12 replies to this topic

[Darthblack]

I'm a new player, and all i have is trial mechs... how do i get my own mechs? how do i get XP how do i earn credits to buys stuff? this looks like a really cool game but all i can do is trial stuff...

[Kaoba]

buy a new mech,earning c bills with the trial mechs

[Darthblack]

how do you earn the c-bills? i can't even find where to see if i have any c-bills... polease explain more...

[Kaoba]

368,987 that are the c bills

[Koniving]

Okay, let me break this down as someone who types more than 5 words.

In terms of lore, low ranked soldiers are loaned mechs by the house or company they work for. MWO refers to them as Trial Mechs. These are stock, lore-friendly, table top builds. Typically these builds have the idea you'd fire maybe twice in a ten second window. In reality most people shoot a lot more -- so the heat is bad on almost all of them.

That said, cbills are the in-game currency earned for playing. Capturing bases in conquest, killing enemies, spotting enemies with the R key (tap and a square appears) and holding the target until from an ally LRMs hit that target, and various other actions will provide you with cash based on how you perform.

You would use the trial mechs to play the game for now. There's a "Cadet Bonus" that pumps you full of insane amounts of cash so that by the time you have 25 matches you'll have enough to buy almost any mech within an 8 million cbill window. From there you can keep playing with the trials or jump up to buying your own. Some tend to buy a medium mech long before then.

Cbills have the symbol next to it. Two numbers to the left of "Social" on the bottom right.

It is important to note that on these forums, any picture can be enlarged by clicking on it.

When you are ready to purchase your own mech, look at the mech lab, as shown above. See where it says "Owned Mechs"? You click on that first. You'll see an empty space as shown next to the JR7-F and Raven 3-L, it reads "Buy Mech."

Click on that. You'll see this next screen. I went ahead and selected the most recommended mech for new players that want to start out feeling great.



As you can see on the right, it says I do not have enough to make this purchase. When you have enough, you want to click "Buy CB."

Before you ask, is a form of real money for those of us too impatient to grind for cbills. Personally I say use for premium time or "Hero mechs", which are just a unique variant not available for cbills. Some are good, some not so good. It depends on how you play. is also required to have more than 4 mech bays. You can probably tell I have a lot. Using supports the game and the people making it. However it is never necessary to pay in order to play. All weapons are available for .

If you do get the Hunchback 4SP, then as soon as possible I recommend upgrading to double heat sinks, and getting a standard 260 engine inside of it. There is little need to change its weapons unless you feel like experimenting. Some swap the SRMs (Short Range Missiles) for LRMs (Long Range Missiles) or Streak SRMs (Homing short range missiles). But other than that, changes are rare except for the occasional cannon-happy PPC (Particle Projection Cannon) user.

This last picture showcases the mechlab. (Note: I no longer have a 4SP; I maxed it out very easily, got over 100,000 XP with it after Mastering it, and eventually discarded it because matches were too easy with it. What you see below is a Hunchback 4J, as I haven't maxed it out yet.)


I recommend watching the tutorial for mech lab to learn how to build your mech. It and many other training videos can be found here. http://mwomercs.com/...raining-grounds

Lots of advice on combat can be found within this thread, to include lots of video, text, etc.
http://mwomercs.com/...some-questions/

Edited by Koniving, 30 March 2013 - 05:44 PM.

[CmdrPoopyPants]

Since Koniving did such an excellent job explaining "buying your first mech", I'll touch on the other question about XP.

You -do- earn XP on the trial mech you're running while you're grinding up for your own mech. The rub is that you can't spend any of that XP on skills until you "own" that chasis/variant yourself. The up side is, the instant you buy that chasis/variant, you have access to spend the XP you earned while running that trial. ... the mechanic is, you can only spend XP on skills "while you own that variant". Once you unlock the skill, you get the bonus for that chasis/variant even if you sell your mech and later run that chasis/variant in trial mode.

There are several threads out there explaining the "basic -> elite -> master" mechanic, so you will want to look those up once you start buying more mechs.. but it's not all that important to you at this stage so I'll not get into it much here, other than to say that you must spend real world cash to get more than just 4 mech bays.. so if you want to master some chasis without ever buying more bays, you'll need to plan on spending lots of c-bills over time, and want to buy 3 variants of one chasis before you move on to other mechs.. (banking XP doesn't solve the problem since you can't spend that XP unless you have the mech in your bays..).

[Koniving]

Slight edit to the above.

Trials are stated to be unaffected by earned mech efficiencies for the variant, even if spent. However if you sold the mech you owned and spent XP on, then buy it back, every mech efficiency is automatically reinstalled as if you never sold it.

Edited by Koniving, 30 March 2013 - 11:36 AM.

[CmdrPoopyPants]

Koniving, on 30 March 2013 - 11:35 AM, said:

Slight edit to the above.

Trials are stated to be unaffected by earned mech efficiencies for the variant, even if spent. However if you sold the mech you owned and spent XP on, then buy it back, every mech efficiency is automatically reinstalled as if you never sold it.

Ah.. I've read (from users, though) that unlocked skills apply to trials.. I've not seen anything from devs on the matter. I'm presuming you've seen a dev post (recently) that clarified this? If not, I guess this is back in the realm of "we don't know"..

[Koniving]

Bryan said it in one of the threads. Can't recall which. I go through too many of them. Should totally get paid for this.

Anyway. Bryan Ekman was also in a match last night. Sadly he said it wasn't recorded which was disappointing; I wanted to see my flamer stalker from the outside. But to someone's question he said this interesting tidbit: "Yes Heavy Metal (Highlander Heromech) will be released before the Highlanders."

That's why you see floating there in those recent snapshots.

Edited by Koniving, 30 March 2013 - 12:08 PM.

[WaddeHaddeDudeda]

You could also take a look into that guide below my sig.
It will hopefully answer all your questions, and probably even some you didn't even thought of yet!

*hint*

[Koniving]

WaddeHaddeDudeda, on 30 March 2013 - 12:16 PM, said:

You could also take a look into that guide below my sig.
It will hopefully answer all your questions, and probably even some you didn't even thought of yet!

*hint*

Read some of it, saved it. May use some of its content for the new pilot training videos that I'm planning on doing.

[Forestal]

CmdrPoopyPants, on 30 March 2013 - 11:57 AM, said:

Ah.. I've read (from users, though) that unlocked skills apply to trials.. I've not seen anything from devs on the matter. I'm presuming you've seen a dev post (recently) that clarified this? If not, I guess this is back in the realm of "we don't know"..

I can confirm this-- tried out the TBT-7M and accumulated a few thousand Mech XP before I bought the TBT-3C (just went for the most expensive variant) instead...

But when I finally decided to come back for the TBT-7M and bought it, the Mech XP I accumulated for using the TBT-7M trial mech were "unlocked" (available for spending) for the TBT -7M I bought.

So Mech XP is "CHASIS-specific" as in which chasis you've USED/played with, but not specific to the "physical mech" you OWN/bought-- though Mech XP will be "greyed out" and unusable if you no longer own the specifc chasis... so if you want to trade Mech XP for GXP (using MC), do it before you sell the chasis.

Edited by Forestal, 31 March 2013 - 04:07 PM.

[Aym]

Forestal, on 31 March 2013 - 04:03 PM, said:

I can confirm this-- tried out the TBT-7M and accumulated a few thousand Mech XP before I bought the TBT-3C (just went for the most expensive variant) instead...

But when I finally decided to come back for the TBT-7M and bought it, the Mech XP I accumulated for using the TBT-7M trial mech were "unlocked" (available for spending) for the TBT -7M I bought.

So Mech XP is "CHASIS-specific" as in which chasis you've USED/played with, but not specific to the "physical mech" you OWN/bought-- though Mech XP will be "greyed out" and unusable if you no longer own the specifc chasis... so if you want to trade Mech XP for GXP (using MC), do it before you sell the chasis.

Not to go too far off topic, but I thought he was saying that if you own an Atlas 7D and have skills unlocked, but choose to play one when it is the trial mech (perhaps for a Trial By Fire style tournament) then your trial atlas will not benefit from the unlocked skills, even though it is the right chassis and earns XP for that chassis.