Newbie guide

Welcome to Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO)!

Now that you have built your character and entered the game world, you will want to know everything about the game. This page is a great starting point. It aims to provide support and to help improve your gameplay, helping you determine how things work in general. It includes links to relevant information, so that you can find information quickly for more efficient gameplay time!

The Character sheet is your primary source of information about all of your character's abilities, attributes, statistics and build details:

• It is the go to place as you progress through acquiring everything in DDO, from Ability tomes through how your saves are calculated.
• Study it and always seek to improve everything you can in it.
• Spells, Feats, Skills and Enhancements can be dragged from the Character Sheet to a shortcut bar for easy access.

Essential and helpful information

Character basics

• Characters benefit from their:
  • Class abilities gained as they gain levels in the class.
  • Feats which provide fixed benefits, gained at Level 1, 3 and every 3 levels thereafter (some classes and races provide additional feat options).
  • Skills which provide scaling benefits, that can be improved as you level up (points per level vary with class; Intelligence bonus provides additional skill points).
  • Race and Class Enhancement Trees, that they can spend points in as they level up (4 points gained per level) to customise their abilities.

Some Class abilities, Feats, Skills and Enhancements are Passive (automatically active), while others are Active (activate when used) or Toggles (need to be activated manually but then stay on). Passive benefits are represented by octagonal (8-sided) icons, while both Active and Toggle abilities use square icons.

• In addition:
  • Equipment can be worn to provide and improve defences and abilities/capabilities. Some items have a minimum level, below which they cannot be used.
  • Spells, Melee weapons and Ranged weapons can be used to damage opponents; Spell Power, Melee Power and Ranged Power increase the damage in the relevant category and can be improved with equipment, feats, skills and enhancement tree options.
  • When a character gets hit by a spell or a weapon they take damage: Magical Resistance Rating or MRR reduces the amount of damage taken from Spells; Physical Resistance Rating or PRR reduces the amount of damage taken from weapons. Equipment, feats and enhancement tree options can improve your MRR and PRR.
• But remember:
  • Bonuses to an ability/capability/power generally do not stack if they have the same bonus type, but do stack if the bonus type is different:
    • e.g. An Enhancement bonus to Charisma stacks with an Insight bonus to Charisma, but two Enhancement bonuses on different items do not stack (only the more powerful effect applies).
  • Bonuses from Enhancements with the same name generally do not stack, but matching bonuses from Enhancements with different names generally do.
  • There are exceptions to these rules, but these are normally given in the item/enhancement/bonus descriptions.
• For help with starting a character:
  • The Class and Race Newbie Guide provides basic information about each class and race.
  • The specific pages for each class and race provide full details of that class/race's abilities.
  • The starting guides for each class explain how things work in practice and useful things to consider when generating/levelling characters in that class.
  • Don't worry about making mistakes:
    • Characters can replace feats if they pick one that doesn't work for them – Fred in House Jorasco can help.
    • All characters get a free +0 Lesser Heart of Wood that lets them undergo Lesser Reincarnation to change all Ability, Skill and Feat choices.
    • It is generally a bad idea to delete and re-roll a character because of minor mistakes or frustration due to dps or survivability concerns. It is preferable to accumulate experience up to level 20/30 and use the Reincarnation process to "fix" mistakes made in past lives. This way, the progress you make with a character is preserved.
    • Enhancement Trees can be reset and reallocated easily. And new and improved gear can be obtained to address dps and survivability issues.
    • You can also use an offline Character planner tool to help design your build.

Playing the game

• DDO is based on the Pen-and-Paper (PnP) version of Dungeons & Dragons, but it is not the same:
  • The list of differences between DDO and PnP covers the main differences that you may need to be aware of.
  • The d20 System Reference Document can be very helpful.
• Starting to play:
  • No clue about what to do next in the starter area? Take a look at The Salvation of Korthos flagging guide and quest section.
  • Even in Korthos, it can help to join a party. To find and join a party, press O to open the Social panel. Click on the WHO tab first and then the GROUPING tab in order to load the names of the players in the GROUPING tab.
  • The Adventure Compendium lists some of the quests that a character can take part in and links to the Quest Journal which groups quest by game area and provides details. More quests are added to the Adventure Compendium after a character levels up.
• Want to understand in game currencies?
  • For purchasing power, see Currency (Platinum), DDO Point and Astral Shard.
  • For earning experience, character and guild benefits, see Experience, Action Point, Favor and Renown.
  • For permanent improvements to your character, see Tome.
  • For what you can get without paying anything, see Guide to Free to Play and Daily Dice.
• What are gems, collectables and ingredients? Where can a character obtain bags to store them?
• DDO displays helpful tips for players about how things work on its loading/transition screens. They are gathered together on the loading screen tips page.
• Confused about something?
  • If what people saying in general chat, party chat or on the social panel does not make sense, head to the Glossary for common acronyms and slang terminology.
  • Not sure how something works or what something means within the game? Take a look at the Game mechanics page.
  • Having problems completing a quest, no matter what you try? Check out the individual quest pages for help (although they may contain spoilers for things you haven't yet got to!).
  • Having a problem and want to be able to explain what's up and ask for a advice? Consider taking a Screenshot so you can show others and/or create a post on the official forums.

DDO Specific notes

• DDO is fundamentally a game for murderhobos. In Eberron, humanoids are somewhat civilized and normally shouldn't be considered "tasty bags of xp", but they are (and no, you don't get any per-kill xp, despite this being based on D&D). Roleplaying might have been an option during launch, but the playerbase was largely uninterested and few options for such matter.
• No matter what the character building screens imply, DDO purely rewards min/maxing your character. While this doesn't entirely rule out covering multiple roles, players should make sure they aren't fundamentally limiting all their options. (If you want to play at endgame, you'll likely *have* to specialize. But expect to reincarnate your character a few times before then).
• The DDO hamster wheel never ends (at least, not without years of effort). Building the "ultimate DDO character" would require running from levels 1-20 63 times and from levels 20-30 54 times, not to mention running uncountable numbers of ultra high difficulty "high reaper" dungeons in the process (mostly to get the "first time bonus" each time you went from 1-30 each life). The game is about the adventure and journey, not trying to actually reach such a goal.
• Eberron is one of the weirder settings in D&D. Take the classic "here we have some barbarians attacking the defenders of the multiverse" with a picture of elves vs. orcs. Hint: the Gatekeepers are the faction "protecting the multiverse" and are almost exclusively orcs and half-orc druids. But plenty of areas in DDO aren't Eberron: such as the classic Keep on the Borderlands (originally in Greyhawk, appears to be a "default setting" in DDO). Ravenloft now hosts two expansions (one in Barovia, the other in Lamordia), the Forgotten Realms also contain two expansions plus more paid options (packs): enough to level from 20-30 (you'll want to go a few other places at first), and can be accessed earlier (but are still fairly high level). And DDO's home of Stormreach isn't all that "Eberrony", you'll need to go to the city of Sharn (a paid expansion) for the full Eberron experience. Note that the adventures are done with a "noir/hard boiled detective" tone, which works wonders with the magical steampunk nature of Sharn.
• DDO more or less diverged from the d20 system in 2014. While Level 1 characters might see little difference, the massive stat inflation meant the window where a d20 die could matter grew smaller and smaller. This lead to all characters with double digit levels wearing robes and outfits (for their secondary effects) as AC was essentially worthless. So DDO added "PRR (physical resistance rating) and MRR (magical resistance rating)" to force players to wear armor if possible. Also things like glancing hits and other "non d20" hits/damage/mitigation were added to balance high level play.

Shopping advice

• If you have the patience to wait a bit, always try to take advantage of DDO sales! You can often save from 10–25%, and sometimes more (rarely as much as 75%!) off the listed price!
• Expansions (and other things from the ddo.com webpage) that are bought directly with dollars/euros go on super sale during Black Friday (and typically the whole weekend). Sufficiently old expansions can be 85% off (some players pick up the "whale edition" of packs they already have when they are discounted this much). Expect sales nearly as good in late February/early March (the anniversary) and the 3rd best in the spring.
• The DDO store in game requires "DDO points" (which old timers will insist on calling "TP", although that's probably been obsolete for a decade). You can pick up 400 DDO points relatively easy by getting 100 favor on each server. After that things will slow down a lot (it isn't like LOTRO were they rain down like manna from the heavens). The best time to buy them are in "double point sales", and I haven't bought them any other time for almost the life of the game.
• Standing Stone Games has offered a "COUPON" (all caps due to the value) roughly once a year for the last 4 years. This code unlocks all but the latest non-expansion packs and also heralds the sale of 4-5 expansions on sale for 99DP each (if you don't have 495DP, I'd recommend breaking my rule and buying them without a double point sale).

1. Expansion packs – Large packs with expansive/multiple Wilderness Adventure Areas and multiple quest chains
   • Fables of the Feywild Expansion (Standard)
   • Masterminds of Sharn Expansion (Standard)
   • Mists of Ravenloft Expansion (Standard)
   • Shadowfell Conspiracy Expansion (Standard)
   • Menace of the Underdark Expansion (Standard)
2. Adventure packs – Smaller packs with a few quests and may or may not contain a Wilderness Adventure Area
   • Delera's Tomb 850 
   • Ruins of Gianthold 950 
   • Vault of Night 750 
   • The Devil's Gambit 450 
   • Demon Sands 950 
   • Three-Barrel Cove 695 
   • Sentinels of Stormreach 450 
   • Litany of the Dead Part 4 850 
   • Litany of the Dead Part 2 350 
   • The Druid's Deep 550 
   • The High Road of Shadows 750 
   • The Vale of Twilight 995 
3. Shared Bank 1,495  – Great for multiple Characters on the same server. Also the only way to share "bound to account" gear to characters on the same account (and server).
4. Crafting Storage technically you get a token amount of storage free, but expect to eventually buy more slots at 250 slots / 995 . It was originally called the "bag storage" because it lets you drag and drop bags of ingredients/materials/gems into the bank (a huge improvement over buying huge bags for everybody. You can probably live without this for several TRs, but will need it before leveling cannith crafting or playing with sentient gems and filigrees.

• VIP Membership provides access to all Adventure packs, but Expansion packs still need to be purchased separately

Official Resources

DDO official manual and game guides

• A PDF format game manual is available. Official Game Guides are also available. (DDO Forums ^{ARCHIVE ME!})

DDO official forums

Make sure to visit the official newbie forum. There are plenty of helpful players and lots of advice on hand – be sure to check the stickied threads at the top of the forum!

• New Player Advice and Guidance

Cordovan's Weapon Descriptions Guide

This is a guide posted in 2011 by Cordovan to explain the weapon description window. Cordovan's Weapon Descriptions Guide

DDOwiki newbie guides category

Here are some other less crunchy articles created or archived by DDOwiki contributors.

• Stormreach Chronicle - The Academy: Armor Class
• Stormreach Chronicle - The Academy: Damage Reduction
• Newbie guide/Classes and races
• New Player FAQs
• What should I bring to a raid?
• Talk:I would like to create a Mage. Should I pick a Wizard or a Sorcerer?
• How to Hit Things
• Category:Aranticus' guides
• Fighting in groups
• Starting a class guides
• Guide to key mapping
• Character Sheet
• Character Sheet (stats)
• Character Sheet (feats)
• Character Sheet (spells)
• Character Sheet (skills)
• User:Melicat/For New Players of DDO
• Character Sheet (crafting)
• Character Sheet (enhancement)
• Help! Am I Raid Ready
• Character Sheet (destiny)

See also

• Avoiding squishiness
• DDO Store
• Free to Play Turbine Point walkthrough
• Game mechanics
• Guide to Free to Play
• Guides and resources available on DDO Fansites
• What is that yellow ribbon, actually ?