Secret World Academy

On the heels of my review of Secret World, I'm offering a few tidbits of insight at a time to players that may have missed something.  I've spent a bit of time (power permitting) in this game since launch, and here are a few tips I hope all players would eventually figure out.







1) You can find ability synergies without browsing all of the skills.
Shotguns get an AoE attack that Weakens enemies.  Want to look up all of the skills that do more damage to Weakened targets, or things that proc off of the Weakened state?  Open your skill wheel.  On the right side, you'll see "Ability search."  Click it, check out the drop down menus to narrow your results, and you've got an idea of where to build next.  For my AoE Shotgun Weakening build, the game tells me I should probably pick Chaos as my second set of abilities.



2) You have two targets
That's right.  You have a primary and secondary target -- not that the UI is particularly fond of showing this to you.   Your offensive target is either your currently selected enemy or the most recently selected enemy you've had.  Your defensive target functions the same way, but with friendly targets.  In WoW, you can hit F1 and get rid of your offensive target; here, the only way to clear your offensive target seems to be to target a different mob.  Did you accidentally pull early?  Don't cancel by self-targeting or clearing your target -- it doesn't seem to go away.  Have fun tanking what you hit!  This also makes assisting quite easy.  Say you're a DPS that doesn't much use defensive targeting.  Select your tank and any time during the dungeon, you can hit the assist key to automatically select their target.  If you're off-tanking, you can select the healer as your defensive target once, and there's a key combination to select whatever's attacking them.

3) You can make your own bags
Want a bag for just health potions and short-term buffs?  Go into your inventory, and click the "plus" sign in the top right corner.  Drag it to the location you want, and adjust the size by clicking and dragging in the bottom right corner.  Once you're happy, hit the lock icon in the bag's top left.  Now you can make your own little hotbars with various items, buffs, or gear sets.

4) You can move across realms.
Have a friend on a different server?  Once you're in a group, you can enter their zone and you'll be playing on their server.  This lasts until you leave the zone -- even if you've left the group and logged out.  As an added bonus, you can teleport to your friends.  When you join a group, you can right click a player's name and click "Meet up."  This has you on the fast track to actually being able to group, though I'm not certain if there's a fast way to get back.

5) Shop purchases are character specific.
Buy a great coat in the shop, and want to use it on an alt?  Pony up again.  Unless it specifically states otherwise in the shop, assume all shop items are unique to one character.

Happy hunting!  If you preordered, and you are having difficulty obtaining items, check out this list to get you on the fast track.