Revised Beginner's Guide - updated for 2022
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Revised Beginner's Guide - updated for 2022
Top Tips for New Seekers
1) Use all of your stamina each day. Stamina is your most precious resource: you get a certain amount each day, and anything not used before the daily reset is lost.
2) Vote 3x each day to get all 3 rewards. Go to your [Character] screen and look in the bottom right corner of the screen for the icon of a hand holding a voting slip.
3) Eat food each day. Go to your [Town], go into the Restaurant, and then into the Soup Kitchen, where you can get a free bread. Being hungry at reset results in reduced stamina.
4) Get your mood up to 1,000 at the end of each day; this will give you some additional stamina each day. During your first week or two, completing tutorial quests will often give you a bonus to your mood. However, after your Grail day is done, make sure you are at 1,000 mood before the day resets. If you are at less than 1,000 you can get 5 mood per beer drunk in [The Grail Tavern].
5) Contact the 30-day program about a journal and a bed. The 30-day program helps new seekers with a journal and a bed, both of which will help increase your daily stamina.
- Strategies to start your adventuring off right (click to expand):
- 1) Start with the beginner's quests. The beginner quests will be your best use of stamina. In addition to introducing you to the basics of the game, the quest rewards are better than anything you could earn by just going out and working on your own. See the section below for more detailed information on Tutorial Quests.
2) Get yourself a journal, and max it out every day. Every day that you wait to start using a journal will cost you approximately 97 stamina in the long run, so - don't wait! You can write in your journal each day, using up to a maximum of 12 stamina, which increases your Learning skill by .12 points. You get an extra stamina each day for each point you have in the Learning skill. Over time, this adds up to a huge amount of stamina: just 1 extra point in Learning skill would give you an extra 365 stamina a year! Since you can increase your Learning skill .12 each day by writing in your journal, that means you can increase the amount of stamina each day every 8.33 days, so don't put it off - at all! Get a journal as quick as possible, and spend 12 stamina on it each day. The quality of the journal does not matter. A better quality journal will last longer, but you can worry about that once you have a little more coin in your pocket. Many of the towns have programs to help new Seekers acquire both a journal and a bed, so be sure to ask your town leaders. For now, just get a journal: any journal you can, as cheaply as you can, and fill it up every single day. Trust me on this one: you will thank you later.
3) Get yourself a grail-quality bed. Beds give you additional stamina each reset that you spend in town with the bed equipped. For a bed, quality matters: a cheap bed only gives you an extra 4 stamina each reset, while a grail bed gives you an extra 24 stamina each reset. If somebody is willing to give you a bed for 1 bronze, go ahead and take it ... but your ultimate goal is the grail bed. Many of the towns have programs to help new Seekers acquire both a journal and a bed, so be sure to ask your town leaders. You also can get a used grail bed - it'll have fewer days left on it than a brand new one, but it will help you get thru until you can afford a new grail bed.
4) Don’t start out trying to craft yourself a grail-level bed (or any other grail-level piece of equipment, for that matter). The amount of stamina it will require from you as a beginning Seeker will probably take months in real life. Most skills under the “Profession” tab on your skills page are more like expensive hobbies in this game: you won’t really generate any income from them, especially at the beginning with a low skill. Once you have a steady stream of income, then you can join a guild and start seriously working on becoming a crafter.
5) Buy things from the market as little as possible. You can often get a much better price by talking to people in the [The Grail Tavern], and you really can't afford to waste coin at the beginning of your adventures.
6) You have all day to spend your stamina, so don't rush. Take your time, plan your day carefully, and take advantage of good paying jobs in the Labor Hall when they appear (which might be several hours after reset, it all depends on when people post the jobs). Rushing to spend your stamina quickly will gain you nothing, but mistakes will cost you stamina and slow down your progress. Learn from your mistakes ... you can always come back and do better tomorrow!
- The Tutorial Quests (click to expand):
- Note: The order listed in here is the recommended order of starting the tutorial quests. Just begin the quest, work on it until you either complete it or you have to wait to proceed (like the next day), and then begin the next quest in the list. Each day after reset, you can start back at the top of the list of quests and see which (unfinished) quests you can advance some more. To get to your quest list: go to your Character page, click on the image of your Quest Book, and the list of quests will be displayed in the right-hand part of your screen.Caution! Some of the tutorial quests give you additional stamina as a reward for completing the quest. Make sure you remember the #1 tip for new seekers: use all of your stamina each day! One option is to do most of a quest that rewards stamina, but wait to turn in the final step, essentially 'saving' that extra stamina up so you can have a lot of extra stamina one day - this can be useful for some projects.
1) [Bandalf's Quest I: The Tutorial] is a basic introduction to the game. You can check out Halcyon's excellent guide here. Caution! Completing this quest will give you 100 additional stamina.- Spoiler - Rewards for Bandalf's Quest I:
- Gained during quest:
-----The Follower Bandalf the Wise joined your cause! As long he remains your follower, you will profit from his abilities!
-----Bandalf the Wise gave you an egg to cook a meal. Find it in your Inventory Chest.
-----You gained a Cheap Cheese Curdle, a Cheap Pick Axe and a Cheap Plough from Bandalf the Wise they are placed in your Item Chest.
-----Bandalf the Wise gave you 5 Wood which is placed in your Inventory Chest.
-----Bandalf the Wise used your Shaft and transformed it into a weapon that can be used in combat. You find Bandalf’s Staff in your Equipment Closet.
You successfully completed Bandalf’s Tutorial Quest!
-----You gained 5 Silver!
-----Your mood increased by 100 points!
-----You gained an additional 100 Stamina for today!
2) [The Scrawny Chicken] is an introduction to ranching.
3) [The Ruined Farmer] is an introduction to farming. For tips on 'What crop should I plant?' see the Farming discussion below in the section "How to earn coins as a new Seeker."
The order of beginner quests isn't critically important, but the order jump starts your ranching - which is probably the most profitable use of stamina for a beginning Seeker. Following those three, you can just go down the list and knock out the others as quickly as you have stamina. A couple of other useful notes about the beginner's quests:
4) [Wanna's Quest I: Recognition], [A Taste For Games], and [Damatheus' Grail Community] quests all require no stamina, and have useful rewards.
5) [Wanna's Quest II: Victory Starts Here] is an introduction to basic combat mechanics in the game. Caution! Completing this quest will give you 100 additional stamina.- Spoiler - Rewards for Wanna's Quest II:
- Pro tips:
● Actually read your task for each fight scenario. Many new seekers have wasted a LOT of time attacking, when the task was to retreat.
● Keep an eye on the durability of your weapon, Bandalf's Staff, while training - if it gets to 0 durability, it breaks and is gone forever. Weapons and armor can be repaired. Better yet, get your hands on a Carnifex Crescent (cheap will do just fine for your purposes). Bandalf's Staff has its uses ... but fighting isn't one of them.
Gained during quest:
- 25 Combat Experience (one combat level)
- 1 mood
- 1 bronze coin
● When attacking the second training dummy, you can get an achievement for destroying it. I wish I had known that when I did the quest ... now I can never go back and get that achievement ... doh!
Gained during quest:
- 1 mood
- 8 combat experience
- 1 meat
Rewards upon Completion:
- 1 silver coin
- 100 stamina
- an Expert Healing Potion
- an Expert Quilted Armor
6) [Wanna's Quest III: A Courier's Task] is required to leave the town gates. Caution! Completing this quest will give you 100 additional stamina.- Spoiler - Rewards for Wanna's Quest III:
- Gained upon Completion:
- 4 silver coin
- 50 mood
- 100 stamina
- Grail Meal (Meat, Mushrooms, Vegetables, Cheese, Potatoes
- Grail Stamina Potion (Caution! This potion is worth roughly 36-40 silver! You will almost certainly get more from trading this potion, rather than drinking it yourself!)
7) [A Weight on your Shoulders] also requires you to leave town.- Spoiler - Rewards for A Weight on your Shoulders:
- Gained upon Completion:
- You earned 5 Silver
- You gained a Normal Travel Bag with 447 durability left.
- You can permanently carry an additional 20 weight.
8: [Bandalf Quest II: Tool of Desire] requires you to be 10 days old to begin it, but you can skip right over it, work on quests below it, and come back to it when you are old enough.
9) [The Weathered Fisherman]- Quest Rewards:
- You completed the Weathered Fisherman’s Quest!
- You gained a Grail Fishing Potion.
- You gained 3 Weathered Fish Dishes (Food Ingredient: Fish).
- Buying, Selling, and Trading in the Grail Economy (click to expand):
- 1) The less coins you spend acquiring resources, the more coins you'll have. Buying directly from other players will often get you a better price than buying from a stranger on the market. Ask around in [The Grail Tavern] when you need a particular item. Veteran Seekers can point you toward a reputable supplier, who might even be willing to give you a deal as a new Seeker.
2) Trading item for item (such as one milk for one egg, or two eggs for one potato) is an even better way to save money. Trading item for item (instead of paying coin for an item) will significantly reduce the town taxes you pay, which adds up over time. Of course, this isn't an issue if your town doesn't charge taxes (each town sets their own tax rate).
3) If you must purchase an item from the market, at least double check with other Seekers in [The Grail Tavern] to verify that the current market price is a reasonable one. Often items just sit on the market for weeks because the price requested is higher than experienced players are willing to pay.As wise old Frenjamin Banklin once remarked: "A bronze saved is a bronze earned."
- How to Earn Coin as a New Seeker (click to expand):
- After finishing the beginner quests, you'll want to choose a beginning career. Your career will help you earn coin, as well as trade for other items you need. Focus on that career for at least a couple of weeks, doing it as much as possible. Once you advance that skill enough and can perform the task for less stamina, you'll be able to start earning coin more efficiently to pay for the other activities in the realms that you are interested in.Note: All prices/wages are approximate as of the writing of this guide, and are subject to town location, future changes to game mechanics, and other factors
1) Ranching can earn you 4.7 bronze per stamina at animal skill 1
Pros: Ranching your own animals is the most profitable thing a new Seeker can do.
Cons: Ranching spots are limited, especially at first, so you will still need to find other things to do with your stamina. Animals require feeding every day, making leaving town a little more difficult (though not impossible).
Danger! Some veteran Seekers will tell you to go to the town Labor Hall and do 'breeding' jobs for the town - it's a trap! At animal skill 1, you earn around 0.5 to 0.8 b/s doing breeding jobs. Leave the breeding to Seekers with high animal skills; they earn 2 to 4 b/s because of their higher skill. Of course, if you don't mind earning 0.5 to 0.8 b/s, you are welcome to do breeding jobs for the town.- Ranching Tips - Click to expand:
- ● Chickens and cows are the most common animals for new Seekers to raise. The basic tradeoff between cows and chickens is: cows are slightly more profitable in the long term, but require twice as much stamina as chickens for gathering.
● The main problem with ranching is that you are limited by how many ranch spots you can build, especially at the beginning. After finishing [The Scrawny Chicken] quest, you will have two ranch spots. Building your 3rd thru 9th ranch spot gets prohibitively more expensive. Some towns have a program to assist new Seekers in this endeavor, so be sure to ask your town leaders about that before doing any expansions.
● Chickens and cows are the two most common animals for new Seekers to raise; all other animals are considerably more difficult or expensive to ranch and are generally done by more veteran Seekers. All animals must be fed every day (1 stamina per animal), and eggs and milk are gathered every 3 days.
● Most Seekers synchronize their animals' ages so that all gatherings are done on the same day. This gives Seekers 2 days of full stamina, followed by a third day with less stamina left after gathering. This is generally preferable because sometimes a Seeker needs as much stamina as they can muster in a single day. The alternative method would be to distribute the gatherings evenly, so that you have the same even, yet lower, amount of stamina available each day. If you wish to synchronize your animals gatherings, purchase a new animal the day after you gather from your existing animals.
● Make sure you keep an eye on your animals' ages (viewable in your ranch by clicking on each animal); butchering requires the most stamina of all. On butchering days (since you will probably gather and butcher on the same day), you can easily find yourself overwhelmed if too many animals require gathering and butchering all in one day. You can always hire the work out to other players, but then you're not making the same profit, and you're missing out on the skill gain as well.
● Cows live to day 70, but will give their last milk on day 69 (assuming you haven't missed a day of gathering milk). There are only two reasons to keep a cow alive after it's last milking: if you want to get a little more skill gain (but no profit) from milking it, or if you want to spread out the workload of milking and butchering on separate days.
● There is no point in feeding an animal on butchering day, unless you just want the skill gain. You might choose to spend that stamina elsewhere, so you can get both skill gain and profit from it. Make sure you butcher animals on (or before) their maximum age. If miss that day, the animal will probably die and you will not be able to butcher it, missing out on valuable profit and skill gain.
2) Cooking can earn you 2.5 bronze per stamina at cooking skill 1
Pros: Pays very well, even at skill 1.
Cons: Requires interaction with other Seekers to truly maximize your earnings.
Cooking is quite possibly the best career choice for new Seekers: veteran Seekers are almost always willing to have young Seekers cook simple meals in return for coin or items. The best way to make coin from cooking is to arrange a deal with another Seeker, player to player (in the tavern, or via letter). You can cook meals and place them for sale in your town Restaurant, but that is a much more 'hit or miss' (i.e., unreliable) way to earn coin.- CookingTips - Click to expand:
- ● How to earn 2.5 b/s by cooking at skill 1: find a player who has meat or eggs they want cooked into meals. A very standard deal in the realms is 'cook one, keep one,' where they give you a stack of the ingredients, and you cook half, and you get to keep half. So, for every egg or meat you cook, you earn an egg or meat. You can trade an egg or meat for roughly 25b each (which is a good profit for the 8 stamina it cost you to earn it). You can also go ahead and cook the egg or meat yourself (bringing your stamina cost up to 16 now), then trade that cooked meal for about 40b (40 bronze / 16 stamina = 2.5 bronze / stamina).
● Most seekers only want three types of cooking done: simple meals (a meal with a single ingredient), soups, or grail meals (a meal with five ingredients). Grail meals require very high skill, so ignore those for now. Simple meals are used for two things: to satisfy the 'eat each day' requirement, and to be intentionally wasted for other in-game benefits. As such, Seekers generally only want the cheapest ingredients in a simple meal: meat, or eggs. All of the other, more expensive ingredients are put into soups. The reason for this is that soups provide twice the stat bonus that a meal provides.
● Because soups give twice the stat bonus, veteran Seekers who want to increase their stats are quite 'hungry,' if you'll pardon the pun, for soups. Soups, incidentally, do not count as eating for your character; instead, they count against your character's daily drink limit. If you want to cook soups, there are several obstacles you'll need to overcome, so get started sooner rather than later on these. First, you need to read the book "Livre de Potage." This will require your character to pass the reading test in game (don't worry: if you can read my ramblings, the 'test' for your character will be no difficulty at all). Unfortunately, this requires getting your character's reading skill up to 20. There are two options: a 'Good Start' (the expensive, but easy way), or take Reading classes in your town Academy (the slower, but more cost effective way). After your character has passed the Literacy Test, you get a town Library Pass for a week and can start reading the book. It'll take you around 500 stamina total, so it will take several days. After you've read the book, you need a cauldron for cooking soups in. If you're going to focus on cooking, a grail quality cauldron is a good investment, and you can probably pay for it by trading soup labor. However you secure it, getting a soup cauldron will require an investment (a decent price for a new grail cauldron would be roughly 25-30s). Finally, you need a cooking skill of 25. Luckily, if you have at least 5 in cooking, you can hire [Chef Whamsay] for an egg each day, and he will boost your cooking skill by 20.
3) Wood Chopping can earn you about 1.6 bronze per stamina at skill 1
Pros: Pays moderately well, even at skill 1. Requires almost no interaction with other Seekers; wood commonly sells on the market for around 8-9 bronze each. Every town has forests close enough that you can can chop wood and be back in town every reset. The quality of your Wood Axe does not affect how much wood you chop.
Cons: You WILL lose life points (probably an average of around 5 life points most trips). Requires a Wood Axe, which is moderately costly. If you chop wood a lot, you'll want to get a Grail Wood Axe (they last longer and are cheaper in the long run). Can only use stamina in groups of 20.- Wood Chopping Tips - Click to expand:
- ● Make sure you equip your Wood Axe before leaving town. Then, double check. When leaving the town gate, triple check.
● Make sure you are carrying as little as possible when going to chop wood - wood is heavy. You want to complete the "Weight on Your Shoulders" quest, or get a Travel Bag from somewhere to increase the weight you can carry.
● Hire the follower Jack Lumber for pretty much every trip.
● Minimize your travel costs. Try and incorporate Wood Chopping if you're already walking past a forest. If you make a special trip, make it count: don't spend 15 stamina walking there and back just so you can spend 20 stamina Wood Chopping. Try and set aside an entire day, so you can make one trip and get as much wood as possible.
4) Farming can earn you about from 0.8 to 1.2 bronze per stamina at skill 1 (this various widely from town to town, more so than other skills discussed here)
Pros: Meh, it pays something. Requires almost no interaction with other Seekers. Virtually never run out of work as a farmer.
Cons: At skill 1, a unit of farming is 40 stamina - you will often be able to do just 1 or 2 units per day, initially at least.
Farming is a slower, but still reliable way to earn coin. It is also possibly the most solitary path for a new Seeker, if you wish to limit your interactions with other players. You can farm your own farms, and you can have as many fields as you are willing to cultivate (each one gets harder to cultivate, so only plan on having two fields at first, or maybe three fields if you focus on farming). You can almost always earn coin by looking in the Town Labor Hall and working on other Seekers farms. Farming is a slower path to character advancement than some careers, partly because it involves several distinct skills (Laborer, Ploughing, Sowing, Harvesting, and Farming skills all play a part).- Farming Tips - Click to expand:
- ● Working on other Seekers' farms is a very easy way to get coin (you can find these jobs in your town Labor Hall). Unfortunately, the pay isn't all that great. At skill 1, a unit of farm work requires 40 stamina. If you get paid 65b per unit, then you are earning 1.6 b/s. This requires essentially zero interaction with other Seekers, if that is what you are looking for. Working on your own farm pays even less. There are a lot of factors, but when starting out as a farmer with skill 1 your earnings will probably be around 1.0 to 1.2 b/s for working on your own farm (possibly less, see below for more info).
● There are five skills total involved in farming, although you could choose to focus on just a few of them at the beginning:
Laborer - this skill is used only once for each farm field, when cultivating or 'creating' the farm field. The number of units required to cultivate a far field increases exponentially: your first field costs 1 unit of cultivation, your second field costs 8 units of cultivation, your third field costs 27 units of cultivation, etc. Once you have cultivated a field, it never requires cultivation again.
Ploughing - this is the only farming skill that requires you to have a plough equipped. The quality of the plough does not matter, except that grail ploughs last longer and so are more cost-effective for you. Every field requires 10 units of ploughing before moving on to the next phase. If two farming jobs in the Labor Hall are equally priced, don't choose the Ploughing job - it will cost you more in the long run, due to wear and tear on your plough.
Sowing - every field requires 10 units of sowing before moving on to the next phase.
Harvesting - every field requires 10 units of harvesting after the field is finished growing. If somebody else harvests your field (because you've placed a work order in the Labor Hall), the crops go straight to your storage.
Farming skill - is an unusual skill in the Grail Lords. Your Farming skill increases every time _your_ field is completely harvested, regardless of who does the harvesting (so: even if you pay somebody else to do it, your Farming skill goes up). When your field is harvested, the field produces an extra 1 crop per 10 points of _your_ Farming skill (again: even if you pay somebody else to do it).
● Each skill has an associated follower you can hire, which will save you stamina. If you're going to hire the follower, make sure you do as much of that skill as you can that day - don't hire the Harvesting follower and then only do one unit of Harvesting. Hiring a farming followers is often most cost-effective if it allows you to perform an extra unit of farming for another Seeker. The follower for Sowing, [The Scarecrow], requires a payment of 6 of your life points. Since you regenerate life points anyway, this follower can essentially be free help, in the right circumstances.
● Which crop should you plant? Well, that depends on several factors. If you need a specific crop, that's probably the one you want. If you want to grow a crop to trade (for goods, or for coin), the three most desired crops are probably Corn, Hops, and Potatoes ... but a word of caution: there are lots of factors at play. If you want to play it safe, find somebody and make a deal with them before you put the stamina into a crop. One important factor in choosing which crop to grow is the current prices in your town - visit your town market to get a rough idea of which crops are selling for higher prices. The other main factor in which crop to grow is your town's upgrades: go to your town Fields and click on the [More Information] link next to Town Tax & Upgrades. Each type of crop has its own 'culture' - the higher the culture, the more crops you will get from that type. Each culture level results in +2 crops when harvesting that type of crop. The basic crop yield is always a random number from 10-15, so the crop yield in your field will be: 10-15 + (town culture*2) + (1 per 10 points in your Farming skill).
5) Crafting skills (alchemy, blacksmith, carpentry, and tailoring) are generally less profitable for a new Seeker, though not impossible if that's what you really want to do. These crafting skills better serve as 'hobbies' for a Seeker, once you already have a reliable income in the game. Other "expensive hobbies" in this game include: making cheese, making bread, and milling.
(editor's note: more career options coming as info is provided. Mining? Please send me a letter if you have suggestions/info)
- Leaving Town and Exploring the Grail Realms (click to expand):
- Note: You'll have to at least begin the quest [Wanna’s Quest III: A Courier’s Task] (see section 3, Tutorial Quests, above) before you can leave the town gates.
1) BEFORE you leave town:
● Pay your town taxes - it's hard to advance your skills while the town guards have you locked up.
● Ride a horse instead of walking. Ask around in [The Grail Tavern] and see if you can catch a ride with another player who has a horse, this will save you lots of stamina compared to walking.
● Have bread on your table at home, one for each day that you will be gone (bread magically follows you on the road, everything else needs to be in your backpack, or on your person). You can't bring any other food while traveling, and going hungry is bad for your stats.
● Hire any [followers] you will need, since you must be in town to hire them. [The Pathfinder] saves you stamina while walking and costs only 20b; the stamina saved is worth it for almost any trip you will be walking as a beginner (unless you are only going a few steps outside of town, and then back to town). If you are going fishing, wood cutting, mining, etc ... there's a follower for that, and hiring them is well worth the benefit.
● Make sure that any tools you will need are equipped. You cannot equip tools once you are outside of town. Almost every Seeker has done the 'walk of shame' at some point: walking back to town after they forgot to prepare properly before leaving town.
● Bring the right things with you. Anything you don't need, take it out of your backpack - leave yourself room to bring back things you collect on your travels. Extra things you should bring, in case you run into certain random encounters on the road: 40 bronze, a piece of meat, and make sure you have a few extra pieces of bread on your table at home. Finally, double check to make sure you have all the goods you need to accomplish the purpose of your trip. See comment above regarding the 'walk of shame.'
● Equip the right weapons and armor before heading out. For us beginners, that pretty much means equip everything you can get your hands on. If you can get a piece or two of cheap armor from somebody in town, that can significantly help your performance in combat. A little armor goes a long way, at our level. Perhaps the best piece of armor for a beginner is [Fur Boots] because they help you conserve stamina while walking. As with most things: simply asking in [The Grail Tavern] can be of great help.
● Feed your animals, and hire [Porkard] to feed your animal if you will be gone more than one reset. If you are away for one reset: you can feed animals now, and then feed them the next day upon return - if leave yourself the stamina to do so when you get back!
● Make sure you have enough stamina to get wherever you're going in one day. While it is entirely possible to spend reset outside of town, it will result in less stamina the next day because you won't have access to your bed. If you're not sure how much stamina that will take, as always: ask in [The Grail Tavern].
2) While outside of town:
● You should be catching rides for most trips as a beginner, but you will have to walk by yourself the first time you go out of town for [Wanna's Quest III: A Courier's Task]. Make sure you keep an eye on the world map, so you don't get lost. Also, there is a forum discussion here showing which routes are shortest between certain points. It doesn't cover all possible routes you might need, but reviewing it will give you a good idea of what kind of route you should look for.
● When riding with another player, make sure you have enough stamina to get to your destination. While riding will reduce the stamina cost, it won't eliminate it. When riding with somebody, you spend the same stamina for movement as the rider does. In other words, how much stamina you spend depends on their Riding skill. Most riders have a good idea of how much stamina it will take them to get to a location, if they travel it frequently. If you are riding with somebody and run out of stamina, they have two choices: carry you (by paying extra stamina), or kick you out of the group and leave you at that spot. Be nice to your Uber driver; don't put them in that position.
- Combat for New Seekers (click to expand):
- Note: The quest [Wanna’s Quest II: Victory Begins Here] (see the section above on Tutorial Quests) will give you the basics of combat in the Grail Realms. Below you will find practical information if you want to get better at combat.
1) Framer Ted's excellent forum post: Beginner's Tip For Combat
2) Cpt Coot's excellent forum post: Guide to Combat Events (the two main combat events each year are the spring event in March, and the Halloween event in October)
Last edited by Pan on Tue Mar 16, 2021 11:57 pm; edited 3 times in total
Pan- Seeker
- Number of posts : 21
Registration date : 2021-02-17
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Part 1 - Strategies for Success
1) Start with the beginner's quests. The beginner quests will be your best use of stamina. In addition to introducing you to the basics of the game, the quest rewards are better than anything you could earn by just going out and working on your own. See the section below for more detailed information on Tutorial Quests.
2) Get yourself a journal, and max it out every day. Every day that you wait to start using a journal will cost you approximately 97 stamina in the long run, so - don't wait! You can write in your journal each day, using up to a maximum of 12 stamina, which increases your Learning skill by .12 points. You get an extra stamina each day for each point you have in the Learning skill. Over time, this adds up to a huge amount of stamina: just 1 extra point in Learning skill would give you an extra 365 stamina a year! Since you can increase your Learning skill .12 each day by writing in your journal, that means you can increase the amount of stamina each day every 8.33 days, so don't put it off - at all! Get a journal as quick as possible, and spend 12 stamina on it each day. The quality of the journal does not matter. A better quality journal will last longer, but you can worry about that once you have a little more coin in your pocket. Many of the towns have programs to help new Seekers acquire both a journal and a bed, so be sure to ask your town leaders. For now, just get a journal: any journal you can, as cheaply as you can, and fill it up every single day. Trust me on this one: you will thank you later.
3) Get yourself a grail-quality bed. Beds give you additional stamina each reset that you spend in town with the bed equipped. For a bed, quality matters: a cheap bed only gives you an extra 4 stamina each reset, while a grail bed gives you an extra 24 stamina each reset. If somebody is willing to give you a bed for 1 bronze, go ahead and take it ... but your ultimate goal is the grail bed. Many of the towns have programs to help new Seekers acquire both a journal and a bed, so be sure to ask your town leaders. You also can get a used grail bed - it'll have fewer days left on it than a brand new one, but it will help you get thru until you can afford a new grail bed.
4) Don’t start out trying to craft yourself a grail-level bed (or any other grail-level piece of equipment, for that matter). The amount of stamina it will require from you as a beginning Seeker will probably take months in real life. Most skills under the “Profession” tab on your skills page are more like expensive hobbies in this game: you won’t really generate any income from them, especially at the beginning with a low skill. Once you have a steady stream of income, then you can join a guild and start seriously working on becoming a crafter.
5) Buy things from the market as little as possible. You can often get a much better price by talking to people in the [The Grail Tavern], and you really can't afford to waste coin at the beginning of your adventures.
6) You have all day to spend your stamina, so don't rush. Take your time, plan your day carefully, and take advantage of good paying jobs in the Labor Hall when they appear (which might be several hours after reset, it all depends on when people post the jobs). Rushing to spend your stamina quickly will gain you nothing, but mistakes will cost you stamina and slow down your progress. Learn from your mistakes ... you can always come back and do better tomorrow!
2) Get yourself a journal, and max it out every day. Every day that you wait to start using a journal will cost you approximately 97 stamina in the long run, so - don't wait! You can write in your journal each day, using up to a maximum of 12 stamina, which increases your Learning skill by .12 points. You get an extra stamina each day for each point you have in the Learning skill. Over time, this adds up to a huge amount of stamina: just 1 extra point in Learning skill would give you an extra 365 stamina a year! Since you can increase your Learning skill .12 each day by writing in your journal, that means you can increase the amount of stamina each day every 8.33 days, so don't put it off - at all! Get a journal as quick as possible, and spend 12 stamina on it each day. The quality of the journal does not matter. A better quality journal will last longer, but you can worry about that once you have a little more coin in your pocket. Many of the towns have programs to help new Seekers acquire both a journal and a bed, so be sure to ask your town leaders. For now, just get a journal: any journal you can, as cheaply as you can, and fill it up every single day. Trust me on this one: you will thank you later.
3) Get yourself a grail-quality bed. Beds give you additional stamina each reset that you spend in town with the bed equipped. For a bed, quality matters: a cheap bed only gives you an extra 4 stamina each reset, while a grail bed gives you an extra 24 stamina each reset. If somebody is willing to give you a bed for 1 bronze, go ahead and take it ... but your ultimate goal is the grail bed. Many of the towns have programs to help new Seekers acquire both a journal and a bed, so be sure to ask your town leaders. You also can get a used grail bed - it'll have fewer days left on it than a brand new one, but it will help you get thru until you can afford a new grail bed.
4) Don’t start out trying to craft yourself a grail-level bed (or any other grail-level piece of equipment, for that matter). The amount of stamina it will require from you as a beginning Seeker will probably take months in real life. Most skills under the “Profession” tab on your skills page are more like expensive hobbies in this game: you won’t really generate any income from them, especially at the beginning with a low skill. Once you have a steady stream of income, then you can join a guild and start seriously working on becoming a crafter.
5) Buy things from the market as little as possible. You can often get a much better price by talking to people in the [The Grail Tavern], and you really can't afford to waste coin at the beginning of your adventures.
6) You have all day to spend your stamina, so don't rush. Take your time, plan your day carefully, and take advantage of good paying jobs in the Labor Hall when they appear (which might be several hours after reset, it all depends on when people post the jobs). Rushing to spend your stamina quickly will gain you nothing, but mistakes will cost you stamina and slow down your progress. Learn from your mistakes ... you can always come back and do better tomorrow!
Last edited by Pan on Fri Apr 29, 2022 11:21 am; edited 3 times in total
Pan- Seeker
- Number of posts : 21
Registration date : 2021-02-17
Section 2 - The Tutorial Quests
Note: The order listed in here is the recommended order of starting the tutorial quests. Just begin the quest, work on it until you either complete it or you have to wait to proceed (like the next day), and then begin the next quest in the list. Each day after reset, you can start back at the top of the list of quests and see which (unfinished) quests you can advance some more. To get to your quest list: go to your Character page, click on the image of your Quest Book, and the list of quests will be displayed in the right-hand part of your screen.
1) [Bandalf's Quest I: The Tutorial] is a basic introduction to the game. You can check out Halcyon's excellent guide here. Caution! Completing this quest will give you 100 additional stamina.
2) [The Scrawny Chicken] is an introduction to ranching.
3) [The Ruined Farmer] is an introduction to farming. For tips on 'What crop should I plant?' see the Farming discussion below in the section "How to earn coins as a new Seeker."
The order of beginner quests isn't critically important, but the order jump starts your ranching - which is probably the most profitable use of stamina for a beginning Seeker. Following those three, you can just go down the list and knock out the others as quickly as you have stamina. A couple of other useful notes about the beginner's quests:
4) [Wanna's Quest I: Recognition], [A Taste For Games], and [Damatheus' Grail Community] quests all require no stamina, and have useful rewards.
5) [Wanna's Quest II: Victory Starts Here] is an introduction to basic combat mechanics in the game. Caution! Completing this quest will give you 100 additional stamina.
6) [Wanna's Quest III: A Courier's Task] is required to leave the town gates. Caution! Completing this quest will give you 100 additional stamina.
7) [A Weight on your Shoulders] also requires you to leave town.
8: [Bandalf Quest II: Tool of Desire] requires you to be 10 days old to begin it, but you can skip right over it, work on quests below it, and come back to it when you are old enough.
9) [The Weathered Fisherman]
Caution! Some of the tutorial quests give you additional stamina as a reward for completing the quest. Make sure you remember the #1 tip for new seekers: use all of your stamina each day! One option is to do most of a quest that rewards stamina, but wait to turn in the final step, essentially 'saving' that extra stamina up so you can have a lot of extra stamina one day - this can be useful for some projects.
1) [Bandalf's Quest I: The Tutorial] is a basic introduction to the game. You can check out Halcyon's excellent guide here. Caution! Completing this quest will give you 100 additional stamina.
- Spoiler - Rewards for Bandalf's Quest I:
- Gained during quest:
-----The Follower Bandalf the Wise joined your cause! As long he remains your follower, you will profit from his abilities!
-----Bandalf the Wise gave you an egg to cook a meal. Find it in your Inventory Chest.
-----You gained a Cheap Cheese Curdle, a Cheap Pick Axe and a Cheap Plough from Bandalf the Wise they are placed in your Item Chest.
-----Bandalf the Wise gave you 5 Wood which is placed in your Inventory Chest.
-----Bandalf the Wise used your Shaft and transformed it into a weapon that can be used in combat. You find Bandalf’s Staff in your Equipment Closet.
You successfully completed Bandalf’s Tutorial Quest!
-----You gained 5 Silver!
-----Your mood increased by 100 points!
-----You gained an additional 100 Stamina for today!
2) [The Scrawny Chicken] is an introduction to ranching.
3) [The Ruined Farmer] is an introduction to farming. For tips on 'What crop should I plant?' see the Farming discussion below in the section "How to earn coins as a new Seeker."
The order of beginner quests isn't critically important, but the order jump starts your ranching - which is probably the most profitable use of stamina for a beginning Seeker. Following those three, you can just go down the list and knock out the others as quickly as you have stamina. A couple of other useful notes about the beginner's quests:
4) [Wanna's Quest I: Recognition], [A Taste For Games], and [Damatheus' Grail Community] quests all require no stamina, and have useful rewards.
5) [Wanna's Quest II: Victory Starts Here] is an introduction to basic combat mechanics in the game. Caution! Completing this quest will give you 100 additional stamina.
- Spoiler - Rewards for Wanna's Quest II:
- Pro tips:
● Actually read your task for each fight scenario. Many new seekers have wasted a LOT of time attacking, when the task was to retreat.
● Keep an eye on the durability of your weapon, Bandalf's Staff, while training - if it gets to 0 durability, it breaks and is gone forever. Weapons and armor can be repaired. Better yet, get your hands on a Carnifex Crescent (cheap will do just fine for your purposes). Bandalf's Staff has its uses ... but fighting isn't one of them.
Gained during quest:
- 25 Combat Experience (one combat level)
- 1 mood
- 1 bronze coin
● When attacking the second training dummy, you can get an achievement for destroying it. I wish I had known that when I did the quest ... now I can never go back and get that achievement ... doh!
Gained during quest:
- 1 mood
- 8 combat experience
- 1 meat
Rewards upon Completion:
- 1 silver coin
- 100 stamina
- an Expert Healing Potion
- an Expert Quilted Armor
6) [Wanna's Quest III: A Courier's Task] is required to leave the town gates. Caution! Completing this quest will give you 100 additional stamina.
- Spoiler - Rewards for Wanna's Quest III:
- Gained upon Completion:
- 4 silver coin
- 50 mood
- 100 stamina
- Grail Meal (Meat, Mushrooms, Vegetables, Cheese, Potatoes
- Grail Stamina Potion (Caution! This potion is worth roughly 36-40 silver! You will almost certainly get more from trading this potion, rather than drinking it yourself!)
7) [A Weight on your Shoulders] also requires you to leave town.
- Spoiler - Rewards for A Weight on your Shoulders:
- Gained upon Completion:
- You earned 5 Silver
- You gained a Normal Travel Bag with 447 durability left.
- You can permanently carry an additional 20 weight.
8: [Bandalf Quest II: Tool of Desire] requires you to be 10 days old to begin it, but you can skip right over it, work on quests below it, and come back to it when you are old enough.
9) [The Weathered Fisherman]
- Quest Rewards:
- You completed the Weathered Fisherman’s Quest!
- You gained a Grail Fishing Potion.
- You gained 3 Weathered Fish Dishes (Food Ingredient: Fish).
Last edited by Pan on Fri Apr 29, 2022 11:34 am; edited 2 times in total
Pan- Seeker
- Number of posts : 21
Registration date : 2021-02-17
Part 3 - Buying, Selling, and Trading in the Grail Economy
1) The less coins you spend acquiring resources, the more coins you'll have. Buying directly from other players will often get you a better price than buying from a stranger on the market. Ask around in [The Grail Tavern] when you need a particular item. Veteran Seekers can point you toward a reputable supplier, who might even be willing to give you a deal as a new Seeker.
3) If you must purchase an item from the market, at least double check with other Seekers in [The Grail Tavern] to verify that the listed price is a reasonable one. Often items just sit on the market for weeks because the price listed is higher than experienced players are willing to pay.
As wise old Frenjamin Banklin once remarked: "A bronze saved is a bronze earned."
2) Trading item for item (such as one milk for one egg, or two eggs for one potato) is another way to save money. Trading item for item (instead of paying coin for an item) will significantly reduce the town taxes you pay, which adds up over time. Of course, this isn't an issue if your town doesn't charge taxes (each town sets their own tax rate).
3) If you must purchase an item from the market, at least double check with other Seekers in [The Grail Tavern] to verify that the listed price is a reasonable one. Often items just sit on the market for weeks because the price listed is higher than experienced players are willing to pay.
As wise old Frenjamin Banklin once remarked: "A bronze saved is a bronze earned."
Last edited by Pan on Fri Apr 29, 2022 11:24 am; edited 2 times in total
Pan- Seeker
- Number of posts : 21
Registration date : 2021-02-17
Section 4 - How to Earn Coin as a New Seeker
1) Ranching can earn you 4.7 bronze per stamina at animal skill 1
Pros: Ranching your own animals is the most profitable thing a new Seeker can do.
Cons: Ranching spots are limited, especially at first, so you will still need to find other things to do with your stamina. Animals require feeding every day, making leaving town a little more difficult (though not impossible).
Caution! Breeding animals for the town is NOT the same as ranching, even though it uses the same skills. The section on breeding animals for the town is just under Farming, below.
2) Cooking can earn you 2.5 bronze per stamina at cooking skill 1
Pros: Pays very well, even at skill 1.
Cons: Requires interaction with other Seekers to truly maximize your earnings.
Cooking is quite possibly the best career choice for new Seekers: veteran Seekers are almost always willing to have young Seekers cook simple meals in return for coin or items. The best way to make coin from cooking is to arrange a deal with another Seeker, player to player (in the tavern, or via letter). You can cook meals and place them for sale in your town Restaurant, but that is a much more 'hit or miss' (i.e., unreliable) way to earn coin.
3) Wood Chopping can earn you about 2 bronze per stamina at skill 1
Pros: Pays moderately well, even at skill 1. Requires almost no interaction with other Seekers; wood commonly sells on the market for around 8b. Every town has forests close enough that you can can chop wood and be back in town every reset. The quality of your Wood Axe does not affect how much wood you chop.
Cons: You WILL lose life points (probably an average of around 5 life points most trips). Requires a Wood Axe, which is moderately costly. For Wood Chopping, you can only use stamina in multiples of 20 at a time (20, 40, 60, etc).
4) Farming can earn you roughly 0.8 to 1.2 bronze per stamina at skill 1 (this various widely from town to town, more so than other skills discussed here)
Pros: Meh, it pays something. Requires almost no interaction with other Seekers. Virtually never run out of work as a farmer.
Cons: At skill 1, a unit of farming is 40 stamina - you will often be able to do just 1 or 2 units per day, initially at least.
Farming is a slower, but still reliable way to earn coin. It is also possibly the most solitary path for a new Seeker, if you wish to limit your interactions with other players. You can farm your own farms, and you can have as many fields as you are willing to cultivate (each one gets harder to cultivate, so only plan on having two fields at first, or maybe three fields if you focus on farming). You can almost always earn coin by looking in the Town Labor Hall and working on other Seekers farms. Farming is a slower path to character advancement than some careers, partly because it involves several distinct skills (the Laborer, Ploughing, Sowing, Harvesting, and Farming skills all play a part).
5) Breeding Animal for town pays about 0.5 bronze per stamina at skill 1 (depending on the town, and the animal). Now, after you spend about ~6000 (roughly one year of doing nothing but breeding a single type of animal all day, every single day) and get an animal skill raised to 50+, then you can start making some decent coin for breeding animals ... about 2.0-2.5 bronze per stamina (again: depending on the town, and the animal).
6) Crafting skills (alchemy, blacksmith, carpentry, and tailoring) are generally less profitable for a new Seeker, though not impossible if that's what you really want to do. These crafting skills better serve as 'hobbies' for a Seeker, once you already have a reliable income in the game. Other "expensive hobbies" in this game include: making cheese, making bread, and milling.
(editor's note: more career options coming as info is provided. Mining? Please send me a letter if you have suggestions/info)
Pros: Ranching your own animals is the most profitable thing a new Seeker can do.
Cons: Ranching spots are limited, especially at first, so you will still need to find other things to do with your stamina. Animals require feeding every day, making leaving town a little more difficult (though not impossible).
Caution! Breeding animals for the town is NOT the same as ranching, even though it uses the same skills. The section on breeding animals for the town is just under Farming, below.
- Ranching Tips - Click to expand:
- ● Chickens and cows are the most common animals for new Seekers to raise. The basic tradeoff between cows and chickens is: cows are slightly more profitable in the long term, but require twice as much stamina as chickens for gathering.
● The main problem with ranching is that you are limited by how many ranch spots you can build, especially at the beginning. After finishing [The Scrawny Chicken] quest, you will have two ranch spots. Building your 3rd thru 9th ranch spot gets prohibitively more expensive. Some towns have a program to assist new Seekers in this endeavor, so be sure to ask your town leaders about that before doing any expansions.
● Chickens and cows are the two most common animals for new Seekers to raise; all other animals are considerably more difficult or expensive to ranch and are generally done by more veteran Seekers. All animals must be fed every day (1 stamina per animal), and eggs and milk are gathered every 3 days.
● Most Seekers synchronize their animals' ages so that all gatherings are done on the same day. This gives Seekers 2 days of full stamina, followed by a third day with less stamina left after gathering. This is generally preferable because sometimes a Seeker needs as much stamina as they can muster in a single day. The alternative method would be to distribute the gatherings evenly, so that you have the same even, yet lower, amount of stamina available each day. If you wish to synchronize your animals gatherings, purchase a new animal the day after you gather from your existing animals.
● Make sure you keep an eye on your animals' ages (viewable in your ranch by clicking on each animal); butchering requires the most stamina of all. On butchering days (since you will probably gather and butcher on the same day), you can easily find yourself overwhelmed if too many animals require gathering and butchering all in one day. You can always hire the work out to other players, but then you're not making the same profit, and you're missing out on the skill gain as well.
● Cows live to day 70, but will give their last milk on day 69 (assuming you haven't missed a day of gathering milk). There are only two reasons to keep a cow alive after it's last milking: if you want to get a little more skill gain (but no profit) from milking it, or if you want to spread out the workload of milking and butchering on separate days.
● There is no point in feeding an animal on butchering day, unless you just want the skill gain. You might choose to spend that stamina elsewhere, so you can get both skill gain and profit from it. Make sure you butcher animals on (or before) their maximum age. If miss that day, the animal will probably die and you will not be able to butcher it, missing out on valuable profit and skill gain.
2) Cooking can earn you 2.5 bronze per stamina at cooking skill 1
Pros: Pays very well, even at skill 1.
Cons: Requires interaction with other Seekers to truly maximize your earnings.
Cooking is quite possibly the best career choice for new Seekers: veteran Seekers are almost always willing to have young Seekers cook simple meals in return for coin or items. The best way to make coin from cooking is to arrange a deal with another Seeker, player to player (in the tavern, or via letter). You can cook meals and place them for sale in your town Restaurant, but that is a much more 'hit or miss' (i.e., unreliable) way to earn coin.
- CookingTips - Click to expand:
- ● How to earn 2.5 b/s by cooking at skill 1: find a player who has meat or eggs they want cooked into meals. A very standard deal in the realms is 'cook one, keep one,' where they give you a stack of the ingredients, and you cook half, and you get to keep half. So, for every egg or meat you cook, you earn an egg or meat. You can trade an egg or meat for roughly 25b each (which is a good profit for the 8 stamina it cost you to earn it). You can also go ahead and cook the egg or meat yourself (bringing your stamina cost up to 16 now), then trade that cooked meal for about 40b (40 bronze / 16 stamina = 2.5 bronze / stamina).
● Most seekers only want three types of cooking done: simple meals (a meal with a single ingredient), soups, or grail meals (a meal with five ingredients). Grail meals require very high skill, so ignore those for now. Simple meals are used for two things: to satisfy the 'eat each day' requirement, and to be intentionally wasted for other in-game benefits. As such, Seekers generally only want the cheapest ingredients in a simple meal: meat, or eggs. All of the other, more expensive ingredients are put into soups. The reason for this is that soups provide twice the stat bonus that a meal provides.
● Because soups give twice the stat bonus, veteran Seekers who want to increase their stats are quite 'hungry,' if you'll pardon the pun, for soups. Soups, incidentally, do not count as eating for your character; instead, they count against your character's daily drink limit. If you want to cook soups, there are several obstacles you'll need to overcome, so get started sooner rather than later on these. First, you need to read the book "Livre de Potage." This will require your character to pass the reading test in game (don't worry: if you can read my ramblings, the 'test' for your character will be no difficulty at all). Unfortunately, this requires getting your character's reading skill up to 20. There are two options: a 'Good Start' (the expensive, but easy way), or take Reading classes in your town Academy (the slower, but more cost effective way). After your character has passed the Literacy Test, you get a town Library Pass for a week and can start reading the book. It'll take you around 500 stamina total, so it will take several days. After you've read the book, you need a cauldron for cooking soups in. If you're going to focus on cooking, a grail quality cauldron is a good investment, and you can probably pay for it by trading soup labor. However you secure it, getting a soup cauldron will require an investment (a decent price for a new grail cauldron would be roughly 25-30s). Finally, you need a cooking skill of 25. Luckily, if you have at least 5 in cooking, you can hire [Chef Whamsay] for an egg each day, and he will boost your cooking skill by 20.
3) Wood Chopping can earn you about 2 bronze per stamina at skill 1
Pros: Pays moderately well, even at skill 1. Requires almost no interaction with other Seekers; wood commonly sells on the market for around 8b. Every town has forests close enough that you can can chop wood and be back in town every reset. The quality of your Wood Axe does not affect how much wood you chop.
Cons: You WILL lose life points (probably an average of around 5 life points most trips). Requires a Wood Axe, which is moderately costly. For Wood Chopping, you can only use stamina in multiples of 20 at a time (20, 40, 60, etc).
- Wood Chopping Tips - Click to expand:
- ● Make sure you equip your Wood Axe before leaving town. Then, double check. When leaving the town gate, triple check.
● Make sure you are carrying as little as possible when going - wood is heavy. You will want to complete the "Weight on Your Shoulders" quest, or get a Travel Bag from somewhere to increase the weight you can carry.
● Hire the follower (Jack Lumber) for each trip.
● Minimize your travel costs. Try and incorporate Wood Chopping if you're already making a trip. If you make a trip just to gather wood, make it count: don't spend 30 stamina walking each direction just so you can spend 20 stamina gathering wood. Try and set aside an entire day (except for journaling and animals), so you can make one trip and gather as much wood as efficiently as possible.
● You can get a free Wood Axe from Bandalf during the "Tool of Desire" quest, but it won't last you very long. When you replace it, ask around for a good price on a Grail quality Wood Axe. You can spend 20s each on 6 different 'Cheap' Wood Axes (spending 120s total), or you can invest once and pay 60s on a Grail Wood Axe that will last the same amount of time ... which one is actually the 'cheap' option?
4) Farming can earn you roughly 0.8 to 1.2 bronze per stamina at skill 1 (this various widely from town to town, more so than other skills discussed here)
Pros: Meh, it pays something. Requires almost no interaction with other Seekers. Virtually never run out of work as a farmer.
Cons: At skill 1, a unit of farming is 40 stamina - you will often be able to do just 1 or 2 units per day, initially at least.
Farming is a slower, but still reliable way to earn coin. It is also possibly the most solitary path for a new Seeker, if you wish to limit your interactions with other players. You can farm your own farms, and you can have as many fields as you are willing to cultivate (each one gets harder to cultivate, so only plan on having two fields at first, or maybe three fields if you focus on farming). You can almost always earn coin by looking in the Town Labor Hall and working on other Seekers farms. Farming is a slower path to character advancement than some careers, partly because it involves several distinct skills (the Laborer, Ploughing, Sowing, Harvesting, and Farming skills all play a part).
- Farming Tips - Click to expand:
- ● Working on other Seekers' farms is a very easy way to get coin (you can find these jobs in your town Labor Hall). Unfortunately, the pay isn't all that great. At skill 1, a unit of farm work requires 40 stamina. If you get paid 40b per unit, then you are earning 1.0 b/s. This requires essentially zero interaction with other Seekers, if that is what you are looking for. Working on your own farm pays even less. There are a lot of factors, but when starting out as a farmer with skill 1 your earnings will probably be around 1.0 b/s for working on your own farm (possibly less, see below for more info).
● There are five skills total involved in farming, although you could choose to focus on just a few of them at the beginning:
Laborer - this skill is used only once for each farm field, when cultivating or 'creating' the farm field. The number of units required to cultivate a far field increases exponentially: your first field costs 1 unit of cultivation, your second field costs 8 units of cultivation, your third field costs 27 units of cultivation, etc. Once you have cultivated a field, it never requires cultivation again.
Ploughing - this is the only farming skill that requires you to have a tool equipped (a plough). The quality of the plough does not matter, except that grail ploughs last longer and so are more cost-effective for you. Every field requires 10 units of ploughing before moving on to the next phase. If two farming jobs in the Labor Hall are equally priced, don't choose the Ploughing job - it will cost you more in the long run, due to wear and tear on your plough.
Sowing - every field requires 10 units of sowing before moving on to the next phase.
Harvesting - every field requires 10 units of harvesting after the field is finished growing. If somebody else harvests your field (because you've placed a work order in the Labor Hall), the crops go straight to your storage.
Farming skill - is an unusual skill in the Grail Lords. Your Farming skill increases every time _your_ field is completely harvested, regardless of who does the harvesting (so: even if you pay somebody else to do it, your Farming skill goes up). When your field is harvested, the field produces an extra 1 crop per 10 points of _your_ Farming skill (again: even if you pay somebody else to do it).
● Each skill has an associated follower you can hire, which will save you stamina. If you're going to hire the follower, make sure you do as much of that skill as you can that day - don't hire the Harvesting follower and then only do one unit of Harvesting. Hiring a farming followers is often most cost-effective if it allows you to perform an extra unit of farming for another Seeker. The follower for Sowing, [The Scarecrow], requires a payment of 6 of your life points. Since you regenerate life points anyway, this follower can essentially be free help, in the right circumstances.
● Which crop should you plant? Well, that depends on several factors. If you need a specific crop, that's probably the one you want. If you want to grow a crop to trade (for goods, or for coin), the three most desired crops are probably Corn, Hops, and Potatoes ... but a word of caution: there are lots of factors at play. If you want to play it safe, find somebody and make a deal with them before you put the stamina into a crop. One important factor in choosing which crop to grow is the current prices in your town - visit your town market to get a rough idea of which crops are selling for higher prices. The other main factor in which crop to grow is your town's upgrades: go to your town Fields and click on the [More Information] link next to Town Tax & Upgrades. Each type of crop has its own 'culture' - the higher the culture, the more crops you will get from that type. Each culture level results in +2 crops when harvesting that type of crop. The basic crop yield is always a random number from 10-15, so the crop yield in your field will be: 10-15 + (town culture*2) + (1 per 10 points in your Farming skill).
5) Breeding Animal for town pays about 0.5 bronze per stamina at skill 1 (depending on the town, and the animal). Now, after you spend about ~6000 (roughly one year of doing nothing but breeding a single type of animal all day, every single day) and get an animal skill raised to 50+, then you can start making some decent coin for breeding animals ... about 2.0-2.5 bronze per stamina (again: depending on the town, and the animal).
6) Crafting skills (alchemy, blacksmith, carpentry, and tailoring) are generally less profitable for a new Seeker, though not impossible if that's what you really want to do. These crafting skills better serve as 'hobbies' for a Seeker, once you already have a reliable income in the game. Other "expensive hobbies" in this game include: making cheese, making bread, and milling.
(editor's note: more career options coming as info is provided. Mining? Please send me a letter if you have suggestions/info)
Last edited by Pan on Fri Apr 29, 2022 12:14 pm; edited 5 times in total
Pan- Seeker
- Number of posts : 21
Registration date : 2021-02-17
Reserved - Leaving town and exploring the realms
Note: You'll have to at least begin the quest [Wanna’s Quest III: A Courier’s Task] (see section 3, Tutorial Quests, above) before you can leave the town gates.
1) BEFORE you leave town:
● Pay your town taxes - it's hard to advance your skills while the town guards have you locked up.
● Ride a horse instead of walking. Ask around in [The Grail Tavern] and see if you can catch a ride with another player who has a horse, this will save you lots of stamina compared to walking.
● Have bread on your table at home, one for each day that you will be gone (bread magically follows you on the road, everything else needs to be in your backpack, or on your person). You can't bring any other food while traveling, and going hungry is bad for your stats.
● Hire any [followers] you will need, since you must be in town to hire them. [The Pathfinder] saves you stamina while walking and costs only 20b; the stamina saved is worth it for almost any trip you will be walking as a beginner (unless you are only going a few steps outside of town, and then back to town). If you are going fishing, wood cutting, mining, etc ... there's a follower for that, and hiring them is well worth the benefit.
● Make sure that any tools you will need are equipped. You cannot equip tools once you are outside of town. Almost every Seeker has done the 'walk of shame' at some point: walking back to town after they forgot to prepare properly before leaving town.
● Bring the right things with you. Anything you don't need, take it out of your backpack - leave yourself room to bring back things you collect on your travels. Extra things you should bring, in case you run into certain random encounters on the road: 40 bronze, a piece of meat, and make sure you have a few extra pieces of bread on your table at home. Finally, double check to make sure you have all the goods you need to accomplish the purpose of your trip. See comment above regarding the 'walk of shame.'
● Equip the right weapons and armor before heading out. For us beginners, that pretty much means equip everything you can get your hands on. If you can get a piece or two of cheap armor from somebody in town, that can significantly help your performance in combat. A little armor goes a long way, at our level. Perhaps the best piece of armor for a beginner is [Fur Boots] because they help you conserve stamina while walking. As with most things: simply asking in [The Grail Tavern] can be of great help.
● Feed your animals, and hire [Porkard] to feed your animal if you will be gone more than one reset. If you are away for one reset: you can feed animals now, and then feed them the next day upon return - if leave yourself the stamina to do so when you get back!
● Make sure you have enough stamina to get wherever you're going in one day. While it is entirely possible to spend reset outside of town, it will result in less stamina the next day because you won't have access to your bed. If you're not sure how much stamina that will take, as always: ask in [The Grail Tavern].
2) While outside of town:
● You should be catching rides for most trips as a beginner, but you will have to walk by yourself the first time you go out of town for [Wanna's Quest III: A Courier's Task]. Make sure you keep an eye on the world map, so you don't get lost. Also, there is a forum discussion here showing which routes are shortest between certain points. It doesn't cover all possible routes you might need, but reviewing it will give you a good idea of what kind of route you should look for.
● When riding with another player, make sure you have enough stamina to get to your destination. While riding will reduce the stamina cost, it won't eliminate it. When riding with somebody, you spend the same stamina for movement as the rider does. In other words, how much stamina you spend depends on their Riding skill. Most riders have a good idea of how much stamina it will take them to get to a location, if they travel it frequently. If you are riding with somebody and run out of stamina, they have two choices: carry you (by paying extra stamina), or kick you out of the group and leave you at that spot. Make sure you have enough stamina for the trip ... if you're not sure, ask for an estimate on how much stamina the trip will require.
1) BEFORE you leave town:
● Pay your town taxes - it's hard to advance your skills while the town guards have you locked up.
● Ride a horse instead of walking. Ask around in [The Grail Tavern] and see if you can catch a ride with another player who has a horse, this will save you lots of stamina compared to walking.
● Have bread on your table at home, one for each day that you will be gone (bread magically follows you on the road, everything else needs to be in your backpack, or on your person). You can't bring any other food while traveling, and going hungry is bad for your stats.
● Hire any [followers] you will need, since you must be in town to hire them. [The Pathfinder] saves you stamina while walking and costs only 20b; the stamina saved is worth it for almost any trip you will be walking as a beginner (unless you are only going a few steps outside of town, and then back to town). If you are going fishing, wood cutting, mining, etc ... there's a follower for that, and hiring them is well worth the benefit.
● Make sure that any tools you will need are equipped. You cannot equip tools once you are outside of town. Almost every Seeker has done the 'walk of shame' at some point: walking back to town after they forgot to prepare properly before leaving town.
● Bring the right things with you. Anything you don't need, take it out of your backpack - leave yourself room to bring back things you collect on your travels. Extra things you should bring, in case you run into certain random encounters on the road: 40 bronze, a piece of meat, and make sure you have a few extra pieces of bread on your table at home. Finally, double check to make sure you have all the goods you need to accomplish the purpose of your trip. See comment above regarding the 'walk of shame.'
● Equip the right weapons and armor before heading out. For us beginners, that pretty much means equip everything you can get your hands on. If you can get a piece or two of cheap armor from somebody in town, that can significantly help your performance in combat. A little armor goes a long way, at our level. Perhaps the best piece of armor for a beginner is [Fur Boots] because they help you conserve stamina while walking. As with most things: simply asking in [The Grail Tavern] can be of great help.
● Feed your animals, and hire [Porkard] to feed your animal if you will be gone more than one reset. If you are away for one reset: you can feed animals now, and then feed them the next day upon return - if leave yourself the stamina to do so when you get back!
● Make sure you have enough stamina to get wherever you're going in one day. While it is entirely possible to spend reset outside of town, it will result in less stamina the next day because you won't have access to your bed. If you're not sure how much stamina that will take, as always: ask in [The Grail Tavern].
2) While outside of town:
● You should be catching rides for most trips as a beginner, but you will have to walk by yourself the first time you go out of town for [Wanna's Quest III: A Courier's Task]. Make sure you keep an eye on the world map, so you don't get lost. Also, there is a forum discussion here showing which routes are shortest between certain points. It doesn't cover all possible routes you might need, but reviewing it will give you a good idea of what kind of route you should look for.
● When riding with another player, make sure you have enough stamina to get to your destination. While riding will reduce the stamina cost, it won't eliminate it. When riding with somebody, you spend the same stamina for movement as the rider does. In other words, how much stamina you spend depends on their Riding skill. Most riders have a good idea of how much stamina it will take them to get to a location, if they travel it frequently. If you are riding with somebody and run out of stamina, they have two choices: carry you (by paying extra stamina), or kick you out of the group and leave you at that spot. Make sure you have enough stamina for the trip ... if you're not sure, ask for an estimate on how much stamina the trip will require.
Last edited by Pan on Fri Apr 29, 2022 11:38 am; edited 3 times in total
Pan- Seeker
- Number of posts : 21
Registration date : 2021-02-17
Section 6 - Combat for new seekers
Note: The quest [Wanna’s Quest II: Victory Begins Here] (see the section above on Tutorial Quests) will give you the basics of combat in the Grail Realms. Below you will find practical information if you want to get better at combat.
1) Framer Ted's excellent forum post: Beginner's Tip For Combat
2) Cpt Coot's excellent forum post: Guide to Combat Events (the two main combat events each year are the spring event in March, and the Halloween event in October)[/spoiler]
1) Framer Ted's excellent forum post: Beginner's Tip For Combat
2) Cpt Coot's excellent forum post: Guide to Combat Events (the two main combat events each year are the spring event in March, and the Halloween event in October)[/spoiler]
Last edited by Pan on Fri Apr 29, 2022 11:31 am; edited 1 time in total
Pan- Seeker
- Number of posts : 21
Registration date : 2021-02-17
Section 7 - Reserved for future additions
Section 7 - Reserved for future additions
Pan- Seeker
- Number of posts : 21
Registration date : 2021-02-17
Section 8 - Reserved for future additions
Section 8 - Reserved for future additions
Pan- Seeker
- Number of posts : 21
Registration date : 2021-02-17
Section 9 - Reserved for future additions
Section 9 - Reserved for future additions
Pan- Seeker
- Number of posts : 21
Registration date : 2021-02-17
Similar topics
» Beginners Guide.
» (WIP) Guide to Combat events of the Realm (Last updated Spring '21)
» Upcoming Spring is Coming Event of 2022
» Beginners Tips: Combat
» Beginners Tips: Keeping Animals
» (WIP) Guide to Combat events of the Realm (Last updated Spring '21)
» Upcoming Spring is Coming Event of 2022
» Beginners Tips: Combat
» Beginners Tips: Keeping Animals
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