In this starter guide, you will be introduced to some basic principles of Conquer Online and the basics of PvP. Just to clarify, PvP is a short acronym which stands for "Player Versus Player." It is usually contrasted in many games against PvE or the lesser popular term PvM. PvE stands for "Player Versus Environment" while PvM stands for "Player Versus Monster." The difference between PvP and PvE or PvM simply is describing your interaction as a player with another object whether it be another player, the environment, or a monster controlled by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Lastly there is a hybrid of the two which is abbreviated as PvPvE which stands for "Player Versus Player Versus Environment." This is simply a fancy way of describing that there are at least three entities, one of which consists of the environmental factors, while the others consist of players. If you have ever heard someone be labeled as a PvPer, it is a description of someone who regularly participates in PvP as you might have already inferred.

Are you still looking for a more "down-to-earth" explanation of what PvP is? If you have ever played any game against someone else, technically speaking you have engaged in PvP. If you have played Conquer Online and have at any point attacked another player or have yourself been attacked by another player, you have engaged in PvP in the Conquer Online world. The next time you throw a fast blade at someone with PK mode on, you have engaged in PvP!

Many reasons exist for why people like to PvP in Conquer Online, but for now we will focus on how to successfully PvP, not the philosophy and psychology behind why many of us like to engage in PvP. What does it mean to be successful in PvP? What is your goal, your objective? For starters, PvP is focused on competition, and of course the purpose of competition as some might say is to win. Winning of course is an implicit way to demonstrate that one player or entity of players is "better" than the others involved in the competition. Whichever player or entity wins can be said to be more "efficient" than the others.

Efficiency is simply a measure of how much work a system can output for a set input of energy or other associated costs. An example of efficiency might be two Trojans attacking the guild war pole during guild war. If one Trojan has more damage than the other, that Trojan would be more efficient at damaging the guild war pole than the other.

Let us now imagine that these two Trojans are competing for the guild war pole. Let us imagine they both are also in enemy guilds. The Trojan that does less damage to the guild war pole is less efficient than the Trojan that does more damage to it. Let us now imagine the lesser Trojan jumps over and kills the stronger Trojan and continues to attack the guild war pole after doing so. The lesser Trojan is now doing more damage to the guild war pole because while the other Trojan has a statistical advantage, they are dead and unable to serve their purpose at all meaning they are currently operating at 0% efficiency.

For those who wish to be successful in PvP, you must ask yourselves for starters, what avenue of PvP do you wish to be successful at? Do you want to PK players in the environment? Do you want to dominate in PK tournaments? Do you want to earn the prestige of being the winning guild at guild war? When you have answered those questions, you then want to secondly ask yourself which class bests suits that goal? Before you can figure out which class bests suits you, you need to learn what each class is capable of, and which of those various capabilities you are most efficient with. Are you skilled at aiming with fast blade and scent sword? Are you skilled at landing melee hits? Are you skilled at getting in range with two-fold blades? Perhaps these skills do not suit you and you are better off using easier and consistent skills such as hercules or tornado.

Once you have your PvP goals set, and the best class suited for you determined, you are then ready to begin determining in much more specific detail what your plan is for a PvP character build. If you are unfamiliar, a build in the case of Conquer would refer to a player's skill and equipment selection which are dependent on your rebirth class combination choices and how you choose to allot your attribute points.

In my upcoming articles, I will begin to cover various PvP builds, the theory, and basic strategy behind these varying builds.