IF YOU PREFER TO DISCOVER THE GAME ON YOUR OWN, REFRAIN FROM READING THIS GUIDE!

ABOUT

I often help out noobs during their first days with the game on the official server.veloren.net multiplayer server, so I thought creating a written guide might aid in my quest. I do not play that often anymore and I am having increasingly less time to do so. As such, this guide is being made. It is based on version 0.18 and I started writing it on 25.01.2026. As such, certain elements might be out of date. The main advice should stay sound, however. It consists mainly of stuff I wish someone had told me when I started or that I learned from other players during my stay. Some things might seem obvious, but many newbies asked about them nontheless - hence they are included. It is in no way a definitive nor a complete guide for the game. And before you ask - no, I can't be arsed to make this side responsive and mobile friendly.

FIRST STEPS ON THE SERVER

Starting location

When creating a new character, you can choose your starting location. The best locations to choose are the capitals chosen by players. They are usually located near the center of the map or in an area with particularly easy access to dungeons/caves.

One way to find out which town is the current capital is to create a test character. Then log onto the server and ask in the chat something like "Which city has the most players?" or "Which city is the capital?". After that, create your actual character and spawn there.

At the time of writing, the player capital is Gbitaka (traders and oldheads hang around there), but Grelen is the town where a lot of newer players are. You should spawn in one of those towns, or if you haven't spawned there, make your way there. You can travel from Gbitaka to Grelen and from Grelen do Gbitaka with an airship, so either one works.

Making your character

On the character creation screen you are choosing the starting weapon and NOT THE CHARACTER CLASS. A starting weapon is a Tier 0 weapon (utter garbage). You are able to use all weapons and unlock all skill trees on any character.

First things first

You save your game by sitting next to a campfire by pressing K. Whenever you die or log on to the server, you will spawn at your last campfire.

First things you should do is go to a Forest and find some Wood, Stones and Twigs. If you find any mobs that you think you can take on, try fighting them as well and getting their Hide, which you'll be later able to craft into Leather. You can sell some of your items to merchants to get some coins or useful items.

Multiplayer ettiquete

Don't always use Firestaffs or Ignite Arrow skill on Bow in large lobbies. If a burning enemy hits a player, that player will start burning. Furthermore, firestaff explosions might limit visibility of others.

When going on dungeon raids, the unwritten rule is that whoever grabs the loot first, gets it. Talk to players in a group beforehand if you want to get a particular piece of loot from. After the raid is over, it is sometimes customary to share loot, so that everybody gets their fair share.

Avoid using global chat if you don't need it. More in the Chat section.

Most people are genuinely helpful, even if you ask the dumbest of questions. If you want to learn stuff about the game yourself, visit The Veloren Wiki. You can also open a specific page on the wiki by typing /wiki <name> in the in-game chat. The wiki is not always up-to-date, so it might have some mistakes.

PVP

Press O and click the two little crossed swords icon in the bottom-right corner

SETTINGS TWEAKS

These are the settings I consider changing myself whenever I decide to reinstall the game or I've heard players complain about being turned on by default.

Interface

Tick Always show the energy bar and Enable Poise bar to have the health, stamina and poise bar be always visible on the screen.

Chat

Increase the Background Opacity of the chat window for readibility.

Tick Character Names in Chat to identify players quicker. Some players name their character differently to their account name. When you have it ticked on, whenever a player types in the chat, you will see their [playername] in brackets and Character Name afterwards.

Graphics

Don't go above 500-600 LoD Detail. There is not much visual difference.

Turn all three brightness sliders up if you plan on frequently going caving or travelling at night.

Try out FSR AntiAliasing Mode together with a lower Internal Resolution. You might be leaving free performance on the table (even if you have a beefy PC).

Adjust Bloom and Point Glow. If you don't like glowing lights, turn to the minimum or slightly above.

You can lose a lot of performance with high Cloud Rendering Mode setting. Lower settings don't look very bad. Set Cloud Rendering Mode to None to remove clouds and fog, so that you can see better.

Sound

Choose a lower SFX Channel Capacity if you're experiencing audio crackling issues. These are supposedly fixed, but if the bug rears its ugly head once again, you know what to do.

Gameplay

Tick Show All Recipes to make searching for crafting materials easier for yourself. More on that in the Items section.

Untick Zoom in when charging bow if zooming in while charging a bow annoys you.

Tick Auto camera if you prefer your camera to always be behind your character.

Networking

Tick Lossy terrain compression if you're experiencing lag or high ping or you have problems with loading the world.

CONTROLS TIPS AND TRICKS

You can toggle your cursor by clicking , (comma). If you ever find yourself unable to play the game because you see your cursor, you probably pressed it by mistake. Pressing , allows you to loop Left Click and Right Click actions. It is is useful, for example, if you want to play instruments. If you want to stop the loop, press the relevant mouse click again. It also allows you to access the Group menu

You can have your character autowalk by clicking . (period). When you have lots of travelling to do, it eliminates the need to hold W. Your character will also autowalk if you open the chat window while walking. In this case, you will need to press the movement key you held before opening the chat to make the character stop autowalking. If you don't, your character will be stubborn as a mule and won't stop. This type of autowalking also allows you to bunnyhop.

You can enable free look by pressing L. This allows you, for example, to look around while gliding in the air. Be careful when disabling it tho, because your character will start walking toward the direction your camera is facing.

You can block using melee weapons by pressing Left Alt.

FAQ for the beginners

What is there to do?

There are three main types of activities you do as a player:

1. Mining
2. Dungeons
3. Exploration

Mining is done in Caves placed around the world. To mine ores and gems, you need to craft a Stone Pickaxe. The Steel Pickaxe is just faster than the stone one. At time of writing, all types of ores and gems can be mined with either type. Be careful - caves contain very strong enemies that even experienced players have troubles with. You can avoid them by running past them (and hoping they stop attacking you) or sneaking around when having a high enough Stealth stat (or just being lucky). Gem spawns depend on how much below the surface you get as well as somewhat on the cave biome you are in. For example, you will find way more Diamonds in Ice Caves. Gold and Bloodore can only be found in Lava caves, which can be quite difficult to find.

Dungeons are the bread and butter of every Veloren player. They are balanced to provide challenge for solo players, so the more players you have in your hroup, the easier time you will have. There are five tiers of dungeons.

Exploration, or more accurately travelling through the world, is what you'll spend most of your time doing in the game. You can find sites scattered around the world. Consider those "enemy outposts" or "cool places to find". They can contain loot chests or foes to fight. To learn about more effective means of traveling, click here.

You can also engage in PVP battles with other players. To learn how to turn on PVP, click here.

How do I write to someone/resize chat?

You only need to type the shortcut in chat once for the chat mode to change. Any message you write afterwards will be sent in that chat mode. There are several chat modes in the game:

• /w is for global chat (everyone can see your message). It is saved on the Discord server.
• /r is for region chat (~200 blocks around you)
• /s is for say (~100 blocks around you)
• /g is for group chat (people you have in your group)
• /t <playername> is for dirrect messages (the [playername] is the one in brackets in chat)

To resize the chat window, you right-click it and drag up or to the right. You need to click on the box itself, not on the edges.

Which items should I get/craft?

The first steps you should take in the game are outlined in the First things first section.

Crafting in the game requires Recipes. You can see how to get any recipe by going to this wiki site or by typing /wiki Recipes in the in-game chat. TL;DR - you get them by killing enemies and opening chests in dungeons and caves. The first recipes you should get are Basic Equipment Recipe, Moderate Equipment Recipe, Utility Recipe and Potions Recipe.

If you turned on "Show All Recipes" in the "Gameplay" settings, you can more easily search for what ingredients are required for each recipe. In the crafting search field type input:<name> to find in which recipes a given ingredient is used for. So, for example, typing input:Diamond will show you which recipes need diamonds.

First items you should craft (or be gifted by a helpful player) are bags. More about them in the bags section. Afterwards, craft yourself a couple of Minor Potions. Honey and Apples are sold by NPCs or grow on trees found in the overworld.

You should also craft yourself some better weapons. The game features a modular crafting system, which you can learn about on the official wiki. These are the subtypes of weapons I personally prefer:

• SWORD: Sabre (Strong Pincer for Power)
• AXE: Jagged Axe (Sharp Fang for Effect Power)
• HAMMER: Mallet (Predator Claw for Speed) or Mace (Sharp Fang for Effect Power)
• BOW: Warbow (Strong Pincer for Power) or Shortbow (Predator Claw for Speed)
• FIRESTAFF: Brand (Predator Claw for Speed)
• HEALING SCEPTRE: Crook (Sharp Fang for Effect Power)

You can dual weild 1H weapons of different types. If you dual weild two different weapons, skills from both become available to you to be put one hotbar. A common combination is 1H Sword and 1H hammer - this combo allows you to travel fast, parry enemies and stun them effectively.

Don't overthink the type of gear should you get. If you want to be an effective fighter, it's more important for you to understand the mechanics of the game

Do not bother getting the gold-tier weapons. The tier multiplier difference between the highest and one-less-than-highest tier is just 0.05x. This translates to +0.8 power (yes, that's less than one point). Save those Orichalcum ingots for the armor, although getting the Eldwood Bow, Firestaff or Sceptre isn't that bad of an idea if you have tons of Eldwood lying around. The other type of gold-tier weapons, the legendary weapons, are purely for looking cool, you can craft weapons with better stats yourself. Buy only when you don't know what to do with those 200,000 coins in your inventory. You will do absolutely fine with Frostwood/Bloodsteel weaponry.

There are several types of armor sets, which cover the broad three stat-types:

• CLOTH: Energy and Energy Regen
• METAL: Armor and Stun Resistance
• SCALE: Crit and Stealth

The recipe for Cobalt Weapons & Armor might prove difficult to find. It might be worth it to buy it from a player.

BE CAREFUL WHEN WEARING CULTIST ARMOR! If you have more than three pieces on you, NPCs in towns will attack you.

How do I repair my gear?

Every time you die, all of your equiped items lose one point of durability. To repair your gear, you will need to find a Repair Bench in a town. The basic ingredient for repair are Velorite fragments.

DO NOT LET YOUR GEAR GO BELOW 9/12 DURABILITY. Repair below that will require you to have the material with which the item was crafted. This gets more problematic the more expensive gear you have. For safety's sake, I would reccomended leaving to go to a city when you have 10/12 durability, as you may die along the way. You should leave yourself that one durability point buffer, especially as a beginner. Get more adventurous when you get more experienced and confident in your survival abilities.

How do I set up my skills/hotbar?

To open the Abilities window, click P on your keyboard. Then, click the Book tab on the left side of the screen. This window shows all the abilities you learned that you can equip in your hotbar. You can only assign weapon skills to slots 1-5.
To assign a skill, drag it from the list to the slots in the Abilities window. To unassign a skill, drag it outside of the Abilities window.

You can assign items do your hotbar by dragging them from your inventory to the hotbar directly. I reccomend the following arrangement:

• 6 - your main weapon
• 7 - pickaxe / another main weapon you want to quickly switch to
• 8 - Agility potions
• 9 - Sunflower Ice Tea / Cactus Colada (you can eat those while moving)
• Q - Minor Potion

You can normally equip two weapons on your character and switch between them with Tab. Having another weapon in the hotbar slot allows you to, for example, quickly switch between the pickaxe and the sword, while giving you the opportunity to switch to a sceptre whenever needed. It allows for more flexibility in the loadouts you can make, as it effectively allows you to triple-weild. This is mostly useful with two handed weapons, however.

How do I add friends?

There is currently no friend list in the game. You just have to remember people the old-fashioned way.
You can make a temporary group that will last until everyone leaves it or the leader quits the game. There are two ways of adding people into a group:

1. Through the Players menu
2. Through a chat command

You open the Players menu with O. Remember that the list displays Character Names. Too see someone's playername, put your cursor on their character's name. To add someone to your group, select them in the menu and click the Invite button.

To invite someone through the chat, you can use the following command:

To access the group menu after successfully creating a group, you need to unlock your cursor by pressing , (comma) and clicking the group menu button to the left of your hotbar.

How do I add money while trading?

You add a certain amount of an item to the trading window by first dragging the entire stack of it into the trading window. Then, you click on the stack in the trading window. In the bottom-right corner a pencil icon will appear. When you click it, the game will aloow you to write the exact amount you want. After that, press Enter.

By Shift-clicking you add one of an item to the trade.

By Ctrl-clicking you auto-add the amount to balance the trade while trading with NPCs only.

Is there fast travel?

There is no fast travel in the game. However, there are some faster methods than walking everywhere:

1. Airship travel
2. Quick Draw + Agility Potion
3. Antelope
4. Gliding
5. Bunnyhopping

Airship travel is the most efficient way to travel to far-away towns. If the town you are in has an airship tower, climb it, and wait for an airship to your desired direction. An airship captain says out loud three times in which direction he is travelling before disembarking. Be careful when getting on - you need to jump to the airship, otherwise you might fall down. Go on the deck and sit on the seats behind him to avoid falling from the airplane during the travel. Remember that airship direction is one-way - they do not immediately return to the city they came from. You can find out more about the routes on the airship map on the official wiki. You can reach it in-game by typing /wiki travel in the chat. A browser window will open with the site - you scroll to the very bottom.

Quick Draw + Agility Potion is a combination of item and a weapon skill that allows you to outrun most things in the game. You need to unlock the Quick Draw skill from the Sword Skill Tree. It is in the Agile branch. After drinking an Agility Potion, you spam Quick Draw until you run out of stamina.

Antelope is the fastest mount in the game. They are found in Savannah biomes, but you can very rarely come across them in Jungles and Forests. To tame it, you need to craft a Collar (you need to learn the Utility Recipe first) and right click it in your inventory when you are close to an Antelope.

Gliding is usually done from mountain tops or from airships. If an airship doesn't go exactly to the place you want to get to, you can travel in a direction parallel to it and glide off the airship. You control the direction of travel with your mouse. Holding W, A, S , D during gliding allows you to tilt your glider, but you will lose height faster.

Bunnyhopping allows you to travel slightly faster than walking. You hold Space while walking. You cannot bunnyhop while autowalking by pressing . (period).

Is there a player storage for items?

There is currently no way to store your items. The only way of increasing your inventory space from the default 18 slots is by crafting bags. To craft them you are going to need to find all three tiers of equipment recipes (Basic, Moderate and Advanced). The maximum inventory space you can technically achieve is 146 slots.

There are two main sets of bags - Woven ones (utilising Red Linen, Silk, Soft Wool and Amethyst) and Leather ones (utilising Leather, Thick Leather, Trollhide and Diamonds):

• +6 Slots - Tiny Red Pouch / Small Leather Pouch
• +10 Slots - Knitted Red Pouch
• +15 Slots - Woven Red Bag / Reliable Leather Backpack
• +20 Slots - Sturdy Red Saddlebag / Trollhide Pack

You need each tier of the Woven bags to craft the next one. With the Leather bags there is no 10 slot one and the highest tier is a separate recipe. Another bag type you can find is a Liana kit (+15 Slots) and you get it by killing Saurons.
You can also craft a Traveler's Backpack (+20 slots) which you wear in your Cape slot. This backpack is unique in that it requires to be repaired. The highest bag tier is the Mindflayer's Spellbag (+27 slots). It requires a rare drop from the Cultist Dungeon's boss. As such, it is a quite rare and sought after item.

Which areas are good for begginers?

There aren't really any easier areas. You need to watch out for harder mobs in every single biome you are in. Use your sight to determine if a mob is easy to beat. If something looks like it will devour you in one bite, it probably will. That said, Desert contains hardest enemies out of all the biomes. You should also not go too deep into the caves as a beginner, as they contain some of the heavier enemies the game has to offer

If you spawned in a town next to a river, try following it while avoiding harder enemies you may find alongside it. Try killing small mobs such as Geckos, Piranhas, Foxes, Parrots, Penguins etc. to gain some XP at first.

SERVER LINGO

Players on the official server use some abbreviations or slang expressions that might sound uncomprehensible to new players.

• Reset - you reset a dungeon by everyone in a group going to the pause menu and clicking Characters at the same time. Dungeons respawn monsters and loot when nobody is around them. Before going to a dungeon, players usually grab a campfire close-by that allows them to reset very close to the entrance.


• Mf - stands for Mindflayer, the Cultist dungeon boss.


• Ori - stands for Orichalcum, which is the best Metal in the game.


• Gigas - refers to either Frost Gigas or Fire Gigas. They are overworld bosses, that require many players to take them down.

COMMON PROBLEMS

I can't make my cursor disappear!

Just press , (comma) and all should go back to normal.

My audio is lagging!

This bug can be caused by having too high graphical settings or by having too high SFX Channel Capacity. Try turning your graphical or sound settings down.

I have very high ping!

Try lowering your Render Distance in the Graphical settings. You might also try turning on Lossy terrain compression in the Networking settings. If that does not help, try relaunching the game.

I have ingredients, but I can't craft!

Go into your inventory, pick up the item that you've been recently given for the crafting recipe and put it in another slot. If it does not fix it, try relogging