Basic Tips

## Getting Started

Often, new players are overwhelmed by the possibilities of Eastern Sun Rises, this page should provide some guidance on what to focus first.

## Some Rules of Thumb

* Pick up items that sell for gold, especially throwing potions
* Pick up all runes and gems
* Make good use of socketed items to get mana, life, damage reduction and damage early on, even a hand full of chipped gems can be super powerful
* Pick up all Rings, Amulets, Charms, Jewels! (can be stored in the Rerolling Orb later)
* Do not put magic rings and amulets for your class into the rerolling orb for now, you can use them for skill tab rerolling
* Pick up all Ancient Decipherers and Dragon Stones! (can be stored in the Multistocker later)
* Don't forget about gemwords like Amethysts in Gloves/Weapons for physical builds
* Shi runes and Jewels (everywhere) and Saphires (gloves and weapons) for early mana after each kill
* Use socketables liberally, **you can alwas unsocket everything with a key and get everything back!** Keys are sold by all vendors.
* **Turn off your loot filter!** (It's off by default on fresh installations)
* Get stockers from Gheed (check the Cubing Materials Recipes on how to use them)

## Detailed Tips

### Killing Stuff Early On

The monsters in the Blood Moor can be a bit menacing, and without a skill to press or enough mana to use it, the first levels can be especially rough. Eastern Sun Rises starts you of with a stack of 1000 Fulminating Potions, equip these and throw them to gain the first 1-3 levels. If you need to refill them, sell them to a vendor and buy them back, refilling the stack, but 1000 should be plenty to get where you can use a skill. When relying on attack rating, feel free to level to 4 or 5 before entering the den of evil and moving on to the Cold Plains, the early level difference can be a massive hinderance when trying to hit stuff!

**Don't forget to kill Blood Raven to get a Rogue ASAP!** Early on, they are very useful and relatively strong. If you find you're outleveling them, which can happen during early game, just hire a new one, she will always be at your character level. **Don't forget to unequip her first!**

#### I never have mana!

* Socket all Shi runes you can find, downgrade white runes above Shi, upgrade lower runes toward Shi, they provide +3 Mana after each kill, which is very useful early on
* Socket Saphires into your weapon and gloves for Mana after each kill
* Socket Saphires into your helm and gloves for more Mana

#### I'm having a hard time hitting and killing stuff with my weapon!

* Keep your eyes open and look for rings, amulets and jewels with + Attack Rating
* Amethysts in your weapon and gloves will also provide attack rating (and IAS), in addition, their Gemword will grant you a chance to cast Amplify Damage, which is fantastic because it reduces enemy physical resistance by 80%
* Use Rubys in your helm and boots to get a chance to cast iron maiden when hit, which will lower the enemies' physical resistance by 60% (almost as good as Amplify Damage's 80%)
* Cold/Defensive Rogues have a blessed aim aura, which boosts the party's attack rating by a lot

#### I'm dying a lot!

* Socket Rubys into boots and helms to get +life
* Keep charms with +X to Life, you have plenty of space early on, you can always use them for rerolling later
* If you stumple upon them, use items with **absolute damage reduction**, i.e. *(Magic) Damage Reduced by X*. Most early monsters do less than 20-ish damage per hit, so getting a chunk of damage reduction can make your characters super stable!
	+ chipped Bitter Peridots provide Magic Damage Reduced by 7
	+ chipped Tainted Tourmalines proved Damage Reduced by 7
	+ A Runes (which drop from late A1 roughly) provide Damage Reduced by 12
	+ Amethysts provide both, magic and physical damage reduction, when socketed in boots or helms, and they provide some strength, which is useful to hit gear restrictions early on
	+ Jewels can have those stats too, keep your eyes open for low level damage reduction jewels
* Also, **GIT GUD!**

#### I'm alwas broke but I would like to buy gems and/or gamble!

There are some items that sell for disproportionally high amounts of gold during early game. With the ancient coupons gone, a large source of early gold was removed. To compensate for this, the sell prices of throwing potions were increased greatly, finding a large stack of them means your gold problems are pretty much sorted for the time being! In addition, there are some items that sell for several hundred gold early on and are worth picking up:

* All kinds of daggers
* Throwing weapons (Axes, Knifes Javelins). Knifes well for 1 gold, but have good sell values when magic or superior
* Hachigane
* Rare items in general
* Gems you do not need
* In addtion, the following items can be sold for quick cash, but in general you should keep them:
	+ Rings
	+ Amulets
	+ Charms
	+ Jewels

#### That's cool and all, but I'm finding almost nothing at all

Turn off your loot filter by typing `.filter off`

This should not be an issue usually, because the filter is not loaded by default when you start playing for the first time, but sometimes players forget this on new chars and it hides a lot of useful stuff.

#### My damage is terribly low

##### Using weapon damage

* Use Amethyst Gemwords in Gloves (also on your merc!) to have a CtC Amplify Damage
* Look for Ku Runes, Jewels, Rings, Amulets with +x to Max damage
* A few chipped gems in weapons and gloves can give you a large boost during your first 5-10 levels!
* If you can complete a lvl 1 set, you're pretty much good to go for all of normal!
* Go for the Starter Weapon Recipes

##### Using Spells

* Try to go for the Skill Tab Reroll Recipies as soon as possible to boost your important skills. The recipies are listed in the Rings/Amulets section of the Cube Recipies on the Database, just scroll down a bit to find the recipe for the skill tab you're using. To do this as soon as possible, pick up all magic Rings, magic Amulets, magic Jewels as well as Ancient Decipherers and Dragon Stones.

### Oh god, there are so many cube recipes, WTF do I do first??

One of the core features of Eastern Sun Rises is its huge amount of cube recipes, which offer a myriad ways to upgrade your gear. All these options can be overwhelming, so here's a rough breakdown on what to prioritize first to make the best use of your crafting materials.

#### Important early recipes

These are mostly cheap and accessible recipes that are useful during early game

* Skill Tab Reroll (for all spell damage based builds)
* Starter's Weapon for your build
* **Unsocketing via keys!**
* Stockers from Gheed
* Gem/Rune upgrading if necessary (3 of the same gem or 2 of the same rune)
* Rune downgrading to get usefull runes like Shi for Mana After Each Kill or A Runes for Damage Reduced by 12 using `Rune + Scroll of Town Portal`. **Careful when using this as it will keep the scroll and if you click too often you'll downgrade too far!**
* Some Rune Forging recipes, especially Shi, Ku and A Runes, but also some others, check the Rune Stats to see which you might want

##### Intermediate

These can be worth using from mid to late normal and become more important as you enter nightmare.

* Stat and Skill Forging (since the costs are refunded when removing it!)
* Downgrading from Magic to White (to get bases for runewords) (Secret Recipe 2 and 3)
* Socketing via Socket Donuts (Attention, this will remove *superior* and *ethereal*, to retain those use Secret Recipe 16 and 17, which are more expensive)
* Maybe a base-up if a normal weapon has low damage but decent stats
* The occasional class craft to fill a slot that still has a crap item, Qual Khek gives you a full set of crafting mats (Perfect Gem + Jewel + Anvil Stone + Flag). Use `Chipped Gem + Perfect Gem + Flag`, this creates a perfect gem that is the color of the chipped gem!
* Limited D-Stoning for certain breakpoints like IAS and FCR if you're running really low

##### Advanced/End Game

Most of this is to obtain and enhance end game gear, the recipes can be quite costly early on and become good ways of using your crafting materials later on. You want to start looking into these around the end of nightmare.

* D-Stoning and Gem Melding on items you inted to keep for a long time
* Corrupting
* Tinkering
* Crafting (Old Craft and Class Craft, depending on the desired stats)

##### End game

These are pretty potent resource sinks and you'll usually start using them when you hit late hell and start preparing for ubers or just want to enhance your char further and further.

* Rerolling rare items, jewels, and charms
* Crafting to fish for great stat combinations
* Lowering Level Requirement Penalty from D-Stoning (Secret Recipe 50)