Draft:Your first weapon

Omega 0.90.4

Your first weapon in Omega is often a guild benefit. Before spending your starting money at Julie's, decide whether you want the Legion's cash and armor, the Order's horse and enchanted spear, or the Arena's extra combat maneuver. These three memberships exclude one another for a new character. A character pursuing a different career can simply buy a weapon. For the surrounding shops, recovery services and religious choices, see Rampart.

Choose the package before the purchase

Route	What a new applicant needs	What you receive immediately	Why choose it?
Legion of Destiny	Strength 10, Constitution 12; neither Arena nor Order membership; visit during the day	Short sword, soft leather armor, 500 Au, +1 Strength and Constitution	An equipped start with money left for supplies or an upgrade. You do not need to spend the induction money on a replacement sword immediately.
Order of Paladins	Positive alignment; neither Legion nor Arena membership	Fully identified, blessed +1 spear and a horse, already mounted	Strong immediate melee bonuses and a place to return for healing and food. This is a commitment to a lawful career, not just a free spear.
Rampart Coliseum: register with r	Strength 13, Agility 12; neither Legion nor Order membership	Club, large round shield, 5,000 Au of Gym credit, one additional combat maneuver	The extra maneuver remains useful after you replace the weapon. Gym credit is not spending money. Registration does not require entering a fight.

A new character starts neutral. For the Order route, visit the Rampart Orphanage and Hospice for the Needy and donate 1 Au: from neutral, this is enough to satisfy the Order's entry requirement. Later advancement needs more Law, and returning with nonpositive alignment gets a member expelled. The first visit gives a spear and horse, not a suit of armor. Return visits by an eligible member restore health and food and cure poison and disease, but do not remove equipment curses.

In Rampart, M followed by ? lists known establishments; type a name and press Return to travel there. The relevant menu names are mercenary guild, order of paladins, arena, hospice and armorer. Julie's is among the shops whose position varies between games. If armorer is not listed, explore the city and read shop signs; reading its sign adds it to the travel list. Travel takes game time, and nearby hostile monsters prevent this shortcut.

Buying without a guild weapon

Julie's sells ordinary weapons fully identified, with no enchantment or curse. Choose w at the shop. It opens from 07:00 to 20:59, except for the whole noon hour. Its selection is fixed: an expensive weapon need not be found in a deep dungeon before you can buy it.

Weapon	Julie's price	Hit bonus	Damage rating	Usual attack	Weight
Dagger	10 Au	+12	6	Thrust	10
Club	10 Au	+10	6	Strike	30
Short sword	80 Au	+11	8	Cut	25
Epee	100 Au	+15	6	Thrust	15
Spear	100 Au	+10	10	Thrust	50
Mace	100 Au	+8	12	Strike	50

These are weapon contributions, not hit percentages or guaranteed damage per blow. Your attributes and chosen maneuver matter; see Melee attacks. All six weapons above use one hand.

Short of cash: a 10 Au dagger is a useful purchase without committing to a martial guild. It is light and accurate. A gifted club costs nothing, so an Arena trainee need not replace it just to own a more impressive weapon. Save some money for food and armor; rolled characters do not all begin with the same purse.

High Dexterity: a thrust adds a Dexterity bonus on top of your ordinary accuracy. The epee offers three more hit points than the dagger at the same damage rating. The spear instead offers four more damage points than the dagger but two fewer hit points. Choose accuracy when you are struggling to connect; extra accuracy stops helping once an attack reaches its hit ceiling.

High Strength: cuts and strikes add extra Strength damage, so a short sword or mace is worth considering when you already hit reliably. There is an unusual cheaper option: the starting attack sequence is a cut, and equipping a dagger leaves that cut in place. It still receives the extra Strength damage. With equal enchantment, this lets the dagger match a club's damage with two more hit points and less weight. Once you explicitly choose the dagger's normal attack in F, it becomes a thrust instead. That can be better for Dexterity, but is not an automatic improvement for Strength.

Joining the Order: try the issued spear before shopping. Its +1 enchantment adds one hit point and one damage point; being mounted adds another +10 to both. The mounted bonus works with other weapons too. A purchased spear does not reproduce this package, and dismounting removes the horse's contribution.

Set up the first fight

Use i to manage equipment. Your weapon must be in Weapon hand and in use; an item in the pack or merely carried in the other hand is not wielded. A two-handed weapon needs both Weapon hand and Ready hand free for it, but a shield uses its own slot and can still provide defense.

For a straightforward attack-and-defense sequence, press F, then a c b c Return: attack Center, defend Center. The attack becomes a thrust, cut or strike according to the weapon currently held. Center is a starting choice, not universal protection: high and low attacks can get around it. Change your choices when the opponent calls for it.

Do not use F's ! shortcut to build this sequence in 0.90.4. Although the menu displays an alternating attack and defense, saving it truncates the sequence. With a new character's two maneuvers, only the attack survives. Enter the actions explicitly. With three maneuvers after Arena registration, a c b c a c Return adds a second attack while retaining a Center defense. The new maneuver is not automatically added to an old sequence.

Revisit F when changing weapon styles: saved cuts, thrusts and other actions persist across weapon changes. A lunge uses two maneuvers and works with these melee weapons, not only thrusting ones. At two maneuvers it leaves no room for a block; its accuracy comes at a real defensive cost.

Do not wield an unidentified dungeon find merely to compare it with your reliable weapon. A cursed weapon can become stuck when put into use, and learning its curse afterward does not free it. Keep the shop or guild weapon until the replacement's condition is known; curse removal can be more trouble than the upgrade is worth.

An older player's advice

Rick Garner Sanders's 1995 Omega FAQ recommends joining a guild before buying equipment and suggests the paladins for undecided beginners. The free equipment and return services explain that advice, but the FAQ itself cautions that curse removal belongs to older versions. In 0.90.4, a lawful return to the Order is still a useful recovery stop, not an answer to a stuck weapon.