Beginners Guide

Welcome to Arcordia! You're probably saying, "accordion what?" But fear not--no accordion-playing knowledge is needed. It's just a cool name we came up with (At least we think so). In this guide, we'll give you a complete breakdown of our built-in tutorial system so you won't be second guessing yourself while playing. Additionally, we'll link all the features we address as you read, so feel free to explore a couple topics in more depth there. Have questions, comments, or concerns for us about this guide or about Arcordia in general? Come stop by Arcordia Headquarters on Discord! Our community and staff are more than willing to help you out. Please note this guide is constantly updating as we receive more feedback from our users. Please help us improve this guide to make it the best it can be for our current users and users to come! Without further ado, let's dive into the world of Arcordia.

## **Interacting with Arcordia**

In April of 2022, Discord turned message content into a privilege. Any bots that used a custom prefix (e.g., !help, .help) are now in-operable due to their inability to read messages and thus can't view their prefix(es). Instead of slash commands, we've taken Arcordia in a completely different direction. While message content is a privilege we will not be requesting from Discord, all bots, including Arcordia, can read messages when users mention it.

To interact with Arcordia, simply mention Arcordia (@Arcordia#2069). Once mentioned, a menu will pop up prompting you to set up an Account with us, but we'll cover that in the next section. For now, let's talk about navigating through Arcordia's multiple interfaces.

**Button Menus**:

Any embed you come across will have buttons at the bottom of it. Buttons have a variety of functions but each menu follows a general formula.

**The following table displays the general formula of button functions we use to create a menu embed.**
 (Dependent on Area)
 (Dependent on Area)
 Travel

Don't worry about Areas, Alliances, the Arcademy, Houses, or the Headquarters for now. We'll introduce them to you later on in this guide. Anyway, back to the buttons. The purpose of button menus is to replace commands. Instead of typing out something like `a!start` to start the game, followed by a whole bunch of other confusing commands, the power to start playing Arcordia is within clicks and a mention. Simply mention Arcordia and follow the set-up process in the latter embeds. Easy, right?

**Travel**:

In attempt to simulate a world-like experience for our users, Arcordia has a Travel feature where users are granted the ability to travel around Arcordia's map. Each of the travelable places are called Areas, where users can engage in a variety of features. To access Travel, simply mention Arcordia and click the Travel button at the bottom of the embed. Don't worry, the travel button will always be an option once you unlock it. It's not going anywhere!

## **Creating an Account**

Creating an Account with Arcordia allows you to protect your progress in-case you lose access to your Discord account. An Account also allows you to back up your progress to another Discord account and provides safety features to protect your data with us. Every user is required to make an account upon starting. Accounts are local to each Discord ID, meaning you can't login to another Discord account and login to Arcordia expecting to have access to your data. All of this seems complicated, but we assure you it's short and easy.

**The following table displays the information you are to provide when creating an account. X's indicate the requirement.**
 Password or pin used to sign-in to Arcordia

Please note the password or pin is used to login to Arcordia, and not your Discord account. We advise you to use different passwords to protect all of your accounts with the most security.

## **Customizing your Experience**

Once you've created an Account with Arcordia, we offer a variety of settings to you allowing for a customizable experience. Want to see lots of pretty images? Look no further. Want no images to save data? We've got data saver for that. No matter what you want to tweak, it all starts by clicking the "Settings" button at the bottom of the Headquarters menu embed. For your first time, we'll give you a survey to answer and will customize your settings that way. If you ever wish to change them, they're always in the same place.

## **Ascendancy Grades**

Arcordia is a complex world, and we understand that you may feel overwhelmed with all the information coming at you all at once. Hopefully it makes you a little excited at least. Anyway, Ascendancy Grades is our way of introducing you to all of Arcordia one step at a time. Sort of like this guide! Every user starts at Ascendancy Grade 0. You're a complete newbie. As we introduce you to concepts, you'll start to become familiar to Arcordia's interfaces. You slowly learn how Arcordia works. Over time through completing goals, your Ascendancy Grade will grow to represent your familiarity with Arcordia and your progress level throughout playing. Did we mention that Ascendancy Grades grant rewards too? Pretty cool, right?

Rewards aside, lower Ascendancy Grades will restrict certain features till a specific Grade is reached. This is done in an effort to slowly introduce you to Arcordia, as we've mentioned previously. Don't panic though. You'll unlock all of Arcordia with enough completed goals.

**The following table displays the features unlocked at their respective Ascendancy Level.**
**(Beginner Levels)**

## **Staying in the Loop**

Here at Arcordia, we like to keep our users updated on what's happening with new developments and changes. Using your Mostly Accurate Information Letterbox (M.A.I.L), we'll send you updates of anything you need to know. We won't go into detail about your M.A.I.L now, but feel free to check out our dedicated page where we break it down further.

## **Guides and Resources**

And... (drumroll please) just like that, you've gone through the basics of Arcordia! Everything else will have it's own tutorial within Arcordia or on it's own page here in our Arcordia Wiki. Any lingering questions? We're always here to help you via our Discord server Arcordia Headquarters whenever you need it. Congratulations if you've made it this far, and good luck on your explorations in Arcordia!

- The Arcordia Development team