I shall put information here to help new players. Others are welcome to add to (or correct) it. Details on most specific items can be found in the Mechanomicon, which is like a Wiki for the game http://mechanomicon.blogspot.com/2017/05/mech-skills-summary.html

When you 1st start, refresh the screen frequently. Some things won't display or be available unless you do. Example: The upgrades tab in the hanger may not appear until you hit Level 5 King Of The Mountain tournaments THE 1ST THING YOU SHOULD DO once you complete the 2 introductory missions on Home Planet & enter the main game is enter the current King Of The Mountain tournament (hereafter referred to as KOTMs). These are found by clicking on "Events" This completes the "Enter a tournament" quest which awards you with an Air Shock missile. It will be your best weapon for the next few levels. The 2nd thing you should do is enter the current lottery. Add friends & start an Honor Guard (see below) Most Kong players seem to only have one when there is a war imminent, but it'll help you for KOTM's and other battles.

**Missions, Mini-Bosses & Boss fights**. The Mini-bosses on Pirate Moon appear much more frequently than they do in the other missions. Do not assume niodes will always be that easy to get. The different symbols under the missions indicate the various mini-bosses, and how many times you need to beat them to move on to the next one, or the boss fight. Oddly, the 3rd mini-boss on Vupa 6 is also the boss. After you have reached a high enough level to unlock Novum Dolorum, when you click on missions there, you may see missions titled "Out of the blue" & "Better run a diagnostic" They will be accompanied by a picture of a Novum mech. This means you *may* have won one. It is the only way to get them. On a scale of tonnage v effectiveness it is considered by most to be the best mech in the game. At 25 tons it can hold its own against most mechs up to 70 tons. In a private chat, multiple Novum owner & Galaxy Gathering reporter Sébastien Roussel-Konan once explained his philosophy on them to me: "The coiners (those buying niodes) can't buy them & the campers don't want the XP you'd get trying to win them" More about the campers in a later post.

**Friends**. Unlike Facebook, friend requests & acceptances aren't required on Kong. Simply right-click on a players name in the chatbox & select `add friend', and it's done. This means you can join each other's Honour Guards and harvest each others crystal (see next post) You can also add them on the Honour Guard page. Hover the mouse pointer over a players avatar & select '+ Friend'* Look at some of the early pages. There are a lot of inactive players there, who's farms will be full.

**Crystal Harvesting**. If your Crystal farm has less in it than you thought it should have, it means a friend has harvested them for you. They will have been added to your stocks & your farm will be able to continue growing more. This is quite handy if you've forgotten or been unable do it yourself. The person harvesting will receive 1 Crystal themselves for every 8 harvested. This is the real reason they do it, not to help you. Kongregate is very good for harvesting. If you've gone through the Honour Guard page & added lots of players as friends as suggested above, you will have lots of inactive players on the friends tab, most of who's farms will have the full 40 crystals, giving you 5. You have a very good chance that active players farms will also be full, due to not having as many players harvesting as on Facebook. Ive found that I have about a 50% chance of getting 5 crystals from each of the 1st 10 players I harvest!

**Circuit fights**. When you get to level 10 you will be eligible to enter these. They run for 4 days & a new one starts every 2 days. Entry gets you 10 crystal & a niode. Many players are happy just with this. Many go for 2 wins to get the 2nd niode. Some go for 8 wins to get the 3rd. A few can get the 22 wins needed to get the 4th. You'll need a maximum energy level of at least 42 to achieve this. If you wish to do all 34 fights (or need to to try for the 22 wins) you'll need a maximum energy level of 54. One reason for doing all the fights you can is for crystal. You will only get 3 for winning the 1st fight, but winning the 34th gets you 106. Even if you win none of the others, that's still a good outcome. So look at the other entries & work out which ones you feel you can beat & which you might beat. The ones you feel you can beat should be the last ones you fight. The ones you might beat should be just before them. Let the fights you lose be the ones that pay the least crystal. As an example, if your maximum energy is 40, you can do 20 fights. Even if you can only beat 1 player, doing it in the 20th fight pays88 crystal. In the circuit that as I write this ends in about 12 hours, I am on 15 wins & 15 losses, for 1860 crystal so far. Winning the last 4 will net me another 618. [Edit] Since writing that the Crystal payout in the circuits has sadly dropped from 3 per XP to 2. Another tip. Watch for KOTMs with light & medium mechs. There may be players that are higher levels than you & you wouldn't normally beat, that have small mechs loaded that you can win against.

**Resources** "Not enough minerals" You'll be short of something at some point in the game (probably many points) This will probably start when you can buy Shocklites. You won't be a high enough level to join the circuits, so harvesting crystal will be your only source of them. So unless you've done lots of harvesting you be unlikely to be able to buy a full field of them. iMechs will be your next issue. equipment for mechs over 25 tons costs crystal. As an example of never having too many resources, fitting out a 100 ton mech could cost around 30K Ferrite, 20K bioptics & 2K crystal! Bases also cost more as you level. The 16 slot base at L44 costs 2,800 Ferrite & 2350 Bioptics. But the 17 slot at L48 costs 14K & 7K. I'm about to hit L114 where the 32 slot will cost me 27K/19K. The Balrogs I'll be able to buy will cost 20K/19.5K/430 Crystal. Plan ahead. Know when you're going to be able to get a bigger base & make sure you have the required purchase price. Also make sure you have a mech already levelled to go in that extra slot - for each formation. So, an Ant for your 10 ton, Shocklite/Axe Bot/Commissar for your 20 ton etc. Get them early enough to level them in time. In my case this can be 2 levels beforehand as the higher the level (and bigger the mech), the longer it takes. Then there's the upgrade cost. This includes newly purchased mechs and all the ones you own when you level up. If you wish to able to compete in as many classes of the KOTM as possible and as meny specialities in the wars, you'll need a lot of mechs. I have full fields for 10, 20, 30 & 40 ton max classes as well as the Anzu & Hoplite KOTMs, but only 4 55 ton, 6 60 & 7 65 ton mechs. All up I currently have 380 mechs. 71 of these are not fully levelled, though 3 are niode mechs only needing 1 level & waiting their turn for the daily Instant Upgrade. 10 are Niode mechs under L5, way down the upgrade queue, 6 other Niode mechs are under L35 & 4 between Ls 55 & 88. The L88 is an Inferno which has been done purely during upgrade sales. Several other mechs get a level or 2 during these as well. The L55 is the Cameron that I will get back to giving daily Instants when the 3 needing 1 level are done. Until I won it I was working on an Antithesis, but it's stalled at L27 until the Cameron is done. My L35 Novum is likely to be next, despite 2 more Camerons & Antis currently under L5. I have a Kami which has gotten to L20 in upgrade sales. It won't unlock for use until I get to L127 so I have a bit of time for it. So even if I didn't get any more Niode mechs, my queue for the daily Instant Upgrades is a few years long. But the rest of the unlevelled mechs are Crystal ones being bought in advance for various formations during mech sales or won in wars, raids & boss fights. Some of them will still be upgrading in 2 months, as unsurprisingly, I don't have enough resources to keep all of them leveling & have to prioritze.

**Ways to get resources** As mentioned, you can get Crystal from harvesting & circuit fights. You can get Ferrite & Bioptics from any of the missions, though usually more Ferrite. You can also get a random drop of Crystals & even Niodes, particularly with the comics. The Mini-Bosses also give Niodes. On Jungle Moon Rizpah and Yomi Reefs you can get up to about 10K of Ferrite & Bioptics from the Mini-Bosses, as well as Crystal. Yomi Reefs also has a mission *"The Ecstasy of Riches"* which can also pay large amounts of Ferrite & Bioptics. You can also randomly get drops of inventory items with it. The standard ones are of no real use as we get them every day anyway. However you can also get the rare 2X Instant Upgrade Kits and Unification inventory items. Sometimes random Mech & Equipment drops happen on other missions. Attacking other players will get you Ferrite & Bioptics. The more tons you kill the more you get. Even attacking 25 tons will usually get at least 100 of each. If you lose the fight, you still get some as salvage. Many players do this to get resources with no XP gain. But the most popular way to get Ferrite & Bioptics is buying 5 packs of weapons then selling them. This is because the 5 packs don't cost any Ferrite & Bioptics , but you get some back when you sell them. The Fury Laser is the most popular, as it has the best return on Crystal. It's the lowest damage weapon you can buy 5 packs of. It costs 8 Crystal normally or 6 during a sale. Selling 1 returns you 55 Ferrite, 44 Bioptics & 1 Crystal. So in effect you're swapping 3 Crystal (or 1 in a sale) for 275 Ferrite & 220 Bioptics. I usually buy 50 5 packs at a time. That way they fill the default `newest 250 weapons' display in your hanger and you won't click once too often & sell something else that you wanted to keep (Such as the Black Widow laser I'd just purchased on one ocassion) :( You can also sell off low power weapons you no longer use after you've leveled & been able to buy better ones. This includes any fitted to mechs you've bought. Once you get past the Cyrstallion, Hex Cannon, Heat Laser, Chemthrower & Midas Missile, there are limits on how many of each weapon you may purchase, so you will probably find yourself hanging on to the last few types. At my L113 I can buy Metal Mambas, but still have many Locust Swarms fitted to my mechs & 57AMs in the hanger for use during Missile specialist events. And until you hit L98 & can buy Glaces, no Crystal weapon comes close to matching the Enveloper's Slow (10). Slow is very helpful for tough mechs in boss-fights & raids

Secondary effects (Coming soon)

**Leveling** Although the levels for the divisions in the KOTMs vary, the bottom division has a maximum of L12 at least 90% of the time. It's worth camping there for a while to try & win at least 1. But be aware that there may be serious campers who stay at that level and are very strong. KOTM Medals are the best source of Niode weapons. **Leveling mechs** Here on Kong (& on SyFy) we get our daily Instant Upgrade Kits supplied, so we won't run out. It should be obvious that they should be saved for Niode mechs & only used on Crystal mechs if all your Niode ones are upgraded. This goes even more so for the 2X Instant Upgrade Kits. You get them with the `acquire a mech' quests, but only up to the Freon. They can sometimes be found amongst the raid pizes, and you can get them in the weekly clan lottery and as random drops on the Yomi Reefs missions. As it takes longer to upgrade mechs as they get higher levels, save them until the mech is almost leveled. Saving a few minutes using them is not as good as saving a few hours. All this naturally applies to the 20 level Instant Upgrade you will get for beating Drochah, the Yomi Reefs boss.

Want to increase your kill count to unlock quests without gaining XP? Here's a list of players I compiled last year that have 0 tons loaded, They probably still have, but check 1st. To find them, click on any player to get their profile then substitute the number at the end of the URL for the ones below. พันษา เขียว 965977 Adam Singleton 957685 kfides01 890528 kfides02 905613 kfides03 90561 kfides05 951598 kfides07 951624 kfides08 951626 Kurt_Fides11 952764 Karen_Fides 959796 KarenFides 952588 Kenndall_Fides 959798 KendallFides 952579 kendra_fides 954337 Kat_Fides 954339 Kenny 895258 Ken Freon 621456 1rngkiller 958386 2rngkiller 958387 3rngkiller 958391 5rngkiller 958388 6rngkiller 958389 7rngkiller 958616 Kel Nico 879409 Rog Wells 957045 Pele Walls 957044 Beowulf1313 967049 Nelson Bond 952232 Nathan Blessing 732057 Jinx Bizzar 339843 David Greywolf 706685 sumcard 905626 Jason Morse 369265 Jayme De Sousa Ferreira 586738 Billie.Meierhoff 805308 John Pappy 76936 James Moody 25849 Andy_Noffke 905704 AgnesLeary 886637 Paul Aoc 798590 Adhietya Mrt 917236 George Chimiklis 961021 Cher Lee 732912 Ether Bunnie 336920 Otis Ross Hodge Jr. 889444 Hilario Iturriza 962681 Nathaniel Dethomas 287391 Bustertj2013 967866 Locutusof_Borg 908616 Rodri Bedoya 81206 Rune Smith 732916 Lawlliet Okotta III 896668 Bustertj2013 967866 Locutusof_Borg 908616 lanark9 670321 Travis Bailey 497349 A player once complained about `Kurt' (I suspect his name is really Ken) stacking the game with these for his benefit. I simply pointed out that anyone can benefit from them.

**Mech Types** (in progress - not all mech's specs are in the Mechanomicon,so I'm having to go through Tech Manuals. This has so far got me 1 20 niode typo spotters fee :) ) Each of my 5 alts specializes in a different weapon type. This one is my Missile alt. So I will list all the mechs by these types (Niode mechs in *Italics*) then the all rounders, with comments. **Laser** 10 ton - Red Ant - 95% damage from L90 15 ton - Anzu - There is nothing faster. 15 ton - *WarHorse* - 11% damage to Laser, Cannon & Missile from L18 20 ton - *Commissar* - 25 ton - *Novum* - Just keep pounding Novum Dolorum. You want as many of these as you can get. 35 ton - Holmes 40 ton - *Buccaneer* 60 ton - *Buchis* 75 ton - Bishop 75 ton - *Sever* 75 ton - *Diliphos* 80 ton - *Frigis* 90 ton - *Regis* 90 ton - Jadoon 95 ton - Yallan 100 ton - *Fext* 100 ton - Balrog TBC

**Random bits** "The day" for inventory items starts at 0500 GMT You can use your day's quota of Stims & Hatorades just before this time & they'll all be availalble again after it. If I'm leading a clan, I try and start the raid at around 0200 so that it ends at about 0600. That way everybody has a full set of Stims available for the last hour if required. However Instant Upgrade kits, inlcuding 2X, cannot be used until at least 24 hours after the last one. **Changing Formations** When you get a new mech slot, usually the mech you add to that slot 1st, will add itself to every other formation. When you replce it & hit `Save Formation', it usually re-appears. This is where you need to hit the `Save' button in the top right corner before hitting `Save Formation', It's often a problem with small formations too - Frontline Fight, 230 ton Max etc.