A small guide to help new players

A basic guide to help those that are new to the game. The learning curve is quite hard, but with this guide, you can play it easier.

A beginning's player guide to the mechanics of the game

Hello. So if your reading this friend, you either just bought this game on steam, or you are playing it after it is sitting in your library.

First off, choose your class. There are several classes you can choose from. These include the warrior, the thief (rogue), the mage, the priest.

==Class Picking==

The warrior is skilled at using weapons and can equip all armor.
The thief class is middle of the road in equipping armor, and can only equip some weapons.
The mage can only wear cloth armor and use staffs.
The priest is also just like the mage and only can use cloth and staffs.

When you pick it, also make sure to name your character and the Covenant.

After picking your class, you can now start the game. You can choose how difficult it is or how easy it is. That is the great thing about this game is that it lets you choose how hard or easy the game is. It is the same way in the game Din's Curse.

==Your Covenant House==

After starting, your character is placed in your house. This house is basically your personal covenant's base. There are many things in it that I will explain.

First is the pedastel's. These allow you to place relics you find dropped in the game on them. You can only place 4 total on it.

Next is the bookshelf. You can buy or find various books scattered around the world. Just like relic's, you can only put certain ones in each spot.

Next to the bookshelf is 2 chests, on either side. These are the storage chests. The one on the right is storage for your game. The one on your left is for shared storage with all your characters. NOTE: You must store bags in the chest. So each spot in the chest must have a empty bag placed in them. Once it is in the chest, you can fill it to your heart's desire.

In this game, inside the house is a giant crystal. This crystal is your healing crystal. Whatever you do, do not let it run out of HP's! This can happen several ways. The crystal will heal slowly. It can also heal your characters. So, in this game, the money is actually crystals. The more you have, the better stuff you can buy.

Outside the house is the tutorial quest giver. I suggest if this is first playthrough, do their quests!

==What are Covenants?==

So, you just started playing and done all the tutorial quests and such. Then you get weird hand symbols appearing flashing. What are they? They have to do with covenants. Covenants to me was confusing, so ill try to explain the best i can here.

Covenants are basically guilds in this game. If you ever played one of the triple AAA rpg's, there are guilds in those games, like thieves guilds, priest guild, etc...The same is for this game. The interesting thing is they change every game, and some of the names for them are a bit silly too.

There are several things that you can do with a covanent. First, press the keyboard key "R". This is the covenant screen. On it, you can do several things, like trading items, trading crystals (money) and influence. Influece is how strong your house is. The longer the bar is, the stronger your house is. The shorter it is, the weaker your house is.

One thing you need to worry about is if another covenant decides to attack your heart of your house. This basically is a quick way to fail and end the game. This can happen if you don't keep them friendly. You can keep them friendly by giving them items and influence and crystals.

You can also start a war with another group if your strong enough. This involves raiding them and destroying their heart stone. Again, this is very dangerous to do unless you have lots of guards on your heart crystal and you have lots of companions. So here i will talk about companions...

==Companions==

So your by yourself and want to find some people to fight with you? How do you do this? There are two ways. The first way is semi-difficult. Watch the messeges for the town. It will usually say "XXX can now be recruited and is in town". This means the person is standing near the middle of town and waiting for help. The problem with this is, once you start their quest, it is timed. You can fail recruiting them if another covenants finishes their quest first, or you round out of time.

The second way to hire companions is easier. You can find them running around on the dungeon maps, and they will be attacking monsters. After you both are done fighting in the general area, invite them to your covenant.

You can invite as many companions to your covenant this way. I suggest hiring different classes, for example, one priest, one mage, one warrior, and one rogue. This way you will have a good group with different skills.

Note that your are limited to having one companion with you at any time in the dungeon. If you find another in the dungeon, make sure to send your other one back to the covenant house.

==Quests and Side Quests==

There are many different type of quests in the game. I will break down what each are for.

~Kill XXX quests: These quests involve killing a certain amount of monsters. Usually these monsters are stronger than normal ones, at least for your level. They also special cases, such as one's teaming up in a group, or starting a party.

~Recruitment Quests: These usually involve if you want to recruit a new member to your covenant. These are timed quests, so they usually involve killing a certain monster or getting an item based on your level of your character. NOTE: These are not the only type of timed quests. They can also be fetch quests, or escort quests.

~Timed Quests: These quests are time sensitive. If you do not do it in a certain amount of time, you fail them.

~Fetch Quests: These involve killing certain monsters and getting drops from them. Not every monster will drop the items you need. Sometimes they are also timed.

~Thief Quests: These ones are usually inside the town. They involve catching a thief wondering around town. NOTE: They are invisible, but if you watch around vendors there is a background disturbance sometimes. Try attacking the disturbance and the thief comes into focus.

~Monster attacking town quests: As stated, monsters attack town sometimes. Hurry and find and kill it before it kills npc's. NOTE: NPC's eventually come back to life, but for the time there gone, you cannot buy or get quests from them.

~Escort Quests: This is a timed quest that involves taking someone to another place. Very hard. Be careful with these ones.

==Epilogue==

So this is my short guide. I don't want to ruin too much of the game, so i leave it at this. I may add more in the future, till then, have fun playing out there!

[RPG Gamer Man]

it can get tedious after awhile..unless you play with someone else

[apterous]

you played only 6 hours, game short or bad?

[RPG Gamer Man]

no worries. It happens to the best of us.

[alltheothersaretake]

Oops, I should have scrolled down farther LOL

[alltheothersaretake]

My chat's busted, "JOTUN: VALHALLA EDITION" is free on GOG.