Hi guys, I'm currently downloading

DAOC trial
trial to catacombs
catacombs to darkness

as per the thread at the top of this forum, I hope it is still relevant today. I realize there are other expansions but I'm not entirely sure if I need to install them to get the most out of this shard. Any clarification would be appreciated there.

Anyways, as I've never played DAOC (coming from an old school UO freeshard), I was hoping somebody may some suggestions on how to start up. Not sure how quickly one levels here, what loot drops are like, but I hope to eventually get into the PvP (RvR) once I figure this game out totally and finish up a char.

How important is gear in DAOC and can I get decent equipment using a PvP character?
Any suggestions on decent classes for future PvP?
Does this game emphasize grouping or is rolling solo possible?

Thanks, any advice is appreciated. I'll prolly have more Q's soon.

Hi and welcome,

you need ToA (trials of atlantis) expansion in order to play some of the classes. Levels go...well...if u ask me, it goes slow. Uthgard is not easy mode.
No pain, no gain. About loots...it really depends, at low lvl you ussually get some armor/weapon, maybe some coins and some crap loot, which you can sell to merchants. First battleground is at lvl 25-30. Here gear isnt that imporntant, but in last BG it is quite important i tihnk. The most inporntant thing is to have fun. Choose class that does, what you like to do. See classes here: http://daoc.catacombs.com/cbuilder.cfm About grping and solo, imo grouping is better, but sometimes solo is needed, and it depends on your class mostly. Hope it helps.

Bye

Hi guy!

I'm in nearly the same situation. I came from a free UO shard (UO: Hybrid) but the small difference is I played the live server off and on until Shrouded Isles came out. (first expansion) Although I have some experience at low levels since I never had a character before get past 25th level.

As for game play, it is quite different pace-wise compared to UO in my opinion. A lot will depend on the type of player you are. Me? I'm pretty laid back and level at my own pace. Depending on what time you normally play will determine if you will group or solo almost. I play late night (i.e. 10pm-2am US central time) and there's usually only between 40-60 people on a typical night.

I will say it seems fairly slow leveling too, but again, the type of player you are will determine if you're cool with that. Either way, try and stick around for awhile. I'd recommend getting a few characters to at least level 20 before you decide to split. At least then you can say you gave it a shot.

OK, just to make sure, if I dl these:

DAOC trial
trial to catacombs
catacombs to darkness
trials of atlantis

I should be able to get the full uthguard experience? For some reason 2 of the dl's have messed up midway but thats something I can work out on my own.

Guess I should do some reading since I can only guess what battlegrounds are and how they work.

Cool mingles. I've been playing Hybrid on and off for 3 years now. I'm more focused on Divinity though, I prefer T2A especially with no mounts. I'll definitely give Uthguard a shot. I've never been a big fan of 'classes' but whatever.

you only need trials of atlantis, and can upgrade it later. try to get this working. how to upgrade can be seen at many threads here,seek ur way through the forum. (its about changing the stuff in the update.bat). if u can,try to get mettys launcher,with .net framework 2.0 it should run fine mostly, so ull be able to connect to uthgard fast. i would not suggest to upgrade to catacombs yet. test the stuff with ToA first,and if u think ur pc can handle that quite well,make a copy of the daoc folder,that u save somewhere else, and upgrade the original one.

Also, if you have bad PC, install only trials of atlantis, cause your PC wouldnt handle catacombs and darkness rising. If you have good PC, install catacombs for better graphics and some general improvements. I'm not sure what darkness rising adds on uthgard...if anything...i think not.

Hi there,

At your low lvls (1-20) you shouldn't worry too much about equipment. Loot here consists of cash drops, equipment drops (rare) and junk. This junk you can just sell to the NPC's for money. With this money you can buy yourself a decent outfit.
Equipment is always important. You kill mobs faster, take less damage,...
If you play a mage class maybe you shouldn't worry too much cause their armour (cloth) is pretty worthless. If you play a tank or healer I'd pay more attention to it.

In general PvP here is based around group action. This ranges from small groups (2-4ppl) to full grp action. Some classes fit in these groups better than other. For example, a Druid (main Hib healer) are a Bard are always needed in groups. To answer your question: Every class can get decent equipment.

About Battlegrounds: These are zones people can port to and are accessible for all three realms. You have battlegrounds for 3 level ranges (Braemar: 1-30, Wilton 31-40 and Thidranki 41-46). In these battlegrounds you can fight enemy players or capture the central keep which will give you an exp bonus. This, however, is just a playground. The bigboy RvR is Emain where level 50s(max level) battle it out.

I can't really advise one class or the other since it comes down to playing style. But to give you an idea:

In Hibernia you have:

Druid: Best healer in the green realm and depending on how you train your skill points he has some great buffs (which are very useful in PvE/PvP) or a big pet/Roots/DoT's

Eldritch: Mage class and a great damage dealer. Again the way this class is played depends entirely on your specialization, or spec. Again wanted in PvE/RvR

Hero: Hibernia's heavy tank. Can wield shield/1handed weapon or a Large Weapon or a Celtic Spear. Finds his place in both PvE and RvR

These are just 3 classes you have. I'd really recommend you either try out a range of classes or loop up some info about them.

This site contains a lot of guides for each specific class:

http://www.classesofcamelot.com/

This is one of my favourite sites. Here you can find a character builder for every class. So you can check out which spec line offers which spells/abilities etc.

http://daoc.catacombs.com/cbuilder.cfm

Being an MMORPG player you shouldn't have too much problems understanding the game.

Thanks for the info. I was leaning towards a mage class so I probably will try one out for starters.

My computer is pretty solid (1 gig ram, 6600 GT, AMD 64 bit 3500+ etc) so I shouldn't have problems running the various expansions but I'll definitely start out with just ToA to make sure it runs well.

Again, thanks, help is always appreciated

Hmm, problems. I got the EU version cause I was having problems with the US one, installed darkness rising, patched up to 1.88. Logged in, made a character, bar loads up, but I don't enter the game

I've been messing around with my firewall, opened ports 10300 and 10400 on my router (and windows firewall for that matter). I allowed game.dll and daoc.exe in my windows settings.. My MTU is set to 1500 (router) which is as high as it is allowed.

Been reading the various posts and I think I've tried most things. If anyone can help me work this out, much thanks to them.

EDIT: I re-did another character to double check that tutorial wasn't highlighted and it wasn't.

EDIT 2: Disabled firewall for a couple minutes and retried the log in process. Same problem

EDIT 3: It started working for some crazy reason.. All I did was take game.dll and daoc of the exceptions list and it let me finally get into hibernia. Weird stuff.