Game Progression

Levels 1-10

Before we start just a few important notes:

Each topic is discussed as it came up in the game while I was playing. There are some exceptions such as feature that have an alternate unlock method that can be done early. I will postpone discussing them until I reach the point where they would normally be unlocked such as the Rune Box which normally unlocks at 80 but can be unlocked as soon as you get your first rune, even if you get it from an event.
If I provide a link to a feature then I've only grazed the surface of it. When this is the case I almost always include a link to an article that focuses solely on that feature in depth which often provides more more information about it.
I may not dive into certain topics or subtopics until later when they become relevant. For example gearing and refining, since refining won't help you early game I hold off on discussing this until you should start working on it.

All of these features can be found in the side bar under "Game Systems". There are tons of them and probably others I didn't dive into either because I've overlooked it or if it just doesn't fit into the flow of progression yet.

Create your Character

When you first launch the game you'll be greeted with the character creation screen. On the left side you can change your race between Human or Doram. The Doram (cat people) can only start as the Witch job which does not have alternative job paths and cannot choose any other. I would advise selecting human since it has many, many jobs and alternate job paths to choose from.

Regardless of which you choose you can always multijob to either one later, including humans swapping into Dorams to play the Witch.

Character Creation Screen

Always Follow the Main Questline

After creating your character you'll start out in South Prontera. On the right side of the screen an arrow is bounding on your first quest. Tap this to auto navigate to this quest. Tapping any quest brings you to the next objective to ease this process.

Your quest list can always be found on the far right side of the screen

Focus on following the main questline as it introduces you to some of the base game systems and mechanics. You'll be given some starter Eden Team equipment such as a knife and armor.

Throughout the guide you'll find that I'm always pushing you to keep doing the main questline. These quests also give you large experience bonuses early on and help boost you into the 30's and 40's quite quickly. Several side quests pop up as well as you hit certain levels. Most of them unlock new features so I will cover them as we reach these levels in the guide, or if they are can be unlocked sooner through another method.

Skills

The main quest will quickly introduce you to skills so now is a great time to dive a little deeper into this interface. To access it tap the More button, then select Skills. There are currently three icons tabs at the top of the screen that toggle between different sets of skills:

Class Skills
Adventure Skills
PvP Skills

Accessing Skills

Example of the Skill Slot selections

Passive skills are identified by their round shape. These skills do not need to be set anywhere and are always active.

Active skills are identified by their Square shape and must be used to take effect. Your active skills are assigned via the skill slots at the bottom of the skills screen. There are two sets skill bars that you can configure. The slots on the left in the example above highlighted in green are for Manually activated skills. The slots highlighted in red at the bottom right are for auto skills.

Combat has an "Auto" mode that will search out enemies and use skills set to the auto bar on its own. Attack skills are used off cooldown but buff skills are only used when their duration runs out so they don't waste time needlessly reapplying a buff that lasts for a few minutes.

By default, you only have one skill bar for each of these but as you play more you'll eventually unlock multiple skill bars.

Combat

You can target enemies by tapping on them, which by default will start attacking them with your weapon automatically. Pressing any of your skills below will activate them as you would expect.

However, there is an Auto mode that you will be using 99% of the time while leveling and running instances. Targeting is tough on a touch screen and while a little better with mouse and keyboard on the PC Client or an Emulator, you'll spend hours farming that you certainly won't want to be doing in long three+ hour sessions.

To activate it, click the Auto button at the bottom right of the screen, then select the monster(s) you want to farm, or all monsters, and close the window. This will continue to farm the monster(s) selected until you tap this button again to cancel it.

Tap to open the monster selection window

Select the monster(s) to farm.

Click the blue Auto button again to turn this off

Soon the game will give you a tutorial on auto potion but there are other features that we will skip over for now that I will come back to when they are needed

If you want to learn more about this anyway read up on Auto Combat.

Play Dead

After your first few quests one will unlock the skill Play Dead. This is an Adventure Skill that stops enemies from attacking you and quickly heals your HP and SP as you are playing dead. This is a great tool if you agro too many mobs to get them off, but is most useful to recover your resources, recovering your SP so you're not wasting your farming time waiting around for more SP.

You can access your Adventure Skills by opening the skills menu, then clicking the center icon at the top right of the screen.

Example of Archer Class Skills tab

Play Dead Skill in the Adventure Skills tab with bonus options!

You may have noticed the trigger options at the bottom of the skill in this screenshot. If you add this skill to your auto combat list is will automatically use this to disengage when your HP or SP gets low. Tapping on this skill brings up this list so you can customize this however you see fit. Some other skills also have options like this or checkboxes to turn on/off features of a skill that you may not want.

While the trigger explicitly states "Trigger at % HP" is also triggers when your SP is below this threshold. Though this will stop you and force you to heal, it will pause combat time usage which gives you tons more farming time for your sessions!

Another useful skill to know about toggling on and off is Auto Attack. This is checked by default and forces you to run in and start melee attacking when you tap or click on an enemy. Some jobs, like mages, should never auto attack and will instead cast spells so you can turn this off when playing jobs that don't need to be auto attacking.

You will also want to turn this off when catching pets since you don't want to kill them by accident. Finally, if you plan an auto attacker job you will wind up putting auto attack on your Auto skill bar anyway so at some point you'll probably just turn this off since it's trouble more often than not.

Camera

The main quest will also unlock the Camera. While this seems pointless at first glance, this is actually a critical feature for gaining Adventure Exp. This experience raises your "Adventure Rank" which in turn grants you new Active and Passive abilities, and main stat bonuses.

Taking a picture of each new monster you encounter grants adventure exp. Pictures of points of interest, places on your minimap with a blue Camera icon also grant adventure exp. Several of these points of interest are locked being main story progress, or side quests.

Get in the habit of taking a photograph of each new monster you encounter and grabbing those points of interest. Many important features are locked behind raising your adventure rank such as:

Ymir's Notebook which lets you save builds, allowing you to respec for free as much as you like!
Additional skill bars
Increased bag space
The skill "Prepare for Elite" which allows you to cast multiple buffs simultaneously with one skill, very important!
Several other things!

Get into the habit of taking pictures. You'll need a whole lot to raise your adventure rank.

Accessing the Camera

Adventure Handbook

You'll also get a brief introduction to the Adventure Handbook. This handbook contains collections of items and every item provides account wide stat bonuses. This includes headwear, cards, furniture, and pets just to name a few. Each of these things give bonuses when they are first crafted or looted from enemies. They also give another bonus if that item is deposited into your handbook. For example, crafting a headewar may give you a permanent +2 DEF, but depositing ALSO gives you another +3 attack.

Anything deposited into the handbook can be removed from anywhere, anytime, so you're not sacrificing anything if you deposit it. If you remove the item from the handbook you lose that deposit bonus until you put it back into the handbook.

If you want more details check out Adventure Handbook. We'll come back to this later when it's time to start working on deposits and unlocks but for now you don't have the zeny or materials to start working on these stat boosts.

"Headwear" is an all encompassing term for any gear equipped to the Head, Face, Mouth, Back, or Tail slot

Combat Time

The main quest will also introduce you to Combat Time. You can access this by tapping the More menu, then tapping on Settings.

Combat Time is the total number of minutes you can farm before you start to incur exp and drop rate penalties. Once your combat time has exceeded these penalties kick in. At first, the penalties are not that noticeable but once you're 90 minutes past the rates have decreased to less than 1%.

Your daily combat time can be extended by another 90 minutes every day by listening to the Jukebox in South Prontera or any other location with a Jukebox. Every minute you stand by the jukebox while it's playing music you receive 3 extra minutes of combat time so listening for 30 minutes reaches the 90 minute cap.

This bonus time does not carry over to the next day but is used first when you start farming again so make sure to farm for at least 90 minutes after listening to prevent wasting this time. This also includes any time gained from combat time potions so if you ever use those make sure you use that extra time up before the day rolls over or it will be wasted.

Read up on Combat Time for more details.

Combat Time and Game Mode Time

I recommend switching to Channel 1 on whichever server you're playing on and hanging out by the jukebox each day. There are usually lots of CD's queued up at the jukebox on channel 1 so feel free to AFK overnight so when you get on again you'll be ready to farm.

Bonus tip for those using offline farm, you can use this to get your jukebox time while offline. Make an empty auto skill bar, turn off auto MVP/MINI hunting, then turn on auto combat with stay alert next to the jukebox. When you come back to the game your character will have all that bonus time to spend since it was logged in that entire time. This is great to turn on before bed if you've farmed for the day so you wake up with all of your combat time ready to use!

Adventure Topic

This new system has replaced several new player systems in the past. Every ten levels a new set of objectives will become available and grant several rewards, including some "Freshman Medal's" which will be used later in town at a gacha machine. This specific gacha gives you every single reward by the time you get all of these medals so make sure you clear this out and follow along as you progress through the game.

There are also rewards at the bottom you get for completing more and more objectives such as headwear and other useful stuff.

Accessing Adventure Topic from the More menu

Example of the Adventure Topic screen

Kafra Services

By the time you reach base level 10 the main questline will send you to Prontera City and introduce you to the Kafra staff. Kafra Staff in cities offer saving services, storage access, and a teleport service. There are also Kafra workers outside of towns but they only offer teleport services.

Example Kafra Staff indicated by the Hairclip Icon on your minimap

Here is a breakdown of the various services:

Saving service saves this location as your respawn point. Anytime you die or use a butterfly wing you will appear at your last save location
Storage provides you with a massive box to store goods in which has tons of space. At base level 40 you'll also unlock shared storage which can be used to transfer things between characters. Later you can even add storage to your house!
Teleport service allows you to teleport to any zone you've been to for a very small fee. This is the best way to get around the world at dirt cheap prices, no cash shop required. Sometimes when you auto travel when tapping on quests you'll notice it takes you to a Kafra and auto teleports you to get you to your destination as fast as possible.

These services used to cost a very small bit of zeny, but recent patches have made these features free to use.

Inventory and Hidden Bag Options

While we're on the topic of storage we should discuss your bag. There are a few tabs at the top that make it easier to find potions, equipment, cards, etc. There is also a hidden menu, one you'll be using quite often.

This menu provides quality of life features that allow you to clean up your bag from anywhere in the world, auto sell junk, and lock items to prevent them from being sold. To access this menu first open your inventory Bag. Swiping up and down lets you scroll through your inventory. However, when you're at the top of your inventory swipe downward to reveal a hidden menu.

Hidden Bag Options Menu

The options are as follows from left to right:

Favorites marks an item as favorite and prevents you from selling, destroying, or modifying it
Deposit will move any items that you've already placed into storage right into the storage bin from anywhere in the world
- This means if you already have some Jellopy in storage and have more on your, using Deposit will move those from your inventory right into storage for free, from anywhere, even instances!
Sell pops up a sell prompt to sell off vendor junk from anywhere in the world
Comb sorts your inventory

Deposit and Sell keep your inventory clean and are easily one of the best quality of life features that I wish were present in every other RPG out there that makes you sift through loot. Use it, love it!

A recent patch has also added an option to Auto Sell junk. To turn this on, open your bag, pull down to access the hidden bag options and tap sell. The dialog will come up but now has a checkbox you can tap to enable auto sell.

I highly recommend you turn auto sell on. You can deposit some of these junk items as skins but otherwise you will never need any of this junk. It's all intended to be sold for zeny so just turn this on to save yourself the hassle.

Turning on the Auto Sell option

Job Selection

The main quest will eventually lead you to a red colored quest "Select Job". This will lead you to the Adventure Hall in Prontera City to select your starting job. Speaking to the NPC that this quest leads you to will bring up a job selection interface.

Here you can see each of the base jobs and each of the advanced jobs they turn into along with a list of a few skills from that job and a brief description of how it might play. You can also swipe up and down on the job icon tabs on the far left to see even more jobs. You can also swipe up and down on the job portraits to see jobs further down the line.

Original jobs have two paths, and four job advancements (T1 , T2, T3, and T4). Newer jobs don't have any alternative path, with most having only a base job, a T1 advancement and a T2 advancement. This does not mean they are weaker, they just progress differently. Throughout this guide I may approach a job advancement that you may not have if you picked a job like Ninja so don't worry if you don't see this option yet.

Example of Job Selection screen for Swordsmen

Example of Job Selection screen for Advanced Novice

Each job has up to four advancements that you will earn as you level up. A bunch of jobs have two options once you reach the first advancement, drastically altering how the job has played up to that point. For example, Acolytes can choose to become either a Priest that focuses on healing and support, or a Monk that focuses on Melee damage.

I've outlined the classes below as well as their advanced counterparts, with some keywords to describe them.