First, let me introduce myself. I'm WatDo. You'll find me in-game as WatDo aswell. I've been playing for the better part of two years now, so I'm not too shabby as a robot driver. I know my shiz, yo. (Not as well as some pilots, but eh, i don't see many helpful starter guides as of yet.)

WTF is the point of this post? To help the horrible new pilots enjoy this game. Don't worry. We were all awful at this game when we first started, the learning curve is huge.

So let's get to it.

Lesson 1 - Movement. Or, WHY DOES THIS ROBOT NOT OBEY ME?!

These robots are slow and lumbering as ♥♥♥♥. It's a robot, yo. The only way you go fast in this game is by playing a light or medium class mech, and generally only those with XL engines go "fast". (I'll explain XL engines later)

However you have your keyboard, gamepad, sticks, or whatever you're using setup - you need to understand your robot moves like a *TANK* with legs. Generally with a keyboard/mouse setup, W A S D will control your legs, and your mouse will control your upper torso, or where you're aiming. None of those movements will be "snappy", like CoD. When you press A, your lower body will rotate left, like a tank. D will rotate it right. W will accelerate you forward and S will reverse you. When you move your mouse, your upper body will rotate/gyrate/undulate in that direction, seperate from your legs. That last part is VERY important to remember. It's easy to forget how important that is sometimes when you first start. But just because you're looking to the left, doesn't mean you're running left, you could very well still be running right - right off that ledge and into a pack of angry mechs.

Play around in the testing grounds until you're comfortable with movement, for your own sanity!

Lesson 2 - Damage. "Your mechs health and you!"

So you just picked that cool, shiny Hunchback to drive around in and you just landed in the middle of a match. You run around a corner and spot an enemy, you stare them down, firing your weapons like a madman, running straight at him screaming things about Commie Scum and running uphill in snow both ways... when suddenly you drop dead.

Why?

Because DAMAGE, that's why! You took damage until you died from it. You could say they made you bleed your own blood, and you'd be wrong because you were driving a robot, you dullard, they don't have blood.

Each and every mech is seperated into 11 seperate boxes, often called hitboxes, which have their own armor and internal structure, which together is it's health. Left leg, right leg, left arm, right arm, front left torso, back left torso, front right torso, back right torso, front center torso, back center torso and head.

A mech will die if
-it loses both legs (you cant walk no mo')
-it loses its head (you got headshot bro)
-it loses its center torso (that's where your engine is)
-it loses a side torso (if you have an Inner Sphere XL-engine)
-it loses both side torso... torsi? (if you have an IS Light engine, or clan XL engine)

When an enemy shoots you, or you shoot an enemy, you or they deal damage to that area of the mech you or they are aiming at. Shoot a leg enough and it pops off, slowing down that mech, shoot off both and it dies. Shoot a Center Torso enough and the mech will outright die, because you blew up their engine!

So, how do you survive having people shoot at your Center Torso or head all the time? Easy, don't let them. Turn your mech literally away from the person shooting at you. That tactic is referred to as Twisting, or spreading damage. If someone is shooting your chest, you turn your mech to make your arm, or something else take the damage. It's much harder to be punched in the nose when your nose is facing away from a nose-punching badguy, understand? Don't fret too much, you won't be good at this until you're more comfortable with the game, but just keep it in mind.

Note: Front and back torsos of the same type (i.e, front left torso and back left torso) have seperate armor, but share the same internal structure. So if your internal structure takes damage from behind, you lose that health for the front too. Always watch your back!

Lesson 3 - Big bad-da-boom. Excuse me, I mean Weapons.

The bread and butter of murdering people and/or mechs.

There's three types of weapons in Mechwarrior Online;

Energy - These weapons consume no Ammunition, fill a wide variety of range roles, and generate alot of Heat.
Ballistic - These weapons consume Ammunition (which you have to purchase and equip seperately from your weapon!!), fill the short to medium range role, and generate very little Heat.
Missile - These weapons consume Ammunition, fill the short OR long range role, and generate medium Heat.

Let's break them down further.

Energy weapons are mostly lasers, they have what's called a Burn Time, ranging from less than half a second for the small, short range lasers, up to over a second for the longer range lasers. What that means is you have to hold your laser on your target to deal damage, thus making it the easiest type of weapon damage to mitigate by Twisting (as described further above). There's also things called PPC's, or Particle Projector Cannons. They are energy based... well, cannons. They make a long range projectile, and come in standard PPC and Extended Range, or ER for short, PPC (ERPPC). The normal PPC has a dead range where it will deal no damage at 90 meters, the ER version does not, but generates almost double the Heat. Those are sniping weapons first and foremost. All energy weapons generate the most Heat, which i will explain later on. The PPC family now also contains Snubnose PPC, Light PPC, and Heavy PPC. Light and heavy PPC's share a 90 meter deadzone with the normal PPC. The Snubnose PPC does not have this deadzone, and is used more for short range fighting.

Ballistic weapons are almost entirely Cannon based, they're all projectile based weapons - except for the MachineGun, which acts like a laser and is Hitscan. These weapons all consume Ammunition, which you must purchase seperately and install seperately from your weapon of choice, adding to your loadouts overall weight. Be careful when preparing your mech, take too little Ammunition and you won't kill anything, take too much and you risk going Boom. Also, since Ammunition takes up weight itself, you have to consider that when planning all your other weapons and equipment. This type of weapon ranges from the piddly AC/2 (or AutoCannon/2, with 2 designating the projectile size and damage) for fire support, to the Gauss Rifle which is the go-to sniping weapon, to the dangerous yet short ranged AC/20 and everything in between. These weapons generate the least amount of Heat, to offset the need for Ammunition.

Missile based weaponry falls into 6 categories. LRM, or Long-Ranged Missiles. SRM, Short-Ranged Missiles, SSRM, Streak Short-Ranged Missiles, NARC, MRM, Medium Range Missles, and Clan ATM. They, like Ballistic weapons, take their own seperate Ammunition. LRM's are first and foremost, long range fire support and sport a deadzone of roughly 180 meters, where they will deal no damage. SRM's are first and foremost a short range weapons, reaching out only to roughly 270 meters. This is for close fighting. SSRM's are the same as SRM's, except they lock on (which is what Streak means here). NARC, which is for scouting, as when the NARC missle hits its target, it latches on and shows on everyone's map where the NARC target is. LRM and SSRM are lock-on based weapons, and can be fired without having direct line of sight to your enemy! Beware though, these weapons will not guide themselves around rock formations or any other type of terrain in the way. That last part is super important. LRM fire especially is rendered useless when you get to cover! MRM, or Medium Range Missles fit in the middle, sitting between 450 and 600 meters for range, with no deadzone. They are stream fire and have a large cone of fire. Clan ATM are the clan counterpart to medium range missles, but have a deadzone of about 120 meters under which they deal no damage.

Take time and read what your weapons do, test them out in the testing grounds for a while until you understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Pro-tip - Your weapon bar in the lower right corner of your UI when inside your mech shows the ranges on your weapons, they light up different colors when at various ranges. Green is perfect, Yellow means within damaging range, and grey means you do no damage at whatever range you're at.

Lesson 4 - Equipment!

The stuff you put into your mech to make it do things.

Weapons (already covered)

Armor - The first line of defense for your mech. Think of it as a never-recharging shield, and your Internal Structure as your never-recharging health. You can increase or decrease the amount of armor on every part of your mech, and the more the better. If you must remove armor for weight reasons, try your arms first, as long as you don't have anything important there, then your legs. Never skimp on your armor if it can be helped though!

Note: Internal Structure is very similar to Armor, because both are basically fancy words for health. Internal Structure is simply the health under your Armor on any given section of your mech, and is generally half of its maximum Armor.

Engines - These come in several types. Inner Sphere Standard, Inner Sphere XL (eXtra Light), and Clan XL, which cannot be swapped out or upgraded. Inner Sphere engines can be swapped out and/or upgraded/downgraded. Inner Sphere STanDard engines (STD for short, go ahead, laugh, get it out of your system) are THE tankiest engines in the game, as the enemy must destroy your Center Torso to blow up your engine. They weigh the most and have the lowest speed to weight ratio. Inner Sphere XL (eXtra Light) engines are the most fragile engines of the bunch, and are mostly used in lighter mechs that are strapped for weight. They will explode and you will be out of the game if you lose even ONE of your torsoes - left, right, center, doesn't matter. XL engines are the lightest and provide the largest speed to weight ratio. Clan XL engines are the only thing current Clan mechs can have, and they are locked in place on each Clan mech. Fret not! Clan XL engines are very fair. A Clan XL engine will survive having a Side Torso be destroyed. You must destroy each Side Torso to kill a Clan XL engine. The bigger engine rating, the faster you go! Inner Sphere now also has Light Fusion Engines, or LFE, which work as a clan XL engine does but weighs more, and more still than an IS XL engine.

All engines, however, will always explode upon Center Torso destruction. Aim for theirs and protect yours!

Ammunition - The stuff your guns shoot. You'll see them when loading out your mech. They come in half-ton and full ton versions. ALL unused Ammunition can explode when struck by damage, if that particular place on your mech has no Armor left to protect it - dealing huge damage to you.

Heatsinks - These keep your mech cool. Any engine rated atleast 250 will have 10 internal heatsinks, and you won't have to equip any extras to run your robot! More never hurts though, as they increase the rate at which your robot dissipates the heat generated by your weapons, allowing you to fight longer! These come in standard and Double varities. Currently, there is no reason to not upgrade all your mechs to use double heatsinks, as they provide almost double the heat dissipation as the normal version, at the same 1 ton cost.

C.A.S.E. - This thing here weighs half a ton on it's own, comes equipped for free on every piece of a Clan mech, and can be equipped on any Inner Sphere mech. The C.A.S.E. protects you from Ammunition explosion! If you run out of Armor on a place on your mech which has unused Ammunition inside it, it can explode, dealing damage to you. With C.A.S.E. installed there, the damage stops at the destroyed component, and will not kill you!

Note: This does not apply to Ammunition equipped in your Center Torso (never do that to begin with) as it still blows up the component the C.A.S.E. is equipped onto, the damage just doesnt hurt the rest of your robot... but it no longer has an engine to run, remember? It also has no effect on an Inner Sphere XL engine, as a single side torso being destroyed will kill you.

E.C.M. - Electronic Counter-Measures. Only certain, designated mechs can equip this piece of equipment. The E.C.M, protects you from Long-Range radar detection, and an enemy cannot target you at range, keeping you safe from Missile fire! It's also great for scouting and sniping, as the enemy must physically see you with their own eyes to know where you are! The E.C.M can be countered by another E.C.M within 90 meters of an opposing E.C.M sysem, PPC fire, and B.A.P.

Jump Jets - Like E.C.M., Jump Jets can only be equipped on special mechs that can hold them. They range in weight from a meager half a ton to several tons, depending on the size of your mech. These let your mech jump into the air! The more you have, the higher you jump and the faster you ascend. Beware, you will take falling damage if you fly too high, be sure to save some fuel to slow your return to the ground. Your Jump Jet fuel will refill after a few moments on solid ground. Great for added mobility!

B.A.P. - Beagle Active Probe. Hastens your Targetted Information Gathering, allowing you to get info on your currently targetted mech, which lets your see your enemies weapons, armor, health and position. Also counters E.C.M, allowing you to target that pesky scout. ALSO lets you detect powered down mechs hiding from you within 120 meters!

A.M.S - Anti-Missile System. Exactly what the name implies. Its an automated system, that Anti's enemy missiles. Shoots em right out of the air as they fire at anything, including you and your teammates! Consumes Ammunition as it fires at incoming missiles within roughly 200 meters.

L. A. M. S. - Laser Anti Missle System. Works just like the normal ams, but does not consume ammunition, instead it generates heat as it is fired. Re-binding the AMS toggle key should be your friend when using this, as you will overheat if left alone under heavy fire.

Command Console - A special piece of equipment, providing additional bonuses similar to the B.A.P, minus the E.C.M countering. Increases the range you can target an enemy mech.

Targetting Computer - A piece of equipment that comes in several shapes and sizes and available to both sides, these trade spare tonnage and space to upgrade your weapons by increasing zoom levels, beam ranges and projectile velocities.

Lesson 5 - UPGRADES! Pimp my ride, MechWarrior Edition.


Ferro-Fiberous Armor - Decreases the weight of your Armor without lowering its values, freeing up additional tonnage on your mech. Upgrading your mech with this also takes up 14 internal slots, lowering the amount of stuff you can put into your mech. This upgrade is mostly for lighter mechs needing that extra ton for a better engine!

Light Ferro-Fiberous Armor - Same as Ferro-Fiberous Armor, but it costs half as many spaces and saves half as much weight. Good for squeezing out that last half of tonnage in a mech.

Endo-Steel Structure - Decreases the weight of your internal structure, freeing up tonnage on your mech. Functions similarly to the Ferro-Fiberous Armor upgrade, it takes up 14 slots inside your mech, reducing the amount of space for stuff, but providing almost double the weight bonus! Take this upgrade before the Ferro-Fiberous!

Double Heatsinks - This upgrade changes all your heatsinks on your mech, in your engine and any you equip from normal Single heatsinks, to double heatsinks. Single heatsinks, at the time of this writing, are largely useless. There is currently no benefit to running anything but double heatsinks, as double heatsinks weigh the same as single heatsinks, but provide more heat dissipation. Double heatsinks do require 3 free internal slots to equip per heatsink, however, so plan ahead!

Artemis Targetting System - Speeds up target lock speed, strength, target retention after your target gets to cover, and lowers how far apart your missiles fly! Simply a must for anything using Missile based weapons, but provides no bonuses for any other weapon system.

Stealth Armor - This Armor upgrade saves no weight, and instead gives you the ability to toggle Stealth Armor on and off. Stealth Armor prevents you from dissipating heat while active, but in return will render you completely invisible to all sensors. Only equippable on ECM capable mechs

Special Lesson - Heat.

All weapons generate heat, ranging from 0.1 to 15.00 points of heat when fired. Each mech has it's own Heat Limit, with lighter mechs having a lower limit, and heavier mechs having a higher limit. Once you reach the limit, your mech begins to take heat damage, and it's safety protocols automatically shut down your mech to avoid destruction. You may override the safety shutdown and you can keep fighting, but if you stay over the limit for even a moment your mech will take damage, it may even outright explode!


Ghost Heat is the name given to the in-game restriction that happens when you fire too many of the same type of weapon. Ghost Heat is the same as heat, just multiplied several times when you fire too many weapons in the same classification, resulting in much faster overheating. Your MechLab will warn you when you have too many of the same weapons equipped!


Heatsinks are the way your mech dissipates the heat, lowering your heat levels! The more the better, but don't overdo it, you still need space and weight for weapons! Your mech also requires ATLEAST 10 heatsinks to function. Any less and you simply cannot use that mech in battle.

Special Lesson - Weight classes.

Each mech fits neatly into a specific weight class, and there are four classes.

Light 0-35 tons
Medium 40-55 tons
Heavy 60-75 tons
Assault 80-100 tons

Lights are the fastest, have the least amount of armor and firepower and are best for scouting or ambushing. Most of them use XL engines and therefore are very hard to pilot!

Mediums have slightly more armor than a light, have much higher firepower potential, and move at a moderate speed and are best for attacking the big guys who are distracted! A great starting class for new players.

Heavy mechs have much more armor, much more firepower, but start to feel sluggish compared to the smaller mechs. These are the prizefighters, the damage dealers on the front lines fighting beside...

Assault class mechs. The most heavily armored, biggest gunned, slowest things in the MechWarrior universe. These things are slow, but if you catch one looking at you, you better hope you have friends. Least new player friendly starting point.

Special Lesson - Skill Tree.

At the end of each match, you might notice you got some experience. For what you ask? Lots of things!

You get two kinds of experience, Mech experience and General experience (also known as GXP).

Mech Experience is only on and usable on that mech you just played in.
General Experience is for your entire account!

Both are used in your Skills tab, and are very important.

Mech experience should mainly be used to flesh out your skill tree for the chassis of your choice.

However, General Experience can be used to skill up any mech you have, but is much slower to obtain, use it wisely.

At the skill tab, you may trade experience points and cbills for Skill Points, which are used to unlock skill nodes for that specific mech.

Clan - The "badguys" in the MechWarrior Lore-verse. They have special, stronger mechs and yes, are supposed to be "OP".

Inner Sphere - The conglomeration of various planets and factions, mostly unified, in the Mechwarrior Lore-verse. They use more toned down, "weaker" weapons and mechs.

XL - eXtra Light engines. These are the easiest engines to destroy, but offer the highest speed to weight ratio. Weighs 50% of a standard engine.

LFE - Light Fusion Engine. The middle ground engine for Inner Sphere, weighing 75% of a standard engine and taking 2 slots in each side torso of the mech.

STD - STanDard engine. The basic engine, also the toughest. As of this writing, only Inner Sphere mechs can use STD engines.

TrueDubs - "Real" double heatsinks, the ones inside your mechs engine itself. These are more effective than heatsinks you can equip. Engines rated 250 and above have all 10 of them, any engine under 250 is slightly handicapped, as they have a dwindling number of internal heatsinks the lower your engine rating.

"Meta" - You can look up the actual definition, but here it generally is used as slang for "the best possible, try hard loadout/mech"

Seismic - Seismic Sensor. A module anyone can get, and is very helpful. It detects incoming mechs without even needing a line of sight on them! If a teammate called out "seismic at [XXX coordinates] that means they're picking up something on their radar, watch out!

CW - Community Warfare. A bigger, more involved version of normal play. Generally meant for units and competitive players to play together. Queues are longer, matches are longer, and it takes a full set of mechs to play. Not for noobs, avoid for now.

FW - Faction Warfare. See CW entry above.

Unit - The Lore-friendly name for a guild, or player group. Generally you will only see these guys in CW, or when you've joined a Unit yourself.

Poptart - The act of using Jumpjets to fly into the air, and quickly deal some damage to an enemy mech, used to attempt to avoid fire by limiting your time exposed to a target.

Mechbays - Where you store your mechs you've bought. You start the game with a few, but you need to purchase more with MC or acquire them from events.

MC - Mechwarrior Credits. The in-game real money currency, used to buy cosmetic changes to your mechs like paintjobs and frills, new mechs if you dont want to spend c-bills and special real money only varients of mechs.

C-bill - The primary in-game currency, used to buy most everything in the game.

Hero mechs - The first set of real money mechs, these come with a small c-bill earning boost and a cool paintjob, and maybe a special set of hardpoints.

Champion mechs - The second set of real money mechs, like the hero mechs, without the nifty paintjob.

Hardpoint - The place on a mech where your weapon/weapons are!

Whale - A slow, fat Assault class mech.

Cored/Open/Stripped - Used interchangeably, meaning a part of a mech is stripped of armor and/or the mech is near dead. If someone tells you an enemy is Cored, it generally means their Center Torso is weak!

Alpha - The act of firing all of your weapons at once.

Ghost Heat - An in-game system of limiting how many of a certain type of weapon you can fire at one time!

Squirrel - A Light mech, generally a harrasser mech built to distract and confuse enemies.

Squirrel Chasing - The act of chasing down a Light mech, or squirrel. Not advised under normal circumstances, as they're probably leading you into an ambush, or distracting you from helping your teammates.

Lance - A group of four mechs.

Death-Ball - A common tactic involving one team grouping tightly together and never straying far apart.

Brawling - Close range fighting.

Poking/Hill Humping - Another tactic, involving quickly peeking, or poking, our of cover, firing off a shot and quickly returning to cover. Generally not advised in anything but the fastest mechs.

Twist/Twisting - The act of turning away from incoming enemy fire to protect your valuable components and spreading damage.

NGNG - No Guts, No Galaxy. A very big part of the MechWarrior Community! Check out their website, they have tons of information for new players, events, news and more.

PGI - Pirahna Games inc. The people who brought you our favorite robot game!

http://mwomercs.com/

The official website of MechWarrior Online. There you can find the forums and plenty of other guides, and even links to the NGNG side of things!




http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/

Your go-to tool for when you want to really learn more about your mechs. Try out different loadouts, see what each mech is capable of and see what other players are using!

No, this game is NOT pay2win. It's actually one of the MOST skill-based F2P games on the market, even if its pricing is a bit crazy. You can get everything you need to play the game just by playing the game. Money only gives you purely cosmetic items like paintjobs and warhorns and the like. Infact, some of the best mechs in the game are dirt cheap and c-bill varients.

Don't buy any of the performance packs, get a Mastery pack first if you must, as they provide the best starting bonuses as of this writing.

If you buy anything, I first suggest getting premium time, as it doubles all your earnings, and a couple of extra mechbays.

Use the events to your advantage! PGI normally has weekly events giving out MC, cbills, mechbays, sometimes entire mechs just for playing!

For your first few matches, don't ragequit as you die, stick around and observe your remaining teammates, see what they do, watch how they twist and see what they aim at. This will also help you familiarize yourself with the map layouts, which is paramount in this game!

Try to not block a teammate, Assaults are not your Tank, and friendly-fire is a thing.

Check out the Lore! MechWarrior Online is based off of the BattleTech universe! It has over 30 years of books, lore, and games. You might be confused at some of the in-game names, events and factions. But that's totally up to you, you need not any knowledge of the Lore to enjoy robots.

Have patience, you'll be overwhelmed at first but after a while, you won't even have to think about anything other than "ima go shoot that guys robot".

But most importantly I hope you enjoy the game as much as the rest of us, Mechwarriors!

See you on the battlefield.

End Transmission.