Beginner's Guide
Beginner's Guide
The guide below will introduce you to some - but not all - of Chronicles' core systems and concepts, ranging from gear to skills. It's not meant to be an all-encompassing, exhaustive guide, but rather your 101 intro so you're not as lost.
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If you have any questions about these, feel free to pop a question in the Questions forum!
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Gear Basics & Tiers
During your character's career, you will likely craft or acquire various pieces of Gear. Gear can improve your character's stats, helping you in combat both against NPC enemies and other player characters. It is crafted by Player Characters who have acquired the required skill level in a Profession, and the gear piece's recipe.
Gear is colour-coded according to its tier.
Grey (Tier 0 / Beginner Gear) is the lowest tier, then Green (Tier 1), then Blue (Tier 2), then Purple (Tier 3), then Yellow (Tier 4, Masterwork), and finally Red (Uniques) is the highest tier of Gear.
There is a lot of customisation and depth involved with Gear, as it can be enchanted or modified in various ways.
Gear also has a Durability Rating. When you engage in combat (PvP or PvE), your Gear loses Durability. You will eventually need to repair your Gear if the Durability is reduced to 0.
Note: Your starting Grey gear does not lose Durability, but you'll want to replace it with better Gear as soon as you can!
Equipping Gear
The Whitelist NPC will give you some starting Gear to begin your adventure with.
Use the 'Gear Menu' ability in the RPR UI (accessed with Shift+R) and equip your starting Gear. Using this same menu, you can inspect your gear, and unequip either individual or all gear pieces.
Weekly Focus
Weekly Focus is one of the two main sources of character progression. For each hour (up to 10) you spend online on your character every week, you will receive a reward based on the type of Focus you chose.
Note: Weekly Focus also resets any weekly cooldowns that apply to your character.
As you become more familiar with Chronicles, you'll see the value of these different types of Focus. For now, we recommend choosing ADVENTURING as your first Focus. Adventuring provides Experience, which will help your character level up faster.
You can use the 'Weekly Focus' ability in the RPR UI (accessed with Shift+R) in the 'Character' category and choose your first Weekly Focus. After doing so, you'll be able to choose your next one in 7 days' time; you'll be reminded that your Weekly Focus is available when you login.
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Character Skills
Characters are defined by two values - their Attributes, and their Skills. Each Skill is governed by an Attribute (which you assigned points to when creating your character).
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For example, Athletics is governed by Strength. This means that your Strength is added to your Athletics score, even if you have no training in Athletics.
You can increase a Skill's score even higher by acquiring Ranks with perk points, gained from levelling. In order from lowest to highest, these Ranks and their costs are:
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NOVICE (1)
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APPRENTICE (1)
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JOURNEYMAN (2)
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ADEPT (2)
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EXPERT (3)
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MASTER (3)
Note: You can only become a Master of one combat Skill and one Profession skill! It is an important decision that will define your character, so choose wisely when the time comes.
The Background you chose during character creation provides a starting set of Ranks in various Skills, representing your character's backstory.
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You can use your starting Perk Points to upgrade your Skills to a higher Rank. This is done in the Character Menu. To do this, use the 'Character Menu' ability in the RPR UI (accessed with Shift+R) in the 'Character' category and upgrade at least one of your Skills.
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Note: Each time you level up, you'll receive 2 Perk Points, which can be spent on upgrading your Skills further.
Don't worry about this initial decision too much - it's not a big deal, as you can reset your character sheet for free several times before you reach level 11 (Available in the Chronicle Coins Menu), so you can always re-do your sheet once you are more experienced with the system or more confident in your character idea.
Techniques
Attached to every Skill tree are Techniques you can learn, providing your character with abilities. There are a large number of Techniques in the game that do many different things. Some are offensive, some are supportive - some are for use in-combat, others are out-of-combat.
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Techniques that come from one of the magical schools such as Restoration or Mysticism are called Spells, but are otherwise more-or-less identical. There isn't much of a difference beyond being named that way for immersion.
Techniques require your character to have reached a certain Rank in their associated Skill before you can learn them. Some of the most powerful Techniques are exclusive to Master Rank, emphasising how important your decision on which Skill to become a Master of is.
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You can use the 'Character Menu' ability in the RPR UI (accessed with Shift+R) in the 'Character' category and learn a new Technique for one of your Skills. Techniques cost Learning Points (LP), which can be acquired in various different ways. We'll come back to LP down below.
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Learning Points​
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We mentioned Learning Points (LP) earlier in relation to getting new Techniques. There are a few ways of gaining LP, such as levelling, or by finding Lorebooks hidden around the world.
By reading a specific Lorebook for the first time, your character will gain a burst of additional LP. You can find your first Lorebook near the Mages Guild in the City of Anvil.
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After that, you'll have to do some exploration to find them on your own, or ask other characters to share their knowledge!
Find and read a Lorebook to gain Learning Points.
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