This article is here to help people running a Windows XP based server improve the performance of their home server, without spending any money.

In this article we will discuss general hints and tips, configuring windows for best performance virtual memory and ensuring that your hardware is set up correctly.
Configuring Windows for Best Performance.

This is our typical Windows Desktop. Note the rich colours, shadowing and the generally nice appearence. Displaying these rich graphics take vital memory, and will slow our home server down.

The 1st thing we need to do its change how windows looks, with the end result being an increases in performance.

To do this we need to right click the My Computer icon, which can be found either on the desktop or in the Start Menu.

Once we have clicked Properties, we are greeted by the following panel.

Click the Advanced tab, then click the uppermost Settings button.

We are greeted by the following dialog.

The options we are shown are pretty straightforward. We know that we are

seeking performance, so lets go ahead and select Adjust for best performance, and hit apply.

Our screen will change, and windows will ask us to wait a moment. When it has finished working you will notice that all the pretty effects have turned into plain grey bars. This is good news as more system resources are now available for our server tasks.
Our desktop should now look a bit like the image below. Note the grey taskbar.

The next thing we need to do is get rid of the pretty desktop picture. Again this uses valuable system memory.

To do this right click anywhere on your desktop, and you should see something similar to.

Select the properties option, and be greeted by something like the following.

Go to the Desktop tab, and select the top option, “[None]“, then hit apply.

Notice how the background picture has gone. This agan frees up a bit more memory for our server to use for its tasks.
Virtual Memory.

Virtual Memory is exactly what you think it is! Windows used the hard disk of a computer to store data that it needs quick

access to, as if it were in the systems memory. By default windows sets the amount of virtual memory it thinks you need, however running an intensive server will soon fill up the default area.

We need to make our Virtual Memory bigger, the more partitions or hard drives you

have the better!

Again we need to go into our adanced settings like we did with the performance options above.

To do this we need to right click the My Computer icon, which can be found either on the desktop or in the Start Menu.

Once we have clicked Properties, we are greeted by the following panel.

Click the Advanced tab,� then click the uppermost Settings button.

This time however after clicking the upper most settings tab, we need to select the Advanced tab from the dialog.

We are not going to change the Processor Scheduling or Memory Useage. Instead click the Change button found in the Virtual Memory section.

As you can see above, all your hard disks are listed, and by default you will have your C drive hosting virtual memory, and it will be managed by windows.

Go through each hard disk in turn. For the C drive set an Initial Size of 1500 and a Maximum size of 2000. If you have multiple drives listed set these to 2000 for both values. Don’t forger to hit Set after each one though, or it wont remember the settings.

Once this is done, you need to hit OK, exit the dialogs and reboot your PC.

General Hints and Tips.

If you are running a server at home then try to use a dedicated server machine. This does not mean you need a state of the art system sat in a corner, it is better to use an older system that is only used as a server – than to use your new desktop PC that you are running other applications on.

Try to keep installed programs and utilites to a minimum. Every program you run takes up memory and cpu power. Do not install Microsoft Office, MSN or IM programs and other un-needed software on your server.

If you want to check what software is starting up with your PC, hit Start > Run > type in msconfig > hit enter.

On the dialog that shows up, select the Startup tab.

All the programs listed here are being executed (i.e stored into memory) when your computer starts. You can stop indivdual programs from starting here, however this can be very dangerous and stop your computer from booting correctly. Unless you feel 100% confident in removing something, then just use this as a guide to what programs to uninstall normally using Control Panels Add/Remove Programs option.

So there are some basics on setting up a regular PC for use as a server. Hopefully you will find inspiration from this guide, and keep an eye out for our other Server and Networking Articles.

Related posts:

1. Mac and windows users
2. Windows Addiction: You’re doing it wrong!
3. Protecting your Home Gameserver

This tutorial is meant for people that want to get involved with the joomla CMS. It is about inserting and editing new content.

Warning: To be able to access all the needed information found here, you have to have author access.

This is a typical user menu, that every author should be able to see. The most important links are:

• Submit Article: Where you can easilly submit your content.

• Edit Article: Where you can make corrections at your old articles.

Click on the Submit Article Link

This is the main page to submit your article, you can distinguish the next important options:

The small icon indicates if the article is already published or it is pending approval.

Clicking here next to the title, will allow you to edit your article.

Lets get into the reason we’re here. Learn how to create new content.

To do so, click on the drop down menu named “New”. This will allow you to select one Main category. If you’re not able to find the category you want to write for, examine the main page’s categories and subcategories in order to find the desired one that is proper for your article.

• If the category you’re about to write, does not exist, drop a message to Admin, together with a small summary of the topic and a suggested name for the category.

When the new page loads, Select the subcategory you want to write an article for and Write the desired title.

Now lets move on, to the next big Section, Editing Text.

This is the main panel that you will use to Create new content or edit.

Everything you type should be inside the Intro Text field and not the Main text.

Let us get familiar with the environment.

Bullets are used to create an unsorted list of content, for example to write five things needed to listen to music.

Numbering is used to create a sorted list of content. Mostly used when writing about things that need to be in order one after another.

Paste from Word Feature. A splendid feature enabling us to paste text from word, with ease.

Preview is one of the most useful features: It creates a pop-up window displaying the outcome of the text you have written so far and how a visitor of the web-page will view it.

Inserting images has never been easier with this feature

Hyper link insertion. Easy feature to help the Authors creating internal and external hyper links.

Smileys! Need to say more?

This is the last panel at the bottom of the screen. It is useful for publishers and those who correct what authors wrote. An author should only pay attention to the Save, Apply, Cancel Buttons.

• Save as you can imagine, saves the changes you have made and takes you back to the page you came from.
• Apply, saves the changes you have made up to now but lets you continue editing your text. This helps a lot in case of power failure.
• Cancel button discards all changes you have made up to now and lets you go back to when you came from. Ps. if you haven’t saved at least once, no article will be created.

Needless to mention that most of the settings of this panel are pre-set and you don’t have to alter anything

Those are the the basics of Submitting and article to the joomla CMS!

Thank you for your patience!

(Or what can go wrong)

(Real Case Study)

To begin with, this paper could be more like a practical guide than a theoretical one, describing what can go wrong, what are the differences from knowledge and experience and finally, help someone new to understand that security is not only about computers. It involves people, situations and numerous factors that we can’t fully control.

To begin with, this is a picture of the place of the “Crime” most of the computer used for the
server, are present.

The idea and early stages of development

It all began from an idea, passion for a game that I was playing for some time. Since the company that created the game announced that it will soon be p2p (Pay to play) I started searching for an alternate solution to play without having to pay for a game. I discovered the world of Private servers. This in a few words is the release of the official server files of the specific game (stolen of course) so that people can setup the server at their house and with some modifications to the Client files they would be able to make their home computers gateways for people to play that game.

At the beginning, I started playing at those servers and was glad I was able to enjoy my favourite game free of charge, but then, I started thinking “why not making my own server?” since many good private servers existed around but I didn’t fully like the settings of any of them. And then the whole story starts.

A good server needs money, and I understood that the moment I downloaded the server files. New ram was bought, and then some more, raising my ram to 1.5 Gigabytes total. 2 SATA hard drives were bought @ 1000 RPM to be able to make the game faster (Fast hard drives were needed for log making and processing and general speed of the game server it self.

Then came the web server part. Somehow people should be able to register in order to play the game, and be able to check their status, their ranking and be able to do more game required tasks from the web. As a web server, IIS was chosen as it was the best solution mentioned in the forums that period.

Finally, MSSQL personal edition 2000 was chosen for the database. No other solution could be chosen since the server had already a pre-made schema and many procedures that could not be transferred
to other databases easily.

So given all that (web server, database server, new machine and game server files) everything should be working correctly.

But it didn’t.

After spending 2 days trying to make a part working with everything else and after trying all different configurations, I came to the point of saying “I give up”. It was more than a relief as this whole server thing had become more like a headache than pleasure.

Days passed and finally the server I was playing to, closed. Well that’s when I said its time to work. And started reading about all the keywords that the “installation manual” had. Well I can admit that was the most creative week I have ever had in my computer career. DHCP, Dynamic ip, ODBC, System DSN, Port Forwarding, SQL Server operations and many more terms that until then seemed well not like “Greek to me” finally were part of my knowledge. As you can understand I finally did it, the server was online and waiting players to come and start playing. For the web page I used a ready-made template that I found from the forums. It had everything, from template to ranking. So I thought my days of worrying were over and my server was all ready. Well security is something I had never considered as an option, and as you can imagine I was a happy server owner without even a firewall. The happiness as you will soon see didn’t stay for too long.

Next step was promotion. That was an easy thing to accomplish since some servers closed that period and I had man people I know that played with me some time. So word of mouth was the best promoting solution for the time being. After 2 days I had more than 100 players ready to register and start playing.

That’s when the problems started.

Problems (what shouldn’t but did)

First of all I could never think that there are so many 13-15 years old that have so much free time to try to exploit everything on a server. And when I say everything, I mean it. Suddenly my system started malfunctioning. Accounts were deleted, some accounts went damn high (as those people were playing a year or so), some had administrative privileges, and system was keep crashing.

So suddenly the need of security came up.

• First step: Firewall

Only solution I could think at that time was to install a firewall. But as we already know, things in reality are much more different from theory. After installing it and changing settings like Stealth mode browsing and automatic detection of intruders and ip ban, I thought I was “stealth”. But again, this made “hacker’s” life more challenging. Not only successful hacking attempts stopped, but became more frequent and more catastrophic.

My next thought since firewall seemed securing my server but still having intrusions, was MSSQL. Since the database was the one that suffered the most from “hackers” that would be the answer to my problems. Reading help files and Microsoft forum posts, I closed all possible connections that could be made from the internet to SQL database, since it didn’t need any connection open to public because everything that needed it was local (both web server and game server). One step closest to a more
secure environment but still far from it. Successful attacks continued. The bad things were not the attacks because I could recover damn fast but the reputation of the server that was going down and the 5000 subscribed players that started to leave server.

After some more investigation it finally became obvious that either web server or database server were responsible for the attacks so dataserver was my problem. The actual problem was that people were able to inject to the dataserver packets that they had that stats and this in-game money for example and dataserver took it for granted as it was coming from the Game server it self. Using firewall again, I
closed every connection from the internet to dataserver too, as I did with database. Results were amazing, hacking attempts were stopped. And with pleasure I wiped the server once more (deleted all account and start registration from the beginning) and assured players that this was the last one.

Wondering what happened?

All seemed to be working correctly, more than 2000 people re-registered for the server. Until again one sunny day, all accounts were gone, people at forums were cursing heavens and chaos was dominant. Server closed for “maintenance”. Didn’t have much time and had many things to do. The bad thing was that I didn’t know exactly what needed to be done. Everything I could imagine I already have implemented it. After numerous hours of searching Google (Google and internet are two identical terms as it seems) I came up with two words: SQL Injection. It seemed that after closing all ports that didn’t need to be open and closing all SQL and dataserver ports, “hackers” started to exploit the site it self.

SQL Injection is an exploit where someone in a field of the web page, can insert whole queries (nested ones together with the normal ones that pass the fields themselves to the database) so it executes both. That way, if someone knew the structure of the database (that was known to all) he could with not much effort to modify delete and update everything at my database. Well this had to stop.

So, it was time for me to learn PHP since I heard it was better than ASP and more secure. Downloaded documentation and help files and started learning. Template was made fast and then the time for code came. Within a week, registration was ready. It might seem slow but if registration was ready and carefully written, all other pages could be done easily by changing the SQL statement. (Well not that easy but much easier than
writing them from scratch). Many people helped with the creation of the new page, mostly with ideas that were developed. After a month all the pages together with SQL Injection protection (filters that could understand if the user input was normal one or wanted to modify the contents of the database)

Wiped server again, promised people that that would be the last one (don’t know why but they always believed me even though I have made up to 12 wipes until now) and started server again.
Outcome was perfect! 99% of the known hacks for the server were not working, people could not change their level, could not get levels for free, could not wipe the whole character table. Even Administrators from other private servers, came in-game to ask me what I did to create that security.

Well, even with that security established, maintaining and controlling a server is not about computer security only. And many more issues needed to be solved.

Special Issue: Mother

Since computer security was at a very good level, it was time to start thinking about uptime. Since many servers could not compete to the security issues, they started advertising that they are 24/7. At least that’s what they advertised. Except security needed to accomplish that, many other factors helped in order to prevent me from that goal. First and more important was my mother (external factors). To understand that, you have to see my room. The most untidy thing someone can have. Full of things thrown here and there. So, my mother prefers to clean it herself than telling me to do it every single time she sees me. That created one big problem. Since my mother and technology haven’t met together, while cleaning the room she pressed keys that she shouldn’t, she put her hands where she shouldn’t (open computer cases), she removed cables while cleaning the floor and many more.

For that, there were 2 options. Either prevent access to it (witch is out of the question since I hate cockroaches) or train the personnel together with some arrangements that had to be made.

To start with, all computer cases were closed, towers with lock in front were bought so I can at least be sure that she would not be able to reboot the machine, cables were grouped together and lifted up from the floor and I trained her not to touch keyboard mouse and everything that it was green and had pins. So training those who are involved with the server even physically is a must if we want the results to be good.

Special Issue: Availability

As you can already understand, server was taking all my time when I was at home. But what could be done to ensure uptime when I was not at home? First of all a script had to be made so that when Windows start, all 8 servers needed for the Game server to operate will start. Then, changes were made to the start page so when someone tries to access the main page, it will check from what type of browser he/she tries to
access it so it redirects him to the right page. By that I made a very simple page that had the name of the server as title and the people connected at that type. After that, by enabling gprs, I was able to check when I was not at home, if server was up and running. If not, a call was made and my father (who had a key to open the front panel of the tower) rebooted it and it automatically started operating again. Someone has to be at the server place or at least near enough so he can do even simple functions in order for server to work again
after a crash or failure.

With that solution, I could go on summer vacations (thank god).

Special Issue: Acts of God

By that I mean all things that we can’t control and can happen any time, any place. As an example, power failures that started occurring frequently at autumn this year when Electricity Company faced many problems. Since I couldn’t change that, and power failures lasted not more than five minutes, ups was bought to ensure a better uptime and a much better protection of server’s hardware.

Special Issue: Script Kiddies

After all that were done, what was better to do than eliminating script kiddies? Some people because they wanted to get many levels in no time, used an application that was running on the background and when they hit something, that application sent the same message x times so it was like that player hit the monsters many times at the same time instead of one. That was creating a serious problem to server since one “Hit Hacker” used the same bandwidth with almost ten players did at the same time. As a result two to three hit hackers were enough to create lag to the whole server. And of course destroy server economy and balance.

To solve that, I downloaded that application and a packet sniffer-logger. Since the application multiplied hits, after numerous tests from other computers I understood what packets were sent from a “normal” player and what from hit hacker, so I made some “Rules” to the packet sniffer in order to be able to
find their ip, delete their character and ip-ban them.

With
fame, comes trouble

After all this reading and time spent, I can say that the server was the safest it can be. Don’t forget that nothing is “unbreakable”. For example, after all the changes, many people tried to “hack” it but not succeeded, so they made a post at a hack forum with title XXX Server is unbreakable. Results were: about ten
posts, yes nothing could be done any suggestions? And the 11^th post was the passwords of my Admin and the 3 game masters. I was informed very fast about that (public relations help a lot in security) and changed them, e-mailing the poster asking for what backdoor he used to enter. He helped.

After some time server become famous about his uptime, security and Events that my Game masters did with players, so many people came to play to my server. It was ranked 3rd private server worldwide for that game for some time. Trouble was that my DSL could only hold 60 people at the same time only so server was always full and started complaining.

Solution: Outsourcing

One of the players in my server worked at an internet cafe in Romania and was responsible about
it’s server and internet security, so after knowing him for some time, I offered him the opportunity to transfer some of Server’s workload to the internet cafe that had a much better internet connection. Since all the people at that internet cafe were playing at my server he accepted and not only that, but his boss paid me to do the installation. So still I had control of everything and could hold 250-300 players at the same time. But that created another problem. What would happen if the guy from there started to “distort” the server files that he had there for his in-game benefit? Answer was a page at the web server that copied the last backup before an incident and transferred that backup to my ftp so I can ip-ban him from using my database and continuing to server the users from my home. Hopefully that didn’t happen and i still can say he’s my favourite ****** (Censored) .

Server became full even with the better speed but as the title says, more trouble came. Many server owners (that were loosing subscribers) and many people that wanted better stats in-game, started to attack me with Distributed DOS attacks. At the beginning I was unable to do something since they were using proxy servers and many computers but tracing every time the source of the dos attacks I made a list from the most common ip’s that attacked and ip-banned them from firewall. That helped a lot since dos attacks were much “softer” and server could stand them.

Overall
Evaluation

Having a server that people other than you use, is a great responsibility. It has to be updated frequently; many new options and enhancements have to be added to keep the players-customers (depending on the situation) happy, and secure. The last part is also the most important and the most difficult. Because no-matter what product or service someone offers, no matter the price or the benefits from using it, having the web server let’s say hacked very frequently, will unfortunately lead to extinction. People have patience, but the more they pay for something the more professional they expect it to be and more secure.

The benefits from having a server are many, depending on what the server owner aims for. At least for me, server has helped me gain knowledge that otherwise I would never have heard of if I didn’t have this server. PHP, Database queries, database administration and web server administration, together with security are some of them. A server except from all that can bring money too. Sources of income can be many, from sales of a specific product or service through it or even if it’s free, targeted advertising can pay a lot of money. At least that’s what I preferred in my situation. I don’t like the idea of pay to play.

What I will never forget about all this experience, even when the server sometime closes, is the interactivity with the players and the different people I’ve met, and the debug state of many things that I have implemented. To explain my self, it was an awesome experience when I made the first draft of the new PHP page that from the 30.000 of the registered users, a great proportion when I announced the beta, went immediately and started testing the web page about bugs so that they can inform me about them at forum. 1000 are better than one after all. I am sure that this dropped the time that the page needed for debugging of every single problem a page can have to one fifth. Even if someone seeks profits through the creation of a server, knowledge gained and experience would pay much more in long-terms and make him more confident about what someone can accomplish and knowing what he/she can do.

Warning: No Hamsters Were Harmed for the Creation of This Article!

Related posts:

1. Setting up a Home Server With Windows XP
2. I’m going home!
3. One thing at a time…

It is common knowledge that Role Playing Games Attract people a lot more than any other type of games. Reasons? Call it thirst for power, thirst for domination call it whatever you want but RPG gaming is here to stay. People play them, meet new people and have fun. The problem is that not many people have the required time to devote into games like that. That’s what web based RPGs come to solve.

Most of them are fast paced and very fun to play, without having to spend many hours per day.

One of them is the Fallen Sword RPG.

Fallen sword is a web based rpg and that’s here to stay. Has everything an rpg should have and nothing to be jealous from the other ones.

The story goes on like this:

You’re a warrior and get ported to the mythical world of fallen sword. Your goal is to get levels from acquiring experience through killing monsters and doing quests and obtain new armors and weapons to make you the ultimate warrior that ever existed in the realm.

Lets see how we can accomplish this through out tips that came out of my personal experience enjoying the game.

First of all you need to register and if you haven’t done already, click the link below:

Patience

If you’re thinking that you will sign up for the game and immediately start with everything you ever dreamed (100 level character, awesome weapons) you shouldn’t go for an rpg game. Games like this make you develop your char with small and steady steps. Equip your self with patience and the idea that this game will accompany you through time.

Stamina

Stamina in this game can be viewed from the top menu and looks exactly like the image on the left. You gain stamina by time. Every 1 hour you obtain 50 stamina that you can use on killing monsters or other players. Stamina max is 500 at least at the start so make sure you play the game every 10 hours for some minutes in order not to waste points that can get you levels and new equipment.

By killing monsters you gain experience, money and equipment and it is essential to your character progress. After a while you’ll be able to roam through the world easily and find monsters to hunt.

By killing players you gain pvp Rating that you will need in the future and some money. My best advice would be to leave that for the moment.

Levels

Leveling your character is one of the most crucial aspects of the game. You can check your level progress bar by looking at the top of the game page that looks exactly like the image on the left. Here you can check how close you are to obtain another level so you can spend the level points and attributes to the skills you want to.

Gold

Gold is your wealth, you need gold to repair your broken items and to buy new ones. Make sure you transfer the maximum amount of gold you are allowed each day to the bank to save them from thieves. Gold can be attained from killing monsters, attacking players and selling your fares to the auction house.

FSP (Fallen Sword Points)

Fallen Sword Points are the most essential source of power into the game. Their uses are numerous but the most important ones are:

• Buying Armour, Weapon, Accessories from the auction house.
• Purchasing guild upgrades for your guild.
• Exchange them for money.
• Upgrade your equipments at the armoury.

First Things First!

Rule number 1!: Don’t use the Hell Forge and Crafting at first levels. Hell Forge is the place that takes one of your equipments and enhances it to make it better. At least for the first levels it is a complete waste of money since no matter how much better you make your level 1 dagger it won’t last long.

Rule number 2!: Don’t waste your stamina killing other players. Might seem funny and profitable but in the long run you will regret wasting your stamina on others while watching them reach high levels and get better sets and rewards.

FSP And Donations Explained.

Fallen sword points are easy to get and much easier to spend.

Since its your basic exchange for the game, think a lot about spending some points here and there.

So, lets check our options and see what’s worthy and what’s not.

• +25 Current Stamina: Never use that. No matter how appealing it might seem, its just a waste of FSP. To explain my self, let me do some calculations.

In one day, a player can get 50×24= 1200 Stamina. To get that 1200 stamina you should spend 48 FSP. So to lets say win a day you have to pay almost 10$. Is it worth it ? Nope! You’re here to stay, and not just to play a day. So don’t use that bonus, not worth it. And as a final notice, most bonuses when you use them, they stay for you forever. That’s one of the few that is expendable.

• +10 Maximum Stamina: That is a VERY useful upgrade for your character if you plan on playing for a long term. That’s because given the fact that your maximum stamina is 500 and you gain 50 stamina every hour, you have to spend your stamina every 10 hours max in order not to leave stamina get wasted. So if I were you I would donate some points for that according to the maximum amount of time i will be absent.

For example: Let’s say I sleep 10 hours and then i have to go to work without being able to spend my stamina in the morning. Lets give it 18 hours from the time i sleep till I am able to return home and spend my stamina. 18 hours is: 900 stamina and since I already have 500 max stamina as my repository, I have to donate to reach my max stamina to 900. So I need another 400 and given the fact that 2 FSP give +10 max stamina, I need 2×40=80 FSP. This is a very useful upgrade to your character and consider doing it slowly but from the start.

• +1% Experience towards next level: Complete crap at least for the first 50 or more levels! I don’t know if it has any worth at levels bigger than 70-80 but let’s get real, you can get 1% at starting levels sppending 1 stamina, not 2 FSP!

• +500 Gold: Another money waster! 500 gold is close to nothing since 1 FSP can be traded with a player for a lot more!

• +1 XP Gain (per hour): I wouldn’t use it even if they paid me to.

• +1 Gold Gain (per hour): No comments!

• +1 Stamina Gain (per hour): I wouldn’t use that one since each stamina at levels close to
  30 can give me 20 exp, so why spend 20 FSP for just a +1 to stamina
  every hour.

• +1 Bank Deposits per Day: Very useful after level 30+ when you keep in your pockets more than 30.000 gold. Since you can put into the bank or guild bank 25% of your gold I would invest in this bonus for an additional one or two times.

• +1 Inventory (Backpack) Slot: I can’t decide if that’s “a Must have one”. For me, if you have many Auction slots that would be ten times better. But its up to you if you want to have more backpack slots so you can change items according to the situation (PVP for example).

• +1 Max Allies: I would rather write them on a piece of paper than spending 5FSP for an additional one. Just keep there your closest friends and you’re done.

• +1 Max Enemies: Look above!

• +1 Max Auctions: Now, that’s a very useful one! Not at the starting levels but at 25+
  you’ll need to do some upgrades to it since two auctions at the same time
  is close to nothing.

• Protect XP: If this skill needed five FSP, I might consider it before starting a war with an enemy or my clan.But now that it costs 25 it’s not worth spending my points to “save” my exp at a current level and never make it drop below that.

• Reset Skill Points: Well that is an expensive thing to buy. Even if put everything wrong i would consider using it ONLY after level 70-80, before that it won’t play an important role. I will explain later on which skills are the most important for the starting levels so you won’t have to use that.

• +1 Max Secure Trades: Unless you are trading FSP and other valuable set items, this is not needed at all. Secure trade can be completed when both parties agree to it, so it can only take a matter of seconds.

• Refill All Bank Deposits: I’d rather pay 50 FSP to have +1 Bank Deposits per Day rather than 20 to refill my deposits just for a day.

• Bounty Tickets (100x): For the first levels in your game experience, this is not needed. Later on when you see a good bounty on someone, grab 100 tickets. They are cheap and you might make much more than you invested on them. Bounty tickets can also be used on placing a bounty for a person. So it’s cheap, use it at our own will.

That’s it ! Now you know where to invest and what you should leave as it is.

Skill Allocation

• WARNING: Now that I have your attention, I have to say: DON’T put skill points everywhere!!!! I see people with 5 skills at rage, 5 at find items, 5 at adept learner… That is completely wrong! Meaning, you will have to buff those skills to you… If you have lets say 5 points at adept learner, it will cost more to buff yourself for 10 stamina rather than use those 10 stamina on more monsters. Don’t take many skills. Concentrate on the ones you will reach to 100.

Next part is the skill allocation. Crucial too cause a small mistake can make you pay 100 FSP just because you didn’t think about it in the beginning!

My advice is: Keep you skill points (5 / Level) till you become level 25! Then you can put 100 to the Adept Learner so you can get 20% more experience per kill. This is a very crucial part if you want to level up fast and catchup your friends.

After adept learner you have many options. You can put points to find item skill that is crappy at normal situations but rocks on elite mobs and events that game masters do such as killing legendary monsters. Many have it but personally i think that when it comes to skills you have to have the skills you need and not ask about them all the time, just because buffing costs stamina to the caster of the buff.

After that or after adept, you can put points to Enchant Weapon or to Enchanted Armor. Both are a very good place to put your skill points since we all want to hit hard and level 80+ mobs hit hard also. It is a good thing to have those two skills.

About PVP (Player Versus Player) And bounties.

Killing other people is fun sometimes but has three MAJOR drawbacks.

• You Make many enemies
• One of your victims might put a bounty on you. (Will explain later)
• You loose valuable stamina that could be spent on monster hunting.

Let’s face it! Most of the people play this game to have the best set and kill others. That’s the ultimate goal! But until you get there, my advice would be to wear your serenity belt and move on!

If you attack someone, he has the right to put a bounty on you within 48 hours. This means that he will put a price on your head so other people will start hunting you. That will make you loose pvp rating and experience. So not only with pvp you stay behind others but sometimes a pissed enemy of yours might make you loose even a level by putting you on bounty.

If you are being attacked, check the player name and see if he has attacked you in the past. If not it might be because you are carrying a lot of money on you. What I usually do is to buy some items with money that can also be sold with FSP. So in that case i can make some FSP while I maintain my sanity!

A VERY good way to save money from thieves, is to coordinate with other guild members. By that, I mean the following:

Lets say we’re 5 people having 10k each…If we do it alone we’ll deposit 2.5k each and have 7.5k on us…If all give money to one person, then that person deposits and passes it to the next, it will go like this:

• 37500 by First person’s Deposit
• 28125 by the Second person’s Deposit
• 21093 by the Third Person’s Deposit
• 15820 by the fourth and
• 11865 by the last one.

So instead of having 7500*5=37500 we’ll have 11865 floating around. Cool huh ?:)

Guilds and how to contribute to them.

Want to become the ultimate guild member? Want your guild master to love you? Want to see your guild gain fast positions on the top 250 Guilds page? Here is what you have to do in order not only to benefit your guild but yourself too.

• Use your stamina. One of the most crucial and important things to do. Don’t waste it by killing people but kill monsters. You will level up, guild will level up and both become powerful to defend each other in case of a guild war. That’s when you pvp, not without a reason. Getting levels for the guild unlocks many new features with most important, being able to create new powerful structures. So, try not to let stamina go wasted, every 10 hours log in and spend your stamina on monsters so you won’t let stamina go 500/500 and just stack up there. In case you normally can’t be online every 10 hours, try to Upgrade getting the: +10 Maximum Stamina until you reach the desired max stamina.

• Use your Bank Deposit everyday, so you won’t get attacked and you will help guild build new structures. It is a good thing to ask before using the deposit in the guild chat so maybe a person can give you more money to donate because he already used his deposit.

• Donate FSP to the guild. If you see that guild master cares about the members and contributes a lot to the guild, try to donate, recruit some people or sign up for some offers and help him make the guild a better place to die for. FSP is the most crucial part of making a guild huge and powerful.

Guilds start with 8 Slots. So if your guild is at start please help your guild master to add more people by donating FSP (It costs 20 FSP to add one more person) and watch your guild grow day by day and become stronger.:)

• Don’t attack simple monsters with guild attacks. Guild attacks are meant for Elite or Legendary monsters that give quest items and Set items. Don’t spend other people’s stamina just for fun.

Where to level up.

It would be a shame if i just copy-paste a very good post that a member in the forums of the Fallen Sword did. So i just Copy-pasted the link for you to check it out and see what place is the best for your level.

Link

How to use the link ? Click on the area of your level on the post, then click the (see map) link and try to follow the oposite way to reach the place where you are. Then, follow it.

Tips And Tricks:

• When you are hunting monsters, try to look the link from the where to level up section in order for you to find a suitable area for hunting. The most important thing from an area is to give good experience from a monster together with the amount of stamina spent. When a monster needs more than 5 stamina ALL the time, leave it and go to an easier one.

• Every area has 3-4 different monsters. When you enter at a specific area, the hardest one would be too tough for you so better leave it alone. At the last level of that area, the easiest one would give very low experience (like 8 or something like that) so leave it alone again. That will help your experience gain a lot.

• If you level, always go in dead corners, there is small number of players
  there and usually many monsters. Avoid commonly used routes, there is one or no
  mobs there, and you then have to use stamina again for moving . Sometimes in a corner
  you can find eight monsters and when you kill some, use refresh and some more might appear, sometimes I kill 10 mobs on
  one spot, again, saving stamina for moving. (By PerunNS)

• Use attack and damage items mostly. At the same time don’t look down to your hit points. Try to have some but the most important thing is attack and damage. Equip items with those two stats and put your level up points there. Also Defence is important, armour is not because if a monster won’t hit you it won’t do any damage to you. Later on you will invest on armour too but not at starting levels. (1-40 or more) Attack and damage stats, save you a lot of stamina letting you kill monsters in very few swings.

• Don’t forget to repair very often. People underestimate repairing but when an item looses some durability, it’s stats get lower and that makes his character die easily from monsters he could kill very easy before. Don’t forget to repair very often when fighting. (Remark from Krypkill)

F.A.Q. (Frequently Asked Questions)

• How do I put money to the guild bank?

From the main guild screen, you can see the guild bank balance. There click on the manage button that is located a bit up and to the right, and on the next page you can do your deposit.

• How can I donate FSP to the guild?

From the main guild button category on the left of the screen, click the sub-category Upgrades. Then, on the new screen you can deposit FSP for guild use.

• I am completely lost and can’t escape this place! What shall I do?

Click on Character tab, then preferences and click Instant portal to Krul Island. You will spend 25 stamina but you will be able to travel back to where you want to go. It will teleport you back to the starting point when you started playing the game for the first time.

• How can I report a Character that violates game rules?

Visit: http://support.huntedcow.com/

In conclusion…

I hope it helped.

I hope you enjoyed reading it.

Keep in mind that what I wrote is not the only way to do it but a good way.

Have fun.

Ps. Nr.1) Remember to use the official game forums for more in-depth questions and answers: http://forum.fallensword.com/

Ps. Nr.2) http://www.fallenswordguide.com is the place to look for navigation help, set bonuses, monster drops etc. A very helpful guide.

Ps. Nr.3) If you want to make a new char after reading this guide please use my link so i can get some points too thank you very much.

Related posts:

1. How to get the girl (based on sucessful attempts)
2. Survival tracking guide
3. Pleasing women guide

Thinking about it, computers and humans have many things in common. It might not be easy to find many similarities but think about it… We have created them, shouldn’t they “work” like we do?

Nonsense? Maybe! Let us see…

Both use electrical signals.

The brain uses chemicals to transmit information; the computer uses electricity. Even though electrical signals travel at high speeds in the nervous system, they travel even faster through the wires in a computer.

Both transmit information.

A computer uses switches that are either on or off (“binary”). In a way, neurons in the brain are either on or off by either firing an action potential or not firing an action potential. However, neurons are more than just on or off because the “excitability” of a neuron is always changing. This is because a neuron is constantly getting information from other cells through synaptic contacts. Information travelling across a synapse does NOT always result in a action potential. Rather, this information alters the chance that an action potential will be produced by raising or lowering the threshold of the neuron.

Both have a memory that can grow.

Computer memory grows by adding computer chips. Memories in the brain grow by stronger synaptic connections.

Both can adapt and learn.

It is much easier and faster for the brain to learn new things. Yet, the computer can do many complex tasks at the same time (“multitasking”) that are difficult for the brain. For example, try counting backwards and multiplying 2 numbers at the same time. However, the brain also does some multitasking using the autonomic nervous system. For example, the brain controls breathing, heart rate and blood pressure at the same time it performs a mental task.

Both need energy.

Brain needs nutrients like oxygen and sugar for power; the computer needs electricity to keep working.

Both Need “Rest”

Humans need sleep to recover from a hard day’s work, computers need a reboot. Reboot takes much less but its also a form of rest for computer memory and chips. Just like human organism’s do.

Cell Membrane – Firewall

The cell membrane acts as a barrier separating the cell’s external and internal environments. Second, it acts as a filter allowing the entry of wanted elements while keeping out unwanted elements (Barrett et al., 1986). In comparison, network perimeter architectures consist of external routers, intrusion detection systems and firewalls that together define the organization’s “point of presence” demarking the internal network from the public Internet. Like cell membranes, firewalls also filter out unwanted data communications while permitting wanted data to enter. Furthermore, analogies concerning threats exist between firewalls and plasma membranes. Any transport channel that circumvents the plasma membrane endangers the cell (Friedman, 1986) just as an unauthorized modem or a faulty firewall logic rule can endanger an entire organizational network.

Viruses

Viruses cause disease when they enter cells and ‘hijack’ the cell’s own protein-making machinery, causing the cells to STOP production of normal cellular proteins, and START making viral proteins and copying viral DNA or RNA. Once the cell makes enough of the viral proteins and DNA, the cell even assembles these parts to make complete viruses in cells! At this point, when there are up to a few hundred mature viruses in the cell, the virus often bursts out of the cell, causing destruction of that cell, and an avenue of escape to spread to neighbouring cells. Some viruses (like the Herpes viruses) also have the ability to insert their DNA into the DNA of their host, and exist as a “latent” virus until environmental conditions are right for the virus to exit cells.

Memory – Programming

Human memory works with many similarities with programming. HTML is a computer programming language for the Internet. What it does is that when we store information we create a Hyperlink so when the user clicks on it, he/she is redirected to the information. Humans “work” the same way when they use to remember something using an experience (linking).

Well, it seems that if we think about it for a minute we can come up with many more similarities. Computers imitate many of our “functions” with their own special way, making them a good tool for us to have fun and work.

Dedicated to all Mothers and Fathers who Still are afraid of Computers!

Related posts:

1. Level one Human
2. Before there were computers…
3. Pocket computers: What’s next?

Requirements

• A strong grasp of HTML is reccomended before attempting to tackle PHP.

• A PHP enabled web server running PHP 4.x.x or higher on either a unix or Microsoft Windows platform.
• This is a basic article, however some knowledge of PHP is desired, such as what functions are, what variables are and the basics of the syntax in general.

The Basics

The very 1st thing we need to do is decide where the text file we are going to store our visitor count is going to be on the server. You can choose to place it anywhere you like, in the example we use the path c:\htdocs and the file is called counter.txt. This means we have a full path for the file that will store our visitor count of c:\htdocs\counter.txt.

Open this file up, type in the number ’0′ – without the quotes – save it and exit. We have now set our counter to 0, or zero. Our script is going to use this file as a reference to see how many people have visited our site and then increment it for every new visitor.

Our second decision is what are we going to call our file. The file is seperate from the pages you wish to monitor, and as discussed briefly in the Introduction we will cover how to include it in your other pages a bit later. For the purposes of the tutorial I have named our file visitorcount.php. You need to create this file, again, wherever you like, it does NOT have to be in a directory your webserver can access.

So by now we should have two files: counter.txt and visitorcount.php

The Code

The first thing we will do is define the name of the file that will record the number of visitors and reference this to a variable. This is the file counter.txt that we created earlier.

//define the file name and its path
$filename = “c:\\htdocs\\counter.txt”;
//note we escape the backslashes in the file system path
Then we need to open the file for reading so we can check the current value, and have this referenced to a variable. //open the file
$handle = fopen($filename, “rb”) or die (“Failed to open the file”);
//note we are using this on a windows system and
//thus use the “b” parameter as it is a Binary file system.
Next we need to read the current value in the file, so we can then add 1 to it to represent our latest visitor. //read the contents of the file, in our case it will be an integer
$data = fread($handle, filesize($filename)) or die (“Failed to read the file”);

//lets now add 1 to the number we read, therefore recording our new visitor
$data = $data + 1;
//note we take the variable $data and simply add one to it, reusing
//the previously defined variable for ease.
Then we close the file for now. fclose($handle);
//and close the file as we dont need it any more
The next part uses slightly different methods, the reason for this is just to show there are many ways to identical actions using PHP. It is time to write our new value to the file. We check that the file is writeable (i.e has the correct permissions set on the server). The code below is commented and speaks for itself.

//lets now write to our file.
//make sure the file exists and is writable first.
if (is_writable($filename)) {

//if it isnt then throw up an error and exit the script.
if (!$handle = fopen($filename, ‘wb’)) {
//note the useage of “wb” in fopen() ‘s mode parameter
//as we are Writing(w) to a binary file system(b).
echo “Failed to open the file”;
//this is the error message it will show if the file is not writeable
exit;
}

// If it is writeable lets write our new number to our opened file.
if (fwrite($handle, $data) === FALSE) {
echo “Failed to write to the file”; //error and exit if failed.
exit;
}

If all was succesful and we updated the file with the new value, we can then echo out the visitor number, or hit count. If you want to keep this data private just comment the line below out.
echo “Welcome visitor number $data”;
Then we close the file.
fclose($handle); //and close the file as we dont need it any more

} else {
This is the error we show if we can not access the file. echo “The file is not accessable.”; //error and exit if failed
exit();
}
Now we need a way to make this work on our website. To include this in any php page on your website simply include the page at the point you wish the counter to be displayed. You can format the number with HTML as normal.

<?php include_once(“visitorcount.php”);?>

And thats it. A very simple hit counter using php and a text file. The full interupted code is below.

<?php

//define the file name and its path
$filename = “c:\\htdocs\\counter.txt”;
//note we escape the backslashes in the file system path

//open the file
$handle = fopen($filename, “rb”) or die (“Failed to open the file”);
//note we are using this on a windows system and thus use the
//”b” parameter as it is a Binary file system.

//read the contents of the file, in our case it will be an integer
$data = fread($handle, filesize($filename)) or die (“Failed to read the file”);

//lets now add 1 to the number we read, therefore recording our new visitor
$data = $data + 1;
//note we take the variable $data and simply add one to it,
//reusing the previously defined variable for ease.

fclose($handle); //and close the file as we dont need it any more

//lets now write to our file.
//make sure the file exists and is writable first.
if (is_writable($filename)) {

//if it isnt then throw up an error and exit the script.
if (!$handle = fopen($filename, ‘wb’)) {
//note the useage of “wb” in fopen() ‘s mode parameter as
//we are Writing(w) to a binary file system(b).
echo “Failed to open the file”;
exit;
}

// Write our new number to our opened file.
if (fwrite($handle, $data) === FALSE) {
echo “Failed to write to the file”;
//error and exit if failed.
exit;
}

echo “Welcome visitor number $data”;

fclose($handle); //and close the file as we dont need it any more

} else {
echo “The file is not accessable.”; //error and exit if failed
exit();
}

?>

<?php
//THIS IS TO BE USED ON THE PAGE THAT YOU
//WANT THE COUNTER TO WORK ON – NOT AS PART OF THE MAIN CODE!
include_once(“visitorcount.php”);
?>

Related posts:

1. Simple Facts
2. Simple guide on how to create a flat TV
3. HorsePower

Replies to Questions you Might Think, Before you Think About Them!
� Do you know everything and like to share with the rest of the world your god-like knowledge?
� Nope, thats why we’re a community. If we knew everything, each one of us would create a site of his/her own. That’s what we bet on. Create a core and make it evolve.

� How many people are involved into this site?
� The core team consists of 7 people. Each one has specific tasks appart from personal content submitting. Editing Front and Back-End functions, Reviewing articles, Programming, are all handled by us. But our biggest reward would be to see more people getting motivated by our work, therefore we would be more that pleased to see those 7 people become more.
It’s up to You.

� Can i become a part of the team? And how?
� If you have good writting skills, passion to share your knowledge to the world, if you are curious of how many people will find your article helpfull, if you like to know us better, or if you can help our efforts in any that you can think of, drop us an email at: info|at|burnabrain|dot|com or Message me from the site messaging system.
Join the team now

Related posts:

1. Chuck Norris approves Burnabrain!
2. Like it? Share it with your friends!
3. Some people are nice…