Draconia 101 - Beginners Basics

Intro

Patch: pre-Alpha 0.1.008

Hello and welcome to my beginners guide to Draconia!

You're interested in the game of Draconia but aren't sure if it's worth getting a key yet? Let me help you on that. Here I will show you everything you need to know about the game and the things you can expect currently before you decide to support the team and get your very own key!

Gameplay

You will find out what you can do in the game currently and what tasks you fill face, such as

- Exploring the map

- Sniffing for food

- Gathering materials

- Crafting items

- read scrolls and do early quests!

Combat

- Contributing in PvP

- Dangers around the map

- Enemies to fight and eat!

What's Playable?

You can find out about the current and future playables here, as well as some infos on the character creation.

Servers

This is a simple explanation about the games servers and PvX settings.

Current Controls

Here you'll find all controls you need to navigate through the world of Draconia with ease!

Gameplay

Draconia is in a very early state of development. With currently being Pre-Alpha, many mechanics are very basic or not implemented yet. For the guide I'll focus on what's possible now and leave most planned things out.

Basic NeedsYour character has basic needs: hunger and thirst. You'll have to keep an eye on those or your new friend will die! Death is not permament though, you won't loose your character and can simply respawn. Some food items can be picked up and you can enjoy your meal elsewhere.

Appart from that you'll loose stamina while moving. If you struggle to find food, you can sniff for it and pick it up for later. As long as it's not a carcass, you can store food in your inventory to be prepared for your next journey!

Here you see the HUD provided by one of my Yggaron!

Red: Health

Green: Hunger

Blue: Thirst

Orange: Stamina

Bright Blue: Experience

Purple: Mana (not used yet but effected by mushrooms)Status effects like hunger or night vision appear to the side of your actionbar.

Left side: Positive and Neutral

Right side: Negative

Leveling & GrowthNow that you know how to keep your dragon alive in simple daily situations, let me explain why you are so smol. You spawn as a baby dragon! This means you are weak, slow and helpless.

As a little hatchling, your stamina drains very fast, plus you need to eat and drink more often. So be prepared for your first few levels. Because as you level up, you grow in size and strength. A little help here are other players, that are able to carry you around when 10+ levels higher than you, or strong enough to do so. A level 20 griffin cannot carry a level 2 Vodros!

Just spawned Vodros hatchling -> max size adult Vodros

The maximum size is reached with lvl20, the max level however is currently 50.

Don't get confused with the experience bar saying 51 at the very right though.

To level up you can gather materials from metal and crystal ores, dirt and bone piles or take on the 3 daily quests that are currently available. To accept a quest, go to the stone with the blue crystal "horns" shown below and press E. The scrolls you find in the villages also hint towards more upcoming quests!

And remember: the game is in pre-alpha. reaching lvl50 takes less than an hour now and will take several weeks in the future (info from the lovely devs, Levia and Amph).

Inventory & CraftingYou'll already have an inventory, including your crafting menu from the first level on. You find 3 inventoryslots for food and materials. Apart from that you'll have 4 extra slots for gear, one to be used by equipping a bag to increase your inventory up to 6 slots currently. The symbols you find there show your inventory, crafting menu, collected scrolls your questlog and lastly your character tab.

The bags can be found directly in the Spawn Village!

Crafting is a rather simple mechanic in Draconia. It just requires you to have all ingredients in your inventory and the knowledge of what you want to craft so far. You can read more about recipes, materials and more in a separate guide linked in the "Final Words" section.

Photo ModeIf you want to take nice screenshots and get your character into the best light, you can use the photo mode! It lets you set the distance and focus, colors, brightness and in singleplayer even the daytime as you wish to take the perfect shots! And since weather is a thing too, you can make amazing thunder shots. It works in both, singleplayer and multiplayer, but the first is safer, since your character cannot move nor fight back while you are in photo mode.

The photo mode HUD and a finished screenshot with warmed up colors

Combat - PvP And PvE

First of all, combat in Draconia is voluntary. You do not have to fight for food, neither against AI nor other players. Infact, on PvPvE servers such as the currently only official server, you start in PvE mode by default. Later there will be pure PvP and pure PvE servers with community servers joining the party.

To switch from PvE to PvP, simply hop into the inventory/crafting view and go to the lowest part. There you can toggle it. Turning PvP on is instant, turning it of takes 15 seconds to avoid mid-battle exploits. PvP mode also activates by attacking another PvP player when you're in PvE mode yourself.

The BasicsThe Combat of the game is very basic, providing 2 attacks with most playable species. You can make use of basic bites as primary/melee attack and a secondary attack in form of an element breath or other. For example, the elementless griffing has a typical and simple peck with its beak and a powerful wingflap.

As little help for fighting in mid air, you can make use of the auto focus mechanic, which locks your dragons sight onto your opponent, helpfull for PvP. Just be aware, the flight combat is.. rather wonky.

A Vodros' shadow breath and the griffins wing flap attack.

Dangerous EnviromentNot only other players may be a threat to you, some carnivorous plants want to nimble your feet aswell! They lurk in caves and at the boneyard and will poison you when stepped on. Luckily, your fate ain't sealed when this happens. The effect can be cured by something I call "funny firefly nests" in the boneyard! Lick them and you'll be good, trust me.

Carnivorous Plants - the Cure

First PreyApart from that, you can hunt for simple AI and even eat them. Depending on what species they are, of course. In the boneyard you can find golems searching for the meaning of live and little delicious crabs just enjoying their existence around the beaches. Both are neutral and do little damage, the crabs provide some food.

Igor van Placeholder

What's Playable?

List of SpeziesMain Species 2 of 7

CreatureElementCan it fly?Current Status - European DragonShadowYesPlayable - LindwormPoisonNoPlayable - Eastern DragonWaterYesNot playable yet - WyvernFireYesNot playable yet - Quetzalcoatl/AmphitereLightYesNot playable yet - Big /BehemothEarthNoNot playable yet - Dragonpeople Surprise!NoNot playable yet

Wildlife Creatures

CreatureElementCan it fly?Current StatusWindYesPlayableEarthNoPlayableUnknownNoNot playable - dragonturtleUnknownNoNot playableUnknownNoNot playable

Note that backer species or items are not exclusive to the backers. There will be NO exclusives! :D

With the being confirmed as playables and the depth of gameplay mechanics they'll come along with, I have added them to the main species list here.

Character CreationOnce you have picked a species, you can customize it. Here the game provides many options like different patterns, a color wheel, attachments and more! A more indepth version of this aspect can be found in a separate guide linked in the "Final Words" section too.

Servers

Draconia offers many ways to enjoy its world. Alone in Singleplayer and with friends in hosted sessions or official/community servers.

Currently there is one official server with PvP setting. But when you or a friend hosts a server you can choose between the following options:

PvP

PvE

PvPvE

RP PvP

RP PvE

RP PvPvE

PvPvE servers allow a player chosen setting. The official servers use this setting.

RP sets the focus on roleplay, a fully playerbased situation with no further impact on the PvX setting.

For hosts, basic admin commands are implemented in the playerlist. You can set a player to moderator or ban them from the server. Both settings can be removed aswell.

SavingYour dragons are saved on the server side, which means that you cannot use SP characters on a server and the other way around unless you copy and paste them over to the desired server. This does only copy the appearance and not the progress.

Talking about progess, only the level and inventory is saved currently. So if you craft stashes and place them down, for now, all this will despawn once you log out. Keep them secured in your inventory.

You can still pose with your reinforced Stash III if you want B)

Current Controlls

Most common controls:

Walk: W A S D

Jump: Spacebar

Crouch: Ctrl

Sprint: Shift

Fly: F

Interact: E or E+Left Click

Combat:

Primary attack: Left Click

Secondary attack: Right Click

Little extras:

Roaring: V

Resting: H

Sleeping: H -> J

Inventory : I

Nightvision: N

Photo Mode: P

Sniffing: hold Q

Free look: hold Alt (flight and walking)

Playerlist: F1 (includes admin controlls)

Carry babies: E on Player to pick up smaller players (requires players to accept)

Final Words

Since I find it a little tricky to get to the important places, I'll drop you the important links:

Official Draconia Discord Server[discord.gg]

Official Draconia Website[www.draconiagame.com] When joining their Discord server, make sure to take a look at the #info and #faq channels.

I hope this guide could help you out and prepare you a little bit and promise to keep this guide updated with infos on what you can expect when you decide to support the team!

I personally love the project and watching it grow more and more into a finished product. It has a long way ahead though, but since the devs put all their love and coffee into it we will see more content in the future.

Here you find my other guides mentioned before:

101 - Crafting Guide

101 - Character Creation

Thank you for your time and stay hydrated! :)

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2465461036					

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