This is a short guide to explain to the significance and meaning of the different NPC colors. As those of you who are new to the game have noticed, every NPC has its name displayed in one of seven colors: grey, green, blue, yellow, orange, red, or purple. Aside from the level of the NPC, the color that its name is displayed in can be used as a quick gage to determine its relative difficulty.

Grey NPCs: Grey NPCs are NPCs that are five or more levels below you. These are the NPCS that are the easiest to kill. Note that grey NPCS will not attack you unless you attack them first. However, if you attack a grey NPC that is by other grey NPCs (for instance, a grey NPC that is surrounded by members of his or her gang), then some or all of those NPCs may start to attack you at that point. These NPCs should be very easy to kill and should give you no trouble at all.


Green NPCs: Green NPCs are NPCs that are 3-4 levels below you. Green NPCs are more difficult than grey NPCs, and are less difficult than blue NPCS. NPCs of this difficulty level are fairly easy to kill, but they can become a threat if enough of them are all attacking you at the same time.

Blue NPCs: Blue NPCs are NPCs that are 1-2 levels below you. Blue NPCs are more difficult than green NPCs, and are less difficult than yellow NPCS. Note that if you are soloing standard or critical missions on the easy difficulty, the NPCs will all be of this difficulty (they will be one level below you). NPCs of this difficulty level are fairly easy to kill, but they can become a threat if enough of them are all attacking you at the same time.


Yellow NPCs: Yellow NPCS are NPCS that are the same level as you are. Yellow NPCs are more difficult than blue NPCs, and are less difficult than orange NPCs. Note that if you are soloing standard or critical missions on the medium difficulty, the NPCs will all be of this difficulty. NPCs of this difficulty level become easier to kill as you gain more knowledge of how the combat system works.

Orange NPCs: Orange NPCs are NPCs that are 1-2 levels above you. Orange NPCs are more difficult than yellow NPCs, and are less difficult than red NPCs. Note that if you are soloing standard or critical missions on the hard difficulty, the NPCs will all be of this difficulty (they will be one level above you). Because archive missions do not give you the option of choosing a difficulty level, but rather “force” you to do them on the hard difficulty, the NPCS will be orange (they will be one level above you) whenever you solo archive missions. NPCs of this difficulty level become easier to kill as you gain more knowledge of how the combat system works.


Red NPCs: Red NPCs are NPCs that are 3-4 levels above you. Red NPCs are more difficult than orange NPCS, and are less difficult than purple NPCs. Note that while red NPCS are not the hardest NPCS in the game, they can be difficult to take down by yourself, especially if you do not have an advanced knowledge of how the combat system works. It is not impossible to kill a red NPC by yourself if you have sufficient knowledge of how the combat system works, but having a group to assist you certainly makes it much easier. It is strongly advised that you and your group do not attempt to take on a group of red NPCSs if you are outnumbered. Those of you who are new to The Matrix Online should avoid red NPCs AT ALL COSTS.

Purple NPCs: Purple NPCS are NPCS that are five or more levels above you. Purple NPCS are the most difficult NPCS in the game. Purple NPCS are also next to impossible to kill on your own, even for those who have a fairly advanced knowledge of how the combat system works; such a task becomes even more difficult when the NPC in question is more than just five levels above you, such as a level 255 agent. Unless you have a big enough group, it is advised that you do not attempt to kill a purple NPC, or a group of NPCs; you certainly want the odds to be in your favor when attempting to kill a purple NPC or a group of purple NPCs. Those of you who are new to The Matrix Online should avoid purple NPCs AT ALL COSTS.

For those of you who have just joined us here in The Matrix Online community, welcome. In my over three-and-a-half years of involvement with this game, I have been told more than a few times that it can be “very hard to do standard missions on the hard difficulty”. The truth of the matter is, however, it is very easy to do standard missions on the hard difficulty once you master the missioning system. This guide will present a way whereby you can easily complete standard missions on the hard difficulty without even having to kill any enemy NPCs. The key to doing solo missions easily and efficiently is infiltration or retrieval missions.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The techniques discussed in this guide do not apply to critical or archive missions, except for some of the tips and suggestions presented at the end of this guide.


****PRE-MISSIONING SECTION****

Note: Several abilities that are vital to this technique of missioning are discussed in this guide. However, because of the amount of abilities that you absolutely must have (as well as other abilities that you don’t have to equip, but should once you are able to) to be able to complete these missions successfully, you will not be able to equip all of them if you are fairly low in level and do not have sufficient memory capacity available (go to a hardline, right-click it and select the “abilities” tab to check your memory capacity ratio at any time). In this event, you will have to try other methods of leveling, such as gaining assistance from someone who is higher than you in level until you are high enough in level to employ all of the techniques that will be discussed in this guide. Alternatively, until you are able to employ the techniques presented in this guide, you may want to try your missions on the easy or medium difficulty if the hard difficulty is to difficult for you. As a point of reference, you can equip all of the key abilities in the hacker and operative trees (which will all be discussed below), as well as the hyper-sprint, hyper-jump, and evade combat abilities by level 15.

Before you begin working on these missions by yourself, there are several abilities you will need in both the hacker and operative trees. To access your abilities window, go to any hardline, right-click it, and select the abilities tab. After this, you will notice four sections: Awakened at the top, which then branches out into Coder, Hacker, and Operative.

**Required Hacker Abilities**

In the Hacker tree, you need all of the following abilities that are surrounded by a green border:

The names of all of these abilities, from left to right and top to bottom, are as follows: Execute Program, Hacker Style, Repair RSI 1.0, Logic Barrage 1.0, Download Mission Map, and Hacker.

**Required Operative Abilities**

In the operative tree, you need all of the following abilities that are surrounded by a green border:

The names of all of these abilities, from left to right and top to bottom, are as follows: Combat Insight, Hindering Shot, Intensify Damage, and Operative.

The names of all of these abilities, from left to right and top to bottom, are as follows: Sneak, Spy Style, Side Roll Escape, Spinning Backsweep, Disable Evasion, Find Weakness, and Spy.

The names of these last two abilities’, from top to bottom, are as follows: Disguise and Open Locks. You may go further down this tree if you wish, but you only have to go this far to be successful on your Infiltration or Retrieval missions.

**Location of a Hacker Vendor**


If you do not already have these abilities, can’t code them or have someone code them for you, then you can purchase them all at vendors around the Megacity. You can get all of the hacker abilities that you from this vendor (named Pickman), in Mara central:

If you are not sure how to locate Pickman from the Mara Central hardline, you can open your map by pressing the M key on your keyboard. You can zoom in and out with the “+” and “-“ symbols on your map, and you can also increase and decrease the size of your map by moving the map around with your mouse. The “…” button on your map is used to turn coordinates on or off; you should have them on The blue symbols with a capital “V” on your map represent the locations of vendors. As the screenshot below indicates, here is where Pickman is, relative to the Mara Central hardline; the yellow cursor represents my location. As the screenshot also indicates, Pickman is located at the following coordinates in Mara: 166 5 107.

After acquiring all of the necessary hacker abilities from this vendor, return to the hardline, right click it, and select “upload”.

**Location of an Operative Vendor**

You can get all of the operatives abilities you need (up to open locks) from this vendor (named Slosh) at Mara Central:

Here is Slosh’s location relative to the Mara Central hardline. Again, the yellow cursor represents my location, and the coordinates are given in the screenshot:




After acquiring all of the necessary operative abilities from this vendor, return to the hardline to upload these abilities.

**The Importance of Other Abilities**


* ALWAYS have evade combat running when doing these missions. After you pick a lock or hack/search a computer, your disguise will come off; immediately after seeing you, the NPCs may or may not try to interlock you. Therefore, it is important to keep track of your evade combat shield; even if you are able to get out of the mission area before any NPC is able to draw you into interlock, it is still very well possible that they broke your shield, meaning that the next NPC who tries to interlock you will succeed. Whenever your shield is broken, reapply your evade combat ability immediately. If you see the icon circled in red in the screenshot in your display, then your evade combat is running; otherwise it is not, possibly because your shield has been broken. If you do get interlocked, use withdraw to attempt to get out of it This ability may be purchased from Pickman or Slosh, whose locations where given earlier in this guide, or from any other ability vendor.

*If you are below level 25, use the Hyper-Sprint ability. This ability can be purchased from any ability vendor, such as Pickman or Slosh. Because the Hyper-Sprint ability uses a lot of your IS (inner strength) at a fast rate, you should only use it in-between mission phases; once you arrive at the building to complete the objective(s) for each individual phase of the mission, you can manually remove hyper-sprint from your buffer of actively running abilities and upgrades by holding down the shift button and right-clicking the hyper-sprint ability in your buffer; what I am referring to by buffer is outlined in red in the graphic below. This will give you time to replenish at least some of your IS so that you may use Hyper-Sprint once again as you run to the next phase of the mission.

*Once you reach level 25, immediately switch from using Hyper-Sprint to Hyper-Speed, as this ability is far better than Hyper-Sprint. It not only enables you to run faster, but it also does not drain your IS as hyper-sprint does; it only uses a very a small amount of your IS right when you activate it. This ability may not be purchased from any ability vendor; it must be coded.

**Location of an Item Vendor**


Now that you have all of the necessary abilities to succeed in your infiltration missions, it is time acquire the necessary items. There are only two items that you will need on these missions: a disguise and the lockpick item. You can purchase a variety of disguises, as well as the lockpick item, from the item vendor named Alsaud in Mara Central:

Here is Alsaud’s location relative to the Mara Central hardline:

**Equipping Your Abilities**

Now that you have all of the necessary abilities and items, it is time to equip these abilities. At the hardline, right-click and select abilities, and then click the abilities tab (it is on ability tree by default). You will then see a screen that looks something like this:




To equip the abilities that you have just purchased and uploaded, move them from the “Core Abilities” side to the “Equipped Abilities” side. Depending upon your level, as well as your memory capacity (how much memory you have left to load abilities’), you may not be able to load all of the necessary abilities; for instance, you must be at least level 8 to load the Open Locks ability.

**Leveling Up Your Abilities**

In addition, several of your abilities can be leveled up, and some abilities require that you level up other abilities (that are lower in the ability tree) before you can use those abilities. For instance, your disguise ability must be leveled at least to level 8 before you can equip the Open Locks ability. Press L on your keyboard to open up the window where you can level up abilities, find the abilities you need (or want) to level up, level them up and then hit accept. Your window should look something like this:

**Toolbars**

Once you have all of your abilities equipped, it is a good idea to put some of those abilities, as well a disguise, in your toolbar. You have a total of twenty toolbars (all numbered) available, and you have two different toolbars open all of the time; you should devote one of these toolbars to your gear for these missions. To put a disguise in your toolbar, press the I key on your keyboard to open your inventory, and move it up to an empty slot on your toolbar. The item surrounded by a green border in my inventory is the symbol for all disguises:

**Actions Window**

Press the O key on your keyboard to bring up your actions window. Under the abilities tab (which is selected by default), drag the Hyper-sprint (or Hyper-Speed if you are at least level 25 or higher and have this ability), Hyper-Jump, and Evade Combat abilities into your toolbar. You should also put the five combat stances in your toolbar: Power, Speed, Grab, Block, and Withdraw. Your actions window should look something like this:

And your toolbar should look something like this after adding all of the necessary abilities and items to it (you only need to pay attention to the top toolbar):

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LordVortex