Expectations

This is not your typical "mobile game"

Nostalgia has brought many of us here to experience the game of our younger years.  All those cool crit popups and builds of yesteryear that we never had time to farm up back in the day are enticing.  However, understand that Ragnarok M is more of an expansion to classic Ragnarok Online (iRO) with a reimagining of the game for the modern era.  Expectations on character growth based on your experiences in the original RO should be completely forgotten.  The game throws a ton of systems at you, all of which provide a constant stream of character growth far beyond what was capable in RO.

You've likely been overburdened by these systems already as there is quite a bit of information overload.  This game has a ton of growth systems that you'll need to learn the in's and out's of to succeed.  Each of these systems is covered in depth throughout the guide.

Be forewarned, this is not your typical mobile game where you can pick up the game and do 5 minutes of dallies and eventually "max out" in a few months.  Before we begin, let's talk about a few key topics that are likely to come up as you start pushing into the game...

Messing up your build

Mistakes in your build were catastrophic in classic RO and most MMORPG’s released during this time period.  Here you don’t need to worry about this.  Respecs to your stats, skills, and aesir monument cost zeny and can be done at any time, no cash shop required.  

After you gain a few adventure ranks you’ll be able to purchase an item called Ymir’s Book which lets you save and load builds.  You can use this to respec all your stats and skills, then save it, allowing you to load this blank slate anytime to respec anytime for free.  No worries about this early on, you’ll get there sooner than you think. 

Character Growth

While gear has always played a major role in MMORPGs, several subsystems start to unlock as you level that become even more critical than gear.   When you reach base 40, job 40 and unlock your second job advancement, the main quest will unlock the ability to access your Aesir Monument.  This is a growth system that looks very similar to the Final Fantasy 10 sphere grid.  Once you hit base level 80 you'll get a quest to unlock the rune box, another growth system that lets you slot in runes to add or augment skills, sometimes significantly allowing for new types of builds altogether.  At some point you'll build your house and realize that you get stats and drop rate bonuses for investing in this too.  The list of systems goes on and on, and you'll need to invest zeny into each of them.

This means zeny farming is the most important thing in this game for character growth.  To succeed you're going to have to balance your spending between the various systems, identifying your highest priority as you go.  Everything in this game costs zeny and it's up to you to decide where to spend it and there are many times where you'll have to test things to determine where best to spend your money.  There is no set path forward for any job, you're going to have to think on your own as you go.

Gear is not always the answer and often puts you far behind if the other systems are neglected, extremely far behind.  Do not chase % bonuses when your base attack is low, especially when you'd be paying 20-30 million for 2% attack versus spending that 20-30 million on 300-400 base attack or more in your adventure handbook early on providing you with much more damage!    Pushing towards % increases as a new player is a huge trap and you'll feel like you wasted millions when you realize you only gained a few thousand damage for it.

Level 120 Boost has been Removed

Many guides and YouTube videos mention a level 120, T3, or Third Job "boost".  This is no longer in the game so you'll have to work your way up there from the ground up.

Don't let this discourage you though.  The main quest also seems to give significantly higher exp than before and several sources of newbie equipment have been added to get you going faster than before this boost was added.

It's still going to take some time to catch up but as I've leveled a new account I've found the new progression path more organized rather than just throwing you in and hoping for the best.

Prepare to be carried

While you can certainly play this game on your own you really want to find groups to carry you through instances.  The rewards from weekly instances are a massive boon to new players offering equipment, cards, runes, materials, zeny, and adventure handbook progress.

Chances are it'll be hard to find random groups so try to find an active guild with people willing to carry you.  Some content like Endless Tower (ET) is easy for many people to carry you through the first 80 floors without any issue and even then, the last 20 aren't that bad for people who've been playing for a while.  The first few clears of ET will provide you with lots of boss materials as well adventure exp for your handbook.  You can take photos of these bosses, even after they are defeated, to fill up your adventure handbook.

Make it a point to get these weekly instances done.

Understanding Gear

The game offers equipment in three primary varieties:


There are other types of gear such as Ancient Relics but those aren't worth covering yet since these are very late game items.


There are also several systems used to upgrade equipment such as:


This is a daunting list of things to work on when you start out.  Early on you're going to want to focus on gathering up Ancient Equipment from rift challenge instances that you'll slowly unlock as you level.  The game will give you an Epic Spirit weapon as you perform job advancements which is quite strong and worth Tiering up for the upgrades it gives.  This will get you through early-game until you can invest enough into your main weapon.  Your main weapon will probably not overtake your epic spirit weapon for quite some time so don't stress about getting a stronger weapon until you're level 80 or higher.

For more on this read up on Equipment Systems.

Guilds

A really hard truth for some of you is that you really must join a guild on your main character.  As with most games it's a huge boon to have friends to aid you in progression to challenge tough content.

That said, even if you don't want to socialize or haven't decided to commit to the game yet you don't have to commit to doing things with a guild, but you must join one.  This is because a few critical growth systems can only be accessed from within a Guild.  One of these systems, the Aesir monument, has a huge impact on your performance by not only enhancing your stats, but alters your skills and sometimes even grants new skills that significantly boost your potential.  If you're that afraid of commitments just create your own guild, so long as you wind up in one that you can access these systems from that's all that matters for now.

That said, being in a large guild, even if you do not participate in guild events, you can claim weekly rewards that give you zeny, contribution, and honor proof.  Early on in the game I rarely did anything with my guild (maybe once every other month?) and still received tons of free stuff every week, easily a few million zeny, lots of praying card packs, and much more!

Trust me, joining a guild is critical to your success.  Even if you choose to leave the guild or get kicked in the future you don't loose anything you've gained from being in that guild.  There is no risk to you so don't fret and just do.  Once you understand more about this and are familiar with the rewards you can decide if you want to take guilds further and find a more active guild.

For more details on this read up on Guild and Facilities.

Combat Time

The game adds a set amount of time every day that you can use to farm and level with.  Once this time is up you start to incur exp and drop penalties that are very small at first, but eventually stop 99.9% of all exp and drops.  This time is shared across your account so you're going to have to decide on farming between your main character or an alt if you prefer.

At first you receive 300 minutes per day.  This time can roll over onto the next day, adding to your total.  This total cannot go higher than 900 minutes so you can skip two days of farming and use all 900 on your third.  Once you reach base level 160 on any character that number increase to 450 minutes per day with a cap of 1350.  This is a long way away but is an incentive to push hard since this is 50% more daily income.

You also get time every week dedicated to instances which is used before it uses time from your combat time pool.

I advise you to read up on the Combat Time article for more details about this, it's important to understand.

Focus on Zeny Farming

Just about every growth system in the game uses zeny so your primary focus to get stronger is to farm as much zeny as possible, always.  To maximize this effort you must always target monsters you can kill in one hit whenever possible.  Higher level monsters only drop a couple more zeny... we're talking 5-10 more zeny from mobs that are 30-50 levels higher.  Two shotting enemies cuttings your profits in half for small gains that never outweigh the time lost.

Always try to one shot monsters, don't be impatient!

Free Job Unlocks

One great feature of this game is Multijob which allows you to switch to another class.  Up until recently, you've only been able to do this with BCC.  Recent patches have added the ability to unlock all non-collab jobs without having to spend any BCC, no cash shop or RNG required!

You need to be level 150 to start doing this which may seem like a bummer, but switching jobs while you're trying to push up in the level is a huge detriment since those other jobs needs their its own gear to succeed which will only slow you down as you divert funds to other classes.

This is a long way away for a new player but a nice reward to look forward to.  Don't stress too much about unlocking all "the best" jobs early on and just push hard to start unlocking them for free.


For more on this read up on Multijob.

Collect Everything

You’re going to become a hoarder playing this game.  Hats, tails, backpacks, pets, furniture, photos, toys, all sorts of stuff.  Each of these things gives all of your characters permanent stats.  Therefore I will state this many times throughout the guide:

Do not neglect the bonus stats from your adventure handbook!

Brand new players should focus on finding gear before entertaining this idea but start on this once you're comfortable because it is the backbone of this game and will hold you back if you ignore it.