Your First Day

From Seed

Originally posted on the Official Seed forums: By Luu

Disclaimer

Anything written is based on my point of view (which is naturally the only right point of view, seeing as it is mine). So if you take offence in reading my words, go away and never come back because these words aren't going anywhere. If you wish them to go away, you can't. Tough luck.

Also, this is a gift to the public. Use it in whatever way you wish, but if you decide to repost it somewhere, please do include my name instead of your own so we know who originally made it. I'm also free to make as many spelling errors as I wish, and if you don't like spelling errors or weird grammar, go wash your eyes with soap or something. I also reserve the right to not update this guide, so if it ever gets to the point where it's old and not useful anymore, feel free to disregard it.

Guide

Written on May 7th, 2006 by Luu

Hello,

This guide is intended the new people who haven't played at all during beta (either closed or open (don't know how many people actually got to play during open, but anyway..)) and who have yet to figure out what exactly Seed is all about.

Well, Seed is mainly about two things; first one is the community feeling. Some may say Seed lacks content, but already at this stage that people call beta (or even alpha), Seed has what so many other games lack - it has a community feeling. You basically need help from everyone else in order to complete something, be that the TSR ring (note: These guys are GM's, they're not bad people trying to rip you off... or well, they are, but still..!) or any other ring that's trying to accomplish some kind of a goal. And the second thing is, well, Seed has a difficulty rating that says "Daaaamn!", especially if you're used to games where you have a sword and a shield handed to you, then you head out of the north gate and the first monsters you meet will be the ones you need to click on in order to advance. In Seed, you can go anywhere and you can go everywhere, and you'll see a lot of freaks that look very much like you. There's actually a reason for that though; and if you haven't done so already, I suggest you read the entire backstory, as well as the other goodies you find on the Story page.

So... Who are you, what do you do, and what's up with all these crashes?

Alright, you are yet another hatched egg, produced from the (pretty much) same DNA as everyone else. TAU (Big Brother) has only got a limited choice when making new people, so he tends to make a lot of the same choices, resulting in a lot of equally funny looking people. Who you are isn't a question that is answered already when you come sliding in, it's a question you answer along the way as you play the game. You define yourself in the ways you talk, in what you learn and in how you socialize.

What do you do, you say? This is where the guide gets a bit more technical. Sure you start out being what people would call a genious back on Earth, however on Da Vinci that doesn't mean much, because you're as good as every other new player. So, what you must do first is decide which direction you wish to chose. As it is, there are four main categories; Repairs, Production, Administration and Research. You start with a single point/level/call-it-whatever-you-want in Repairs, and a few tools to get you started. (The skill menu is the third from the bottom, by the way) So, in other words, all you really can do when you arrive is start learning, and start repairing. You'll notice, that once you start training skills to a higher degree, they will rapidly increase in the time required to advance, meaning that either you specialize, or you don't. I suggest you specialize, because then there's always someone out there who will like you. You'll notice that once you start training one of the basic categories, more and more of the skill tree will start opening up to you, and you'll find that it's very easy to get lost in all the skill levels, and the time it takes will dramatically increase. Already after a day or two, you can have skills that take several hours to complete, however in Seed, your skills will grow even while you're offline, so the impact isn't so horrifying. My suggestion for new players would be to either stick with repairing, or start specializing in one of the skills that the production line opens up, and then get to the advanced level in one of those. It'll take a while, but it's definitely worth it as all major components require these advanced levels in order to be built, and not many people actually have them.

Special note: Administration - leave this alone for now; why? First of all, you can't use it while in trial mode, in other words, it's useless the first 14 days of your play time. During this time, you're seperated from the politics part of the game. You can only watch. Special note: Research - researching is currently only partially implemented. There are some medical prototype items around, but this isn't where I'd put my skill points, at least not at this time. Maybe later.

And remember, no matter how you advance, you can always change course and go for a different skill group. How many skills you have does not limit you, or make it more difficult to go in a different direction.

Now, get to repairing because, well the tower is always in need of repairs. You'll find that in the Req/cspace area (Req/cspace - because the devs can't quite agree on how to spell it), the damage types will match the tools you start with, in order to help new players get started a bit easier. Blue damage is fixed by the wrench lookalike, Purple damage is fixed with the Rigger kit, and your CED kit fixes Red damage. To find these tools, you access your Assets menu, which is the brainy looking button second from the top. You equip an item by simply clicking it and then pressing the Equip button in the splash menu that appears. There's also an info button - this button is VERY helpful. Learn to use it for gods sake. It tells you everything you'd ever want to know about an item. Now, when you equip something, a box pops up telling you which item is equipped, and what functions it's capable of doing. Find a service hatch that needs repairs (these aren't difficult to miss as there's usually smoke and whatnot coming from them), click on it and select target in the splash menu. Find the appropriate tool, equip it and click the action for it once. The game will take care of the rest for you. Now, as the colored damage bar goes down, notice that a brown bar up in the actions box goes up. This is the stresslevel of your tool. If this bar gets full, your tool breaks (you don't want that), so click the action that's running, if it's getting close to the breaking point.

Once you manage to get a repair job finished, you'll be awarded some access points. These are what gives you access to various features around the tower, such as building items in the numerous factories, or acquiring components in the sharepoints. You could call them a kind of currency, but they cannot be traded between players. What access points you have are yours, and not everyone else's, but of course you can always trade items with others.

Now, your main goals at this point of the game is to get some skills so you can start being useful to someone, and find a ring. Rings are what you might call guilds in other games, however rings are more open to new people than most guilds are in other games, as rings need your help. The more people they have that are willing to contribute and work together on projects, the more successful it is, and finally, get to know as many people as you can. It's very important to know people who know people. You might need a favor some day.

As for the crashes... Well, that's something the devs are working on.

Additional note: When you talk to NPC's, you don't really talk. You emote. There's a whole list of emotes available at List of Emotes and this wiki will also provide you with a whole lot of other goodies.