Simple outline on how to get the best start on RK as a keeper!
STARTING OUT
BREED
In this section I will ONLY outline the breed advantages/disadvantages for the first 100 levels, for more advanced breed tactics please refer to my other guide which is stickied in the keeper guides thread.
ATROX: A hefty fella to say the least
Advantages:
1.Green Stam
2.Green Strength
3.More HP
4.Others
1.STAMINA
Your 2he skill is 40% dependant on stamina, and having green stamina means you can increase your stamina with very minimal ips meaning your 2he skill will be a be cheaper than all the other breeds. Also a lot of decent armour for keepers are stamina dependant so atroxes have an easier time equipping these armours. Other important skills dependant on stamina are:
body dev. which means you have cheaper HP.
Brawling, a skill required for kyr'ozch sword type 112s and a great attack to have since it has a chance of stunning your opponent
Run speed, being faster is never bad eh
2.STRENGTH
Your 2he skill is 60% dependant on strength which means that you get cheaper 2he skills. Armour again is strength dependant such as tier armour and CAS. Other skills dependant on str are:
brawling again, for better brawls
runspeed again
sensory improvement is 20% dependant on strength, this can be useful for casting your weapon buffs
3.HP
How do you die? Your HP is reduced to 0, so having more HP means it takes longer for you to die, simple yet very effective way of extending your lifespan. Atroxes also get 4 HP for every body dev. point they raise so base HP will be a lot higher than the other breeds.
4.Others
Silken Legchopper gloves: 40 2he in glove slot
Disadvantages
1.Intelligence
2.Psychic
3.Sense
1.Intelligence
All your nanoskills and also computer literacy are highly dependant on int (80-100%) having dark blue int means it is very expensive in ips to keep this ability up to date, you may find you can't cast the nano your level allows. Computer literacy almost certainly will limit your ncu space as well. Treatment and First Aid are also half dependant on int and this means the implants and symbiants that are available to you are rather lower in quality. Also your speed skills are slightly dependant on int so you may find you attack slower than otehr breeds and also evade less.
2.Psychic
Keeper auras cost a lot of nanopoints and since nanopool is 70% depedant on psychic and it is dark blu for troxes then you may find you will have trouble casting your auras at the required levels without some sort of nanocost reducing buff or lend nano buff from traders and MAs. Dimach is also psychic based and also most of the speed skills, so similarly for int your speed and nanoskills will be more expensive in terms of ip.
3.Sense
Not so important but it does affect speed skills, some nanoskills, dimach and fastattack which is one of your main attacks since sense is 40% of that skill
NANOMAGE: Squishy and not recommended for a new player to chose
Advantages
1.Intelligence
2.Psychic
3.Nanopool
4.Others
1.Intelligence
Green intelligence means you have a cheaper ip cost in raising your intelligence, so as a consequence these skills will be higher:
Nanoskills
Evades
Melee init
Treatment
First Aid
2.Psychic
Main contributer to nanopool, will have an easier time getting enough max nano to cast those massive costing auras, also skilsl like dimach, inits, evades and nanoskills are dependant on this ability.
3.Nano
Nanomages get 4 points of max nano every nanopool point they raise which means you have to spend less ip on that dark blue skill to be able to cast your nanos.
4.Others
You can equip Shades of lucubration for a nice meaty 30 int/psy and also the nanomage unique sleeves: De'Valos Sleeves which add 30 to all nanoskills and also 30 ncu each (poor mans artih armour )
Disadvantages
1.Strength
2.Agility
3.HP
1.Str
As you probably already figured out, str is kinda of a high priority for keepers so this being dark blue doesn't help a keeper much at all and therefore a lot of core skills of a keeper will be lower as a nanomage.
2.Agility
Agility is also an important ability for a keeper to have, as keepers have quite decent evades later on, but having dark blue agility doesn't help a keeper in the speed department.
OPIFEX: Skinny fella, evades more than he hits
Advantages
1.Agility
2.Sense
1.Agi
Core skill that pops up in various different parts of a Keeper's toolset, evades and inits being 2 and also our main special: fastattack is 60% dependant on agility so you will generally find that an Opi keeper will have higher fastattack than other breeds. This ability also has another advantage, you can make a lot of custom implants that are dependant on agility and since agility is so easy to buff it means you can equip a lot higher quality implants, armour and other things on your keeper. Treatment is also a bit higher due to high agi
2.Sense
Not such an important skill for a keeper but your evades, inits, fastattack and treatment are dependant on this ability partially. Opifexes have a cheap agi/sense so it makes sense to equip these armours this therefore naturally gears an opifex keeper to wear such armours as apocalypse leather/omni steel-ribbed and crawler/prowler armour which adds to evades and inits, helping the opifex keeper to survive.
Disadvantages
1.Stamina
Stamina is such an important skill for keepers, as most armours later on the game will require it (especially tier armour) it also crops up in a lot of main keeper skills and having dark blue stamina means that an opifex keeper will have a harder time getting tier/mercenary on as well as 2he and brawl being lower than the other breeds.
SOLITUS: All-rounder
No advantages or disadvantages to speak of here, unless you count being equally good at everything as an advantage. Solitus do get a lot of nice stuff at higher levels though so don't completely shelf this breed . For the first 100 levels however you will probably find you will be behind atrox (and maybe even opifex) a bit but not by much. At least you won't have any troubles casting your nanos and you can put on any type of armour you wish with relative ease. IP consumption is also a little on the high side due to all abilities being blue. It's worth it in the end though so keep slugging at it!
YOUR FIRST STEPS
You make your keeper and Anarchy loads up: you find yourself inside a big hall. Start running forwards towards the 3 tunnels at the other end of the room and familiarise yourself with the WASD movement and mouse clicking. Once you've had enough of that make for the right hand tunnel which leads to the JOBE training area, you HAVE to start in there as a keeper (so no ai levels for j00).
You load up on a platform in a strange strange place, open your inventory up by pressing the "I" button and take a look at your starting items. First right click on your "projector" and a lil guy pops out and give you a brief intro to SL, useless but a ncie touch from FC . Ok lets take a look at the other more useful stuff, namely your weapon. The starter sword you start off with is the biggest PoS that you have ever seen but its all you have and you better equip it, to do this, just right click it.
Ok weapon done, next take a look at your healing items, you should have a starter coil and a starter first aid spindle, put these in your hotbar by clicking on them once and clicking again when your mouse is over your hotbar. One more thing you start with is a nanocrystal called "Keeper's Edge" which adds a nice 12 to your 2he skill, right click it and it will appear in your nanoprograms list and also on your hotbar for ease of use. One more thing: your Jobe bracer, you can equip it if you like as it has a +5 add all def mod which is small but better than nothing, the main thing this does is teleport you into the jobe Backyard until you are over level 16. To teleport, simply right click on the bracer. You end up on a platform with a bridge attached to it, run toward the bridge and talk to Drake Rodriguez, do all the missions you get from him (There are plenty of guides for these quests so i won't list them here).
SKILLS AND IP DISTRIBUTION
Since the 16.3 Patch, FC have introduced an automatic ip distributer that works until level 20: don't use it, it puts ips into places that you don't necessarily need at such a low level, these are the skills you should mainly focus on:
Agility: max this every level, implants and armour depend on this
Strength: Max it, its a core keeper ability
Stamina: Same as above, a few implants can be made to require stamina and it is the easier skill to buff at low levels
Intelligence: All nanoskills are 80% dependant on this so unless you don't want to cast any nanos (not recommended) then you should max this skill
Sense: If you are an opi then maybe you can afford this skill, but for any other breed you can easily survive without sense in the first 100 levels
Psychic: Nanomages may raise this if they REALLY want (since its green for them) but even then its probably one of the Keeper's lowest priority skills in the first 100 levels.
Brawling: Only the kyr'ozch sword type 112 uses this skill, so unless you get one of those, leave this skill alone
Dimach: Most keeper weapons have this special, its really not worth it at lower levels because the heal just won't be useful enough at its 1hr recharge.
Riposte: Avoid weapons that require this ((Exact)Copy of the Excalibur and (Long)Sword of the Illuminated and Kyr'ozch Sword- type 880 are exceptions as they deal very good damage for their requirements) as this skill is nothing but a weapon requirement.
2he: Max skill at all times, its our primary weaponskill
Fastattack: Our main special I like to keep mine maxed so I have a lower recharge time, but if you are tight on ips you can neglect this a little, Flurry of Blows also requires this skill and it is one of our main Add damage items.
Parry: same as riposte, a broken skill that does nothing.
Melee init: I tend to max this as most of the weapons from 1-100 have relatively slow attack speeds, having high init also means you can start going defensive while
doing the same damage. N.B. any ql guardian conductor of speed adds 100 melee init (even ql 25) so it is great if you have a very low tower site.
Nano init: Keepers don't have "active" nanos, you don't need this skill at all
Dodge-rng: I would start putting IPs into this as you near level 100 (or if you start RK mission early then put it in earlier) because you will start to want to do tokens around then and RK mobs use ranged weapons.
Evade Clsc: I max this as it's our cheapest evade skill and most mobs in SL that you will meet from level 1-100 check against this.
Duck exp: I leave this well alone, you have more important places to put IPs in
Nano Resist: Leave this alone, unless you are making a twink
Run Speed: Being able to run fast is nice, but it isn't essential, if you have spare ips or are willing to sacrafice something else then you can put a few ips into this.
Computer literacy: Just because it's dark blue doesn't mean you have to be scared of it, very important skill for all professions so max it.
Bio Met: used in all our auras, only raise when you have an aura you want to cast
Psy Mod: Same as above, but this skill is also used in our weapon buffs.
Sense imp: Look above
Time&space: Used in our procs for extra damage, again raise only when required.
First Aid: its a cheap skill and has saved me a few times when soloing, I maxed mine but you can neglect it if you stay in teams a lot
Treatment: Arguably the most important skill in game, max at all times to equip better symbiants/implants
These are the only skills that you really need in the first 100 levels
EQUIPMENT
I always say that what's on the inside that counts. In the case of AO its your implants and utilities. Armour has a relatively low priority when it comes to twinking as if you can't twink implants, you can't twink armour.
The basic shops on RK sell ready-made implants all the way to ql 100 and these should be fine to use up until level 60, upgrade as your funds and time allows. When you hit 60, this is a typical twinking time as it is the max level for The Temple of Three Winds. Buy the ql 125 empty implants and then put these clusters into them: Imp Config
NCU is such an important part of a keeper, your auras will require lots of ncu and at the moment, self-buffing myself at level 213 requires almost 500 ncu. Max intelligence, max comp lit, and then with a few buffs and comp lit implants see what the highest ql ncu you can fit in is.
Utilities are just the little extras that can make all the difference. For the first 100 levels there are only a few that are worth mentioning.
The melee fighter manuals that drop off SL mobs adds 1-4 2he/brawl/fastattack/dimach depending on which guide you get, you aren't going to get anything better at this level so you might as well use them.
For hud1, a garden or sanctuary key should sit in there for the majority of the time (sanct preferably) as they add treatment and in the case of sanct keys: ncu and inits, very important.
For hud 2 you can grab a Sided earring:
this or
this. If you are neut you can wear both but I recommend you use only one and use a sanct key in hud 1 and a crit increaser in hud 3 such as:
Viral targeting subunit (various qls) or a
Targeting scope-Vision Enhancer (various qls) or for a more defensive approach:
Eremite Macro Sensor as it has a 1 crit decrease which means mobs/players have 1 less % chance of critting you. This sounds pathetic but it is surprisingly effective.