Game Progression

Levels 30-40

Continue Following the Main Questline

Hopefully you get the routine at this point.  Continue with the main story quest.

Novice Benefits

You may have already noticed a yellow button labeled "Novice Benefits".  This provides several bonuses for new players.  These benefits can be accessed by clicking on the Novice Benefits button near your Minimap.

There are several sections represented by Tabs on the left side of this interface which we will cover below from top to bottom.

Novice Benefits Icon

Novice Sign-In

The first tab contains a 7-day sign in event which rewards you with several goodies such as headwear, offline farm time, meteor chains, and a fashion costume.  You have 30 days to complete this so just remember to come to this screen and click the Collect button(s) at the bottom to claim your rewards to each day.

Novice Sign-In Interface

Free Headwear!

Novice Adventure Log

The second tab is a progression system that offers rewards as you complete dailies.  You can see a list of exactly what grants experience to this log by going to this screen then clicking on the circular scroll icon at the top left of this screen.

There is also a "Luxury" line below which provides the second line of extra rewards if you purchase it, much like a "battle pass".  None of these rewards are necessary.  There are several catch-up items, a Gacha pet, and other goodies, but none of this is exclusive so you really don't need it.

Remember, you have 30 days to receive all of these rewards.  None of these rewards will change your life but the freebies include headwear, cards, and other things that will help you get caught up!  Make sure you do your dailies and get this completed!

Location of the Objectives to level up your Novice Adventure Log

List of some objectives in the Novice Adventure Log

First Recharge Goodies

Do not buy any of this!  I would not consider any of this an actual value to new and upcoming players!  There are better things to spend money on if you are so inclined but this ain't it.

First Recharge Goodies Interface

Super Value Giftpack

Again, you do not need to buy any of this!  There is only one thing here that is actually worth anything if you're going to spend and that's the last item, the small secret.  This is a very good headwear that improves damage, increases zeny earned, and provides a strong deposit bonus if you replace it in the future.  This will come back in the Time Wish Gachapon machine though so you don't have to have this, feel free to skip it!

Super Value Giftpack Interface

Strong Headwear

Recharge Goodies

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, do not buy into any of this!  These are just "rewards" for spending so much on cash shop currency.

Even the "free" Alpaca shown here is just a 3-day rental to try to get you to buy the permanent version in the super value giftpack.  However, Acolytes that have reached third job can get one for a bit of zeny after completing a quest line.  The only thing unique about this one is that it might be wearing a different colored collar or something.  Since you can multi job later everyone can  get this for free.

The Card and Wings aren't bad, but the price tag is way too high.  Just skip this and move on.

Kafra Adventure Log

Since we covered the Novice Adventure Log above let's talk about the Kafra Adventure Log, the one that I mentioned a while back in the New Event menu.  This log can be accessed by clicking New Event at the top of your screen and selecting Adventure Log.

Location of the Kafra Adventure Log

This log automatically gains experience as you complete your daily and weekly assistant tasks such as doing mission boards, completing Endless Tower, etc.  Each level rewards you with various items with three different "line's" that rewards come from.  Additional lines can be purchased much like a "season pass".

The first line contains free rewards that everybody can get without having to spend any money.  Some of these are actually pretty good like headwear, mounts, and even a costume at times even though usually it has no stats, it's just for fashion.

The second line costs about $8 USD and usually contains a few more headwear, maybe a costume with some good stat unlocks, and sometimes even a pet or mount.  Just like the Novice Adventure Log this purchase is completely optional.  The only thing you'll miss out on if you don't buy it is a couple of deposits and some convenient items.

The third line costs about $30 USD and has always seems to offer the same reward scheme between seasons.  You always get a large amount of zeny, some gold mora coins, sometimes a unique pet, and one or two other things.  Most of the time the pet is nothing special other than a very small HP deposit so this is also completely optional.  Trust me when I say that buying this is a safe skip.

For more on this system read up on Kafra Adventure Log. 

Using the Exchange

At this point you're probably feel like you need to pick up a weapon or need some gear.  Before we go into details on your gear and waht to look for let's first talk about the exchange and understand how it works so you can find what you're looking for.  Using this is not as obvious as you would think...

First and foremost the price of goods sold on the exchange is not set by the players.  The game automatically prices base equipment, and all other goods using supply and demand with the exchange price adjusting throughout the week.  An intrestin bit about this is that gear that has already been synthesized or upgraded to a higher tier simply adds the cost to do this as if you bought all those materials right off of the exchange.  

That's right, there is no savings if you buy an item that's already synthesized compared to just buying the materials off of the exchange.  You're paying just as much as if you bought the materials yourself and since you can use your own materials along the way I would argue you'll actually save zeny if you do this step yourself.  If you saved up the zeny instead by selling your materials you incur listing fees so you'll actually lose some zeny along the way unless you use your own materials or have saved up enough zeny to outright buy what you need.

Therefore, you should only buy synthesized equipment if the item is rarely in stock or if it has a good fourth enchant, a topic for a little later...


With that out of the way find an Exchange NPC and select the Exchange option to open this interface.

Location of the Exchange NPC in Prontera City

Exchange Interface

Let's look at equipment since this is a spot where things get confusing for new players.  Below is a search for the weapon "Luna Bow".  You'll notice that there are actually two of these.  The number in braces represents the number of slots that gear has.

When you search for "Rosa Bracelet" there are two options but only one of them has braces, "Rosa Bracelet [1]".  This means that the one without braces is not slotted.

Search for "Luna Bow", notice the one that has a single slot

Search for "Rosa Bracelet", notice the one that has no slots

By default weapons always start with one open slot but Offhand, Armor, Garment, Footwear, and Accessories start with no open slots.  Each of these can have one slot added to them so when you search for gear on the exchange there are always two options for any given piece of equipment.

Let's select Luna Bow [1] from the search list.  You'll notice a few bows are listed here.  Each bow shown has a different refine, status, enchant, or quantity.  Use the legend below to better understand what you're looking at.

Example of a "Clean" Luna Bow with no refines or slots with 219 in stock

Legend for Exchange Equipment

Example of a one slot broken Luna Bow refined to +6

Example of a one slot Luna Bow refined to +4

BROKEN equipment means it cannot be refined until it is repaired and all repairs require one copy of the base item.  The copy does not need to be slotted or refined to match the original it just needs to be the same item.  All broken equipment is 100% functional in this state so buying broken equipment is perfectly fine if you see a good deal, functionally there's no downside to this.

Later you'll unlock the Enchanting feature.  These enchants roll three random stats and can be added to every piece of gear but rarely you'll get lucky and roll a fourth stat referred to as the "Fourth Enchant".  These are very rare and increase the price of the item, causing it to be listed as a separate item on the exchange.

Gear with fourth enchants do not show anything special on their equipment icons.  You'll have to tap on the item and scroll down to see if it has an enchant on it.  You're not looking for gear that has this at this point in the game but I'm pointing this out because you may accidently buy something that costs more just because it has an enchant that may not even be good for your job.

If you see multiple items at the same refine level such as 3 different +10 Luna Bows this means that one may be broken, and some have fourth enchants.  Again, in the example below note that I had to scroll down in the item stats to see this enchant so it's not immediately apparent that the item is enchanted until you examine it.

Example of a Broken +6 Stardust Robe with a Fourth Enchant

Don't worry about the savings for buying a slotted weapon as the savings are minimal for most pieces of gear.


I highly recommend you read up on Gear Systems to better understand these processes and why & when they matter.  I'll bring this up again later when we start refining your real weapon.

Buy a Cheap Weapon

The Epic Spirit weapon from the main quest can be tiered up and enhanced without spending much.  You'll eventually want to replace this with a serious +10 weapon that fits your build but you don't need to stress about this for a while.

If your Epic Spirit weapon does not suit your play style you may want to consider spending a little bit of zeny on a cheap starter weapon to get you through.  Here is a list of some starter weapons that are extremely cheap that provide sizeable stat boosts:


Please note that there are other weapons that are cheap with high stats but some of these weapons require T2 or T3 job such as the Forest Hunter bow which gives lots of attack, crit, and crit damage which is great for hunters but cannot be used until T3 job around base level 100+.

Pets

By level 34 you'll receive a new quest called "Capture Pet".  Head to south prontera and speak to Dean to initiate the pet capture quest to get your first pet, a Poring.

Location of the Capture Pet quest in South Prontera

Once you complete the quest you will also get a new item in your bag called "Pet Egg Bag" which will store all of your pets.  You can open this to bring out a different pet anytime you like.  The old pet will be put back in this box in an egg, stored in this box.

Now you're able to catch new pets.  You'll need taming items to do so which come from a few sources, though the ones most accessible to you are the exchange and running your weekly Endless Tower instance.  This instance is not unlockable quiet yet but is a great source of pet taming items.  However most of these materials are rather cheap these days off of the exchange, with most costing between 30-100k each.

You can also send your pet out on adventures to target farm cards.  However, the rates on the good cards are low here you can easily blow hundreds of hours hoping for one card when you could have farmed up enough zeny to buy hundreds of cards with all the wasted combat time.  Since pet adventures consume your combat time you should really avoid this feature until much later when you're strong enough to know why this is unnecessary.

Pet adventures is one feature that could use a remake since it has not been updated since launch so I'm not going to cover it in this section.

Pet Labor

One feature you do want to utilize is Pet Labor.  This lets you send your pet out to work for a shop to generate free stuff for you.  This does not consume combat time so there is no reason not to do this.

To access this open your Marveling Pet Bag and select the center tab on the far right side of the screen.

Selecting the Pet Labor interface from the far right, bottom tab

Selecting the Item Shop, but no pets avialable for this yet

From here, select the shop you want them to work at.  For now you'll only have access to the item shop and will unlock more as you progress through the game.  Unfortunately our Poring currently does not meet the requirements since it must be at least level 45 to work here so it will be some time before you can assign him to work, so come back to this around that time and set him to work in the Item shop.

If you want to learn more about pets, including things I've skipped over such as Pet Adventure then look over the dedicated Pets page.

Daily Routine

At this point you should be doing the following each day:


If you've run out of combat time and want to work on something useful then focus on Adventure Exp.  There are some great skills at higher ranks like a way to respec for free, a skill that combines all your buffs into one, additional skill pages, and many other goodies.