7 DON'Ts of a newbie. - Printable Version

Okay, so you're a new player. I know that you might be overwhelmed about all the things that you can and should do in Discovery, however you might have no idea what's considered poor demeanour in this lovely corner of the interwebs known as Discovery Freelancer. Well, look no further. In a moment I will give you the arbitrary list of seven DON'Ts - the stuff that you should NOT do so as not to piss off other players and be a n00b. Nobody likes n00bs, right?

1. DON'T go in without sufficient knowledge of English.

You don't need English philology PhD to play on Discovery, however it is worth noting that people will rarely treat you seriously if you don't at least try to respect the rules of grammar and punctuation. I mean, would you treat this guide seriously if it was written in broken English and no punctuation? Exactly. I can't stress enough how important proper English is during RP encounters - as a rule of thumb you should remember to always do your best when talking to other people in game - you will save yourself the embarrassment and sometimes even ending up on the wrong side of a blue message. And don't worry about typing slowly, there's no hurry (most of the time).

2. DON'T go in without reading the rules.

The admins are often easy on newer players for small mistakes they might make, however it is still good to at least have a sufficient understanding of the rules and your ID before playing. Otherwise you'll make yourself look like a n00b. Here's a short TL;DR:

a) Don't be a male reproductive organ.
b) Don't use emoticons or internet shorthands (i.e. "lol", "brb" and so on).
c) Read your ID and follow it to the letter.
d) Don't shoot people without saying a word, especially if your ID doesn't allow it.
e) If you die, don't come back to the system you died in for two hours (or until the ship that killed you leaves the game)/
f) If you need to practice shooting, go to Connecticut (/conn to go, /return to go back).

3. DON'T do non-canon roleplay.

Discovery Freelancer universe is unique in that it depicts specifically human struggles in a human populated sector of the galaxy. That means if you roleplay someone from outside Sirius (like Sol) or you roleplay a non-human entity (Nomads and AIs are excluded from that), people will generally point fingers or outright refuse to talk to you. This includes imports as well - trying to roleplay characters from other franchises such as Mass Effect or Star Trek, or other roleplay universes.

Of course there are exceptions - using just the picture of a character (as long as it's a human) without adapting the name or character is usually fine considering the difficult of finding unique character photos. Just know the limits and don't make it blatant.

4. DON'T overwork yourself.

Often players that don't have much experience with RP will try to pick a character that suits them. That's fine... until you decide to RP an overly complex character. The thing about RP is that you need to understand your character very well and have the ability to figure out what they would do in any situation. And it's not difficult to be unique while also being simple to play - I've seen many entertaining ideas for the simplest trading character who were very fun to interact with.

Also remember that your character is a person with all strings attached. Avoid the Mary Sue syndrome. Try to start with a simple merchant, freelancer or smuggler who follows simple goals - such as, you know, making money.

5. DON'T make a faction unless you know what you're doing.

I did that once. Let's not speak of the results. If you're looking for a group of players to join up with, rather than make your own faction join one of the existing ones. Chances are you will find what you're looking for there and get some know-how on how to kickstart your own once you feel comfortable. Leading a faction is hard work that takes up a lot of time and you have to keep in mind that you still have to stand out or offer something unique if you want to attract players. Spazzy also wrote a good tutorial on the subject so I won't go too much into detail here.

6. DON'T go after the biggest, shiniest ship.

You undock from Erie. The first ship you see is of course the glorious, majestic Battleship Gettysburg. I mean look at it. A thing of beauty, right? Something that you're gonna get as fast as possible, right? Riiiiiiiight? It's not that simple. Let's imagine that indeed, you do some non-stop trading for a month, grind out the half a billion you need for a Liberty Dreadnought and with a feeling of sheer power you fly that cow into the first fight you get into.

And then you're gonna get blasted to pieces by the first enemy bomber or gunboat that sees you.

There are many mechanical intricacies to flying a capital ship - you need to know how armour works, how weapon groups and turret steering work, as well as have a group of people that can support your flying cow. Big ships have a lot of firepower, but are also easy to kill if you are not careful. You might be better off getting a smaller cap, like a gunboat or a cruiser, and learn your cap pilot skills on that, or aim for the stars and jump into the most elitist ship type in Freelancer - fighters.

Additionally, spending all of your money on a single ship is not a good idea. You definitely want to have at least one properly outfitted trading character that you can grind the money for other stuff on. And considering the price of a properly outfitted battleship is ten times greater of a properly outfitted transport you might want to consider what faction you're going to get the battleship on.

7. DON'T be afraid to ask questions.

Seriously. We are human as well. We want to see new players join Discovery too. So if you have anything that bothers you about the game, its mechanics or environment, there are many ways of communication: the Help & Support forums, the Discord Help Channel or the [Angels] player faction which is dedicated to helping new guys. We don't bite.

So I guess that's it. Leave comments below if you have anything to add or have any feedback. Have fun and enjoy Discovery.