Silkroad Online Forums

Version 1.0
As most everyone knows, there's dozens of guides on srf and other sro related sites about builds, skills, and other aspects of the game. Upon closer inspection, one realizes that an overwhelming majority of the guides cover the same exact things. One requires more than two hands to count the number of nuker guides, fire glavie guides, and blade guides.

This "guide" will attempt to give you helpful tips and things to consider before and while making a guide.

- What is the purpose of your guide?
Is your guide a walkthrough to building a str glavier? An outline of the skills required to build a nuker? A detailed look at the alchemy system?
Make sure your guide does what it does. If you will give a walkthrough to build a str glavier, don't give a list of the suggested skills and leave it at that, make sure you tell your audience how to grind, what to grind, helpful tips and suggestions, and lastly explaining why you should do this or get that.

-Be more in depth, we're not just baking a cake here.
Explain why one should choose a skill over another, explain why it is better to grind a particular mob at a particular level. This isn't just a recipe of do this now, do this then, take this out, put this in, people want to know what's going on and why they're doing it.

-Has a similar guide been written before?
People just seem to write guides off the top of their heads and post them, disregarding the fact that you can't count the number of existing guides on the same subject using your natural set of hands and fingers.

-If a similar guide has been written before, is yours a new aspect of doing it, are you just adding on information and tips, or are you just spewing the same information everyone is saying in their sleep from reading it so much?
People don't need 10 guides that tells them to build a str glavier you must wear garment, put all points in str, get a high crit glavie, and use fire as a main mastery. Does your guide offer a whole new aspect of building a str glavie? If so, it is a green light for you. Does your guide only provide other tips and more information than the currently existing guides? Yellow light, try to find the author of an existing succesful guide and ask for your information to be added on. Has everything you had to say been said already? Red light, scrap your idea of making a guide, or try to think of something unique.

-Have experience on the subject you're writing.
I can't stress this enough people. Not much worse than reading a guide written by a level 3x, who has no idea how things are later in the game, and is just basing his guide on things he either heard or assumes. Only thing worse is when someone writes a guide for a build they've never played, or a job they've never done.

-Be aware your audience might not be an expert in SRO terminology.
The average new player doesn't know what a "build" is, what "masteries" are, what sp or sp farming is or why you should do it.
Make sure you define any terms in your guide, preferably somewhere in the front so they either know before coming across the word in your writing, or they can easily go look it up if they forget it or skipped it.( Terms are not defined in this guide, as the audience here is guide writers, and one can hopefully assume that they know the terms)

-Be open ended, don't make people take one way, one lane, dead end roads.
Not everyone who is making a new character has an old character that can supply them with gold required for good equipment, don't force your readers into a kind of situation where you need something such as sox weapons to grind higher level mobs. Offer alternatives, don't force someone into grinding a physical or magical mob, that person might not be able to afford a good set of equipment for the different types of mobs, also one type of mob may be crowded and thus grinding there would be slow.

-Include visual aids such as screenshots, if you really want to be good you could make videos too.
Not only does this help you relate to the readers, it makes your guide look more appealing and interesting. For some, it is easier to remember the pictures of skills rather than their names. (there are no pictures in this guide, because what pictures could there be? Screenshots of all the nuker guides that come up in search?)


If you have any comments, concerns or suggestions, feel free to post them.
This guide will be updated periodically with your suggestions, or if I think of something else.

With that, all the crappy guide makers were just pwned. Good job!

is there a point in reading this? honestly if u want to make a guide do it but dont post shlt just to get ur post count up. Thanks for your time

Is there a point to you breathing?

haha this guide rules, is the best one ever

-Have experience on the subject you're writing.
I can't stress this enough people. Not much worse than reading a guide written by a level 3x, who has no idea how things are later in the game, and is just basing his guide on things he either heard or assumes. Only thing worse is when someone writes a guide for a build they've never played, or a job they've never done.


iv wrote guides for builds iv never tried, i just know so dam much haha and no joke its a good build

this guide is pointless

if you dont know how to rite a guide in the first place you shouldnt be writing it now should we

Next, there will be a guide on how to make a guide on how to make a guide..