Phoenix Cheatsheet For Noobies Like Me

Started 24 Feb 2021
by gomashio
in Tavern
Here's a big braindump of stuff I found out that improved the enjoyment I got out of the already awesome server. I want to note these are things that helped me, so if they help you that's awesome, but it's not intended to be the canonical or 100% correct solution for everyone

- General info
- The wiki is available on Internet Archive but has been offline for over a year. As a result most useful information is buried in forum posts
- There is a very useful list of all slash commands on the forum: https://forum.playphoenix.online/server/support-center/25395-list-of-phoenix-server-slash-commands
- The forum is super useful but also full of people who love to express their strong opinions, just ignore those people if they annoy you (including this post if you don't like it) and remember the server is maintained by a small group of volunteers
- Bysans UI has a discord where they distribute the latest version, that version has a lot of great phoenix specific QoL features like task flag locations on the realm war map, xp items locations, etc. IMO having Bysans UI is a pre-requisite for accessing the full set of features on Phoenix in-game
- There is an active phoenix discord that has info on raids, trades, a good advice + support channel, etc
- Discord invite links always expire so unfortunately you'll just have to google for them or ask someone

- Leveling up
- General rule of thumb, better in most cases to be in a group for XP. Don't be shy about looking for a group in /lfg. You can also just /invite people to start a group
- The fastest way to level is in the Level Playing Field Event. Highly recommended to try and hit RR5L5 during the event as well, as your AF/DPS doesn't cap until RR5L5
- The second fastest way to level is to farm mobs (preferably in a group) that drop "XP Items". You can view them on http://www.einfachfranke.de/daoc/ or in Bysans UI etc. For a given item type it will drop once every 2 minutes at most. You an also buy them on the player market, but it usually costs >1P per level.
- You get the best XP from XP items if you turn them in on the lowest level possible (delve the XP item to see the level requirement)
- While leveling use ROG gear (randomly generated stats). Just start killing stuff and gear will drop. Salvage + trinket + sell what you don't use
- You can do the 'flag' RVR dominate tasks at level 35+ and get early XP and RAs that help with leveling
- In your upper 40s highly encouraged to respec RAs and skill lines multiple times while its free to test out builds

- Crafting/potions/marketplace
- If you own a house you can sell items on the player market. Use the /housing command in game to find houses or pay markup to buy from the housing entrance
- In a couple hours you can get your crafting skills up to the level where you can salvage metal and wood and trinket to sell to make way more money farming (look up the salvaging guide on the forum: https://forum.playphoenix.online/realm/crafting/4141-salvaging-guide-for-new-players)
- Crafting skills transfer between all characters on an account. Look up the alchemy/spellcrafting guide on the forum if you want to level those up, https://forum.playphoenix.online/realm/crafting/9534-an-actual-alchemy-guide-cheapest-possible
- If you have 1000 alchemy you can craft potions/draughts/elixirs. You can usually buy these on the player housing for <400g.
- For permasprint if your class doesn't have it you can get 'improved draught of invigoration' (100 charges)
- For power regen you can get 'strong draught of replenishment' for +4 power (100 charges)
- For instant power you can get 'superior elixir of instant power' for +99 power (100 charges)
- For instant health you can get 'superior elixir of instant health' for +100 health (100 charges)
- There are others, just check out the market
- You can buy mini pets that follow you around (visual only), just search 'mini' on the market, or you can gamble for them with /gambling

- Templating
- Templating is the act of picking gear that caps all your relevant stats. You can use bought/crafted/dropped gear. There are good guides on the forum
- You want your armor, jewelry (including cloak) and currently quipped weapons to give +75 in all relevant stats for your character, +11 to all relevant skills, and +26% to all resists. If you want to switch weapons without re-doing your template, you need to pack more utility into less items, so weaponless templates tend to be more expensive. For a class like the Cleric, weaponless doesn't have much advantage, so templates can be done more cheaply
- For a class like the minstrel that switches between a weapon and an instrument, you can reduce template cost by relying on the equipped weapon to cap your str and qui which you only use when swinging the weapon. If you switch to the instrument you will be missing some str/qui but it would only affect carrying capacity. Similarly, you can have +stealth on a spellcrafted instrument so you will only max stealth if you have your instrument equipped.
- In the info panes in-game you can hover over your various stats to see what the current bonuses and caps are. Some info is only available if you hover over a stat
- If you have a crafted weapon with 0% bonus, use the NPC enchanter to give it a +35% bonus (helps makes your weapon hit more often)
- If you don't repair your gear at the Smith, you will eventually start losing stats until you repair it again
- When searching for items on player housing definitely use the playphoenix webapp housing search w/ attribute filters
- Loki 1.4 works well for a spellcrafting app for Phoenix's patch level. The spellcrafting report works correctly for buying items etc. Look up the templating guide on the forum: https://forum.playphoenix.online/realm/crafting/5898-beginners-guide-on-templates-for-phoenixdaoc, and this youtube tutorial for loki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sB7AiR4aJw
- For melee styles the growth rates on https://talsyra.tripod.com/daocmechanics/realm_style_growths.html seem to be roughly accurate but tend to vary a bit due to changes by the phoenix devs here. You can check the exact growth rate for a style in the combat log
- For many classes it's possible to max stats and resists in a template (not weaponless) using ROGs with a utility value of around 55-65 which are quite affordable
- If you want weaponless or have a class with lots of skills it will be more expensive
- SI chest for your class will have a +150 heal on it, which is higher than you can get w/ spellcrafting
- Melee classes w/ no magic can still craft instant DD charges onto armor that lets them have a ranged instant rupt
- You can also craft ROGs from blanks instead of buying them or farming them. It takes money and is still random. But if you can farm lots of plat from AOE farming blues for example, and don't want to farm Supreme ROGs off of reds/purples...
- You can upgrade resists and stats on level 51 rogs. For example on a lvl 51 rog with 1% heat resist, you would need 1000+ spellcrafting skill, a perfect heat stat gem, 30 phoenix dust and 90 phoenix ash. To go from 2-3 you need 45 dust 135 ash, 3-4 you need 66 dust 198 ash. The cost goes up quite steeply (near exponential) so it's much cheaper to go from 1-2 than say 9-10. See ROG stat boost link below for details
- With 1050+ spellcrafting you can craft epic ablative or epic healing reactive tinctures for about 750 phoenix feathers plus ~250g each, or buy them on the player market for around 500g each and have a spellcrafter apply them. So in general add about 1-3P onto your template cost for these
- Many templates include Tasty Chunk of Legion and/or Heart of Legion which cost 20k feathers each and do instant health/power on a separate timer from the instant health/power potions. Tasty Chunk of Legion can be equipped as a bracer or used from inventory. Heart of Legion can be worn as a gem or used from inventory
- I recently templated a wizard weaponless w/ all capped for around 5p plus 55k feathers (5k feathers for rog upgrades and epic ablatives on 5 pieces, 2 20k feather items, 1 10k feather item, 5 cloth spellcrafted armor pieces, SI neck, and rogs that cost <500g each on player market)
- You can figure out if you are capping swing speed by using the swing speed calc linked below. The combined forces pot here gives you 14% haste and 50 quick. Spec qui buffs go up to 75 (red cleric dex/qui). The spreadsheet will tell you how many RA points you need (in either MoArms or AugQui) to hit the 1.5 cap. For example on my highlander thrust minstrel using a 2.4 speed weapon, I have 50 base qui, 75 item qui (+75 max in temp), 50 buff qui + 14% haste (combined forces), giving me a swing speed of 1.548 without any RA points.

- Phoenix items:
- Eggs: Trade these in for XP
- Feathers: Buy end game gear
- Dust: Upgrade stats on ROGs to max out your template
- Claws: Buy RVR specific potions
- Tears/Ash: Bought with feathers from bits & pieces merchant, used in crafting

- Quests: There aren't that many quests but here's the ones I know about:
- SI Neck quest (level 48): have to do it 4 times, you get a nice weapon and a 80 util necklace many ppl use in their templates. Makes it faster if you destroy your bind stone in capital city between runs so you can use it without waiting 15 minutes
- Crafting gear quest (level 15-45): Buncha kill tasks but you get a set of armor that doubles crafting speed (among other things)
- Catacombs epic prerequisite (i.e. DS) quest: haven't done it as i'm not one of the few classes in demand for DS runs
- lvl 50 Epic armor quest: A mob kill quest, gives your character their epic armor. The armor sucks but can be salvaged for >1p
- Horse quest: Haven't done it, but horses seem to be good for AOE farming for some classes so may be worth it

- Tasks: use /task to see current tasks.
- Realm tasks: You will probably want Bysans UI for this with the task /rw map tiles from their discord. Without a good map of the flag spots the 'Dominate' /task is difficult to play. There are flag poles/statues placed randomly in static locations around the frontier. You can capture these flags to get bonus RPs. The zone changes throughout the day. You get bonus RPs for participating and/or winning the task (each task lasts 45 minutes).
- If you don't have Bysans here's a quick and dirty screenshot I made so you can see the locations. The little squares are flag locations. Only one zone is activate at a time based on the current Dominate task. Just head to one of the flags in the right zone and you'll figure it out quickly enough: https://i.imgur.com/j4K0uxo.png
- XP bonuses: Every day the xp bonus on mob type changes, so you can factor that into what you farm
- Task completion tokens: You can trade these in for XP, or sell them for gold/gamble for cool items later

- Feather farming:
- You can't move feathers between accounts, when people say 'wtb 20k feathers' what they mean is they want someone with 20k feathers to buy an item for them and give them that item
- SI epic dungeon (i.e. Sidi): Try to find the person in your realm that organizes these, you get about 10k feathers for every run which takes about 2 hours or so
- Classic named mobs (i.e. Lynn Barfog loop): Smaller groups can do these but certain classes tend to be preferred so the feathers are split less ways, you get a few thousand feathers per hour probably doing this
- Catacombs epic (i.e. Dark Spire): Nowadays only run by specific classes and hard to get in a group since not very many people train noobs or take non meta classes
- Darkness falls: Most reds+ drop feathers
- At the end of big raids usually everyone will run /random 1000 and the highest rollers get to select an item from the loot box (a npc called Chester which usually has items inside sorted by utility value)
- There are a bunch of other PVE areas I haven't done yet that are raided less frequently

- Gold farming
- If you want a 20k feather item but there's no raid coming up, it might be more efficient to farm some plat
- You can either go for AOE pulling classes and get large numbers of green/blue/yellow ROGs which you salvage/trinket/sell (note that jewelry below level 50 cannot be salvaged)
- Or you can farm orange/red/purple and get 'Supreme' rogs that might have high 50s+ utility and can be sold or salvaged for more
- Darkness falls/classic zones: Some mobs drop non ROG items that have crappier stats but salvage for higher yield

- RVR
- Zerg: Watch or ask in /lfg /as /guild for whoever has a bg going, or do /who bg. Then do /bg join <player> and find a group and surf the Zerg, groups usually less strict than 8mans. If you don't get a group at first just keep asking or start a new group by doing /invite on other people post lfg messages
- Siege: You don't need to level siege crafting here, you can just buy and place rams/catas/ballista from the Siege Merchant with no skill and no special ammo needed. No placeable trebs/palintones but there are fixed ones on towers/keeps you can control
- 8mans: 8v8 fights w/ premade groups, sometimes PUG, sometimes guildies etc. You can use the /gvg command to get extra RPs if you had a fight with no adds. There is an 8v8 discord for this sub-community (linked below)
- Small mans: any group less than 8 technically speaking, can be 2-7 (2-4 if you use the small man teleporter), good way to get into this is to start solo and do the current Dominate task, then join up with other soloers you see by doing /invite
- Solo: Some classes better than others... literally hundreds of pages dedicated to this topic on the forum
- Don't get frustrated if someone 2 shots you in RVR. As you raise through the Realm Ranks you will notice your character dying more slowly, and eventually sometimes winning
- There are 3 special kinds of RVR teleporters. Ellan Vannin teleporter, Small Man teleporter and Solo Teleporter. The EV and Small Man porters are in the frontier towns but only work if you first ran out manually and died within the corresponding territory. The solo porter only exists in the 3 solo zones (Trelleborg, Myrdin and Folley) so you have to run out manually each time, but once you are in one you can port to the other ones if solo. For the small man porter you have to be in a group between 2-4 and the territories are the 3 Maze zones in the frontier. If your 2-4 group dies within the maze boundaries, you can port back to the maze within a short time period using the frontier town porter, or you can use the porter within the maze to port to other mazes.

- Combat effects
- Stuns: Prevents any activity until the stun time runs out or they use their Purge RA. Does not break if the player is damaged. Once stunned you are immune to stuns for some time (varies by how you were stunned, i.e. Numb gives 10s immunity, Slam gives 45 second immunity). Purge gives you 60 seconds of stun immunity. Getting stunned by Static Tempest resets stun immunity
- Bleeds: These are a type of damage over time. Each tick breaks CC (mezz, snare, root). So don't bleed someone if that target needs to be CC'd later. Bleeds cannot stack, the latest bleed takes precedence.
- Snares: These slow a targets movement speed for some duration or until they are damaged. If a target is snared and you hit them, they will run at full speed again. A target can be immune to snares if they were recently rooted.
- Root: Target is slowed initially at 100% and then gradually regains movement. Just like a snare if they are interrupted they regain full movement speed. Once rooted a target is immune to other roots or snares for a given time.
- Mezz: Target is unable to do anything until they get hit, the mezz timer runs out, or they use their Purge RA ability. Once mezzed a target is immune to mezzes for a given time. A level 50 Sorc mezz also has a 10% resist chance. Can be demezzed by various casting classes.
- Confusion: Causes the target to switch combat targets randomly. For 'Fire-and-foget' pets on animist and theurg, can be used to permanently disable a pet. For charmed pets it can cause them to change targets. To summoned pets it has no effects. If casted on a player it acts as an interrupt (i.e. this is the main use of the minstrel instant confusion, which also can be used to prevent aggro when charming pets near other hostile mobs).
- Amnesia: a spell with a long range that prevents spells with a cast time from completing, also known as a soft interrupt. For a caster using MoC you can prevent them from casting. When resisted it causes a hard interrupt (delay before next cast) on the target (unless they have MoC which prevents hard interrupts)
- Ichor of the Deep: An RA that does AOE damage + AOE root, with an uninterruptable cast. Once rooted by Ichor, targets have their root immunity reset. So you can Root, Ichor, Root without waiting for the first Root immunity to expire.
- Poison: Damages you over time (DOT). You can get a dot from a proc, a weapon poison, or a spell. You can have multiple poisons at once. Can be cured by a healer
- Disease: Debuffs you plus limits your movement speed, health regen, and effectiveness of healing, has a long duration. Can be cured by a healer
- Nearsight: A spell casted on you that limits your casting range for any ranged spell (including instants or ranged DD charges, so clearing nearsight on tanks is sometimes useful). Can be cured by a spell that takes either around 6 seconds (very long in a fight) or around 3.5 seconds (AKA 'fast nearsight cure' for classes with high heal specialization.


Additional Links

- Phoenix 8v8 discord: find 8v8 groups in EU and NA prime times https://discord.gg/3znA9JMq
- Darkspire puggers: Find DS/Celestius/HoH groups in all realms https://discord.gg/wfGkT34A
- Phoenix Swing Speed Calculator: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G3YNfILQigMuZnNJ0439Wl2_04wZtVdaasd2bJsJa-8/edit#gid=0
- ROG Stat Boost Calculator: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QBt-n8IoBB_z-gh7F-Q27mf3fxDrsRFLS4lfTdgcXpg/edit#gid=0
- Phoenix XP Items map: http://www.einfachfranke.de/daoc/
- List of all Phoenix slash commands: https://forum.playphoenix.online/server/support-center/25395-list-of-phoenix-server-slash-commands
- Phoenix Salvaging Guide: https://forum.playphoenix.online/realm/crafting/4141-salvaging-guide-for-new-players
- Phoenix Templating Guide: https://forum.playphoenix.online/realm/crafting/5898-beginners-guide-on-templates-for-phoenixdaoc
- Loki 1.4 Tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sB7AiR4aJw
- Melee Growth Rates By Realm: https://talsyra.tripod.com/daocmechanics/realm_style_growths.html
Thu 25 Feb 2021 12:40 AM by Catkain
Deserves a sticky imo <3
Thu 25 Feb 2021 11:22 PM by Magesty
Awesome post. Really nice of you to put this together.

One tip: You can do “/who bg” to see active battle groups instead of having to ask.
Fri 26 Feb 2021 3:14 AM by gotwqqd
Magesty wrote:
Thu 25 Feb 2021 11:22 PM
Awesome post. Really nice of you to put this together.

One tip: You can do “/who bg” to see active battle groups instead of having to ask.
Crafting skills transfer to all characters in account...this is wrong ..... all characters on same realm on the account
Thu 4 Mar 2021 4:54 PM by Luse
Does anyone have an invite link to Bysan UI Discord?
Thu 4 Mar 2021 5:41 PM by ExcretusMaximus
Luse wrote:
Thu 4 Mar 2021 4:54 PM
Does anyone have an invite link to Bysan UI Discord?

https://discord.gg/U4pKnsvS
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