Ravendawn Complete Beginners Guide

Welcome to our Complete Beginners Guide for Ravendawn!

In this guide we cover all of the information you need to know when getting started in the game and also we have provided some information to help with some of those early quest woes.

Make sure to join us on Discord if you have any questions or need help!

Getting Started

Ravendawn is a free to play top down MMORPG, focused on Dynamic World Building, Community, Deep Character Customization and a Player Driven World above all else. Ravendawn brings everything that makes an MMORPG special, with a focus on player freedom and player community.

  1. Getting Started
    You’ll need to firstly go onto the Ravendawn website to start playing. Fill out the form including my Referral Code: TC_Lee13 and then you can get started!
  2. Platforms
    Ravendawn is only available on Windows and you can download the client from your account page once you’ve created your account. The game can be played in English or Portuguese
  3. Monetisation
    Ravendawn is a free to play MMORPG which runs on an optional subscription also known as Patron where you’ll gain various benefits such as chat badges and colour, faster login, reduced marketplace fees, free fast travel as well as additional quest and exp related benefits.

Character Creation

  1. Character Creation
    Once you’ve downloaded and installed the game, launch Ravendawn and login. You can now create a character.
  2. Appearance (X)
    With your characters physical appearance you can only select Male or Female when creating the character. later customisation is available ingame where you can change your outfit and the colour sections of your outfit and hair. Press X to go to the Character menu then select Customisation.
  3. Classes/Archetype
    On launch the game has 8 archetypes and you need to initially pick 1 archetype when creating your character

    • Holy: Utilizes White Magic for healing and smiting enemies with holy force.
    • Spiritual: Employs Red Magic to aid allies with barriers, speed, and mana replenishment.
    • Witchcraft: Blue Magic users exploit enemy weaknesses and mix occult powers.
    • Warfare: Focuses on brute force and self-healing through bloodshed.
    • Shadow: Specializes in stealth, using toxins and deception for lethal strikes.
    • Protection: Defends allies and leads charges with unbreakable spirit.
    • Archery: Excels in ranged combat with speed and disengaging abilities.
    • Wizardry: Harnesses elemental magic, especially frost and fire, for AoE attacks.
    • As you progress through Ravendawn you’ll unlock a second and third archetype slot. By level 15 you will have 3 different archetypes selected which will determine which one of the 56 classes your character becomes.
  4. Changing Archetype
    You can change your Archetypes at level 15. To change Archetype just open the menu with (K) and press on a different archetype, you’ll then be asked which archetype you want to switch, choose one and you’ll now have a different archetype selected. You can individually level up all 8 archetypes, doing so will reward you with extra skill points and attributes.
  5. Starting The Game
    Once you have your character you can start your journey in Ravendawn.
    As you begin the game you’ll start off in a main story quest tutorial in your parents house on an island. You’ll need to advance through this to reach the main continent of the game.
  6. Movement & Controls
    Moving your character in the game is done by pressing WASD. You can move diagonally by pressing 2 movement keys at the same time such as holding WA will move you diagonally South-West. You can also move in the game by pressing on the mini map or on the floor. This may need to be turned on in your settings (Press O) > misc > point & click on
    – There are not any camera control since this game has a specific top-down view overlooking your nearby vicinity.
    – To fight enemies you’ll need to right click on them or press on them in the battle list. You will then begin to auto attack, but you can now hit enemies with your abilities by pressing your hotkeys

UI & Menus

  1. UI
    Ravendawn packs quite a lot of information into its UI and we’ll go through it all now.

    1. The base overlay includes chat boxes in the bottom left, you can press on multiple options here to change which text channels you can see and write to.
    2. There are health and mana bars in the top left but some of this information can also be seen above your characters head.
    3. There is also a enemy list on the middle left side which is more visible when coming into contact with enemies, this can be adjusted by clicking on the icon at the top so you can choose which enemies appear and in what order.
    4. You will also see your current level and experience bar beneath the ability bar.
  2. Enemy List
    1. Located in the middle left of the screen, it becomes more visible when in contact with enemies.
    2. You can adjust settings to select what types of enemies or players to display.
    3. Options to arrange enemies by type, distance, health, name, or level.
  3. Menus
    1. Located in the bottom right of the screen, menus and utilities can be closed by pressing the Raven Dawn symbol.
    2. The menu includes various options like character screen, inventory, infusions, Raven cards, archetypes, professions, reputation, transport, world map, quests, Rangers company, trade pack list, journal, guild list, social list, tutorial, Raven Dawn store, and settings.
  4. Mini Map
    1. Located in the top corner.
    2. You can zoom in and out using the middle mouse key.
    3. Displays the current zone and time.
    4. Features include PVP mode toggle, house tog mode for land, house, and farm editing, battle list toggle, quest tracker toggle, and a zoom function.
  5. PvP Mode
    1. Accessible from the mini map.
    2. Allows you to change settings to be more offensive, defensive, or peaceful to avoid attacks.
  6. Fast Teleport
    1. Teleport to Raven Crest feature.
    2. Has a 4-hour cooldown and can be used for instant teleportation to the main city, provided you are not in combat.
  7. Server Channel *Top Tip*
    One important thing here is your active channel, this is the current instance you are in on the server. There are multiple channels which is to prevent overcrowding and you may need to change your channel if you are in an area that is too busy or to join your friends who may be in a different channel. Simple look at your mini map in the top right corner of the screen – you’ll see a number 1 to 4, click onto that to open the Switch Channel menu, select the channel you want to change to and press Join Channel. This will only work when you’re in a protection area such as in the main city of Ravencrest.
  8. Hotkeys & Editing Them *Top Tip*
    In the very centre of the screen you have your abilities and quick slots along with your aether meter in the very centre. To add a skill here you’ll first need to learn a skill, press on the skill menu (K) and click a skill to learn it, double click to add it to your hotbar. Once on the hot bar you can press and hold left mouse click to drag and move the skill. To change your hotkeys for your hot bar, you must right-click on a skill, press “Edit Hotkey” then press the key you wish to switch it to and click apply. Be careful what you change hotkeys to, since you don’t have a hotkey menu, there’s a chance if you unbind a key you might not be able to reassign it.

Character & Gear

  1. Character & Progressions
    In Ravendawn you have both your legacy level which is your overall level which will determined your available quests and the gear you can wear. You also have individual levels for each of your archetype and Effective Level which is the average level of your 3 equipped archetypes. You’re able to switch and level up all 8 archetypes which will be beneficial later in the game for the additional skill points that you’ll be rewarded for doing this.
  2. Inventory (I)
    This is where you hold items you have collected from quests, gathering and killing enemies
  3. Equipment (X)
    On your character screen you will find your equipment tab. To equip gear you can click it from your inventory or drag it onto the slot in your equipment screen.
  4. Armor Types
    Armor can be used in Plate, Leather or Cloth and equipping 2 pieces or 4 pieces of each armor type will give you additional character bonuses. Plate gives you increased Health, Healing Received and Weapon Defense. Leather increases Crit Chance and reduces crowd control effect duration on you, Light increases attack speed, spell Defense and reduces casting time.
  5. Gear Tiers & Grades
    Gear in the game has no level caps but if you wear gear that is too high for your level, you will temporarily lose some of the stats benefits of that gear until you are high enough to wield it at full strength.

    • Gear has 6 tiers 1 being the worst and containing no attributes and tier 6 being the best which will have multiple primary attributes and secondary attributes to buff your character. All gear in the game can be crafted by players.
    • Alongside that you have gear grades, this is graded 1 to 9 and this is identified by the boarder around the item. Higher tiers items will have higher Attack Points, Defense Points, Attributes and sub stats so the strongest items in the game would effectively be a tier 6 grade 9 item. Items can be upgraded via Infusing.
  6. Character Stats (X)
    Upon levelling up you’ll receive 2 points that you can distribute into your stats of Vitality, Might, Intelligence, Dexterity and Wisdom. You’ll want to try and match these choices towards the weapon and ability types you are using for example
  7. Attributes (X)
    Your attributes are on the same menu as your stats, this shows you a breakdown of how you stats, gear, trinkets and other things overall effect your character. You can see a breakdown of things such as your spell and weapon power, defence and more.
  8. Attack Power
    This shows you your current total attack power and it’s also known as AP
  9. Defense Points
    This is the same but how strong you are defensively and it’s also known as DP
  10. Mana
    Mana is the resource used to cast magic abilities and is the blue bar above your characters head and in the top left of the screen
  11. Health
    Health is the red bar above your characters head and in the top left, it shows how much remaining health you have and some abilities will also cost health to use.
  12. Gaining Experience & Levelling Up
    Experience is gained in a number of ways but usually by killing enemies and completing quests around the entire world of Ravendawn. The game has a soft cap of level 75, once you hit this Legacy level the amount of experience needed for more levels will drastically increases. There is no hard cap in the game so players can keep progressing their character but it will just take a much more significant amount of time and very minimal additional benefits
  13. Reputation (H)
    When doing quests and speaking to NPCs in Ravendawn you’ll sometimes be given 3 dialogue options, these will determine your reputation either Order, Mercenary or Criminal. You’ll enable different options in the game based upon your reputation including NPCs that will give you access to enchantments to improve your gear. You also earn Reputation points which you can spend on the reputation screen, this will allow you to purchase a range of character buffs and benefits that effect combat, economy, movement, crafting and more
  14. Artifacts (J)
    These are collectables that you can obtain by completing story quests, events, exploration, NPC interactions and rare creature drops. You’ll find them in your journal menu, and the value of collecting these is that you’ll unlock a range of benefits such as exclusive docks, shops, respawn shrines, workshops and NPC interactions along with secret dungeons and hidden locations!

RavenCards

Ravencards are a system in the game which allows you to collect cards and equip them to your abilities to modify them, usually adding additional functionality to a skill to make it stronger. Each ability has 2 potential Ravencards options you can obtain and these cards have 7 rarities and the rarer the card, the more powerful the modification it adds to an ability. Cards can be obtained from Ravenpacks which you obtain from Twitch Drops, levelling up or by trading dawn essence which you get from missions and North Star Quests. When you get a duplicate Ravencards you’ll receive Ravenshards which can be used to upgrade the rarity of an existing card that you have.

Combat

  1. Combat
    Ravendawns combat is a tab target tile combat system. To attack enemies in Ravendawn you must right click on them to begin auto attacking, you’ll then need to use abilities to inflict more damage or protect and heal yourself or apply crowd control to enemies. You can also turn on Quick Targeting from your settings (O) menu which helps you to target enemies that are attacking you.
  2. Melee Combat
  3. Magic and Ranged Combat
  4. Skills and Abilities (K)
    With the Archetype and Class system you can use a variety of skills and passives to create your perfect playstyle. You need to increase the level of each archetype and then you can purchase skills with skill points to use with your character, stronger skill require more skill points to unlock them.
  5. Choosing Abilities
    It’s completely up to you which abilities you choose and which order you get them. It’s a good idea to select skills that work well with your build type and resource type. I try to synergise certain abilities to my weapon and character playstyle.
  6. Hotbar Abilities
    When you have an ability unlocked, you need to place it on your hot bar so it can be used. We mentioned more about this earlier in the guide. If you have too many abilities you can add additional ability bars by going to your settings (O) > windows and ability bars, then choose additional bars.
  7. Passives
    For every 5 skill points you spend in 1 archetype, this allows you to be able to buy passive abilities which cost 3 skill points each and give you a range of character benefits which will usually be permanent buffs or circumstantial/auto-activating.
  8. Blocking/Dodging
    It’s not possible to block in the game, you must rely on abilities that absorb damage and buffs, passives and abilities that reduce incoming damage. Dodging is also not actively possible generally but it can be done with the Illusive ability if you have the Shadow Archetype active.
  9. Interrupting & Crowd Control
    Both of these are possible depending on your skill selection. A number of skills are capable of interrupting casting enemies and most crowd control consists of slows and snares but some stun abilities do exist. Having access to these is important for dealing with packs of enemies.
  10. Looting
    Looting in the game is automatic so you don’t need to do anything, everything you loot will automatically go into your inventory (I)
  11. Death
    The death penalty in the game is a experience debt. You’ll lose a certain amount of experience and you will have to earn it back before you can earn anymore new experience. You can also pay silver to clear your debt.

Quests & NPCs

  1. Quests (J)
    Quest can be found all over Ravendawn and they are a critical part of progressing through the game both for the rewards gained but also the experience. Some quests are level locked so you need a certain legacy level to be able to do them.
  2. Finding a Quest *Top Tip*
    Quest can be found by looking on your World Map (M) and searching for the orange exclamation mark. This signals any currently available quests based on your level.
  3. Interacting with NPCs
    To speak to an NPC just walk up to them and press F
  4. Starting a Quest
    Speak with an NPC and follow the dialogue options and you’ll be send to do a quest or mission.
  5. Jensens Key *Top Tip*
    Jensen has lost his key on one of the early quests you’re sent to do, you can find it by pressing on the bush nearby and you’ll obtain the key.
  6. Completing a Quest (J)
    You have to play close attention to where a quest is sending you because the quest icon will show you a location to go to but it may be underground or higher ground or in an area where you need to go through a tunnel, it’s often not as straight forward as it looks and you need to read the journal information. Once you’ve completed the task head back to the NPC to hand it in and claim the reward.
  7. Rangers Company
    This becomes available at level 15, you must complete the introductory quest and then you will have access to the Rangers Company mission boards. These are scattered all over the world and you’ll be given region based tasks to complete. When you complete missions you’ll gain prestige points which improve your rank within the company and also earn bounty marks which can be used to buy items from the company.
  8. North Star Quests
    These quests are automatic objective based quests that guide you through the game, you’ll be asked to reach a certain level goal for example which then rewards you once you achieve it. You’ll earn Land deeds via these objectives so it’s worth paying attention to them.
  9. Dynamic Events
    One of my favourite thing about the game is the dynamic world events. These will start at random times in different areas of the world and you’ll have to work with other players to complete the event. Even if you are above or below the suggested level for an event you just need to press the green arrow to scale with the event to earn rewards. On the event tracker the green bar is your contribution to the event and the purple is contributions of other players.
  10. Selling & Buying from NPC’s and Shops
    Some junk items can be sold for silver- Look for Xeniad in main city Ravencrest, near the gate to the Slums. They will buy all junk and creature products that currently don’t have any useful function in the game.

Travel & Transport

  1. Travel & Transport (Y)
    Travelling around Ravendawn can be done in a range of ways. One method is using Waypoints to fast travel, you need to press on a waypoint and then you can travel to another discovered waypoint. On your Mini Map you can also travel to your most recently visited city but it does come with a very long cooldown.
  2. Mounts
    The only mounts in Ravendawn are Moas and these are obtained via the Mortal Enemies Quest you’ll get early into the game. You can only have 1 active mount at a time, they cannot be used in combat and you are able to breed Moas to gain rare and higher tier mounts. You can equip your moa with equipment and it will also have useful abilities and various beneficial stats such as speed and strength.
  3. Wagons
    These are used to transport multiple tradepacks around Ravendawn to trade posts to gain silver. You will obtain wagon parts early in the game by completing quests, then go to the Wagoncrafter NPC in Ravencrest near the docks and create your first Wagon. Your wagon has a certain amount of health and can be used to carry a limited number of tradepacks.
  4. Ships
    You can also build and customise your own ship, useful for also carrying tradepacks but could be used for exploring new areas, ocean fishing and naval combat.

Crafting & Professions

  1. Professions – Gathering and Crafting
    Ravendawn has a range of useful professions including fishing, carpentry, weaving, cooking, breeding, mining, woodcutting, farming, blacksmithing and husbandry.
  2. Crafting Skill lines
    The crafting skills are carpentry, weaving, cooking, blacksmithing and breeding. Weaving allows you to create cloth and leather gear, blacksmithing allows for the creation of weapons and plate armor, carpentry is used for crafting furniture and weapons, cooking is for making useful meals and buff food and breeding lets you breed Moa mounts.
  3. Finding Materials
    Materials can be found all over the world. One place you’ll find early materials easily is on your community farm, but when exploring the world you’ll find ore, trees, you can go fishing
  4. Refining raw materials
  5. Creating new Items
  6. Deconstructing Items
  7. Infusions (U)
    You will often loot infusions which are items dropped by enemies in the game, these can be used along with silver to improve the grade of your gear. Go to the infusions menu and select the item you want to infuse, then you’ll choose any infusions you have to level up the grade of your weapon or you can use old gear and weapons to improve your new ones too.
  8. Enchantment
    Enchantments are powerful runes that improve your gear and weapons which can be exchanged with certain NPCs. Only 1 enchantment can be used per piece of equipment. You cannot remove enchantments but you can replace them by using another enchantment on a piece of gear that already has one. Rune have a range of different types and tiers.
  9. Community Land *Top Tip*
    There’s no map marker for the community farm which is a great place for players without a home do work on their farming and husbandry. It’s found in Ravencrest to the right side of the city, look for the brown square of land on your map to locate it.
  10. Housing Mode & Editing
    When you are at your community farm or other land – To place new items in your farm, go to the compass/mini map in the top right of the screen and look for the little “Toggle house mode” button which opens a menu allowing you to buy crops, animals and trees and place them in your farm.
  11. Farming
    Farming provides a range of potential resources that can be used for crafting. For example you can practice husbandary and use the meat gained from that to produce meals and improve your cooking profession. Farming allows you to grow crops, plant trees and breed animals and these are all done on different timers. You’ll have to plant and place things into your farm, water and feed them, and return when they are fully grown to harvest them. Press F to interact with farm items, you’ll then have to choose what to do with an item, pressing F1 on potatoes will harvest them, next a mini game appears where you have to press F to stop the moving bar in the green section, missing or not doing this only means it takes longer to harvest.
  12. Effort Points
    To complete land activities you need effort points which are earned by killing enemies and completing quests, these can then be used for farming. Every 100xp earned = 1 effort point.
  13. Estates
    Building your own estate in the open world of Ravendawn is an interesting feature in the game. You can find available land on your map by turning on housing viewer and searching for the estate type you’re interested in. Estates can be Small, Medium or Large and come with a hefty fee to buy land 10k for small, 500k for medium and 5m for large. You need a land deed to claim an estate and you gain these from North Star quests, the first land deed will be a small land deed you gain at level 25. Once you buy land you have to pay silver and a weekly tax to keep your estate. You’re able to plant crops, trees, breed animals and place a house on your land.
  14. Trophies
    These are very rare items looted from enemies which can be placed in your house to provide you will additional buffs to your characters stats.