After you create your character, you’ll login and see Meridian’s nostalgic-for-some ancient-for-others interface. It’s important you know where to look for information, so let me explain with this screenshot what you are seeing.



At the top of the window, you’ll see the room name you are in. This is important for knowing where you are in the game currently. It will also help when using maps to navigate.



Below the room name, is your game menu. Under Game, you’ll want to adjust your preferences and your Configuration soon. I’ll give more advice on that as we go.

Below the game menus are five clickable buttons and a colorful cube. These buttons are in the order as follows: Help, Drop, Get, Rest/Stand, Mail. I do not suggest using these buttons, as most of those commands are quicker used with hotkeys. The cube color lets you know your latency. Right click it for details.

Finally, moving down, we get to the view able screen, and the chat box below that. There is no second chat box available in Meridian, so getting used to noticing broadcasts, or tells while fighting is a skill you’ll quickly grasp.



On the upper right is your character’s vital information. Hitpoints, mana and vigor from top to bottom. Hitpoints in Meridian are gained by killing monsters with more hp than you have. You’ll get the message “You suddenly feel a little tougher.” when you have earned an hp. A “tougher” will also max your vigor, hp and mana.



Also in this area is your face. That beautiful mug you chose from the options available. Right clicking on your head shot will bring up your biography. A sad, empty tale now, but plenty of time to customize and add your own song lyrics, quips or favorite quotes as you play. Here you can also see your full body and visually what you have equipped.

Below your vitals, is the in-game map. You can zoom in or out on the map hitting the add or subtract buttons. When scaling mountains or making jumps, you want to zoom in as far as possible. In general game play, keep the map scaled out enough to see nearest entrances and exits. When you’re killable, you always want to see if an enemy may be approaching.



Below the map are tabs for your inventory, spells, skills and stats. Here is where all of your character information is displayed. If you chose starting skills and spells (hope you did!) when creating your character, you’ll see the percentages you ended up with here. You should also have a weapon and some shillings in your inventory.



Meridian’s inventory needs some work, yes. You cannot drag to organize it. To organize your inventory, you'll want to find an empty room, where you can DROP items, and pick them up in the order you prefer. Inventory management leads to successful PvP almost as often as quick reflexes. I know it seems clunky, but the game is worth looking past it.

Given Meridian 59 is a community-driven game, communication is essential for a player to learn quickly. You can communicate with other players through say, yell, broadcast, tell, group chats and guild chats. Here is how and why to use each channel:

SAY (‘F’ or type say with your message) - This will be displayed to anyone in the same room as you. Requires no mana.

TELL (‘T’ or type tell PlayerName message) - This is a private tell with the player you are sending a message to. Requires one mana per tell. If players have similar names, you can use quotes around their name to specify who you are sending a tell to. I.e. tell "mayhem" hello.

BROADCAST (‘B’ or type broadcast with message) - This is a message displayed to everyone currently logged into the server. Sending a broadcast currently requires half your mana.

YELL (‘Y’ or type yell message) - Yell works like say, where everyone in the room can hear you. Additionally, everyone in an adjacent screen can hear you as well. Useful if you’re in a town and trying to message everyone in adjacent shops. Requires no mana.

TELLGUILD (type tellguild message) - Message sent only to your guild members currently online. Requires no mana.

TELL GROUP (tell groupname message) - Message sent only to members you’ve added to a group. Requires one point of mana per group member logged on. To create a group, type GROUP. You can create a new group from this screen, add members if they are online, or type in their name if they are not online. Additionally, you can use groups to track if players are on line. Type "ad groupname" to see a list of players in a group. Their name will appear red if online. This is a necessary function when tracking random player killers or friends. More on this in another guide.

Meridian 59’s default controls are slightly less intuitive than current game titles. However, they are completely customizable should you find a specific key not to your liking. To help new players get adjusted, we will assume the default key configuration in this guide.

You will start in the Raza Inn, with a sign to explain to you the most fundamental basics of movement. Let’s expand on that information:

To MOVE, you want to use the W and S keys to go forward and back. A and D do not turn, but rather they strafe. This is useful when using mouse look.

To activate MOUSE LOOK press C. Instantly you’ll feel much more modern and at ease if you prefer a mouse look game. One caveat, the default mouse look is too sensitive here.

Mouse look sensitivity: Before you get too involved, I highly suggest adjusting your mouse look settings. Go to Game -> Configuration and click on the Mouse tab. My preferred settings are 6 for the X scale and 6 for the Y scale. Play around with a few adjustments and see what feels right for you. Note, it’s an old game, adjusting anything in the configuration settings requires a restart of the game to change your settings. Don’t give up yet, this game is worth it. Look beyond the clunky settings.



Next you need to know how to interact with the dark, torch lit room you stand in now. To LOOK or EXAMINE, you can either hit ‘L’ while in mouselook. This will either bring up a list of items you can examine, or if there is only one option, it will bring up the description of that item. Face the sign and press L to see this. If you are out of mouselook, you can right click on an item to examine it.

We’re getting there. Next, let’s get out of this room. One of the more immersive aspects of a game with dated graphics, are the atmospheric sounds and music. Meridian doesn’t disappoint here. Walk toward the blue double door. To OPEN a door, hit the spacebar.

Fresh air, birds chirping, lakes… lake-ing? Raza is a decent looking starter city. It’s basic enough to ease you into the game, and confusing enough to get you lost. Don’t worry, you have this guide to help.



Turn to your left, and walk toward the building on the West end of town. Enter the door on the right (north end) of the building. It has a sign with a hammer and anvil. Finally, shopping for gear.



You can BUY in two ways. Face Tomas, the shirtless blacksmith, and hit ctrl+B. Or you can press enter, then type buy and hit enter again. Either way will get you to the buy screen.



Buy a set of leather armor by clicking on it and clicking buy. If you chose slash as a skill, but not mace fighting, buy a long sword as well. Otherwise, stick to the mace you received on creation. Click your inventory tab at the bottom right of your screen and double click on your new leather armor, as well as your mace (or long sword.) They will highlight yellow when equipped. You should also see your mace eating up a good portion of your viewing screen now. You’re welcome.

Exit back through the shop door, continue around the lake and enter through the gates near you to the north. Beyond the gates you should see a wooden chest.



This chest is often filled with starter gear by game administrators or veterans making characters in Raza. Right click or EXAMINE with L to access the chest if you are close enough. Feel free to grab a set of gauntlets, scale, shield if any of them are available. Again, equip these in your inventory. If you upgrade your leather armor to chain or scale, you can redeposit your leather for the next person by dragging it out of your inventory and onto the chest in your view screen.



You’re ready to start fighting. Turn to the right (east) and enter the mausoleum doors.

You’ll make your way through the maze-like mausoleum until you see a mummy.



You can TARGET the mummy by clicking your next target button ‘]’. Get close enough and ATTACK with your weapon by holding E. There is no “auto attack” function in Meridian, as all attacks are independent of each other. Be sure to hold E to continue attacking. Monsters may strafe side to side as you fight them. You need to keep them in your view to continue attacking.

Mummy dead? Congrats! Your first kill. Now to loot. Mouselook down to the corpse and you will see the loot on the ground. Press G to GET your items. As with most menus, if there is only one item, you will pick it up without additional prompting. If there are multiple items, you’ll need to select each item and click get.



After a few kills, you may want to return to town to sell your loot and buy another weapon or armor.

Note: loot 10 entroot berries in the mausoleum and take them to Eric in the tavern in Raza. You can OFFER him the 10 entroot berries by pressing ctrl+O or typing offer. Select your entroot berries, select a quantity of 10 and accept. He will provide you with a knight shield for your reward.
If you don’t have 10 entroots yet, or aren’t interested in a shield, you can return to the blacksmith, or the item vendor near the blacksmith to OFFER your loot. A sell window will appear with their shillings offered to you for the loot. Click accept to receive your shillings.

Raza does not have a bank. I don’t suggest leaving until at least 25hp. That’s the cap in Raza, but you may want to stay longer.

When you get out into the world of Meridian 59, there are three banks available for you to use. In Jasper and Tos, banks are connected. You can DEPOSIT or WITHDRAW funds from either bank. To deposit, simply offer the banker your shillings. To withdraw, type withdraw (or click shift+w) near the banker with an amount of shillings specified. To check your BALANCE, type balance. The third bank is on the island of Ko’catan and is disconnected from the other two. Don’t worry about this yet, you’ll want some more hp and experience before heading to the island.

Along with banks, there are vaults in Meridian to hold your extra gear. The first vault you will encounter is in Barloque on the docks. You can use the same OFFER, WITHDRAW commands to deposit or withdraw items from your vault. Note: depositing items to your vault costs money based on the weight of the item. It does not, however, cost money to keep items held, or to withdraw them.

There are a couple more quick preference settings to change when you are just getting started.

Go to Game -> Preferences.

Here you will want to turn off your profanity filter. Meridian's filter will completely block a message that may contain profanity. While I do not know every word it is blocking, it often will block seemingly harmless messages. I avoid this. Unless you are playing with young children watching, I suggest turning it off.

You will also want to delete the system address of your internet explorer. This is what launches when you type help in game. There's nothing worse than fighting a troll, or in PvP and accidentally hitting help, and having a web browser attempt to load an old web site.

Finally, as you begin to get comfortable with interacting in Meridian, two more settings will increase your speed and convenience when entering commands.

HOTKEYS - Go to Action -> Hotkey aliases

You'll want to set up hotkeys for certain actions you perform consistently. These would be the spells you are currently working on improving, or spells you cast most often in PvP. You can use between F1 and F12 as native hotkeys in the game. Be sure to utilize them all and get comfortable with which spells line up to which keys. You wont want to hesitate in the middle of a guild war.



COMMAND ALIASES - Go to Action -> Command aliases

Command aliases are like shorthand commands you can create to quickly perform additional actions. Perhaps you have more spells than your F1-F12 can hold. In that case, you can create a command alias like this screen shot.



If I create 'light' as my word and "cast light" as my command, simply typing light will also type cast light. Buff spells, like magic shield, or resist poison can be set to words such as ms and rp. Surprisingly this is extremely convenient for an old client and I suggest adding many commands for your regular actions.

Another useful function of command aliases is the ~~ variable. You can add to your command additional text after typing the command. For example, if my word was 'trgt' and my command was 'tellguild target ~~!', I could type 'trgt Ransom' and my guildsend would be "Target Ransom!" This can be utilized in many other ways, through emotes, tells, etc.