guild battles are mostly 4x4 pvp. Thats really my favorite part, the group battles, its really too bad duels never implemented something like that.

[Belthazzar]

whoa cool, seems like game Im gonna spend a lot of time with.

Can u throw me inv to guild or do I need to send application?

[lessigfan]

We're building more space right now, just for you Belth

It'll be a few days, if that's ok.

EDIT: Sent you an invite Belth

[Belthazzar]

sure, no prob

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