Welcome to Outlands! This guide is designed to help new players get started with essential information about templates, skill progression, PvM, and more. Whether you're just beginning your journey or looking to dive deeper into PvM content, this guide covers everything you need to know to get started.
Choosing Your Template
Pick a template here. It’s recommended to start with a melee character since it’s cheaper and easier to replace your stuff if you die to mobs or player killers. The most recommended starter build is a Chivalry Peace Macer (Peaceadin), which can be found under Bard Templates in the provided link.
Make sure to start with the Chivalry skill to receive the Chivalry book early.
Starting as a mage is more difficult due to the need to maintain reagents for spell casting. If you create your character with three mage-related skills (Magery, Meditation, Evaluating Intelligence, Necromancy), you will start with a spellstone with 2250 charges that acts as a replacement for reagents. Once it runs out, you’ll need to switch to using reagents. Make sure to include Necromancy as one of your starting skills to receive the Necro book.
Raising Skills
Within the new player dungeon on Shelter Island (where you start), most skills have a 10x increase to the chance of gaining skill up to a maximum of 80. This excludes gathering (Mining, Lumberjacking, and Evaluating Intelligence) and crafting skills (Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Carpentry, etc.).
It is allowed to AFK skill gain, either by using battle trainers for melee skills or by setting up scripts/macros for other skills. Many players AFK skill gain right inside the entrance to the dungeon. Mobs can be dragged onto you, but generally, you’re safe there. Battle trainers and pickpocket dips (for training Snoop and Stealing) are located in the building on the southwest side of Shelter Island (dips are on the roof).
By default, you have an overall skill cap of 700 and an individual skill cap of 100. Skill Mastery Orbs increase your overall skill cap by +1, up to a maximum of 720. Skill Mastery Scrolls can increase specific skill caps by +1, up to a maximum of 120.
Young Status
Young status on the island provides access to the bank, NPCs, and gathering skills like Mining and Lumberjacking. You can return to the island at any time to take advantage of the increased skill gains in the dungeon, even if you’re no longer considered “young.”
Gathering Gold and Progression
You are NOT allowed to AFK activities that result in gold, experience, or resource gains. It’s advised to create a separate character on your second or third account to gather gold while your main PvM character AFK trains their skills.
Miners and lumberjacks are great options for making the fastest amount of gold as a starting player. Shelter Island has a 50% reduction in resource gains, so it’s recommended to get the skills you want to 80 as quickly as possible and then leave to get the best resources. The Tracking skill is highly recommended for gatherers.
Dungeon lockpickers are easy to GM and require only a training lockbox and some tools, making them a cheap option, but you'll need some gold to start. You should be able to generate enough gold during PvM training in the new player dungeon to fund this.
A backstabber is another great character for earning gold, though you’ll need to unlock post-skill progression systems to make decent amounts of gold.
Scavengers
A scavenger is a barebones character usually focused on Forensic Evaluation to skin mobs for leather, which you can sell to other players or use to skill up Tailoring and complete society jobs (more on those later).
As a scavenger, you’ll want to travel through dungeons, gathering loot from and skinning corpses left behind by other players. **Important**: To prevent flagging as a criminal and being attacked by other players, type this command in-game: `[PreventCriminalLooting`.
Post-Skill Progression Systems
Once you reach GM skills (100 skill level), you’re still not quite ready for PvM success. Monsters can still overwhelm you unless you progress further through the post-skill systems. These systems are based on experience rather than skill gains and provide significant combat bonuses.
Experience is gained based on a monster's difficulty rating. This rating can be viewed by using Animal Lore on a mob, even if you don’t have the skill. Experience is calculated as follows:
- Gold Dropped * % Damage Done = Experience Gain
For example, if you do 50% of the damage to a mob that drops 500 gold, you gain 250 experience.
- Aspect Experience** is the exception, where experience is gained based on your weapon/spellbook and armor’s active aspects. If both weapon and armor use the same aspect, the experience gained is multiplied by 1/50. If they are different aspects, you get 1/100th experience for each.
Codices and Tomes
Your first goal is to obtain Codices and Tomes: Codices and Grimoires Overview. These are blessed items that can be leveled up and provide combat bonuses. There are different Codices and Tomes for various builds:
- Melee types
- Parry
- Mage
- Barding
- Poison
- Tamers with pets
- Summons
On average, each of these items costs around 40k gold.
Aspect Mastery
The next progression step is unlocking Aspect Mastery. This system provides combat bonuses and bonuses for specific skill sets (e.g., Poisoning Aspect boosts Poisoning skills).
The cost of activating an aspect can vary widely, from 50k to 800k+, depending on the aspect chosen. Activating an aspect unlocks all three categories: weapon, spellbook, and armor.
To activate an aspect, you need to have the appropriate items equipped for each category, including a melee weapon, a spellbook, and full armor pieces. You’ll also need Aspect Cores, Aspect Distillations (which drop as rare loot from mobs), and Aspect Kits (crafted by players).
Mastery Chains
Mastery Chains are a later-game progression system: Mastery Chain Overview. Mastery Chain XP is account-wide, so it's recommended to keep all PvM characters on one account to avoid leveling this system multiple times.
Mastery Chain links are expensive, and the bonus per link is small. It’s advised to wait until you’ve unlocked 5+ links before diving in, as this will allow you to spend gold on more immediate needs like leveling your Aspect or obtaining quality-of-life items.
It takes over 116 million experience to max out the Mastery Chain, so this is a long-term system.
Housing
Outlands has a very active player base, and finding a house location can be challenging. Houses collapse when players become inactive for too long, and this leads to several events:
- **In Danger of Collapsing (IDOC)**: Announced in-game and on Discord as a contested PvP event. When a house collapses, the items are placed in a lottery where you can buy tickets and win them.
- **Housing Lottery**: Houses may be placed in a housing lottery where you can buy tickets for a chance to win a house.
Both types of lotteries are handled by Belana the House Decay Lottery Official, located west of the Society Hall and northwest of the Casino in Prevalia.
More information on housing can be found here: Housing Wiki.
Rental Room System
Outlands offers a rental room system, where you can rent an inn room, and it acts like your own house. You can access your rented room from any innkeeper but will always return to the inn where you rented from. You can upgrade the number of secure containers within your room.
For more information, see Rental Room System Wiki.
What’s Next?
Outlands offers a ton of different content to explore:
- Keep leveling your PvM characters and try new builds!
- Societies: Weekly quests based on various activities.
- Ships: PvM and PvP with boats.
- Murderer: Take loot from other players.
- Stealing: Be a thief, steal from mobs or other players.
- Factions: Engage in faction-based PvP.
- Fashion: Purchase special clothing and decoration items from Jakesh the Prevalia Merchant.
Various PvP events:
Resources and Help
For assistance with various issues:
- Bugs: [classicuo-client-bugs]
- Gameplay issues: [gameplay-mechanic-bugs]
- Map issues: [map-bugs]
- Scripts and macros: [scripts-and-macros]
For buying and selling: [sell] [buy]
Additional tools and guides:
- [1] Outlands Malls
- [2] Outlands Drip (Fashion)
- [3] Outlands Butler (Tools/Calculators)
- [4] Tame Outlands
Feel free to ask questions in the #newplayer channel. Our companions (members with orange names) are always ready to help.