When you first enter Serbule from the newbie island or Serbule Hills, there will be a “ghost NPC” (Non Playing Character) that you will see that is apparently someone who was very close to you or knows you. While the plot for the game is still being worked on, this NPC does introduce you to the “Stuff to Do” tab (under the crown icon on the interface bar). It's a small and handy reference to a few basic tasks that can be completed early on if you need direction and what to watch out for to advance both the main quest and to take advantage of things in Serbule itself that are different from the island.

While on the island, you were probably killing skeletons and wolves, looting, and doing tasks that you would be familiar with as a new player in any MMO. It is when you get to Serbule that you will focus on what the real underlying purpose of this game is: to familiarize yourself with each new environment (or zone) and its people (NPCs) and to make friends (gain Favor) to learn more skills, get more inventory space, or get access to special barters or other resources.

Instead of an experience or XP grind you are going to be going through a Favor grind and learning skills that specifically help you, mostly in that particular zone. You can think of it as a sort of “community pride experience”, except there are actual Community and Civic Pride skills and these have a different purpose in the game which I will get to later on in the Serbule Hills section. That all said, raising Favor with NPCs in each zone is one of the major components of the game.

In other MMOs, they simulate introducing a character to a new area by having scripted sequences or events that quickly guide you to an “on rails” solution to fabricated problems that sit in a quest log that you MUST do in order to move on to the next quest and the next quest and so on. The NPCs refer to you in the exact same way they do every other player that comes their way and they might even call you a “Chosen One”. They give you your first quest which initially sounds more epic or important than it really is. Then they ultimately send you on a “fetch quest” to collect 10 Rat Tails to get experience (XP) and gold so that you can do the next quest to move to the next NPC or area that sends you on another fetch quest for XP or gold.

Project Gorgon (PG) does some of these things and doesn't do others. It certainly doesn't hold your hand like other MMOs and – in many, many ways – expects you to go “off script”. Sure, there might be a Favor quest for those Rat Tails, but that NPC wants them specifically for a Shamanic Infusion recipe and after you collect them you don't suddenly and magically learn Shamanic Infusion. Instead, you collect the Rat Tails and get some money or a skill to create a belt that increases your projectile dodging capabilities. But collecting the Rat Tails may have also unlocked an option to “Hang Out” with that same NPC (which will happen when you log out of the game, mind you) and try out some Alchemy recipes, which will both increase your favor as well as get you some Alchemy experience AND possibly teach you the NPC's favorite hidden lore old Rat Belt inventory space recipe so you can create a belt that increases inventory space. Or maybe you'll unlock a Bartering option that will give you a charm that another NPC collects so you can raise Favor with them or get new items.

The major use of Favor for most players is going to be to unlock new Training skills. If you are a Sword player, you will focus on becoming friends with Swordmasters in the game to unlock new skills. But here is a list of all of the reasons to increase Favor in the game:

• Unlock new Training skills
• Unlock a Shop option
• Unlock new Hangouts whereby you can learn new skills or get certain items or more Favor
• Unlock unique Bartering options
• Unlock new Favor quests (sometimes for even more unique items or skills)
• Unlock Storage Space so you can store items with an NPC

You can think of the Favor system as a way to add a really interesting depth mechanic to NPCs that isn't usually found in other MMOs.

Many NPCs will talk to you differently depending on who or what you are or what decisions you've made. Some won't talk to you at all if you are an Animal, a Necromancer surrounded by skeletons, or a Werewolf. The gameplay for a Spider Necromancer is going to be completely different to the gameplay of a Pig Priest or a run-of-the-mill character like a Human Unarmed Mentalist. If you are a Rakasha, you might get frowned upon in some areas and be welcomed in others, if you are also a Werewolf Rakasha, you might be downright hated by some NPCs and absolutely loved by others that would otherwise attack a player character on sight. Even on the animal side, the life of a Spider is often even harsh among the animals NPCs that either don't like or don't trust you while they will trust humanoids. Some Elves won't talk to players at all (regardless of race, animal, or otherwise) if they aren't clean: meaning you will need to find some water to rinse off in. Many NPCs have uniqueness to them that you just won't find in your standard MMO. The developers took the time to code in so many unique interactions for each and every class and each and every race and each and every animal form, there is simply no other MMO out there that has this kind of complexity with its NPCs.

Later on in the game, you might run into an NPC who is an expert in Cheesemaking that needs a few specific Blacksmithing items in order to finish his research. An actual example of this is the Quarter Hoops quest for Braigon in Eltibule. Braigon needs them to make barrels which are used to make and age cheese. This is kind of a unique quest combining or introducing the use of three different skills. After it is completed, you will have learned how you can use Blacksmithing to make the Quarter Hoops, Carpentry to make the Barrels, and Cheesemaking to make the cheeses. A fourth skill, Textile Creation, is actually needed to make the Cheesecloths to make the Cheese, too. But this particular quest is a good example of the depth of the skills in this game and how you will progress in the process of becoming friends with NPCs.

In PG, many things you will do chain off to the next ability, or area, or person, but not as an “on rails” questing experience for a traditional main storyline. While I used Rat Tails as an example above, they really are actually quite worthless most of the game unless you are going to increase a skill called Shamanic Infusion which uses trinkets or otherwise junk items from loot to give permanent gear buffs. Determining what to do with “rat tail” loot is part of the game as well, finding out what items are mostly trophy items that you can sell for junk or are ones that you should give to specific NPCs for Favor (Remember "More Info" is your friend). Lastly, if you can't find a purpose for it, sell it. Remember the Craft → Favor → Barter → Sell adage, as that's the order in which you should use to determine if you should keep an item.

More on Favor is below, but I still want to address just how off-script you can go.

In PG, you can effectively swear off the humanoid NPCs in Serbule, save up 200 councils, go to the “Buy Used” tab on Marna or Mushroom Jack, buy a Pig potion, drink it and turn into a Pig, set your secondary skill to Unarmed, and then go run off killing whatever you come up against. You're going to have a bit of a hard time surviving as a Pig as a newbie, but it will be a drastically different experience compared to most newbies and is still feasibly just one route you may go. Some of the regular NPCs that a normal newbie will talk to will want to eat you instead of Training or Bartering with you, but you'll get to talk to other animal NPCs (especially in Animal Town in Sun Vale) that those same humanoid newbies wouldn't otherwise meet. Oh, and if you ask for help in chat, you'll find you “Squeal” and “Oink” instead of communicate effectively (and you will level your “Beast Speech” skill in the process). Yes, Animal forms have this same depth of synergy skills as humanoids do!

Please note here that playing as an animal intentionally isn't necessarily recommended, however, for your first demo character from the author of this guide. (NOTE: I do have an animal tips section if you do decide to do this) You will sometimes make choices that can drastically change the way you play this game and some of them are irreversible or nearly irreversible. It may be best to make these irreversible choices (namely, becoming a Werewolf or Druid) on a secondary character or to take seriously what the NPCs are saying about what will happen when you make these decisions. If you do make this decision on your first character, I would recommend making a second humanoid character immediately and getting them to Serbule to use as an “inventory mule” and do traditional Favor questing alongside your first character. Additionally, if you can make it to Sun Vale and Animal Town early on as an animal, that might also be a good idea to work on Favor questing there.

I do want to note, however, that if you have paid for the full game, playing as an animal character (even as your primary character) is definitely viable. Animals have a lot of animal-specific combat and survival skills even, and can be very enjoyable to play. A good portion of the playerbase even chooses to play as animals most of the time. A significant portion of that group maybe even NEVER plays as a human. It's entirely optional, but keep in mind you still may want to have a Human character around as an alt (also sometimes called a “mule”) to trade with NPCs in Serbule for the early game.

As of the time of this writing in 2024, you can play as the following animals:

1. Cow
2. Deer
3. Pig
4. Spider
5. Rabbit
6. Giant Bat
7. Wolf/Werewolf/Lycan
8. Spirit Fox
9. Butterfly (sort of)

All of these classes are fully fleshed out and can compete in the end game, too. Butterfly is a Fae-specific skill, however, and I don't know much about it or how it works, you might have to ask in game for someone who is familiar with Fae to help you if you have questions or refer to this entry in the official wiki. I know that Butterfly with Psychology/Mentalism is a thing, but I don't know if they can pair another combat skill with Mentalism like Unarmed or Ice Magic or if they have to use Psychology or not.

The very first thing you are going to want to do if you are fresh off the island is sell unnecessary items in your inventory.

The easiest way to do this is to find Marna in Serbule (you can find maps for each area on the wiki) and just sell everything to her, but I would recommend you sell as much of the armor/weaponry/gear items to Joeh that you can at first and as much of the trophy items or extra mushrooms as you can sell should be sold to Mushroom Jack. Mushrooms can also be saved for making more Pick-Me-Up juice, so keep that in mind. Cheese (and other foods) can be held onto as snacks or sold (or gifted) to Fainor. Hardtack can be held onto as well at least for early on as it is a reliable early food and you will always want to be eating for buffs. Therese and Sir Coth will also buy many seeds and otherwise insignificant items at full value. Marna is who you will typically want to sell items to last after first selling to Joeh, Mushroom Jack, Fainor, and Therese. (Or using items to gain favor with these NPCs)

Marna is a unique NPC in that she will buy and sell pretty much any item in the game and she does so at full value. She has a very limited amount of councils on her, though. You can hover over the number of Councils she has left on the Sell tab to see when she will refresh her councils, too. The same applies to Joeh next-door, however he has more money and will get even more as you gain Favor. This is simulating him liking you more and thus being willing to trade more. Later on in this guide we will explain more about Favor and Storage, but for now I would just sell what is taking up space for you, and especially sell any equipment you aren't using. Equipment that isn't better than what you have equipped is easily the first thing worth selling.

I would also recommend storing/saving some items even if you have to store them in your inventory. In fact, here's a good list of items new players will occasionally run into around Serbule and should never sell to NPC vendors because they have value outside of NPC purchasing price by itself:

• Crabs, Clownfish, Grapefish, Perch - Use these to make food or meats instead and then sell (or gift for Favor) that food.
• Strange Dirt - These are used to make Fertilizer for Gardening or can be sold to players for at least 60-100 gold each.
• Heartshrooms - These are useful in Bartering and early Favor with several important NPCs.
• Stomachs - Players will pay 1k-1.5k in councils for each of these. This is probably the single item most players accidentally sell to the vendors, veteran players find them on the “Buy Used” tabs of Fainor and Marna all the time.
• Amethyst - These are worth ~500 gold each and used for teleporting around.
• Tuft of Fur, Beaks - These two items (combined) can be traded to Flia for a free gem worth around 200-500 gold (If you have more Tufts of Fur than Beaks, you can buy Beaks from Way in the Mushroom Cave later on). This item also has its uses for teleportation in the late game as well as can be used like a Rubywall crystal for Crafting-based Work Orders.
• Cat's Eyeball, Antler - These two items (combined) can be bartered to Flia for Strange Dirt, an essential ingredient in gardening.
• Bronze Gear, Tin Gear, Brass Nail, Metal Claw, Silver Spring, & Enchanted Construction Nail - If you purchase the full game, these can be bartered with Dorimir in the Casino basement for Casino Tokens. These tokens can be traded with Qatik for inventory space, so these items are very important for increasing storage space early game. Many of these items are also very needed for late game Carpentry and Gadgeteering. A few are used for high level Giant Bat/Battle Chemistry weaponry.
• Rubywall Crystal - These will sell to players for 130 to 500 gold each or you can use them yourself in crafting or surveying which are two big early money-making options in the game. Selling a stack of 99 for ~15,000 in work orders is pretty common, sometimes they sell for less or more, though.
• Eggs - Similar to Crabs these should be used to make easy food which you can eat or sell, but they will also sell for like 20-40 gold to desperate players in Trade chat.
• Bottles - Bottles are worth around 30-40 gold each to most players. You can even go get Milk from a cow and easily get 100ish gold for the Bottle of Milk and the player may give you empty bottles for a cheaper price so you can milk cows again to repeat the process. This can also be done on alt accounts or mules so you can farm Milk for early money assuming you have a lot of bottles. Later on, you can get Empty Bottles by simply buying Fertilizer from Yetta and either using it or emptying it. The skill “Angling” can also help you collect mostly “free” empty bottles.
• Mushrooms - Most mushrooms can be combined with salt to make Mushroom Flakes which increases your Mycology skill and you can sell for more than the Mushroom value to an NPC named Mushroom Jack. Or, stack them up in your inventory and later sell them to players.
• UnPig Juice - Keep an eye out for an UnPig Juice especially when killing Pigs. You can sell these for ~3000 on the Consignments tab with Mushroom Jack. Later on I'll talk about why you should maybe consider holding on to one of these, because you can use Ruggedizers (40c cost) as large one-hour health boosts but they come with a small chance of turning you into a Pig so it's nice to have at least one of these in your inventory while using Ruggedizers to offset the small risk of being Pigified.
• Ancient Coin - There are a few different versions of these. All of them can be sold to Sir Coth for money or gifted to Flia for easy Favor to get access to her Barters. Tadion will Barter Ancient Coins for metals which is a great way to get some of these skill early if you aren't doing Surveying.
• Hops - This is used in the Brewing skill and you could probably sell it for ~200-500 to a player that is doing high level Brewing and needs scores of these for the higher level crafting.

Aside from these exceptions, please follow the Craft → Favor → Barter → Sell adage and remember that "More Info" is the best ability in the game because it tells you exactly what that new item you just picked up is used for.

One more thing to note, just in case it comes up, is that Velkort (and later, Way) will take as Gifts most of the junk items that you can't otherwise sell. Sir Coth also buys paintings, coins, spoons, and other random items. This is nice if you can't sell to Marna anymore or have hit her weekly cap. I will get more into Gifting below as it also has to deal with Favor and Storage.

I would recommend reading the Lore items in the back part of Marna's store as well as clicking on selectables in other parts of town. You should eventually get a single skill level in Lore where you can use the first level of Word of Power. You also will need to get the Crab Meat recipe from Fainor and buy at least one Bottle of Water from Therese.

Here is where holding all those Crabs from Anagoge Island becomes worthwhile, however, as you can use a Crab Meat, Bottle of Water, and Salt to make a Lore 0 Word of Power. These are kind of odd in that you can use them in chat to gain the effect they say they give. You can save them to your “Notes” tab or just write them down in a notepad next to your computer. Be sure to cross them out or erase them as you use them. A few of the notable “Level 0” words will teleport you to certain locations, the two big locations being Serbule Keep and Serbule Crypt, which can help cut down on run time.

One piece of advice about Words of Power (WOP). Don't bother saving these for too long. Just use them as you need them. There's unfortunately an issue where the WOPs can accidentally (or intentionally, maybe even) be reused by other players or just run out and not work (server reboot?), so it's worthwhile to just use them as you need them. You can make maybe a few dozen at a time, but I would recommend using them within a week or you'll find other players will.

You can restock on Crabs by swimming in the moat and collecting them around Serbule. You'll also want to pick up Clownfish and Grapefish as you get higher Fishing skill. While Perch are going to be the most useful given their use in speed potions, Grapefish and Clownfish can be used for Favor with Rappanel in Serbule Hills for getting Bard skills. There's also an “Angling” skill that I go into detail about later on if you really want to focus on fish.

As you travel around and click on things in the World or do small missions in Serbule, you might find yourself getting what seems like random experience in various skills like Cartography. This is normal. You are learning more about how the world is laid out which will help when making maps for finding resources. For skills like Foraging, you are learning the skill to collect the resources themselves. There will be more on Surveying and the skills related to it and Mining in the Serbule Hills section of the guide, but for now just enjoy getting easy experience in all the various skills.

You will notice that some of the experience gain will get you skills you can actually add to your sidebar. You will have a limited number of slots on this sidebar unless you get comfortable with Alchemy. I would recommend planning out what side bar skills work best for your play style, but feel free to experiment a little, especially before you hit level 30 or so in your main combat skills. At some point you'll want to hunker down and really focus on certain sidebar skills, but early game you might prefer Crossbow over First Aid, or Applying Poison to a knife over Armor Patching.

Some of the sidebar skills are skills for summoning pets for Animal Handling or skeletons for Necromancy, while others are for applying Poison, or other direct-combat related skills to give you a little bit more options-wise. Still others help you with finding quest objectives or give slight buffs. Most people do run with some form of stamina and/or health gain like First Aid and Armor Repair here, and the earlier you start leveling some of these active side skills the better, so seriously consider slotting them before level 15 so you can make sure they don't fall too far behind. At higher levels in First Aid there is both a revive and a bone repair skill that makes you very worthwhile to a party, so I would actually say that sidebar skill is a must-have if you are playing a character that can use it.

In old school MMOs, you didn't have “taunt” abilities or they weren't always considered taunt abilities if they did exist. Instead, what we would do as new players would be to walk up close to a hostile NPC so that it started to run after us, and we'd either walk backward or run away (this is sometimes called “body pulling” and is also known as “kiting”) to get the mob to a safer place where we can start unloading on it with all our skills and abilities so that when it called for help, there was no other enemies around it to help.

This is a player skill (not an in-game skill) you'll want to get really really good at as a solo player so you don't pull a whole room of enemies. It is even important as a tank or dedicated “puller” for when you are in a group. Learn how to body pull and walk backwards otherwise you'll get a good idea of the range of the alerts the NPCs send out to their kin and pull too many mobs.

It's also during your first forays out in Serbule that you may start thinking of some questions. I'd like to answer them pre-emptively for you in the FAQ sections below.

• Which Two Combat Skills Should I Use?
• How Do I Get Better Weapons For My Skills?

Also this one with its own section.

• Becoming a Werewolf is easy, should I do it?

Getting back to what to do in Serbule itself, I would recommend that if you are fresh from newbie island that you use your Bow, Sword, or Unarmed on a few of the mobs in the area and get your first bar of skills filled out while checking the “Do Favor” tabs on some of the NPCs in town and doing what simple quests you can. Once you've filled out a full bar with skills, consider if you are playing the way you would prefer to. Do you see yourself doing these skills (and possibly some others similar to them) for hours and hours or do you want to go for something else?

Also, while you're killing things and filling out your skill bar, pick up everything you see on the ground like Bluebell seeds, Eggs, Parasol Mushrooms and Strawberries. You've probably gotten some mushrooms while you were on the newbie island to make the Pick-Me-Up juice, but you'll now find that everything you pick up in Serbule has a use. It can be a bit overwhelming in fact. Much of your inventory will go towards collecting things you are not sure you need. If you don't need them or don't know if you need them, sell them! While it seems like you aren't getting paid much, it does increase your councils. Check the Work Orders board for certain regular items to sell like Strange Dirt and etc. Some of these you will accumulate over time and want to sell anyway.

You will learn more about Mycology and Foraging as you gain more skill in using them. They are both good easy skills to level up early. Do not forget about the "More Info" option when you right-click the things you pick up. I will keep referencing this command in this guide because it is so valuable.

It is also around this time that you'll want to get your tools or get whichever of these you do not yet have from the newbie island. These are as follows:

• Shovel
• Autopsy Kit
• Skinning Knife
• Butcher Knife
• Angling Pole

I'll go into a bit more detail on each.

Both the Shovel and Autopsy Kit can be found on Mushroom Jack in Serbule. The shovel will allow you to “bury” corpses. This does two main things: increases the spawn speed of the next mob in the same general area, and increases your Compassion. Compassion is important in the game later on for obtaining Priest, so if you are not taking Psychology as a primary or secondary combat skill, it is highly recommended to bury corpses early game while combat is easy and plentiful.

Also for shovel, there are Dirt Mounds and Corpses you will sometimes see and interact with that you can “dig” to get Strange Dirt and/or Talk to Corpse (requires a higher level in Necromancy and won't be applicable till much later on after you've purchased the game).

The basic Autopsy kit, after you pick one up from Mushroom Jack, is necessary for learning more about the different types of monsters you are fighting. For the most part, you can think of it like a real world game hunter, a hunter who specializes in only killing deer isn't going to be as skilled as a hunter who specializes in killing both deer and tigers and bears.

Every enemy in the game has an classification type and analyzing the corpse after death makes you better at learning that particular anatomy. You will get better at fighting that type if you are an Archer, and you will get better at harvesting skins and organs regardless of your combat skills. In fact, if you are an Archer, Autopsying is a MUST, if you neglect it, it will only hurt your character development.

Autopsying bodies gets much much harder as you fight higher level monster types, so it is best to get a kit early on now so you can start using and leveling the skill right away while fighting lower level enemies, otherwise you are going to find yourself having to come back to Serbule to train this later on anyway.

Skinning is a skill you can only use on animals that you've killed, but the Serbule area is full of mostly animal enemies, so this is where you want to start. The earlier you can start using this skill the better as it will get harder to skin in other zones if you haven't done a decent amount of it here in Serbule. You may have gotten a simple skinning knife from Lawara on Anagoge Island. If not, I've sometimes seen skinning knives on Marna in Serbule, but you might want to head to Eltibule (if you have purchased the game) to buy one from Kleave. The “Buy Used” tab on either may even have Master-level skinning knives or Amazing skinning knives based on whether or not a tool-crafter has been leveling in the area. Demo players may not have easy access to higher level Skinning Knives due to trade restrictions so you may need to go back to Anagoge to do both quests for Lawara to get one.

Lastly on Skinning, it is worth noting that sometimes you'll get rare items from animals, too, like Pig Snouts from Pigs or Magic Tooth from higher level animals (wolves and panthers) in Eltibule. These sell for a significant amount higher than normal loot. While they are also used for some crafting skills, they may be better items to gift for favor or sell for getting money early on. Joeh, for example, has one Favor quest for a Pig Snout that is worth quite a bit of early Favor.

The same goes for Butchering in that you will want to get into it early. While Butchering can get you easy access to meats for Cooking and sometimes even fats for Candle-Making, you may want to switch from the Butchering Knife (purchased from Fainor in Serbule) to an Organ Knife (bought from a player vendor usually) early on to get rare organs like Heart, Brain, Spleen, and the ultra-rare Stomach. Stomachs typically pay anywhere from 1000-1400 councils with players who are leveling Cheesemaking. Brains are used in some early Alchemy recipes that you can use for boosting skills like Psychology and/or Mentalism. Spleens and Hearts are used in Necromancy skills as well as Alchemy. All organs can eventually be used to make Organ-based Substrate used in Mushroom Farming, too.

Later on you can get Amutasa's Organ Knife when you have favor up high enough with her in Rahu that gives you an even higher chance for organs. Never lose or trade this knife if you get it.

The Pig Snouts from Skinning or Hearts from Butchering can also be used for early Favor with NPCs like Velkort and Mushroom Jack, or sold to Mushroom Jack or Way (an early Myconian you may eventually be able to talk to in the Myconian Cave). Some NPCs have “Do Favor” quests for butchered items early on in the game.

Any items you get either from mobs or Skinning and Butchering can be looked at via "More Info" as well. Remember that "More Info" is always your best friend in the game.

Special mention here is needed for another utility skill you may eventually get called Skull Extraction. Unlike animals which can be skinned, you can extract skulls from the more intelligent species to study using Phrenology. This will have applications in dealing more critical damage when using skills like Mentalism and Psychology. You won't get this till you pay for the game and get to Kur Mountains, however sometimes you'll find a utility tool that does Skinning, Butchering, AND Skull Extraction, which can be pretty handy for saving inventory space. Additionally, there is a ring in the game that also serves as an extractor, which is nice as well.

Bones and skulls that you get from Skull Extraction or Butchering are useful in making Bonemeal using two skills you will learn from Therese early on if you get your Favor with her up to a higher level. This is very nice early on for Gardening, though later in the game you will likely be using Rotten Meats for your fertilizer. If you do get the two skills from Therese, remember that skulls return two bonemeal while bones only produce one bonemeal. Lastly, there's also special powders that Necromancers can use and make from skulls and bones for their rituals. At very high levels you'll even need certain powders for specific Necromancer gear.

Aside from just picking up fish from the bodies of water around Serbule, you can also do angling to find semi-important items and different types of fish. Roshun the Traitor in North Serbule will sell you the pole and bait to do this. As this is a very new skill added to the game, I don't know much of what it is useful for. I think this was added mostly to satiate those players that think an MMO needs some sort of a traditional fishing skill.

Right now this is mostly just a simple rock-paper-scissors side game, but for new players it CAN be very handy for building up an inventory of empty bottles without having to outright purchase them, so it is probably worth your time to get this skill to level 15 relatively early. Unfortunately, a bunch of high level foods also require specific fish from Angling, so you will need to grind this skill up at least a bit if you are a solo player that doesn't do the group-based content at level 80+.

Please make sure you've read the More Info section first. In particular, you should know that the order of importance for every item is determined by the adage of Craft → Favor → Barter → Sell.

Whenever you enter a new zone like Serbule or Serbule Hills, you should generally be checking the “Do Favor” tab with every NPC in the region. Some of them will provide space or training given enough Favor. Some NPCs are more important for it than others, and some are easier to gain Favor with than others. In fact, Favor is one of the big “grinds” of the game and part of what makes Gorgon unique to other MMOs. You are left to decide how you want to increase it and with whom, and each player may choose to go about gaining such Favor in different ways based on what they are comfortable doing.

If an NPC likes both flowers and a certain type of gem, you may want to either Garden and grow the flowers, or do gem Surveys and look for gems.

Favor grinding and Inventory Management was the primary inspiration for creating this guide as I had no idea what I should be doing when I got to Serbule, nor did I have any idea how to manage my inventory space and I was (and am, still) a compulsive hoarder.

If you want to be a farmer, growing food for favor, you might want to get into Gardening and go that route, if you fancy yourself more like a hunter you can skin animal corpses and trade them in for favor or sell the skins for money and find some specific brass or ivory item the NPC desires. It is left open-ended, but for certain NPCs at certain stages of the game, there are some generally accepted “best routes”. I'll cover a few of them below.

Heavy spoiler warning needed here. Some players actually enjoy the game more if they discover this information for themselves. The author of this guide did not enjoy not knowing who would give what space and at what Favor level, which is one of the major reasons this guide was created.

There are four primary Inventory space giving NPCs in the Serbule area.

• Joeh
• Marna
• Ivyn
• Charles Thompson

There is also a fifth and sort-of a sixth, more will be explained below.

In my experience, Joeh was the easiest to gain favor with, since I went the cooking route and he loves Sausages and other meat foods. Joeh gives out space as you level his favor. A good item to get or ask another player for early on is a Pig Snout for a Joeh favor quest. Cat Eyeballs are similarly easy for a lower level to get and Joeh will have a quest for these. You can sometimes find both Pig Snouts and Cat Eyeballs on Mushroom Jack, otherwise you can go out and skin or butcher for these items.

Marna is also pretty easy since she will take vegetarian foods and also likes skins, both of which are fairly easy to obtain or make for her early game. Marna also gives out more and more space (like Joeh) as you gain favor. She will never have the buying power of Joeh, however. I made a lot of Fruit type foods and gave her a bunch of skins to get easy favor.

Ivyn likes any kind of created food, including Sausages, but he seems to gain a little less favor for the work you will put in on that and his Favor quests are a bit more complicated for a new player to complete.

You will not get access to Ivyn's chest (and SHOULD NOT access his chest) till he's at a slightly higher favor level than he starts with. If you do access his chest using the code you find on a wiki or from another player and store items in it, he will sell anything you may have put into his chest at a certain point.

Getting more favor with Ivyn did not seem to give me more space, but I once heard in game that it *did* give more space. I'm pretty sure it's only 32 slots no matter what and the wiki seems to confirm that.

Charles Thompson is one of the hardest to get inventory space with early on. He does seem to like mushrooms, but if you give him all your mushrooms early game instead of learning some of the lower level Alchemy, you may regret what you've given him.

Instead, I would recommend checking on Joeh's “Buy Used” tab once you get some councils saved up and are around level 20. Look for reasonably cheap battle bottles or chemistry beakers (these are weapons). Make sure you right click the item and go to “More Info” then look under Gifting to make sure Charles Thompson likes that particular item. On more than one occasion I accidentally bought an “orb” that wasn't even something he liked. Some people also farm Heartshrooms in the Mushroom cave to get favor up with Charles. The huge downside to that is that you need to grind mushroom harvesting already to even get there and be at least level 20ish or so before you can take that cave safely, in my honest opinion.

Additionally, Charles Thompson also doesn't immediately give you space just for becoming his friend, you've got to get quite a bit more favor than you did with the others with him. When you do get his space, it's also only for Alchemy ingredients, though I will admit, it was a godsend to get as much space as he gave me at the time.

Astute observers will know that Tadion also gives a lot of inventory space, but since he is such an impossible grind for early and demo characters, I'm not going to focus on him. He won't give you any space at all till you are at “Like Family” favor level and it's quite difficult for any character under 30 or even level 40 to get him there. Tadion's much easier to grind once you start doing Daily quests, which is outside of the scope of the demo. Once you start doing those you will have far more metal armor to gift to him.

This is inventory space that can be bought (at exponentially increasing amounts) with Hulon in Serbule. As an example, the 25th slot will cost 900 gold while the 49th slot will cost 8000 gold. I would recommend getting to about 25-30 slots early on to help deal with your early game inventory issues. You will be able to access this storage in a few other locations outside of Serbule as a paid player, it also doesn't have Favor requirements, meaning it's all about the councils you are willing to spend.

Regarding Favor, even though they don't give you space, Therese (Gardening) and Fainor (Cooking) have some essential early level skills that you will need to get to Close Friends or better to Train early on. The Bone Meal from Bone (and Skulls) recipe on Therese is very important for Gardening and being able to make vegetarian meals for Marna's Favor. Sausages and Bacon recipes that you can train making with Fainor are important for both increasing your health and power regen during combat and for gaining favor with Joeh for Storage and to be able to sell your gear for more money. Fainor also teaches some fruit-type skills that are “snacks” that stack with Sausages.

Sir Coth is not someone you need to focus on getting favor with except to maybe become Friends. Rita and Blanche also do nothing special really. Everyone else either is worth getting some Favor with for training or, like with Larsan, for better prices. Velkort is another one to not forget about as eventually you will want to sell excess recipes or skills you've already learned and he will purchase them from you. Hulon does the same, but Velkort was a little easier for me to favor.

The inventory for all Serbule NPCs can be reached via a bookshelf in what is sometimes referred to as the “Library”, the house between Marna's house and the Council Storage NPC. You will see Nelson Ballard sometimes walking in there and there is a writing table (for Calligraphy books) also present. In Serbule Hills, the same bookshelf for accessing inventory is behind the Surveying NPC. What is nice about The Bookshelf is that even if you are in an inhuman form, you will have access to all inventory spaces there. Marna and Joeh won't shoo you or threaten to eat you if you access their storage there.

Lastly, I will spend a bit of time talking about the Inventory space you can get in Serbule Hills since this is also technically an option for Demo players. Some players spend more time here than others, and may even bind their Teleport skill here, but I never got interested enough in getting high favor with many of the Serbule Hills NPCs enough to get storage. When I moved on inventory-wise from Serbule, I migrated most gear directly to the Casino. I still use Serbule Hills for some excess equipment, low level foods, and items, but my good stuff is mostly at the Casino and some things are even stored in Kur. Even if you play an animal, you're probably going to primarily use inventory in the Casino and Animal Town in Sun Vale over a place like Serbule Hills.

That all said, there is some easy inventory space you can get from the Innkeeper if you pay for a room. Also, I know for sure that the Baroness and Tyler Green have *some* inventory space on them at higher favor levels. And it is a decent amount of space, too. Sammie Grimspine even has some space if you are already grinding Favor for Calligraphy skills.

Late game, I've been finding it easy to use Serbule Hills as a spillover inventory region. Basically, I take all my low level stuff that I hardly ever need to craft with, mostly low level Cooking materials, and have moved them all to Serbule Hills. This frees up Mandibles in the Casino to be my main food inventory holder for all the medium to high level Cooking needs while I use Nishika in Rahu to store all my cheap meats for making Gardening fertilizers. You could just as easily use Serbule Hills for storing cheap meats, but it's up to you and where you prefer to garden.

• https://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Storage
• https://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/General_gameplay_tips/Inventory_and_Items

While combat is relatively easy if you are used to some of the old school MMOs, the beginning of the game can be kind of harsh for a new player that isn't ready for it and has no idea what is going on other than running quickly through quest text. There are ways to make life easier, though.

First off, if you are not using food in the game, start now. It doesn't matter what kind of food, you ABSOLUTELY need to be running food buffs when you engage in combat. Think of this as the equivalent of “downtime” between pulling mobs in old school Everquest. You just have to do it. It's not an option to go through this game without some form of food buff. You need health and especially mana regen to use your skills, so trying to do combat without a full stomach is intentionally handicapping yourself. There are two types of food, Meals and Snacks. You can use Cheese for both, but I'd recommend early level using the cheapest food you can make and the cheapest snacks you can make. The Meals are more important than the Snacks, but you should at least be using something for fighting and if you are taking on mobs that are at your current combat level or higher, you need to be using both.

One of the best early items in the game to find is a chest piece called “Knight's Armor”. It's recommended because many of the early monsters before level 30 do not do as much raw damage and will need to overcome your armor in order to really start hurting you. While the armor by itself isn't going to keep you alive in situations where you are surrounded by dozens of spiders, and it starts to fall off in value around the time you hit the Goblin Dungeon (level 20 or later), it is still a very good early piece of equipment that will help you stay alive in one-to-one tussles early game. Armor is also considerably important late game, but you will need skills to make restoring that Armor easy, and such skills are not readily available early game for all classes or skills.

Players often sell “Knight's Armor” on the Consignment tab of Joeh in Serbule, but you can sometimes find it on the “Buy Used” tab of either Joeh or Tadion, or you can ask any higher level character if they have a spare or could keep an eye out for one for you. I sometimes see these run as high as 1k in the Consignments, but they are around 400 councils on the “Buy Used” tab without buffs on them.

Another piece of equipment that might make early Serbule life easier is “Windstep Shoes” if you see them on the Buy Used or Consignment tab on Joeh. These provide a buff to Sprint (+2) that makes travel quicker. While I'll do a bit on the Inventory benefits below, another item that helps early game is the “Amulet of the Rugged Traveler” with increased Inventory (+3 slots) and Sprint (+1) speed that can sometimes be found on Larsan's Buy Used or Consignment tabs.

You can also right-click and use the “Appreciate” command on flowers for an increase to Max Power (and level Nature Appreciation) and make some low level potions similar to the Pick-Me-Up Juice you learned on Anagoge that might give you a bit of an edge (bonus to damage of a specific type) or provide you some survivability (increase in Max Health).

Cooking also has some very nice spammable foods that use Metabolism (a limitation on spammable food use) but provide you with instant Health and Power. The biggest one of these you may get early on is called Bacon and it's really simple to make and use as an instant health potion. There are actual health potions, too, but these require Spider Eggs and you may not want to be farming this early on as they are relatively rare and can only be found in high number within the Spider Cave in Serbule Hills from my experience. If you are going to focus on Alchemy, or you plan on getting into Battle Chemistry, though, feel free to farm the Spider Cave early game as these potions are quite nice for helping level Alchemy and the Spider Legs are useful in raising Mushroom Farming late game or just for selling to Mushroom Jack for money.

First Aid and Repair Armor abilities are important to start training right away and you can get these going with Marna's help.

While the Pick-Me-Up Juice that you learn early on in Alchemy is fine, you're going to have a much better time of it if you use something like a Ruggedizer which can be purchased from Charles Thompson just outside Serbule on the way to the Serbule Crypt. These are quite cheap for what they give you. While this comes with a small chance to turn you into a Pig, do not fret it. UnPig Juices are easy to farm even if it seems like they aren't at first. If you are killing Pigs to get Pork Shoulders to turn into Bacon or Sausages for favor with Joeh or Ivyn, you are going to find UnPig juices as part of this process. Just having one will be sufficient in case you get turned into a Pig by a Ruggedizer potion. Otherwise, keep about 3,500 councils on hand in case you have to buy an UnPig juice off of Mushroom Jack's Consignment tab.

Speaking of Pork Shoulders, even when you have maxed out Favor with Joeh or others, do not just sell your Pork Shoulders to Fainor for councils. Instead, turn them into Sausages or Bacon first, then sell them for councils. This has two benefits as it not only makes you more money, but it also helps you level your Cooking skill. For a lot of other items, it's going to be better to convert them to food or other crafted item first, then sell the food item rather than the raw unprocessed food alone. Another example where this is beneficial is tanning skins. You can raise your Tanning skill this way and get more money out of it. Even crafting some early leatherworking gear with the skins is a good idea, typically.

If you are looking for more tips along these sorts of lines of Survival and Min-Maxing, be sure to check out the buffs section of this guide.

At some point shortly after getting to Serbule, you are going to get the impression your gear is “falling behind”. You might even feel this way as you are leaving Serbule.

While gear in this game is actually not very important in the early levels, I don't want to give the impression that this means you shouldn't be replacing your junk gear from the island. You absolutely should.

One of the easiest ways to replace gear is to collect Brains and Brain Lobes in Serbule and to take them to Zeratak, a large speaking mantis NPC in a building at the very north side of Serbule.

For those of you thinking “Basic <Piece of Armor>” gear isn't better than your current gear because it doesn't have writing saying it improves X or Y or whatnot, please note that Bartered gear randomly rolls buffs on it and you have a chance of getting something not just better than what you are currently wearing, but significantly better than what you are currently wearing. So it's not just an armor upgrade, it's de facto better than newbie island gear, regardless of color. If you can get a usable Red, Purple, or Gold gear piece from Bartering, it's absolutely better than the Gold gear pieces on the newbie island, IMHO.

Also, yellow and purple newbie island gear is very common to see. It is not better than a Cyan level Barter trade with Zeratak. Please do Barters for early game gear, especially if you are killing lots of Brain Bugs.

While the Tailoring pockets option isn't really available for demo players, it is important to know about it. The easiest way to get space is to take your cloth or leather chest and leggings to any medium to high level Tailor and ask them to Add Pockets to your gear. For leather gear, you could just offer to pay a few thousand, for cloth gear, it's a bit more complicated, but it can be done maybe for 4 to 5k in councils with most Tailors.

As a demo player you will not have this option directly, but you may sometimes find gear with extra inventory on it. There is also a necklace you can get that has Sprint (+1) and Inventory (+3 slots) on it called “Amulet of the Rugged Traveler”. You'll sometimes see these on the Consignment tab on Larsen in town, usually with a ridiculous markup in price, but space and Sprint speed are a big deal early on in game and you need as much of both as you can find.

As a paying (non-demo) player looking for extra inventory, there is one major two-set combo that will help immensely called “cargo gear”. Most looted gear that you find will have 100 EP or CP. Player-crafted gear has 120 EP or CP on it for enhancements. This translates to +8-10 pockets on leather gear and +18-20 on cloth gear, but sometimes the gear itself can already have inventory space on it such as the “cargo gear”, so you'll see different numbers accordingly. Don't let this confuse you, if you have a piece of cloth or leather gear that you like but just wish it had inventory space, you might have to settle for slightly lower pockets than crafted gear. Metal armor you find or create only recently got the ability to have pockets, and you'll need someone with considerably high level crafting skills to do it. It also doesn't give nearly as much space as Tailored gear.

For most low level operations, I would recommend finding a Tailor to make you cargo gear. You can get a set of this gear with no Endurance or other skill requirements that will help you as a new player. Since the treasure mods on gear isn't super important till level 40-60, you will find the pockets far far more valuable to you while you are working on getting Favor with all the local NPCs in Serbule and the Casino.

Pockets for leather gear cost are just a few carded cotton and uncarded cotton and are relatively cheap for Tailors to make. As a new-but-paying player who is level 25 or higher in their main skills and has a Foraging buff from Flower Appreciation or a Dance buff from a Poetry Jam, you may be able to survive Eltibule monsters enough to run around and pick up enough Cotton to make a trade with higher-level Tailor. If you can collect a lot of it, or if you can get your Gardening up high enough to plant it, you should be able to provide a medium-level-or-higher tailor with ~100 cotton and a few dozen Strange Dirt as a worthwhile trade for pockets. Their actual costs are likely much higher than this, but as a player who has leveled Tailor themselves, I can tell you I'd gladly add pockets to Cloth gear for 200 cotton and 100 would probably still work if you had something else worthwhile to throw in and I wasn't preoccupied with other tasks. Councilwise, I've seen players charge ~500 councils per cloth armor pocket buff (you can do 10 total buffs on crafted gear) which is pretty expensive for a new player, but might still be worthwhile if you've made money Surveying which is an easy early farming skill I will get into further in the guide.

Alternatively, if you are a paid player you can look for “Amazing”-labeled (or “Astounding”) cloth gear on Consignments or the player vendors to find these high pocket items. Occasionally you might find one at “Great” or “Quality” or even “Nice” with the same or similar space. A cost of 6-12k councils for these is fair, but you might find that for the “Amazing” and “Great” ones, they sell for over 12k per piece.

As you level various skills, you will eventually obtain Folders for your inventory. This will allow you to sort and organize your inventory to make access to things easier. When you get to the point where you have around four folders you could break them down like this: One folder for loot, one folder for Foraging and Mycology items, one for Equipment and Tools, and one for Work Orders. A fifth could be for Quest and Favor items or could be for items you want to trade to your friends when they are online.

While talking to various NPCs and doing general quests for them, you might find that Velkort in Serbule is willing to teach you or introduce you to Fire Magic. While any humanoid can learn and use Fire Magic, some players do not recommend taking Fire Magic as one of your first sets of combat skills due to a very high cost to learn the spells later in the game.

Fire Magic, Ice Magic, and Weather Witching are slightly different from other combat skills in the game because instead of purchasing the training for them, you instead purchase training for “research skills” that allow you to randomly unlock each of the special skills. With Sword, for example, if there is a skill you don't want to learn or use, you don't have to pay to learn or use it. With Fire, however, you research a random skill at or near your level and you do not know ahead of time which exact skill you will learn.

As someone who did not learn Fire Magic as his first combat skill, I do think I'd have to say that some of the concern about the high costs of Ice, Fire, and Weather Witching, might be a bit overrated. All three are definitely a viable option till level 55 when the research skills start requiring really rare items.

If you want to be a magic user and you want to try Fire Magic out, and if you like it as a main combat skill, you can just farm the money you need to purchase the rarer items you'll need to level it past that. It does get very expensive to learn the later skills, but NPCs charge large amounts to learn later skills for many other combat skills anyway, and you're still going to be spending money on whatever your secondary combat skill is and the prices are reasonably comparable in the end anyway.

That all said, if you do decide to learn Fire Magic, be sure to keep any rare or uncommon potions you find so you can gift them to Velkort to get some of the later skills he offers. You'll need to be Best Friends with him to learn some of the highest level research skills.

As a demo player, Fire Magic will only really cost you Salt, Fire Dust, and Sulfur, all of which are easily purchased or dropped items from specific mobs that you can find in Serbule or Serbule Hills or the dungeons. Because of this, you really won't need to worry about the later level costs at all and can try out the skill just fine.

While you will need to make some items over and over again using crafting skills to level yourself in that skill, there are ways to justify the time and costs if you visit the Work Orders board. In Serbule, there is one of these boards at the docks in Northeastern Serbule. There is also a Player Work Orders board just outside Therese's Garden in the southern part of Serbule Keep.

You will want to look for low level items that you can easily craft or gather. Some items may seem simple, but actually require a lot more resources than you think. You are also limited to how many Work Orders you can have at once, though this increases as you level the Industry skill. At the start of the game, you'll want to be very particular on which ones you decide to commit to memory so you can do them quickly.

Early recommended work orders may be food from Cooking and hides and rolls from Tanning, but you can do any of the ones that are accessible. Alchemy might be easier in some cases, for example. You'll want to level the Industry skill early on, however. While the money doesn't seem like much, when you get to the higher level crafting, the Work Orders are huge payouts and one of your biggest money-making processes in the game. Combined with The Work Order Run, you'll be able to get skills like Leatherworking, Cooking, Tailoring, Toolcraft, Flower Arrangement, Sushi Preparation, and more to the highest levels.

The Player Work Orders are kind of an optional ordeal and are fulfilled instantly when you have them in your inventory only. Most of these requests are to find, harvest, or easily-created items. The players typically want to pay money for larger amounts of those items than the standard “10” that you will see in a regular Work Order, however. Sometimes the effort involved to accumulate such high numbers of otherwise easy-to-find items does not justify the amount they are willing to pay for them. Other times you'll be wondering why they are willing to pay so much for so little.

One last thing that is important to note is that players will typically pay 12k-16k for a stack of 99 Rubywall Crystals. While this guide talks about that more in the Serbule Hills section about Surveying, you will definitely want to take advantage of that easy money early game when you are first starting out and often quite cash-starved. Two stacks of 99 Rubywall Crystals can essentially get you enough money to buy the best in player-made inventory space gear that lets you farm even more Rubywall Crystals or loot even more items in each of the many Serbule Dungeons.

So I've mentioned it a few times, but never really talked about Alchemy. Alchemy is going to be a very important skill for making inks and buffs. In fact, early traversal of dungeons is best done running SOME form of Alchemy buff, even if it's just buying a Ruggedizer off of Charles Thompson or a Pick-Me-Up Juice you made right before heading into Serbule Crypt. Many Alchemy recipes have both a positive and a negative to them. Sometimes, like with the Ruggedizer, there is a chance you will be hit with a negative penalty.

Some of the alchemy buffs, like Zealo's Ferocity Juice, can give you straight up damage increases, but they weaken your mana so much it probably isn't worth the hassle. Others, like Zealo's Strong Electricity Resistance Potion, have absolutely no downside other than obtaining the ingredients. You'll have to find Zealo in the Carpal Tunnels Dungeon, though. Fortunately, it's a great dungeon for getting the ingredients for a lot of Alchemy buffs.

Alchemy also features in the Buffs section of the Wiki with regards to the speed/haste potions as well as the Never-Die juices for health.

In the Serbule Crypt, there's a pathway that will be introducing you to random paintings or pieces of Art. These paintings have a value that can only be properly assessed by someone with a high enough Art Appreciation skill. They also sell very well to Sir Coth in Serbule.

There is a Poetry Jam at the Serbule Inn at 2pm EDT, 1pm CDT, 12pm MDT, and 11am PDT every Saturday. You will want to drink alcohol from the Brewing kegs that are set up in the back of the inn and pay attention to how your dancing skills switch around on your skill bar as you follow the dancing directions. You can get some massive buffs from this event that will last a long time. These Poetry Jams on Saturdays also give you Poetry Appreciation. Similar to Art Appreciation, this is necessary for the Synergy Levels it gives you to other skills. Plus the entire inn of players gets buffs both during and after the Jam, so be sure to stick around for the whole thing. You will see some massive crafting buffs if you stay for the whole thing.

As you go around learning more about and picking up the mushrooms in Serbule, you'll start to have myconic visions. If you followed Mushroom Jack's conversations with you when you first meet him, you'll notice you're reliving several of the same experiences he had. Eventually you might get enough skill in Myconic that it's time for you to touch a Large Mushroom in Northwest Serbule and see if it will take you somewhere you've never been before. Perhaps somewhere you can get even more Alchemy components…

Now that you know a good bit about what's around in Serbule, consider heading to the Serbule Dungeons section of this guide, or if you just want to learn about more skills available, head to Serbule Hills or Eltibule to learn about other early-game skills.