Captain's Log: Beginner's guide to Star Trek Online, Page 2
The Beginner Tutorial
After the Nimoy-licious opening cinematic, which sets the scene and heavily references the 2009 film, your new Federation character begins his tour of duty in the mess hall of his starship. Naturally, the ship is under red alert. The Borg are attacking! The tutorial, with helpful hints voiced by Zachary Quinto, is fairly straightforward. Run around, use doors, speak with the captain, interact with objects. Routine stuff.
I won't ruin all the fun, but the tutorial first sends you to clear the Borg out of a fellow Starfleet vessel. First you'll use your tricorder to scan an injured crewman. Next, you'll be sent down the hall to forcibly evict some of the Borg attackers from the ship. As you go, you'll notice Starfleet officers and Borg duking it out in the corridors and hangar bays.
One of the nice things about STO is that, unlike many MMOs, you don't always have to retrace your steps to turn in quests. Instead, as you complete each leg of the tutorial, quest NPCs will hail you with thanks and further instructions.
After getting rid of a pair of Borg intruders, you're ordered to take the turbolift to your right to the next deck. Here you'll find the Borg assimilating the ship, and it's up to you to blast six of the green, glowy constructs they're building along the walls. Try to find a construct with a Borg in front of it. The explosion will knock the Borg for a loop, which is satisfying in its own right.
With six constructs destroyed, head down the main hallway to another turbolift. As you head to Main Engineering, you'll run into more Borg drones. Don't sweat it. Just use your strong attack (it's automatically hot keyed to the number 2 on your keyboard) whenever it's available and the weaker, number 1 attack the rest of the time. Now head to engineering and shoot Borg for 30 seconds or so to progress to your next mission.
Head south down the corridor and choose a Bridge Officer. Bridge Officers are important crew members that join you on ground missions and add offensive and defensive abilities to space combat. Each officer will explain his or her primary function before you can choose one. Your choice here is important, but not life-altering. You receive a new Bridge Officer free with pretty much every new level, and you can requisition others throughout the game at certain vendors.
The choice is yours, but I take the Tactical Officer. A popup window allows you to change the officer's name and appearance for free, so play with that if you want or hit OK to skip it.
Next week, Captain's Log will cover the rest of the Federation tutorial and the basics of the Klingon tutorial!
