New Player Guide

## General advice

1. First, you have to commit to playing the game for more than a day. The game, like most games, doesn't truly start to shine until you start to learn it. Give the game a fair shake and play it for at least a week and see if it's for you. You might just be pleasantly surprised at the depth the game offers.
2. Do the tutorial! If you can't see the option for the tutorial, go to "Main Menu" (top left), "Account Settings" and scroll down until you see the button "Start Tutorial". The tutorial is short and sweet and answers many initial questions through an interactive interface.
3. Ask questions. Many people on the Walkie-Talkie (Chat Console) are willing to help answer any questions you have, so don't be afraid to ask.
4. Figure out if you wish to join a gang, start a gang, or stay neutral. More on that later.

## Specialties

This is entirely up to you! Each specialty has its pros and cons, so it just depends on what type of playstyle you want.

* Recovery (faster stamina regeneration): Medic
* Salvaging: Salvager, Mechanic, Thief
* Crafting: Scientist, Mechanic
* Speed: Courier, Scout
* Survival: Scientist, Courier

This summary is rudimentary as most classes overlap into areas.

## Cities

If you click "GLOBAL MAP" and then followed by "GANGS", you will see lightly colored squares and squares with gang logos, the ones with logos are Settlements. They also have player run shops with many items for sale. **The shops and the economy is totally controlled by the players.** When you start playing you can select from 5 different starting cities based on the point score attributed to each city, to put it simply, ones with more stuff and easier starting conditions going on become New Player Cities.

## Stamina and Health

Stamina is a measure of how much "stamina" you have to salvage, fight and do other actions. Stamina is used up when you select specific commands and it regenerates slowly based on your recovery skill.

Your health goes up and down based on your actions. For instance, if you encounter a bandit and lose, your health may go down. You may lose all your fights if your health is too low and also lose the ability to run missions. Your health gradually increases over time, or you can use Painkillers or Canned Food to speed it up. If you lose health completely, you will die and will be able to respawn at last visited structure.

## Movement

Traveling one square can take around 10-3 seconds depending on your speed skill and terrain your are moving, for example Mud tiles are slowest to travel. Increase your "speed" stat to move faster. Some of the fastest players increase their speed to 100 and are able to zip around much faster than other players (at the expense of other stats).

## Making Bottle Caps

This is a game where bottle caps (cash) matters! Bottle caps are the game's form of currency and are often shortened to "caps" or "bc". Here are some ways to make money.

1. Run missions and jobs: they are found in cities that have the required upgrade. You will receive bottle caps and exp as a reward. Mission, are missions where you have to move to a marker on the map. Jobs are being done over prolonged period of time and can be done even when you are offline. You can finish job faster and get proportional reward to fully completed job. Try to select the missions or jobs that give the most bc and experience. There are many missions, but you have to be close in the required stats for all the missions to appear (and have the city's level upgraded enough). Different sector themes have different missions.
2. Sell to other players: There are shops in most cities, so use them! Selling to other players can be very lucrative if you know which items are hot. If you are willing to pay real money, you can also buy Survival Kits or other upgrades, and sell them to other players.

## Salvaging

Salvaging is one of the most important parts of Dawn 2055. Salvaging success is determined by a player's salvaging skill. It costs 10 stamina to salvage, however, it can be potentially lowered to 8. Keep in mind that different locations have different items to salvage, generally, the best places to salvage for certain types of items are.

* Military and Police Ruins for guns and ammo.
* Industrial Ruins for general materials.
* Hospitals for items to increase recovery and general aid.
* Malls for ammo, general aid, and consumer items (think sat navs and spray paint)
* Research Centers for crafting blueprint

Each area has limited amount of salvage. Once depleted salvage generally respawns to full bar within few days.

## Radiation

To enter radiation, you need the following survival skill level:

* White: 20

* Yellow: 60

* Red: 100

## Stats

You can increase your stats by the equipment you wear, by hiring mercenaries, by the equipment you give your mercenaries to wear, or by leveling up and distributing points. Group strength is a measure of your overall stats. Click the question mark to see what the stats do. For example, recovery is valuable because it helps increase your health and stamina faster. The maximum for all stats is 100.

Speed - Determinates how fast you can travel. Also affects how good your character is at enforcing combat priority on an enemy player.

Salvaging - Higher salvaging gives higher chance to salvage materials. It gives a bit better chance to at item scavenging too.

Crafting - Determinates what items you can craft, higher crafting unlocks more items. It also affects how much materials are needed to fix an item and how much materials player gets when item is taken apart.

Scouting - Higher scouting gives higher chance at spotting hostile NPCs and avoiding NPC attacks. Scouting also increases players chances to better perform a recon and ambush on an enemy player.

Survival - Higher survival is needed when your travel trough radioactive zones. See the radiation survival requirements here.

Combat Power - Combat power displays how good your squad is fighting at different ranges. It's affected by weapons and skills of the group members. Weapons with good handling like pistols will add more bonus to close range, but high accuracy weapons like sniper rifles will increase Very Far and Far combat power.

Recovery - Higher recovery allows faster Stamina and Health restoration.

## Mercenaries and Stats

You can hire mercenaries from most cities. The better the mercenary, the more expensive it is. You may have to travel to a city that has a level 5 bar to find the best mercs. You have to be careful though, mercenaries may increase your stats or decrease them! Mercs are usually rented weekly.

Scouting, Speed, Recovery, and Survival use a type of **averaging system** (not exact averaging, but too complicated for this guide) to determine your overall stats (ie group strength). For example, if you have 100 Recovery on your character and you rent one mercenary with 0 recovery, your overall Recovery could be 50!

Melee, Ranged, Defense, Salvage, and Crafting are **all added to each other with your mercs!** For example, if you have 100 Ranged and you rent a merc with 10 ranged, your overall ranged will be 110! People use mercenaries to boost these stats which is helpful for combat, missions, and salvaging.

Note: If you are poor, the best mercs are probably slaves and survivors. Slaves you can find in random desert encounters (cost 100), but the upkeep is free forever and they increase your salvage. Survivors are found in random encounters and can follow you for free, but they have a small upkeep.

You can have a max of 4 followers.

## Equipment

Your overall goal should be to find the best equipment for you and your mercs. Over time your equipment may wear down and break. You have to have enough crafting and material to be able to fix equipment. Other players are usually able to help you fix equipment either for free, for a fee, or for a tip.

## Crafting

Crafting is relatively simple. You have to have high enough crafting skill, materials, and a city workshop to be able to craft items. Find a city and select Crafting, each item that you can craft will show up. Many items require learning blueprints, blueprints can be found mainly in Research Centers, bought in shops from other players.

## Gangs

Gangs which are sometimes referred to as factions, act as the backbone of player interaction in the game. They have many functions which we will go over in this section. Of the guide.

When it comes to gangs you have 3 options, remain neutral, start your own or join a gang. There are a few large gangs which can be viewed on the "Main Menu" -> "GANGS" tab, choose wisely as they all behave differently and much like our own world, they have differing viewpoints ranging from democracy to fascism.

You can start you own gang, from here if you want to expand, build a settlement. While they are resource intensive and could take months to grow into a full-blown town. Settlements are worth it in the long term and will put your gang on the global stage as well as give your gang points.

## Reputation

You can increase or decrease your reputation based on PVP or encounters.

Attacking a "bandit" player will result in an increase to your reputation but attacking one with a positive reputation will cause you to lose reputation.

## PVP

PVP is based on your group stats vs your opponent's group stats, coupled with the type of tactics you choose. Go to your stats menu to select your default tactic. Tactics are a game of rock, paper, scissors coupled with terrain modifiers. It is possible superior tactics will win you the fight, all things else being equal. If you win a PVP fight, you win part of the other person's inventory, upward to 40% of his inventory.

New players usually don't have anything at all, so it's not worthwhile to attack them.

Don't be discouraged if you're attacked! Simply make a resolve to get better equipment and mercs so next time, you're the victor. It may take a little time, but you can get there. Also, it may be more worthwhile to stay in towns if you go offline, being outside of a town will leave you extremely vulnerable. Gangs can offer some additional PVP protection as well.

Some settlements have guard barracks which prevents PVP. Check security map in "GLOBAL MAP" to view most dangerous or safe areas (coming soon)

## Goals

Goals are common objectives for players where they have to either increase Civilization or Anarchy Theme. One Goal is active for number of days and have bottle cap and valuable item rewards, sometimes there's even a Weapon Kit! Players are split into two groups based on their reputation - bandits and survivors. Both groups have opposite Goal, the side which prevails in the end gets the rewards.

## Bosses

Bosses are scattered around the global map, but they spawn in specific areas. Find some players and see if you can take some out

And for now, good luck on your travels.