Draconia 101 - Beginners Basics

Another basics guide for Draconia to help you getting started!

Intro

Patch: pre-Alpha 0.5.2.3

Hello and welcome to my beginners guide to Draconia!

You're interested in the game of Draconia but aren't sure if it's worth getting a key yet? Let me help you on that. Here I will show you everything you need to know about the game and the things you can expect currently before you decide to support the team and get your very own key!

Gameplay
You will find out what you can do in the game currently and what tasks you fill face, such as
- Exist
- Sniffing for food and water
- Gathering materials and crafting items
- read scrolls and do early quests!

Combat
- Contributing in PvP
- Dangers around the map
- Enemies to fight and eat!

What's Playable?
You can find out about the current and future playables here, as well as some infos on the character creation.

Servers
This is a simple explanation about the games servers and PvX settings.

Current Controls
Here you'll find all controls you need to navigate through the world of Draconia with ease!











In addition to this guide, you can visit the Draconia fandom wiki[draconia.fandom.com] that I am also working on. It has lots of infos on the game, including loot tables and the interactable version Valkairs legendary maps!
It is similar to my old Draconia World Anvil page, which I have stopped working on until further notice, ecxept for the maps.

Gameplay

Draconia is in a very early state of development. With currently being Pre-Alpha, many mechanics are very basic or not implemented yet and eagerly being worked on. For the guide I'll focus on what's possible now and leave most planned things out.

Basic Needs

Your character has basic needs: hunger and thirst. You'll have to keep an eye on those or your new friend will die! Death is not permament, so you won't loose your character and can simply respawn. You will have to go and recollect what you had in your inventory though.

Some food items like meat and pastries can be picked up and you can enjoy your meal elsewhere, you can even find different flasks that refill your hunger or thirst from 0 to full instantly.
Appart from that you'll loose stamina while moving. If you struggle to find food, you can sniff for it holding Q and pick it up for later. As long as it's not a carcass, you can store food in your inventory to be prepared for your next journey!

Here you see the HUD provided by one of my Vodros!

• Red: Health
  
• Green: Hunger
  
• Blue: Thirst
  
• Yellow: Stamina
  
• Purple: Mana (for some abilities later)
  
• Bright Blue: Experience

Status effects like hunger or night vision appear to the side of your actionbar.
Left side: Positive and Neutral
Right side: Negative
This bar shows a fire and blue Zs, indicating that my dragon benefits from a nearby campfire and is sleeping. Resting near a campfire or hot spring is good to regenerate health faster.

Leveling & Growth

Now that you know how to keep your dragon alive in simple daily situations, let me explain why you are so smol. You spawn as a baby dragon! This means you are weak, slow and helpless.
As a little hatchling, you are able to fly already but your stamina drains very fast, plus you need to eat and drink more often. So be prepared for your first few levels. Because as you level up, you grow in size and strength.
Just spawned Vodros hatchling -> max size adult Vodros

The maximum size is reached with lvl50, the max level.

To level up you can gather materials from ores and piles, hunt crabs at the beaches or take on some daily quests that are currently available. You can find quests from the 3 queststones on the first island or some of the available NPCs, the queststone quests hand themselves in automatically. However, hunting crabs is still the most efficient method for now.
And remember: the game is in pre-alpha. Reaching lvl50 will take much longer in the future (info from 2 of the lovely devs, Levia and Amph).

Character Interactions

With the return of the Dragon Uber business we got an Interaction Wheel!
This can be used by holding V for different interactions between characters, such as invites to clans and groups or picking up smaller players. Roaring is still just hitting V once.
Emotes are on the top left side but only available to the new, reworked models.

In case you are the smaller player, don't be afraid of other people picking you up. This mechanic works via request. A player can request to carry you, you accept or deny it.

Fast Travel & Flight Modes

In some areas of Altuis, which is the name of the map, you can find waystones. These stone arches or pillars with blue crystals serve as fast travel points that you can find and unlock to get from A to B quickly.

Available for fast travel are the waypoints at Spawn (Aphtaria Hawa), villages like Dunarth and Athyne and many, many more! You can always use these waystones to even go from one island to another. With more updates to the map also often come more waypoints to unlock.




Besides that, there are 2 flight modes to switch for a more comfortable traveling and easier combat. These 2 flight modes have slightly different controlls fitting to their purpose.
Use TAB to change the flight mode during flight.

When flying, you will see the representing icon on the bottom right of your screen, the scale and claw mean you're in combat mode, the wing stands for the travel mode. Travel mode is basically the old/standard controlls and is activated by default and using combat mode is not bound to actually have PvP mode activated.

Photo Mode

If you want to take nice screenshots and get your character into the best light, you can use the photo mode! It lets you set the distance and focus, colors, brightness and in singleplayer even the daytime as you wish to take the perfect shots! And since weather is a thing too, you can make amazing thunder shots. It works in both, singleplayer and multiplayer, but the first is safer, since your character cannot move nor fight back while you are in photo mode.
The photo mode HUD and a finished screenshot.

Your Inventory & Clans

The inventory is, as you can see, more than just your pocket for items. It is your panel for many ingame mechanics and includes: Inventory, Crafting, Notes, Questlog, PvPvE settings, Clanpanel in that order. Each tab has its own symbol.

You'll already have an inventory and all menus from the first level on. You find 30 inventoryslots for food and materials, 45 for Golems and even 60 on a Hokura!
Apart from that, you'll have 4 extra slots for gear, one to be used by equipping a bag to increase your inventory by 6, 12 or 24 slots currently. The other slots cannot be used to equip gear for now.

Crafting & Stashes

Crafting is a rather simple mechanic in Draconia. It just requires you to have all ingredients in your inventory and the knowledge of what you want to craft so far. All required materials can either be gathered from nodes such as metal ores and item piles like a pile of sand at a beach or pile of wood in the forests and barrels and bags all around camps and villages. You can read more about recipes, materials and more in a separate guide in my Guide-HUB, linked in the "Final Words" section.


The bags can be found directly in Aphtaria Hawa at Bulvars stand!

The craftable stashes are a cute method to hide some specialties such as crystals, pearls and hearts. Once crafted, simply place them (you can look and move around while in placing mode for the perfect position) and put stuff in there. The stashes have 80 slots by default and can be upgraded to 112 and 144 inventory slots. More differences are looks and HP, as they can be damaged, repaired and destroyed in multiplayer.

There is an automated decay that destroys your stashes within around 2 weeks, repair your stash through the interaction wheel to reset this timer. Don't want others to grief your stuff? On PvPvE servers they can be set to PvE to be save from other players teeth!
Another funfact about the stashes, they are account wide. All your dragons on the server have full access to them, even changing their PvX setting!
When you're in a clan, you have the option to open your stashes for clan members to use and repair aswell.










All this fancy info is only relevant on servers, in singleplayer they are literally just place and hoard.

Clans and your own Empire

On servers, the "Shield Icon" will lead you to the Clanpanel. You can create your own by naming your clan and optionally adding a description and a MotD (Message of the Day). The decription and MotD and also be added and edited later.

Here you see a screenshot of an example clan. Clans have 4 ranks for the members: Owner, Admin, Moderator and Member.
Persmissions for each rank, from building, caring for clan structures and moderating members can be set for each role.

The clans owner can change these settings at any time, here you can see an example of my prefered clan settings.
The displayed names are not account names, but the character names, as joining a clan is not an account thing but instead a character thing.




With that said, you can join multiple clans as long as you have enough characters. You can also own one on Char A and be part of another clan with Char B.

Combat - PvP and PvE

First of all, combat in Draconia is voluntary. You do not have to fight for food, neither against AI nor other players. Infact, on PvPvE servers such as the currently only official server, you start in PvE mode by default. Later there will be pure PvP and pure PvE servers with community servers joining the party.
The combat of the game will also receive a greater overhaul with changes to the current systems and the addition of more abilities, for which some playables already have animations that are just waiting to be used.

To switch from PvE to PvP, simply hop into the inventory/crafting view and go to the "Dragon Mask". There you can toggle it. Turning PvP on is instant, turning it of takes 15 seconds to avoid mid-battle exploits and PvP players do not take damage from PvE players for the same reason.

The Basics

The Combat of the game is very basic, providing 2 attacks with most playable species. You can make use of basic bites as primary/melee attack and a secondary attack in form of an element breath that uses mana or other abilities. For example, the griffin has a typical and simple peck with its beak and a powerful wingflap. Additionally, you can use attacks or T to target players in PvP and AI enemies while hunting and leveling.


A Vodros' shadow breath and the griffins wing flap attack.

Most of this is changing in the near future with a massive combat rework, which adds more abilities and even a talent tree with which you can change the element of your main species characters! Prepare for fire Vodros and shadow Tecatls!

Resurrection and after-effects

If you revive yourself after death, after-effects come upon you. At the moment, these include the reduction of HP, food, water, stamina, and mana to 50% for 5 minutes, all of which you must replenish after the debuffs duration. If you are not at the max level yet, you will also loose a small amount of XP, but you will never loose a level from dying.
Also, these effects are independent of your cause of death, so they always affect you. It doesn't matter if you starved to death, got eaten, or fell from the sky after your trip to the moon.

For this you spawn again nearby, more precisely at the next respawn point. These are dragon statues that honestly remind me a bit of Toothless. Fitting, he looks after his dragon swarm just as these statues look after dragons after they were a bit too careless.

Other dangers around the Map

Either if you are a PvP enthusiast or not, Altuis is not all ponies and rainbows. There are enough dangers around the islands that are eager to unalive your character.

Defensive barricades around outposts deal massive amounts of damage and make you bleed. The crabs around the beaches may be neutral and look harmless but can easily overwhelm low level characters, even more so if you can't fly.

And of course, classic lava baths. You may be breathing fire but you are not that fire proof!

What's playable?

List of Spezies

Main Species (4 of 6)

Creature	Element	Can it fly?	Current Status
Vodros - European Dragon	Shadow	Yes	Playable
Yggaron - Lindworm	Poison	No	Playable
Yamati - Eastern Dragon	Water	Yes	Playable
Fyrrwin - Wyvern	Fire	Yes	Playable
Tecatl - Quetzalcoatl/Amphitere	Light	Yes	Not playable yet
Gaulung - Big Drake/Behemoth	Earth	No	Not playable yet

Wildlife Creatures

Creature	Element	Can it fly?	Current Status
Ka'sai - Dragonfolk	Surprise!	No	Playable
Reeka - Griffin (Backer)	Wind	Yes	Playable
Gardeos - Golem	Earth	No	Playable
Scarrok - Drake	Fire	No	Playable
Kylan - Kirin	Light	No	Not playable
Hokura - Dragonturtle	Ice	No	Playable
Prystaria - Fae (Backer)	Shadow	Yes	Not playable
Carpil - Crab	Water	No	Not playable

Note that backer species or items are not exclusive to the backers.
There will be NO exclusives! :D

Character Creation

Once you have picked a species, you can customize it. Here the game provides many options like different patterns, a color wheel, attachments and more! A more indepth version of this aspect can be found in a separate guide.

Plus, a rework to the character creation is incomming, adding improvements and more options!

Servers

Draconia offers many ways to enjoy its world. Alone in Singleplayer and with friends in hosted sessions or official/community servers. While you can have unlimited characters in singleplayer, servers allow a maximum of 15.
Currently there are 4 official servers, 2 EU and 2 US. But when you or a friend hosts a server you can choose between the following options:

• PvP
  
• PvE
  
• PvPvE
  
• RP PvP
  
• RP PvE
  
• RP PvPvE

PvPvE servers allow a player chosen setting. The official servers use the PvPvE setting.
RP sets the focus on roleplay, a fully playerbased situation with no further impact on the PvX setting.

For hosts, basic admin commands are implemented in the playerlist. You can set a player to moderator or ban them from the server. Both settings can be removed aswell. A full list of all chat-commands can be found on the Draconia Trello: click me![trello.com]

The Grouping System

A basic grouping system is available, allowing players to easily find each other and keep an eye on each others health. To make a group, hit F1 for the playerlist and click the "invite" button of the player you want to invite. A notification will appear on the right of each of your screens.
The infited player then has ti hit F1 and click accept on their right side. To leave the group again, you can either both go offline as this removes the group automatically, or hit F1 again, rightlick on your name and leave. But due to it being in a testing phase (like basically everything lol) you may encounter bugs. NOOOOOOO!

Chat options & Tabs

You already have a variaty of options for communication in Draconia. By default, you have one chat tab, default, which includes ALL chats. You can edit it and add new chat tabs with the little symbols to the bottom left of the chat window. I, for example, have different chat tabs as seen on the screenshot.

Shoutout to Asena Black for leaving a list in the comments:

1. World chat: Your text is white while name is a tan and visible to everyone.
   
2. Local chat: This is dragons in the area, your text is white.
   
3. Private Chat: This is bright pink and used to directly message a player.
   
4. Group Chat: this is a more subtile pink and used to talk to group players.
   
5. Clan Chat: This is purple and can only be seen by members of the same clan as you.
   
6. Roleplay: This is a light orange, this can be read by everyone and is used for, well, roleplay!
   
7. Species chat: This is a light green, this text is only visible to dragons of the same species as you.

Saving and copying Characters

Your dragons are saved on the server side, which means that you cannot use SP characters on a server and the other way around unless you copy and paste them over to the desired server. This does only copy the appearance and not the progress.
To copy and paste a character, click the scroll icon next to it to copy its code. Then go to the server you want to play on and click "+ import Character", enter a name and paste the code.

Current controlls

Basic controls:

	Keyboard/Mouse	Gamepad
Walk	W A S D	Left Thumbstick
Toggle Auto Walk	Num Lock	Arrow up
Look Around	Mouse movement	Right Thumbstick
Jump	Spacebar	Triangle/Y
Crouch*	Ctrl	Right Thumbstick Button
Sprint*	Shift	Left Thumbstick Button
Toggle Flight	F	Hold Triangle/Y
Interact	E	Right Shoulder
Inventory	I	---

Combat:

	Keyboard/Mouse	Gamepad
Primary Attack	Left Click	Left Shoulder
Secondary Attack	Right Click	Right Shoulder
Set/Switch Target	T	Right Face Button
Release Target	Hold T	Hold Right Face Button
Toggle Flight mode	Tab	Arrow Left
Fly Up (Combat mode)	Space	Right Thumbstick Button
Fly Down (Combat mode)	Ctrl	Left Thumbstick Button

Little extras:

	Keyboard/Mouse	Gamepad
Free Camera	Left ALT	Left Shoulder
Interaction Wheel	Hold V	Hold Arrow Right
Call	Tab V	Arrow Right
Rest	H	Arrow Down
Sleep	Hold H	Hold Arrow Down
Nightvision	N	Box/X
Smell**	Hold Q	Hold Box/X
Photo Model	P	Special Right

Playerlist: F1 (includes admin controlls)
Open Chatbox: Enter

*Can be set to toggle in the options.
**Particles will come towards you from the source. Red leads to food, blue to water yellow to Questgivers and, if grouped, purple to packmates.

All keybinds can be changed in the menu to adjust the controlls to your linking!

Ingame Tutorials

If you want to quickly read up on something in the game without having to go back to wiki pages, YouTube or these Steam guides, you can enjoy the in-game tutorials that have been available since patch 0.3.2.0. These appear as pop-ups while playing.

If you are already familiar with the game or simply don't like pop-ups, you can turn them off in the menu under "Misc" at any time. Regardless of this, they can be opened up if necessary via the new question mark in the inventory.
Besides the familiar aspects like crafting items and simple walking around, there are also some tabs for future mechanics, such as the talent tree and offsprings. However, they do not contain any information yet, since there are hardly any final decisions for these mechanics.

Final words

Since I find it a little tricky to get to the important places, I'll drop you the important links:

• Official Draconia Discord Server[discord.gg]
  
• Official Draconia Trello[trello.com]
  
• Fanmade Draconia Wiki[draconia.fandom.com]

When joining their Discord, make sure to check out the #info and #work-in-progress channels for more interesting links and a good look at what's cooking in the dev kitchen!


I hope this guide could help you out and prepare you a little bit and promise to keep this guide updated with infos on what you can expect when you decide to support the team!
I personally love the project and watching it grow more and more into a finished product. It has a long way ahead though, but since the devs put all their love and coffee into it we will see more content in the future.

Here you find my other guides mentioned before:

• Draconia 101 Guides (Steam Group)

Thank you for your time and stay hydrated! :)

[Chakra]

I figured it out! I just have to type a letter then hit enter and THEN it puts me into the text box to actually type. For all the steam deckers out there!!

[Chakra]

I have a pull-up keyboard but when I type nothing happens so it's kinda like is there a letter key or something I need to map to go into the text box, I've only managed to twice but I have no idea, something says hitting a punctuation key but that didn't work when trying

[Datlen]

Since I don’t have a steamdeck myself and don’t know anyone that does, I can’t tell and will ask on the discord.

If it is the same as controller, a keyboard is still needed to use the chat.

[Chakra]

On steam deck how do I access chat? I can't talk to anyone :/

[Datlen]

There is a little tent with an orange Ka'sai named Bulvar, the bags can be found on a table right next to him :)

Just keep in mind that if you are in multiplayer they may not be there for a moment if another player had just picked them up. They'll respawn fairly quickly though.

[Soulfyr]

Hi, just wondering where to find the inventory bags? Are they in a different village? I've checked the the entire village I originally spawned in and didn't find them. Send help, thanks :)

[Datlen]

There are overall stat boosts at lower levels, even below level 10 but I cannot give more details on that yet. In this early stage, stats and their progression is heavily WIP, we don't even know how a max leveled characters stats are since we have no way to look at them just yet.

I believe stuff like that will be added probably together with the skill tree system but we'll have to wait and see :)

[Amber9572]

Is there stat allocation? or do I just get boosts automatically as I level?

[Cyclone]

Thanks!

[Datlen]

You use them in the normal chat window, opened by hitting enter even in singleplayer. :)