Valor Quest

Game Help

Valor Quest is a role-playing "forever" game. You are free to play however you want. Please note this help guide is due for updates and may contain incorrect information. If you would like to contribute, let us know. The in-game help guide, accessible while you are logged in, is more accurate.

Health and Stamina

Health and Stamina are the two most important attributes for your player. If your Health reaches 0, you die. For normal players, this opens up death mode and requires you to be resurrected to resume most activities. You can still move around the map dead as a ghost. Stamina is required for some activities, and especially training your player statistics. Stamina regenerates at a constant rate of 1 point per 5 seconds, and your Health regenerates at 1 point per second. If you die, your Stamina remains what it was when you died, and will begin regenerating once you have been resurrected.

Valor and Gold

Valor and Gold are often inversely entwined. Valor is the measure of your ability to balance necessity with morality. In addition to ranking players for upcoming weekly Champion features, your Valor will determine where you can go and later, who you can interact with. In general, doing good things for good reasons should reward you with Valor, and doing bad things for nefarious reasons will decrease it. You should not worry much about your Valor early on, instead focus on developing your player. Gold is the main currency of the world. You can earn it by doing good things and bad things. There is no limit on how much gold you may carry, but banks have a deposit limit.

Map View and Navigation

Moving around the world will be something you do early and often. The map interface contains several features that are fundamental to playing the game. Movement consists of 6 directions. East, West, North, South, Up, and Down. The little top-right house icon is a Recall button which costs 10 stamina and immediately returns you back to the Tree of Life in Siddun. This is a one-way feature so despite it's incredible usefulness, it has drawbacks. Currently you cannot change your home Recall location.

The map image itself is usually a medium-distance overworld view showing obvious paths and exit directions, and sometimes partial or full names of those locations. In towns, this is closer, and up high, this may be a more birds-eye view. Some special locations show close up scenes, such as the Tree of Life in Siddun, and the Fishouse Hall in Darjeal. Exit paths are not always marked even if exits are available.

The available exit arrows are lit up if an exit in that direction is available. Please note that not all exits are two-way, meaning just because you went west before, does not necessarily mean going east from there to get back will be possible. Most of the map is, however, somewhat logical. It often pays to slow down and read an area's description and also gain a sense of the players and monsters in the area before blasting through it to the next. So far, if an exit is lit up, it is a true exit, and if it is unlit, it is not ever an exit, unless a game update changes it. So, a valid exit will always be an exit, even if it might not always take you where you thought you were going.

The Great Nelvo desert lies just north of the starting City of Siddun. Exits in this region behave bizarrely. Each area within the desert has all 4 directions available to exit, but is is confusing and confounding in that wretched place, so you might not always end up where you wanted. You'll figure it out with experience playing. If you go north from Impasse Point and land in Foothold, you've made it across the desert and can continue northward towards the city of Darjeal.

Movement can be dangerous. Moving to certain areas can cause instant death. There are also dangerous areas where monsters ambient to the region will attack you if you try to move through their territory. Details can be noticed in area descriptions. You will need at least 10 stamina to move through a dangerous area, or else you'll see a caution message.

The time zone in the game is not tied to any specific real-world time zone other than the game's creator enjoys the game's new day falling around 7 or 8pm in his time zone.

Fishing Trips

In the city of Darjeal, you can pay to embark on fishing trips from Fishouse Hall. You can select the desired trip duration and destination there, during which time you will not be able to move except to recall. If you recall before you arrive at your destination, you will be out your trip fee. Once you arrive at the destination after the required real-world time has passed, you can click the Fish button to see what you caught. You will receive credit for your krill catch, if any, which you can see on your Profile page. After that, you can recall and keep your loot. What you will catch varies. Pay attention to the forecast posted before you embark on a trip for hints. You can sell your krill at the Market in Darjeal, just north of Fishouse. The price of krill will fluctuate over time based on the economy, so investment and profit opportunities will be available from that, too. Speaking of lore, the krill here are special in that the composition of the environment and their shells causes them to self-preserve as food when they die. They never go bad.

For now, you will not be able to attack players or be attacked by them while on a ship or at a fishing location. Soon, disembarking at destinations will be possible with extended areas there open for exploration.

Note that fishers increasingly do not like slavers. Once you progress too far down the slaver path, you will no longer be able to take fishing trips. Otherwise, they will be more expensive.

Why is the ocean red?

Long ago, all the surface iron of the world oxidized, turning into crimson rust and blowing away. When the rains came, the basins filled and the iron-rich waters appeared. Rumors abound that it's really red because of all the blood.

Special Area-Specific Actions

The middle bar across the screen where NPC's appear for Talking or Bartering and other functions is where your current area's special actions are available. Usually this will be things like Talk and Barter, but other options may appear such as Slots for the casino slot machine, and Search for Gold for the downtrodden at the Tree of Life. Talking to NPC's can sometimes be interesting. Some of them are more sophisticated than others.

Your Profile

Clicking the big top left Valor Quest logo above your name while playing takes you to your Profile page. This shows your current player presentation and any cosmetic customizations you can apply (later). From here, you can view many different useful personal statistics about your player. You can also view other player profiles and see much of the same information about them by clicking on their name whenever you see them.

Level and Experience

You begin at level 1, and gain experience from a wide variety of activities. Exploring new areas, defeating dangerous monsters, increasing your statistics, and many other activities can increase your experience. You can see your progress towards the next level in your Profile, and be aware this number is not always live and is updated on a slight delay. Your experience should never decrease, and when you level up you are awarded a large amount of skill points, with a bonus included based on your perception statistic.

Monsters and Combat

In areas above ground near towns or well-traveled pathways, you're likely to encounter no monsters or see a few weaker creatures. Venturing a bit off the path or away from town, you may see some stronger monsters, but they will usually not attack you first. You have the option of whether to attack anything you see in the area on the list on the left side of the screen. In dungeons or other designated "dangerous areas" not only will you see stronger monsters appearing, but anything appearing in the list is able to randomly attack you anytime you try to move, so be careful.

Attacks are calculated automatically by the game, so your role as a player is to configure your equipment, skills, and activity to the best of your ability so you have the best chance of a good outcome during any kind of combat. Try fighting some rats to get an idea how combat works.

You may select a monster in the area by clicking its radio button in the box it lives in on the left, and then click the BATTLE button at the bottom. Likewise, when viewing a player profile if they are eligible to be attacked by you right now they will have a battle button on the right side of their profile box. Players must be alive and still in the same area at the time of attack to be successfully attacked. For monsters, the color of the box background and name letters should give a good indication of the challenge level. Grey means little challenge. Green means the monster would be a fair challenge, and red means the monster is likely to kill you.

Attacks may have several outcomes. You can win, lose, stalemate, or flee. A stalemate is a battle that lasts too many rounds with no one dying. Fleeing is a successful runaway during battle. A critical miss death is called a Critical Failure and counts as a death but not a loss. Suicides are counted as deaths but can only occur outside of combat.

If the monsters box reports in grey, "No monsters found..." that means monsters could be around but you didn't see any. "No monsters here." in white letters indicates no monsters can currently exist here.

Death and Resurrection

You can choose to be resurrected at a hospital for a 5-10% valor and 50% gold on hand penalty, currently two exist one each in Siddun and Darjeal. There are also special stones in the desert that can be used for resurrection but with the same penalties. Being resurrected by a player comes with no similar penalty.

Resurrecting others requires level 20 and costs half of your current health to perform, and requires you to have at least half of your total health on hand.

When you die, your screen is greyed out and most of your normal activities will not be available. You can still move around while dead, and this can be used to your advantage. If you were hardcore, you will be able to reset your account or play normally from now on without the hardcore designation once you have been resurrected.

Hardcore Mode

If you choose to play the game in hardcore mode, after dying at least once you can go to Settings (the little double gears looking icon in the 5 icon grey bar under the health, stamina, valor, and gold bars). From here you can carefully select two boxes and reset your character back to brand new and restore hardcore status. Accounts with more than 100 deaths on a run will no longer be eligible to reset in this manner.

Statistics

You have 10 primary Statistics, and each one influences different aspects of your character. Every day, you will be able to train a set amount of stamina into your 10 primary statistics. This begins at 1500 with 35 perception, and increases to over 10,000 with perception over 400.

Here are your primary statistics and their main functions.

Strength

   Base damage done in battle turns. How much weight you can carry in your backpack. Useful for warriors.

Agility

   How often you take an attack turn in battle. If you can not hit your opponent, you can not damage them. Agility is essential for effective combat.

Intelligence

   Affects gain amounts when spending stamina on stat training. Involved in bartering. Best trained early.

Endurance

   Maximum stamina you may have and how many turns you can take in battle before stalemating. Plays a big role in determining how long you can actively regenerate stamina while idle.

Dexterity

   Chances to make critical hits and critical misses in battle. The best armor is no match for a surgically placed blow attacking a critical weakness.

Vitality

   Total hit points you may have. If your hit points reach 0, you die.

Perception

   How much stamina you can train per day and how many creatures you see at once. Also plays a role in many fortune-type events like luck and finding things.

Wisdom

   Affects how many skills you may have actively toggled at once. Determines your skill point bonus when you level up.

Charisma

   Barter Prices and social standing. Very useful for traders and diplomats.

Luck

   Luck has a very small influence on all things in the game. The higher your Luck, the more favor you will have.

Each of your statistics influences more than just what is described on the Statistics page. Especially in combat, but in other places too, your actions can be influenced by 2 or more statistics with varying weights. For example, finding items after winning combat can be partially attributed to both your perception and your luck statistics.

Skills

The current skill system utilizes a list of various perks that increase based on how many skill points you invest in each one. You'll only be able to toggle as many skills active as your wisdom and level will allow. You begin with 2 and it might be common for a level 20 player to be able to select 6-8 or more. Skill points are awarded in bulk each time you level up, and you can earn some through your slave workers too.

Skills level up the more points you invest, but they also cost more to level up with each increase. This creates a system of perks you must choose and strategize carefully to maximize your current gear build and best reach your personal goals.

You can train the number of skill points up to and including the amount you still need to level up in that skill, provided you have the skill points to train, of course.

Equipment

Armor comes in 11 types or slots, and there is one weapon slot. Some weapons may also have defense in addition to damage. Currently, when you equip an item it cannot be unequipped unless another item of that type is equipped, thus forcing the old item back into your backpack. This may be updated in the future.

Weapons may have defense, and they all have a damage range and rating. Weapon speed times average damage equals weapon rating. Weapon speed is effectively a multiplier effective on your agility during battles. This means weapon speed is very important, especially early on with most players opting for the fastest blades they can find to compensate for their low stats.

All items have a quality rating. This is simply a measure of the item's overall quality relative to other items in its class or type. Quality is commonly an influence when bartering is involved.

Your total defense is your flat reduction in all basic damage. At 100% defense, you would block all regular damage and only take damage from critical hits. Theoretically at 200% defense, you would be invincible, although currently getting to 100% is a challenge.

Your Total damage represents your basic damage range, which hits randomly in combat. Critical hits are multiplied by the number rolled for a hit within the basic range. Thus, some critical hits can do less damage than some regular hits.

Journal and Notifications

Some important events such as attack results for both attacks and defends, leveling up, and hourly/daily slave worker pay information will be posted to your journal and the journal button will light up some exclamation points next to it until you view your journal.

Item Hues and Quality

Items come in a wide variety of qualities and hues of color in their title. In general, better items are rarer and appear less commonly in the game than average items.

- Grey items are common basic items and do not feature any bonus properties.
- White items are superior to common and slightly less abundant and come with a white title and possibly 1-2 properties of mild bonuses.
- Green items are more scarce and often feature 3 properties of average bonuses.
- Yellow items are rarer still and feature 4 properties of moderately good bonuses.
- Orange items are somewhat rare and feature 5 properties of good bonuses.
- Red items are very rare and feature 5 properties with very good bonuses.
- Purple items are extremely rare and of course EPIC and feature 5 properties that can have massive bonuses.
Other hues of items are rumored to exist.

Items may sometimes appear after winning a battle with a player or a monster at the bottom of the page after the battle report results. You must click the item's GET ITEM button to stuff it in your backpack, and if you are carrying too much weight, you will not pick up the item. Item drop rates globally are currently set fairly low, you should expect to get 1 drop in about 10 battles, but please note that rats never seem to drop any items. Item rarity is based around a global constant which can be influenced by your perception and luck, and perhaps other stats too. Rare items can more easily be found in vendor shops, and their prices are loosely based on a comparison of your intelligence and charisma with theirs.

Slaves

You do not have to become a slaver to play the game, in fact opposing this practice is half of the game. If you do, though, there are some things you'll need to know.

Slaves can only be purchased at the Slave Market, which is located in Podunk. Once you own one or more slaves, you can put them to work in any areas with a colorized Your Slaves icon, which appears on the top left of the map interface area. Clicking this icon will give you detailed work and skill information for the area you're in. The pay ranges and prices are updated each hour, and they can rise or fall, or appear and fall off the chart. A current report for all areas can be found by going to the Library in Siddun.

Slaves that are working somewhere will usually gain a little bit of orneriness each hour. Once a slave's orneriness is over 50%, it will have an increasing chance to escape from a work area. If this happens you will get a journal notification and the slave will be returned to you. Beating slaves reduces their orneriness to 0%, but beware that beating your slaves almost always destroys any Valor you might have.

Hourly Updates

Once each hour on the dot, areas with slavery update their wage prices and skill details. Players with workers matching posted wage ranges are paid instantly in gold. Players with worker skill tags matching posted area skills will be awarded skill points directly based on the worker's Intelligence stat. You will be notified via journal update of these details, and worker orneriness increases.

Many NPCs selling items will update their stock once per hour.

Daily Updates

Once a day at 00:00, your daily pool of stamina for training primary player statistics is refilled.