Beginner's guide (Enderal)

This guide should give **new players advice** on how to start the game as Enderal on the default adept difficulty, compared to Skyrim, is far less forgiving to suboptimal decisions made by the player in the early stages. Though the player is making more decisions when the quest It Starts with the Dreams is started, the player must follow the main questline until at least The Void is started, but new players are advised to follow the main questline until The First Steps are completed. These quests give the player general information about Enderal to get started with while in the game itself.

This article will explain other topics relevant to other subjects as well. On the bottom of the page, links will be provided to other subjects and instructions.

## Arcane fever

Arcanist's Fever, also called arcane fever, is a negative status development which can kill the player character when the meter crosses 100%. It can be compared to radiation poisoning. Consuming healing potions, using healing spells, being in areas with high magical energy, and casting some spells all lead to an increase. At 40% and 70%, the player will receive an arcane fever status effect with only negative effects. At 70%, mana recovery is completely stopped, thus characters specialized in magic skills or frequent spell users should avoid going over this amount.

This fever can be lowered with bottles Ambrosia potion, which lowers it by 20% percent-points, but with an item value of 80, these potions are quite expensive to buy in the earlier stages of the game. It's advised to learn brewing for these potions with the Alchemy skill. There is also the memory Arcane Interference, which will give the player a talent to reduce arcane fever by 15% once per day.

Regarding long term effects of uncontrolled arcane fever, this won't become worse over time or by leveling when the storyline quest, Taming the Waves which cures uncontrolled arcane fever, is ignored.

## Class and skill development

Every player character starts as the Adventurer Class. This class has no perks or penalties. As soon as the player character has invested about four or five Memory points into a specific memory tree branch, the player character will gain a new class, but all those classes don't have perks and penalties as well. A class with perks is an affinity class, which is gained by investing at least ten memory points into two different branches which have a synergy. But due this requiring at least 21 memory points (1 for the opening talent + 10 x 2 for a branch), affinity classes become available at early mid-game.

See Classes and the side quest providing information about affinity classes and The Art of Combat, for more information.

### Class

For the first ten levels, dedicate a character to a rogue, warrior, or mage build. Phasmalism requires at least three memories to have access to apparations and some explorations to find Souls to make good apparations of, thus requiring quite some memory points for combat skills, while apparations can't be used everywhere. After the first ten levels, it can be developed fully if desired, but the first ten levels should be spent on build of mage, rogue or warrior.

Lycanthropy can be developed more early, but requires wolf blood potions and experimentation to gain access to the lycanthrope effect and Alchemy skill, thus proving harder to develop early for new players.

### Skills

All skills are improved by either spending learning or crafting points, which is done by reading Learning books, which are consumable items. Each book improves the level by one point and they cost only one point, but there ranks of 0-24, 25-49, 50-74 and 75-100. Learning books of higher rank are more expensive, thus one needs more money if willing to specialise in one or multiple skills to a high level. **Combat** skills are more expensive than **crafting** skills.

**Combat skills** should be developed depending on the player's intended build, with the craftsman skills following that strategy. If monetary resources allow it, develop the most used skills for that to 25 before going further.

For rogues, the Sneak skill should not be developed the first ten levels, due to the limited effect of the skills, until level 50-70, where its effect become clear. Due to adept and expert skill books for combat skills being expensive, it also requires a lot of money, not yet available. The other combat skills don't have limited returns on the earlier levels.

The **craftmanship** skills can be developed more carefree, as it's basically impossible to mess up with these skills, unless a high score in one or two is required for a certain character build strategy to work properly. Players feeling poor or not yet knowing which skill to pick can start with developing Rhetoric to adept level (50) the first ten levels, as that skills dramatically improves buying/selling ratios and provides speech checks, which can be used for all kinds of goals. For allrounders, it also helps to improve the Lockpicking skill to 25, as it only requires an investment of 10 crafting points and gives you the ability to open adept locks, of which the game has plenty. For locks of the two higher ranks, you can use Scrolls of Ondusi's Key.

In the long term, the skills of Handicraft and Enchanting do both provide good methods of making money and being able to craft and update good gear, which most character builds can use.

## Controls

The controls can be found in the pause menu under the section Controls, which displays which button the player needs to press to perform a certain action. These can be adjusted to the player's preference.

## Difficulty

If the game is too difficult at the moment, it can be lowered to apprentice or novice level. This can be done by opening the menu, selecting Gameplay and then adjust the difficulty setting. This will affect multiples of damage inflicted / received and makes the game easier that way. It won't make the AI smarter or dumber or add/remove abilities from certain enemies.

## Healing

By default, Health lost in combat or other causes, and won't regenerate over time. The player must either use food or healing potions and spells to restore health, though the latter options increase arcane fever, but are the only methods of regaining health during combat.

In the Suncoast area, the player can find glowing roots, which are called moon roots. These will restore about 30% of all lost health upon using them, but each root may only be used once per day. These roots don't appear in other areas.

## Light

When exploring dark areas or exploring the world after sunset, a Torch should be used. Other light sources include the spell Magelight or a Staff of Magelight. Spells can also be used as a brief light source as a byproduct.

## Money

Endralean Penny Coin, or just pennies, is the currency of the game used in trading activities. Due to the levelling system requiring learning books, which mostly must be bought, it takes until level 30-40 before the amount of money acquired each is in excess of player needs. Leveling up Rhetoric in order to gain better buying and selling ratio is recommended, as is acquiring equipment which bestows better trade directly or boosts the skill.

See the Money making guide for ways of making money.

## Traveling

Traveling on foot long and short distances is part of the game, as there is no Fast Travel system, which will do the moving for the player from the current location to a specific known location. After completing The First Steps, the Myrad tower network will become available. The Myrad network consists of Myrad flying the player from one place to another cover most of Enderal, except the edges and the most hostile areas.

At Ark, a lot of shops are selling teleport scrolls, which may be used to travel quite fast to predetermined places. It's also possible to make a teleport location of your own with the Mark and recall spell combination, which consists of two spells which both need to be acquired to work properly.

In Ark, the player character can also buy a horse or complete the side quest Gnarldarf Has to Die to gain a mule as mount. You can fight with an one-handed weapon while mounted, but combat is considered clunky. You can't use power attacks, and spells and two-handed weapons are also not possible.

## Medior tips

In this section, you can find tips for player characters around level 15-25

### General

* Improve the amount of Health and armor rating with the spells Blessing of Life and Divine Shield.
* If having trouble with being able to take damage, try to avoid taking damage. In case of melee combat, deal a few hits and back off or circle around the enemies while it's performing attacks. Also consider dealing way of dealing damage fast. Rogues and mages can also rely on hit-and-run tactics.
* In case better weapons are needed, start investing in the Handicraft skill. Though crafted version are quite powerful and the same weapon is only marginal better, for the long term it is better, as it also gives access to better quality updates.

### Mage

* When it comes to Mana, make sure to frequently use the Focus talent. This will decrease mana considerable when in effect. Make use of mana regeneration speed items, such as Mana Fungi or a few Food items, with this effect as well. Though is not helping that much during combat, outside it is. For the more tougher battles, a few mana restore potions are needed.
* In case of advancing melee enemies and risk being overwhelmed, either use frost spells to slow enemies down or use mana aggressively to take one or two enemies down, before resorting to melee or low-damage, low mana spells.

## Character attributes

* Carrying capacity
* Health (Enderal)
* Mana (Enderal)
* Stamina (Enderal)
* Classes (Enderal)
* Experience points (Enderal)
* Memory trees

## Other guides useful for beginners

* Alchemy recipes (Enderal)
* Call of the Hunt (lycanthrope introduction quest)
* Lycanthropy
* Introduction to Phasmalism (introduction quest)
* Phasmalism
* Levelling
* Magic