The massively multiplayer online role-playing game genre is still in its infancy, but already a whole dialect of slang and abbreviations has crept up and firmly embedded itself in the online culture. If this is your first MMORPG, you’re likely ignorant of most of these concepts, so we’ve included this section to bring you up to snuff. Following you’ll find the most important words to add to your vocabulary.

AC–armor class. Refers to your character’s ability to absorb or dodge attacks. The higher your ACs, the better. The ACs in Anarchy Online include impact and projectile weapons, energy attacks, melee attacks and martial arts, cold, fire, chemical, radiation, and disease.

AFK–away from keyboard. Used to let people know you’re leaving the computer for a few minutes.

Aggro–When an enemy attacks you (or becomes aggressive), he or she has “gone aggro” on you.

AO–Anarchy Online…duh. J

BBIAB–be back in a bit.

BRB–be right back.

Buffs–A term from EverQuest. Beneficial nano programs or items used to increase stats or abilities.

Burst–A type of high-damage attack that fires three quick shots at your currently targeted enemy.

Camping–“Campers” are a people who simply wait around at a point where they can easily kill unsuspecting enemies or easily loot respawning treasure. Camping will cause other players to look down on you.

Circle of death–When teamed up with other players, a “circle of death” is formed in one of two ways: Either the team surrounds an enemy and harms it from every direction, or a single teammate (known as the puller) attacks it to make it aggro, then runs around the group with monster in tow, as the rest of the team leisurely makes mincemeat of it. I changed this because apparently, according to Webster’s, to “send something to Davy Jones’s locker” means to send something to the bottom of the sea. “Davy Jones” is the bottom of the sea personified.

Client–Your computer is known as the client, as opposed to the computers at Funcom that are actually running the gameworld, which are known as servers.

Death loop–If you are unlucky enough to scan in (save) while in enemy territory, you may find yourself in a death loop. You’ll respawn, get killed, respawn, die, and so on.

Drop–When your computer loses contact with the server, you are dropped from the game. Also known as going link dead.

EXP–Experience. See ‘XP.’

FPS–first-person shooter. The genre of games with a first-person view (as if you were looking through your character’s eyes). You can switch back and forth from AO’s default third-person view to a first-person view by pressing F8. You can also switch between various third-person views by pressing CTRL+F8.

HP–hit points. Refers to your character’s ability to take damage and continue in the realm of the living without being re-created. The more HPs your character has, the better.

IPs–improvement points. These are given out at every level-up and are spent improving abilities and skills. Abbreviation can also can stand for IP (Internet Protocol) address, which is the unique number assigned to your computer when it’s connected to the Internet, which lets your PC connect to the Anarchy Online servers.

KOS–kill on sight. Describes your relationship with another creature. If you’re enemies, you’re likely KOS.

KS–kill steal. When you wait for another player to almost kill an enemy and then join the battle to “steal” experience or loot from the vanquished, you’re kill stealing. Kill stealing is just about the easiest way (along with camping) to make other players strongly dislike you. It’s not much of a problem in AO, as KSing will not gain you any experience, nor will you be able to loot the vanquished foe.

Lag–Used to describe the delay that occurs when your computer has a less-than-ideal connection to the servers for one reason or another.

LD--link dead. When you lose your connection to the AO servers, you go link dead and are removed from the game.

Leveling–Reaching a certain preset experience level will cause your character to backflip and “level up.” You’ll receive some IPs to spend on raising your abilities and skills, and additionally, you’ll look increasingly cooler in other people’s eyes as you gain levels.

LFG–looking for group. Pretty self-explanatory…If you’re looking for a group, “/shout” that you’re doing so, à la “Lvl 12 Nanotech LFG.”

Log–Logging out. When you leave the game, you log.

LOL–laughs out loud. Used to, well, signify that you found something funny.

Mana–Some players refer to the nanobot supply as the mana supply, as many MMORPGs use mana for the mystical force supply of their games.

MMORPG–massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Such as Anarchy Online or EverQuest.

Nano–shortened form of all things nano-related. “I need a nano recharge” or “Anyone have any nano buffs?” In Anarchy Online, nanobots are the tiny creatures that execute your nano programs.

NCU–nano containment unit. Defines the number of friendly nano programs (buffs) your character can have in use at any given time.

Newbie–fresh meat. A player who is new to the game. Also n00b.

NPC–nonplayer character. Anything lifelike within the game that is not being controlled by a human.

Pet–player-controlled NPC, à la Anger Manifestations.

Powerleveling–Playing the game with the sole purpose of leveling up as high as you can, as fast as you can. Powerleveling often leads to a less fulfilling gaming experience, as powerlevelers generally walk around solely killing things and skip out of the role-playing and socializing aspects of MMORPGs. Also refers to a higher-level character helping a lower-level character level up much more quickly than he or she could have without help.

Pulling–Attacking a creature in order to make it go aggro on you. Often used in teams. One player is the “puller,” and he or she “pulls” the monster around the team, while the rest of the team forms a circle of death and kills it off.

PVP–player-vs.-player combat. In Anarchy Online, PVP can only occur in designated PVP areas or after both parties have attained level 75.

PK–player kill. When one player kills another in a PVP battle.

ROFL–rolling on floor laughing. A stronger version of LOL.

Scan–The act of saving your character at a scanning terminal. After you’ve left the training grounds, dying will send you back to the last terminal at which you scanned, so scan often. Scanning costs credits, depending on the level of your character.

Server–The computers running the actual Anarchy Online gameworld are servers.

Social–Social creatures aid each other. For example, if you attack an adolescent malle and there’s an adult malle sitting around near the battle, the second malle will attack you, as it is a social creature.

Spell–Since most RPGs have traditionally used “spells” to describe nonphysical attacks and capabilities, many AO players refer to nano formulas as spells and to nanobots as mana.

Tank–An enforcer or other character with good armor and melee expertise. Used as a human shield for weaker characters (most often nano wielders), who are more vulnerable to melee attack. Also known as a meat shield.

Twinking–The act of using a higher-level character to equip a lower-level character with higher-level equipment or money. This is less of a problem in AO than it was in other MMORPGs, as most equipment in AO requires high skills or abilities, so twinking is unlikely to succeed often.

Whompa–The name given to teleporters located throughout Rubi-Ka. Teleporters were christened as such because of the sound they make when in operation.

WTB–want to buy.

WTS–want to sell.

XP–experience points. Used to determine when your character levels up. Synonymous with “EXP.”

Skill Dependencies

Your skills and abilities are not independent of each other. Raising your base abilities will have a profound impact on the rest of your skill set. As such, if you plan ahead, you can save IPs by strategically raising those base abilities that will then propagate advances to many skills that you’d like to raise. To spend your IPs as efficiently as possible, refer to the following table whenever you level up.

Abilities

Body

Melee

Thrown

Ranged

Speed

Trade/Repair

Nano/Aiding

Spying

Navigation

General Strategies & Tips

Once you’ve left the training area and entered the Real World, it’s a whole other ball game. No longer are you simply running around a small, relatively safe area simply attempting to kill things and level up a few times–now you’ve got literally a whole world to explore and virtually limitless options at your fingertips. More importantly, death now means something. If you die and haven’t scanned in (saved) your character recently, you’ll lose experience, something you’ll want to avoid as much as you can. In this section, we’ve put together some tips and strategies that we’ve gathered in our time playing the game.

How to Use Your Pets

Shame on Funcom for not including any information whatsoever in the manual pertaining to pets–the creatures that meta-physicists, bureaucrats, and engineers can create to do their bidding for them. They mean the difference between life and death for these three professions. However, unless you know how to use them, they’ll stand around doing nothing.

Control
The most basic command you can give is “/pet attack,” which will cause your pet to attack the currently selected target. If you’d like your pet to go after enemies that are engaging you or your team, input “/pet guard,” and your pet gladly obey. For some personalization, type in “/pet rename newname,” replacing “newname” with whatever you would like your pet to be called. To let the pet roam and attack on its own, use “/pet hunt.” You can free or kill your pets with the “/pet free” and “/pet terminate” commands.

Combat Tips
Use your pets! One of the simplest commands that you can give a pet is “/pet attack.” Often you will end up on a team with newbies who either never issue a command to their pets or, for one reason or another, just tell it to guard them and then ignore it. People who fight like this–and make no mistake, they are doing a lot of the fighting even though they shouldn’t be–would be better off as enforcers.

To make the most effective use of your pet, get in range of the enemy. Once you are able to select it, order your pet to attack it and then back off. After you do this, the enemy should begin to attack your aggro pet instead of you. If you like, you can let the two of them duke it out; however, it is better if you assist your pet. Simply shoot the enemy from a distance or fire off offensive nano programs, depending upon what you have, and you will find yourself able to take down enemies with ease.

In addition, if you would like to sit and avoid the combat altogether, when you are in an area that isn’t too difficult you can sit down and order your pet to hunt. You will want to have a backup ready to deploy in case the pet that you have out gets destroyed, providing that your class allows for a backup, but otherwise this can be quite effective. As long as the area you are in is relatively safe, you can rack up quite a bit of experience even when you get up to run to the restroom or get a drink.

The most difficult thing about either of these strategies, however, is remembering to do them. If you aren’t used to abstract combat, then chances are you should take a more direct character like the soldier or enforcer. If you are able to handle giving another creature orders, then your pet can become a huge asset. In fact, you may even end up able to rely on your pet alone most of the time.

Follow the Leader

When playing in a team, it can be fairly difficult at worst–tedious at best–to keep track of and stay with the team leader. To make things easier on yourself, target your leader and type “/follow” into the chat box. Your character will now automatically follow your teammate. You’re free to chat, move the camera around, use inventory items or nano formulas, and attack; you’ll continue following your leader until you press a movement key. This can also be used to close in on a cycled target whose location you don’t know. In addition, if you get lost but are still fairly close to your team, you can click on one of your teammates in the team window and type “/follow,” and you will automatically run to them.

Cycling Targets

Regarding cycling targets, press the Tab key to cycle through nearby enemies. Press Ctrl+Tab to cycle through friendly targets. Combining this with the “/follow” command will let you easily find and attack enemies. This is an especially valuable technique for team leaders to learn, as they can quickly and easily bring their group (which should be “/following the leader”) to suitable enemies.

Sharing the Booty

Bring order to chaos within your team by having the team leader set “/team loot alpha.” This will force teammates to take turns looting vanquished foes. Alternatively, “/team loot all” leaves the booty as a free-for-all, going to the first looter.

Macros Are Your Friends

You can create macro objects–essentially shortcuts that will execute long commands for you simply by pressing a single key–at any time by typing “/macro macroname command,” where macroname is the name you want to give the macro, and command is the command you want the macro to execute. This will create an object that you can drag into your quick action bar, and then use like any other item. For example, a popular macro is “/macro NxtTrgt Next Target: %t,” which will read your current target, and send it in the form “Next Target: Current Target” to the chat box. This can be used to quickly tell your teammates what to attack next.

So Are Scripts

Creating scripts requires a little bit more work–and familiarity with Windows–than making macros, but you can do a lot more with them. In Windows, open up Notepad (click Start, then Run, then type “notepad”), and type in whatever commands you like, with each command on a new line. Save the file, with no extension, in a directory called “Scripts” within your Anarchy Online directory. (Create it if it’s not there yet.) Then, while in the game, type “/scriptname” to execute the script. For example, the script…

/me is hungry.
/eat
/delay 3000
Still hungry…
/eat
/delay 3000
Man am I hungry!
/eat
/delay 3000
Uh oh; ate too much!!
/puke

…will tell everyone that you’re hungry, then eat, wait three seconds for the animation to finish, declare that you’re still hungry, eat some more, tell the world once again that you’re hungry, eat even more, then cry out that you ate too much, and show the puking animation.

Scan Often!

Nobody likes losing hours’ worth of time, experience, and looted items, and if you go out hunting indiscriminately, that’s exactly what you’re asking for. Every time you level up, your character will automatically be saved. However, if you’ve been out and about for a few hours and haven’t leveled up, you’d be wise to find a scanning terminal and save your character’s state. The credit cost is well worth the peace of mind.

Speak Your Mind

But speak it to those you want to hear you. Simply typing text into the chat box will only send messages to those around you. To increase the distance at which you’ll be heard, prefix your words with “/shout.” To decrease the distance, use “/whisper.” To quickly speak to only one person, type “/tell playername,” where playername is the name of the person to whom you want to speak. When on a team, click the “friends” icon on the upper-right hand corner of your screen, then click “team” on the subsequent menu. This will cause all of your regular text to be sent to all of your team members. If you’re looking to sell an item or for whatever reason want other people to be able to view its information, you can simply drag the item to the chat box and hit Enter. People will then be able to Shift-click on the item’s name in the box to view its description. Finally, if a friend is not online, you can leave him or her a message by using the “/tell” command. Your friend will receive the message the next time he or she signs on.

In the Beginning…

When you first decide to create a new character, you’ll find yourself in an area containing various controls with which you can customize your in-game persona to your heart’s desire. Once you’re done creating your character, you’ll be whisked off to a training area. This section of the guide includes some tips for getting the most out of your training.

Plan Ahead When Choosing Your Breed

Unfortunately, in the character-creation portion of the game, you choose your profession after having chosen your breed and after having spent several minutes deciding what you will look like. In other words, say you choose the muscular but not so intelligent Atrox, and you then decide that you want to play as a nano-technician. Your best bet will be to go all the way back to the beginning and re-create your entire character. Because of this, it is wise to keep your profession in mind from the very beginning and choose the breed accordingly. Be sure to refer to this guide’s section regarding professions before beginning character creation.

Before You Venture Out

Before you attempt to kill any of the monsters provided for you in the training area, take a minute to examine your equipment. You should begin with a set of maps, a nano formula or two, a special move or weapon, a treatment kit, and some first-aid kits, in addition to an achievements board and, if you are an Omni-Tek citizen, an Omni-Tek shirt.

If you are an Omni-Tek citizen, begin by equipping your Omni-Tek shirt, your weapon–if you have one–and your maps. If you have a special move, then get that ready in your shortcut bar. Next, examine your nano formulas and increase whatever skills they require so that you will be able to use them and get that ready in your shortcut bar too. You will also need to make use of your skill points and place your treatment kit in your shortcut bar. If you need any assistance on using your skill points, simply refer to the section in this guide regarding your chosen occupation. Lastly, increase your aggression to max and leave it there, unless you start taking a lot of damage, at which point you may want to back it down some.

An Army of One?

Of course not. Unlike most games, Anarchy Online encourages you to work in teams: When teamed up with others, you’ll get very close to the same number of experience as you would have gotten on your own, and the enemies will be significantly easier to vanquish, at least for nano-based professions. This will become vitally important once you leave the initial training grounds and enter the Real World. A reet of paradise is fairly easy for anyone to take down solo, but a blood reet will kill a much tougher character if he or she tries to take it alone.

Ready for the Monsters

You are now ready to take on the monsters in your training area. At this point, you have one goal: Get to level 4. You will not be able to leave the confines of the training area until you have, at the least, reached level 2 or obtained 1000 credits. However, it is recommended to wait for level 4: The extra IPs will help you a lot more than the credits burning a hole in your pocket. In addition, you will often find yourself too weak at level 2 to do much more than act as bait. Now, while the general goal is to reach level 4, there are several important milestones along the way. For now, however, walk out and kill monsters until you reach level 2. While doing this remember: If you are about to die, you can run to the guard for assistance.

Level 2

Since you have now gained a level, take the time to distribute your skill points again, and from now on remember to do this with each level. Keep in mind that you don’t have to distribute all of your points at once. Whatever IPs you don’t spend will be saved, so don’t feel that you have to invest in a skill that you don’t feel you’ll use simply because you have excess points. Upon reaching level 2, you should be familiar with your opening training area. Each training area (there are several) has a section that is a little bit further from the rest where some of the harder monsters are. At level 2 you should be able to head into the second area and attack them. This will give you more experience than you were getting previously and will hopefully force you to develop some tactics when fighting tougher monsters. Continue to fight here until you reach level 3.

Level 3

At this point, it is time for you to take on your first mission, if you’re feeling up to it. Leave the training area and explore the small area of town that you should have access to right off the bat. You’ll find a mission booth here. Request a mission and turn the difficulty all the way down, then raise the experience slider so that you’ll get as much experience as is possible. Afterward walk in and complete the mission. This should give you a vague idea about what missions will be like later on and, at the same time, give you far more experience and credits than you would have received by fighting monsters in the training area. If you are not able to make it to level 4 on the first mission, however, simply head to the training area and make a few kills; it should not take many.

Level 4

Congratulations. You have an established character on your hands. Head out into the city and take on a couple of missions until you reach level 6. From that point on most of the action that you will want to involve yourself in will take place in the outside world. Travel in groups whenever possible, and you just may live long enough to see some of the higher levels.

Trader

The trader class is thought by many to be the weakest in the game. A middle-of-the-road fighter at best, traders also lack the devastating nano-formula punch of, say, the nano-technician. Instead, their strengths lie in their ability to assist others, be it through trading their health to a teammate, raising their friends’ skill levels, or creating items to, well, trade. As such, their soloing power is much less than that of some other classes.

Breed
The trader is an all-around “average” profession, so the Solitus is an excellent choice of breed.

Solitus
Since the trader is by definition a jack-of-all-trades of sorts, the Solitus breed is a surprisingly good fit. Trade skills should be the strength of the trader, so the Solitus’ average intelligence rating will be detrimental. However, traders that focus entirely on trade skills will be lost whenever they’re not engaged in trading, and actual trading takes up only a small portion of their time. A Solitus trader will not be able to live on the bleeding edge of trading power but will make a much more well-rounded, easier-to-play character.

Opifex
Much like the Solitus, the Opifex breed lends itself to a well-rounded trader. However, as an Opifex, your character will be better suited to wield most weapons than the Solitus but with reduced initiative and other sense-based skills. Between these two breeds, it’s a toss-up as to which is “better”; it’s strictly a matter of personal preference.

Nano
The Nano breed is the frontrunner for best trade-skill breed; however, you’ll pay for the decreased trade skill and nano IP cost with increased combat-based skill cost increases. As such, playing as a Nano trader will be rather difficult.

Atrox
Looking for a tough time? Play as an Atrox trader. Strength and stamina will of course help you be a better fighter, but the weak intelligence, sense, and psychic scores will make becoming adept at trade skills impossible at worst and expensive at best.

Weaponry
Traders inherently have a slight advantage in shotgun skill, but that’s it. If you choose the Opifex breed, you’ll have more freedom to choose the weaponry you desire, but as any other breed, you’d be well advised to concentrate on the shotgun.

Armor
Again, if you chose the Opifex breed and are concentrating somewhat on combat ability, your armor choices will open up a little bit. Otherwise, you’re likely to rely on cyber or nano armor classes.

Nano
As the trader, your nano programs focus on the ability to assist others, be it through trading your health to your teammates, raising friends’ skill levels, or stealing health from enemies. Trader nano programs are not overpowering, so teaming up is a good idea.

Skills
Traders have only a small number of skills that they’ll want to toss the bulk of their points into. However, they’ll want to max those skills constantly. Pick a few trade skills and pump them up, or you’ll be ineffective.

General Skills
This is a list of skills that are not dependent upon the discipline that you have chosen. These skills can be useful to all classes.

Body–adventuring, swimming
Speed–running speed
Trade and Repair–psychology
Nano and Aiding–first aid, treatment
Navigation–vehicle air, vehicle ground, vehicle water, map navigation

Skills to Keep Maxed
As a trader, you’ll want to keep your trade skills up to snuff, and to do so, you’ll need to keep your intelligence rating up as well. Additionally, since your nano program repertoire is less than exemplary, you’ll likely want to choose a weaponry skill and concentrate on that as well (likely shotgun).

Abilities–intelligence
Ranged–shotgun (or other weapon type if Opifex breed)

Skills to Keep in Mind
Competent defensive skill is always a plus, as is keeping your nano skills in good repair.

Abilities–body development
Speed–dodge ranged attacks, evade close combat and martial arts attacks, duck explosions and thrown objects, nano resistance

Discipline-Specific
While traders are adept at all trades kills, you won’t be able to constantly max all of them. Thus, you’ll need to decide what to focus on, and toss IPs at those specific areas rather than simply evenly distributing them among all trade skills.

Trade and Repair–several, reflecting the things you intend to trade or create.

Relevance
The lone trader is as useless as the single-player MMORPG. Find a team and stay with it.

In Groups
While not as team-friendly as the doctor, the competent trader is a valuable commodity in any team. You should focus on attacking the enemy with whatever ranged weaponry you choose to focus on; however you should also use your team-based nano programs to funnel your health to the rest of the team when you’re able, and buff your mates up as well.

Alone
The lone trader is a sad thing indeed; many of the trader’s nano formulas assist teammates and are thus wasted if the trader has no team. More importantly, the whole point of being a trader is to trade and assist others. Playing alone will be a very unfulfilling experience.

Soldier

Soldiers are the ranged weapons experts, able to pick off enemies at a distance and take damage if necessary, but they prefer to keep what distance they can. As a result, the soldier will not have as many hit points as the enforcer, but at the same time the soldier can deliver quite a bit of damage to an enemy before the enemy can get up close and personal.

Breed
Soldiers, like enforcers, are good at getting in the thick of things and mixing it up, and the Atrox is thus an excellent choice.

Not even most soldiers can take on a red that is only slightly higher than them in level, so be careful when going it alone.

Solitus
The Solitus is going to provide an extremely balanced soldier; however, you will not be able to take the type of beatings that an Atrox can, and you will not be as good with weapons as the Opifex. Overall this is a good choice, but you simply won’t be as effective as you could have been if you had chosen a different race.

Opifex
The Opifex is also not a very good choice for a soldier, as you will not be able to take anywhere near the amount of punishment that you will probably be subjected to. On the other hand, if you are able to keep in a group almost all of the time, where other players can stay up front and take the beating, the Opifex can be very useful. Because of the high agility and sense of an Opifex you will prove to be a very good aim. The moment that you lose your entourage, however, you will become extremely vulnerable.

Nano
Obviously, the Nano is the worst choice for a soldier. The Nano is feeble in three of the most important skills to a soldier (strength, agility, and stamina) and ranks high in skills that will rarely be used. Also, because the soldier does not use nano formulas much, those things that normally make a Nano an attractive option are of little use.

Atrox
The Atrox is a natural soldier and is all around the best option for a soldier. By choosing an Atrox, you will be able to take a lot of damage, and your increased strength will help you handle the bigger guns. Because you can take the punishment, you will not need to rely upon a group of people as much as the Opifex will, since you may even find yourself being able to stand toe-to-toe with the occasional red enemy.

Weaponry
As a soldier, your very survival depends upon your skills with ranged weapons. As such, you will be able to use any of the ranged weapons in Anarchy Online. To start off with, you will have a powered assault rifle. While not the most powerful weapon in the game, the powered assault rifle does not use ammo. As a result, you may wish to use this weapon until you have gained several levels, as you will be able to save quite a few credits that would have otherwise gone to ammo.

After you have reached level 7 or 8, you will want to definitely look into other weaponry. At this point it is good to take a pause and decide what type of path you want to take. To put your skill points into as few disciplines as possible so that you may be your best in the few disciplines that you choose, it is good to choose, as early as possible, a type of weaponry in which you will want to specialize. While this is not a requirement, it will help you in the long run. There are two ways that people generally like to go about this. Either they want to cause a lot of damage in as few hits as possible, or they like to do less damage, but hit a lot faster. For the most part the two are very similar, so which way you go is entirely up to you.

If you choose to do less damage, but hit faster, then you will want to focus almost entirely on handguns or weapons that can be dual-wielded. As a result, you will be attacking almost twice as fast. This can be an advantage later when you are able to obtain a nano program that will enable you to do more damage with each hit, as you will begin to cause serious pain to your enemies. On the other hand, the downside is that many pistols do not let you burst, fling shot, or use full auto. Upon occasion you will find a pistol that will let you do one or two of these; however, it is rare, and to be able to execute that maneuver, you will need to have a pistol in each hand that will let you perform the action.

Regardless of which way you choose to go, keep one thing in mind. Ammo can get very expensive, and the cost is almost equal no mater which path you choose. Because of this, the soldier is a very expensive class to choose, and you will find yourself fighting for money often. So it is good to keep your powered assault rifle on you at all times in case you run out of ammo.

Armor
Despite having a problem wearing some of the more “advanced” armors that require a high intelligence or nano proficiency to wear, as a soldier, you have a rather wide selection of armor at your disposal. As a result, you will find yourself wearing plasteel or OT assault armor quite often later in the game. However, for your first few levels the stats will matter very little, and you will often be able to choose your armor simply based upon the AC bonuses that it provides.

Nano
While most soldiers will not rely as heavily upon nano formulas as many of the other professions will, nano formulas can be very important. For instance, if you have chosen the pistol-wielding path wherein you will hit often but for less damage, the soldier has access to a nano program that will increase the damage that you do with each attack by four points. While that may not sound like much, when you are firing off a shot every second or two it can really add up. In addition, you will also find nano programs that can increase your AC, increase your health, reflect damage back on enemies, cause enemies to attack you, or even increase the rate at which you are able to attack. Naturally you will have to pick and choose, and depending upon your style, some nano formulas will be more beneficial than others. Overall, we recommend nano formulas that increase your AC, the rate at which you can cause damage, and the amount of damage that is done per hit.

Skills
Because the soldier is a fighter class, you will find yourself relying on many of the more “basic” abilities. As a result, the skills that you need to focus on are very different from the skills that a doctor would focus on, for example. The following is a breakdown of each skill and its importance. Any skill not mentioned below should be raised when required for a specific task but should otherwise be ignored.

General Skills
This is a list of skills that are not dependent upon the discipline that you have chosen. These skills can be useful to all classes.

Body–adventuring, swimming
Speed–running speed
Nano and Aiding–first aid, treatment
Navigation–vehicle air, vehicle ground, vehicle water, map navigation

Skills to Keep Maxed
As a soldier, you must be able to use whatever weapon you come across and be prepared to take serious damage. As such, it is a good idea to keep your abilities that the various weapons depend heavily upon maxed out, in addition to the dodging and evading abilities that will enable you to survive as long as possible.

Abilities–agility, strength, stamina, body development
Misc Weapons–heavy weapons
Ranged–MG/SMG, fling shot, burst, full auto
Speed–ranged initiative, dodge ranged attacks, evade close combat and martial arts attacks, duck explosions and thrown objects, nano resistance

Skills to Keep in Mind
In addition to the skills that you will need to keep maxed at all times, there are a few skills that a weapon discipline may depend upon but that may not be vitally important. Occasionally you may also find yourself requiring some close combat abilities and, as such, it is important that you keep these skills in mind for when you need them. They should not always be maxed out, but you may occasionally want to toss a few points their way.

Abilities–intelligence, sense, nano pool
Body–brawling

Discipline-Specific
Depending upon which weapon you plan to use, you will need to max out the appropriate skill. As a result, you should be able to keep from spending points on abilities that you will not use often, if at all. For instance, if you have decided to wield dual pistols, then there is no reason to spend any points on your shotgun skill unless you decide to switch weapons.

Ranged–pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, rifle, ranged energy, aimed shot, multiranged

Relevance
The soldier is a strong profession and can thus take the damage associated with traveling alone, but strength is found in numbers, and teaming up has its advantages.

In Groups
When in groups the soldier should avoid being next to the enemies as much as possible. Instead, this position should be left to the enforcers and martial artists. It is best for the soldier to stand back from the fight as much as possible and instead focus on shooting whatever enemy possible. If the group lacks any melee fighters, then the soldier should take up that position in an effort to keep the rest of the group alive, drawing fire from some of the weaker party members.

For the most part, soldiers will have to rely upon other members of the party for most of their healing. While a first-aid pack or two can be very useful, there simply is no substitute for playing with a good doctor.

Alone
When going it solo, the soldier will need to try to maintain as high of an AC as possible. Combat should be initiated from a distance, and you should attempt to do as much damage to an enemy as possible before the enemy has a chance to strike you. When alone, you will have to act as your own medic as well, and as such you will need to have some minor healing skills or you will die fast. Often several first-aid packs will be enough.