User:LoSboccacc/NewbieNoobGuidingGuide

Welcome to your new post-apocalyptic home, Somerset!

First Things First

Dark-Wind is a diffcult game, set into an harsh world of opportunity and perils. Most of the fun within this game is the difficulty of keeping your characters and cars alive against the odd in the places around somerset. Mission can - and will - go bad, people will die, car will be lost. No amount of firepower and skill will guarantee your success on the wastelands of Evan.

You'll need patience and some commitment to get past the initial buildup phase of your team of pilots, gunners, mechanics, mutants and more.

The best resource you'll have to survive on the wasteland is the community of players that will help you, give advise and answer to your doubt within the game client or the web forums. When in doubt, just ask! You'll find that is the more effective way to startup your players.

You'll find a glossary at the end of this manual with the common terms used through the game.

Registering And Installation

Launching the client

You will need to register to the Dark-Wind website, www.dark-wind.com to create your "gang" and start your life on the wasteland. This will also allow you to download and install the game client. As stated from the download page, the game client will self update after each startup so you'll need to run it as an administrator user:

As most of the game logic and data is provided by the server, this game has low system requirements:

• a 64Mb video card capable of 3d opengl accelleration
• a recent version of java for the lobby updater
• a browser for the game management interface
• internet connectivity

By its very nature this game is strongly resilient from connections dropout and doesn't suffer from high latency. A broadband connection is still recommend to reduce loading and updating times.

Welcome to Evan

Largely reverting to desert wastes, battered by radioactive dust storms, and surrounded by a poisonous and lifeless sea, Evan still manages to be largely self-sufficient. The relatively fertile northern regions provide enough food for the small population of the continent, and water treatment facilities both here and on the southern seaboard provide sufficient water. The oil fields that line the east-midland mountain ranges provide fuel and raw materials for the transportation and combat vehicles of those that are brave enough to travel the deserts.

Somerset, one of the town in the rich northern area, is now your home: you'll find here a safe harbor to build up your gang for hitting the wastes in the quest of richness, glory, rare combat cars or just to enjoin the plain old slaughter of pirates and traders.

The continent of Evan has a stable economy, with trades of food and other resources run by both players and npc; the economy of each city is affected by players and traders actions, so expect price fluctuations relative to the scarcity of certain resources in certain area and pirate activity. As every action in the game world, it takes time to carry goods from north to south and vice versa. In game terms, one month passes for every week of real time.

What is this all about

Dark Wind is a game centered on vehicular combat. As such it revolves around managing your vehicles, your drivers and gunners, and when you're rich enough to afford an outpost all of your own, the production of your factory (mostly car and weapons related, of course). You can partecipate to town event, take courier missions, travelling from town to town or scouting an area to keep the rampant piracy at bay; all those activities are handled from the web interface and played out on the game client.

Town events

Town events are 'friendly' matches organized on tracks around the town of Evans. There are three type of events: races, which are strictly weaponless, deathraces and arena combats, which may or may not be squad based. Most events are available in the starting town, Somerset. Events organized there are mostly regulated under the 'EAA Deathrace rules', which are a set of rules of conduit and in game restrictions that regulates the event to provide a somewhat protected environment for freshmen to train. That means having pedestrian weapons removed, having to shoot only at appropriate targets (which is game enforced) and refrain to shoot at resigned vehicles (which is not enforced, so safety is not guaranteed). Non EAA deathraces are wild events where everything goes, so watch out for dirty tricks and players hunting you on the track skipping checkpoints, stealing cars and generally killing each other. Pro and Semi Pro events are town events in which you get to use your own car. Those usually have an engine or combat rating restriction, to maintain a leveled playing field.

Some event are grouped in leagues with prices and money reward awarded at the end of all the competitions.

Generic Missions and story missions

Missions are available from the tavern of each city. Those missions mostly involve getting a package from one town to another, escorting a trade convoy or killing a specific member of another gang. Upon reaching certain goals, like being appreciated by one of the evan factions as the merchants or the deathrace mafia, you'll also have access to 'narrative' missions. Those missions spans on multiple events and are given from specific npc characters from various places in the evan city. An early example of mission you'll get from Somerset are 'Racing for the mob', obtained in the Dexter tavern involving doing some dirty work fror the deathrace mafia or 'Angel of Mercy' given out from the somerset hospital.

The Game Interfaces

The web interface toolbar

The web interface is where most of the non driving related activities takes places. The navigation bar represented on top exposes all of the management functions you'll need to maintain you gang up and running.

The Gang Menu

The finances screen

The Gang menu item takes you to your gang page and optionally offer the ability to browse and search for other gangs of registered players and npc; from your gang page you can see a log of your activities, your gang balance sheet, your reputation in the world of evan and the item that you may have stockpiled in the various town.

• The weekly financial report is based on an actual week, so it represents your earnings within a month of game time and it is reset at every friday 4:00am GMT
• The activities are reported with the time they happened, using the server time as reference and not the game time (which runs 4:1 in respect to the real time)
• The lookups screen shows your items and how much does it cost to stash them. You may consider trashing/selling some to reduce the weekly cost.
• The reputation screen show your reputation with each town of Evan, with each major Faction on the continent and additionally every faction reputation that is not "neutral" with other gangs

When browsing the other gang instead the page shows you information about that gang reputation and its assets, be them characters, vehicles or entire camps. Here you have the option of pay them tributes or to take an hit contract.

Game Glossary

• Gang - a group of player and their possessions in the world of Evan, may also be run by NPC (it's stated on the gang page)
• Ganger - one character from a gang