Hi All,
A few of us have been playing Saga of Ryzom and I thought it would be handy to write a little mini guide to hopefully help you all out.
General Notes:
Ryzom is unlike other MMORPGs that force you to choose one particular “track” and stick to it. Every character may, with sufficient levelling, perform every action, get every spell, every melee skill, etc. You are not limited as to the kind of character you wish to make!
With that said, on the Ruins of Silan (the starter Island) I would personally recommend that you have a balanced character up till about level 30 at least and in fact I’d expand that up to level 70 or so.
While it may be tempting to only do the Fighter quests or only the Magic ones, your character will be much stronger if you do them all as opposed to one track. The reason is simple: You get a much larger skill point pool for critical upgrades such as more HP, more Sap, a faster HP regeneration time and so on. These upgrades may often be purchased at multiple trainers, so you can gain a quick few levels in Harvest or Craft and easily get an Hp or Sap boost.
This is also important for working in a team. While there will often be a specific person who does harvesting, another who has high craft, a tank and a magic user, and a healer, it is recommended that everybody get basic Magic skills like Heal Life. When you come out of a fight, you then have much less “downtime” waiting for healing that if you have only one healer, who must wait to regenerate thier sap.
Notes about Action bars:
In Ryzom you get a lot of different actions to do - and the key thing to remember is that every one of them can be customised and also that they all get added to your number 1 action bar.
What I would recommend is that on Silan you have 1 action bar per skillset type. So, for example, I have:
- Action bar 1 - Pure fighting skills (I use only 2 or 3, explained later) plus Self Heal Life and Self Heal Focus, and Use Item Enchantment
- Action bar 2 - Pure Magic skills (again, I use 4 or 5 at the most, generally 2 variations of Acid, Root and Root) plus Self Heal Life, Self Heal Sap and Use Item Enchantment
- Action bar 10 - Pure Crafting Skills (again, only 3 here I use), plus Self Heal Focus
- Action bar 9 - Pure Harvest skills (3 prospects, 1 or 2 extract), plus Self Heal Life and Self Heal Focus
To keep your action bars organised I recommend that every time you get a new action you remove it from bar 1 and re-add it to the relevant other bar. It is critical that you “know” your actions and where they are.
Always upgrade any actions with new upgrades or skills as you get them!
I recommend that every action bar except Crafting has a Self Heal Life! This is important - the Self Heal Life is recommended to be in the same position on every bar. For example, mine is in the shift-8 position. I would also recommend that every action bar (as mentioned above) have a Self Heal X (where X is Focus or Stamina or Sap) depending on the bar type (Harvest, Melee, Magic) and that it, too, stays in the same position on each bar.
Here is the setup of my 4 bars:
Melee Fighting:
You’ll notice I have very few actual actions here - this is becuase most people tend to prefer one type of weapon - slashing (swords, axes), piercing (daggers), and blunt (maces). So you only need to go for one set of skills - Bleeding for Slashing weapons, Ignore Armour for Piercing, etc.
Due to this, it is recommended that you have a very small set of actual attack buttons - generally I have 3:
- A main “first attack” which uses the most stamina - this stanza consists of the highest Bleeding/Ignore Armour, etc plus the highest Increase Damage skill
- A secondary attack, which uses little stamina but still does more damage that the default attack. This action consists of essentially just an Increase Damage stanza.
- A tertiary attack, which uses Increase Damage plus Accurate Attack, for those hard to hit enemies.
A note on Taunt. It has a very small range compared to magic - so it’s often better to lob an Acid1 at the enemy to lure them instead.
You’ll notice I have the “Speeding up Power” on this bar too. This is a very good skill and, in my opinion, is way better than “Invulnerability”. It takes only 10 skill points, lasts 4 seconds longer, and you can use other actions too. This means you can be running hell for leather away from your enemies, but, using the numpad 0 to look backwards, still fire item enchanted spells backwards! This can be the difference between life and death.
I also have the healing skills:
- Self Heal Life (this is upgraded as you get new upgrades so will always heal the most)
- Self Heal Stamina
As noted above, I recommend that every time you get a new skill you delete it from this panel and recreate it on another panel.
You may duplicate default actions by dragging them from the Actions panel (B) to the action bar.
You may not duplicate actions that you have already customised.
Magic Skills:
While some creatures have special resistances to, say, acid or cold, generally Acid is the best to go for at first. So, all you need to survive on Silan is Acid and the Root/Rot spells. This is why in my magic bar I have 3 Acid spells (Acid over Time, Acid 2 and Acid 3) plus Root and Rot.
I also have Fear, and my healing spells:
- Self Heal Life
- Self Heal Sap
- Heal Life (maximum heal spell here)
- Heal Sap
This means I can act as both an offensive magician, throwing spells, as well as a healer, if need be.
Like action Bar 1 I have the Speeding up power here - this is so I can quickly escape from combat and come back to rez people if need be.
In addition I have Create Sap Crystal and Use Item Enchantment, as on bar 1. This is so I can easily create crystals and recharge my weapons.
In terms of magic skills, concentrate on one spell set (Acid, Cold etc) becuase you’ll get more powerful with a single type instead of only have all the level 1 spells.
Crafting:
You really only need the basic crafting actions here, and you should just upgrade your existing ones with any HP / Sap boost upgrades you get.
Not much to say here really.
Harvesting / Foraging:
Here I have split the Foraging into 4. I use 1 (or 2, max) Extraction plans, and 3 Prospecting plans. This is done like so:
- Extraction plan. This has my highest Harmful extraction skill on it
- Extraction plan 2. (Not shown) This has my highest gentle extraction plan on it.
You only need one or 2 extraction plans.
- Prospect (Basic). This is your prospecting for default (basic) materials. It has the following stanzas (and I recommend you get them too): Extraction Time Bonus (highest you have), Range bonus. That’s it.
- Prospect (Fine only). This is your prospecting for fine materials needed for some quests and in general. It has the following stanzas: Extraction Time Bonus (highest you have), Range Bonus, Only Fine Materials. You may also use Multiple Spots if you wish.
My last prospect is simply this:
- Prospect (Find spots), containing: Deposit Tracking Range 50m (or higher), Only Fine materials.
I also have the standard Self Heal Life and Focus, since those clouds can damage you, and you can use it without having to back off foraging.
It can sometimes be confusing to have the icons all the same type - but the underlying actions be different. You can control the look of the icon by whatever you add to the action last. So, if I add the Extraction Time Bonus last I’ll get an hourglass. If I add the Fine Materials I get the Sun icon, and so on. Generally though, just using 3 prospect actions will help since you wont have too many to remember.
That’s it for Harvesting.
Enchanting weapons:
You’ll notice that some weapons have a Sap Load of more than 0. (For instance, the two handed sword you get, or the Frost touch, etc) This means that they can have a spell embedded in them.
The key things to remember are this:
- Any spell can be crystallized to add to a weapon, and
- using embedded spells requires sap crystals!
I often have either Acid2 or 3 (whatever your highest Acid spell is), or Fear enchanted onto a weapon. This allows you to do the maximum damage to an enemy.
I use it in the following way:
- Fire a high level acid spell (Acid 2 or 3) then immediately follow it with
- Fire the item enchantment multiple times
So long as your initial spell connects, you will get XP for the kill even if you then subsequently kill the enemy with your enchantment. However, it is worth nothing that if you kill an enemy purely using the enchantment you wont gain XP for the kill!
It is also worth noting as I mentioned above, that you can be running away very fast from an enemy, and using the backwards view, target and then fire spells backwards from your enchanted weapon.
The initial Sap Crystal spell sucks ass (5 sap per charge) but Sap 2 gets you 20 which is much better. If you are a fighter, then you can get sap 1 but otherwise just ask a mage on your team (or me) to make crystals for you.
By correct usage of sap crystals, a good embedded spell and a high damage initial strike, it’s possible for you to solo the 4 goohead looters in the Ruins without dying while still only at level 25.
Final Notes:
Much of this you already know, so apologies if you have seen it before.
To keep a balanced character, as I mentioned above, try and do all the different types of quests - and also remember that you can upgrade your HP/SAP etc through crafting or foraging.
If you have any questions on skills to get, or upgrades, then ask me - I’ve been playing Ryzom for a while so can offer advice. Obviously with this all said my own personal preference for playing can be different (I prefer magic heavy but with a mix of combat skills too), however, for Silan and on up to level 50-70 it’s best to try and have a balanced character so you can take on any position in a team.
As an example my character on the mainland carries with her both a set of heavy duty armour and a 2 handed axe, as well as a set of light armour and good amps. She can be either a tank or a healer, or a nuker. It’s your preference but one of the beauties of the game is that you don’t have to just be one. You can be it all! It takes a bit more time but is well worth it. 
To those of you who don’t play Ryzom… ignore this thread. 
Delphy