General gameplay tips

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Basics

User Interface and Controls

Main UI Bar

• So, for the current User Interface a player has 3 main windows that are not able to be closed. These are your Special Abilities(Left), Equipped Skills (Middle-Bottom), and your Main UI Bar(Right).
  • You can see the Main UI Bar on the right. These are, from Top to Bottom:
    • Account Status - Place to report bugs, Un-stuck toggle, Give Suggestion, Report Abuse
    • Inventory - Shows players current carried items
    • Chat - panel for talking to other players
    • Skills - panel that shows the players current skills and their level in each
    • Map - shows the map of the area the player is currently in, if applicable
    • Quest - shows the players current quest, stuff to do, and a notepad
    • Recipes - shows all recipes that the player has learned
    • Pets - shows the players current pet(s)
    • Persona - shows current Equipment, Player Stats, Player Abilities
    • Options - shows various things.. key commands, Mouse and Movement Parameters, Graphics, GUI and Windows, Sound, Special Settings, Logout, Quit Game
    • Social - shows players hunting group and Friends list
  • The Equipped Skills bars, are where you can see your currently equipped skills, be they combat, animal, performance ect.
    • The default controls are numbers 1-6 for the top bar, and Ctrl + 1-6 for the bottom bar.
  • The Special Abilities bar holds, special action skills such as First Aid, Armor Patching, and even items from your inventory, allowing you to switch instantly.
• Player Controls
  • Movement Controls
    • Standard WASD movement is Default
    • Holding right-mousebutton + left-mousebutton will make your character move forward.
    • Always Run/walk toggle is ` (the button left of #1 on a standard keyboard), alternatively holding down LeftShift or RightShift will make your character run.
    • Auto Move Forward is Numlock by Default
  • GUI Controls
    • Screenshot default key is Ctrl+P (screenshots are found here:C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\ProjectGorgon\screenshots)
    • turn off/on GUI is = by default.
  • For the complete list see Controls.

Combat

Short and sweet version here check out Combat for a full run through of all buffs/equppmet/effects.

Above, you can see your characters Armor, Health, and Power

• Armor mitigates 1 point of damage for every 25 points of armor remaining.
• Health is the current health of your character. Can be healed with potions and specific skills.
• Power is consumed by using abilities that have a Power cost (most skills include emergency abilities that have no Power requirement, typically with a longer cooldown). The amount of Power available and your ability to recover Power between encounters is significant if you hope to take on more than one enemy at once, or even solo dungeons. Running while in combat will drain power.
• Rage is the energy source that powers monsters’ special attacks. As you hit monsters or they hit you, they gather Rage, and when their meter is full (an orange looking hand), they user their super power.
• Vulnerability monsters periodically go into this vulnerable state, and some attacks do extra damage against vulnerable monsters, so it’s sort of a whack-a-mole mechanic — you use your vuln-boost ability when you see the monster flashing vulnerable.

Levels

• A short explanation: (see Level for a thorough walk-through)
  • Most MMO's usually have a way for both the player's character and for NPC foe's that start at level 1 and slowly increase to 2 and 3, all the way to 50 or even 100. Project Gorgon does not do this. Skills are by Default at level 0, and do not show in the players skill panel, to get level 1(and a usable skill), the player will need to find the appropriate NPC that teaches the skill they desire.
• Combat Level:
  • A player has two combat-abilities they can bring to a fight, each with their own skill level, as well as the armor items that the player has equipped, this leads to a, hmm, 'hazy' view on what the effective level a player really is. Generally players are considered on the levels of their two currently equipped skills with the assumption that they have equipment that is reasonably close to their skill's levels. NPC Foes are judged on a case-by-case basis, with none really having at true 'level', the player will have to make an educated guess by looking at the mob's stats, again see Level for complete details.

Inventory and Items

Save everything!

Nearly everything that drops off enemies and harvestables are either useful in crafting or will earn you favor. As a new player make sure to use the "Small Talk" option with every new NPC you discover to learn about their likes and dislikes. Experiment by giving them appropriate gifts. This will give you over time an idea of what's worth holding onto.

If you still are not sure or want to hold onto stacks of items to gift later, store it with Hulon and start buying additional vault slots. You will be happy to have those stacks of items many levels later when you realize what they are for.

Storage basics

Hulon in Serbule Keep is the vaultmaster. You can use storeage in the main "council storage", and you can also use the nearby chest which is meant to transfer items between your characters on the same account. Many, many, NPCs offer storage once the player is their friend, this is very handy once the price of more bank slots becomes unmanageable. see: Storage

Empty bottles

To fill an empty bottle with water you can either activate a water well (eg. in Serbule) or similar object, but you can also simply stand in a body of water outdoors and right click an empty bottle.

You can also milk cows if you have an empty bottle (you can even milk player cows for better milk! *cough*).

Quests and favor

Get every NPC on your side!

Most NPCs in Project: Gorgon have services and special rewards when you gain enough favor with them. They also offer additional quests. So for the player who is used to have a guiding "main quest line", this is where you can find the brunch of your goals as you try to complete errands and earn favor from NPCs, which will send you to explore the world and the dungeons.

It is common that after completing a quest you'll find you still need to get a bit of favor to reach the next relationship level (for example you are 60% into "Comfortable" after doing an errand for the NPC, you still need 40% favor to move to "Friends" level). So if no more quests are available, check Small Talk and learn about their likes and dislikes and collect gifts for them.

Getting Comfortable or higher with most NPCs can earn you significant benefits, such as the ability to Shop, additional Storage (ie. permanent storage for your items), more quests, special recipes, etc.

Merchants

All NPC merchants share one common mechanic: the better your relationship with them (through Favor), the bigger their money pool and the more they will pay for your items (so eventually you can sell loot at full value).

The 'Buy Used' tab shows items sold by other players! If you can afford it, you can often buy items required by a quest rather than craft/hunt/harvest everything on your own.

Hanging out

Remember most NPCs give the option to "hang out" with them. Project: Gorgon also rewards you while you're offline, whether it is for 30 minutes or 8 hours! A good tip here is that you don't need to do that just before logging off. Chose the option at any time while you play, the last one you chose will always be active when you log out. You also don't have to worry about logging back in sooner. It won't cancel, it will just continue next time you log out.

Extra Tips for NPC Favor

Befriending the NPC Joeh, located in the central area of Serbule. He is one of the most helpful NPC's as he buys most gear you'll find within dungeons. Getting his Favor up is very easy, though a bit costly. One of his favorite and easiest things to acquire is Bacon, you can get this recipe from Fainor, located in the large Inn/Tavern style building. The fire near him is also where you can do a majority of cooking. The recipe only requires 2x Salt and 1x Pork Shoulder and gains +3 Favor per Bacon with Joeh.

Combat and experience

Looting corpses

Various looting options become available once you have the required tool in your inventory. Burying a corpse (to reduce the respawn time of the creature), skinning, butchering, and so on. Most of these items are available from the townsfolk of Serbule Keep.

See the following (mild) spoiler for a list of such items, or see the relevant skill pages.

Autopsy Kit

Allows figuring out "how someone or something died" with the pathology skill. A simple Autopsy Kit is first obtained in the tutorial cave. Examining corpses will also raise related Anatomy skills such as "Rodent Anatomy" and "Undead Anatomy". As these skills increase you will be able to see more details about the enemies before engaging them, such as what abilities they use, and what type of weaknesses they have.

Butcher Knife

Allows butchering of corpses for organs and meat. Can be bought from Fainor.

Handsaw

Allows harvesting wood. A Handsaw can be bought from Therese in Serbule.

Shovel

Gives the option of burying the corpses of deceased monsters, which makes replacement monsters appear more quickly.

Simple Skinning Knife

Allows removing fur or skin of an animal with the skinning skill.

Spoiler text.

Skills

First time's the charm

Most events in the game reward bonus XP the first time you complete them. This applies to using recipes in various Trade Skills, to eating all types of foods (Gourmand), slaying foes (both common and bosses), and even Binding yourself to a Teleportation Circle!

Seek objective

Make sure to pick up all harvestables like mushrooms even if they don't seem useful yet. Leveling Foraging will unlock Seek Objective at level 5 which is an ability that will orient your character to face in the direction where your currently active quest objective is! (think "tracking" in good ol' EverQuest).

Extras

Picking mushrooms does in fact NOT raise the Foraging skill, only the Mycology skill.

When exiting the Tutorial Cave you may notice a circle patch of low level mushrooms to the left of you, they respawn often and usually contain enough mushrooms to get a stack of 16-18.

If you desire to raise your Fishing skill the best place to start is the moat around Serbule. Start with Crabs until you reach the level required for Clown Fish, from there it is mostly collecting a mixture of Crab, Clown Fish and Grapefish. Perch and Eel are very rare to find and are not optimal for leveling.

The road from the Tutorial Cave to Serbule is where most Pigs spawn. They are easy to kill and always drop Pork Shoulder, Pork Shoulder is extremely important for raising Joeh's Favor fast.