Newbie Guide

The main goal in the beginning is to get as far in the stages as you can. Stage progress is more important than progress in other areas of the game (towers, bosses, later dungeon) as stage progress determines your farming (online or offline) rewards.

At first just follow the guide missions. They will introduce you to the different areas of the game. As soon as you're unable to progress (easily), you can try to:

1 - See if you can progress in the Growth Tower (see below under everyday resources)

2 - Allocate extra talent points (first) or gold (second). The base stats (attack, HP, defense) are good places to start. HP recovery, MP and MP recovery you pick if you need them. Ignore the rest for now (especially attack speed and normal attack damage are bad early on).

3 - Use gems to summon weapons or armor. You'll slowly progress towards Mythic and Fantasy tiers.

4 - Level up weapons or armor. Prioritize leveling your equipped items first (sword, then armor, then belt). Then start leveling your other gear for the owned effects (again sword first, then either armor or belt depending on whether you need HP recovery or defense more).

Use your everyday resources:

1 - Growth Tower tickets (3/day + 1 ad) - get as high as you can and sweep at the end of the day to collect ad - gives XP, gold and gems.

2 - Gear Stone Tower tickets (3/dag + 1 ad) - get as high as you can and sweep at the end of the day to collect ad - gives upgrade stones for gear and dice for rolling bonus effects on skins and skill stones

3 - Skill Growth Boss tickets (3/day + 1 ad) - gives skill books and skill coins

4 - Emblem Boss tickets (3/day + 1 ad) - gives emblems

Of these, the resources from the Growth Tower will help you most in the beginning. Leveling up will give you talent points to improve stats.

If you have a lucky pull (get a good Mythic or even Fantasy weapon or armor, skipping one or more you don't have):

1 - This is a good time to level it up and not summon this type of gear for a while

2 - Disassemble it (a few times) to fill the gaps. You can safely do this as gear is about unlocking, not about how many you have. This is important as all gear also has passive ('Owned Effect') bonuses, so unlocking lower gear is important. It costs only 1k gems per step (if you go multiple steps, make sure to select only 1) and you can always 'merge' it back for free.

As soon as you get some skills (from skill summon), you can start allocating these in your skill slots:

1 - For stages and towers, the best skills are the AoE skills from the Magic category: best is Sword Rain, followed by Earth Explosion and Magnetic Field. Spinning Blade (Mythic slash skill) is also good. Check the Skill Builds page for more details.

2 - Don't forget to switch on the auto button.

Spending gems:

1 - Don't hesitate to spend gems. It doesn't hurt to have a small reserve (10-20k) but the rest you can spend. You'll get a lot of gems, both as a beginner (from the guide missions) and in later stages. If you're somewhat active, you'll get 30k-50k gems each day.

2 - Summoning is a good way to spend gems. In the beginning that's weapons and armor. Soon skills and a little later belts will be possible too. Belts are very good gear, giving an extra attack multiple and boosting defense (that you've been lacking until belts) so as soon as they unlock... summon a lot of them.

3 - Small fees for disassembling gear (see lucky pull, above) and resetting talent points are also a good way to spend gems.

Beginner Tips by @legend9565:

1) For leveling up at start, the growth tower is important. It is suggested to not sweep but rather try to clear the next floor.

2) Without using the growth tower tickets, you can level up the fastest by idling the stage you are not able to clear.

3) Awakening the bless skills should be prioritized for the crit rate.

4) Gems should not be used to get relics before stage 9 or 10.

5) Relics like attack speed and MP recovery% are not very useful.

6) It's suggested to keep the MP recovery at level 15-20 and MP at level 20 to clear any MP shortage. As you awaken skills, their MP costs increase, so upgrade your MP and MP recovery further as needed.

7) Buy all the talent presets ASAP.

8) Make a talent preset for pushing. Defense should be 90% of the enemy's attack. Keep your HP recovery at its cap. Check "HP Recovery max %/sec" on your stats sheet to find this. You will update this talent preset frequently.

9) Make a talent preset for bosses and towers that has zero defense and equal HP and attack. Get MP and MP recovery to level 20, and increase them as needed as your MP costs increase. Get the crit rate, crit damage, and damage reduction talents to level 20.

10) Invest in sword and armor at the beginning until mythic. Don't upgrade them above level 100 for the time being. Fantasy gear can exceed level 100.

11) Check Class Up#Class Up Boss for tips on defeating the Class Up Boss.

12) Don't use reroll dice before awakening 5 on skins.

13) If you're going to die in a guild battle, you can quickly exit before dying to prevent using your ticket and give you a second chance.

14) Upgrading relics is the most important. If you want the area complete bonus, it takes 55k gems. If you don't want the complete bonus, still get min damage, max damage, and HP.

15) You can upgrade the relics which are 5 stages above you, so if you want to upgrade relic of some type check if the same chapter buff is available in the next 5 chapters.

16) Changing skill presets mid battle applies a cooldown on them so avoid it but changing talent preset mid battle is very useful. Example - use a preset which has high attack and HP with no defense. This is good at the stage start since it takes many enemies down, when you have low HP, switch to a preset having high defense and HP recovery and regen till you have good HP. Switch in-between to clear stages easily.

Source: Pain on Discord (2023-04-07)