Get to the City
Do your quests in the starting area until you are lv20, then go to Nightfall Citadel. You don't really need to complete the starting quests in the starting area; you can come back when you have more time. This is actually an important tip for the entire game - there is a lot of extra stuff to distract you in the game, learn what you can ignore until later so that you have time to do the things that are really important to your character's growth.
Leveling
I used to not recommend speed leveling, but now I recommend speed leveling to at least 85. At 85 you can start pet control training and go to the raids that can win you hero 3 gear directly. Do not level past 100 until you are done with pet training since it breaks at 101. Do not level past 104 until you have all the champ points you need since the higher level challenges don't give champs.
Talent Tree
Once you turn 20 you will get your first talent tree point. All classes have three trees to choose from. You can read the skills in each tree to decide which tree to choose, or check out this chart. I recommend sticking to one tree. Once you know how your character works, you can use a talent compass to make changes to the tree.
Skills
You get some race/class skills automatically, but some you get from getting scrolls to learn them. Ayrshi's Mirage on the airship in the Citadel has all class skills except archer. Archer is lucky enough to have the skills available in their skill menu as they level. The scrolls at Ayrshi are only 10sg, so start opening!
Union Rank
There are three unions and each is for a different set of races. The reps have lots of items including the soulforce trinkets that you can get with enough rank and contribution. These npcs also give you entrance to the training ground where you can get exp by just standing around.
Soulforce Trinket
You get your first one when you pray for the second time (you get prompted to do this fairly shortly in the game - the first prayer gives you gear). This trinket gives you a powerful aoe that helps you wipe out mobs. Eventually when you upgrade this, it also gives you extra stats. You can get better trinkets at your race rep agent. At lv80 you can use Union level and war god pts to buy the upgradable trinket from your rep agent. This trinket can be upgraded via items also bought with war god and union rank at the rep agent. To see what item you need next to upgrade the trinket, bring the trinket to the armorer and place in the Identification tab.
Once you exhaust all the items that the race rep npc has, you will need to get upgrade items to keep upgrading your trinket: Windless Wind*, Earthless Earth and Fireless Fire. There is a quest from the lady in Freedom Harbor. You can see how many of the items you will need by talking to an armorer and using the Identification tab.
Tip:Don't upgrade the trinket past Windless Wind until you have the IDs you want, and don't upgrade it to Fireless Fire until you have the IDs you want - each level requires harder to get reID scrolls.
Gloop
You can also open up special skills in the trinket. Click the arrow next to the trinket in the C menu. This will open up the gloop menu. You get gloop from getting kills and wins in arena. Take the gloop and put them into the skills in the menu. You can level up all the skills, but can only use one at a time.
Tip: I recommend Unbending and Iron Skin to start with.
Armor
Really, don't worry about the LH badge gear or the wg gear. If you have the badges, go ahead and get the gear - it should serve you well enough until 80. At that point, you can usually get blue gear from Advanced gear instances, or people might give you gear. Get your hero gear from drops - don't waste your war god pts or champ points buying or upgrading the gear. Once you have lv4 hero, you can start upgrading to 5 using champs. You really can't run the instances that drop 5 without already having lv5 gear (FW irony). Once you have the lv5, run the instances that drop lv6 to get the gears directly if you can and use your champs for the ones you are having trouble getting as drops. Lv7 requires legendary points which requires you to do instances that are insane. And the lv7 gear is crap anyway, so don't worry about that gear.
Identification
Gear, and some other items, can be identified for additional stats using an ID scroll. The stats are random and you rarely get what you need on the first try. You can reroll these IDs using a reID scroll. Although IDs are now both transferable on upgrade AND transfer, the stat you'd get on higher level gear has a higher range, so I wouldn't spend too many resources getting good IDs on gear you won't be in long.
You can get some reID items from checkin quest, Fort Khoaway weekly, and daily free rolls.
Reforging
You can increase certain stats on your gear by reforging. These increases can help a lot, and I do recommend reforging your gear; however, I would not reforge gear that you won't be in long because the reforges do not transfer - even on upgrades.
Fortifying
You will want to fortify your gear to get added stats on it and open up gem slots. I recommend fortifying low level grey gear and then transferring the fortification to higher level gear. Fortifying high level gear is less successful in my experience and far more expensive!
Note: fortifying is not very easy and can be frustrating - we've all been there.
Tip: using lower level gear and transferring allows you use less star crystals, which you will still need a lot of. Get star crystals running instances that give you rolls (pb invader and fate are two good ones). AND make sure to find Meid daily whenever the island opens up.
Augmentations
This adds reIDable stats to your gear. It can be expensive and take a long time to get them added, but it can really give you a boost. Here is a guide to hopefully help you get them more easily!
Tip: you can get extra fluxes from the Saturday Bloodbath on the xserver, and save your token of faiths! They come in really handy for getting easier augments.
Transmutations
This will add one extra stat to your gear. You actually get to pick the stat (not all stats are transmutable), which is nice. You can overwrite transmutations, so put them on, even if they are small, and overwrite when you get a better one. It's not too hard to do once you get the hang of it - here's a guide.
War God Points
You will get these points through various means. Klass in the Citadel has a shop where you can purchase a lot of really cool things with war god pts - including things to fortify and transfer your fortifications to new gear! Save your war god for those things and your trinket upgrades. Some of the things that Klass offers are really hard to get in the game through other means, so buy them from him instead.
Champ Points
You mostly use these for upgrading your gear, but you can also use these for purchasing a few things from the npc a few npcs right of Klass (his right). Check that out.
Ode to Guardian Points
You will get these through various means. You can get a lot of very valuable, useful stuff with these points. Check out the gem lady next to Klass. I recommend using the points for upgrading your flying level which upgrades your speed in the flying mount which makes it a lot faster to get things done. Then use the points to get gems. I only use the points for rages, shatters, crystallines, twilights, and goldsparks. The rest of the gems aren't that great of a deal and you will get enough of them through regular play. Once you have the gems you need, get resistance tomes to upgrade your resistance!
Gems
For the most part, combining lv1 gems into lv2 gems is a waste of gold. Buy flare gem cards from AH. They will give you a lv3 gem each day. I only combine shatters, crystallines, twilights, and goldsparks. I also combine rages if I really, really need to. You can buy fusion agents from the npc next to Whitney. The lv5 fusion agent requires items that you can get as drops from exo and hr. Save them up! Use the gem guide to plan what gems you will work on.
Save your extra lv3 gems for making special gems for rings and necklaces. Whitney has the recipes. You can also take your extra gems to Christer (near the Molten Inferno npc). He can change them to a different gems with enough login credit and 1sd. He doesn't always change them to something different.
You can also use your extra gems to feed into your wings menu.
Wings
Your character will get visible wings when you get your gear chroma to 200. You get chroma pts by putting gems in your gear; not your weapon tho - that chroma only makes your weapon glow. Higher level gems are worth more chroma pts. These wings and weapon glow are completely aesthetic, so don't combine a bunch of easy to get gems just to get visible wings or a glowing weapon - work on the gems you actually need.
Wing Skills
Your wing icon also has a menu that you can start working on right away. Click the arrow next to the wings in the C menu. Put gems in the box for a chance to gain pts for this menu. As you level this menu you will open bubbles that contain skills and stats. You can have one bubble in each wing tier active at one time, but you can switch which bubble you have activated as you like.
Tip: use lv1 gems for the first wing tier, save your lv2 gems for the next tier. Save your lv3 for your third tier...and so on...
There are a lot of very valuable skills here, so start working on this as soon as you can. I feed all my level 1 azures, bloods, mists, solars, eagles, and rages (yes, even rages) into this.
Two easy ways to get gem boxes for this is by running anything with rolls and doing gbqs.
Anima
If you look in your C menu you will see at the bottom of the menu two spots for anima. You get your rage anima from the 5th floor of Hell Road (HR). You get your shelter anima from completing the main quests in the Polar Borderlands. It's a long quest - here's a guide. As you upgrade your anima, you will get extra stats and open up skills. Your anima gives your existing skills damage boosts too.
You can level up you anima using charms or gear. The green scaly things you get from instance rolls and daily roll can be traded in to the anima trainer for the charms. You can also trade WoTA tokens at the WoTA entrance npc for boxes that have a very good chance of giving you a lot of charms. Completing your daily challenge quest also gives you charms.
Tip: although you can get your shelter anima upgrade items using war god from Klass, I recommend doing WoTA on Fridays for the tokens and the achievements that will also give you the upgrade items. It can take a lot less time doing it this way, and you can use the war god for other things. Plus, you get soul leaves and ded for this!
Anima Trainer
Do this daily once you get your anima. The anima trainer gives you 10 free tries each day to add pts to the stats in your anima. He will give you the option to accept or deny what the try will give you. Only accept the try if you will gain pts (the number in the total field will be green). This can get frustrating sometimes because after 10 tries you may get nothing, but they are free tries, so it just costs you time. If you are particularly lucky, keep going with the 5sg tries until your luck runs out or you don't want to spend anymore sg.
Mastery and Resistance
This is one of the most important things that you can do for your character. Get pts from instance rolls and completing certain floors in HR. Once you reach certain levels in mastery and resistance, Dan (of Run Boy Run fame) will give you bonus pts.
Mastery
This takes a long time to build without cash shopping so take all the opportunities for these points each week that you can get. Do your HR! To figure out what mastery to build up, look at the skills in the tree that you chose. You should see at least one skill that talks about a specific mastery - that's your mastery. It is recommended to build up your main mastery at least until 90 before you start building your other mastery(ies).
Resistance
Choosing resistances to build up is really up to you. You can look at the attacks that are killing you the most and build up those - or you can take a very general approach and level them all up together. I recommend building up physical and dark to at least 60, then start building wind and fire to 60 while continuing to build phys and dark to 80 as you also start building water, light, and earth.Nice thing about resistance is that you can buy resistance pages with Ode to Guardian (otg) pts, so they are a bit easier to come by than mastery. But, you need a lot more of them.
Hell Road
Hell Road gives you free mastery and resistance points each week, so start doing hell road as soon as you can. Every mob you kill gives you items that you can right click which adds pts to your demon's rose menu for HR. You can use those points to add stats to your demon, once you get her on floor 5. Floor 5 is also where you get your rage anima token. Hand the token in to the Ayrshi Mirage - choose the anima wisely! There is more than one. Choose the one that supports the mastery for the skill tree you chose. If you accidentally choose the wrong one, don't fret, eventually all the elements get activated.
Pets
During the shelter anima quest you will be sent to Rachel to get info on pets. Pets are fun, but, they are also pretty important to your overall power. Pets can become very powerful, can have skills that can help you, and can contain buffs that will make you more powerful. Pick a pet that supports your character - if you like the look of one that doesn't support you well, you can always morph onto one that does.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Beware of leveling a pet too soon. Use rebirth scrolls until you have the strengths and weaknesses where you want them and be sure to meld as you level.
Pet Skills
Your pet typically starts out with one skill, but you can open up new skill slots (a total of 8) by teaching it new skills. Don't put really valuable skills on your pet until you open enough skill slots to lock the valuable skill in place.
Resistance Through Interaction
You can upgrade resistances by using interaction pts on your pet in their interaction menu. You can gain support stats by leveling up the pet control system. You can also send your pets out to do your dirty work via the journey menu. Have your pet out as much as possible to get those interaction pts but make sure to put them away when needed (they cause problems in some quests and instances).
Pet Control Training
When you get to level 85 you can begin pet control training which increases stats of you and your pets. Do this as often as you can and be aware that currently, once you reach 101, you will no longer be able to do pet control training (it's a bug that happened during the last expansion and we're waiting for them to fix it).
Fusion Gems
Also during the anima shelter quest you are introduced to Whitney who will help you with your fusion gem system. Fusion gems are really important to make your character more durable - so if you find you are dying too much, get those fusion gems done! You'll want to keep up with them as they do take vigor to make and it takes a while to replenish that. You will also need to level your alchemy job since the gems are bound - meaning you are the only one who can make them for you and you need alchemy to make them. The mats are found in gear instances, so collect them as you run these instances.
Jobs
You will get job points as you complete main quests. You can only have as many jobs as you have points to take them, so choose wisely - unless you have a bunch of wisdom fruit to reset the points. I recommend taking alchemy (for making fusion gems), mining (for gathering fusion gem materials and making a little gold in AH), and botany (also for gathering fusion gem material and making a little AH gold). Henry also asks for botany and mining mats for his quests, and you need botany/mining/alchemy items for guild donations, so all those skills come in handy for many different purposes. The other pts use as you like - although fishing is also good to have since you can fish valuable items up in special spots around Forsaken World.
Ground and Flying Mount
You get your ground mount fairly quickly in the game, but the flying mount is not as obvious. Nadine in Nightfall Citadel has the quest for getting a flying mount once you turn 55. The flying mount is extremely helpful in getting around more efficiently and bypassing trigger-mobs that would wipe you out. Upgrade your flying by getting enough flying time in and completing the quest Nadine gives you at each flying level cap. Put your mounts in your mount bag - which is in your fashion bag.
Fashion
Another item that is fun but important is fashion. Fashion can help give your character more identity, but also gives you boosts in stats when you ID it. You can ID most fashion. If you get a good ID on a piece of fashion that you don't really care for, you can always cover it with a garderobed piece of fashion. Do not put fashion with good IDs in the garderobe - they will lose the ID. Get one set of fashion with good IDs to keep in your slots in the fashion portion of your character menu and put everything else that you can into your garderobe.
Extra: You get titles for matched sets of fashion. Check with Goethe in the Citadel. The fashion titles are just aesthetic.
Titles
Some titles actually do give you extra stats. You can get these titles from orbs/AH, completing vengeance ranks, and completing some other quests.
Vengeance Rank
You can get a lot of nice things for your character by completing your vengeance ranks. Check out the menu at the vengeance promoter near Henry. Ranking up gives you titles that will give you stat boosts too. Doing these quests also gives you lots of wg pts and helps you level up. You get access to the different vengeance maps by leveling - however, the Freedom Harbor (FH) map also requires that you complete the Retake Freedom Harbor instance (you must hit the final boss at least one) and talk to the vengeance promoter before it expires to get your portal to the FH vengeance area open.
Tip: since you can get badges completing Dusktown and Sanctuary vengeance quests, and these badges can be used to level up lower level vengeance areas, do Dusktown and Sanctuary as much as possible and use the badges to level up the other vengeances that you'd rather not do.
Rings and Necklace
You get two slots on your character for rings and one slot for a necklace. Fill them, even if it's only with low level items as they mean extra stats. Some are fortifiable and these are the kinds that you eventually want to get. You can get these from ranking up in vengeance and paying with trade gold - but they are worth it. However, if you run Frostgale Fjord and Ice and Fire on the xserver - you can get those fortifiable rings and necklaces for just battlefield points. I recommend getting battlefield double point cards to make this process go faster. AND if you do go the battlefield route - use your points to get the crit damage bonus accessories instead of the cheaper ones without. It will mean you will have to wait longer, but it will be worth it - you cannot upgrade from a non-crit to one with crit. The battlefield pts do have a low max, so you will need to buy the items as you go along and store them until you have enough to buy what you need.
Soul Power Tree
You get soul power pts from various means. They do max (20,000 is the max pts you can hold at a time), so it's good to use them as soon as you can. To use them in your soul power tree, which you should, you will need to complete the quest to open that up. You can also use your sp for pet training, giving to your god, and leveling up your astroplane system.
Open up both sides of the Soul Power tree to get even more stats! The skills that have 3 spots to level will transfer those stats from the side you're not using to the side that you are.
You can also open up rune slots in the sp tree that can boost your talent tree skills.
Runes
Runes give your skills boosts through rune quality pts leveling up your energy tree (the red, yellow, and blue columns at the side of your soul power tree). They also can give you extra pts to use in your talent tree. Each rune has a skill pt on it for a particular skill. Place runes with energy that supports your tree. You can check this by looking at your end skills in your talent tree and matching them up with the supported skills in the energy tree. Here is a guide on runes.
Divine Tokens
You will need these to level up your soul power skills. They are a very rare drop from GT2 (pet journey works), LCS, and Run Boy Run/Hanks (not from pet - you actually have to run it). An easy way to complete the Hanks quest is to park your char at the autoroute location when you go afk for a few hours. When Hanks passes your character, you will get credit as long as you are not in a flying mount. Just make sure you can hand in the quest before reset or you have to start all over again.
Elemental Relic
Another item to build up to get more stats. You get the quest to obtain this item from Hugh when you turn 90. It's another long quest, but not nearly as long as the one to get your shelter anima! There is a quest guide here. Even if you wait to get this item, go do the beggar quest every day to get the contented miracle pouches which contain the lv1 elemental relics that you will eventually use to level up the relic you work with. You could open a pouch and put that relic into the relic slot in your C menu. You won't be able to do anything with it until you complete the quest; because that quest gives you the skill to open up your elemental relic menu.
Quests to do each day to build this:
- Beggar : in Abyss - you can pay 1sd to complete it, or choose the last option to get your 1sd back. Gives you 3 relics.
- Man in the Waterfall: in the Twin Cities - you have to complete a kill quest. 2 relics.
- Flower Contest: in Order Highland (on the flying island) - pick the better flower. 3 relics.
- Treasure Chest: in Order Highland - grab the treasure chest from the thief. 3 relics.
During the elemental relic quest you will get introduced to the awakening system. You talk to two child demons that control the light and dark awakening powers. You will need to choose either the light or dark awakening, but you eventually can work in both parts of the book. This system will give you new skills that are pretty awesome. Collect kindness/evil points to buy the skills from the book in your skill menu. They are 10sd each and each level costs you more points. You can get these points from the expert gear instance, the guard quest in the twin cities (the light city gives kindness, the dark city gives evil), the dark contract daily quest (the top answer gives evil, the bottom answer gives kindness). You can only use kindness points in the light book and evil points in the dark book, so choose your quests accordingly.
Quests to do each day to build this:
- Dark Contract: Abyss - 500pt (type based on quest)
- Guard Search: Twin Cities - 800pts (type based on alignment)
- FF: xserver - 1100pts (type based on alignment)
- Expert: instance - 1100pts (type based on alignment)
Showing support to the gods can give you valuable stats! There are several gods to choose from, but leveling each one gives you another stat. Level them with badges from the King, badges from HR ranking reward, and with sp.
Astroplane System
A newly introduced way to add stats. You will get materials as you quest that you can use to level this system. Look at the four different constellations that you can build up by pulling the menu screen to the left. You will want to choose a constellation to upgrade. You access the other constellations for upgrading by leveling the overall system first. Here is a quick starting guide.
Diestone System
The Diestone system is another way to add stats. The warrior souls you need to make diestones are not easy to get and you need a lot of them. Most people do not worry about leveling this since it is so difficult to get enough of the materials. You can get these from rolls, Lost City, Blood Bath, and Dim Wars.
Lost City
This is a great place to go to get lots of exp and a little present each day (only available from 22:00-22:30). At higher levels you will need to win access via a random, but common, drop in FF; however, at lower levels you will have free access. It can be a very competitive and frustrating place, but you don't have to compete for the free exp or the chest - so go for those. If you have low frustration tolerance and there are lots of people there, leave the fog gathering for others.
Blood Bath
An xserver event, it is active every Saturday after 15:00. You get double battlefield pts if you are in FF from 15:00-16:30 -- wait to collect your daily FF chests until after 15:00. You need to get 3 FF wins to collect all the bonus chests which can be found in the tab next to the daily reward menu. I highly recommend this if you are trying to get the FF rings and necklaces, are interested in creating deistones, or want fluxes for augmenting.
Dimensional Wars
Dim wars is on the xserver every Sunday at 21:00. Although this gives tons of exp and great rewards, it too can be very frustrating due to griefers. And in order to get the rewards, you have to avoid the griefers in a very small, rather open area - not easy to do. Skip this if you have a low tolerance for frustration and not a lot of time to play - because in the end, you may get nothing.
Crucible
There are two quests you can get here. The seal quest gives you lots of sp. The petal quest gives you lots of exp. They can be done daily. You can get extra sp from the seal quest if you pick up the quest during the time that the seal bonus is activated by your guild. As you run around getting your seals quest done, you can also check to see if the ores scattered around the crucible are ready to pick. When you turn those in to the quest npc, you get a pretty big chunk of sp and exp!
Warning: gathering ores can be extremely frustrating as it is highly competitive. If you have a low frustration tolerance, check the ores when people are less likely to be on.
Artifacts
As you complete certain quests/instances, you have a chance at receiving an artifact. When you collect a whole set of artifacts (press L to view), you get a passive skill that increases stats like hp, pve intensity/tenacity and attack.
Horseshoe System
The horseshoe system adds stats to your char. You get the items for upgrading this system through various daily quests in the Order Highlands.
Guild Base Skills
You can get some pretty neat skills from your guild base with enough merit and soul gold. The skills can be found on the upper ridge under the swamp crawler. I recommend the one that gives you bonus champs and the one that gives you soul power.
Shylia Market
This is the blue present in the upper right. You can get some useful freebies from the Experience tab as you level, so take a look early on. Save the talent compass for when you need it, since I think it is timed. You can also get free daily energy and vigor between 18:00-22:00 and free chests and keys (for extra rolls) between 19:00-23:00.
Dedication Rewards
You get dedication pts for completing various tasks/instances in the game. You can find a list of what gives ded in the dedication tab of Shylia Market, along with the rewards available. The more ded you have the better the rewards are. You can get free fusion gem catalogs from Whitney with 120/280 ded, so make sure you pick up those catalogs if you get enough - even if you're not planning to work on the gems right away. Make sure to take your ded rewards before weekly reset!
Odyssey Rewards
These can be found in the Odyssey tab in Shylia Market. As you complete the quests/instances tied to each reward, you fill the meter of the reward. Once the meter is filled, you can collect your reward. The rewards are valuable, so try to get these open.
Guild Freebies
Every week you can get an allowance of soul gold, faith tablets, and lionheart scrolls from the guild npcs by the lower pond, provided you have enough merit. You will need a lot of soul gold in the game, so pick up the soul gold every week. Pick up the others if you are running short.
I noticed under the option to buy skills from Ayrshi rangers (archers) are noted to not have skills to buy- this also applies to the Warden class :)
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