Guns of Icarus Online (or GoIO for short), is a game made by Muse. The game features a variety of airships in a steam-punk fasion, two varieties of gun types, and three classes with their own assorted tools of trade. The game's concept in to promote teamwork through communication and co-operation to achieve a given goal in one of the three gamemodes currently available. Be warned: GoIO is a game that can be made much easier through use of friends, so bring some, or make some!

The way the game works it that a team of four players makes up a ship, one commander to organize everyone, and three others to help out. Each team (Red vs. Blue) generally has a 2v2, 3v3, or rarely a 4v4 match of the respective number of ships (See "Gamemodes to Play By" section more more details). You must work together to achive the given goal, and eventually level up you character, and possibly even become [WANTED] or a bounty hunter!

The aim of the game in it's simplest of forms is to outplay, outgun, outlast, ou-whatever you get the point! Point is, make sure they die before you do. You die when that little bar on your screen reaches zero. No, I'm not talking about the stamina!

Anyways, my name is CrazyContraption, and I will be you wounderous guide within this guide. If you happen to actually read this, and feel like you could use some live help, we have a clan in GoIO that is solely meant for helping newbies to the game! So, without further ado, I present the GoIO guide:

Mentioned previously was the fact of there being three classes in-game. Each with their own set of tools and stratagies that we will go over shortly. The classes are as follows:

The best part of GoIO is no class can do anything anybody else can't (exceptions do apply)! Pilots can use the guns, engineers can pilot, gunners can repair, and so on and so forth... There aren't any skill trees, only unlockable cosmetics for your characters and ships, so there isn't any player that is more over-powered than you are at the very beginning of your career. Only more experienced ones. You may be asking why have different classes if they're all the same, the answer is they aren't!

Each class is better at their respective tasks because they can carry three of the tool types belonging to that class, and only one tool of every other type. Pilots get three helm tools, but only one bullet type, and one engineering tool. Gunners get one helm tool, three bullet types, and one engineering tool. And finally engineers get a helm tool, one bullet type, and three engineering tools. To see more detailed info on the tools, see the "Tools of the Trade" section.

You can also have as many of each class on every ship, but it is reccomended that there be one pilot, one gunner (if any at all), and two (or three) engineers. You may have also noticed if you have played the game a bit, in the lobby before a game start that shows your teams, the top slot for each ship is for the commander of that ship. While this typically is reserved for the pilot, it is not limited to the pilot class.

The commander is technically a class, while it isn't really. It allows you two abilities that would normally be disabled: You get control over what ship is being flown (see "Pick Your Ship" section), and you become the only person on that ship that can talk directly with voice communication to other team commanders once the match begins. Nothing special, but it works out pretty well.

All being said, that pretty much concludes the classes section!

In Guns of Icarus Online, there are several tools that are each useful in different situations, and can make a big difference in battle. We're talking win or lose difference, so pay attention! All of the tools are available from level 1, but, the default loadouts that they give you aren't very good. The most important tools to note are the repair tools. When a component gets damaged, it needs to be repaired, and if it recives too much damage it breaks and stops working until it is rebuilt. The following are the fixing tools:

Rubber Mallet[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
Shifting Spanner[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
Pipe Wrench[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]

Fires can be a big problem in GoIO, but you don't have to worry about those until you get out of novice mode (when you reach level 8 on any class). So don't put these in your loadout until you have to deal with fire. But should you happen to need to deal with them, there are two things you should know: Fire never goes away until it breaks the component or it gets extinguished, and fire can stack to the point where it can make components too hot and unusable even if they aren't broken destroyed yet. These however, are the anti-flame tools of doom:

Fire Extinguisher[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
Chemical Spray[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]

These tools don't really have too much of an impact on battle, but are really nice and helpful to have around. The only problem is they take up a somewhat otherwise important tool slot! But here they are anyways:

Buff Hammer[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
Spyglass[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
Range-Finder[gunsoficarus.com]

This only leaves the gunner's many bullet types, and the piloting stuff left for me to explain, but honestly, between me being too lazy to say what they all do, and the variety of opinions on what gear is the best, I'm just going to give you a link to the Wiki with all the different types so you can decide for yourself! Otherwise, I'll just reffer to what gear is good when I need to adress it...
CLICK ME BECAUSE CRAZY WAS TOO LAZY TODO ANYTHING ELSE[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]

This pretty much also concludes the tools section! YAY! \e/

You know the classes, the tools they use, but not really how and what to use them on. Every ship has five components to it. The number (if any) of these components will vary between ships (see more on that in "Pick Your Ship"). Here is what component's purpose is, and how to know what to do with them:

Hull Armor[/u][gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
Balloon[/u][gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
Engines[/u][gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
Weapons[/u][gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
Helm
All of these, with the exception of the helm, can be destroyed, repaired, and buffed with the aforementioned tools. In terms of importance, this depends on the captain amd situation. Speaking of situations, let's talk more about actual gameplay!

There are three variations on each of the four different gamemodes currently available. There are the 2v2 versions, the 3v3 versions, and the rare 4v4 versions. Each one progressively harder by nature, however novices are limited to 2 ships vs. 2 ships. The four actual gamemodes are:

Novice mode players are limited to deathmatch and practice, while all modes are available to others (you can opt in or out of novice mode at any time, but once you hit level 8 on any class, you can't go back). The Goals of each game are different, and have repectively different rules too. Lets start with the basic deathmatch.

Deathmatch is won when a team reaches a set number of points. The amount of points needed varies depending how many ships there are. 2v2 is first to 5 points, 3v3 is 7, and 4v4 is 12. The reason I say points rather than kills is because the opposing team still gets a point if you die by crashing into a mountain or something, even if they weren't resposible, SO DON'T DIE! (Jumping off the ship doesn't count)

The way you kill a ship is by attacking them until their ship's health reaches zero, however all ships are protected with a hull armour (more details on that in the "Pick Your Ship" section) that can be repaired like any other component in the game. Once the hull armor is down, any hits to the enemy will become red, showing that direct damage is being done. While you cannot see the enemy's heath directly, that structure of the ship graphically shows how damaged it is. When the ship crumbles, the point is given.

King of the Hill is a bit different. You rarely see anything other than a 2v2 on KOTH, but it is possible to get 3v3s and 4v4s. The goal is to capture a central "balloon", and gain points for every second you control it. While ships can still be killed in this mode, it provides only a few points towards winning, but moreso just delays that ship until it respawns. Chemical spray and close range weapons are highly reccomended for this gamemode (See "I'mma Fire Mah Guns" section). The team that reaches the number of set points first wins.

Crazy King is probably the worst of them all, it functions exactly like King of the Hill, but the point changes every three minutes. There are balloons marked on the map A B C D E accordingly, and they change in order, and then back to A again after E. Close and long range weapons, as well as a buff hammer are reccomended. Possibly a faster ship like the Squid or Goldfish (see "Pick Your Ship" section).

So you've got pretty much everything down pat except for your ship! You just need to pick a ship and outfit it with some guns! Guns however, are a whole different can of worms, and will be explained in depth in the "I'mma Fire Mah Guns" section. But before that, you need a ship to mount those guns onto. You have several choices available to you:

Goldfish[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
Depending on what you put on the front of a Goldfish, it statagies change entirely. This is what makes the Goldfish a favorite by many captins

Squid[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
The Squid is by far the fastest ship in the game because it has four engines. While it is also the one with the least firepower, having only 3 guns. This does not mean that it should be taken lightly however, as it being quite fast and small makes it very difficult to hit with damaging weapons.

Pyramidion[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]

Junker[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
What the junker lacks in speed (moonshine or kerosene can fix that too), it makes up for in firepower. The amount of of slots, and the places that they can be put allow for endless combinations. This is the chosen ship for people who like their ship "just the way they want it".

Galleon[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
The Galleon is a very tough, but rather slow and easy-to-hit ship with trendous firepower. If staged correctly (gunner(s)/gungeneer(s) mann bottom deck, and engineers mann top deck), it can be a very "gotta watch out for that Galleon" on the other team.


Mobula[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]

Spire[gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com]
The Spire is a very difficult ship because unlike the Squid, it can't move fast, and has low health. The redeeming quality is that medium gun and 3 small guns it has available. The Spire sort of demands a long-dstance stratagy, so the Lumberjack is reccomended (See "I'mma Fire Mah Guns" section for why).

Each ship has its uses, for example, the squid is really good at Crazy King, and the galleon is great for normal King of the Hill. Finding the right ship will take a lot of experimenting, especially when you include the fact of all the different guns you can mount on them. This takes us to our next section, and concludes this one!

W.I.P.

W.I.P.