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Newbie Starting Guide

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 Mage Realms - Game Help Manual

Newbie Starting Guide


When you begin looking over your new realm, you might be wondering what you should do first. So this guide has been written by players to get you going. It is not necessarily perfect strategy, or the only way to build and play, but it is a very good general guide to getting started.

You should do the following things, explained in more detail below:

1. Read your sphere forum, see what's going on, and who you share your sphere with. Post in forums to introduce yourself. These people are your allies in the game, and a great source of information and advice.

2. Click thru the links in the game to see where things are and what options are available to you.

3. Read the Game Help thoroughly. It is very important to know how the game works, and where to find information as you start developing your realm and your strategy.

4. Start building your realm up. This means (a) draft some scholars and spirits, (b) build some buildings, and (c) start your research. Do not train any spirits into advanced troops the first day. If you are below 700 land, you can explore some land, but exploration is expensive.

Exploration: If you are below 700 land, explore more during Newbie Status. After Newbie Status, you can continue a bit longer but not too long, because you'll need your gold for troops. Exploration gets more and more expensive, the more land you have.

Research: Start by assigning your scholars to Gold Digging. Research this to maximum (see help file for the maximum%), then move to Population Growth, then Mana Production, then Military Tactics. As you draft new scholars, keep assigning them to these 4 topics until all 4 are at maximum percent. You should have them all maximum by the time you finish Newbie Status. After that, you can choose the next topic based on your strategy, usually Shields is a good next choice. Keep your top 4 bonuses at maximum as long as you can, and never, never let Military Tactics drop below maximum. You will not need Spy Research for now.

Buildings: Check the Game Help for their detailed functions and how much resource they provide. In your initial building, you should use all the free land for Gold Mines, Villages, a few Mana Pools and some Spy Guilds and Summoning Altars. After that, continue to build Villages to keep ahead of your growing peasants, and make enough Forts to hold your spirits and later advanced military troops. Watch your mana and if it starts to go down, build more Mana Pools. Always build on your land, free land is a waste of resources.

Here is a distribution example of how to allocate your buildings. It should be roughly like this, although advanced strategies can use widely different ratios:

Villages: 10% - 15%
Forts: 30% - 35% (always calculate how many you need)
Mana Pools/Mana Fountains: 15% - 20% (never risk running out of power)
Summoning Altars: 10% - 12% (try to keep 10%)
Spy Guilds: 10% - 15%
Gold Mines/Alchemist Labs: 15% - 20%

Military: Initially, if you have fewer than 500 scholars, you should draft scholars until you have about 500. Then switch to drafting as many spirits as you can. Do not train spirits into advanced military units until you (1) have 10% of your land in Summoning Altars, (2) have enough Forts in construction to hold the trained troops, and (3) are 24 hours from end of Newbie Status. Then train as many spirits as you can into your most advanced troops all at once, so they are finished just before you come out of Newbie Status.

Special Ops: You will not use your spies in Newbie Status, but once you come out, you will want to have a few thousand. Their most important use is to Spy on Military or Spy on Realm before attacking a realm. You need the Spy result to calculate the amount of troops you will need to send to break the defense of your victim. You can also use spies to steal gold from realms. With the stolen gold you can build additional troops.

Attacking: After you come out of Newbie Status, you will need to look for some small targets to attack for land and other resources. Start by attacking inactive realms, which can be recognized by having small amounts of land, with low glory. Attack up to 4 times with 1 general each time, but always be sure to keep a lot of defense at home to protect your own realm.

Read the Help File on Spies and on Attacking for details of how to Spy on the target's military forces and how to compute the troops you will need to send. The main website Fan Sites page lists some attack calculators that you can download.

Missiles: Don't build any spells until you can afford it with an income of a few hours. Otherwise it's a waste of resources that you could be spending on better defense. Don't use spells for petty revenge, save them for more important uses.

General Advice: This game is mainly about diplomacy and communication, strategy and cleverness, not only war. Don't resort to unpleasant messages, profanity, or cheating of any sort. Not only does the Administration delete people for that, but it ruins the game for others.

You most likely will be attacked many times during the game. Do not get upset, do not send nasty messages, just stay cool, rebuild, and carry on. Everyone gets attacked from time to time and it is just a natural part of the gameplay. Remember that when you attack another player, he also feels angry, so always be nice about it. Keep this in mind and you will find many new friends and enjoy all aspects of this great game. Be nice, be active, be strong!

- This guide was written primarily by Devil Pikkolo and Mr. Wicky,
with nods to Blueberry, Crash, and Jusenkyo.




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