New player tips and tricks!

Hey there new players! I'm about 60 hours into the game so far, still having a blast! I figured I'd write up some tips and tricks I've learned in my time playing that I wish I'd known starting out. I'll add to this as I think of more! Here goes!

EDIT 2/27/25: Now at well over 400 hours. Still having a blast! Treating the game like a choose your own adventure book! I have now switched to using Gemini 2.0 over chat gpt. Gemini 2.0 seems to do much better when it comes to storytelling consistency using player notes and has random things that are creative and fun happen that I love, as well as has characters surprise you and things like that. It struggles with how to relay this to you so I often have to say "give me more details", or "tell me how they respond in great detail" but I personally think the addition of the random elements and storytelling consistency make it better than chat gpt now.

Probably the single biggest tip for anyone who loves story and consistency and their companions above all else: write down everything that you want the ai to remember forever under the Notes> Character info tab> and write under where it says PLAYER CAMPAIGN NOTES. The campaign summary is not infinite and you will eventually lose things relying on only it. If you recruit someone but don't talk to them or about them for awhile they will eventually disappear forever. This goes for absolutely everything your character does in the long run, so any time you do something or meet someone you want in your story forever, write down what about that story or person you want it to remember. If you say you meet a beautiful elf named Lyria who joins you on your quest and she has glowing blue eyes, long red hair, and a fiery, Chaotic personality, that is how the ai will always remember them and have them act. say someone is stoic and pragmatic and they will nearly always act like this. Don't mention their personality? Well be prepared to have them act like they have multiple personality disorder because once the ai forgets how they acted the first time it'll completely make up a new personality unless you have one written down here. Same goes for their appearance. It will not be mentioned unless written here. I cannot stress this enough, this area of your notes is *by far the most important tip I can give you. That's why it's on this list as both the first and the last tip

You can completely change the way the ai tells the story and how it works by clicking the "notes" tab, scrolling to "player preferences for the dm" and adding your own notes! You can delete things that are already here if you'd like (if you dont like some of the default ai settings, dont immediately delete them all though without reading them! Some are important!) and use this for all kinds of personal edits to how the ai works! You may have to try multiple variations of the same command if you're having trouble getting one to work! They typically work very well though. If still having issues, you can literally just tell the ai in the chat "remember, do xyz. Rewrite the above prompt with this in mind!"

As examples for the above: you can use this to tell it to never have you roll ever if youd like more of a choose your own adventure book instead of traditional dnd rules. I told mine for instance to never speak for my character so I can choose all my own dialog in every interaction, to never skip time when I'm talking to people unless I specifically say or allude to time going by, and to not end conversations unless I specifically say "goodbye" or unless I say my character leaves. This makes every interaction with other characters infinite until I leave the conversation or area. This way I can interact with people or hangout in a place until I decide to leave. I also told mine here to only have me roll for actions inside of combat so persuasion and other things all work how I say they do every time. I also told it here that I never want to roll for initiative and that I only want to roll for my own combat actions, and told it to autoroll for my companions in combat. all edits should have a space between them to help the ai keep track of the individual directions you give, don't jam multiple things into one paragraph, even if the things are similar!

Another massive tip is you can correct or lead the ai! If you check your money bag in game (I keep track of mine on my notes app on my phone as the ai is fairly bad at keeping track of your money among all the story stuff it keeps track of. I might try adding a line to the DM notes and see if I can get it to keep better track from now on! EDIT: Now writing this under Player Campaign notes as mentioned above. You still have to add and subtract yourself, but if its listed here and you say "keep track of this at all times for when i ask" beside the amount it will remember and you can ask it whenever or just click notes to check it youself as needed.) and it says you only have xyz and you know that's incorrect, you can say "I actually realize I have xyz amount instead of xyz". Another aspect of this is choosing your own quest rewards, and, the biggest part of this in my opinion besides keeping track of money, you can also do this when buying or selling items if you think the items offered are too expensive or you're getting a bad price for an item you're selling. An example: I went to buy potions and the woman wanted an outlandish price of 150 gold coins for one healing potion and one elixir of hill giant strength. I wrote " I realize she must have meant 150 silver instead of gold, chucking as I hand her 15 gold coins needed". I went to buy a house, picked a fair price based on the description, then instead of asking for the price I said "i realize a house like this would go for about 500 gold".

You can do the above in all interactions to change the price or reward for things. I also use this to correct the ai if I'm somewhere and it keeps describing the area wrong (thinking we're in the desert when we're in the forest) if it says we're somewhere we're not (like the wrong town) or if it tries to say we're almost to a place after one day that takes a week to get there. Also if it says the time is wrong I can day "actually I realize it's xyz time, i still have plenty of time to do xyz". These things happen pretty rarely, but when they do it can confuse the ai, so make sure to take a second to correct it! If you ever want a certain price or quest reward, say it when you begin the quest or go to buy something before the ai makes up a price, and again when you go to get your reward. the more times you say the same thing the more likely the ai is to decide it's important for it to remember it hours later! For instance say "I saw/heard this quest offers a reward of 20 gold, is that true?" When talking to someone or you can say to yourself "I'm very excited to collect my 20 gold as the reward when I turn this guy in!" * you can get super creative with this instead of making it awkward!* I usually read postings and then add the reward afterwards. So like I'll read a posting that says "this bandit wanted captured" then I'll add "and the reward is 30 gold alive or 15 gold for them dead!" Overall the ai is very good of keeping track of important people or quest items, but for little people, rare characters, or for items that don't really matter, sometimes you'll have to remind it!

If you want the ai to tell you how something went or you want to roll for it, say something like "I attempt to do xyz!" If you just want it to happen say "i did xyz and xyz happened".

Another tip is you can use the ai to keep track of items you want to remember by saying something like "I make a strong mental note of these items, so I don't forget later. I have:" and then list them. It's pretty damn good at this, but it does occasionally mess up. If it does, just correct it like above and it'll rewrite the list. As for most of these things, once again, the more you talk about something in game, the more likely it is to remember it!

Another tip is don't be afraid to do weird shit or think outside the box! You can do literally anything you want in this world! make up your own spells and the rules for how they work! Go house shopping! Get a partner and settle down! (do this one in real life too!) My story got a lot better after I got more creative. I started doing some basic adventures, then I joined the town guard and got 6 gold per day after my shift, and I had some fun side adventures doing it and made a good friend. The ai even connected it to a main adventure I'd done earlier in a really cool way that I almost didn't catch, and then when I did catch it, it went all in too! The quest started with us investigating townspeople for corruption by these cursed items we caught a thief trying to destroy at night, and culminated in my new dwarf friend and I fighting a shadow demon that had been spawned by deep ones. It was great! I then took the gold I'd earned from saving the town, asked my dwarf friend to come with me from now on, took another job that paid extremely well, then I went and bought a smithy to make money and talked my dwarf friend into moving out of the barracks and buying his own house with his half of the earnings! We even went house shopping lol. Be weird, think outside the box, and do what you want!

Another tip is if you want a story to be done, tell the ai that very clearly! after my main quest with the shadow demon, it did try twice to insert the Deep ones into another quest. I ignored it the first time, then after it tried the second time I said " I must be mistaken, because the Deep ones have been defeated forever in Emberden thanks to my friend and I." It hasn't mentioned them since! Since this happened, whenever I want to be done with a person or quest forever, at the very end I simply say something very clear about it being done like "and I'm glad the town will never have to worry about the Deep ones again. Safe forever from their influence!" Or "the goblin camp had been burned to the ground, their warriors all killed to the last. They wouldn't be troubling people in these parts for a long, long time."

Another tip: if you want to travel without being attacked or bothered by something, just say something to your allies or yourself about how safe the road is now and how you're sure you'll be safe a few time. Or make something up about how there's regular patrols of the road now and it's considered very safe. Like always, be creative!

Another tip: if you want to just get somewhere instantly, start out with your normal travel dialog then just say "the days pass quickly, and you arrive in xyz without any trouble, you pass through the front gate at sundown, looking around at your new surroundings" this will tell the ai you want to skip traveling and make it clear you want to resume playing now that you're there.

Another: if you find that you're constantly fighting the same enemies, write a note in player preferences saying something like "please ensure every enemy encounter is different. Unless I specifically tell you what we're fighting, please pick a random monster, humanoid, or creature from the Dungeons and Dragons universe for each encounter that makes sense for the location we're currently in".

Another tip including NSFW tip here: i use ChatGPT for my regular adventuring. It seems to be the best all rounder and is basically never down. Gemini 1.5 is extremely NSFW friendly, so if you're doing any NSFW roleplay* use that. Deepseek is great, but it seems to be down and result in forever loading more often than not.

Another: if you have an idea for a cool story arc or something, start mentioning it in your dialog with others or your characters thoughts. I wanted a large scale invasion of Emberden, and I referenced it a few times as "some army coming from the north conquering as they go" as a rumor and the ai gave me a war with 2500 orc invaders that led to me being the general of the Emberden army and defeating the orcs in an epic battle in the Starview Plains before they could reach the city. If the ai isn't doing good enough with this, just have another character you meet on the road or another traveller or something come and tell you "did you hear about xyz?" And it'll start.

Another: i mentioned above if you want the ai to do something specific and it's not working in notes to talk in the chat box to tell it. Well instead of hitting regenerate, you can literally just tell the ai "rewrite the following prompt and" and tell it what you want it to change. Use this for corrections if the ai forgets something important, or even if you like what it wrote but want it to stop the prompt earlier. An example is if you say you head towards a city and it just has you go straight in and start looking around but you wanted to do something at the gates before entering, you can tell it "rewrite the above prompt and stop right after I reach the city gates before I go inside.

Another tip: I found adding a line in notes for the DM that says "I would like you to keep close track of all the items myself and my companions have an collect". It helps a ton with the random loot being lost or not remembered.

You can also write in your players campaign notes section that you have xyz items and it'll keep WAY better track of those items specifically to where I haven't had mine forget one of the items listed there in like 80+ hours since I added it. And thats without ever reminding it. It will also remember the details of any characters you put in here like hair colorn, race, personality, and their items if you add it here, even if you havent seen them in a while.

I'm fairly certain for the player campaign notes it basically reads that part and the notes for the dm part every time it goes to respond, which helps out a ton with the lost items as even if your summary gets too long it'll always remember that stuff.

Another tip: always remember if you get yourself in a sticky situation or just want to get through something safely, the game always defaults to what you say directly over anything else that's happening! if you say you run away safely, you'll run away safely. If the game tries to make you roll to run away (if you still have rolling enabled in notes) then just say "I don't have to roll for this, i just run away and get away safely". And it'll follow your lead. Remember, you're in charge! That's the whole point of playing with the ai, you're making your own adventure and taking control, making everything as fun as possible for you, even when following the ai's lead!

Have fun!

Madison Howard

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New player tips and tricks!