Advice for beginners

Here is some advice that beginners should read. It is really useful and may save your life. Really, this article is a gold mine, pay attention to it.

• • For help getting started with FOnline: 2238 go here, it contains information about how to create a good character, starting in game, and so on.

• • If you need any extra help other than that guide, it might be a good idea to check that whole section of the forum here.

Advice

Basics

• Once you're in the game, you may want to know some useful shortcuts. F1 will show them.

Q shows the range of your sight.

W shows the range of your weapon.

A changes your to attack mode.

F6 displays names above players' heads.

• Beware when you're in towns without guards (Most Northern towns). Gangs there will kill you without any hesitation. You can try to do some quests there to gain your first levels.
• In a guarded town, put in your hands the items you don't want to be stolen.
• Be careful with drugs, some of them, like Jet, will make you addict forever as soon as you use one. Get the infos on drugs on this wiki before using one.
• Pay attention to your reputation. Attacking or stealing in a guarded town may make town NPCs hate you. Killing slavers will make you hated in Den, killing Rangers will make you hated in NCR, and so on. Of course, animals are usually reputation-free so you can kill them with no change to your reputation.
• When reading chat messages you may encounter abbreviations. Check their wiki page to learn more about them.

Survive and grow stronger

• At the beginning, trust nobody.
• Be careful. In the beginning random encounters are deadly. Even rats can kill you if you don't run fast enough! But as soon as you've grabbed a gun, you'll be able to slay 'em all!
• When you've got your first gun, avoid any human encounter. Try to kill spore plants, rats, little geckos, little radscorpions, brahmins (to get hides for your tent) and so on. Dogs are tough and fast, beware.
• If you keep dying in random encounters, tag the Outdoorsman skill while making a new character, it will help you a lot once raised.
• If you are tired of respawning randomly, you can rent an hotel room for 100 caps a week only.
• You can go in the desert and enter in a random location to search for resources. Resources are needed to craft items. Once you've gathered a few resources, you can craft some primitive but useful tools, or trade them (for a low price).

Get caps

Caps are the most important things to have at the beginning, because they allow you to buy (for about 1000 caps) a tent, a safe location to store your stuff. It is by then your first priority in the game : Earn caps, buy brahmin hides from a trader in a guarded town, and make a tent.

• Get yourself a tent. You'll need 10 brahmin hides, which at early levels can be hard to get. Check shops often for them (especially Hub shops).
• Before you get a tent, you can store your stuff in different towns. Choose towns with very few people and hide your stuff well, it should be moderately safe if it doesn't stay there too long.
• Open a bank account if you start near a town with an FLC bank. It costs 100 caps but it's worth it.
• Shovel shit for experience and caps. Several towns contain a brahmin pen (Klamath, Modoc, Vault City, Redding, NCR...). Talk to the pen keeper, grab his shovel and you're ready to clean the pen of all the shit there is! Talk again to the pen keeper when you're done, you'll be rewarded for your work.
• To get caps, you can of course shovel shit, lift caravan boxes, etc. But one of the best ways to trade your hides is to craft Brass Knuckles. They only require one junk for each, that you will find on the floor of urban encounters (South-West of Hub, around New Reno, San Francisco, etc.). Craft about 20 brass knuckles and trade them for your 10 brahmin hides!