Talisman Online New Player Guide: An Overview

Developed by Miracle Castle Ltd, Talisman Online was released just prior to Christmas of 2007. It is a F2P (Free to Play) MMORPG in the high fantasy category. It is extremely similar to World of Warcraft in both visual and game play. There are five character types that you can choose to play: Wizard, Monk, Assassin, Fairy, and Tamer. The Wizard is the sorcerer and uses magic attacks, the Monk is the healer and uses light combat, the Assassin is your melee hand to hand combat fighter, the Fairy uses a mix bag of tricks, and the Tamer is a druid-like hunter with a companion fighter pet.

When you first fire up the account, you’ll be met with the character creation screen. You’ll be choosing the name and face style of your player. This, as well as other areas, are implemented so that you can have a customized character, one that you can be happy with. You’ll be allowed to create three characters in one account. (To have any more than three characters, you will have to have more than one account.) Once you’ve created your character, you will be able to enter the server and play on the account that the character is on. This is the first step to starting out in Talisman Online.

You will start your Talisman Online adventure in Green Scarp. This has four areas: Back Mountain, Square, Secret Cave, and Piedmont. All of the characters will start out here and it is green year round. This is the area that you will learn about the controls, the starting quests that you can enter into, and basic game play. You'll do this while interacting with the new characters that are also just starting out as you are. This is a good place to start getting use to the Chat Controls in the game.

Killing monsters will net you loot in the form of money, experience, and energy. There are hotkeys 1, 2, and 3 to use for attacking. This will give you the skills that you can use to slay whatever foe that needs to be vanquished. Once you’ve killed the monster you can right click to see the drops. There can be armor and weaponry that drop as well. To equip any of these items you'll find, you will need to right click to pick it up and then press “I” for your item box to come up. Right clicking things in your Item Box will equip them to your person. If you get the item as a reward it can’t be merged or traded. It is what is termed "Soulbound" in most MMORPG games.

NPCs (Non Playable Characters) are ones that will be giving you the in game quests. Go to the ones that have an exclamation point over their head. They have quests for you. Just right click on them and then you’ll see what the quest is for and if you want to accept it or not. If you do want to accept it just hit the “accept”. Once you accept you can go off and complete the quest. If you fail to finish a quest you can go to the quest menu by hitting “T” and then click the quest that you are working on. Once you click on the quest that you are working on a blue star will appear on the map showing you where to complete that particular quest. There is also the “Trace it” function that is in the bottom of the quest interface. After hitting “trace” you can get the name and number of the quest which will help you in its completion.Remember all finished quests are in yellow, you won't need to be working on those.

If you need to find people to help finish a quest or scenario by playing with you, you can use the Chat channels to find someone. You can also find a person in the game and right click their picture and bring up the “Team Up” feature. If you are invited to one of these "Team Up"s, you can hit accept or decline. This is a way that you can add people that you enjoy teaming up with to be on your friends list. You can open your community by clicking the “F” hotkey and click the “add” to add them to your friends list. You can also hit to block them should you want to do this feature by blocking them (marking them as an enemy, or nonfriend).

There are many similarities between this game and World of Warcraft. The characters are a bit more anime and caricature like but the interface and the backgrounds are very similar. You'll find that the game questing is reminiscent of World of Warcraft as well. If you are looking for the “poor man’s” World Of Warcraft, this may be a welcome surprise for you.