Newbie's Guide to Dark Age of Camelot

Welcome to Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC), a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. This is a game like no other, where you will play with thousands of other players. Some who will be trying to kill you, while other will be your realm mates and trying, mostly, to help you.
First of all, kiss goodbye to Real Life (RL) you won't be needing it from now; just make sure that there is beer in the fridge, and a pizza delivery menu stuck to your computer.
The game is vast and complex, expect a steep learning curve, in nine months of play, we have just begun to get to grips with it. To begin with, there doesn't seem much to do, this is because your character will not have many skills.
Typically, give the game two weeks of play, your free trail, and if you are not addicted - find another game :
The game is very keyboard orientated, you can use game controller, I do, but expect to do a fair bit of typing.

First load the programme, probably a 14 day free trial. For each computer you will need a licence number (this is checked online so the same one can't be used twice). Next go on line and create an account. A player account is a bit like an email account; you can access it anywhere and have more than one. Creating a player account will require a credit card number, but if you cancel within 14 days you will not be charged (typical cost at the moment is about £7 a month).

During this process the game will have patched and download a host of new files. Since the game is dynamic (i.e. Mythic is always tweaking and fixing bugs) this happens a fair bit. Your firewall might complain as well, allow access to all ports, always.
Now you should be faced the server selection screen. There are a range of 18 servers to play on. Some like Merlin and Lancelot have a high population, other have a smaller population.
Most servers are standard, (Wat's up with u dood?), but there are a few specialist servers Roleplayer servers RP (Hail brave comrades, how doth the fight goeth?), a Realm verse Realm RvR server - where everyone really is out to get you; and a carebear server - where no one will kill you and the game play is strictly Player verses Environment (PvE).
Select Merlin.
Now there are three realms, Albion (Knights of the round table), Hibernia (Elves), and Midgard (Norse Vikings). It is only possible to play one realm on each server. For example I play Albion on Lancelot server, Midgard on Percival, and Hibernia on Merlin.
Select Hibernia.
Now you get to create a character. There are sites and sites on character. This is brief outline. First there is the race to choose, each realm has about 6 or so. Then there class, again each realm has about 15. Now within each class, there is usually about 3 specialisation (i.e. a hero might be a big sword wielder, or use a sword and shield), and countless tweaks such as the ability to keep running forever. The game is not called massive for no reason.
Fundamentally there are tanks (warriors with no magic), wizards (with damage dealing spells,), Pet class (where the character summons a pet to fight for the summoner), healers, stealthers (invisible assassins), and hybrids (i.e. a fighter with a bit of magic). Much of this choice is not made till level 5, but more of that later.
Select something you fancy, don't worry too much, you will be making more characters later.
Now you also get 30 point to put in your statistics. Basically stick 10 point into some that look sensible (like Con, Str Qui for fighters, Casters use Int, and Druids Emp).
Now name your character first name, avoid long names it looks stupid on the screen (and joke names, they wear out quickly).
When you attempt to create a character, you will probably get: "someone already has the name JOHN". I find use random name, and then nick the name ending from the name the easiest (i.e. Fristelg, = Johnelg)
Hopefully you character will now be created, and you have a choice of where to start. Again, it doesn't matter that much, whatever you like.
Now you really start!
Get used to seeing the backside of your character, you'll be seeing a lot of it (although you can select a different view).
Your screen has load of bits on it. Basically, this is the chat window, a bar to put buttons on (qbar), indicators for health/endurance/power, and button on the top to display information about your character.
The qbar is where you will put you combat styles, magic spells, and skills as you gain them. Check out the character's information and under skill you will find sprint. Drag and drop this on the Qbar. When you press this button, a green sprint button flashing on the top of the screen to indicated you are prepared to sprint, should you move. In a few seconds, if you don't move it will disappear. As you gain levels and train, you will get skills to drop here. There are 10 qbars, so you can have access to 100 spell/skill; some fighting characters will probably only use 30 buttons, while some wizards might have 50 or so.
Use the cursor keys to move back forward left and right (S & X should look up and down).
Right click on the character in front of you, this is your trainer until you reach level 5.
Click on the first round icon on the top right of your screen and this will bring up your character sheet. Click on the commands and that will bring up a rack of buttons. Click on keyboard and let's configure that keyboard. Find the stick command and assign from shift-g to the # key.
Right now let's kill something!
Monsters have a colour to their name, gray is beneath you and won't attack you, green is easy, blue is difficult but do-able, usually, yellow tough, orange (oj) unlikely but you might get away with it, and red - you are dead; as for purple, - you a dead and you didn't even see it kill you. As your character progresses the greens will become gray, blues become green and so forth. Killing monsters give you experience (XP), the more experience you get, so your character will develop (gain levels), on your display is ten bubbles which fill up with experience, when all are full, you will gain a level. To get from level 1 to 5 can take 8 hours for a new player, down to less then 2 hours for a practised player.
So find a monster (MOB), at level 1 everything is blue but don't worry. Wander around till you find some, they won't be far away. Click on it, or hit F8 for nearest enemy, then hit your stick key (#) and you should run right up to it and start following it around. It will ignore you, as at low levels, the garden zone, monsters generally don't agro (attack you on sight)
Now let's hit it. Press F6 for attack mode, and your character should start fighting. Hopefully the monsters health bar should go down faster than his does; and he should die (your XP bar should go up, and he should drop a bag of loot, double click to get it).
Now you need to sit to get your health back. Press slash key and then type sit (and your character should sit). Slash command are used for absolutely everything. If you die, and you will, /release will bring you back to life, usually in front of your trainer. Until you reach level 6 there is no penalty to dying. After level 6 there is a penalty which looses you xp and cost you money - so you won't want to die often.
Right type /dance. It doesn't do anything, but it nice to celebrate your success.
Ok, kill everything around you hahahahhaaaa <manic laughter>. This should cause you to level. Bright light and a nice ding!
Staying in one place killing the monsters as they appear is called camping, all players do it a bit, but the bonuses for killing things drop off to discourage this sort of play; but at low levels this is not really a factor.
You can now go back to your trainer and spend the point developing your character. Don't worry too much at this point as when you decide on your class at level 5 your new trainer will undo all this training so you can re-spend the point you get at low levels.
Ok that's it game over, see you at level 50.
Only joking, before you start thinking that this game really sucks. As you probably gather, your character starts at level 1 and wins and level 50. Actually life does begin at 50 in this game, there is so much more too do once you hit 50.
The best thing you can do to start with is quests. Under certain, NPC (non-playing characters) you will see a moving disk around their feet. Click on them to talk to them, and they will tell you things and offer you the chance to do something for them.
There are thousands of quests in DAoC, follow the quest instructions and get the rewards (they are usually worth doing and you get, money, xp, and neat loot). Click on journal to find out where you are in the quest. Tasks are simple quests where you just kill monsters nearby - see the Taskmaster in your area. Use /map to pull up the map of the area, and click on the compass button to bring up the compass.

Oh my god someone just asked me to join a group, what do I do?
This is a MMORPG, you can just play solo, but that defeats the object of the game. Playing with other players is the unique features of these on-line games; and levelling (gaining XP) is nearly always quicker in a group.
Just type /say Hi I have only just started playing, do you still want to group?
If the person runs off screaming, take that as a no. Otherwise, click ok -quickly.
Chat is done by typing. There is also a shorthand, that can be very confusing to start with. Type <enter> /say Hi I'm a beginner would anyone like to power level me to 50? <enter> That will really make everyone like you - not! But everyone around you will "hear" you. /yell is the same but you get a bigger audience.
In the chat window are two tabs, guild and group. Select group and hit enter, type your sentence to your new group mate; <enter> cheers mate, yous a l33t dood for grouping with a noob <enter>.
He/ she will respond with either: lol (laughing out loud), or WTF (what the fuck?).
Select your group mate, click quickly, and then hit your stick key, so they can't get away from you; and it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship. You'll probably go a small distance to a "camp" and start killing things.
Players will often stop by and give you things, and magically enhance your abilities (buffs), just type /say thanks. Or some just wait and watch till to die and then /laugh at you.
Guild is another chat that will be going on. When you start, you are in a start up guild. Select the guild tab, and hit <enter> Hail mighty warrior of the realm, how goes your struggles against the evil forces? <enter>
Again, you'll probably get lol or wtf; unless you're on the RP (role playing server) where someone will take you seriously and answer using bad Shakespearean English.
A guild is a group of friends that chat together and get together to fight things etc. In the start up guild you will find new players and some experienced player who have just created a new character (alts, alternate characters) and not bothered to switch to their normal guild - or just hanging about for the laugh you get from that guild chat.
You will also see alliance chat (/asend Hi <enter> to talk in alliance), and alliance is a group of guilds. Most guilds are small and some tasks need a lot of people to do.
Someone might invite you to join their guild. Type /gc quit to quit the start up guild and then click on the ok button when their offer to join appears.
So that in a nutshell is how to interact with your realm mates. You cannot harm your realm mate - no matter how much you want to at times! These are the guys and galls you play co-operatively with during Player verses Environment (PvE).
Right onto one of the most fun bits, killing real people!

Realm verses Realm (RvR).
Since any character less than 50 would not stand a snowballs chance in hell in real RvR, DAoC brought you battle grounds. A battlegrounds has a level cap on, 1-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19, 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-39, 40-44.
It is possible to level your character entirely in a battleground; but generally only the top level in a BG can expect to have much success. I recommend getting to 9 before trying this.
Level nine should only take a couple of hours playing.
To get to the Battleground you need to get to a frontier keep. Drum Ligen (DL) in Hibernia, and see the merchant for a portal necklace (lions den). Wander onto the launch pad (round circle of stone) and click on the summoner.
You will then be ported to the battle ground. Right click on the main door to get out. Each battle ground has a centre keep (CK) which will under the control of whichever realm took it last.
Needless to say, the idea is to kill the opposing realm players. So if you are playing Hibernia, then you get to kill Albion and Midgard players (their names will appear red). Since this is a three why fight, you can expect some interesting situations. Since the bestest computer game AI is a mere shadow of what real people can come up with, expect the unexpected.
RvR can be slow, but it worth it when you finally kill someone, as you know somewhere someone is cursing your name and throwing their mouse across the room; particularly when you jump up and down on their dead body.
Other exciting things to do in the battlegrounds is to use siege weapons, which can smash holes in the Centre keeps walls, and take the Centre Keep from one of the opposing Realms. We warned though, the keep has NPC guards and the Keep Boss (NPC) is very tough, typically needing around 16 players (2 full groups, 2fg) to defeat. Once you kill the keep boss, the Centre Keep will transform to belonging to your realm.
Of course, expect to die in RvR, frequently. However you will not loose any XP, or Constitution, and when you release you will be back in the portal keep (HPK). When you finally run out people to kill, click on the portal stone (a small upright stone) in the keep.
Finally, there is freelevels. To help players level quicker, characters get a free level every 5 days (or 7 days if you play a populated realm/server). Type /free level to see how long it is to your next level. Two questions that always crop up are:
What happens if I keep playing after I level? Nothing. A free level is a gift of that level's XP. So say you hit 10, then get told of your free level, but you keep playing till you hit 11; when you see you trainer your free level will probably only give you 5 bubbles of XP, rather than the full 10.
I haven't got a level, do I still get my free level after 5 days? Nope. You have to level first, and then you get a free level. So if it takes you 10 days to get a level, that how long it takes; but you will get your free level immediately that you level, not five days later.
Freelevels stop at 48, so, you need make sure you manually level the odd numbers in the 40s and get the even numbers as free levels (so you get 47-48 free).
There is a lot more to learn, but frankly if you have made it this far you have done well - go kill some stuff and have fun playing the game.
There are hundreds of sites with more information than you can possibly asborb, checks the links for some good sites.
See you in the game dood :)