Guide/GettingStarted

# A Quick Start Guide

This article will take you through steps to ensuring your 6 Swords experience is one of success and enjoyment.
There are many ways to enjoy the 6 Swords skill for Alexa, but the tips and tricks described below will help introduce you to some of the game features.

## Initial Group

Right from the start, your group is organized and ready for the open road. Even the randomly generated start group is likely to survive some early exploring. When you examine the details of those characters, however, you will very likely want to find better.

## Hiring and Firing

A hiring hall is okay for seeking new mercenaries for your group, but a veterans hall is a better choice. If you come across a military district, give it a good examination.

You might even find a paladin and a ranger to hire. If you get lucky, there is a fighter with great stats. Finding a paladin or a ranger with great stats is like winning the lottery.

Hiring a thief is a good idea, if you can find one with good stats. Having both hit points, dexterity, and intellegence is a must.

At this early stage, specifics about a paladin's deity or stat maxing is not of much use. Just fill your group with 6 solid mercenaries, and get out there and earn some experience.

## Trading Up

Once you have a few mercenaries of sufficient level to survive out in the wild, hiring 1st level recruits becomes a lot less painful. Keep checking for mercenaries with better stats, and make replacements as opportunities become available.

## Altering Names and Genders

Once you have found a few mercenaries worth keeping, consider giving them names you can easily speak. Being able to use commands accurately is important, and altering names is free and easy.

In any castle or tower, you can find the office. A registry office will appear beside the main office. In the registry office, you can change your group name, individual member names, and genders.

## Pocket Guards and Teams

With enough gold in your inventory, you can invest in a Pocket Mansion. One of the advantages of a mansion is that you can build Guard Posts where additional mercenaries can be stored.

You can collect mercenaries and organize them into different groups saved as teams, then load a whole new team whenever you like.

The mercenaries you store may actually become useful later, especially if one of your group members dies in combat. A wizard shop can resurrect, but its costly.

## Investing in Equipment

Because any death of a group member returns their inventory to the group inventory, investing in those items is not at all risky. You can even resell lower rated items to reclaim your investment. Some mercenaries might even turn a profit on the deal.

Advanced levels certainly do improve the combat performance of mercenaries, but highly rated armor and weapons instantly transforms any mercenary into a deadly threat.

## Rising Threat Levels

As your team of mercenaries gains levels, and the average level improves sufficiently, they will begin to encounter more highly ranked enemies. While some areas you explore will be more dangerous than others, the general threat level will not often exceed a range appropriate to your team's level. Advancing levels will expose your team to more dangers and the possibility to gain much more experience and treasure.

## Game Restart

If all your attempts have failed, or you simply want to start fresh, resetting the game is a simple matter. The following Alexa commands will give you a fresh start.

* 1. "disable six swords" to completely delete your existing game account
* 2. "open six swords" to start all over again
* 3. And, be sure to tell Alexa to enable the skill, in spite of it having been disabled in the past.

## Continued Reading

You may also want to learn how other players have earned experience and treasure. To be sure, there are a few broadly used strategies that have proven effective.

Strategies for earning wealth