If your ever in need of killing some time this review may help you out or get you fired. Many of you may know about a new free forum based PVP/RPG called Duels. For those of you that haven't heard; this one' s for you.

It's located at, you guessed it, Duels.com. This game is all about challenging other players to "duels" and seeking to become a ranked duelist. It provides a good amount of competition and has a active community. The developers over at Duels have done a good job with the concept and despite the massive lag at the beginning of the game's life it has become stable with Duels doubling their servers. The speed of the game is still an issue but one that the Duels' staff is very aware of and from what I have seen they are steadily trying to improve it. I am going to touch on some basic things I have learned about the game and would have found helpful at the beginning when I started.

Character Creation

You can customize your avatars face, skin color, hair style, hair color, tattoo design, tattoo color, undergarment, and background scene. The current race choices are human and elf. Duels is planning on adding more races and racial skills in the future but it will probably be a while.

*The only gender in character creation is male. This will change in a few weeks. Click here to view developer thread on this issue*

Power

Every character has a certain amount of power based on level. Each item in the game has a power value, armor and weapons. I will cover this a little more in loadouts. Items also have level restrictions on them.

Quests

The quests for about the first 10 levels are tutorial styled quests that are designed to get newcomers familiar with the game features. Well done.

Loadout

This is where you go to equip your items. When you equip your items keep in mind that it takes up power.Your items' power total value cannot exceed your power value when equiped. You will also need to saveyou loadouts if you want to use that certain equipment setup. Some people that have obtained plenty of money like to have several loadout configurations they can pick from. This is what is so addicting about Duels because you always want to get better items to make your loadouts better.

Paths

You will get to choose a path when you turn 5th level. Paths are basically skill trees where you can enhance you character's skills and attributes.

Path of the Sword

This is the basic path for the Warrior/Assassin's high paths. This path has basic skills for melee offense, melee defense, attack rate, % hit, % crit, dual wield, and item power reduction.

Path of the Staff

This is the basic path for the Mage/Druid high paths. This path has basic skills for buffing yourself, debuffing opponents, staff mastery, increase scroll effects, wand usage and mastery, and regeneration.

High Paths

You will get to choose a High Path once you turn 20th level and have 15 skill points in you basic path.

High Path of the Assassin

This path allows you to increase damage output through poisons, damage multipliers, and off hand and main hand damage increase.

High Path of the Warrior

This path allows you to increase attach rating, defense defense rating, damage adsorption, block percentage, perform a stun attack, perform block that cause damage on block, and get a extra first attack.

High Path of the Mage

This path allows you to debuff opponents, increace item plusses, perform blast wave (damage mod on int stat), fireball (damage mod on current level), increase resistance, increase attack and defense rating for a round, and increase wand damage.

High Path of the Druid

This path allows you to debuff opponents, increase attack rating, land you first attack with damage mod, Insect Swarm (damage mod plus debuff opponent), increase health and intelligence, and Ice Storm (damage mod on level plus opponents lose x number of attacks).

Economy

Gold

Used to buy items.

Armory

Where you go to buy items. The variety of items in this game is a definate strength.

Tokens

Used to buy packs. Are awarded from skirmishing, challanges, and quests.

Packs

Packs are purchased with tokens and are named after the item set names. A pack contains a item (armor, gem, weapon, ect),a couple of scrolls, and some gold. It is rare but sometimes instead of getting tokens you are awarded a pack.

Badges

Badges are obtained after completing the requirments for the badges. Badges are ranked into Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. With each progression of badge rank the rewards get better and better. Here are the break down on the type of badges you can get.

Badge of Leadership - To earn this badge you are given points for the amount of people you recruit into duels. For example to get the a bronze badge you need two points so you will have to recruit two people to complete the task.

Badge of Champions - To earn this badge you receive one point for every challenge you win.

Badge of Service - To earn this badge you receive one point for every month your account has been registered.

Badge of Assistance - This badge is earned by being helpful on the forums. The awarding of points for this badge is at the admin's descreation.

Battles

Skirmishes - Allow you to battle a opponent without the results being posted to your record. This gives you some experience points and tokens. The number of xp and tokens depends mostly on if you win or lose. However, there is a ongoing debate on what formula is used. Skirmishes are the way to go, especially in the beginning. They do not require your opponent to confirm that they want to fight, since it's basically a practice run. So skirmish with as many people as you can.

Challenges - Challenging a opponent allows you to use a scroll and to select the loadout you want to use. This form of battle is posted to your record, so make them count. Challenges also give you more xp, tokens, and gold.

Also in battles you can choose to watch a animated version or narative version(text only). Below is a video of the animated version.

Last Thoughts

Tips

• Always to remember to save your loadout when your done modifing it.
• Armor type (plate, leather, cloth) restrictions are not being inforced at the moment. So you can be a plate wearing mage if you want. lol
• Don't worry about armor much until after 15th level. Just get the best weapon and swing for the fences.
• When you challenge use scrolls it betters your chance at winning.
• On one of the starter quests where they want you to get a pack; don't open before you go back and complete the quest. If you open it you will have to go get another pack.
• If your skill tree ever gets off and shows that you don't have a skill point when you should have a skill point go to the Account button and select Check My Skils. That should fix it.
• If you Avatar's headshot doesn't show up on the side or on the forums you can fix it by going to Account and click on Fix Headshot.
• Don't neglect stamina it is worth raising atleast one point minimum every level.

Concerns

• To many dummy accounts.
• Almost too addictive.
• Needs a ally confirmation and a rival notification.
• Keeping the server performance up with growing popularity.

In short Duels is the best web-based RPG I have seen thus far. I expect good things from Duels in the future; they are definately headed in the right direction in the forum arena. Duels is almost a social network for D&D fans.