The Burchell Arms Regulars/B.A.R Guide
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Burchell Arms Regulars: Survivor Manual v2.1This manual has been written for the use of new BAR recruits so that they can learn essential survivor tactics and useful information. It is probably not too useful for experienced survivors. It is recommended reading, but if you do not want to read it, we won't force you to. After joining the BAR one of the very first things you should do is make an appearance at the BAR forum. Once you have been assigned member status (as a "Regular") you can get to work helping the BAR. Access to the "Office" (private BAR section of the forum) requires a promotion to BAR Employee. Work hard though you'll earn that status sooner or later. This guide is split into several sections for easy reading. Recent changes:
Character Class GuideThis is a general character class guide, following what I think are the best characters to be depending on what you want to achieve. Name, names are important, don’t choose one you'll be stuck with for the rest of your UD life! Some clans even make a point of killing characters with stupid names! Once you've chosen your name and password, you are presented with a hard choice. What to be! Well, if you want to be a doctor, choose a Science, can't go wrong, both doctor and lab assistant are solid choices. If you want to kick some ass, I recommend that you choose Military and be a Private. Medic is a bad class; if you want to heal, be a Doctor. Scouts take a million years to get experience, so picking a different class would be smart. Don't like the sound of those? Well, you could be a Firefighter or a Cop from the Civilian choices, but stay the hell away from being a Consumer! They suck bad style! According to the wiki, the best starting classes, in order (exact order is debatable): 1- Firefighter 2- Cop 3- Private 4- Doctor Graphical Interface and Game Functions GuideThis is for people entirely new to the game. If you know the basics, you'll want to skip past this part.
This just points out the basic functions of the interface, patronizing but I didn't notice the suburb name for way too long when I first played!
Here we see an example of the right hand side of the screen, with important functions pointed out. Players will appear underneath the "already there graffiti", but my building is deserted. Under the players you will find the "since your last turn" section but since nothing HAS happened since my last turn, nothing is there.
Character ProfileTo access your profile, click on your name in red underneath the map. Here you can join groups, set your description, and look at your skills tree. Once you have clicked your name, look in the bottom left of the screen. There is a button that says edit your profile Click this button and you can set your description and change your group affiliation. The submit changes button works for all three options - survivor description, zombie description, and group. Note that you only get 250 characters to describe yourself. ContactsYour Contacts can be accessed via the View Contacts button underneath the map. Clicking on it will show your contacts. To add someone to your contacts, click on their name and look in the bottom left of their profile - there is a button that says add to contacts. Once added you can change the colour your contacts name will appear in. Your contacts list can be used in a variety of ways: specific zombie tracking, Player Killer tracking, Revive Point rotter tracking, and for tracking your group. Immediate Tactics!What to do at Level 1Now you know what everything does, you can do some really important stuff, like spending the 50 action points that you start with! First of all you need, I REPEAT NEED, to find a safehouse! A place to bunk up for the night. Even if you spend all your points finding one, it will be worth it! To find a safehouse, travel across the map diagonally, and in every new square, look for a building that is Very Strongly barricaded (or VSB). If a building is VSB that means that a) you can get into it, and B) there are people in there to help if zombies break in. I recommend that you especially check out police stations, fire stations, and hospitals - these make good starting safehouses for low level characters. Avoid heavily barricaded and extremely heavily barricaded buildings as you cant get into these without freerunning (see skills) However, if you DO find a HB or EHB building, odds are that there is a VS building close by to use as an entry point for freerunners. Once you have a safehouse, use a map, such as: http://map.aypok.co.uk/index.php, or http://dssrzs.org/map/, to find out where you are in the world by looking at your suburb name (above the 3x3 game map). Click on the suburb names to zoom into your suburb and find out where you are to the square, and how far away you are from resource buildings like fire stations and police stations. After that, cross reference that map with this one: http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Suburbs which shows how dangerous your suburb is, and if you click on your suburb on this map you will get current information on the area. (Be warned that the danger levels could be out of date, so make sure you have enough AP to go somewhere else if it turns out the suburb is dangerous.) Neat, huh? Anyway, since you now know where you are, you can start finding useful gear. As a general guide, a gun-using character (the advantage of a Firefighter, he doesn't need ammo) will want to head to a police station, and a healer will want to head to a hospital. If you are a lab assistant, stay near your safehouse and use your DNA extractor to poke zombies, getting you 4exp a pop.
Police Stations are great for finding the following: Pistols, Pistol Clips, Shotguns, Shotgun Shells, Radios, Flack Jackets. Hospitals are good for: First Aid Kits (or FAK's - good stuff) Search TacticsUrban Dead uses a random number-based searching system. When you search for something. random number generator decides whether you find anything, and determines what it is, depending on where you are searching. You can never run out of items to find. In police stations there is a roughly 7% chance of finding a pistol clip, and in hospitals there is a similar chance for first aid kits. If there is a running generator in your building, then you have a higher chance of finding stuff. The Urban Dead random number generator is, however, an evil beast. These tips may help you tame it: First, don’t click like mad. If you click like mad, you won’t find jack. It happens. Go Slowly. It helps to do things in-between searching (I like to drop my useless items in-between searching, as that uses no action points). Sometimes you will get a groove and get lots of stuff; other times you will get nothing for 30 action points. Make sure you have enough AP to get back to your safehouse (or if you feel like it, stay at the resource building if it's safe- it could be your new safehouse). What to do with suppliesWell. Hopefully you are now tooled up with lots of clips if you are a military person, or lots of FAK's if you are a doctor. Time to go earn some XP and kick / heal some ass! If you are a combatant, leave your safehouse and find a zombie, then without clicking like mad (remember the evil random number generator), fill it full of lead/axe wounds. Hopefully you killed it, but it doesn’t matter if you didn’t, as long as you have enough action points to get back to your safehouse! Be careful! (Oh, by the way, that ammo you found earlier is being converted into experience. 1 point of damage = 1 XP.). If you are a doctor, then heal, heal and heal some more! Every FAK you use gets you 5 experience! No need to worry about random numbers, it’s guaranteed! It used to be the case that level 1 doctors had to ask if people need healing, but now they start with Diagnosis, so just look for survivors that have less than 50 health. DyingShit happens. Especially in your early levels, you will die a fair few times. If you die, it's not the end of the game. If you want to get back to your human character, then post on the B.A.R forum and head to the Otto Street revive point and we will welcome you back to our side. [91,16] (coordinates) Otto St in Pescodside (that’s the suburb). If you are in a revive point say Mrh? once or twice as a zombie. People generally take that as to mean you want reviving. Or, alternately, head to the nearest cemetery and look for graffiti pointing you to revive points. Getting Player KilledA part of dying is getting player killed by others. Player killers flourish in zombie suburbs where local groups cannot police their presence and take joy in basically pissing people off. Now what to do about it, first be sure to take and save a screenshot of yourself being killed - press Alt+PrtScr and then open paint (or other programs) and press Ctr+V - you now have evidence of your injustice. Host this picture evidence on the wiki or on Photobucket for use on the forums. Then add your killer to your contacts so that you have his UD ID, which we can use to track him down. Now, even if you are not a part of the B.A.R then there are a number of things you can do to avenge your death: 1) Contact small individual anti PK'er groups in your area and see what they say. 2) Contact larger anti PK'er groups in your area. (eg your local Malton Police Dept people or Bounty Hunters) 3) Add the PK'er to your contacts list and hunt them down. But if you are in the B.A.R, then what you should do is report the killing in the Knight Watchmen forum (for new PK'ers) and in the general forums. Add the picture evience and a link to his profile. Now a lot of B.A.R members will add your killer to their shit lists and if he comes back into our area he will get the *&^% kicked out of him. There is of course nothing to stop you hunting him down yourself! Recommended Skills!Once you have earned your experience you will want to spend it! Well, here’s a general guide to make life easier for you - certain skills will affect how fast you get more experience, and how often you die. To buy skills simply look underneath the map, and click the buy skills button. The rest is self explanatory. MilitaryGet Freerunning. You already can shoot, freerunning allows you to get into buildings that are EHB so you can be VERY safe. Your chances of dying with freerunning are minimal. To get into a EHB building, find a building that is VS or less, go inside, and then click on the building in your adjacent square, your character will travel between the buildings. Once you have freerunning, get your pistol skill up to advanced. The reason to do this is because the pistol far more efficient for Action points, as you get 6 shots per clip that do 5 dmg each - that’s 30 damage per clip (at 100% accuracy lol) whereas with a shotgun, its MUCH MUCH less efficient. Save the shells you find til you have maxed out pistol and can afford some shotgun experience! After that you can choose pretty much what you want, bodybuilding and construction are good for sure. (Weapon efficiency is discussed in the AP efficiency section in greater detail). Skill Progression by level:
Now you have the ability to gain exp efficiently and can go about obtaining other useful but less essential skills. For a start, body building and construction, then build up your scientific skills. ScientistAgain - Get Freerunning! I know it looks expensive, those 150 experience points could buy you some shiny new doctor skills, but you can’t be a survivor if you're dead. And dead is what you'll be a lot without freerunning. Break-ins are common, except in heavily or more barricaded buildings. A zombie can get Very Strongly down to Open Doors in about 40 AP, letting his mates come in and munch you. Once you have freerunning, you'll want to improve your science skills. NecroTech Advancement by level:
Now you have the ability to gain exp by reviving people and can use NecroNet to locate potential revives. Id max out doctors skills too because they are also cheap and can get you experience. Doctors Advancement by level:
If you started out as a doctor, now is a good time to buy some scientific skills as in my experience surgery is rarely used. CivilianIf you are a civvy, again your main priority is freerunning. If you are a fireman, get improved axe efficiency after that, if you are a Police officer then get your pistol skills up to par same as military. Being a civilian gives you a lot of choices, you can become a doctor, a NecroTech technician or a warrior by following the appropriate tech tree. Action Point EfficiencyBasically, action points are the real health points of the game. Make your enemy run out of action points before you do and you win. GeneralIts more AP efficient to barricade a building up than it is to wait til its open and full of zombies, then have to kill them (30Ap plus ammo each - that’s like 90AP plus ammo for 3 zombies!), dump the bodies (1AP), close the doors (1AP), fix the interior (1AP), Then Barricade up. This is obvious, but people still don’t take it into account. Death - If a zombie dies, its costs them either 1AP (if they are have ankle grab and you don’t have headshot skill) 6AP (If they have ankle grab and you have headshot) or 10AP (if neither of you have either) or 15AP (if you have headshot and they don’t have ankle grab) Most zombies get up for 6AP. However, to make a survivor come back from death, 10ap to become a zombie (you don’t have enough EXP to spend on ankle grab) then you have to find a revive point - about 10 more AP (costs you 2 to move) then you have to wait around like a Mrh? cow while you wait for someone who has manufactured a syringe (20AP for them)or found one (?AP) to come to you (not that far - most rev points are near NT buildings) to come and stick you in the neck with it (10more AP for them but 10exp too) - then you can try to stand up for 10more AP, making a whopping 60AP combined! That’s ten times more than it costs a zombie to get up, so don’t die in stupid ways and don’t kill them unless they have broken into your building because emptying all your precious ammo into a crowd of 30 zombies isn’t gonna do jack! Instead, barricade your building up, and prepare for the worst. Traveling - Remember its more efficient to travel diagonally, you see more squares if your hunting zombies if you travel diagonally! Object EfficiencyFlack Jackets. Effectively reduce the damage you take by 20%. Definitely worth getting. Find them in PD's and Armories. Crowbars. Nothing better for getting a barricade that should be VS down so you can get in than a crowbar. Available in all decent scrap yards and factories. Generators. In every building the presence of a genny is important. Search odds go up for everything, more AP efficient again, also in hospitals you need a genny to perform surgery (15 points of healing per FAK) and in NecroTech buildings you need a genny to use NecroNet to make syringes and to check on the zombie populations in your suburb. and it increases the odds of searches again! Find in factories and malls. *Note, Fuel cans are most often found in Auto Repair shops. You might want to try out this inventory system i figured out:
All references form personal gameplay and http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Category:Items Listed like this: Amount of items, Encumberance %, Where to search. (note that the % is doubled or tripled for 2 or 3 items) All Purpose Adaptable InventoryPermanent Items: 1xDNA Extractor, 4% , Found in NT buildings 1xFlak Jacket, 2% , Police Stations 1xCrowbar, 4%,Factories 1xMobile, 2%, Junkyards + Malls 1xRadio, 4%, Police Stations + Malls Set to 27.66 2xPistols 8%, Police Stations + Malls Subtotal of 24% of your inventory. Consumables: 2xSpraycans, 4%, Autoshops, junkyards + Malls 2xRevive Syringes 4% NT facilities 5xPistol Clips 10% Police stations + Malls 4xFirst Aid Kits 8% Hospitals + Malls.
This inventory system is made to be adaptable, your character has the space to deal with situations by stocking up on the required materials and going out there. With 50% of your inventory available, this could for example take the form of using the extra space for: 1x Generator 20% Factories + Junkyards 1X Radio Transmitter 20% Malls OR 1x Tool Kit 16% Factories + Junkyards & Auto Shops 1x Fuel Can 10% Thus bringing your percentage up to 100, with the ability to start a new safehouse if one has gone down or been the victim of GK,RK ing. Note that your spraycans, pistols, F.A.Ks and Revive Syringes allow you to continue normal operation as well as this. This is recommended if going to a new area, as long as you have supporting crew and people to fill other roles - like the Tank. WeaponryCheck out the Fire axe. As you can see, The Fire Axe is the most efficient weapon there if you have the skills, and in fact it is the most efficient weapon in the whole game! Why? Because you dont need ammo for it! Now check out the Pistol. The pistol is more efficient than the shotgun as its ammo is more plentiful; however shotguns are very useful because when you search for pistol ammo, you find shotgun ammo as a side effect. Shotguns are also useful in a tight spot where you have few AP's to spend. Use them wisely. Personally I use all three, depending on my situation. Hybrid wins every time. If you are more curious, use this http://www.herbsofwar.com/test/combatstats.html to see the action points calculated. Wikipedia(http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Main_Page) Wikipedia is the Hub of Urban Dead. Apart from the game, it’s the most important resource that you have at your disposal. Once you learn your way around Wikipedia then you can find out anything and everything about the game and the people on it. The map i gave you earlier is on Wikipedia, as is practically every clan on Urban Dead. Hell it has already given you this wonderful resource :-) Online ResourcesUseful websitesThese are websites that are useful for Urban Dead Resources:
Firefox Plug-insI find that firefox is the best browser to use. If you are using IE, here's a place to get firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Once you have firefox, then you can get the following goodies should you choose:
General guide to building defenseHere is a general guide on what to do with safehouses etc: If it is a resource building, DO NOT 'cade over VS+2 as newbies cannot get in! If under siege, however feel free! However if there is spraypaint that says ENTRY POINT, DO NOT 'cade over VS+2 as people will not be able to get to the adjacent safe house that is EHB and you probably killed a lot of survivors by doing that. Try to keep a genny running in any safe house, its better for everyone involved. Same goes for radio - you can radio for backup on a local frequency if you get in trouble, but be aware that zombies often target these objects as primary objectives because of their high importance. Outside of killing zombies for EXP, cleaning up a Revive Point from unwanted Brain Rotters and PKers, there is NO REASON to kill a zombie outside. You waste AP and ammo attacking them, and they just have to stand back up to be at full health. Rather than taking potshots at hordes, concentrate on getting zombies out of safehouses and cading them up, and if there are too many(roughly equal the number of people inside the building, evacuate. If you have the AP and supplies, heal some people first. This will buy some time, as healing is more AP effective than a zombie's attack power. You'll be of much more assistance, if you skip out and live, only to return and retake the building after the bulk of the horde has passed, than staying behind to be killed by the dead. In Malls. Malls are generally known as Death Traps. Sure they have FAK's and Guns, but any decent sized horde can break in in hardly any time due to rules like ransack and dragging. The only mall to survive for a measurable time was Caiger Mall. Gameplay changes and eager hordes ready to test their mettle, have destroyed this last bastion of human resistance. If trying to defend a mall, which should only be attempted for the thrill of it, it is essential to spread forces evenly so that the zombies don’t get inside any of the quarters - the "large buildings rule" means that if the cades are down in one part, they can be bypassed in all the others. Anyway the B.A.R doesn’t really like malls. There's no friendly atmosphere there. I have played zombie characters, and a mob of 17 zombies managed to break into, and cause terror in a mall to a ridiculous extent. Jargon GuideUD means Urban Dead. ClansB.A.R means Burchell Arms Regulars, RRF means Ridleybank Resistance Front, C4NT means Channel Four News Team, DEM means Department of Emergency Management. etc etc. ObjectsFAK = First aid Kit, Genny = Mobile Generator used to power buildings. BuildingsPD = Police Department, FD = Fire Department, NTB = NectoTectBuilding sometimes just NT. Barricades or 'CadesVS = Very Strongly VS+2 = highest with entry still possible, VH = Very Heavily, EH = Extremely Heavily, maximum cades, also known as EHB. Extremely Heavily Barricaded. PeopleGK'ers = Generator Destroyers, Pk'ers = Player Killers, Zk'ers = Zombie Killers, Zergers = People abuse multiple characters, Alt = Alternative Characters, eg "my zombie alt ate some people" Game HistoryCaiger MallWell Caiger Mall was hailed as the "last bastion of human survival" with attempted sieges and such, but they grew soft like rotten fruit. They took but did not give in return, and thus when the massive Shacknews Horde ravaged Malton in December 2006, Caiger mall fell. There was much woe but also much rejoicing. Attempts to secure Caigar again for human survival have been met with merciless zombie sieges, and i witnessed both the first and second sieges and downfalls of Caiger Mall. RidleybankI pity the poor newbie that spawns at level 1 in Ridleybank. It has been a traditional zombie stronghold for as long as the game has existed, and it’s an unwise survivor who treads there. In recent years the risk has grown less, but the RRF are as strong as ever - and even the C4NT were forced to leave after the siege of the Blackmore Building. The Big Bash and Mall ToursOnce the largest and most devastating zombie group in the game, the zombies of the Big Bash destroyed our home and suburb on two occasions, in the second recovery was swift, because we had experience from the first they used the Big Spiral of Death method of territory conquest to gain areas, which they took two at a time. The Big Bash has now fragmented, and many of its zombies have joined the Mall Tour 07. The Mall Tours are just as much of a historical group as the Bash, the distinction being that the Mall Tours tried to destroy Caiger Mall and failed (first and second siege of Caiger) leafing the Bash to never target Caigar. ShacknewsEasily the most devastating and amazing group of recent times, the Shacknews horde was unique - an entire forum joined UD at the same time, and made an affiliation. They started at low levels because of this - but still took the Blackmore Building in days when the siege there took months. Speculation that Blackmore was lost due to another groups actions on a mall were proved wrong when the Shacknews mall sieged and trashed Caiger. My zombie alternate character was there, just to witness Caiger fall. Burchell Arms RegularsWhen the Regulars were formed, it was difficult to hold our safehouse at all, but as we have grown as a clan we have spread our wings and helped heal our suburbs of zombie infestation in the face of much larger clans. In the start, we were small enough to not witness the full force of the RRF, but nevertheless had to cope with a ravaged suburb and short supplies, we've been through the Big Bash - Twice, as they headed north to Treweeke Mall then returned to ravage the south. More recently, we have been embroiled with the nomadic group MOB - the Military Order of Barha. B.A.R specificsThe BAR aren’t Nazis, we don’t want to tell you what to do, but there are a few things you should be aware of. Check out the barricade plan, to make sure that you don’t cade people out. Speaking of NecroTech buildings, Rolt Heights has a distressingly small amount of them, the nearest one to the BAR HQ is the Clewett building, which is a high profile target and should be kept at EHB at all times. The sponsored revive point for the BAR is Otto St, 91-16 i think in Pescodside, the suburb next to Rolt Heights, it would be appreciated if people would keep an eye on it, occasionally check the DEM tool or the forum for requests! Cheers! Also if you want to spray up the BAR url, use this one http://tinyurl.com/lnukg as it will actually fit into the spraypaint text bar. Other groups in the BAR area:
To see our allies go to the members and allies selection at the top. Happy Hunting! ConclusionThere are still lots more things to learn in urban dead, this is just a basic guide! Brought to you by SamTheMan Of the Burchell Arms Regulars!
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