Last Changed: 19th January 2006
This guide is intended to draw together as much information as I could to provide an easy to understand guide for Engineers of any level.
Thanks in advance to Lyricia, Virral, Elbo, Kzak, Caddock, TheDeacon, Brioni, Jayde and anyone else who has responded with suggestions or additions for the material I've used.
Introduction
So you started an Engineer? First of all let me welcome you to the profession and to our forum, don't be afraid to ask questions here no matter how silly they may seem.
I'd like to say right at the beginning that this guide isn't only aimed at new players, I've tried to add in as much information, or links to information that should hopefully be able to satisfy a large number of commonly asked questions on these forums.
What this guide doesn't do
Provide you with a step by step list of things to do to make your character uber.
Contents
1. Choosing a Breed
2. Starting to Play
3. Controlling Yourself and the Bot
- 3.1. Macros
- 3.2. Advanced Macros
- 3.3. Scripts, Variables and Chat Commands
- 3.4. Pet Command & Maximum Range
4. Affording your Engineer
- 4.1. Begging
- 4.2. Soloing Missions
- 4.3. Blitzing Missions
- 4.4. Mission Locations
- 4.5. Jewelery
- 4.6. Monster Parts
5. Skills
- 5.1. Essential Skills
- 5.2. Secondary Skills
- 5.3. Perks
- 5.4. Resetting Skills
- 5.5. Buffs
- - 5.5.1. General Buffs
- - 5.5.2. Engineer Buffs
- - 5.5.3. Where to get the Nanos
- - 5.5.4. Meta-Physicist Buffs
- - 5.5.5. Trader Buffs
- 5.6. Items
- 5.7. Bots, Buffs and Over-Equipping (OE)
- - 5.7.1. What are Over-Equipping Rules?
- - 5.7.2. "What has that got to do with me?"
- - 5.7.3. Doing the Maths
- - 5.7.4. "There must be an easier way?!"
- - 5.7.5. Bugged Bots
6. Armour Choices
7. Weapon Choices
- 7.1. Weapon Skill Perks
- 7.2. Weapons for Fighting With
- - 7.2.1. Pistol Based Weapons
- - 7.2.2. Grenade Based Weapons
- - 7.2.3. Shotgun Based Weapons
- - 7.2.4. Martial Arts
- 7.3. Weapons for Improving your skills
- 7.4. Other skills
8. Trimmers & Android NCU Upgrades
- 8.1. Permanent Effect Trimmers
- - 8.1.1. Attack Speed Trimmer
- - 8.1.2. Taunting Trimmer
- 8.2. Temporary Effect Trimmers
- 8.3. NCU Upgrades
9. Implants
- 9.1. Profession Specific Pre-made Implants
- 9.2. Implant Design
- 9.3. Common Issues
- 9.4. Sample Implant Design
10. Soloing & Teaming
- 10.1. Terms & Concepts
- 10.2. Pets in Combat
- 10.3. Solo Play
- 10.4. Team Play
- 10.5. Offensive and Defensive Auras
- - 10.5.1. Damage Shield Debuff
- - 10.5.2. Reflect Shield Debuff
- - 10.5.3. Blind (Add All Off Debuff)
11. Trade Skills
- 11.1. Introduction to Trade Skills
- 11.2. Trade Skill Processes
- 11.3. Charging for Trade Skills
- 11.4. Special Tools
- 11.5. Maximum Skills for each Breed
- 11.6. Tutoring and Why It's Important
- 11.7. Where to find out more
12. Player Vs Player
- 12.1. Combat Specialist or Trade-skill Specialist
- 12.2. Skills
- 12.3. Weapon Choices
- 12.4. Ranged or Close Combat?
- 12.5. Nanos
- 12.6. Tactics
- 12.7. Things to watch out for
13. Anything Else
- 13.1. Making References & Tracking Damage
- 13.2. Where to find parts for the Engineer Pistol
- - 13.2.1. Solar-Powered Pistol
- - 13.2.2. Solar-Powered Tinker Pistol
- - 13.2.3. Solar-Powered Mender Pistol
- - 13.2.4. Solar-Powered Mechanic Pistol
- - 13.2.5. Solar-Powered Machinist Pistol
- - 13.2.6. Solar-Powered Engineer Pistol
- - 13.2.7. Solar-Powered Master Engineer Pistol
1. Choosing a Breed
This the first decision that effects your character. Each breed is different. I've included the Breed Ability caps for both level 200 and level 220, just ignore them if they make no sense.
- Nanomage - The most intelligent of all the breeds, which makes this one the best at using nano skills. However, this intelligence is not without a price, Nanomage is also physically the weakest of all breeds with the least hit points. Nanomage is also the best breed for all trade skills except Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering.
Level 200 / Level 220
Strength 464 / 664
Agility 464 / 664
Stamina 448 / 748
Intelligence 512 / 912
Sense 480 / 780
Psychic 512 / 912- Solitus - The middle ground, doesn't excel at any of the abilities, but is a good all-round breed. Good for any profession and an excellent choice if you're unsure about the breed to start with.
Level 200 / Level 220
Strength - 472 / 772
Agility - 480 / 780
Stamina - 480 / 780
Intelligence - 480 / 780
Sense - 480 / 780
Psychic - 480 / 780- Opifex - Bonuses to Agility make this breed better at using certain kinds of weaponry than the others. Opifex are also the best breed at certain Tradeskills (Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering).
Level 200 / Level 220
Strength 464 / 764
Agility 544 / 944
Stamina 480 / 680
Intelligence 464 / 764
Sense 512 / 912
Psychic 448 / 748- Atrox - The least intelligent of all the breeds this one remains an unusual choice for the Engineer profession. The main advantage of the Atrox breed is the extra hit points you get. Since Engineers generally aren't so keen on getting hit at all this advantage tends to be less important to us.
Level 200 / Level 220
Strength - 512 / 912
Agility - 480 / 780
Stamina - 512 / 912
Intelligence - 400 / 600
Sense - 400 / 600
Psychic - 400 / 600
2. Starting to Play
When you first start any profession on Rubi-Ka you are given a small number of items to start you off.
For an Engineer these are:
- Solar-Powered Pistol
- Engineer: Startup Crystal - Feeble Automation
- Engineer: Startup Crystal - Swift Weapon
The most important thing you'll have here is your very first Robot Shell. As well as some health kits, first aid kits and if you're Omni or Clan a blank token board.
You may need to raise some of your skills to upload these nano crystals and activate the bot. So either press the "U" key or the button at the bottom of your screen called "SKL". You'll find the skills you need under "Nano & Aiding".
You can see a description of any item or player by holding down shift and left clicking on it. The description contains all the information about the skills you need to wear or use the item.
If you need to remake your robot you can do so by right clicking on the Nano Progam under the Space section. This makes a bot shell in your inventory again. Bots cost credits though, so make sure you kill a few creatures before losing your first pet.
This bot will last you until you terminate it, it dies, or you log off. If you lose your connection the bot will wait for 2 minutes for you to reconnect before powering down.
3. Controlling Yourself and the Bot
Pets are controlled through the command line (ie hit enter, type in the command). But don't panic there are ways to make this much easier!
3.1. Macros
You can either have the game help you with this or do them yourself. The command "/macro" creates a little icon for your to place on your shortcut bar (press "Y" if you can't see that). Which then allows you to perform the command just by pressing a number from 1 - 0 depending on it's position on the bar.
You'll soon see what I mean after you've tried it if that didn't make sense.
If you want the game to help you simply type in "/help pet" and click on each of the links to create the macro.
If you'd like to use your own then the following may be helpful:
/macro Attack /pet attack
/macro Report /pet report
/macro Wait /pet wait
/macro Follow /pet follow
/macro Behind /pet behind
/macro Hunt /pet hunt
/macro Rename /pet rename "Mini Slayer"
Since our pet can't heal the "/pet heal" command is useless to us.
With regard to the command "/pet hunt" - Pet hunt uses an algorithm that chooses the next target by shortest line distance. This means it has a tendancy to choose targets in a fairly unpredictable fashion. That is it won't follow a logical room to room path if a mob in another room is closer even if it has to run through 4 rooms to get to the "closer" mob. Its highly recommended that you use this command with extreme caution.
Just a quick couple of notes on bot names:
They must be at least 4 characters long.
If you have a space in the name you must inclose the name in "".
According to the terms you agree to play the game you cannot name the bot to the same name as an NPC character or static mob.
If you'd like a colourful name for your bot then head over to Kuren's site to his colour helper here.
3.2. Advanced Macros
When you reach level 100 you get the option of a Mech Dog pet in addition to your main attack pet. You can continue to control both pets through a single general command or you can control each seperately.
With a correctly written command you can make it refer to a specific pet by including the pet name in the command.
All pet commands you use take the form:
/pet "<pet name>" <command>
eg /pet "Bob the Slayer" attack
or /pet "Ralph the Mech Dog" attack
These types of macro's work particularly well in conjunction with rename macros, otherwise the macro would have to be updated every time the pets name changed. Finally, if you use colourful names then the command must reflect that or it won't work.
3.3. Scripts, Variables & Chat Commands
Scripts are text files that sit in a Scripts folder inside of the Anarchy Online program folder. Scripts do not require any extension (the last part of the file name, like .txt) and will work with and without.
These files are command lists and are fairly versatile.
The following script has no real purpose, but should provide enough of an example for script creation.
Filename: Attack
/w Eek! Look out there's a nasty %t!
/pet chat "Fear not master I shall kill it for you!"
/delay 5000
/v Well go on then
/pet chat "Could you move this pebble?"
/pet attack
/me sighs
This script would be called by entering the it as a command into AO (ie "/Attack") which would then run through the commands one at a time.
Variables are useful things that allow us to name things in chat or commands without typing the full name.
%t is replaced with the name of your target
%m is replaced by your own name
%f is replaced by the target you are currently fighting
%1 - %5 are replaced by the words immediately following the script name.
Examples:
Filename: fighting
Called with: /fighting
Attacking --> %f <--
Filename: buffs
Called with: /buffs <variable 1> <variable 2> <variable 3> (eg /buffs MPGuy mochams 500k)
/v Hi %1, Could I trouble you for composite %2 please. Paying %3.
Shortcuts for certain chat channels are also available to you.
/s is shout
/v is talk in vicinity
/w is whisper
/g is talk in team chat
/o is talk in organisation (guild) chat
/me refers to yourself
Finally it's also possible to change chat channel like this as well.
/ch clan ooc changes to Clan OOC chat
/ch team changes to team chat
It will also recognise partial names provided it's enough to get a unique match. So if your guild was called "Super Guild Version 12.4" then "/ch Super" would be enough to switch to that channel.
3.4. Pet Command & Maximum Range
This section covers two issues.
- Command Range - You can only issue commands to your bot within a relatively small range (approximately 10 - 15 metres). Issuing commands outside of this range will have no effect.
- Maximum Range - Pets will cease fighting and return to us if the pet gets 50 metres or further away from us. You will recieve a warning and some time to get back in range when this happens.
Other important resources:
Beginners Guide
Anarchy Online Manual - The Offical game manual
Dictionary - Having trouble with the language?
New Arrival Forum - a Good place to get quick answers to your questions.