Advancement Guide
by Draxx Rodnujan
Haelrahv, 2003

Page 1

**Everything You Wanted to Know About Advancing in Haelrahv**
(Well...Almost Everything)

Greetings Hael goers! This is Counselor Draxx Rodnujan, here with some highly useful information for those that wish to know more about how to rise through the ranks in this game. Of course there will not be any earth shattering secrets on how to level faster, since there isn't any way to level faster! ::smirk:: This guide will, I hope, help you, the players, better understand how the advancement system in Haelrahv will be working.

1 Introduction
2. The INFO Display
3. INFO, Continued
4. The Eight Statistics
5. Skills
6. Skills, Continued
7. Experience
8. The Extended Learning Buffer
9. Death and Your Own Destruction


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The INFO Display

First of all, one of the important screens that you will become familiar with almost immediately. This display will give you the basic rundown of your character's stats and some other important information. Ignore the numbers and a few other things on this one as Counselors regularly change their stats and other things when they feel the need to.

Information for Demonic One Draxx Rodnujan, Level 7 Human Psionic

Agility : 100 Age : 120 seasons
Charisma : 100 Race : Human
Coordination : 100 Gender : Male
Intellect : 100 Height : 10'3"
Mentality : 100 Weight : 672 lbs.
Perception : 100
Strength : 101
Vitality : 100

Encumbrance: You are minimally encumbered.

Asapi rank: Funky blister

Statistic training points: 568
Skill training points: 132

Resistances:
Blunt : 0% Cold : 0% Electrical: 0%
Erosion : 0% Heat : 0% Magic : 20%
Mental : 35% Piercing : 0% Poison : 20%
Slashing : 0%

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INFO, continued.

- The first line will tell you you character's name (in case you forgot) and title if you have one, as well as your level, race and profession.

- Below that is a listing of eight very important factors to managing in Haelrahv: your characters stats. These are initially determined by your starting profession. Raising them is determined by your character's chosen race. More information on these will be available later in this writing.

- Beside the stats are five pieces of general information on your character including age, race, gender, height, and weight.

- The Encumbrance line will tell you in one sentence about how burdened your character is by everything that they are currently carrying. This effects a number of things, the foremost being combat effectiveness.

- The asapi rank displays what the Almighty Asapi has dubbed you for your current level of achievement...

- Below the important information about your asapi rank is a listing of your current stat and skill training points. These are what you will spend to increase your stats and skills. More on these later.

- The final piece of information is your resistance to each the 10 types of damage. Each of these will change depending on your race, profession, certain stats and skills. Your armor will add to this, but the addition will not be shown here, as armor covers specific parts of the body and these refer to the body as a whole.

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The Eight Statistics

Understanding what these do is probably just as important as understanding what skills you need to/want to train. In fact, these determine how well you perform in your various skills when you put them to use! So without further ado...

Strength: This is a measure of the character's physical power, and has a bearing on how much the character can carry without being burdened and your athletic abilities.

Vitality: High vitality means that the character can go for a longer amount of time before they begin to feel fatigued. This also effects your body's ability to fight off poisons and disease, as well as how much damage you can endure.

Agility: A measure of your flexibility and ability to move your body. This will aid in acrobatics as well as evading incoming attacks.

Coordination: A measure of how well you can move various parts of your body in tandem. This has a direct effect on various activities as disarming traps, stealing, and playing instruments.

Charisma: This is the measure of your characters personal charm, which does not necessarily include physical appearance. A high charisma will aid in getting more from selling commodities or items, as well as getting discounts from certain stores. This also has an effect on spellsongs and is paramount to many Guardian abilities. Along with all that, this stat contributes to your essence. Unlike other games...this is not a stat one should ignore!

Intellect: This measures your characters mental capacity. This stat will effect the rate at which you waste experience when draining your pool. This is also an important factor in magical spell power, and the amount of focus points that one has. Intellect is especially important for Mages.

Mentality: This measures the strength of one's mind. This has a direct bearing on the characters mental powers (psionics), the resistance to such powers, and the amount of focus points that the character has. Mentality is very important for Psionics in particular. Mentality is also a measure of how well you can handle stress and focus on a hard task, and therefore factors into many things, like healing wounds when you're injured or faced with the mortal peril of someone you are healing.

Perception: An indication of your character's awareness of their surroundings. With high perception, a character can finding hidden objects and people easier, as well as spot people sneaking around and stealing. Perception is also important in the use of most weapons, particularly ranged ones such as guns and bows.

To train any of these eight stats, you must first have some statistic training points, which you receive by earning experience. You will get one stat point for every 1200 experience points you earn. That is to say, actually putting them into your experience point total, rather than just getting experience points into your pool. You will also gain 25 stat points each time you level up.

You will spend these points at various training facilities that you can find. How much you spend depends on the current level of the statistic as well as your racial bonus/penalty in the specific stat. There is also a cap on how high each stat can be trained. The default cap is 100 in a stat, which is further adjusted by your racial bonuses/penalties in the stat, +/- 10 for each bonus/penalty point for training the stat. This cap is completely removed once the character reaches level 100.


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Skills
Your skills determine how well your character performs in certain actions or situations. These can range from using a weapon, defending yourself, using spells, singing, etc. Here is an example of what you might see when you type SKILL in game. Again, ignore the numbers.

Skill sheet for Draxx Rodnujan:

Acrobatics : 200 Parry : 200
Alchemy : 200 Persuasion : 200
Appraisal : 200 Poisons : 200
Archery : 200 Polearms And Spears : 200
Athletics : 200 Psionic Ability : 200 (250)
Aviation : 200 Pulse Weapons : 200
Bladed Weapons : 200 Repair : 200
Blunt Weapons : 200 Research : 200
Climbing : 200 Rhythm Instruments : 200
Cooking : 200 Riding : 200
Craftsmanship : 200 Sculpting : 200
Dancing : 200 Security : 200
Drawing : 200 Shield Use : 200
Driving : 200 Singing : 200
Ecology : 200 Skinning : 200
Electronics : 200 Spell Casting : 200
Evasion : 200 Spell Research : 200
Exotic Weapons : 200 Stealing : 200
First Aid : 200 Stealth : 200
Fishing : 200 (207) Streetwise : 200 (207)
Handle Animal : 200 Stringed Instruments : 200
Heavy Armor : 200 Surgery : 200
Intimidation : 200 Swimming : 200
Law : 200 Tactics : 200
Light Armor : 200 Tailoring : 200
Marksmanship : 200 Thrown Weapons : 200
Medicine : 200 Tracking : 200
Nautical : 200 (207) Unarmed Combat : 200
Occult Lore : 200 (240) Wind Instruments : 200
Painting : 200

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Skills, continued.

The general stuff
- What you see here is a list of the 59 skills that you are able to train as you progress through life in Haelrahv. The number beside the colon lists the current rank of the skill according to how much you have trained it. You can only train a skill a maximum of two times each level, with the exception of certain skills that are related to your chosen profession, which can be trained three times each level. Let's call these triple-trainable skills your "focus skills" since it's easier to type than "triple-trainable skills".
- In the character manager, depending on which profession you chose, your final choice will be to choose which of the nine weapon skills you want to focus in (add them to your focus skills). The only exceptions to this are the Guardians, who are only allowed to have Unarmed as their weapon focus, and the Mercenaries, who have all weapons as their focus.
- In addition to the focus skills, four of these will be what are called "core skills", which are the skills deemed necessary for every person in a particular profession to utilize. Each time you level up, each of these four skills will automatically be raised by one point, which means that you do not need to spend a skill point to raise it. This auto trained point does, however, count towards the three times you can train your focus skills, meaning that after leveling you can train the core skill two more times if you wish.

Training caps
- Like with the eight stats, there is a cap on how high each skill can be trained. First, there is the level cap which restricts the number of ranks a character can possess in any one skill by their current level. This is related to the number of times you can train a skill. For instance a level 10 mage can have a maximum of 30 in spell casting and 20 in tactics. If the mage currently has 0 in tactics, he can spend 20 skill points to get it to 20 if he wishes.
- The second cap is the upper limit cap. No skill can be trained above 200. Like with the stat caps, this one is removed once a character reaches level 100, though there is still a cap similar to the level cap, which is based on your total experience since you cannot actually progress to a level beyond 100, but are still able to train skills and stats beyond that level. This really only applies to your focus skills, since the rest of them can never attain 200 ranks before reaching level 100. Yes, this does mean that you can max out your focus skills if you raise them three times each level well before you obtain level 100...which will happen between levels 66 and 67.

Skill bonus/penalties
- Notice in the above list that there are numbers in parenthesis beside another number without them. The numbers in parenthesis is the current ability level that you are able to use for that skill, while the other one is the level that you have trained by spending skill points. This number in the parenthesis shows the effect of any bonuses or penalties that you have on the particular skill due to your profession, spells, psionic abilities, spellsongs, alchemy potions, or the death penalty (more on this later...::grin::).
- In addition to these, the atmosphere of a certain room may aid in completing or hindering tasks, which may also raise or lower your current ability with the skill. Some rooms may have a small bonuses to many skills due to people gathering there regularly and can be of assistance to you, while other areas may offer a larger, more specific bonus to only a few skills due to access to special equipment.

Obtaining skill points
- You will earn skill points through gaining experience. For every 2000 experience points that go into your total from your pool, you will gain one skill point. In addition, you will get 15 skill points upon advancing to the next level. To use these, you need to locate a training facility for the skill you wish to raise and train there. For every rank you raise a skill you need to expend one skill point.

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Experience!

The word that exists in the forefront of every power gamer's mind: Experience! Things in Haelrahv work a bit differently than in other realms, so here is where you can get the low down on how gaining this intangible formless gold and ascend your way to near god-hood. So first we have what you see when you typ EXP in game. You will of course get your name, race, profession, and level again here. But you will also get some new pieces of information.

Experience information for Draxx Rodnujan (Level 7 Jaddan Psionic)

Experience : 200870 Skill training points : 132
Next Level : 9130 Stat training points : 568

You have not experienced anything useful recently. Perhaps you should do something to further your knowledge.

Your last image was taken 2 minutes and 10 seconds ago.
If you were to roll back to this image, you would lose 0 experience points and 0 levels.

Total Experience
- The first thing you should take note of are the two sets of numbers on the left. The top one will tell you the total number of experience points that your character has earned during his or her adventuring career. This number will always be steadily getting larger for 99% of the Haelrahv population.
- Below that is the number that every power gamer is looking for: how much experience points (XP) you need until you can advance to the next level! This number will count down from 30000 each level as you drain more learned experience from your pool and put it into your total. You must obtain 30,000 experience points to reach the next level of advancement. Yes, to get from level 1 to level 2 you need 30,000 XP...and getting from level 99 to level 100 also requires 30,000 XP.
- There are ways to LOSE experience, but 99.9% of those can only be obtained by severely breaking policy...such as AFK scripting/gain (such as running a script to have your character forage over and over for experience while you are not paying attention to the game, and so on). This activity will not be tolerated, and repeated offenses can and will result in your character being deleted.

Skill/Stat points
- These have already been explained elsewhere in this document, but your current accumulation of both of these points is displayed here again, as their totals are directly affected by the gains in your experience total.

Experience Pool
- Below all of the numbers is a line that lets you know about your experience pool. More often than not, this will only tell you one of two things: if your pool is empty, or if there is currently experience in it. You put XP into your experience pool by doing certain activities. These activities range from hunting, alchemy, carving, etc. Over time, the experience in the pool will drain into your experience total, which is like allowing time for your mind to digest what it had just learned. The points will drain away from this pool in "pulses".
- When you "pulse", a few things happen: a certain number of XP are put into your total, a certain number of XP are lost, and still more XP are put towards working off the death penalty (only if you are currently under one). Your intellect score directly effects the efficiency of your mind in processing what you have learned, and higher intellect scores will reduce the amount of XP that is lost as waste.
- There is also a maximum number of XP that can go into your current total XP during any given pulse, which is 10. This effectively means that acharacter is unable to go into an area and kill things for hours on end and advance faster than everyone else. They can fill their pool up very quickly by doing this, but they must still wait for their XP pool to drain into their total regardless.

Imaging Information
- The final line is telling me how long ago it was that I had a genetic image taken and whatI would stand to lose if I died and was cloned right now. You should pay attention to this notice...as it will likely save you quite a bit of heartache and frustration in the long run.

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The Extended Learning Buffer

There is one other factor that must be taken into consideration when wandering around and trying to constantly gain as much experience as one can as long as one can. Your mind can not learn things constantly. It WILL get tired, and therefore this "learning curve" has been put in place. Every pulse that you drain experience, a point will be added to your learning curve. After you rack up enough (and believe me, it takes quite a bit) the amount of experience that you drain each pulse will slowly start to go down until you are draining a whole 1 XP every pulse.

There's no need to panic or go into a huff over this, though! Indeed, most players may never encounter this. Those that play excessively (like hundreds of hours a month) will be the ones that will have problems with this. There are two ways to drain the points put toward the learning curve. First, for every pulse that does not put any experience into your total (i.e. your pool is empty), a point will be taken from the curve total. The second is to spend time offline. The longer a character is logged off the more points will be taken away from the curve total.

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Death and your own Destruction

It will happen eventually, and it can set you back quite a bit, but there are things that can be done to protect the time that you've put into advancing your character. You have two options when you die that will enable you to breathe and go on with your activities once more.

Medics
Medics are your friends! If you alienate them woe be to you! WOE! A medic will be able to repair the damage that some nasty critter, trap, or perhaps even another person has done to your body. In addition, they are the ONLY ones that can be trained how to use cardiostimulators. When sufficiently trained, a medic must first repair vital body parts (all parts but the limbs and eyes) and any bleeding wounds, so that you will in fact be able to breathe safely. Then, they can restart your heart by using those lovely devices. This, along with a few other benefits, is a very good reason to make friends with a medic and bring them along on any excursions through hunting grounds you make. You should definitely pay the medic who gets you breathing again.
There are a few benefits to this method. First, you will not have to run back to retrieve your items, as you are simply being brought back to life. Second, medics are able to reduce the death penalty! The drawback? If you don't know any medics who can do this or don't have one handy, then you will need to wait around for one to come to you, and they will have to find you as well.

Cloning
If you hate medics, they hate you, or you don't want to wait for one to show up, you have the option of abandoning this current body, and having a new one cloned for your spirit to inhabit again. Around the planet, there will be various locations for you to go to where you can pay to have "a genetic picture" taken of you. They will then store that information until the time is needed to create a new body for you to live once more. This is not, of course, free. Each visit will require a fee if you are over above level 3.
Should you be foolish, and forget to do this often, there is a good chance that you can loose a great deal of the time that you have put into your character. Imagine being at level 25, getting killed, and then finding out that the last time you had a picture taken was at level 8? That would be quite a set back. On top of this, you will need to go back to where you died to retrieve your items, as they are obviously not cloned as well.
To add insult to injury, if you had any cybernetic implants, you will lose them all. Part of the process of getting an implant involve removing the body part it replaces. You will be cloned as a complete person, and will therefore have to undergo the surgery to get it reinstalled again, since you now have a complete body once more.
Your items will be protected from the wandering hands of grave robbers. If you should by chance fail to retrieve your items after a certain amount of time, they will be moved to the nearest pawnshop, where the owner (and only the owner) can purchase them back. Should they remain in the pawn shop for an extended period of time, they will be placed up for general sale to anyone.

The Death Penalty
Dying is not something that should be taken lightly. This penalty, affectionately dubbed "The Death Penalty" by a few members of the staff, is a reflection of this. Dying causes great trauma to the body AND the mind, and after you are able to walk and breathe again, you will find that you will not be operating at full strength. I'm not referring to hit points and stamina here either.
After being revived (by either method), you will have a penalty applied to all of your skills AND stats. This penalty can vary in severity, but it will lower every single skill you have by some percentage. Newer characters may not even notice this, as their skills may be so low that little difference can be seen between a 10% or even a 40% decrease. Advanced characters, however, may find that they are suddenly quite a bit worse at just about everything.
The only way to work this off is by using up XP points in your pool. Every pulse will expend some of the points in the pool towards working this off, and will slowly lower the penalty until it is gone. Should you die again while under the effects of a death penalty, a new one will be added on to any that are currently in place. Remember however, in Haelrahv it is easily possible to gain experience without taking part in dangerous activities. If you are affected by a severe death penalty, perhaps spending some time on a non-combatitive activity is just the thing for you.