As you probably noticed Highorbit is not playing the game for two years now, and he does not even answer PMs. As some things have changed, and this guide needs an update, I took the liberty of copy pasting his original guide, as a template for a new, updated one. Please let me post the entire guide, and then you can start with some suggestions on where it should be improved. I do not have unlimited time, so it might take a while to update the whole thing.
Last Major Change: 10th June 2007
This guide is heavily based on Highorbit's Engineer Guide MkII.
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 anyone who has responded with suggestions or additions, and especially to Alternity for help with the PvP section
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.
Much more information is available in the Useful Reference Threads.
What this guide doesn't do
Provide you with a step by step list of things to do to make your character uber.
Other important resources
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.
Contents
1. Choosing a Breed
2. Starting to Play
3. Controlling Your Pets
- 3.1. Pet Commands
- 3.2. Macros
- 3.3. Maximum Range
- 3.4. Pet Runspeed
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?!"
6. Armour Choices
- 6.1 Beginner Armor
- 6.2 Intermediate Armor
- 6.3 Endgame Armor
7. Weapon Choices
- 7.1. Beginner Weapons
- 7.2. Intermediate Weapons
- 7.3. Endgame Weapons
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
- - 8.2.1. Tradeoff Trimmers
- - 8.2.2. Damage Type Trimmers
- - 8.2.3. Improve Actuators Trimmer
- 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. Skills
- 12.2. Weapon Choices
- 12.3. Armor Choices
- 12.4. Equipment
- 12.5. Nanos
- 12.6. Perks
- 12.7. Tactics
- - 12.7.1. Rooting
- - 12.7.2. Fighting Against Charms/Calms/Roots
- - 12.7.3. Battleship Point Capture
13. Anything Else
- 13.1. Making References & Tracking Damage
1. Choosing a Breed
This thread covers Breed choice.
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 press the "U" key. 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 Your Pets
3.1. Pet Commands
Pets are controlled through the command line (i.e. hit enter, type in the command). But don't panic there are ways to make this much easier, which we will go over later.
The "mode" commands will change the way the pets behave until you give the pets a new mode command. These are:
- /pet guard - the pet will follow the owner and attack any target that attacks the owner. This is the default mode.
- /pet hunt - the pet will patrol and attack any target it finds. If more than one target is found it will attack the one closest.
- /pet follow - the pet will follow the owner.
- /pet behind - the pet will follow the owner. The difference between this and follow isn't clear.
- /pet wait - the pet will stop and do nothing. Also sets the mode to /follow.
Other commands are:
- /pet attack - the pet will attack the selected target, and subsequent targets that attack the pets. Afterwards, the pet will return to the owner and to the previous mode.
- /pet terminate - the pet terminates and disappears.
- /pet report - the pet reports its health, nano, ncu and location.
- /pet rename "New Name" - renames the pet. The name must be at least 4 characters long. If you'd like a colourful name check here.
- /pet chat "Chat text" - the pet says the text.
Since our pet can't heal the /pet heal command is useless to us. The command /pet emote also doesn't work on our pets.
From level 100 you can also have a pet dog. From then on, if you issue a command, other than /pet rename, it is issued to both pets. To issue a command to one pet use /pet "petname" command.
You can also issue these commands from two other places. The first is the pet window. Type "/open pet" to open this window, and you can see some of the commands are available as buttons. The second is macros, which we will go into now.
3.2. Macros
The command /macro macroname macro text 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 can either have the game help you with this or do them yourself. If you want the game to help you simply type in /help pet and click on each of the links to create the macro. Otherwise, just type /macro Attack /pet attack etc.
3.3. Maximum Range
Your pet will only obey your commant up to a maximum range - 50 metres. If your pet is further away than that, for example since you issued a /pet wait command and moved away, and you issue a command, you will get the message "Pet is too far away. It can't hear your command." and the pet will do nothing.
Your pet will also stop fighting if you are further from it than 50 metres. You will first get a warning "Your pet is out of range, if you dont get closer to the pet it will abort the fight and return to you." You are then given 5 second to close the distance to your pet. If you close the distance, you will get the message "You are within your pets range again." and your pet will continue fighting. Otherwise, you will get the message "Your pet is out of range, its aborting fight to return to you." and your pet will come back running to you.
3.4. Pet Runspeed
The runspeed of your pets is set to be your own runspeed, so your pet can follow you arround. The runspeed is set when the shell is activated, and sometimes when you zone. One should therefore make sure to buff runspeed before activating the shells, and if this is not possible, make sure to do a hard zone. When in /follow mode, and when certain pathing conditions kick in pet runspeed is increased by 15% in order to allow the pet to catch up.