This is not finished but I am here writing down what I've learned so far as the wiki is convoluted data for me but not really digestible, useful information... Combat and its Skills You have two weapon loadouts, which you can switch with by hitting Q any time including in active combat. Each weapon has its own skills attached to it and you can level these individually. One loadout is used for ranged and one by melee but besides that you can do what you want with it. If you change the weapon type in your loadout it switches to the skills and skill level you have with that weapon (or 0 skills if it is a new weapon type for you). If you switch the loadout then the skills in the hotbar change accordingly automatically. If you have levelled your character or your weapon skill you get points to assign respectively. You can left click a skill and then either confirm the skill points assigned to this skill or you can choose to respec anything (currently in Alpha 2 at least). Right clicking the new skill removes the tentatitvely assigned skill points again. If you play a summoner you have 3 summoned companion options and should choose at your character's 1st world entry which you want for the first time - tank guardian, healer mystic or damage dealer hunter. At least in Alpha 2 you can always respec and switch the option. If you open "Skills" by hitting K you can change hotkey button assignments (and only then). Under the "General" tab you can assign the buttons for what the stance of your companion is, aggressive towards targets, defensive if they attack you or passive. If your companion is in combat a new hotkey bar group appears with the skills of that companion. While you fight as summoner you essentially hit the buttons for your own skills, your weapon's combos too if it has any and your companion special attacks. Consumables There is Food and Drink that gives long duration buffs to attributes like physical strength, intelligence etc or short term healing. The effect requires you to sit down and remain still for a while. If you die the effect is gone. You can only have one food active at a time. Food can be cooked. There are Salves and Potions for quick help in combat but they have long cool downs. They come from Alchemy. There are Elixirs which help with gathering speed, xp etc. There are Scrolls to increase attributes or do other buffs for long term (the effect is not erased if you die), guild creation or guild war declaration. They are made by Scribing. There are Treasure Maps made by scribing or found in loot etc to go treasure hunting. Mounts and transport You can not chat with an npc while mounted or interact with any object and it will not show you the interact option while you are mounted. If you carry a crate on your back your mount will be as slow as it is with you directly carrying it, it seems. But there are special crate mounts, which you can buy from the farming NPC for example. They are then unusable "babies" essentially and need to be trained first at the animal husbandry station. Mounts can take damage from falling or attacks from NPC or player. I have not yet found a way to heal them. If they die, they are in "revival cooldown" for 9 minutes or so while in your backpack and then back to 100% health. It seems you can acquire mounts in the worlds (not sure yet how) and then they can be traded or used directly. There are caravan waggons you can build, but they are only usable with an animal to pull them. Mounts can swim an jump - but not very high. They gain a speed bonus if on streets. Crafting & Economy There is some loot from NPC but it is not a lot. Gathered materials for crafting (as well as baby animals like the purchased crate carrying one) end up in your "materials" inventory, which is both sloth and "size" based with each object having a certain number and shape of slots it occupies. This means you need to spend time manually playing tetris in your materials inventory. You can early on craft a backpack as your second material slot container to unlock more material slots. The 3rd slot can be occupied by a specialized bag you can buy at the storage vendor for herbs or wood or so.If you kill some mob or do some quests you might receive Glim. This can be merged if you have 10 of it by right clicking into the next higher value type. Glim you can sell to NPC for quite a bit of money. You can sell some of the other items too. Selling to an NPC is done by right clicking it in your inventory while you speak to him. There is no buyback it seems. Pretty much any crafting step costs money - directly via taxes and indirectly because you need ingredients that can only be purchased from NPC at least now. A lot of the crafting up to the final item is "hit the button and wait" while the workstation does its thing (for many minutes too in some cases). So don't expect to be involved in the crafting really but load workstations with the ingredients and walk away doing somethign else. And be prepared of HOW MUCH MONEY this costs, because there are so many steps to get anywhere. You might have all ingredients from crafting steps but simply not be able to afford the fees coming with it. Settlements need to be founded (by claiming nodes) and levelled and what crafting tier is available seems to depend on this. High tier settlements can offer teleport and such. But everything is open for attack and looting (or defense). Professions There are 22 professions for gathering and crafting. You need to level your profession tier to be able to do certain things. For that you obtain a certificate for that profession and tier from the respective profession's NPC in settlements. You can only become Grandmaster tier in 2 professions. You can demote a tier in a profession to raise another at the NPC. For farming or animal husbandry you can do work at the public settlement stations (farming is done at a farming work station at least currently, NOT on a field) but it seems higher tiers need the space of a freehold or at least house you or your guild must own. Gathering Fishing: put the Skill button for fishing into your hotkey bar and make sure you have a fishing pole equipped, then hit the button facing deeper water. The character will autofish until the backpack is full or you are moving. If the character shakes the head and reels in immediately you are not facing open waters enough. Herbalism Hunting: starts with (currently in Alpha 2) walking up to critter versions that do not move but have a target next to their name. They are not aggro or such and you just interact with them to collect their carcasses. Lumberjacking Mining Processing Alchemy Animal Husbandry Cooking: process and use herbs, fish and certain carcasses. Farming: go to a herbalist vendor and buy water, gather flowers and make mulch at a farming station. Buy seeds from the herbalist vendor. Make the plant at the farming station. Lumber Milling Metalworking Stonemasonry Tanning: process the carcasses from the hunting profession. Weaving Crafting Arcane Engineering Armor Smithing Carpentry Jeweler Leatherworking Scribe Tailoring Weapon Smithing Auction Houses, Player stalls There is no global auction house or connected market places or bank spaces. Everything is local. This is intentional. Resources are area specific and the game mechanic intends that people move things physically around - and are targets for PvP for example. An economic settlement that has reach stage 6 unlocks "Linked Economy" though and can then have goods shown and available for bidding between 2 settlements, this one of stage 6 and a vassal one. Player stalls can be rented in economic settlements near the stage 3 unique building or in any stage 4 settlement at the marketplace building. Freeholds can have a market building as well. Death and PvP flagging In AoC you have open PvP and a death penalty system with various degrees of experience debt and inventory drop. To avoid a gank fest there is a system where you can not fight back (non-combatant) - but then you receive the experience debt x and drop material when you die fight back (combatant) - then you receive experience debt x/2 (half) and drop material when you die be corrupt from killing non-combatant players and have experience debt 4x if dying, drop materials and items (gear?)A corrupt player will have weakened attack skills as well and become marked on the map for all to see. Dying a few times seems to remove that "corrupt" flag again. The problem is that you can easily become a combatant even if you don't want to. For example you can TAB select mobs to fight but a combatant might deliberately run through and you WILL target this player then too, thus attack and be flagged now as a combatant. At which point the player and/or his guild will usually swarm in and just kill you without penalty. You can lessen this risk a bit by going to "Settings" and then under "Gameplay, Combat, PvP" make sure you have "Require Force PvP to use harmful abilities on combatants" active. You will become combatant too if you break open a material package. Those can spawn randomly in the world. Some collect them and deliberately place them on streets leading to settlements and lie in wait so newbies who don't understand the consequences yet can be killed without penalty. Or you become a combatant if you loot the ashes pile of a dead player. Which some guilds use deliverately too, they PvP where newbies are, one dies, the newbie picks up the stuff ... he is dead. Durability If you die you not only acquire XP debt and drop materials but your equipped items will loose durability as well. To repear gear you can go to any NPC vendor and hit the repair icon on the bottom left. Background Lore - the Gist of it There are several planes of existence in the universe of AoC, the celestial plane of Aesthetia, the material plane, the Void etc. Essence is the life force and used to create magic. Ten gods, Essence wielder from the celestial plane, created the world Vera in the material plane. Vera is diffused by magic. These ten together then made the Ancients. But three of the gods, the Others, went further and taught the Ancients about the secrets of the Essence. This sharing of information about Essence was considered an unforgivable break of trust by the remaining seven gods. Accordingly, they banished these Others and the Anciensts to the Void plane. Then the remaining Seven created the playable races of human, dwarf etc. on Vera. Each of these gods had their own following and religion among these races. The Ancients no longer have access to Essence on the plane of Void (that was the point of them being banished there) and they thus try to corrupt the living beings on Vera to gain access to their life force and thus the Essence it is based on. The soul of a living being is the conduit for the Essence to pour its life force into the world. If the soul is not tethered it is at risk of getting lost and the Essence up for grabs. Together with the Others the Ancients managed to conjure the Harbinger, meteor like weapons, that caused an apocalypse on the world Vera. The vast majority of the races fled then Vera to a magic-free world called Sanctus. Those who remained on Vera interbred in the Underrealm and the Tulnar were the result. The game plays in a phase where the portals between Vera and Sanctus were just reactivated and the races return to Vera to reclaim and rebuild. The Harbinger are still active, the world is mostly in ruins and there are Corrupted from the Ancient's influence found everywhere. Settlements/Nodes The world of Verra has pre-determined locations, originally called Nodes, which are for developing and claiming settlements. Each settlement is of a certain pre-determined type (economic, scientific, militarian, divine). Settlements start at stage 1 and can be developed up to stage 5. At stage 5 the superpower of each type becomes unlocked, it applies to every vassal settlement of this stage 5 settlement. With each stage different things become available for each settlement based on type and buildings that the mayor decided to have there. Buildings start as scaffolds and must be build with resources by players. Each settlement type has a unique building that unlocks at stage 3 in its basic form and then changes with each higher stage of the settlement to another version with more functions. The stages are Stage 1: Expedition Stage 2: Encampment Stage 3: Village Stage 4: Town Stage 5: City The architecture of a node depends on the majority race influence of its citizens. Any action within the influence zone of the node (visible on the map) impacts the node stage, no matter if citizen or not. This makes the stage increase and the influence zone grow. But the moment two influence zones have contact at their borders their growth is stalled and maintaining the influence zone becomes harder. Think of it like pressure and counter pressure applied by two bodies in contact. If a player reaches level 10 they can apply for citizenship within a settlement. They will then have to pay taxes every 2 weeks and can for example vote for the mayor. Trading and crafting station use costs money but the fee is reduced for citizens.