Surviving CLOK: A Guide (Updated October 2018!)

[Lun]

Surviving CLOK: A Guide
Written and compiled by: Dennis
Version: 1.0
Date: 2nd day of Octum, 1218

Table of Contents:

1. Author’s Forward
1.1 Version History
1.2 Introduction

2. Basics
2.1 Starting Towns and Weather Mechanics
2.2 Combat
2.3 Storage at the Haiban Walk-In Vault
2.4 Skills and Abilities


3. Appendices
3.1 Weapons
3.2 Armor
3.3 Skills and Abilities

4. Miscellaneous
4.1 Starting Towns
4.2 Supplies and Encumbrance
4.3 Commands To Know
4.4 Crime Doesn’t Pay

5. Credits

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Quick Navigation:
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Five easy steps to jumping to the section you want.

1. Highlight the section name and letter (as seen above).
2. Press Control and C.
3. Press Control and F.
4. Press Control and V.
5. Press Enter.

You should now be at the beginning of the appropriate section.

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1. Author’s Forward
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Hi all, Dennis here. This guide isn’t really a guide, but more of a compilation of tips. It was written with the intention of helping players understand how to progress in CLOK.

The funny thing about the word “progress” is that it indicates an end goal - in CLOK, you’re free to choose your end goal. It might not be related to skill levels at all, or an ability; it could be something like making a new friend, or owning a house.

So I guess it’s more accurate to say “This guide is designed to help you survive your first few weeks in CLOK. After that, you can probably ditch the crutch and walk on your own.” Much of what I know was learned by greedily sucking knowledge from every possible source, and I highly recommend you do the same yourself. At the end of the day, this is just a compilation of tips and knowledge and is by no means the end-all, be-all solution to all your concerns.

Hmm, hmm. Yep, that’s about all I have to say. Safe travels, friends.
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1.1 Version History
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Version 1.0 (10.2.2018): Initial release of CLOK guide! Cheers! Actually, it’s just a reformatting of my pre-existing tips, so I guess it’s not an initial release.
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1.2 Introduction
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CLOK is an RPG that basically lets you choose your story - there is no main path to follow, but a large world where you can be whatever you want to be. You start off as a skill-less peon and work your way to become the person you want to be.
CLOK is a dynamic thing, in that both its world and its mechanics are constantly changing. The world can change based on what happens in it and how the player characters act (or don't act). The staff are constantly developing, altering, and tweaking mechanics. If you take a break from CLOK for a few months, it might be a pretty different place when you get back.
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2. Basics
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Before reading this guide, make sure you’ve read the original Tips for Beginners guide.

http://clok.contrarium.net/index.php?ti ... _Beginners

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2.1 Starting Towns and Weather Mechanics
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Tips for Beginners touched briefly on Shadgard being “a rather cold place to live”. To quote Rias, here are some key commands to know during the winter season.

Useful cold-weather-relevant commands:
campfire: to make campfires.
carve branch: before adding them to campfire to produce shavings that can be used as tinder
split: to split larger branches into smaller branches.
chop: to chop small branches into kindling with an axe, or to chop logs into split logs which burn for a nice long time in campfires.
break: to break small branches into kindling with your hands.
forage tinder ground: to forage tinder and put it on the ground.
forage deadwood ground: to forage specifically for deadwood, which is far easier to find than straight branches, and to put them automatically on the ground.
add branch/log/kindling/tinder to campfire: to give that campfire more fuel so it can burn longer.
warmth: to see how well-equipped you are to ward off the cold.
warmth clothing: to see how insulating the clothes you’re wearing are.

CLOK has a pretty nifty weather system. The in game weather simulates real-world weather conditions, and cold in game has an actual effect on your health. The system will warn you that your character becomes too cold, which indicates you should take shelter. You can read more on the initial launch of the winter system here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3300&p=30971#p17729

Cold damage by the environment directly impacts your energy and your health. To help delay the onset of cold damage, you can wear clothing that helps insulate against the cold. Wearing a cloak and clothing made of warm materials (such as fur or wool) will help to fortify you against the cold.

You can prevent the onset of cold damage and reduce your chilliness by resting near a campfire, brazier, or other warmth-source. This is usually indicated in the room description with language along the lines of “This area is warmed by …” If you’re out in the wilderness, chances are you’ll be nowhere near an inn or a guardhouse to warm up by. Even if you don’t have access to a fire source, just resting in a room that isn’t cold/freezing will help thaw you out, albeit very slowly.

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2.2 Combat
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To grow as an individual you must constantly challenge yourself. This applies to your character as well - if you find opponents of similar skill or who are more skilled than you, and you succeed against them, your character will get gains in return.

You can read in-depth on combat by following the links in this page:
http://clok.contrarium.net/index.php?title=Combat

2.2.1 How are skill-gains calculated in CLOK?
Skill-gains are based on challenge rating. Challenge ratings are based on your dynamic roll, and not on your raw skill - If something's potential roll is higher than your potential roll, it’s a challenge. That’s a bit difficult to understand, so let’s look at an example.

Combat rolls are essentially your accuracy, or chance to hit or dodge. Your skill with a weapon, its quality, and your armor type you’re wearing are three major factors which influence your offensive roll, but by no means is it everything. Let’s take a look at a single turn’s combat report.

You attack a shadowy gray phantom with your horribly malformed staff!
staff (-----) (M:80 vs D:156) Dodged!

(energy -5)

An offensive roll is the first roll displayed in the combat report. In this case, it’s M: 80.
The defensive roll(s) are rolls after the “vs.” displayed in the combat report. In this case, it’s one roll of D: 156.

These are not the actual results of the roll - think of this number as the dice you’re rolling. I had a 80 sided dice, and my foe had a 156 sided dice. His chance of dodging is therefore much higher than my chance of hitting! To strike him, my (hidden) resulting roll needs to be higher than his (hidden) dodge roll. I didn’t roll higher than him, therefore I missed.

You can read more on combat rolls here:
http://clok.contrarium.net/index.php?ti ... at_Numbers

This is a challenging foe for my skill level, so if I were to hit them, I would certainly gain a significant amount of skill for every strike I land or dodge out of. A general rule of thumb is that you’ll want your defense roll to be similar to your opponent’s offense roll, and your offense roll to be similar to your opponent's defense roll.

Something else to take note is my weapon’s quality. What is quality, and how does it affect my combat? Quality, simply put, grants a bonus positive or negative multiplier to your rolls. Poorly made objects can take away as much as 15% of your roll.

This is the list of adjectives for woodworked objects, but consider it a guideline of quality tiers for all weapons.
horribly malformed : -15%
misshapen: -10%
rough-carved: -5%
(nothing): 0.
well-balanced (or well-carved): +5%
exquisite: +10%
masterfully-carved: +15%

2.2.2 How is damage calculated?
Damage is determined by many factors, including your weapon, your tiredness, your opponents armor, and more. Let’s discuss the role of your weapon, which is easily controlled.

No matter how skilled you are with your chosen weapon, you'll only do damage within the range of your weapon. You can think of it like it’s a 1d100 weapon. You can take on abilities that can help weight your rolls to the higher end of the maximum damage your weapon can do, and poor skill can weight your rolls to the minimum possible damage your As for which weapon does how much damage, a safe way to assess possible damage is looking at its weight and length. A poleaxe or heavy claymore would be able to do more damage than a knife or a short blade.

Your opponents are built similarly to your character, though animals may have different “body part health” and size as compared to a human.

You can learn more about the wound and health system here:
http://clok.contrarium.net/index.php?title=Wounds
http://clok.contrarium.net/index.php?title=Energy

Some foes have the means to disable or kill you while inflicting minimal physical damage to you.

2.2.3 How can we differentiate between a challenging foe and a dangerous foe?

Challenge takes a sharp nosedive into dangerous territory once you graduate from the weakest foes. The main difference between a dangerous foe and a challenging foe is that a dangerous foe is something that has the capability to hurt, harm or injure you severely without the proper chance to fight back, whereas a challenge is something that engages you for a period of time so you can improve oneself. A risk is a skeleton swinging a greatsword at you versus a skeleton punching you with its much weaker skeleton hands. Whereas the sword-wielding skeleton might lop your head off in one blow, the punchy skeleton will take a much longer time to severely wound you.

When you engage in combat, first check to see if they're armed. An enemy armed with a weapon will always have an associated risk level or pose a "threat" to you. As you become stronger, these types of foes become more common. You can maneuver around armed foes by finding allies capable of disarming them, or training your character to do so. Otherwise, you can utilize distance, heavy weaponry, thick armor, or stealth to help prevent your character from taking serious harm. Danger is always relative to your situation, and there will always be risks to training your skills.

2.2.4 Death

Death has been undergoing extensive reworking for awhile now, so this information may quickly turn outdated.
Death happens. As we take risks to improve our characters it becomes inevitable that our character passes away.
When death overcomes your character, you’ll find yourself in a void with a mysterious bell in the room. Death in CLOK is mysterious - your character’s soul has a tenacious hold on the body, and so a link remains even after death. Looking at the bell notifies other online players (with the ability to attune to the void) to the location of your body, so they can bring it to a monk or sorcerer who can reconnect your soul to your body.

There are protections in place to prevent your corpse from being coldly robbed - that is to say, no one may loot your corpse while you’re dead. However, any riln that isn’t held in a container will be dropped upon your death. You can PUT your RILN AMOUNT into a CONTAINER to avoid this problem.An example syntax is “Put 100 riln in backpack”.

For some early characters, vicious wildlife is a significant danger on the roads when travelling between towns. For the most part, starving animals can be avoided by dropping fat or raw meat on the ground. These can be acquired through trade or through hunting and butchering.

2.2.5 Starting Training Areas

Most players are usually aware of one or two training areas.I figured I could help narrow down some options for you to start your career off here.

Thoroughfare of Tarueka - Heading north out of Shadgard, if you take the left fork, you’ll pass a thoroughfare.
Mistral Lake Caravans - East of Mistral Lake Docks along the road is a route leading to an abandoned field of caravans.
Shadgard Old Graveyard - Nearby, northwest of Shadgard, is an old trail leading to the graveyard.
Infested Village, South Bank - Along the road west of Haiban is a village whose inhabitants are infested.

if exploration isn't your desire, you can also hunt the local fauna.
Hunting is as easy as hiding and hunting in a wilderness room. Take note - most animals aren’t going to sit there and let you kill them. Prey animals are naturally flighty, and you won’t get the same benefit you would fighting a mindless infested carrier. Early on, you might consider simply letting a prey go if it flees, as travelling in the wilderness costs energy, time, and hunger. It’s critical to keep well stocked on rations and food to avoid starving to death when hunting in the wilderness..


Commands to know:

HIDE
HUNT
SKIN
BUTCHER
Take that meat and CUT STRIPS to make one meat turn into many for frying in a pan. It lasts longer that way.

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2.3 Storage at the Haiban Walk-In Vault
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Money matters. You need it for lessons, purchasing new clothes and gear, repairing your weapons and armor, for food, and much more. There are plenty of ways to earn it, with the simplest being foraging for herbs to sell at the market, and more complex ways such as mining ores and converting them to valuable metal-bars to sell at the market. You can provide services to other players such as forging or protecting, or complete tasks set forth by your guild masters.

As time goes by, you're going to discover you have a lot of equipment and miscellaneous goods that you shouldn’t be carrying on you all the time - whether to reduce your encumbrance or to protect against potential thievery.

The Haiban Walk-in Vault was introduced a while back to reduce the reliance on weight-based deposits and to help with mass-storage of goods. By default, everyone gets access to a small crate. It can only hold tiny items, and is a sample of what the room can offer.

A vault attendant hands you a catalog listing various storage options for lease:

1. a medium storage crate ...... (2000 riln) (1 per customer)
2. a large storage crate ....... (5000 riln) (1 per customer)
3. a heavy oak trunk ........... (7500 riln) (1 per customer)
4. a simple pine weapon rack ... (1500 riln) (1 per customer)
5. a simple pine armor rack .... (1500 riln) (1 per customer)

A well-furnished vault at Haiban can replace the need for a home. Armor racks can be used in conjunction with the STRIP ARMOR command in order to rapidly unequip your armor. Your armor will appear on the armor rack. Use the OUTFIT command to equip your armor again. Handy!

I recommend anyone looking to increase their storage capacity start with the Heavy Oak Trunk. It is a massive crate for storage purposes. Whether it’s sets of armor, loads of weapons, paintings, gemstones, it will hold most everything you’ve got.

See: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5679 for more details.

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3. Appendices
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3.1 Weapons
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See: http://clok.contrarium.net/index.php?title=Weapon_Types

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3.2 Armor
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See: http://clok.contrarium.net/index.php?title=Armor

Armor and its associated skill, Armor Use, are important to staying alive when placed in a difficult combat situation. A common problem plaguing beginners is that they struggle to wear heavier armor.
The usual progression of armor is leather armor until 100, scale armor until 200, rigid leather until 300, chain armor until 400, and finally plate armor from that point onwards. You may opt to stick to a lighter tier of armor, but you will find it impossible to use heavy armor without prior training in armor use. Even with training in heavy armors, you’ll find heavy armors cumbersome and tiring to move in! Skill in using armor will not magically make them lighter or make you nimbler in them, but mitigate some of the worst of the repercussions. E.g. fewer impacts on accuracy.
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3.3 Skills and Abilities
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See: http://clok.contrarium.net/index.php?ti ... ory:Skills

Abilities are separated into two categories; guild-specific and generalized. Abilities are special commands that are associated with skills, either improving your use of a certain weapon or unlocking skills for your character to train in. For example, in order to mine, blacksmith, or take on artisanal crafts, you’ll generally need to take “Apprentice of the Land” and other crafting related skills to unlock them. Another example is if you’ve reached a significant level of accomplishment in a weapon skill, you might take the mastery ability, passively increasing your accuracy with that weapon. Other abilities may allow you to actively disarm a foe, or harness the might of magic.

With the associated required skill level, anyone can learn a generalized ability using the ability menu. However, guild specific abilities require a character to pledge lifelong allegiance to the organization, and so should not be the main reason for joining a guild.

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4. Miscellaneous
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4.1 Starting Towns

It’s my opinion that Haiban is the best starting town. It has ample resources nearby in way of wilderness plots for farming, trees and forests, a river, access to a public mine, and low level hunting grounds. It also offers the cheapest weapons and arms available via NPC, though some permutations are more expensive than others. Being centrally located, it’s convenient to access from around the world, and it also has the walk-in vault.
The town of Shadgard is also a good option, but in the wintry months, it is rife with environmental hazards.
Note that all towns are reachable via travel in the wilderness, so where you start doesn’t matter after some time.

4.2 Supplies and Encumbrance

A popular school of thought is that light blue or low encumbrance is the best. This school of thought comes from users of the abilities “tumble” and “flip”. Tumble and flip require users to remain relatively unencumbered in order to be able to do them.Basic clothing, a backpack, and supplies for the journey generally don’t weigh that much. Therefore, I try to carry 200 bandages, 10 rations, a quill, a firestone, a severe-wound poultice, and a sheet of paper. These supplies weigh little to nothing and can get you to a hunting ground, through a challenging fight, and back.
For heavy armor-users, encumbrance no longer is a major factor. By forgoing lightness in favor of thick armor, you can get away with carrying more bandages or food supplies, as you’re already significantly encumbered.
Upon eventually learning riding and owning a horse, you can also purchase saddlebags at the Haiban stables and carry extra supplies in there at no impact on your personal encumbrance.

4.3 Commands To Know

PEER <Direction>: where direction can be a cardinal direction or an exit in the room e.g. store, cave, bank.

4.4 Starting Tips

When you first start off, the first thing you'll want to acquire is a permanent ESP pendant from the post office. You don't start with enough capital, so you'll have to earn the riln one way or another, but you need one to communicate (long distances) in game.


4.4 Crime Doesn’t Pay

Crimes you commit in game all have in-game consequences. I wouldn’t recommend this route to anyone, personally, as long jail time is just one of the lighter automated punishments, and your actions can cause larger repercussions. Now, if you do get caught committing a crime by accident, here are some suggestions:

Don't resist arrest. You’ll often be given a chance to surrender to the authorities when caught, which can often result in a lighter sentence than if you resist arrest and assault an officer of the law or murder someone.

Don't practice in major towns. it's a good idea to practice your less-than-legal skills on hostile NPCs like infested carriers.

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5. Credits
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I’d like to thank Rias, Jirato, Noctere, and all of the gurus that have come and gone over the years involved in the making of this game.

I’d like to thank my fellow players for helping me write this guide. Without your guidance, I would likely have rage quit a long time ago. And viewers like you for reading it! Thank you.

[Mooshie]

Huh! I did not some of this. Thanks!

[Rias]

A few more tips regarding cold weather and building campfires here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3300&p=30971#p17729 (tips on campfire preparation further down after the original post in that thread)

Also: GO INSIDE! People freeze to death quite frequently, despite the fact that the messaging starts telling you that you should find shelter soon before you freeze to death. When you start taking cold damage, just go inside - anywhere inside, though places with fires/stoves/other warmth sources will thaw you faster.

Also also: Make friends with a pyromancer, and have yourself a portable campfire. Pyrospheres are fun.

Unrelated to cold: Carry lots and lots of food. People don't starve to death very often anymore, but it still occasionally happens. In a pinch you can try and forage for edible herbs, berries, fungi, and so forth. Just type forage by itself, no need to specify. If you hold an open container in one hand, you'll automatically put the stuff you forage in it, so you don't have to keep stopping to manually stow the stuff you found.

If you hunt up some meat but don't have a frying pan with you, you can forage a branch and carve it into a skewer to cook that meat on. (Don't cut the meat into strips if you intend to use a skewer). Fishing is also an easy source of food in a pinch, provided you can make a campfire to cook the fish with. Again, skewers can be used if you left the frying pan at home. You can fish with a fishing pole, or spearfish with a spear. You can carve large straight branches into wooden spears for this purpose, in case you didn't bring a pole or spear with you.

[Sneaky]

Cooking with skewers is really really hard, so if you're in a situation where you need to eat fast and don't have a lot of cooking skill, forage instead of trying to skewer some fish/meat, as cooking it improperly and eating it will cause you to become sick.

[Rakon]

Thank you for this! As a recently re-returned player (somebody staple me or something) I found I not only had some new things to learn about but had largely forgotten a lot of the older commands I used to know.

[Jirato]

Thank you for this! As a recently re-returned player (somebody staple me or something) I found I not only had some new things to learn about but had largely forgotten a lot of the older commands I used to know.

Welcome back to CLOK!

[Lun]

Bump! Welcome to 2017! Hopefully these tips can help a new player survive a week in CLOK. Death is fun!

[ironcross32]

I'm bumping this because everyone should read it.

[Jirato]

Thank you for updating this. I really think it's a good resource for new players. Stickied.

[Jirato]

Bumping this to get it marked as unread and have it mentioned in discord, FYI, it was updated yesterday