the Illustrated Manual - (step by step player's guide)

This thread will serve as an online manual with a screen shot driven walkthrough and discussion of each topic, with this first post containing and index and links taking you to the exact page.

  "Nobody wants to read the last 1000 posts to simply use the mod".

  Index:
  1) How to install a patch and check that it was successful
        https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,279776.msg8928905.html#msg8928905

  2a)  Character Creation - class overview
  2b)  Magic User and magic user spells
  2c)  Cleric / Paladin and prayer spells
  2d)  Bards, Barbarians, Monks, and Rogues in more detail
  2e)  Races and starting factions
  2f)  Necromancers for players.
        narration focused on v155 as a Necromancer/Cleric, B2 build:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,369679.msg8959169.html#msg8959169

  3a)  non-standard interface changes: camp menu
  3b)  non-standard interface changes: reports menu
  3c)  some tips for non-standard changes everywhere else: towns, villages, prisoners, food, wages, companions
  3d)  recruiting at towns
      Try THIS post:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,369679.msg8931931.html#msg8931931
 
  4a) Rigale crafting, harvesting , and guilds.
      Try THIS thread:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,372473.0.html
      some things made by Rigale crafting:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305002.msg8934013.html#msg8934013

  4b) PBOD in battle formations
  4c) TPE tournament Play Enhancements
  4d) movement and exploration
  4e)  some topic reserved for now*

  5) Trouble and FAQ: I'm stuck...

  6) v155 discussions:
    troop trees  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305002.msg8941103.html#msg8941103

      both v155 and v156 starting as a king:
    faction strengths comparison:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305002.msg8941673.html#msg8941673

General topics:
  the first post HERE is also useful:
  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,276405.0.html

 

1. "How to install a patch and check that it was successful"

  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,279776.msg8928905.html#msg8928905

2a)  "Character Creation - class overview"

  Phantasy 2018 uses "classes" to assign and control powers and archetypes in how your character was prepared for adventuring in terms of background, possible specialties, and class specific skills.  Instead of Phantasy Calradia (2014) where everyone could be everything by spending some money and possibly starting some quest to add yet another "class" to their collection of abilities, you now have to plan ahead.  If you never want to cast magic user spells, then don't pick magic user as a class, and you also won't need to remember to keep a weapons slot empty to receive spells.  You won't ever be burdened with having to learn the class, and you will be wasting money shopping for spell scrolls someday at a magic guild.  We'll discuss this class in greater detail shortly.  Likewise Clerics and Paladins.  Warband had everyone be either a "Fighter" or a specialist such as archer, roughly the sub-class "Ranger".  Add in some extra skills on top of the basic fighter and you get the utility classes Rogue and Monk.  Make the class focused on pure rage based damage and you have Barbarian.

Adding cleric spells gives Cleric and Paladin classes, and focusing on magic user spells is Magic user class.

Necromancer is a specialist in raising and manipulating undead, and does all of its special actions before battle.  In battle they have no extra powers to speak of besides their lich fear aura, which is automatic and not even something they control.  Actually, Necromancers have many disadvantages, and I hope you didn't come here just because someone suggested it was "easy mode" or exploit friendly. 

  A diagram:
        Primary                                                                                                                      Secondary
    Fighter
          when "primary" gets a "specialty" bonus, extra gear and skills                                  weaker skills, weaker gear

  Barbarian      primary only                                                                                                  --- none ---
   
  Ranger        primary and secondary.  Adds pathfinding, bow skills, gear                          secondary

  Monk          primary and secondary.  Allows unarmed damage skill > 3.  Without this class any skill points > 3 are wasted for unarmed combat          mainly unarmed skill based, which needs agility

    Bard          primary and secondary    allows use of Entertainment skill for pay, experience, and renown
                        without this class entertainment skill only works at camp menu page 2 actions, and even that is not yet working.
                      Entertainment skill based, which needs Charisma.

    Cleric          primary and secondary.  Selecting this will trigger a menu later to select your starting deity and alignment.
                      some combinations of primary class and alignment are blocked and simply will not show as menu selections.
                      cleric spells, which mostly are instant cast as opposed to first summoning an item like magic user spells mostly use
                      Mainly Faith based, which needs Charisma.

    Paladin        primary ONLY.  A paladin primary will not gain added benefits from setting a cleric secondary
                      Paladins have mainly cleric capabilities.  They are expected to be honorable at all times and can lose powers if they are not
                      Mainly faith (charisma) and honor based; some strength helps also.

    Necromancer  while not strictly "anti clerics", they ARE considered evil only in alignment and for a number of reasons will be the least
                      comfortable class to play for beginner.  Pretty much the whole map will gang up and beat them down as a team, for starters.
                      Primary class only.  But there is nothing stopping for instance  "Necromancer=Primary"  and "Cleric=Secondary",
                          or for that matter "Magic User=Secondary".

    Magic User  Needs high intelligence, and otherwise casts spells by first summoning an item into a weapons slot then throwing it.
  Primary vs Secondary class selection tabs.  Primary is at the left side of the screen.  Choose this first.  Secondary class is not required.

Faction tab

  in both v156 and v155 series, faction tab sets YOUR skin type at start.
  If you want to be                    choose
    Elf                                        Dokohan Koldoff Alliance
    Dwarf                                    Nokrak Realm
    Dark Elf  (Drow)                    House of Ken Urden
    Orc                                      Bleeding Throat Clan
    Lich (Undead)                        Delthersam Empire  (but also select Necromancer class as Primary)                           
    Human                                  all other choices

  for v156 series, if you start as your own kingdom, the faction choice you selected also set the starting default culture for your kingdom's villages and town:
  In this example the player has started as an elf by setting faction tab to be "Dokohan Koldoff Alliance" and when the town next has
"recruit troops" showing as a town menu item (refreshes once every 2-3 days), it shows the choices that would be shown for an Elf town.
  This has strong implications for Ridas Mageocracy (golems), Necromancers (dark mages), and Orcs (Ogres) as special recruits.

  Here the faction setting will be "Ridas Mageocracy", giving a human skin and otherwise setting the kingdom culture to be "Mages":
  It took about 3 days to see the menu item "recruit troops" at the town menu.
  Choosing any ONE of the menu selections within that menu, shown at slide #7, will clear the entry until it refreshes again.
It should be fairly easy to guess what all of these do except the last entry, which I consider the most powerful "Recruit by Caravan..."

Putting it all together:
  Make a non-kingdom orc barbarian/ranger, which will be adept at movement, dodging, archery, do extra damage in melee after getting hit,
but be challenged at making money.  However its ability to live off the land (perhaps profitably) is unparalleled, and may eventually parley these skills into something that can earn money giving lessons in town:
         

"Magic User and magic user spells"

see this post:
  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,373071.msg8913604.html#msg8913604

in battle, B opens your spell book and selecting a spell auto-closes your book, as does the key  V

wearing heavy armor weakens your spells, especially armor with high iron or steel content
    there exist very expensive alloys used by Elves or materials made from silk and spider shells (Drow) that interfere less with casters.
    Most caster gear is silk based, by the way.

  Always leave 1 of your 4 weapons slots open -- that is, nothing placed in it.  When you first cast a spell from your spell book, normally the first thing that happens is a new "throwing weapon" is placed into your first available weapons slots.  If all 4 slots are full there is a huge explosion as matter returns to energy and your mind is damaged for one to three game days, during which time you can't cast spells.  So, forget your plans to have magic PLUS a bow and arrow PLUS a sword and shield.  Or stick to haste or cleric spells, which are mostly insta cast.  Or use a 2 hand sword without a shield to open up a slot for spells.  It is not my job to juggle your inventory (and when I did, players complained).

  My advice as to which spells are most useful:

my advice is aim for Fireball or lightning bolt, both of which need magic power skill 5 to scribe the spell scroll.
You might also get value from Haste or charm person.
The others are "meh", especially with low throwing skill, but at least most of the single target spells work from horseback.

Chaos impacts around 1/5th of the enemy's force, charming them briefly or sending them running or slowing them. The effect is random, and it isnt thrown but insta cast with range the whole battle. But it also does 1/2 as much to your troops in numbers as it impacted enemies. So if 20% of the enemies standing in battle at that instant now roll dice to see if they are affected and if so how, 10% of your own troops standing in the battle field at that moment ALSO have the spell effects applied. Its for desperate times if you are getting overrun and otherwise sure to lose.

Ice storm needs to be used away from trees and buildings with overhead cover, so it works well for siege defense but less so for offense.
Magic missile is fairly weak BUT it can be used while riding a mount, unlike fireball, ice storm or lightning bolt. For most of these, remember to not wear heavy armor or it will be much weaker. Also lightning does extra damage if the target(s) are wearing heavy, metallic armor. But the radius of effect is smaller than fireball. They both work very well against opponents climbing a siege ladder, and somewhat less well against defenders at the walls because the walls give partial cover.

Otherwise fire arrow, acid arrow, darkness work fairly well but if they don't penetrate shield they don't fire their magical payload.
Don't under-estimate clerics, especially versus undead. And other than that, there's your 3 minute lesson.

" Cleric / Paladin and prayer spells "


(reserved)


Pop up in game 4 hours after making your character with a Cleric class

Good Alignment  Deity selection
Neutral Alignment Deity selection
Evil Alignment Deity selection
  cleric has some complicated deity selection which so far to me seems mainly to change what your spirit hammer becomes.  I managed to end up with a throwable/wieldable 2-handed sword with the deity I chose.


some links discussing Cleric trivia:
Alignment matters:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305002.msg8848112.html#msg8848112
Deity choice influence spell strength:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305002.msg8876341.html#msg8876341

"  Bards, Barbarians, Monks, and Rogues in more detail "

(reserved)

Dodging in detail:    https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,276392.msg8844735.html#msg8844735
How to check my dodge:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,373350.msg8902685.html#msg8902685

Unarmed combat:    https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305005.msg8899662.html#msg8899662

"Races and starting factions"

(reserved)



other discussions:
  Magic/clerics and auto-calc:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305002.msg8860975.html#msg8860975

"Necromancers for players"

  Essentially, picking this especially as a kingdom start guarantees you'll be over run in the first month.  You should strongly consider how you will shelter your cash while waging guerrilla warfare.  As time passes the Necromancers, Orcs, and Drow will be friendly and otherwise every time you take land for yourself expect to be steam rolled. You can instead though, take the cash from starting as King and park it someplace, let all your land get taken, your lords leave, then go be someone else's vassal, and for a while you get ignored.  Then build up your skills, your Rigale skills for making income from harvests, trade for cash, mug bandit spawns or participate in the wars your new overlord wages.  Don't join any human, Elf, Dwarf kingdoms and you should be all right -- if that kingdom survives, you might survive.  For a time. 

  Here's a sample I made in v155. 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/137sJ2c2Ia-lX0FU8vvmzXhbvgO1jhR0J/view?usp=sharing

  Troop Tree - single branch 7 tiers

  A play through narrative:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305002.msg8951531.html#msg8951531
====

  With build B2, Necromancers have a new lease on life.  Or at least, a better start.
  Here is a walk through focused on v155 troop trees and theory:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,369679.msg8959169.html#msg8959169

non-standard interface changes: camp menu

(reserved)

non-standard interface changes: reports menu

(reserved)

some tips for non-standard changes everywhere else: towns, villages, prisoners, food, wages, companions

  Large/small battles toggle:  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,305002.msg8936818.html#msg8936818

player guides:
  https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,373467.msg8905073.html#msg8905073

a dormant WIKI:
  http://phantasycalradia.wikia.com/wiki/PhantasyCalradia_Wiki