A general guide for new/returning players (2024)

Hi-hi!
Since I couldn't find any relevant guides for new/returning players that is actually up-to-date, I decided to write one thatshouldstand the test of time.

Before you can begin reading this guide, there are 4 requirements:

1. If you're in North America (NA, Yura), you need to join the Cerulean Order.Crimson League is niche and should only be chosen if you know what you are doing! It's the opposite in Europe (EU, Jinsoyun) where most players are in theCrimson League.
   • This is where most of the community is for each region, and it will give you access to the corresponding Faction Chat channel.
   • If you joined the wrong order by accident, you can swap it later. Just focus on the quests.
   • If the Crimson League is full, you can swap it later, just focus on the quests.
   • To swap factions, you need to go to Silverfrost Mountains -> Zaiwei -> Merchant Square and talk to theNPC Sul Lipin:
2. You need to complete the yellow (main)quests.
   • Make sure to boost your character once the Soul Boost button is available below the mini map!
     
3. You need to complete the purple quests. If you get stuck with one, there are YouTubevideos about them (as they are the same as 5 years ago). You canalso ask in World or Faction Chat (check which one is more active in your region).
4. You need to complete the orange quests up to a point where you can accept the weekly challenges. You won't be able to finish them all, but just do them till you can.
   • Dawn of Khanda Vihar, Aransu School, Demonsbane and Emperor's Tomb orange quest side acts are the ones that can be completed solo, primarily with a special solo instance marked with the orange quest arrow. Emperor's Tomb also requires the player to walk inside to talk to Juna first, then walk out to access the solo instance.

You are all set and ready to do dungeons? Nice! But before that, let's rather start with your inventory, as it will fill up quickly and you don't want to trash useful items, do you?😜

1. Use the wardrobe for storing weapons, outfits, pet skins, and other cosmetics
2. The cheap inventory expansion rows should generally give you enough space to hold on to everything.
3. Basic junk thresholds would be any non-consumable items with a level lower than 50 and any gear that you have better of.
4. Generally speaking, keep everything that you get from Soul Boost, Dungeons, Battle Passes, Daily and Weekly Challenges.
5. Food is usually useful, even the bonus XPones will come in handy later:These pictures are just examples, there are other ones as well.
6. Charms are usually useful:These pictures are just examples, there are other ones as well.
7. General upgrade materials that you will need for a lot of things:
8. Accessory-specific upgrade materials that you will need to upgrade accessories. These items will change over time, but usually they have the same name as the accessory piece, so it's easy to spot them:
9. Weapon-specific upgrade materialthat you will need to upgrade your weapon. It will change as you progress, andit has the same name as the weapon, so it's easy to spot:
10. Soul/Heart/Pet/Talisman-specific upgrade materials:
11. Crafting guild materials that will depend on your crafting guild:
12. Coins. There will be more of these later. Theones below might not be useful anymore.I think you should keepall of them and once you feel like looking at every shop you can decide which ones are still relevant:
13. Insignias, Scale Chests, Unity Stones (or boxes), Etching Stones, Repair Tools, Keys to open Demonsbane Chests, Psyches , and Gildstones are all useful.
14. If it can be sold on themarketplace, keep it, or sell it!
15. Again, if it drops from a Dungeon,Raid, Daily or Weekly Challenge, Soul Boost, or a Battle Pass, they are most likely useful 🙂
    1. Duplicate accessories can be added to your Compound with a 420 Power Potential. Thebonus stats in [Shift P] will increase depending on your Power Potential. The Compound system consumes accessories you are not using to unlock Rune slots for Etching Stones to be used on. You can't recover any accessories your use this way, so always triple check if it's the one you're not going to use, or was replaced by a stronger accessory. There arespecial Hongmoon Accessories with no stats that are for this that you can put in as well.

Now that you know what to keep and what to trash, let's get you started!

Again, make sure that you joined Crimson League if you're NA or Cerulean Order if you're EU!
As a fresh lvl60 character your first day will look like this:

1. If you are completely new to this genre, I would recommend doing the following:
   • Press [F8] and then Dungeon
     
   • In the picture above you can see the following parts:
     • At the top left, it's the party finder. People can post party recruitments there. Feel free to try it out. You can either join a party or recruit for one🙂Just make sure that youonly do easy mode and/or stage 1!
     • At the bottom left, it's the usual chat. When you join [F8], it won't delete the chat you had before. Let's use it to teach you about another wayto join parties!
       • You can press on the number in thetop left to put a link to your party into the chat. If people click on it, they will join your group. Usually you just click on your number, write which dungeon you want to do and at which difficulty, and people will join. Or you can join others by clicking their link in chat.
       • If [F8] feels dead as you play at ungodly hours, or if people don't use it anymore, don't worry! As you can see in my chat above, people recruit directly in World and Faction Chat as well. 🙂Feel free to join those party invitation, or make your own!
     • On the right of the window, you can see the available Heroic and Demonsbane dungeons. If you hover over them you can see the rewards they will give as well
       • If they have a blue icon next to their name, that means they are part of today's Daily Challenge. Make sure you do them every day!
       • If you are the leader of a group, you will need to select 1 dungeon and press Enter Dungeon at the bottom of the screen.
       • If you don't want to interact with the party finder orchat, press LFP. I would recommend selecting 3 heroic dungeons and waiting 10 secs for LFP. If it doesn't find anyone, enter a dungeon and press the "Recruit Party Member"button on the top left:
         
   • If you are not comfortable with 'parkouring' yet, I would recommend you to enter the dungeons solo and learn how to reach the 1st miniboss orwatch a video on YouTube before you join a group. This will feel really bad when the others are already at the main boss while you are struggling to getthere.
   • Try to do every dungeon at least once to complete the Daily Challenge and to get rewards from Daily Quests.
   • If you are still not bored andhave more time, farm your favorite one(s).🙂
2. If you are a returning player and/oryou have experience in this genre, I would just recommend you do every dungeon at least once and farm the one(s) you like until you get bored ordon't have time left.🙂
3. Make sure to accept the Weekly Challenge quests!
   • You can join Raid groups in the World or Faction Chat by right-clicking on their name and press Apply to Party. You don't need to do it on your fist day.
4. You will die a LOT!Don't worry much about it though. It will take time until you learn how to evade attacks with your class.
5. Watch andread a guide on your class. The Academy discord server will probably be around when you read this, and they have great guides for every class/spec!
6. NOTE: General player patterns have shifted away from Cross-server ([F8]) usage due to an increased presence of Dungeon trains to complete Soul Boost. It's still used to more easily access Dungeons, and is mandatory for Demonbane Dungeon access.

Your basic weekly routine should look like this:

1. Do Daily Challenges every day.
2. Do Weekly Challenges every week. Only doing 4/5 is fine. Do the ones that are easy.
3. Do Daily Challenges on your alts every 3rd day (more about this later).

Stuff to do other than the basic weekly routine:

1. Check out the Hongmoon Store (hit [F10]), in particular the Hongmoon Coin tabs for free items.
2. Soul Boost:
   • Soul Boost will give you a lot of items to get you started.
   • If there are Dungeons that were taken out of F8 and are still needed for the Soul Boost, you can either find groups in World of Faction Chat, or you can make your own!
   • To enter some Dungeons, you might need to do a quest. Look at your Quest Journal(hit the j' key) and look forQuest Letters!
   • The World and Faction Chats areusually helpful. Feel free to ask other playersif you get stuck with a quest.
   • Current solo dungeon of interest are:Shrouded Ajanara,Circle of Sundering, Den of the Ancients, and Spectral Shrine.
3. Alts:
   • You can get more character slots from the Hongmoon Store. To get hongmoon coins use F9.
   • I would recommend every new player to have 1 main char and 3 alts.
   • You only need to do 1 alt every 3rd day, meaning that with 3 alts you only need to play 2 characters a day.
   • Each alt will give you an 2k extra gold daily, meaning 6k gold per day. This might change later, but the 3-day rest should stay.
   • You can send over most upgrade materials to your main via in-gamemail.
   • Since they are just Daily Challenge slaves, you don't need to worry about upgrading them, but you should still use Soul Boost on them. Theywill level up by doing Daily Challenges.
   • If you hate leveling, you can skip alts!
4. Farm out the easy mode andstage 1 accessory set:
   • You can check the loot table in the Game Guide (hit [Ctrl+J]).
   • Once you have all of them, upgrade them to+11.
   • At +6 they will get a random stat, you want to get the highest Mystic stat on them. You can reroll it by salvaging the same tier accessories.
5. Farm out the Soulshield Set:
   • You can use easy mode, or Chaos Supply Chain stage 5 drops thebest-in-slot Soul Shields and is entry level. The basic Poharan (provided byChaos Supply Chain stage 5) set is also slightly better than the Shadow Fury set from easy mode.
   • You want to have Crit andAccuracy on 2, 4, 5, 6, 8.
   • You want to have Crit on 1, 3, 7.
   • You need to use the Crit Primers on each piece to get extra Crit on them.
   • You can max out the stats on the Soulshields by feeding them to each other. Make sure to feed into the one that has the correct stats.
   • I know that in the future they will probably have Mystic etc stats as well, but imo Crit and Accuracy is more important for a new player.
6. Make your unity stones Awakened (hit [Ctrl+H]😞
   • You get a lot of unity stones while doing dailies.
   • You shouldn't worry about what their stats are until they are all Awakened.
   • Usually you should only get Boss Attack Power ones, but you might lack Accuracy orCrit, so keep those as well until you have enough Crit and Accuracy.
   • You can fuse them by clicking the Refine Splendor Stone button.
7. Join 2 craft guilds:
   • I would recommend you to join the Earthseers and the Acquired taste ones, as they will give you resurrection charms and pretty good food. The weaker you are, the more boost it will give.
8. Join a clan:
   • It might be difficult to join a clan when you just started, but if you see a good sounding clan recruitingin World or Faction Chat, go for it! 🙂
9. Farm out outfits you like:
   • Press [F3] and look through the selection 😄Some are dyeable, and you can press Ctrl+Cto customize them. You can get Chromatic Threads for pretty cheap in [F10]. Just make sure to get Hongmoon Coins from [F9].
10. Farm solo dungeons:
    • Sadly I don't know what the future holds, but check out the NPC shops to see if there is any solo dungeon worth doing.
11. Do events:
    • They are almost always really worth doing, most of the time you will need to do it on your alts as well!
12. Use the Psyches you got from Soul Boost (this picture is just an example):
    
    Don't use the Soul Boost Psyches on legendary accessories, because they can't be used in the succession system so it's a complete loss when you'll get your Starcross Accessories.
13. Gildstones can be put inside accessories, they can be upgraded as well:
    
    I would recommend focusing on these once you can do stage5 Demonsbane dungeons.You can either get them from an NPC or by farming Dungeons. Check the loot table from the Game Guide (hit [Ctrl+J])!

14. Gems. There are 2 types of them: Weapon and Pet gems. You get pretty solid ones from Soul Boost, so I wouldn't worry much about them. You can farm them from Dungeons if you want to get better ones. Not a high priority, unless you are farming stage 8 Dungeons and want to do stage 12 or higher. You can upgrade them in the Transmute window from your inventory.

15. Fish while you sleep:
    • Not mandatory, but leaving your char fish at night will get you a lot of extra items.

Once you have your easy mode and stage 1 accessory set at +11 with Mystic stat, the Soulshield set done, and you completed Soul Boost, it's time for you to start doing more difficult content:

1. Before you join anything other than easy mode orstage 1, make sure you know the content mechanics!
2. Hard mode might still be out of reach, but at this point you should be able to join one. I would still recommend doing easy mode as it's way faster.
3. Stage 5 Demonsbane should be 'easily' doable with your stats now, just make sure that you don't join a group that wants 6k+ Boss Attack Power (bap)🙂
   • From there you need to farm out the best accessory set:
     • You can use your current +11 accessories with 'Succession' to make them +6. It will keep the Psyches.
     • You can upgrade these as much as you would like, since they are the best ones.
     • Make sure to get Mystic as the random stat.
   • From there you need to farm out the best Soulshield set.
     • These Soulshields can have other stats as well. Please ask in World or Faction Chat what to get on them.
   • From there you need to farm out the weapon.
     • You need to salvage the same tier of weapons to get essences that are required for upgrades
     • Make it at least +6.
   • Upgrade your Soul/Heart/Pet/Talisman as you get the materials from events etc.
   • Start focusing on Compound (hit Shift+P)
     • You mainly want Boss Attack Power,Mystic, andDebuff damage on one page, and full Debuff Damage on the second one.
   • Start focusing on Insignias (hit Ctrl+K)
   • Start focusing on Portaits (hit Ctrl+M)
   • Start focusing on Achievements (hit u)
     • Prioritize the Attack Power ones.
   • NOTE: Stage 5 Demonsbane dungeons are doable without +11 Starcross accessories, even +0 will suffice. Damage requirement for stage 5 is low enough that a mid-Soul Boost character without any Starcross accessories can manage to avoid enrage, depending on the player and character.
   • There might be a new system when you read this, generally speaking press the Esc key to get to the main menuand look through all the menus.
4. Once you have all of these done, you are more than ready for hard mode and stage 8:
   • It gives more rewards.
   • It drops the best weapon.
   • NOTE:Hard mode has similar damage requirements to stage 6 Demonsbane dungeons. It's possibly doable with the full +0 Starcross+full Soul Boost gear, but will require a bit more caution and knowledge of the dungeon.
5. Stage 9 and onwards are usually not farmed, unless you do it for rankings orfarm it with your clan.
   • Stage 8+ dungeons requirea lot of Accuracy to be able to hit the boss. Landing CC or even DPS will be nearly impossible if you don't meet the cap.
6. Post-Soul Boost gear: your primary focus should be what to roll on the Compound system. Active selection for stats is required when re-rolling runes, compared to Splendor stones having tier as a priority over their exact stat roll.

Solo Dungeon farming:

• There are many solo dungeons in the game, each increasing in difficulty. You can learn your character and game mechanics by doing them. You can even try the first few while leveling up, because some of them are lower level contents.

  • Low level (45-60) solo dungeons are in Mushin tower. You have to do the "Calling of the Naryu sage" quest (see the Quest Journal [J]). The quest is easy, you just talk to the NPC.

    • Mushin tower floors 1-8

    • Mushin tower floors 9-15

    • Mushin tower floors 16-20

    • Outlaw island. You need to do the "Blackram battle royal" quest.

• Easy Mode Dungeons: probably the easiest way to farm Skystealer crystals, Starcross crystals and Oculus stones, plus Insignas. If you can't solo one of them, just recruit 1 or 2 people but it's not mandatory.

• Sanctum of the Masters: This isan odd solo dungeon in Ajanara Monastery. It has easy, normal and hard modes. It's just a horde mode, but with a twist: our healing is decreased. It gives useful insignias, so do it every day. It has auto-combat built in, so you don't have to kill trash mobs for 10 minutes if you don't want to. You can activate auto-combat with [Shift+F4] by default.

Extras:

• The Unity system is explained in a side quest available after level 55 (?). See the Quest Journal by hitting [J] and look for the correspondingQuest Letter. It explains the system well enough, but it doesn't explain that the Unity Level is account wide, so all of your characters benefit from it being higher.

• Check the Dragon Express (fifth icon from the left at the bottom of your inventory) and then the Solar Energy Tab (second from the left) for 3x Celestial Forgestones and 1x Thornbreaker Forgestone. This will give you access to a fast-tracked upgrade route for your weapon. You will need to click on the Forgestone in the upgrade menu to use them though.