Rappelz: A New Player's Guide

Rappelz takes place on a continent with a seemingly infinite amount of monsters. Now, these monsters are mean and vicious and will attack you at any chance they get. So what do you do? You're just a person trying to get from Horizen to Rondo to deliver a package or to see a friend.

You fight back. Well, if you can take them on that is. If not, you run like hell and hope they don't catch you. However, I am not here to write about the art of running. This is for people who want to fight. Well, you probably all want to fight, there isn't many other ways to level. In any case, I'll be going over a few basic things. 

There are really two different ways to attack; with magic and with melee weaponry. Each, as explained in the stats section, is affected by a few different stats. In both cases, most people carry around things called Boost Chips in order to help them take monsters down. 

Boost chips come in two types: Force Chips and Soul Chips. Force chips are red, Soul chips are blue. Force chips take down a monster's P.def, Soul chips take down a monster's M.def. 

 Here is a comparison of damage with force chip and without. We'll show damage without force chips first.

 Eh. Could be better with the help of a force chip.

 Wow. The damage nearly doubled. Pretty nifty, huh. 

Here are the three different types of attacks possible: Attack (self), Creature Attack (Creature Only), and Attack With Creature (Both you and creature attack). The icons are, respectively, as follows.

Aggro 

 Now, monsters have this thing called Aggro, short for Aggravation. Aggro is a measurement of how much a monster views you as a threat. In-game, they call it threat but everyone calls it aggro. All attack spells as well as normal attacks cause aggro. There are ways to reduce aggro to reduce the threat you pose to the monsters or there are ways to increase it. Why would you want to increase it? Say you're a tank in the party. You want all the aggro you can get to make sure the rest of your party members stay safe. If you don't know what a tank is, you'll learn real soon in the Dungeon party section. 

In any case, walking by certain monsters, if not all monsters, will cause them to follow you. The reason they follow you is to try and eliminate you; they view you as a threat.  

Aggro is entirely transferable. If one person starts doing more damage than the person with the aggro, the monster will go and attack the new person since they are the most threatening. Even not-threatening spells, like healing spells, can get aggro. The monsters are smart, sometimes, and realize that someone is healing and will go after them. This is why it is important to keep heal spells at low levels so as not to provoke aggro. Also, it is important for whoever has the aggro to keep the aggro.

Should the person holding the aggro currently either die or log out, the monster will then go for the 2nd most threatening person. Makes sense.

Types of Attacks
There are two real types of attacks; debuffs and attacks. Attacks deal damage while Debuffs are spells that are used to weaken the monster. Here's an example.

As you can see,  this Tiny Quartz is currently affected by my Windy Shackle, a powerful debuff that lowers attack speed by 60%. Other debuffs may do other things. The one right next to it is called Weakness Skin and decreases the monster's P.Def by 150. 

Some debuffs are strange and are more like status afflictions. An example would be Fear. Fear is a status affliction that causes the one being afflicted to run around, unable to control their movements. They don't attack or anything, just run around. This one here is called Nightmare, puts the monster to sleep.

Sleep status is extremely useful when you're trying to run away from monsters. =D

Boss Types 

Now, so far, you've seen normal monsters. Monsters with [*] by their names are considered field bosses. Sometimes, many of them can spawn at a time. Sometimes, there is only one. This here is a Chondrostay, a boss in the Ceriu Desert.

 Although it is a Critical Hit, most boss monsters are able to hit for way more than normal non-boss monsters. They have higher defense, higher attack, and are overall, harder to beat.

When monsters die, they drop rupees and occasionally, items. All you have to do is pick them up; they're yours to keep.

Dodging and Guarding

Dodging and  guarding are useful in that they are lucky breaks for you. Basically, you either dodge their attack or block their attack. When you dodge, the monster misses completely and you don't get damaged. When you block, a partial portion of the damage goes through, but you blocked a bit of it with your shield. In some cases, you can get a Perfect Block, meaning no damage goes through at all.  Both of these are based on chance as well as your stats. Evasion increases your dodging ability and having a better shield increases your blocking percentage, hence your ability to block.

Here is a picture of me dodging an attack. By the way, the fire thing doesn't happen every time you dodge an attack. It just so happens that I was casting Stench of Frailty when I took this Screenshot.

 And this is me Guarding. 

Guarding only happens when you have a shield. 

Picture Credits for this section go to Arumekat. That is why they are so beautiful.  

There are two types of PvP: Duels and PKs. Duels are arranged matches that you fight in an arena. Basically, you both have to agree to duel. PKs, which stand for Player Kills, are non-consensual battles when people are outside of arenas. I'll go over Duels first.

Duels

Dueling is when you and someone else battle in an arena. You initiate a battle by typing in the command /battle_invite PersonName. This sends an invitation to the other party to battle. If they accept, the battle begins after a countdown. Here's a link to the full picture.

 Now, during the duel, you are able to fight the other person using whatever skills you have. Again, click on the link for the entire picture of the battle.

 The duel will continue till one person dies. That person does not lose EXP nor does his/her pet, if he/she is using one during the battle. Click for full image.

And that is it for Duels. 

Player Killing 

Player Killing is a function in the game used to either make justice or just for senseless slaughtering. PKing has side-effects. You will be considered an immoral person not just by others in the game, but by the game itself. You get immorality points. Immorality points are represented in your Character Stats under Additional Information.

 Currently, I have no PKs. To turn on PK, all you do is type /PKON and wait for the PK to turn on. When you do, this will happen. Click for full image.

As you can see, there is a Red Skull next to his name and his name is turned orange. Also, if you notice in the chat window, you'll see that his immorality has increased. When you have PK on, anyone can attack you and you can attack anyone. Click on them for full images. =D

 When you PK a character, your immorality goes up. If that person is 10 levels below you, it goes up even more. Immorality will get you debuffed by a status called "Wrath". It reduces 10% from every one of your stats, including movement speed. Usually, it can anywhere from an hour to many, many hours, depending on how many people you kill.

Sometimes, Wrath can get extremely severe. Here's what my wrath looked like when there was a glitch and a bunch of people were wrathed and sent to the Abyss. =D

 Now here's what my stats looked like after wrath.

Awful, huh?

To turn PK off, you type in /pkoff and wait the 30 seconds it takes to turn it off. 

When you have killed a lot of people, your name will turn red, indicating that you can be attacked by anyone. This red will still stay even if you turn off PK and people can attack you. 

To reduce immorality, you either die, fight monsters at or higher than your level, or donate to the Altar of Forgiveness in any town. It's a small statue-like thing somewhere in the town. With the donations, it's the AMOUNT that matters, not the quality of the item. So if you donated like 5,000 Luna Chips, it'd be the same as if you donated 5,000 return scrolls. 

There are restrictions on PKs:

1. You cannot PK in towns
2. You cannot PK guild members
3. You cannot PK party members

And that about covers it for this section.