The Super Duper Basic Guide To PW

[Laeluan]

So you might have heard about Perfect World the game. You might only have heard Perfect World as the company that made Jade Dynasty, Swordsman, Saint Saiya, and the other games on RGN. And in either case, you haven't played it before and installed it to try it, or you're just here to get the network achievements, or you last played over a decade ago and can't remember much more than that you once played it.

Well, good news! This guide is for you!

What the ***** is Perfect World?

Simply put, Perfect World is China's answer to World of Warcraft. An absolutely massive giant of a MMORPG that is also old as dirt. Launched in January 2006, it was also the first game published by the company that named itself after its flagship game and which would proceed to launch many, many, many other games over the years. And in just as many ways, the game shows its age - weirdly proportioned characters; clothes that have no basis in physics when moving; visual bloom everywhere; super fanservicey appearances for the women; and music that's weirdly dominated by electric guitars. What Perfect World does have, and which was very special back when it came out, was one single, large map for the main grind map, and airborne combat. More on the latter later.


The Basics

- In case you hadn't already noticed, you move around in standard MMORPG fashion with WASD keys, or by left-clicking the ground. Spacebar allows you to jump - note that you can do a doublejump in mid-air by pressing spacebar twice.

- You don't get skills automatically. Instead, you have to locate your class' trainer (found in every city) and talk to them in order to pay gold to learn or upgrade a skill once you reach the appropriate level.

- There is no auto-attacking function. Good ol' manual keysmashing and clicking is the only way.

- Now, while there IS an auto-route function, it will guide you in a straight line towards your goal, regardless of any obstacles that are in the way. If you come from a MMO with an actually sane auto-routing, this can take some getting used to.

- Attempting to auto-route will also automatically put you on your aerogear if you have such one equipped, which does help with the auto-routing issues. Make sure that you put the height slider up to max, as otherwise you can and will get trapped in trees/rocks/mobs/buildings/invisible walls/NPCs/hills/decorative spikes.

- Pay attention to where you are! Monsters vary a lot in levels, and you can risk finding level 80 monsters hanging out near the level 2 ones.

- Gear lose durability as you use it. Any merchant with a sales interface can help fix your gear in exchange for gold at the bottom of their interface.

- Skills can be interrupted. Yes, this includes your town portal.


The Races and Classes

There are 5 races in the game - each with their own starting town - and each race has two classes, one magic and one physical

Humans
Humans start in Etherblade City in the north part of the map, and have nothing special about them other than their hometown tends to get crowded due to the sheer number of people going to the City Of Thousand Streams.

The Blademaster is general-purpose DPS of the game, and has a huge variety of ways it can be played depending on skills, gear, weapon and more.

Wizards are the standard squishy, high-damage magic caster with AOE. Their spells take a long time to cast, so they are best paired with someone who can tank enemies while the wizard charges their Destroy Everything In The Vicinity skills.

Untamed
You couldn't have a MMORPG in the mid-naughts that didn't have sapient animals of some sort, so PW's answer were the Untamed. They are found in the City Of Lost towards the middle-west part of the map, and are the only race whose classes are also gender-specific. They can also turn into an animal later on, which gives them new skills and stats.

Barbarians are always male, can look like a bear or tiger, can turn into a big tiger, and is the tankiest tank that ever tanked. Seriously, everyone want this guy in their party. Do note that the tanky nature means that barbarians are expensive in repair-costs.

Venomancers are always female, is the resident sexy fox/cat girl, and can both raise pets from cash shop eggs or just tame a random monster from the wilds to serve as their companion. Thus, don't go for the giant golem trying to crush your head, go for the tiny girl throwing beetles at you from behind it.

Winged Elves
As their name implies, these are elves with wings. While the wings are only apparent when flying, the Elves are never the less the only class to start off with the ability to fly, and tend to hang out in their giant tree-city City Of The Plume.

Clerics are your standard run-of-the-mill magic-based healers/buffers/resurrectors. Note, however, that heals can draw aggro from nearby mobs, and the clerics tend to be a bit on the squishy side when it comes to physical attacks.

Archers are the local ranged attacker. Fast, quick, and able to deal both physical and magical damage, but also squishy when caught by an enemy.

Tideborn
The first race added beyond the initial three, the Tideborn are basically bipedal mermaids and live in the City Of Raging Tides town in the south-eastern corner of the map.

Assassins is your quick-moving crit-stabbing rogue that will do massive critical damage, but who also have to get up close and personal with their target.

Psychics are another mage-class, but one that specialises in buffing and debuffing. They also have little to no party-buffing skills.

Earthforce
The Earthforce are, lore-wise, a bunch of zombies. Raised from the dead to fight against evil, Earthforce is both the newest race available (which means most detailed appearances) and the only ones with a unique meditation.

Seekers are a debuffing DPS class. While they have relatively low health and defence, they can control large crowds of mobs and thus also take on the role of tank.

Mystics are the second healing class, and also the local summoner. They are, however, very expensive in mana.


Flying

One of the main draws of Perfect World is that every single class can fly, and every race has their own general type of aerogear. The winged elves are the only ones who can fly at level 1 - all others have to wait until level 15.

Humans: If you have played Jade Dynasty, you will notice the similarities here, because humans fly around on a big, floating sword.

Winged elves: As could possibly be expected from their names, elves also use wings to fly with. These come in bird/butterfly/bat/etc variations.

Untamed: For reasons unknown to man or woman or anything else, the untamed's standard aerogear is a stingray. There are variations that allow them to ride different animals, however.

Tideborn: Despite their affinity for water, the tideborn mimic the elves in that they also have wings - however, the tideborns' wings tend to be more obviously magical and etheral in nature.

Earthforce: Do you like kites and hanggliders? Because that's how the earthforce flies around.


Transportation and Travelling

Due to the sheer size of the map, the presence of high-level mobs, and the "as the elf flies" auto-routing system, walking from town to town is simply not recommended. Each town (or waypoint) has a teleport master hanging out, who can help you teleport to another waypoint that you have visited before.

Note the visited-before thing. Teleporters can also only teleport you to specific waypoints, and you might easily need multiple teleports to get to where you want to go. I also highly recommend you get the Geographical Map from either your online rewards or the webshop to immediately unlock all the waypoints.

Mounts are a faster way of travelling around the map than by foot. You can get all sorts of mounts, from mechanical to monstrous to animal to, well, all sorts. However, mounts are extremely shy, and will immediately drop you to the ground and disappear into your inventory the moment you get hit by an attack. Mounts also cannot double-jump, and they have the same issue with auto-routing in a straight line.

Flying is the primary method of transportation. You can set the auto-path height from 0 to 78 units, and your character will climb to the level given while they fly to their destination. Height 78 puts you well above any and all mobs and obstacles in the game, thus making for the only kind of manual travelling where you can actually leave your computer without your character getting stuck or getting killed on their trip.


Main Hub Cities

There are two "hubs" that are also considered neutral ground; in that they don't particularly belong to one or the other faction.

Archosaur is the largest city in the game, located to the middle east of the map, and is usually the gathering point for everyone due to it being the central point for quests, tasks, missions, trade, and much more.

City of a Thousand Streams, also just called Thousand Streams, is the central hub for crafting, dungeons, and special quests.


Customisation

Another one of Perfect World's major attractions is the sheer scope of the character creator. You can change just about everything about a character's appearance; from the slope of their nose to their head-to-body ratio. Due to the game's age, however, any player characters outside of your most immediate reach will be spawned with a default appearance for their race, and only have their customisation (aside from their face) loaded in when you get close.


Equipment Basics

One of the fun things about Perfect World is that as long as you have the minimum stats for it, you can equip anything in the game that isn't race/class bound (and very little is). Want a wizard to flounce around in full platemail and whacking things with an axe? Go for it. An archer wielding a magical staff? Sure.

However, a lot of skills require a specific type of weapon, so while it can be a nice change of pace, using gear not suited for your class is not generally recommended.

Armour come in three versions: Heavy, Light, and Arcane. Heavy Armour has high durability and high resistance to physical attacks, but is weak against magical damage and requires dexterity and a high strength stat and to be worn. Light Armour is the middle-of-the-road in terms of defence, and requires equal strength and dexterity to wear. Arcane armour provides high magical defence, but low physical defence, and requires strenght and a high magic stat to equip.


Damage Types and Elements

Damage done to mobs and you can be either physical or one of the six kinds of magical damage. This means that neglecting one type of defence can cause you to easily die to some mobs, while making you practically invulnurable to others.

Each creature in the game apart from players also come in one of the six magical elements. If you have different elemental attacks at your disposal, focusing on one that the enemy is weak to can be a benefit to you.

Metal: Weak against Fire damage, does more damage against Wood

Wood: Weak against Metal, does more damage against Earth

Water: Weak against Earth, does more damage against Fire

Fire: Weak against Water, does more damage against Metal

Earth: Weak against Wood, does more damage against Water

Non-elemental: No particular weaknesses but also no bonuses. Physical attacks are as a general rule of thumb this.


Genies

Simply put, Genies are little helpers that float around your head and can do weak-ish attacks against things you attack. They gain experience as you do from killing monsters, or you may choose to infuse them with your own experience to level them. There is a bunch more to these, but that is for a far more advanced guide.


And now you should be good to go on the very basic concepts! If there are any new-player basics that I haven't covered, please let me know so I can update this guide!