Mat's Wakfu blog(thing)

(Important: this is partially outdated!)

Hi wakfu current and wannabe players! For everyone out there whether new to the game or just want something to read I have created this blog as a helpful start to your wakfu life.

For those of you that didn't know anything about wakfu here is some info about it;

1. Wakfu was created by a company called Ankama.
2. It has regular weekly updates.
3. It's a turn based MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) Stratergy game.



Step 1: Making your account + characters.Once you have your wakfu game downloaded the first thing you will need to do if you haven't done already is create your account. You can do this either on the games login page or on the wakfu website at: www.wakfu.com.

After you have created your account you will be almost ready to start playing. After you login to the game the first thing you will come across is your character page, on the character page there will be 5 character slots (which will be blank if you have no characters made yet) to make a character click on one of your empty slots and you will be taken to the character creation page (you will be given the option of doing the tutorial before you can make your character) where you can select a character you want to be, its gender, how you want it to look and the name of you character. Once you have created your character you will be able to play.

Step 2: Taking your first steps.
In the game your controls are fairly simple. To move Left-click any cell on the ground, and your character will move there if they can find a way. Your character will either walk or run there, depending on the distance between them and where you clicked. You can also click-and-hold and your character will go in the direction of your mouse - whether he'll run or walk depends on the distance, again.

You can interact with items and other characters by right-clicking them (They'll even light up as you mouse over them. Handy!). A semi-circular menu with a few buttons will appear, you can point at them to read what they do. Greyed-out ones won't work because you lack something (Usually skill level or a tool - mousing over them will usually explain what's missing). The rest, you can push.

The chat in the lower-left corner works quite as usual: type things in there, hit enter, and your character will say it. The messages are colour-coded for your convenience, and clicking the little drop-down menu to the left will change which channel you'll talk in. You can also change your channel by starting a message with /l, /m, /p, /g for vicinity, trade, party and guild channels, respectively. To whisper someone, start with /w "Their Name" - quotes aren't necessary if their name's just one word.

To the lower right you'll see a bar that's empty at the moment. That's where your emotes go for ease of access! It's called the action bar. The small buttons on its left edge open your emote list or switch it to combat mode so you could rearrange your spells. Just click-and-drag to rearrange. Arrows to the right flip through the four panels available, and clicking the number itself will open a copy of the current panel for you to move anywhere on the screen. To use the emotes, left-click on the appropriate icon, or simply press the number key shown on it. It works the same way in combat, only you'll have to show a target, as well.

That's it for out-of combat controls. Now, on to combat!



Combat in Wakfu is different from other MMOG's: it's turn-based! This means that as you start a fight, both sides will choose their starting locations (Click the blue cells to pick yours!), then take turns moving and performing various manoeuvres. You always have 30 seconds to finish your actions, but it's preferable to do so earlier - press end or the round arrow thingy in the bottom-middle of your screen to do so.
But before you start actually fighting things, you'll need to do one thing: press S (default controls) or click the "spells" button in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Drag all the bright abilities you see to your action bar for ease of access. Also right-click them to get the gist of what they do - I'll explain how to read them later.

During your turn, you have four main things to pay attention to: your Hit Points (HP, big heard-shaped thing in the middle-bottom of your screen), your Movement Points (MP, green number next to it), Action Points (AP, blue number) and Wakfu Points (WP, cyan one). The first show how much damage you can take before you're out of action and are usually reduced by receiving attacks. MP determine how far you can move - each cell costs one - and also some abilities. AP is used for your abilities - primarily attacks. WP is used for some very powerful abilities. AP and MP refill to their limit at the beginning of each turn you get, so there's no point to saving them up unless there's something penalising you for spending them. HP does not recover naturally, but can be recovered by some abilities, particularly ones in the Eniripsa's repertoire. WP is very difficult to recover, and in most fights it's downright impossible, so make the best use of the six you get!

Doing stuff in combat isn't that much different from doing it out of combat. Click on the ground to walk there - provided you have enough MP to do so. Mouse over a character to see where they can move (This is not always accurate, but a good estimate). Right-click them to see a window with their stats, like HP and elemental weaknesses. To use abilities (And attack), choose one from the action bar (Left-click its icon or press the appropriate number). Observe the new cells now on the field. Blue ones are where you can aim the ability. Ones with a crossed-over eye are ones in range, but out of line of sight - you can't use the ability there unless you restore LoS by moving around the obstacle or removing it. As you mouse over the blue cells, you'll note that some cells become red: these are the ones that will be affected by your ability if you use it there - it'll be just the one cell for regular attacks, more if it's an area of effect ability.





Step 3: Know the interface.
For this part, I'll show you annotated screenshots. It might take up more space, but definitely easier to read through. Click the buttons to see the screenshots themselves in all their 1280*1024 glory
Characteristics

1. This field shows your character's name and current level.
2. This bar will fill up as you gain experience and become empty once you level up.
3. This field shows your current characteristics: maximum ones in case of HP, MP, WP and AP. Which one does what will be explained in greater detail later.
4. These are your current resistance and attack bonuses for each element, as well as AP and MP loss.
5. This shows how much attribute and skill points you have. Clicking it will open the window to the right (Numbers 6-10).
6. This is where you raise your attributes. Each has its own cost.
7. This is how many points you have to spend on your various attributes. You get 5 each time you level up.
8. These are the points you have to spend on your class's support skills.
9. The abilities to the left are active: you'll need to put them on your action bar and activate them as normal.
10. The abilities to the right are passive: they always grant a benefit and don't need any additional activation.

Spells

1. These are your elemental spells. Greyed-out ones can't be used yet. Left-click the icon to see the spell's card in the lower part of the window, or right-click to pop one up outside the window. Drag them to your action bar to use them in combat.
2. These are your support skills and abilities, including both active and passive ones. Same behaviour as elemental ones.
3. A spell card that shows its description. Later points describe all of its parts.
4. The spell's icon.
5. The spell's current level. This will increase as you keep using it.
6. The spell's experience.
7. The spell's cost (Green man: MP; blue star: AP; cyan W: WP; red drop (not pictured, Sacrier only): angrr), minimum and maximum range and modifiers (Greenish open eye: needs line of sight; reddish crossed-over eye: doesn't need LoS; yellowish eye with lines: range can be increased).
8. Tabs to toggle the spell's normal effects, critical effects and (not pictured) conditions required to use it.
9. Spell's effects. Displays your current level when the card is opened.
10. Scroll this bar to see the spells effects at different levels.
11. Or manually input the level you want to see the effects for.
12. Reset display to the spell's current level.

Inventory

1. Your current equipment.
2. Slots for bags. Bags let you carry more stuff. You start one, but can get more during the game.
3. Your current Kamas. Kamas, in case you didn't know, are the money used in the world of Twelve
4. Your Gemlin. Click him for some settings I'll write about later.
5. Filters to only show items of a specific kind, from left to right: all, consumables, equipment, resources, miscellaneous.
6. Your current inventory. Left-click any item to open its description card, right-click to pop one up. Item cards are almost identical to spell cards.
7. An item's effects in its card.
8. This button will show the item's set window. (11, 12)
9. This button lets you use the selected item. Or you can simply double-click the item.
10. This button lets you permanently destroy an item away. This is the only way to get rid of some of them.
11. This shows what bonuses the set will give you as you complete it. The bonuses stack.
12. This shows which items from the set you have equipped.

Step 4: Attributes and Abilities.
Characters in Wakfu possess many attributes. Let's go over everything you've seen in your characteristics window and describe what each one does.

• HP: hit points should be familiar to everyone who's played a good game. When they reach zero in a fight, you're defeated. You'll start with an amount of those based on your class, and gain some more each time you level up. These recover to your maximum slowly over time outside of combat, and can be recovered faster by eating pastry.
• AP: action points are used for activating abilities in combat. There are very few abilities that don't require AP to use. These recover to your maximum at the beginning of your turn.
• MP: movement points are used to move and activate some abilities in combat. Each cell costs 1 MP to move. These recover to your maximum at the beginning of your turn.
• WP: Wakfu points are used to activate some very strong abilities in combat. Everyone starts combat with 6, and there are very few opportunities to recover them, so use them wisely.
• Range: the maximum (And only maximum!) range of all spells with boostable range is increased by this number.
• Lock and dodge: lock allows a character to prevent enemies from moving away from an adjacent cell. The higher said character's lock is, and the lower the enemy's dodge is, the more chance he has of preventing their move and causing them to immediately end their turn. The highest chance of getting away is 95%, while the lowest is 5%. Having more than one enemy adjacent to you reduces your chances of getting away, but you get a higher chance if the enemy's not facing you.
• Strength, intelligence, agility and chance: these four passively increase your damage with, and resistance to, their associated element. Initiative: characters in combat move in the order of their initiative, from highest to lowest. Higher initiative also means you get speed bonuses sooner.
• Critical hits: this is the percentile chance of your abilities causing their critical effect instead of their normal one. A critical hit deals more damage, or heals for more.
• Critical failures: this is the percentile chance that your attempted abilities will have no effect whatsoever, and still burn any AP, MP or WP paid to use them. You cannot obtain this attribute naturally: it only appears as an effect of some negative ability.
• Block: this is the chance of reducing damage received from any incoming attack by 30%.
• Wisdom: this is how much additional XP you will receive at the end of combat, how much more likely you are to succeed with your AP-reducing attacks, and how likely you are to resist AP loss. Each point gives 1% to each of these parameters.
• Willpower: this increases your chances of causing status effects with your abilities, and reduces your chances of getting hit with negative status effects.
• Leadership and mechanics: this is how many summoned creatures you can have in play at any given time. Generally, classes get one or the other, but functionally, they're identical.
• Summons damage and mechanism damage: this is how much extra damage creatures summoned by you cause. As with leadership and mechanics, you get one or the other.
• Backstab: damage you deal from behind your enemy is always increased, but this attribute lets you do even more.
• Backstab resistance: this negates others' bonus damage when they hit you from behind.
• Perception: for Srams, this increases their chance to remain undetected. For everyone, this increases your chance to notice hiding Srams.
• Kit skill: this reduces the level requirement for items.

There are three main ways to influence your abilities: first is raising them directly through attribute points you get from levelling up, which should be self-explanatory by now. These are non-refundable once you've spent them, though, so think carefully.
Second is through equipment: obviously, you can equip one of each item type for your head, shoulders, neck, chest, back, waist, and feet - as well as a main hand (Where all weapons go), an off-hand (Where you can equip a dagger or a shield, and two ring slots. Everything simply grants you its on-equipment bonus seen on its description card, with a single exception: if you use two identical items, only one will grant its bonus. This can only happen with rings and daggers, of course.
Third is get included in nation-wide bonuses from good ecology and Rush dungeons - they will be elaborated upon later.

Ability cards have already been dissected in the interface section. There are a few more things you should know, though.
First is range: some spells have additional limitations to their range, not indicated anywhere until you try to use them. Usually these limitations are only using them in a straight line or a diagonal.
Second is non-standard AoE. While most effects can be described as line, cross, circle or ring, others act more weirdly, like affecting the two cells to either side of the target, or a V-shaped AoE, or a square. Some of them also take the direction your character's looking in into account. This isn't indicated anywhere until you try aiming them around, but should become fairly obvious
Third, some abilities (Ones with a range of 0) can be used on yourself. Keep that in mind.
Fourth, note that bonuses to the chance cause a status effect you might get from attributes, support abilities or equipment do not apply to abilities that don't already cause these effects.





Step 5: Your Haven Bag.
The Haven Bag is a very special item that you will receive early on in the game. It will serve as a portable home for your character, allowing him to do plenty of things, such as storing or selling items - even growing resources and crafting later on!

To enter your Haven Bag, simply use it by double-clicking it in your inventory. Or you can put it on your action bar, along with emotes, for an even quicker access. This is not possible in some areas, though, such as Incarnam. As long as you're in it, it will appear on the ground, free for anyone to check the items you're selling or enter, if they have the permissions. If your Haven Bag has windows with items in them, it'll stay on the ground for others to check for a day or so, or until everything's sold off (Whichever comes earlier) after you log off inside it. Don't worry: only you can interact with objects inside it, so there's no danger of someone barging in and carrying away all your stuff.

When you just get it, the Haven Bag only has two rooms: the room closest to the entrance is the merchant area, where you can put windows for objects to sell. The one in the back is the Bag's control centre. Let's have a look at everything you get in there, one by one:
The Haven Bag

1. The entrance "portal". Step into it to leave the Bag.
2. The merchant room
3. The control centre
4. The Bag's front window. This is a piece of furniture, and a very special one at that: you can put objects you want to sell into it, and they'll be visible whenever someone mouses over your Haven Bag. It may be small, but it is the only window that does that. Right-click to rotate it, move it, pick it up to your inventory (Note that windows have to be empty in order to be picked up), or manage the items in it. The first three functions are identical for all pieces of furniture.
5. The Coffer. This is a chest that only you can access. It functions like an expansion to your inventory, starting out rather small, but with more tabs for you to unlock as you progress. However, you cannot use the Coffer if you're an outlaw.
6. The lock. Activating it will forbid anyone but you from entering your Haven Bag.
7. The permission books. These allow you to set up more specific rules regarding who can access the Haven Bag.
8. The control panel. It has two functions. The first one is managing Haven Gems, which you will eventually find in your travels. These gems are used to expand your Bag and add functions to it. You'll see nine slots - putting a Haven Gem into an empty one will create a 4 by 4 room of the gem's type. Putting another identical gem into the same slot will expand the room to 5 by 5. And don't forget that rooms should be connected to one another, so you can only put new gems into empty slots adjacent to ones that have gems in them. The second function is customising your bag's appearance: just choose from the possible ones.
9. The log. Using this will show a list of all items sold from your Haven Bag, along with the dates when, prices for how much, and names to whom they were sold. Handy for keeping track of your profits!

There are four known kinds of Haven Gems:

• Merchant (yellow): you can place windows to sell items here. When putting items in these windows, you'll need to pay a percentage of your asking price as tax, so be careful when setting the price.
• Deco (red): you can place a lot of decorative furniture here, most of which serves no purpose other than add character to the Haven Bag.
• Garden (green): you can plant and grow trees, herbs and crops in here.
• Crafty (cyan): you can install crafting tools here.

Step 6: professionalism.

Professions are a large part of Wakfu. They are essentially skills that allow your character to collect resources, regrow them (Thus affecting the ecosystem - see the next part for an explanation of how that works), and fashion them into usable items.
There is a total of 17 professions in the game, 6 of which deal with gathering and regrowing of resources, 10 deal with crafting useful items, and one special to mint Kamas, available as early as Incarnam. Each ability has its own XP and level (Up to 100) and can be raised independently of your character level. You can have them all if you want to - there is no limit to stop you from achieving level 100 in each one.
To first acquire a profession, you'll have to find a Clan Member that teaches it and ask them. When you do, you'll be given a book. Read it and talk to the Clan Member again. Answer their questions correctly, and you'll receive your profession and, if it's a gathering profession, a tool. There is no penalty for getting it wrong.

To gather resources from an item, you simply have to right-click the item and choose the appropriate icon. Your character will automatically equip the appropriate tool, approach the object and start working. After a few seconds, you'll get the resource, some XP for the profession, and the object you harvested from will change - depending on what you were gathering, it may disappear entirely, become unavailable for gathering for a while, or revert to an earlier state of development.
To prevent most resources from disappearing, you'll need to replant them. For this, you will first need to gather some seeds from it, then use them from your inventory and choose a spot on the ground for them. As you mouse over the ground with seeds selected, you'll see cells turn red where it's impossible to plant and green where it's possible - there will also be a percentile chance that the seed will take at that spot. Just click an appropriate cell and your character will go there and start planting. You can also click several cells to queue the planting - your character will automatically go from one to the other and keep planting.
You can only plant things in a location where it is already present. Even within the location, different areas have a different chance of the seed taking. If a seed doesn't take, it's lost, but there's nothing preventing you from trying to plant another in the same spot.

Note that even gathering professions have a few crafting recipes - a farmer can mill grain into flour, for example. These work just the same as with crafting professions, but require their own type of table.

To craft something with the resources you have, first, collect the needed resources. Then you'll have to find a crafting table for the profession - it's a static item you can find all around the world. Interact with it, choose the recipe you want to make, input how many items you want to try making and click the big hammer button. Just wait, and you'll make the items, and get XP.
It's possible to fail crafting a recipe if your level is too low. The chance of this happening is 10% for each level your profession is below the recipe's.





Step 7: The area around you (ecosystem).
Wakfu features a simulated ecosystem. In the basest sense of it, this means that most monsters and some natural resources within nations don't respawn on their own. Instead, you can acquire seeds, which can be planted with the appropriate profession (Trapper for creatures; lumberjack, farmer, and herbalist for trees, crops and herbs, respectively) and will eventually grow into full-grown monsters or resources.
Of course, it's not all player-driven: monsters can breed and produce seeds on their own, but that doesn't happen to often, and is usually counteracted by even a couple players actively hunting.

So what does that mean and why should you care? First off, it's possible to deplete an area's resource, making it much harder to access it until it's replenish. Secondly, keeping certain populations healthy will make Clan Members happy, and they will provide a bonus to attributes of every member of the nation this area belongs to. Lastly, bringing populations closer to their "sweet spots" where they start giving bonuses will give you Citizenship points, which play a role in the game's political system.

When you are inside a nation's territory, you'll see a small Clan Member window in the top left corner of the screen. It has 3 buttons that open ecology-related windows.

1. Clan Member's picture.
2. Clan Member's name and area name.
3. How many bonuses this area's ecosystem has and which are granted.
4. Nation's symbol.
5. Species' current population. Same information is also represented by how full the flask is.
6. Clan Member's desire for the species' population. Yellow lines along the flask are also that.
7. Species icon. Mouse over if you're not sure what it's supposed to be.

Climate
1. The current weather in the area.
2. Forecast for the weak, in real time.
3. Use these check boxes to filter what you want to see.
4. This will fill up as you gain enough skills to plant various plants, and display their preferred temperature range and optimum weather for planting.
You can also mouse over this button to see just the current weather.

The third button just displays some general information about the area and the Clan Member themselves, and should be fairly self-explanatory.

These windows will give you some information about what the ecosystem's current and desired state in the area. Each population within the Clan Member's desired limits will grant a bonus to all the members of that Clan Member's nation whose Citizenship Point total is at least 10.

Different areas can sustain different plants and areas - you cannot bring something that's not already present in the ecosystem. Also some areas are further divided into smaller zones which share what can and cannot be planted, but have different chances for each kind of seed taking.

The weather in current area will affect the chances of plant seeds taking. If the temperature is not in the plant's preferred range, its rate of growth will be slowed. Animals are not concerned over such trivialities and their seeds have a fixed chance of taking and growth rates for each area.


Step 8: Politics *yawn*.
Each nation will be overlooked by a governor. The governor is elected by players that have 100+ citizenpoints, also players can run for the election of being governor with 1000+ citizenpoints. Along with other important roles with the governor such as vice governor, Head guard, army general, weather engineer, treasurer, ecologist and challenger. Each one is a player elected to fill this role and make the law in the nation.

Step 9: Nation Selection.
By the time you leave Incarnam, you will have to choose a nation. This is an important choice that has many consequences, but don't dwell too heavily upon it at first. The choice you make in Incarnam is not permanent: you will receive an additional mission you must complete before being accepted into any nation. But if you go to a different nation's gate area before returning to the Archivist, you can just as easily join them, instead.
The four nations of the World of Twelve are Amakna, Bonta, Brakmar and Sufokia. Each has a distinct look and feel, as well as offering some unique enemies you won't find anywhere else, and an abundance of certain resources:
Amakna is a pastoral, peaceful and quiet expanse of fields and a forest. The unique enemies are poisonous, walking field flowers. This land is rich in wheat and other crops, but might be difficult to find wood in.
Brakmar is a harsh, soot-blackened and barren waste where lava flows right along the surface.
Sufokia is a bright and sunny land, most of which is a sea-side beach.
Bonta still needs a proper description from someone who's been there more than a few minutes.

If you're not sure which to choose, now is a good chance to have a look what each offers: the areas around each nation's gate have that nation's unique monsters, and look like that nation's terrain.

Being a member of a nation means that you will participate in its political system and be subject to its laws, and affected by its nation-wide bonuses. You will also be affected by that nation's war states - unable to form parties with citizens of nations you're currently at war with, and free to attack them and be attacked by them.
Once you've choosen a nation to join and gotten your passport, there's no going back - you can't change it. But travelling to another nation is relatively easy.
All things said and done, which nation to join is a matter of personal preference more than anything - pick one which looks the most pleasant for you, or the one where you have friends. Or you might want to check these forums for a guild or a community to join.