Congratulations on being part of the beta phase of Herb & Fable! These opportunities only come around once generally and last for a limited time. To mark your early adoption you can grab the special Herb & Fable beta badge, which is only available for early adopters like you and may at times lead to advantages in game play and special prizes. Once you’ve created your Herb & Fable account you’ll be able to apply the beta badge to your account by rezzing it (or wearing it) and clicking it. You won’t be able to apply it until you’ve created your account so let’s gets started!
In your beta pack there is a load of Herb & Fable essential resources, ingredients and equipment. We’ve designed the beta pack to give you a really comprehensive initial experience of Herb & Fable to get your started.
First up we need to get you registered – without being registered you can’t play.
- Add the HUD “Herb & Fable : Welcome Pack – add me to unpack” – it will unpack some copyable essential Herb & Fable elements to your inventory.
- In the folder find and add the HnF meter – choose a gender.
- Add the HnF HUD (beta) V.01
- Click on the HUD and it will open.
- Click on the far left button that says “create account/change email”
- Write your email in the box that appears and click submit.
- Read the text in local chat that contains a link to the password reset page of the website – go there and put in the email address you used and you will be sent a link to set your password. Do check your spam folder (it sometimes gets thrown there depending on your email provider) and allow a few minutes for the email to arrive.
- When your email arrives. Follow the instructions to create/reset your password and then you’ll be able to login to the Herb & Fable website.
- Your account is created! Congratulations – you can now play Herb & Fable!
Take a look around the Home area of the Herb & Fable website – you’ll see 4 tabbed areas where you badges and special XP will show for the four different pathways (Herbology, Witchcraft, Connection and Nature). You can change your name on your profile page by using the little cog icon and choosing “Account”. You can also change your picture on your profile.
You’ll also see your player stats on the right including player role, class, faction (where applicable – some of these things will become more relevant as the game develops). Your Fleurin F$ balance (in-game currency), and your current attribute levels.
Let’s get that beta badge registered for you!
- Ensure you are wearing your meter
- Find the badge in your beta pack – rezz it and click it.
- You should now see the badge on the website in your HnF home area.
Now you can turn your attention to having a go at some actual gameplay – some things you’ll find you learn as you go along but to get you started here are some pointers:
Essential resources
HnF Meter
You’ve already found your meter. You must be wearing your meter during game play or your attributes won’t be healed/damaged and your special XP may not be registered. You can use the HUD to go “Out of Character” (OOC) – when you are OOC you will only earn XP once and you won’t be able to heal/damage your attributes.
You can see the attributes on your meter – these are Prana, Power, Emotional well-being, Spirituality, Vitality, Wellness and Happiness. When levels become low they will affect other attributes. When your Prana reaches zero you will become unconscious and will need to heal before you can continue gameplay.
You can also see:
Your chosen gender (which you can change whenever you want). Traditionally, this has been about which sound to assign to a person when they are injured etc. but I recognise that it is about much more than that for many people and thus have included a non-binary option*;
Your role (which can’t be changed by you but may change over time or by completing certain levels);
Your class – which you can choose yourself and change as often as you like. Choose something that resonates with you. At this stage it has no relevance to gameplay….but may in the future.
You can also choose to input a label – pretty much anything you like that is between 1-50 characters – use this to convey something about you / your character.
HnF HUD
Some of the things mentioned above that show on your meter can be changed using the HnF HUD. Most are pretty self explanatory. One worth mentioning is that you can change your email address (and thus your login username) from the HUD. Please ensure that you use a legitimate email address that you have access to – you won’t receive your password if you can’t access the email inbox.
HnF Pouch
This is worn as a HUD and can be used to see what ingredients you have in your pouch and to share ingredients with other players. You do not need to be wearing your pouch to collect, harvest or access ingredients for recipes.
HnF Wallet
This is worn as a HUD and can be used to see your Fleurin F$ balance and to give F$ to other players.
HnF User Mailbox
This is a useful tool that can be used to deliver SOME items that were still processing when you logged off or crashed.
**IMPORTANT – this will NOT work for any processor that you are wearing – if you are wearing a processor such as a Mortar or Mixing Bowl or Old Stick and you log off – the processor is not longer in-world to continue processing. It will fail. It’s sad but it is what it is – you will not receive you item and will need to start again. It should be noted that you can, in theory, rezz the processors that are normally worn if you are worried about crashing or you plan to log out. You will not enjoy the animations of the processors in this case and you may experience some animation script errors, though these won’t affect the processing.
If you are using a rezzed processor like an oven, juicer, or dryer, or one of the planting beds – and you log off – the processor will continue in-world without you to its conclusion and the delivery will be stored as pending. When you log back in after the processor has finished you can touch the Mail box to initiate delivery. You can only rezz one mail box.
Processors
Processors include things like ovens, kettles, juicers, etc. and these process recipes and/or complete activities. There are processors available from Herb & Fable directly or from 3rd party creators. There are different types of processor, some of which are included in your beta pack.
Standard Processors: You have a number of beta pack standard processors in your beta pack – beta pack standard processors can each take a maximum of 5 recipes and will then be full. You can keep your full processors and use them for the recipes they contain (or you might decide to give away or sell them to other players). To add more recipes you’ll need another standard processor. If you have the ingredients for a specific recipe that can be made in a standard processor – simply add the recipe to a processor of your choice. If you’re not sure of what recipes are available or how to spell them – take a look at the recipe list on the website. When you find recipe cards in-world they should also give you the details you require.
In your beta pack you’ll see that you have a number of beta pack standard processors including a Primitive Oven, an Old Kettle, a Juicer, a Mixing Bowl (and spoon), a Mortar (and pestle) and a Drying Rack. Whilst technically you could use any of them for many recipes – using one that is ingredient appropriate will give you a better experience. e.g. using a pestle & mortar to grind something, using a mixing bowl to mix something, using a kettle to boil something.
Special Processors: These processors have recipes assigned to them and the list of assigned recipes can grow over time as new recipes are added. Often they are used for activities like for example, carving a stick to make your first wand. You can see what recipes are assigned to them by clicking them. In the beta pack you’ll see you have a “random old stick” that is a special processor. Some special processors are single use (like the stick – if you carved a stick in real life you would no longer have the stick) and others are multi-use.
Unique Processors – These processors only make one recipe full stop but often can be reused for that recipe as long as you have the ingredients. For example, plant beds for growing plants. They may be copyable and can’t be sold or given away.
Ingredients
Ingredients are the items required to make something when using a processor. You can buy some ingredients (from H&F or 3rd party creators), where others are obtained through recipes themselves. You also have several ingredients included in your beta pack.
Ingredients are usually offered to you as mesh items that you’ll need to rezz or wear and click to transfer the ingredients into your (virtual) pouch – how much of an ingredient is contained in an item or pack varies. From your (virtual) pouch you can use them in recipes.
Ingredients are very specific in recipes. If you have some HnF_wheat_flour but the recipe calls for BOBS_wheat_flour, you would not be able to use the HnF_wheat_flour in that recipe.
Recipes
Recipes are how ingredients are combined to make something. There is a list of recipes on the website and the list will grow as more recipes are added. Some recipes are made by Herb & Fable and some are offered by 3rd party creators. Some recipes can be made using standard processors and others require special processors / unique processors. These are listed on the website as well as the length of time they take to make. You can also figure out the recipes by going to make an item
Produce
Produce is used to heal/damage your attributes. It might be food or something else like a cream or potion. At this stage most of your produce will come from recipes but you can also purchase single transferable scripts to make your own produce to use or sell to other players.
OK so what next? How do I get started doing stuff?
We’ve designed a tutorial “Starter Quest” to help familiarise you with some of the common elements of Herb & Fable. Some of you will enjoy the quest and for you we’ve added some extra seeking elements to add to the quest experience. We appreciate though that some of you won’t enjoy questing and so for you we’ve added a shortcut to get all the items from the beta pack without having to do the full quest – it’s more of a “walk-though” than just dumping everything on you at once.
In the beta pack you’ll gain access to everything you need to:
- Create your Herb & Fable account in-world and on the website (you’ve done that bit).
- Login to see your progress and member-only areas on the website.
- Make your first wand!
- Create a basic Altar
- Grow stinging nettles and use the leaves in a cake recipe whilst learning about how amazing stinging nettles are.
- Grow wheat and grind it into wheat flour to use in a recipe.
- Grow Cleavers and juice it for a replenishing and healthy juice drink, whilst learning about how cool cleavers are and why some call them “sticky willies”!!
- Using a mixing bowl to mix ingredients.
- Use a Pestle and Mortar to grind ingredients.
- Boil water for use in making teas!
- Make a nettle tea (did we mention how cool nettles are for you?)
- Make a lemon tea (great for cleansing)
- Dry some leaves for use in tea!
- Forage from another player
- Have another player forage from you
- Complete a ritual and make your first altar
- Buy something from another player and pay them in F$ (Fleurins)
- Sell something to another player and be paid in F$ (Fleurins)
- Give and receive ingredients to/from other players.
- Buy and sell the contents of your pouch to other players.
- Earn your first badges – INCLUDING a special beta player badge that may give you special prizes in the future
- Display your badges in-world with a special low LI display board.
You get all the equipment and resources you need to earn the following badges:
*Options for gender beyond binary will remain as long as we are allowed to do so. Should it become disallowed to offer such choices on an American platform we will look to remove gender from being an option for anyone at all.