This is a casual guide with things I found during the alpha/CBT, I hope it can help someone!
Guide author: xirii
Introduction
Levelling in SOLO is VERY similar to other theme park MMORPG, the best advice I can give you is to complete EVERY SINGLE quest that you see as you follow through the main questline. This will both give you as much exp as possible and give you a good chunk of gold throughout the levelling process. While levelling you will receive tutorial quests for life skills and other game mechanics, these are fairly simple and quick but worth paying attention to.
Important Notes
- Always pick up quests with gold marker!
- Remember to do Biographies (CTRL+L)
- Check out video guide if you prefer that way:
Level 1-24
Follow the main story quests and side quests. You will receive the mount around level 4, this will greatly speed up travel so make sure to use it as much as possible! You can also talk to NPCs while mounted to turn in or accept quests, the wing mounts are great for this as they are small enough for you to go into little pavilions to give in quests and such.
If you find yourself at level 15/16 with no quests, check the cultivation window (the small red icon to the left of your minimap) for a tutorial quest, that will get you back on track!
REMINDER: Make sure to check for unlocked Biography quests (CTRL+L) as these will help with EXP.
Level 24-25
During levelling, you might hit a roadblock at level 24, where the next main story quest will require you to be level 25 to continue. At this point, I would recommend farming Frostbitten Path as you will likely have some quests just outside this dungeon also.
When you go to the instance portal and enter, you can add an NPC to your party that will do REALLY good damage and speed up this grinding process, if you find yourself struggling to survive during the dungeon grind you can swap the NPC to a healing role instead by going to “Companion Recruitment”, you’ll find this in the bottom right menus.
Once you have completed the dungeon quests then it’s best to complete the dungeon objectives as quickly as possible and skip any unnecessary trash.
Level 32/33-34
This is where you will hit the second roadblock, the main story quest will require you to be level 34 to continue. At this point, you will be either most of the way through level 32 or early into level 33. Here you may look for Heroic Events to do (you may have weekly cultivation to do 4x Heroic Events in a specific map so have a look just in case) do some single-player Blood Ruvia Bounties on your map in the open world or you can go and speed run Frostbitten Path.
At this point you should have 2 NPC helpers to add to your party, again making the dungeon go quite quickly even if farming solo. Same as before, if you still have any quests for Frostbitten Path at this point, complete them on the first run, then you can speed run the dungeon after that for exp gain if that is the route you choose.
Level 34-36
You guessed it, back on the ol’ dusty quest trail. Exactly the same as you have been doing already, follow the main story quests while picking up ALL quests you see on the map. If you’re feeling spicy and they are in the area you’re already questing in, you can do some Heroic Events and Ruvian bounties for a bit of bonus exp.
REMINDER: Make sure to check for unlocked Biography quests (CTRL+L) as these will help with EXP.
Level 36-Student I
This is your third and final roadblock. You can do much of the same as before, Ruvian Bounties, Heroic Events and/or Frostbitten Path. Also, I know I just said it but, REMINDER: Make sure to check for unlocked Biography quests (CTRL+L) as these will help with EXP.
Okay, so you maxed out your level 36 EXP bar? OKAY! Now you need to go to your class hall, you can do so by using the portal skill you obtained during levelling. You will find a new quest in your class hall that will promote you to Student I, the max level attainable in SOLO at the moment!
Congratulations!
I’m Student I. What now?
So this is where the endgame kinda opens up and the game really starts to kick in.
Cultivation
First and foremost, there are a ton of “tutorial” quests within the Cultivation window (The red circle icon to the left of your mini-map). I would recommend working through the PvE and PvP ones at least to unlock various aspects of the game and get a full set of base PvP gear. There are also PvX cultivations that will unlock various life-skill aspects of the game if that’s something you want to dive right into.
The Cultivation window is something you’ll be interacting with on a daily basis so it’s best to familiarise yourself with it early.
Main Story
So now you’re Student I, you will have unlocked the continued main story. This is where my knowledge becomes a tad limited so bear with me. I have continued through the main story which has granted me ilvl 45 PvE gear and also has unlocked further dungeons, for this reason, I highly recommend working through the rest of the main story if you plan on doing PvE content.
There are side quests in the areas that the main story will take you to, I have not done these side quests so I cannot comment on whether they are worth doing for anything specific OR if they are worth saving as an EXP backlog for when the level cap is possibly increased, I will likely edit this guide when I know more, but for now please use your own judgement.
Basic Endgame Loop
Okay so, the endgame really opens up and you can do whatever you would like to do in the endgame. The premise is, you will be given rewards that match the type of content you are doing. If you are doing Dungeons, for example, you will receive PvE gear/currencies. If you do PvP, you will receive currency to progress in a PvP environment. If you choose to do PvX or “Leisure” activities, you will be rewarded to further that path.
There are some limited exceptions to this, which is some cultivation quests MAY offer you other endgame progression currencies, for example, there may be Leisure cultivation that awards Mysterious Parchment, which is used to purchase/craft PvE gear. So it’s always worth checking your Cultivation window to see what’s available.
Dailies
Dailies are a part of almost every MMO endgame and it’s not much different here. The easy path here is to check your Cultivation window for the dailies you would like to do, if you are aiming for PvE, I would recommend any with Mysterious Parchment as a reward. Working alongside the Cultivation dailies you can also run all 5 dungeons on Normal difficulty each day for a chance at ilvl 50 gear, Parchments and materials. Also, the Heroic Missions and Blood Ruvia Bounties can be done each day for gold, rep and currency that can be used to purchase, you guessed it, Mysterious Parchment (the purchasable parchments have a limit of between 1 and 2 parchments per character per week). You can find these vendors in any major town, but they are all clumped up together nicely in Cloudrise.
Weeklies
Weeklies again are an integral part of any MMORPG experience, in SOLO you’ll be able to see your weeklies in the Cultivation window, so you can do as you wish with them. Also, you are able to run all 5 dungeons on Hard difficulty once a week for a chance at ilvl 60 gear, materials, possible housing items and Mysterious Parchment. Also, you can compete on the dungeon clear speed leaderboards starting at Hard difficulty. As mentioned before there are a few vendors that will see Mysterious Parchment on a weekly lockout, so make sure to check those out if you miss any activities towards your weekly parchment cap.
Mysterious Parchments cap
One important thing about Mysterious Parchment: there is a weekly limit of how many you can get and any further will be wasted. You can get 10/week normally and the next 2 will be converted into a buff. After that, you can’t get any more from dailies, weeklies or shops.
If you do the 3 weekly dungeon runs as mentor and student, you will get 2 stacks of a corresponding buff which will allow you to redeem the 11th and 12th parchment box. The weekly mentor quest also rewards you with 2 Mysterious Parchment boxes that don’t count towards your weekly limit.
So in total, you can only get 10 without a mentor/student and 14 (12+2) with a mentor/student.
A daily dungeon is 7, Bounty weekly + biweekly 3, Lantern biweekly 2 and weekly Biographies 1. In total, you can get 13 boxes/week just from dailies/weeklies. That is 1 more than you can redeem even including the mentor quest. (I’m also not sure if Biographies reset more than once per week)
While you can buy 4-5 boxes per week (2 from bounty, 2 from the lantern and 1 from attendance but takes 10 days of tokens) they count towards your weekly limit so you should only do that to fill up to the max (10 or 12) if you couldn’t do some quests during the week. If you buy them early you’ll waste your quest rewards.