Guides/Beginner Guide

*Guide by **Daegan Hamilton***
Here are some things to know as you begin to play *Roguelands*:

# Get to Know the Game

When first starting out in *Roguelands* it can be difficult to know what to do and what does what. Before you can do much else, you first need to get acquainted with your Ship. All the characters you make will spawn here and will share anything left in the Storage Chest. From your ship you can also access the Ship Droids by activating the device with the purple screen, the Market by going through the doorway, and the teleporter by going up to and activating the capsule-like object on the pedestal (the capsule will be orange for now).

Do go to the market and talk to the various NPCs. They can provide helpful information and a little background on what exactly is going on, and one of them will give you some Health Packs I. Going through another doorway in the Market will take you to the main quest-giver NPCs in the current version of the game (who goes by the name Captain Atlas), but it is not recommended to try and take on the story quests when first starting out. There is another quest-giver NPCs in the Market whose quests you are free to pursue, but if you're starting out you probably won't be able to cash in on any of those quests for awhile.

So you have an idea of what the various things on the ship do, and you can access the various crafting stations, but you have nothing to craft with. You also only have one weapon and a single droid that follows you around. To be able to craft anything you have to go through your teleporter and explore! On any world you go to, you can click on trees, plants, and stones to have your droid harvest them for materials which you can then use to craft things back on your ship. The more worlds you go to, the more materials of different kinds you can get. But first, you have to get through the first planet: the Desolate Canyon.

# Prepare to Die

I guarantee you that your first character will die, possibly within the first minute. Since when your character dies everything they had on them will be lost forever, your first challenge in this game is getting through the first planet alive so you can get back to your ship and use the crafting materials you just got. Remember that it takes practice to get used to using your weapon and cutting down enemies, in addition to avoiding obstacles. Don't get discouraged if you die a lot. When first starting out, you don't have any potions to heal yourself with if you lose the ones given to you by one of the market NPCs, so you should avoid touching enemies and obstacles at all costs. But if you are very close to death, you can use an exploit that exists in the current version of the game by pressing the Escape key, and selecting Quit without Saving. When you reload that character, they will be back on the ship and have all the materials you got before you quit. This exploit can be helpful, but it goes against the spirit of the game, so obtaining the materials through the correct means is advised.

My best advice to getting through the first world when starting a new character is to avoid touching the large green Eyepods, watch out for floating rocks that will hurt you if you touch them, and use your mobility and environment to your advantage. The enemies here are generally slow moving and predictable. The dunebugs have trouble reaching you if you're up on a ledge, and all the enemies but the Worms get knocked back when you hit them. When you get to the end of a stage there will be three teleporters with randomly determined teleport locations. If you can access the Desolate Canyon again, do it. Otherwise enter any other teleport location and just go back to the ship. Any teleporter you go to will take you to a "town" where you can go back to the ship, place materials in storage, buy loot for credits, and you might even find some chests with some extra loot. You will also find a Gear Chalice that you can jump into to level up your various equipment depending on when you jump into it. Before moving on to other planets you'll want to level up your character and gather lots of materials to make yourself some potions and armor.

# Gear Up

You can craft potions at the Alchemy Station with any plant or animal materials of the same tier. By placing these materials in different patterns you can create different potions, but most of the recipes will result in you getting Ashen Dust, which is just about useless. Once you discover the recipes for potions, however, you can click on the orange button in the top right of the crafting window and select the recipe to craft it so long as you have the required materials. You can also just spam-click a recipe to stack up as many potions as you can make and place all the potions down into a single inventory slot. (Don't waste time clicking the recipe then dragging each potion to an inventory slot one at a time like I did at first.)

Making new armor, weapons, and shields is a bit more difficult. First you need to make emblems by going to the Emblem Forge and transforming stacks of ten materials for a single emblem each. You then take these emblems and go to your Gear Forge to craft new gear. Like with the Alchemy station, you can find the recipes you've discovered by pressing the orange button in the top right of the crafting window and click on a recipe to craft it if you have the emblems for it; but discovering new recipes involves a lot of trial and error. Currently, you can get the materials to craft all the different equipment in the first seven planets. It is important to know that different weapons will do more damage depending on different stats. Swords and Lances scale with Strength (orange), Guns and Cannons scale with Dexterity (green), Gauntlets scale with Arcane (blue), and staves scale with Faith (purple). The Vitality stat (red) gives a small boost to your total heath points, and the Tech stat (light brown) boosts certain guns and cannons that scale with it. Armor, shields, and rings will also boost different stats, so pick your armor and shield according to the weapons you want to use.

"But hey! How do I pick which of my stats to level up?!"

When you make a new character there are two colored stat boxes that determine your class. These are the two primary stats that will be leveled up most each time you level up, and you can click on each to cycle through the different stats. Did I not mention that before? Oh well. You can just make a new character if you like.

# Mid Game

Now you should be leveling up your character, gathering as many materials as you can, and leveling up your gear by getting through the planets. You'll also die quite a bit, but there's a chance you'll unlock new stuff when you die that can help you in your next run. When you're on various planets you may find relics that will give you portal uses, allowing you to enter that planet straight from your ship using your ship's computer. You may also collect Combat Chips when looting chests or in towns. These are either special abilities or passive buffs to your stats. You can see and use these abilities any time you have your weapon out, and can use them with their corresponding number key (1-6). You cannot "use" passive chips, but you get the benefit of the chip by just having it equipped. Different abilities will do more for you depending on which stat they scale with, and all will cost mana to use. You can tell which stat they benefit from because they will be the same color as the corresponding stat. You cannot move or remove combat chips until you get to a Combat Chip Stand in the ship or in towns. Unequip chips you don't need to make room for new chips. If you get a new chip when you have no room for new chips, the new chip will be destroyed.

Move on to new planets when you feel ready for it. Each successive planet will have better crafting materials and more difficult enemies which will give you more credits and exp. I won't spoil any of the other planets for you here, but if you want to spoil it for yourself you can find information on each planet here on the wiki. I'll just warn you that the eighth planet, the Molten Crag, is one you won't want to visit for awhile. The enemies there can give you the burn status, which will rapidly deplete your health unless you use Anti-Heat potions (which you can only craft with materials from the Molten Crag. Go figure.), and the boss will spawn after thirty seconds and will also seriously burn you and will chase you through walls wherever you go until you defeat it. So before you get to that, try and take on more challenging versions of the planets you've already visited.

From your ship's computer you can select a planet and pay 5,000 credits to increase the challenge level of all planets. Raising it further will cost 10,000 credits and so on. Raising the challenge level makes the enemies more difficult to defeat, will give you more exp accordingly, will increase how much you can level up your gear at the end of a planet, and will give you a chance to collect equipment Gear Mods and three special shards from enemies and resource spots. Once you complete a planet and go back to the ship, the challenge level will be restored to normal difficulty. Switching characters will also restore the challenge level to normal difficulty.

To equip mods and use the shards you have to go to Mech City and use the devices there to attach mods to your gear and combine ten of each shard into a prism which you can then attach to any level ten gear or weapon (aside from rings) to make it into an Ultimate Gear version. You can access Mech City from your ship's teleporter after purchasing and using an Ion Ticket from the market for 5,000 world fragments. Each ticket lets you teleport to Mech City three times.

# End Game

Now you should have fully decked your character out with equipment that compliments its stats, completely modded all your equipment to your heart's content, and gathered enough materials to craft just about anything you like. By now you're ready to take on the Molten Crag and the two planets after. The Demon's Rift and the Whisperwood. Hopefully you've also been upgrading your storage chest and ship droids to increase your storage space and increase how many world fragments you get over time. Once your character has reached level 100, you should save up some credits to get yourself a Remembrance Ticket to go to Old Earth to purchase special Combat Chips and NPCs Helms for Wealth Trophies and Champion Badges. You get Wealth Trophies from the ship's market, but you can only get Champion Badges after you reach level 100. You will continue to level up, but instead of gaining levels you will instead receive a Champion Badge. The Forbidden Arena is a special end-game zone can be accessed from your ship after purchasing and using an Arena Ticket from the ship's market, where you can fight against different bosses.

What else is there to do in Roguelands after you've done all this? Make a new character and do it again, try your hand at the Iron Man mode, and play the game with friends on online multiplayer. New stuff will be added soon. Remember that this game is still in development. In its full release I'm certain there will be much more for players to see and do. Until then, just enjoy what has been made so far and check back every month or so for updates.