Welcome to the Ra's Chosen Beginner's Guide. The mainland can be a bit of a daunting place, especially when you are fresh from the islands. With the multitude of options available, you may be wondering what in the world you should be doing. Well, read on. This guide will give you some general pointers, and will help you get started in Egypt.
All conversations in-game are text based, using the small window in the bottom right of your screen. When you join a guild, you will notice a new chat tab has appeared. This is the guild chat window, which all members have access to. For that reason, the window can often get rather busy when many members are on at once. So, to keep things easy to read for everyone, it is generally polite for people type using full sentances. Fragmented sentances can be very awkward to follow, and also lead to "spamming" the chat window.
Fragmented Example
<Player 1>: Can someone tell me
<Player 2>: Hmm... I need to do some mining.
<Player 3>: Sounds good, want to go together?
<Player 1>: where I can get
<Player 2>: Sure thing. It should speed things up a bit.
<Player 3>: Ok, I'll meet you at Zokar's mine. Remember your Grilled Fish!
<Player 1>: a fishing pole so i can
<Player 2>: Hehe... I never forget them.
<Player 1>: go fishing?
Another useful chat tool is the Private Chat option. To start a private chat, simply type "/chat <playername>" (without quotes) and a new tab will appear with the player's name as a title. One use it has is for Mentors to talk to and teach Students in private, without the need to use the guild chat window. Another use would be chatting to someone you are working with. Of course, it can be used for anything, such as telling little secrets to people!
This should be the very first thing you do before you attempt anything else. It will get you valuable skills you will be needing to perform many tasks later on, and is a very simple process.
First, press F3 to bring up your mini-map. You will notice black dots on the map, called things like UBody and SWorship. These dots represent Universities and Schools. There is one School and one University for each of the seven disiplines. So whats the difference between a School and a University? Simple. Universities provide researched skills for free to anyone. Schools have set skills that can only be learnt by paying them a fee in resources. Also on the map, you will see a red arrow. Thats you.
As the name of this section suggests, you are interested in the Universities. To be specific, the Universities of Architecture, Art, Body, and Worship. So what should you do? Simple... point the red map arrow towards the nearest University by rotating your screen, and then run towards it. When you get there, click the University building, and select "Learn". You will then see a list of skills offered by that University. Simply click on each skill to learn it.
On the main University menu, you will also see a "Tests" option. Each University offers a series of tests in its own disipline that can be performed for various bonuses. At this stage, only the Initiations will be available to you. Simply click the "Tests" button and choose to start the Initiation. You will get a short description of what is required, but you can perform the actual task whenever you want.
When you are done, head out to the next University and repeat the process. Note that currently, the Universities of Conflict, Leadership and Thought in Pharaoh's Bay do not have any skills available to learn. However, they do have Tests. It is up to you whether you want to go to them and start the Initiations, or whether you wait to start them at a later date.
Also of note is that the Universities in other areas may have more skills to learn. This is because they are in more populated areas, so the research of new skills is generally faster. Once you are settled, it may be worth visiting the Universities in Karnak to aquire skills that are not yet available in other regions.
ATitD is very much a community-based game. That means it involves people working together and helping each other out to achieve their goals. By "goals", I dont just mean completing the various tests either. You will often find you need the help of others to simply build a certain piece of equipment, or gather a certain resource. As well as that, working together can make many tasks much quicker than if you do them alone. For this reason, it is a very good idea to join a guild as soon as you arrive on the mainland. There are literally hundreds of different guilds out there, so there is no way for me to list them all. However, I can give a few tips on finding a guild that is right for you.
The first thing you should do is decide where you want to "live". While you can travel to other regions easily, it can take a lot of time. So, it would be a good idea to join a guild in the region that you intend to spend most of your time.
Take the time to find out what the guild is all about, what they do, and what their aims are. You have to find a guild whose aims are similar to your own, if you want to really enjoy your time there. For example, joining a guild that primarily grows Papyrus when you hate doing so would be a complete waste of time. Finding information on a guild can be done in multiple ways. First of all, you can click on the Guild Hall itself and check the messages. These often give some idea of what a guild is all about. Often the messages also include a website address where you can find even more information. Finally, you can look at the list of Elders, contact one of them using the "/chat" option, and ask them about their guild.
Another thing to look for in how many members the guild has. Some guilds are made specifically for a small group of friends, and will not want outsiders to join. Others are very specialised and only need a few members. As a new player, your best bet is to join a guild that has many memebers. This generally indicates a well established guild, as well as meaning their will nearly always be other members about to socialise with.
Finally, it may be worthwhile trying to find a "Mentoring Guild". These guilds are specifically set up to recruit, teach and help new Citizens. They will often take you through all the basics, maybe help you with the Initiations to the various tests, and give you enough knowledge to be a productive Citizen.
Dont be too worried about your choice of guild though. You can be a member of as many guilds as you like, and can leave guilds at any time. However, as joining a guild is a very large part of this game, the rest of this guide will assume you have joined one and have access to their basic equipment.
An important task to perform is the construction of your home, which is a Tent. Building a Tent is also the Initiation into Architecture. On top of that, your Tent will act like a huge chest, able to store a weight of 16000db.
You will need:
Seeing as you are fresh from the island, you are probably very familier with making Rope, Canvas and Linen so that will not be covered in detail here. Your guild will most likely have all the flax processing equipment you will need, such as multiple Distaffs, a Hackling Rake, and a Hand Loom. The Hackling Rake is an upgraded version of the Flax Comb, and the Hand Loom is an upgraded Student's Loom. Both operate in the same way as the previous version, but will not break as often. Be sure to ask an Elder for some Flax Seeds, as you will probably be provided with a different type than you used on the island. It is called Green Nile, and gives a higher flax yield per plant than Old Egypt. The only difference in growing Green Nile seeds is that they need to be watered. Please see the Flax Guide for detailed information. You will be needing around 100 Flax in total to make everything you need. While this may seem like a hell of a lot, the time it takes will be reduced by the higher yielding Green Nile seeds, and the multiple Distaffs available.
Boards are also easy to produce, and are made even easier still by a new piece of equipment that you did not have on the island. It is called a Carpentry Shop, and is basically an upgraded Wood Plane. Your guild will most likely have multiple Carpentry Shops located close to each other. There are three methods of using one. First of all, you can use it in the same way as a Wood Plane, by choosing the option to plane one piece of wood into a board. The second method is by clicking the "Start planing wood into boards" option. This automatically planes wood into boards without the need for you to keep clicking. It will continue until you run out of wood, or until it has planed 50 boards in a row... at which point you simply start it up again. The third method is much faster than either of the two mentioned, and can be found on The Carpentry Trick guide. The Carpentry Shop will generally last a long time, but if it does happen to break while you are using it, simply contact an Elder and they will most likely fix it for you.
As for nails, aquiring them is slightly more complex. It involves mining for Iron, and the use of a Student's Forge to make the iron into nails. For detailed instructions on how to mine for metal as well as mine locations, please see the Basic Mining Guide. You will also be needing Charcole to fire the Student's Forge. Please see the <GUIDE LINK HERE> for information on how to make it. In total, you will need 4 Iron and 10 Charcole.
First of all, click the forge and click the option to fill it with Charcole (put all 10 in there). Next, click the option to fire the Forge. When you click the forge after firing, you will get a large menu that lists the products you can make. Find "Nails" and click it. You will get a pop-up box telling you the forge is making nails, and that it will take 1 minute for them to cool. This is not long, so stick around. After the minute has passed, you will hear a noise and your Main chat window will display the message "Your nails are ready". Click the forge and make some more nails. Repeat the process four times. Once done, click on "Take", and remove the nails you have made. There should be 96 of them, which is enough for your Tent. If you wish, you can also choose to put out the forge and remove any remaining Charcole. However, it is important that you DO NOT click this option when you have a project cooling. If you do, the project will be ruined and you will lose the resources you were using to make it.
You should now have all the materials you need to build your tent. The best idea at this point is to stash the materials in a temporary chest, to free up your inventory. Why? Because you're not quite ready to build your Tent yet. You have to build a Small Construction Site first. These sites enable you to place buildings outside of compounds. However, a site will not stay there forever. If you do not load materials into the site for 2 hours, the site will crumble. That is why you should make all the resources you need before building the site.
You will need:
As you can see, you dont need much to build a site so it will not take long. Once you have the materials, go to your "Projects" menu, click "Construction", and then "Small Construction Site". You can move and rotate the site in the same way as any other building. The front of the site is located where the two large boxes are, but you dont need to worry too much about the placement at the moment. Once you have placed the site, go and collect all your Tent materials. Click on the site, and choose to load materials into it. Click the little "+" sign next to a resource, and select "Max". Once you have loaded all the materials, the site will be removed and a Tent will appear in its place.
Finally, you may find the need to reposition your Tent slightly as it is hard to tell which way it will be facing when its under construction. To do this, click the Tent and select "Utilities", then "Reposition". You can then move and rotate the Tent as with any other object. Note that you can only perform this action ONCE. As soon as you click "Build" on the reposition box, thats it... you can NOT move it again.
One final task that new Citizens might like to complete is the Initiation into Art. It involves the construction of a sculpture, using any items you wish to make an interesting work of art. These sculptures can be voted on by people passing by as "Interesting" or an "Eyesore". Achieving 20 "Interesting" votes will complete the Initiation into Art.
You will need:
The first thing you need to do is find a place to build your sculpture. This can be pretty much anywhere, but a bit of common sense is involved. Do not place a sculpture near any compounds, unless it is your own. Do not place a sculpture right next to publicly used buildings or objects. Basically, you are looking for an area where it can be easily seen, but not an area where it will look bad, untidy, or simply get in the way of other Citizens. Often you can find open spaces near Chariot Stops that have other sculptures on them, so that is a good place to build. If you are unsure about placement, and Elder in your guild will probably be able to help you.
Once you have found a good spot, click your "Projects" menu, then "Decorative", and then "Build a sculpture". A square will appear on the ground, made up of wooden stakes and rope. You can move this around like any other building. Once placed, click on it. You will see all the options you need to build your work of art. If you click the "Add" button, you will be asked what item you would like to add to your sculpture. This can be anything you have in your inventory. When you confirm your choice, the item will appear on the ground on the middle of the rope square. You now use the arrows on the sculpture menu to move the item around, and position it where you want it. The left-hand arrows control the objects placement on the X and Y axis, the same as placing a building. The right-hand arrows control the objects placement on the Z axis, allowing you to raise, lower, rotate and tilt it. Have a play with the controls with a single item, to get used to how it all works.
Its then simply a case of adding items and positioning them in an interesting way. To see what an item will look like in a sculpture, simply drop it on the ground. It will look exactly the same when you add it to your sculpture. With a little time, effort and imagination, you can create some very interesting pieces that are sure to aquire positive votes from all that see them.
By now you should be relatively familier with the basics. You know how to contruct various things, and how to gather the most important resources. You have a home and a guild. You've probably even made some new friends. So, now would be a good time to find out exactly what is possible as a Citizen of Egypt. You will find information about how things work, where to find resources, and what kind of tests are available in the Main Wiki. It is a wiki that can be edited and added to by anyone that plays the game. It contains a wealth of information, although it can often be rather complicated to follow. But, its still worth a browse, simply to see the multitude of options available to you. Remember that if you have any questions at all, feel free to ask other guild members and Elders... they are usually more than happy to help.
Et Viola! You are now settled in Egypt and can move on to bigger and better things. The possibilities are almost endless, and just trying all the different things will take a very long time. Maybe you can find something you really enjoy doing, and make it your primary occupation. You could work solely for the guild, helping to collect resources and build new equipment. You could start out on your own, by building your own compound and fulfilling your own goals. You could concentrate on completing the various tests from Schools and Universities. You could become a trader specialising in certain goods. You could simply socialise within the community, offering your services where needed. The list goes on and on and on. But of course, the main thing is simply to have fun! Good luck!