Player Guide

Getting Started

The tutorial provides a very good example of what the overall world is like. Understanding the ins and outs of combat, how to handle light, equipment, and completing quests are a big part of your experience of the game overall.

Once you have completed the tutorial, many players tend to focus first on questing. In the Sparkle tower you can find orbs that show you a list of nearly all of the available quests throughout the game. You also have the ability to claim them for immediate reward.

The benefit of claiming a quest immediately is that your character grows, and combat experience is directly tied to how much quest experience you have so far. The downside is that you do not get to learn about the areas where these quests are.

If you are a new player, there are good tour quests in Argos (Calia), Solace (Krynn), Sparkle, Minas Tirith (Gondor), Pelagrir (Gondor), the Gypsy Camp (Terel), Kabal (Kalad), and west of Bree (Shire). These can be good places to practice some of the skills that you have learned in the tutorial.

Learning how to create triggers and aliases are a very important skill. These allow you to automate a lot of effort, and greatly reduce how much typing you have to do. Try installing the tutorial package, it has examples of how to write these for yourself. Ask others if they have their own packages as well - these are made to be shared.

Joining a Guild

The most important decision of your experience will be about choosing an occupational guild. The majority of your strength will come from this. There are guilds that are free to join (eg. Mercenaries, Gladiators, School of High Magic) with no application requirements. These are the easiest to start off with.

If you are uncertain of where you want to go, you can also join the Cadets or Academics (located in Gelan - Calia), which are designed for new players to really get a feel for before taking on something more serious. These can be a great place to start off while you are still learning about the 15 different realms available.

Magic guilds (School of High Magic, Academics) provide a more difficult experience than martial guilds. They come with lower defensive skills, and also require you to find spell enhancers (wands, staves, etc) as well as herbal components to power your spells. While the appeal of magic can be very exciting, the experience can also be very discouraging, particularly when you are just getting to know the game. This is a more advanced playstyle. Both have comparable damage caps. Magic guilds may trade off defensive capabilities for slightly higher offensive output, and not having a tank may cause you to feel you are getting constantly beat up.

There are many skills, and skills cost a lot of money. There are dozens of adventurer guilds throughout the game, many of which allow you to train your skills up to superior layman. Only your occupational guild will allow you to get to the highest level of skills in any particular section.

Making Money

Skills require a significant amount of money, particularly above superior layman. There are several approaches that most new players take to collecting these funds.

Combat

There are newbie friendly areas that provide a decent amount of money, along with some combat experience. Some common areas for the smallest players are: Satyrs (east of Gelan, head north once you have crossed over the mountain), Sarn Ford (southwest of Bree), Orc temple (west of Sparkle). Be on the lookout for unusual/peculiar/exotic items, as these are imbued. They can be exchanged at Karkadelt (Sparkle) for 25 platinum or sold in the auction house for potentially more money. Faint imbues are the lowest value, and intense ones can get you 9x as much as a faint imbue, and a lot if the imbue is a useful one. Be on the lookout for gems as well, you can sell these in gem shops for good money too.

Herbing

If you have enough herbalism skill, you can search for specific high-value herbs to sell to an herbalist. Attanar and Suranie are examples of these, though there are many others. Your ability to search here for suranie is entirely dependant on your herbalism skill, if you do not have enough you cannot do it. The craftsman gardener guild (Earthsea) is a great way to get this skill without making a major commitment to an occupational guild.

Mining

Mines are scattered through caves all over the world. Avenir, the Utterdark of Kalad, the Tharkadan Mines and the caves of Faerun all have a good number of them.

You need something to dig with, wielded: the various pickaxes and chisels found throughout the realms all work. A better tool holds its edge longer, and tools dull as you swing them — though the more mining skill you have, the more slowly that happens. There are also boots to be found in the realms that make each swing less tiring, which matters when fatigue is what limits how long you can work a vein.

There are two ways to swing:

• mine here works the rock blind and brings up whatever the vein gives you.
• mine here for iron goes after one metal in particular.

You can say wall, vein or rock in place of here if you prefer.

Naming a metal improves your chances of getting it, and more skill improves them further, but it is a nudge rather than a guarantee — the vein may still hand you something else it holds. Asking for a metal your skill cannot work gets you nothing at all.

Skill decides what you can bring out of the rock. The commoner metals come out easily; the rarer ones need a miner who knows what they are doing, and until your skill is up you will not find them however long you swing. A vein also gives up less the more it has been worked, until it is exhausted and needs time to recover.

Watch for gems. Any successful swing can turn up an unpolished stone alongside the ore.

Blacksmiths buy ore, and most of them will smelt it into bars if you would rather push it further. Bars are what the smiths and craftsmen work from when building custom equipment, which is done in Gelan, Palanthas, Theros in Solace, the Avenir Bazaar, and Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul.

Gems are cut by the jewelers of the world. Any jeweler that deals in buying and selling gems will also cut yours for a fee, and a cut stone is worth considerably more than the rough one you carried in.

Looting

The highest value equipment comes from the high end places, but these can only be killed by the biggest players (legends and myths). Many large players do not have much need for money and leave the loot on the ground, which you can potentially grab and run to the shop. This can be highly lucrative (2 platinum per NPC in some cases). However, this does rely on you knowing where these places are, and which bigger players tend to leave the loot behind.

Using the Client

Genesis Remastered is played by typing commands at the input line along the bottom of the screen and reading what the game sends back in the main output pane above it.

Connecting

Choose Connect from the menu bar. Once connected, the game asks for your character name:

Please enter your name or type 'new' to create a new character

Type an existing character name to log in, or new to create one and follow the prompts.

Disconnect ends the session. If you close the client while still connected, it asks you to confirm first.

The screen

Scrolling up in the output pane splits it: the older text you are reading stays put on top while new text keeps arriving below, so nothing is missed. Press Esc or scroll back to the bottom to close the split.

Finding things again

• Ctrl+F searches the scrollback.
• Ctrl+S saves the session log to a file.
• The up and down arrows step through commands you have already typed.
• Tab completes a word from what is already on screen; Shift+Tab cycles backwards through the matches.

Where your settings live

Settings, aliases, triggers and keybindings are stored against your character on the game server, so they follow you to any machine you log in from. You need to be logged in for changes to be saved.

Aliases and Triggers

Aliases and triggers are the two ways to make the client act for you. An alias reacts to something you type; a trigger reacts to something the game sends.

Both are edited from the Edit menu, and both are stored against your character on the server.

Aliases

An alias turns a short command of your own into one or more real commands. Create one from Edit > Aliases, give it the text you want to type, and the commands it should send.

Aliases can capture parts of what you typed. A pattern with capture groups makes those available to a script as args[1], args[2] and so on, with args[0] holding the whole match.

Triggers

A trigger watches the incoming text and fires when a line matches. Create one from Edit > Triggers.

Triggers can match plain text or a regular expression. As with aliases, capture groups from the pattern arrive as args[1], args[2], …

By default the > prompt is stripped from the start of each line before triggers run, which makes patterns anchored with ^ behave the way you would expect. If you need to match the prompt itself, turn off Ignore prompts when firing triggers in Settings.

What they can do

Each alias or trigger runs one of three kinds of action:

Command actions understand ${shipcmd}, which expands to the vehicle command when you are aboard a ship and to nothing when you are not — so a single movement alias works both on land and at sea.

Turning them off

Every alias and trigger has a checkbox in the list. Unticking it leaves the entry in place but stops it firing, which is easier to undo than deleting it. Triggers and aliases can also be disabled as a whole from the menu bar.

Keybindings

Edit > Keybindings lists every key the client responds to and lets you change any of them.

Editing a key

Select a row to see what it does. To add one, press + ADD, then press the key combination you want — the field records the combination rather than letting you type its name. Give it a command, a script or a client action, and save.

A key's action can be changed, but its combination cannot: delete the entry and add a new one instead, so the old key is not left silently bound.

Restoring defaults

• DEFAULT on an open entry loads that key's shipped binding back into the form. Nothing is stored until you save, so you can still cancel.
• DEFAULTS at the top of the list discards every change you have made, including keys you added yourself. It is the way back if you have deleted bindings you now want returned.

Deleting a key that ships with the client leaves it unbound rather than restoring the default — re-tick it, or use DEFAULT, to bring it back.

Keys the client cannot receive

In the Steam version, some combinations are taken by Steam or by the desktop app itself before the client ever sees them. Those rows are marked with a warning icon; hover it to see what has claimed the key.

The most common is Shift+Tab, which opens the Steam overlay. The desktop version therefore also binds Ctrl+Tab to backwards word completion. You can change Steam's overlay shortcut under Steam > Settings > In Game if you would rather keep Shift+Tab for the client.

Keybindings are stored against your character, so they follow you between the web client and the Steam version.

Scripting

Aliases, triggers and keybindings can run JavaScript instead of sending a fixed command. Choose the script kind in the editor and write the code in the panel that appears.

What a script can use

Scripts run with a small set of names already available:

The full reference, with every method, its parameters and examples, is in Help > View API. In the Steam version that page is bundled with the client, so it always describes the version you have installed.

The script editor knows the same reference: as you type gwc. it offers the available members, with the signature and description of each beside the list.

Storing your own data

Two places are available, and the difference matters:

• gwc.userdata is stored against your character on the game server. Use it for anything you want on every machine you play from.
• gwc.localdata stays on the machine you are playing on. It is the right place for scratch values that would only add upload overhead. In the Steam version it is synchronised through Steam Cloud, so it survives a reinstall.

Errors

Mistakes in a script are reported in the output pane, with the line and character. The script editor also flags problems as you type, and the Console (from the menu bar) is available for trying things out.

Packages

A package is a bundle of aliases, triggers, keybindings and stored data that can be installed in one step, so you do not have to build a set-up from nothing.

Installing

Packages > Install lists the packages published with the client. Select one to read what it contains, then install it. Its aliases and triggers are added to your character alongside anything you already have.

You can also install a package file someone has sent you with UPLOAD.

Sharing your own

Packages > Export builds a package from what you already have. Tick the aliases, triggers and keybindings to include, and the client writes a file you can pass on.

In the Steam version that file is saved to your Documents\Genesis Remastered folder, along with any logs you save. In the web client it goes to your browser's download folder.

Settings

Options > Settings collects everything that changes how the client looks and behaves. Settings are stored against your character, so they follow you between machines and between the web and Steam versions.

Appearance

The font, the font size and the default text and background colours are on the menu bar directly, under Options. Every font on offer is fixed-width, which the game needs for its maps and tables, and each name is shown in the menu in its own face. On a phone the list is different: it offers narrow fonts, which fit more of a line on a small screen. Your phone and your desktop remember separate fonts, so a choice on one does not follow you to the other. The Settings window carries the rest, including whether the scrollback split opens when you scroll up.

Music

The client can play background music, and separate music during combat. Both can be turned off, and the volume set, from Settings. The speaker button on the top right toggles it quickly.

Logs

Two options under Download save your session automatically: on disconnect, and when the window closes. Both write the same file Ctrl+S would.

In the Steam version those files go to Documents\Genesis Remastered, and the client tells you the full path each time it saves one. In the web client they go to your browser's download folder.

Triggers

Ignore prompts when firing triggers strips the > from the start of each line before triggers are matched. Leave it on unless you have a trigger that needs to see the prompt itself.