Advice for New Players of The Mana World

The following hints are gathered from my own experience playing The Mana World off and on for a number of years. These are kind of first steps players might want to take playing the game:

• Learn the keys to move, target, attack, and talk. I personally like to remap my target key from a to alt (or ctrl) so that my target and attack are closer together. This if course means having to remap what alt/ctrl did before to something else (a is good).
• Talk to Aidan the monster guide and register as a quest participant right away. If you don't register right away you lose any monster points you might have gained from killing monsters. Monster points can later be traded for items (monster points are not experience, but are very useful nonetheless).
• Equip your cotton shirt before you start killing monsters, it gives you a little added extra protection and is not equipped by default, but is in your stash.
• Talk to different people in Tulimshar and go on the quests they send you on. There is an order that needs to be followed. Some Non-Player Characters (NPCs) will not give their quest until you've completed another quest.
• After you've killed a bunch of maggots and scorpions visit Ishi the rewards master. She will ask if you want to trade your monster points for items. You can get some significant items that will help you both now and later in the game: (for example: the Fancy Hat gives a good boost to basic defence at the start of the game and Snake Skins come in handy later in the game for chaps, currently the most durable lower body item in the game).
• If you get duplicates of items like the Fancy Hat don't give them away initially (you can do that when you're level 50), sell them for gold and buy a Leather Shield. This will further add to your defence.
• When you've done most of the quests (I didn't finish the mine quest until after I'd finished some of the Hurnscald Quests) head north and to the right. Look for the Ferry Man and pay 1000 GP to get to Hurnscald. In Hurnscald you'll be able to complete a number of other quests. I recommend you go north and do the Pinkie quest which will result in a prize of a powerful +75 to attack Scythe.

Changes in a year

It's been over 1 year since I last posted about The Mana World. I attempted to log into TMW a couple of times over the past year without success because I couldn't remember what name I used to log in (it wasn't Tarq, that was the character name). I set up a new account a couple of months back but did nothing with it. Last night I logged in and started playing. I noticed in the TMW Forums that there was a big account sweep, and sure enough I recognized the user name, Charm, that I used for Tarq *deleted.* As an administrator I understand deleting used accounts, but it still kind of sucks, I put many hours in... But I know the game much better... or so I thought until I headed over to what I thought was going to be the location of Hurnscald... gone.

But I did make a friend, Lux... thanks for the update. And I got to reminisce about some of the players I used to know. In the mines north of Hurnscald I used to bump into Katze (Editors note: I was wrong it was Wayne). I think it was Katze (Wayne) at least. At one time he was wearing a red robe and the red mask, then the black top hat and a black robe. I think when I met Wayne he was in the Level 90+ range, because he was always far more powerful than I. After a few months of playing it seemed that Wayne had hooked up with a female player, I think it was SugarCorgit (no it was Freya), who did a lot of drops. I'm going from memory, and my memory has been bad of late, so I could be wrong (Yes I was wrong).

I think it was Wayne who first directed me to the wiki and I earned my Setzer because of him. Later (I think I was level 69) I decided to switch from being a lug-headed fighter to a magic user. Much of that story and my quest for a robe of every colour is documented on this blog.

So starting over again. Actually I'm level 16 already after playing an hour or so one evening and a little bit of time this morning. Some things I remembered to do: remap the auto-target key. I always used the left Alt for auto-target instead of a, it makes it easier to pick up items (z) after a monster is killed. I also remembered about monster points. Shockingly I was able to trade monster points away for: a snake skin, iron ore, one of those yellow things useful for magic (can't remember), fluffy skin, antenna, etc.

I completed a few minor quests, but I'm a long way from where I left off (in the 80s if I remember right).

The good news is that since I'm almost starting from scratch, and because the game has been updated, I can put more relevant information for new TMW users.

Stack Fighting

One sign of a seasoned The Mana World (TMW) player is stack fighting. Stack Fighting is when players stack on top of one another in order to hit monsters. Monsters swarm in and players hit in tandem. There appears to be not only an experience bonus for stack fighting, but a defense bonus since attacks seem to be relatively distributed.

Last night I ran into a player who was overly concerned that I was around killing a few walking trees, they player kept screaming, "mine." It turns out the player was level 33, almost 30 levels less. I'm nicer than a lot of players who would have on purpose gone around and destroyed all the trees and taken the logs on this player. Teamwork is pretty necessary in this game, especially at higher levels it helps develop faster.