Dwarf Fortress Tutorial (Video Series)

Beginner's Guide to Dwarf Fortress [DF2012]: Step-by-step tutorial series on how to get started in the Fortress Mode, how to build your first fortress and how to help your dwarves survive.

This Dwarf Fortress video tutorial series follows along as I build an example fortress, showing what to do and how to do it. The series is meant for new Dwarf Fortress players, but I hope it'll be useful for all DF players, new and experienced alike.

I recommend using these video tutorials in conjunction with the Dwarf Fortress Wiki. You'll learn the basics through the videos and can follow along, and then find additional information from the wiki.

PLAYLIST (all videos in this tutorial series): Dwarf Fortress Video Tutorial [DF2012]

DOWNLOAD the tutorial fortress http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=6891

How to Install Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress Tutorial, Part 1: Downloading and Installing (Lazy Newb Pack). How to Get and Install Dwarf Fortress (DF/tutorial)

Dwarf Fortress Video Tutorial

Playlist (all videos):



Watch on YouTube: Dwarf Fortress Tutorial 2012

LINKS AND REFERENCES

Game: DWARF FORTRESS - free & awesome

Game version: 0.34.11 (DF2012)
Graphics package: Phoebus' Graphic Set 0.34.11v00

Installation package: Lazy Newb Pack. See the Part 1 of this tutorial series for the Download and Installation Guide.

Other Utilities: splintermind-attributes is a Dwarf Therapist clone that displays the exact numeric attributes of the dwarves.

DF2012:Installation (Dwarf Fortress Wiki)
DF2012:Quickstart guide (Dwarf Fortress Wiki)
DF2012:Dwarf fortress mode (reference, e.g. controls)

How to Beat Barrett in 60 Seconds or Less - Deus Ex Human Revolution

To defeat Barrett:

1. As soon as the battle begins, throw a EMP granade on Barrett (if you have one)
2. Strafe/turn right, grab one of the gas canisters on the right
3. Throw the gas canister on Barrett
4. Run to the left or straight down the right side, grab the explosive barrel, throw it on Barrett
5. grab next gas canister or one of the fire extinguishers, throw it at him
6. run to another explosive barrel, grab it, aim, throw it on Barrett
7. repeat 5-6
8. (if you run out of things to throw, Barrett should be damaged enough for you to finish him with any gun)

See the video below for visuals...

Video Walkthrough of the Barrett Fight

Here's quick video showing how to defeat Lawrence Barrett, elite member of a secret mercenary hit squad, and get The Bull achievement.

I used over 45 minutes on the first boss battle of Deus Ex Human Revolution, trying to win the fight with guns, which I hadn't used at all before that as I was playing "stealthily", avoiding enemies by sneaking past them, or taking them down without killing them...

Anyway, after almost an hour I had to give up and I looked for help on how to win Barrett. I found an easy way, which got the job done (even that it was a bit "boring" way to win the fight), but at least I was able to continue this awesome game.

And here's a video I made to show you how to do the same...

Deus Ex Human Revolution Barrett Boss Battle Guide



Watch on YouTube (HD 720p):
How to Beat Barrett in 60 Seconds or Less - Deus Ex Human Revolution - Boss Battle I

All Things Eve - The Eve Online Guide

Fly Safe!

All Things EVE- The EVE Online Guide

Collection of Guides to Get Started in EVE Online.

Into Eve Online
Risk and Reward in Eve
Eve Kick-Start: Fitting Your Ship

Eve Kick-Start: Creating a New Eve Character
Eve Kick-Start: Skill Training for Newbies
Eve Kick-Start: Tutorials and Beyond

Holy Priest Guide from Ensidia

There is new sheriff in town of holy priest guides for World of Warcraft!

poptisse of Ensidia treats us with comprehensive guide to all things holy, recommended read to anyone running around in their pajamas throwing frisbees.

Ensidia - Holy Priest Guide, part 1

Ensidia - Holy Priest Guide, part 2

One of the best guides I've seen about Holy Priests, and I've read a lot of them over the years.

Effective Procrastination: Don't Waste Your Time Looking for Ways to Waste Time

Wasting time is hard! You have to think about what to do and feel bad about avoiding whatever you want to avoid by wasting time. Well, I wasted time by writing this blog post and playing all these cool and totally meaningless games while at it. Mission accomplished, I wasted several hours :) You can too..

Effective Procrastination: Don't Waste Your Time Looking for Ways to Waste Time

Tired of the constant raiding, but feel like you need a reason not to log in?

Need to waste couple of hours while hiding in your cubicle before you can leave from work?

Or just feel like procrastinating a bit before you take a dash to finish that paper you have to finish for tomorrow?

Look no further, these should make time fly by!

RetroShoot

In RetroShoot, you just have to move your mouse, perfect! And it comes with mind numbing music to boot, I love it!

Falling Sand

So beautifully simple but still so fashinatingly versatile. Great time waster!

Not Pr0n

I wrote shortly about Zahada earlier this year, and man, if you thought that was tricky - Go for the Not PrOn.

Not enough? check these lists for more

As a side note, I saved you from wasting time for googling these up yourself :)

Top 10 Free Time Wasting Sites on the Net - Picked the Falling Sand and Not PrOn from this list, go check out the other 8.

The 15 Best Places to Waste Time on the Web - if you don't feel like gaming, but still need to waste time, go here.

A Complete Waste of Time Massive list of free & fun games - An extensive list of (mostly) fun, free online games you can play in 5 minutes or less

Have you found a great time waster everyone should know about?

Post it on the comments!

Blog Watch: Ulduar Healing Guide by Matticus

Yay, Ulduar is here! And for us Healers, Matticus treats us with Healing Ulduar: Flame Leviathan for the first boss. Although, it's Nice guide for non-healers too if you ask me :) To get things rolling, Razorscale and XT-002 Deconstructor 25-man guides are there too already.

For those who've lived under a stone and are unaware of World of Matticus blog, go check it out! If nothing else, check the healing guides for raids, like the needed-this-week Ulduar Healing Guide, which the mentioned Healing Ulduar: Flame Leviathan is part of.

Three (Healing) Addons to Rule Even More

Yes, more useful healing addons right here.

The most popular post on this blog was posted a year ago, and it's time for continuation of the oh-still-so-valid Two (Healing) Addons to Rule Them All.

In the previous installment of "healing addons that rule" series, I highlighted two essential ones: Quartz and VisualHeal.

A year after Quartz is still the best casting bar there is, so go get that if you for some non-sense reason haven't already! (Even if you are not a healer, Quartz is for you, as it has has useful plugins, like flight time and tradeskill timer)

VisualHeal is also still an essential addon, but note that several addons (including the most popular raid frames addons like X-Perl and Pitbull) use LibHealComm-3.0 too, so check if you have one installed already.

VisualHeal, PitBull, BunchOfBars, oUF, Grid, PerfectRaid, ag_unitframes, X-Perl and sRaidFrames all use LibHealComm-3.0 for communicating healing. Ideally all healers in the group should have VisualHeal or another addon that uses LibHealComm-3.0 installed. VisualHeal will continue to function even if some healers don't have it, but it will not be aware of healing cast by these players.

Three (Healing) Addons to Rule Even More

After you have Quartz and VisualHeal (directly or through LibHealComm-3.0), you'll be wanting these three too:
Clique
Grid
SmartBuff

Why these, you ask?

Clique

Easy mouseover casting

When healing in a party you can manage targeting each player and casting a spell to'em, but on raids you will need simple mouseover casting (which helps you in 5-man teams too). And Clique makes setting up your keystroke+mouseclick shortcuts to all your spells so simple that adding tailored macroes yourself would be a waste of time.

Grid

Very compact and highly customizable unit frame

Grid gives you compact view to the whole party/raid, and through some configuration, you'll have all the information you on one glance. For example, you can see who has your renew or Prayer of Mending on them and if you need to recast one soon, see incoming heals to the whole raid (as all healers are using VisualHeal or some mentioned LibHealComm-3.0 addon right?).

If you setup your unit-frames nicely, you can go without Grid, but I like it's compact view a lot, and use it as my only raid frame. And Grid works superbly with Clique, so there you do, get'em both :)

SmartBuff

Super easy buffing

I don't want to check if someone needs that Stam or Spirit buff, or if I should renew my well-fed buff, or even worse, have someone in the raid shoud "Stam buff please!". Smartbuff does it for me, and all I have to do is roll my mousewheel and it's all done. This way I always have my Inner Fire up and the lone one who took one for the team at last boss gets the needed buffs from me before we rush on. Works for all classes.

Bonus Addon

Some people say you don't need Decursive if configure and set-up Grid as your decurse/cleanse point, but I like to have those curses and sicknesses in different area of the screen, so I prefer Decursive. Every class with any curse- and/or disease-removing abilities, should have this.

Where to Download Addons

Download the addons from wow.curse.com or WoWUI or any site you prefer (those two are the biggest and get fast updates for the popular addons)

You also want to set-up a system to automatically check updates for your addons, because to avoid using old/buggy version, and skip the manual work of checking, downloading and installing the new versions.

Unfortunately WoW Ace Updater is no longer with us, as wowace integrated with curse.com, and for me, curse updater just isn't very good (tbh, it sucks big time).

But you have at least two great options: Wowmatrix being the most popular I believe, and WUU - WoW UI Updater which I'm using at the moment (because I happened to find that before wowmatrix).

Both Wowmatrix and WUU support all the possible addon sites and give you one-click version check and update of the addons while at it = Less time updating addons, more time enjoying the game you love.

More "Healing Addons That Rule"

Two (Healing) Addons to Rule Them All

How To Powerlevel Mining with Smelting

I leveled my Death Knight Alt's mining skills the tradiotional way to 240 until I realized one can also get a lot of mining skill from smelting ores. In fact, you can level all the way to 315 entirely by Smelting (if enough Ore is available). After 315 some actual mining is mandatory, but not a lot. After 375, only way to level mining is, well, mining.

Here's the most efficient way to level mining from 1 to 375.

WARNING: the most *efficient* does not equal the cheapest.

This requires gold, but if you really want to powerlevel, that's what it takes. If you don't have extra gold to spent, use the traditional mining guides.

Depending on the price difference of Ore and Bars in your server, the cost of leveling this way varies (in theory, you might even make money). The buy amounts are heavily overestimated, it is possible to get by with less.

When Smelt turns green for the Ore in question, skill-ups will slow a lot, so you might hit the gray or you might not with the noted amount. To 90% guarantee no mining runs, buy the noted amount (and buy more if needed).

At least buy the minimum to minimize the mining runs.

* SHOPPING LIST

Buy 12 (minimum 3) stacks of Copper Ore.
Buy 12 (minimum 3) stacks of Tin Ore.
Buy 12 (minimum 3) stacks of Silver Ore.
Buy 12 (minimum 1) stacks of Iron Ore.
Buy 5 (minimum 2) stacks of Gold Ore.
Buy 12 (minimum 2) stacks of Mithril Ore.
Buy 6 (minimum 1) stacks of Truesilver Ore.
Buy 12 (minimum 2) stacks of Thorium Ore.
Buy 12 (minimum 3) stacks of Fel Iron Ore.
Buy 10 (minimum 2) stacks of Adamantite Ore.
Buy 8 (minimum 2) stacks of Eternium Ore.

OPTIONAL SHOPPING:

Cobalt Ore (buy if you don't hit 375 with the above)

* 1-75 MINING

Buy 12 (minimum 3) stacks of Copper Ore.
Buy 12 (minimum 3) stacks of Tin Ore.

Smelt all the Copper Ore (green until 47, skill-ups slow after that)

If your mining is under 65, buy more Copper Ore and Smelt more. (or go mining until 65)

Smelt Tin (green until 70, gray at 75)
Smelt Bronze (green until 90, gray at 115)

If your mining is under 75, buy more Copper and Tin Ore and Smelt more Bronze. (or go mining until 75)

* 75-150 MINING

If Smelting Bronze took you way past 75, you don't need as much Silver.

Buy 12 (minimum 3) stacks of Silver Ore.
Buy 12 (minimum 1) stacks of Iron Ore.

Smelt Silver (green until 122, gray at 130)

If your mining is under 125, buy more Silver Ore and Smelt more. (or go mining until you hit 125)

Smelt Iron (green until 145, gray at 160)

If your mining is under 155, buy more Iron Ore and Smelt more. (or go mining until 155)

* 150-225 MINING

Buy 5 (minimum 2) stacks of Gold Ore.
Buy 12 (minimum 2) stacks of Mithril Ore.

Smelt Gold (green until 177, gray at 185)
Smelt Mithril (green until 202, gray at 230)

If your mining is under 230, buy more Mithril Ore and Smelt more. (or go mining until you hit 230)

* 225-300 MINING

This is where it gets hard, if Truesilver Ore is not available.

Also Truesilver is the one Ore is most likely to cost a lot more than the bars.

Buy 6 (minimum 1) stacks of Truesilver Ore.
Buy 12 (minimum 2) stacks of Thorium Ore.

Smelt Truesilver (green until 242, gray at 250).

If your mining is under 250, buy more Truesilver Ore and Smelt more. (or go mining until you hit 250)

Smelth Thorium (green until 270, gray until 290)

Go mining until 300. In theory, this is the first spot you absolutely have to mine :)

* 300-375 MINING

Buy 12 (minimum 3) stacks of Fel Iron Ore.
Buy 10 (minimum 2) stacks of Adamantite Ore.

Smelt Fel Iron (green until 307, gray at 315)
Go mining until you hit 325.
Smelt Adamantite (green until 332, gray at 340)
Go mining until you hit 350.

Buy 8 (minimum 2) stacks of Eternium Ore.
Smelt Eternium (green until 357, gray at 365)
Smelt Felsteel (green until 357, gray at 375)

Note: You need 350 to mine Cobalt in Northrend (so 375 is not needed).

If your mining is under 375, and you want to Smelt as far as you can:

Buy some stacks of Cobalt Ore
Smelt Cobalt (green until 362, gray at 375)

* 375-450 MINING

Smelting days are over :(

Go mining Cobalt until 400.
Go mining Saronite and Titanium Ore until you hit 450.

* LINKS

Traditional mining guides (with mining route information)

Gatherer - The addon for any gathering profession

WoW Mining Guide with Maps 1-450 - WOTLK Mining Guide

WoW Forums Mining 1 to 300 Guide by Highlander on EU-Terenas
Mining @wowwiki
Smelt @wowwiki

Do Not Downrank that Heal (to Save Mana)!

10 months ago and at level 70 downranking your heals was a standard way to save mana, e.g. by spamming downranked Greater Heal continuously but still staying with almost full mana (because of mana cost and mana regen).

However, this all changed in the patch 3.0.2 (Downranking from WoWWiki) :

With the release of patch 3.0.2, downranking was essentially eliminated for its ability to conserve mana, as all spells are now reliant on current base mana. It can still be used as a choice should a player want to use a faster spell

So if you downrank your heal, you'll be using the same amount of mana but heal a lot less. Generally this is a bad thing (there are exceptions, if downrank is faster to cast but this is pretty rare).

And this is exactly what I did all the way from level 70 to 80, and even *on* the level 80. I downranked all my heals, I was healing about 2/3 of my max heals but I was using the same amount of mana. I did Heroic Culling of Stratholme like this (not easy), I did Spider Wing of Naxxramas like this. Basically using level 70 heals all the way.

Why?

For the sake of it? Because I'm crazy? Well, yes, but that's not the case here.

I use combination of addons called Grid and Clique for my heals. Grid is super simple, but modifiable, group/raid frame. And Clique enables you to bind any spell in your spell book to keypress-combinations used with different mouseclicks & cast them on mouseover (so no "targeting" in a sense). All this works beautifully apart from this one small thing...

When you "map" a spell with Clique (e.g. by holding down Alt and right-clicking a spell in spellbook with Clique config open, that spell is mapped to Alt + Right-click), it essentially maps the certain *rank* of that spell. Now you probably see why I was using level 70 heals all the way...

I've been using Clique for a very long time, so of course, I had mapped my level 70 heals to it. In came the expansion, I never went to see Clique's config - why should I, spells were already mapped and I was mostly dps leveling my way up - so all the spells were at level 70 rank.

I'm so happy the fellow priests noticed this when we were doing Naxxramas (don't remember the exacts, but I was throwing 7-8k crit Greater Heals, when it should be closer to 11-14k range). So I remapped all my spells and now it's good.

Conclusion: Addons are very helpful, but don't rely on them to work as you think they work, make sure they do :)

Zemalf out, See You in Northrend!

Be Prepared for WotLK: Badges of Justice

Continuing the series 'Be Prepared for Wrath of the Lich King', this time on Badges of Justice you have lying around.

In Wrath of the Lich King, there will be new "badges": Emblem of Heroism, similar to Badges of Justice, but for level 80. Badges of Justice will continue dropping in level 70 heroics and raids, but you can only use them to level 70 items.

If you have plenty of Badges lying around, you might want to make use of them now - or actually not lying around anymore, as they are in your Character windows Currency tab, but anyway.

More and less you have two options:

1) Use Badges of Justice to optimize your gear for leveling, that starts after a week from now, by buying items that will help you do more damage, and thus, level more quickly.

* use lootrank.com to evaluate which items you could possibly buy. You don't have to do theorycrafting yourself, as you can take advantage of the templates dwarfpriest has gracefully submitted to lootrank.com for all of us.

2) Use Badges of Justice to buy uncut Epic Gems, 15 badges a shot. You can use the gems yourself to help the early leveling, or you can sell'em as they're not bind in anyway to you:

* Cut the gems yourself, or find Jewelcrafter to cut them for you, and socket the gems to your current gear to boost damage.

* Sell the gems! Prices are going down fast, but you still might fetch several hundreds of gold if you're quick. Check the Auction House for the prices, and decide if it's better to sell the raw gems or the cut ones.

I'm going for a combination of these, I'll be buying couple of items I can use, which will even out my shadowpriest gear in different slots, and the rest of the badges I'll be putting on gems, which I will sell. If it happens that I can't sell'em during this week for reasonably good price, I'll get'em cut for +Spellpower & possibly +Hit gems and use them then.

One more tip: It's only a week to go until expansion is live, so make a use of it and empty your bags and bank from unneeded trash and sell'em at Auction House. After doing that you might want to empty your quest log (by doing the quests preferrably, not just abandoning them) to have a fresh start with the quests from the expansion.

If you're in a guild, or even responsible for the guild bank, you might have a lot of work to do when emptying the guild bank and selling the items, but it pays off with more room in bank for the new mats and items, and of course, some much needed gold for the guild.

That's all for now. See you in Northrend.

Be Prepared for WotLK: Leveling

The Wrath of the Lich King expansion is upon us, and for many it means leveling our character to the new level cap of 80. It's been ages since I've done any leveling, and just a week ago I took and leveled all my alts at least two levels, just to get a hang of leveling again.

So here's a quick post with some tips for leveling:

Spec and gear for the most damage

Forget healing. Concentrate on Damage!

You should be geared, and Your talent points should be distributed, to maximize you damage (and thus maximize your experience/hour for example).

For example, I will be very dark shadow priest as soon as the expansion launches, as shadow talents improve my damage output the most.

Get some questing addons

Two I use the most are:
LightHeaded
- Tips directly from Wowhead to aid your questing
QuestHelper
- Calculates the most efficient path to do the quests you have

And to take these two to a whole new level:
Cartographer 3.0
- Maps and notes
TomTom
- Waypoint arror deluxe

Don't forget to have fun

It's new expansion! so enjoy it, don't let it swoosh by too fast :)

Eve Kick-Start: Fitting Your Ship

I'm not an expert on fitting internet spaceships and there's plenty of suggestions around forums and net how to fit basically any ship at any point of EVE Online.

However, I'll write up some basic info about fitting your ship, as I was pretty overwhelmed when I first opened up the in-game market to take a look what is available.

You're fitting you ship for a purpose: to maximize cargospace, make the ship faster, be able to mine ore, be able to do damage to opposing ship, etc. And most of the time it comes down to...

STAYING ALIVE

1. Be able to sustain more damage than the other fellow can.
2. Be able to do more damage than the other fellow can.
3. Be able to evade hostile contact or break that contact.

A Comprehensive New Player Guide to Tanking

SHIP FITTING RESOURCES

To start this, to try different fittings for your ship, you don't want to spend ISK to see it won't fit or just isn't what you wanted. Luckily there's an excellent tool for this, called Eve Fit Tool (EFT). Download the tool and try it out.

Second, there's a post with all ships setup threads in the forums for your pleasure or even more in the Battleclinic.com's Ship loadouts tool, so you don't need to figure out it yourself. I know I was flying my first frigates without knowing why I fitted it like I did, I just followed guidance :)

SHIP FITTING BASICS

You should also pay attention to the bonuses your ship has, and fit it accordingly (most of the time) - ship type's bonuses are listed in the description part of the ship info. For example, if the ship has bonuses for cargo space or mining yield, it's not probably the best mission runner for you, but it will be great miner instead. Or if the ship has bonuses for small hybrid turret damage, you are very likely to have the best results using those small hybrid turrets. There are exceptions of cource, especially later in the game and PvP, but I don't know anything about that yet, so just believe me: take the benefit of the ship bonuses.

When fitting the ship, you'll bump into cpu and power capacity, which different item modules eat away (some more, some less, some nothing). The cpu and power capacity of the ship increases with your electronics and engineering skills - which is why they were mentioned as one of the "core skills" in the Skill Training installment of Eve Kick-Start. So keep in mind that it's not just the getting the skill to get into a ship. It's also about flying it well and there's quite many skills which help you fly any ship better.

Other than that, it's all about figuring out what you want and then getting the best tools (you can afford) for the job. When looking and comparing the different kind of modules of the same type, keep an eye on the Meta Level of the item. Meta Level is a quick indicator of how good the item is, higher being better. For more detailed comparison, take a look at item info (that blue 'i') - go to the variations tab - and at the bottom of the window you'll see button to 'compare' - Click, and you can easily see the attributes of the different variations.

EARLY FRIGATES

When you're starting out, you're initial ships will be frigates. Your edge flying a frigate is speed. So take an advantage of that and improve it even further. By doing this, level 1 missions will be a breeze.

Look for ship fittings which includes Afterburner I & Nanofiber Internal Structure - These increase you speed - most level 1 mission foes will never catch you or even hit you. Fit your ship with long-ranged weaponry and look for more range from ammunition. For example, In my Tristan (Gallente Frigate II), I used this setup:

[Tristan, Newbie Edition]
Nanofiber Internal Structure I
Nanofiber Internal Structure I
Shield Power Relay I

Small Shield Booster I
1MN Afterburner I
Cap Recharger I

150mm Railgun I, Tungsten Charge S
150mm Railgun I, Tungsten Charge S
Standard Missile Launcher I, Flameburst Light Missile
[empty high slot]

Hobgoblin I x1

It was easy to fit with new character (Electronics 2 and Engineering 2 I think). The setup takes benefit of the speed. And Tungsten charges in the Small Railgun Is increase the optimal range to over 16 kilometers, where most level 1 mission enemies can't even shoot! And when they do, Small Shield Booster I was a plenty to deal with it. And with one missile slot empty it handled level 1 missions very nicely.

OK, there's a small introduction to ship fittings and early frigates. But you'll be quickly going for destroyers or cruisers, especially if you chose military career - and to get ready for that and everything else you want to know, read up from forums Ships and Modules Resource Thread in the forums. And keep in mind the forums Ultimate New Player Guide Collection.

Fly Safe! Always have a skill in training, Keep your clone up to date and Insure your ship.

Eve Kick-Start: Tutorials and Beyond

Continuing the EVE Kick-Start series (previous parts covered Character Creation and Skill Training)

After creating your character, and it's the first time you're playing EVE Online - do the tutorial. Seriously, do it. You gain basic knowledge of the game AND get a lot of useful equipment, including ships.

Eve Kick-Start: Tutorials and Beyond

So do the tutorial, and do the 2 part mission you get from the agent during/after the tutorial. After this the agent adds an Event-Agent to your People & Places (menu there on the left which you should be familiar after tutorial).

Go to the station the agent is, and do the 10 part mission from the Event-Agent after the 2 part tutorial mission. This will net you about 500000 ISK, implants, basic skill books and on top of that you'll get your first new ship (as a side note, that ship you'll get will be superb for early mining, which is a great way to get money in Eve).

After doing the 10 mission arc, you can do whatever you want. That's Eve - a sandbox.

However, I highly recommend doing the 10 mission arcs for the other careers of your race as well (2 in addition to the one you already did). You can find them from the system list below.

TUTORIAL & 10 MISSION ARC SYSTEMS

Do the 2 part tutorial in each station, then start the 10 part mission from the Event-Agent.

Amarr: Conoban, Deepari, Pasha
Caldari: Jouvulen, Uitra, Todaki
Gallente: Trossere, Couster, Clellinon
Minmatar: Malukker, Hadaugago, Embod

To get to the system you want: Go to the star map (F10), Go to search window and type in the system name (or the start of it). Right-click, set destination.

The autopilot you're way there -or- do it manually 'warping to 0' to each gate waypoint, jump through, rinse and repeat until you arrive at the destination. Watch out for low-security systems, as you are more likely to get shot there, set you're autopilot accordingly (should as default avoid low-sec systems).

Like said, doing all the 10 part missions will net you a load of early ISK, equipment, implants and ships. After this I'd recommend you to at least some mining, as it is one of the best, if not *the* best way to make early money. Or try the missions, especially if you chose military career, but do buy some better equipment for your ships (or actually better ship even).

You'll also want to join a corporation at some point, there's a plenty of rookie friendly corporations out there, so just pick the one that looks to suit you're play style and future plans. You can find corporations using the corporation tap on the left menu (NeoGon they call it), and use the search or look at the adverts. You can also join the Recruitment channel if you want. Eve University is on of the best bets early on, as Eve Uni specializes in helping and training new players, so definately check them out.

As a last tip, or more of a reminder for new pilots: you're not safe anywhere in Eve. You can be shot at any point. You are *relatively* safe in high security systems (0.5 and above), but don't count on it, so...

Never Undock with Something You Cannot Afford To Lose

That ends this segment of Eve Kick-Start. Fly Safe, keep you're clone up-to-date and insure your ship :)

All Things Eve (Further Reading)

Into Eve Online
Risk and Reward in Eve
Eve Kick-Start: Fitting Your Ship

Eve Kick-Start: Creating a New Eve Character
Eve Kick-Start: Skill Training for Newbies
Eve Kick-Start: Tutorials and Beyond

Eve Kick-Start: Skill Training for Newbies

As I mentioned in the previous post about Creating a New Eve Character, I was once new to EVE Online as well and wanted to share the experiences I've had, and hopefully help the new players to get the most out of EVE.

Eve Kick-Start: Skill Training for Newbies

As you may already know, skill training in Eve is time based. And you can train any skill you want (taken that you have the prerequisites for the more advanced skills). Thus, you're not tied to any "class" choice or anything like that. How fast you gain skillpoints, is based on the attributes of your character. After the skill is trained, you have that skill, and attributes won't affect how good you are using that skill.

Early on you might want to train some skills towards your early career (mining, industry, trade, etc.) or train up core skills - like engineering, electronic and mechanic - which any pilot needs as they boost the abilities of any ship you choose and enable you to fit the usual modules you need. Whatever you choose, train the ten core skills listed below.

If you like more in-depth info about the skills, look for that in the EVElopedia Skill Guide, Useful Thread on EVE Forums about Skill Training, or one of the short lists about those skills: EVE Skills Roadmap.

Below is a list I've compiled from several sources, including the wonderful New Players: Very First Steps -guide.

CORE SKILLS FOR ANY PILOT:

Train all these skills to level 3, before going for 4 and 5. The numbers behind the skills is my recommended order what to train to 4 and 5 first.

Engineering (4): maximize the power grid.
Electronics (1): maximize the CPU.
Energy Systems Operation (2): max the capacitor recharge rate.
Energy Management (3): maximize the capacitor capacity.
Shield Management (5): maximize shield capacity.
Shield Operation (8): maximize the shield recharge rate.
Mechanic (6): maximize hull strength.
Hull Upgrade (7): maximize armor strength.
Navigation (9): maximize armor strength.
Spaceship Command (10): maximize armor strength.

OTHER GENERALLY USEFUL SKILLS

Energy Grid Upgrades: reduce the CPU need of power modules.
Weapon upgrades: reduce the cpu needs of weapons
Control bursts: reduce the capacitor need of weapons

Summary - early on, concentrate on the core skills, and then go for the skills you need for the things you want to do and want for new ships, equipment or career.

Recommended order to train the core skills: Engineering, Energy Systems Operation, Energy Management, Electronics, Shield Management, Mechanic, Hull Upgrades, Shield Operation, Navigation & Spaceship Command. First take all to 3, then to 4 in this order and then to 5.

As a last tip for this entry, download EVEMon - Character Monitoring and Planning tool. In short, it's a tool for keeping track of your EVE Online character progression and planning your skill training in advance (and offline even). You can easily find the skills needed to fly the ship you want or equipment you want to fit and so on. In addition to this, it helps you schedule the skill training based on your play time. Even if you don't understand all this, just get EVEMon :)

All Things Eve (The Full Series)

Into Eve Online
Risk and Reward in Eve
Eve Kick-Start: Fitting Your Ship

Eve Kick-Start: Creating a New Eve Character
Eve Kick-Start: Skill Training for Newbies
Eve Kick-Start: Tutorials and Beyond

Eve Kick-Start: Creating a New Eve Character

I'm new to EVE Online. My character, Araihs Revlis, was born on 15th of September 2008, 14:01 game time. So that makes me 3 weeks old today. With my Eve newbie experiece, I'd like to share some tips that helped me during these first couple of weeks in Eve. Starting with character creation.

(This post was written in 2008 and the character creation has changed significantly since then. You can read up on Character Creation and Character Creator in EVElopedia.)

Eve Kick-Start: Creating a New Eve Character

As I first started Eve (with 14 day trial), I created a Gallente with industrial career and perception attribute at 3 (Gallente Intaki) - this made it hard (time consuming) to train and fly new ships. During the couple of days with the industrial character, I noticed that perception is quite important attribute in Eve. Attributes of the character affect how fast you gain skillpoints (different attributes for different skills), so having signicantly low attributes makes some skills take a longer time to train.

I researched a bit, and found several articles about creating optimal character for Eve, but several were concentrating on how much time it takes to train all possible skills in Eve, which is a bit too longterm for me, as I don't plan to fly every ship in Eve (and if I do, I'll create Alts to be honest). For those interested, optimal character build for training all possible skills in Eve promotes high perception and low charisma, as a lot of skills (ships for example) use perception and less use charisma (apart from Trade and Leadership).

But I wanted to create more balanced character. Thus, I re-rolled and created Araihs. I chose Gallente Jin-Mei, Saan Go Caste, as I didn't want to hinder any attribute. A simple guide: Tips for Eve Online Character Creation was the one I followed, and succeeded in creating balanced character which enables me to enjoy and follow whatever career I choose in Eve, without any skill training taking too long.

So here's a tip#1 for Eve newbie: Create a balanced character (all stats 7 or above), and with slightly higher perception and intelligence. With balanced character build in Eve, you can train any skill in reasonable time, which makes it easier (and fun) to try out all kinds of things when you're new and exploring all the possibilities in Eve and have all options open for the future. If you want to specialize at some point, you can for example create a high-perception character to train and fly ships and specialize in combat, but for your main character it's good to have all options open, at least that's how it is for me.

As for career and specialization, I would recommend any new Eve player to choose Military career and one of the specializations under it. Why? because Eve is about Internet Spaceships after all - and with Military career you have the prerequisites covered to train your race spesific Cruiser and Industrial from day 1 and fly better ships than that rookie frigate right from the start if you want (better Frigate or Destroyer). And you can equip all kinds of cool equipment without training any skills.

Even if you want to pursue Mining, Trading or Industrial career eventually, flying better ships makes the start more fun as you're training the skills you want. Of course, if you want to start as mining pilot for example, by all means go for it, but be ready to train those ship skills!

If you're undecided, all the starting attribute for any race and bloodline can be found from EVE[geek]. Be sure to bounce back and forth during the character creation, checking the attributes and the skills with the two tabs in bottom left to see how the choices affect starting attributes and what skills you'll be starting with the chosen starting career and specialization.

Now that we have character creation covered and to kick-start your Eve experience, dive in the game! Or read up a bit more - Guide & FAQ : New character creation from EVE Online forums.

One last thing - if you're the kind of player who likes to study and read as much as possible about the game you play or want to play (I'm like that), then you'll also want to checkout the Ultimate New Player Collection from EVE Online forums.

Do you have any tips on character creation? Please add your comments then :)

All Things Eve (The Full Series)

Into Eve Online
Risk and Reward in Eve
Eve Kick-Start: Fitting Your Ship

Eve Kick-Start: Creating a New Eve Character
Eve Kick-Start: Skill Training for Newbies
Eve Kick-Start: Tutorials and Beyond

Two (Healing) Addons to Rule Them All

The most useful healing addons right here. Individual needs and preferences apply, but these ones I love the most.

I'm addon "freak", I use them a lot, so I reckoned to make another topic out of it.

I'm constantly tuning my UI, removing unused addons and adding new ones. I like it simple but my screen always ends up cluttered, as I feel that I need this and that.

I prefer Ace addons, as they're constantly maintained (a blessing after patches). With WowAceUpdater it's easy to install new addons and it keeps all my installed Ace addons up-to-date with single click. As all Ace addons use the same library, the addons are lightweight for cpu (compared to having same number of independent addons)

I use Omen and BigWigs, which help a lot in raids/groups.

I have Pitbull unitframes (even more important after, for some reason, my Grid started malfunctioning).

For heals I use Clique (different mouse clicks with different modifiers (alt/ctrl/shift) to do mouseover heals on frames/player).

For decursing I use, well, Decurse. And tons more (e.g. Fubar,Bartender3,Buffalo2,AuctioneerAdvanced,etc)

But if I would recommend two addons to all healers (and all casters, and they benefit melee too), it would be these:

Quartz
VisualHeal

Here's why Quartz and VisualHeal are sooo good:

Shamelessly ripped from my own posts on several forums (as I love these addons so much I'd love to more people getting the benefits, and as they will benefit even more if others would use them too).

QUARTZ

CastingBar

Holy efficiency! I stumbled upon this castingbar replacer - and even that it's very very simple - Quartz is absolutely, hands-on, the best addon I've ever seen!

Why?

Because Quartz adds "latency" to your casting bar. Without going into any client-server jargon, you're normal casting bar is showing how your client sees the casting time, but because of latency, your spell is actually going off at server before your casting bar reaches the end.

What this means? And How Quartz helps.

It means that if you have 200ms latency for example, you can see that visualized in Quartz and start your next spell / action 0.2s before your casting bar is actually full and the spell still goes off! So with ten spells, you have saved 2 seconds. With 500 dps, that's free 1000 damage more. make it 100 spells and it's 10000 damage! And all this just by tackling the latency with Quartz. If you experience 500ms of such latencies, it comes even better! Don't let lag and latency get you, get Quartz

VisualHeal

Healing Visualizer for both Healers and the ones healed

For healers: VisualHeal shows where target's health will end up after the heal hits
--> cancel unnecessary casts which would cause too much overheal

+ it shows if someone else has same target and is also casting heal on it
and it adds all this to the estimated health after your heal hits --> you can cancel cast if it would mean too much overheal, as the other healer has the target covered.

For others: VisualHeal shows incoming heals to you = where your health will end up when heal hits you --> can use abilities accordingly.
- low health & no heals coming? better use some "saving" ability!
- low health, but two heals incoming. Great! Keep pounding.

For all this to work, everyone needs VisualHeal, so once again, get it!
Must for healers. Recommended for everyone else too

+ VisualHeal shows up in unitframes too if they support it (PitBull does), so if every healer uses VisualHeal, it can be easily seen who is not healed yet = less parallel healing

So I'd say that every healer (if not everyone) should install VisualHeal (make the bar invisible if you want, but do have it). I'd think it will help you and your guild a lot, especially in 25-mans.

Where to Download Addons

Get WowAceUpdater! Keeps your addons up-to-date, and easy installs for every Ace addon. That is the best way to get Quartz and VisualHeal (and Omen, BigWigs + loads of other goodies), and keep them up-to-date.

EDIT: Unfortunately WoW Ace Updater is no longer with us, as wowace integrated with curse.com, and for me, curse updater just isn't very good (tbh, it sucks big time). New and improved alternatives for easy addon maintenance: Wowmatrix and WUU - WoW UI Updater.

There are many other places too to get addons, like Curse.com (they also have installer, which isn't nearly as good as WowAceUpdater) and WoWInterface.

More "Healing Addons That Rule"

Three (Healing) Addons to Rule Even More

Blog Watch: Get That Alt Moving

Love is in the Air is over already but Lunar Festival is still on-going.

I never realized to exploit the "teleportation service" Lunar Festival offers until I read the WoW Insider post on How to use the Lunar Festival for easy lowbie travel.

In short, you can gather the flights points and go train your weapons skill in all the major cities in Azeroth for your lowbie Alt. By doing this, for example if you're Alliance, you can skip that dangerous run to Ironforge from Wetlands with your Night Elf / Draenei.

So if you have lowbie Alt or you're planning to have one, or even brand new character, I recommend you use the Lunar Festival to it's fullest as it won't be back until last year.

For female characters, get that beautiful festival dress as a bonus (the male "pyjamas" I don't recommend for anyone, not even gnomes).

Additional tip: Remember that as a Druid you can move around quickly during Lunar Festival with the Moonglade Teleport spell.