====== New Player Guide ======

Getting started in a new game can always feel a bit overwhelming. So many options can mean so many places to mess up and fall behind in progression. This guide will walk you through the first weeks in Elethor. There are many different ways to progress in the game, so don't be discouraged by taking somewhat different paths. The worse paths or traps that new players may fall to will also be explained in these guides. Any improvements to this guide should be submitted so new players can start off on the best foot!

===== Actions =====

Instead of choosing combat or mining in Elethor, you choose both. The first thing you should do when getting started is click “Fight” and start fighting some rats. Their drops will be useful for some time, so no extra rat hides will go to waste. In fact, no drops are truly useless as they can be sold on market.

Once you're fighting, click over to “Mine” to see the mining section of the game.The mining page has 4 segments: Resource nodes, Mining lasers, Fossils and statistics. For now, go to "Resource nodes" page and start gathering from the pit; the default mining node everyone has.

In the top left, you'll see a number and another number in paranteses that indicates your remaining actions. You gain a buffer action (inside paranteses) every 25 actions. The game spends an action every 6 seconds for combat and decreases the number (outside the paranteses) by 1. The game can also bulk process actions together, so don't worry about it decreasing by up to 50 at once. You can click on top of the numbers to refresh your actions to your max.

If your actions fall to 0, then the number inside the paranteses (buffer actions) starts to go down. If both go down to zero, then you'll start to go negative actions, where you'll fight and mine 2.5x times slower. At -10k actions, you'll stop doing both completely.

At the start of the game, you have 1200 actions. This is enough for exactly 2 hours. You can increase this time by doing main quests (they give bonus actions as rewards) and the weekly quest "Pod Building" (that gives 10 bonus actions at the last quest). Buying VIP also gives 600 actions + 10% more actions. If you buy VIP, you'll start with a little over 3 hours instead of 2 hours of uptime you don't need to worry about refreshing actions.

===== Combat=====

Combat is the most intricate part of the game. It takes so much calculations that it lagged the game so players didn't get an action every 6 seconds like they should have. To fix this problem, combat actions are processed in batches. This way, you never actually lose combat actions to lag, but the sum of several actions appear in the "You gained" section. Don't be confused on this, just focus on how many of a monster you killed in the "Last fight" as that's the true indication of how well you're doing.

There is no winning formula that everyone uses. Everyone decides on slightly different reinforcements, energizements and even focus on killing different monsters. This will be mentioned in the later guides.

The combat/fight part of the game has 4 sub-sections:

==== Monsters====

Where you do your automatic combat actions every 6 seconds. You can choose which monster to fight here. You get permanent bonuses when you kill a certain amount of monsters (250k, 500k and caps at 1M kills) which is shown under the "Compendium" section under your character. This will be mentioned in the later guides.
At the start of the game, you can kill a maximum of 15 kills. This can be raised higher with masteries and abilities later on, which will be explained later. For now, try to focus on monster that you can max kill, as they give the most exp and you only really need exp more than anything else early on.

==== Dungeons====

You use an entry to a dungeon, in which you fight a monster 1v1 until you kill a certain number of them to get the rewards (RNG dependent amount). Some quests want you to kill some of these dungeon monsters later on. You can acquire more dungeon runs from daily/weekly quests. You can easily ignore the first 6 dungeons, as they aren't worth your time since what they provide can be bought cheaply at market. Keep in mind that the latest dungeons are critical as they have drops that cannot be bought or are always extremely expensive.

==== Incursions====

You get an incursion attempt daily if you're in a corporation where a team of 4 or less battles a horde of monsters. Ask your corpmates about joining higher ranked incursions for much better rewards!

==== Spire====

You attempt to kill 50 spire monsters in a round. Spire monsters have 10x the stats of the original ones. Sounds impossible, but you also get spire-only bonuses to compensate. Don't worry too much about this part of the game yet, just battle monsters in order, get some buffs, then repeat.

===== Mining =====

Mining is much simpler than combat overall. If you hover over the amount you're expected to collect, you can even see the actual formula mining is based upon. However, the path to raising your mining income is expensive. Early on, mining income is raised 66% through mining lasers, 33% through Prospector companion abilities, 1% through fossils. This is why if you want to invest in mining, simply level up lasers and don't even bother upgrading fossil shop at all, it's very expensive even late game. You unlock a new mining laser to use every 30 mining levels. Start with the percentage laser, then follow up with base ore laser when you get to lvl 30 mining.

In the "Resource Nodes" section, you'll see that there is an option to craft omninodes under the "Surveying" section. You passively have a chance to get geodata every minute and if you use 5, you can craft an omninode that only you can use. The omninode can have modifiers that make it better and it also always has 20% better stats. For this reason, you should always craft omninodes and stay on them. You can enhance the omninodes by spending platinum or geodata, but I recommend not doing that, as it has low return value. At the beginning of the game, you will overflow on geodata since your mining lasers are weak. This is ok, but if you don't like this, you do have the option to spend geodata to enhance omninodes.

By mining omnium, you will get fossil shards. By spending them on fossil shop, you can get temporary mining bonuses. You also get 3 resets per day. Try to focus on experience boosts early on.
Don't upgrade fossil shop until late game, it's way too expensive for little gain.

===== Improving Gear =====

As you fight rats, you will want to craft Rat gear in the crafting window. You'll see that each crafted item (until tier 8) can have +/- 3 stats from the average (what you see on the recipe itself in the crafting window). Try to craft an item for each slot that has better than average stats across the board. For all items you craft that are below average or aren't worth equipping, deconstruct them into scraps.

Once you get an item with good stats across the board, it's time to reinforce and energize it. Using the scraps you got from deconstructing, unlock 3 energizement lines on the gear. If you are short on scraps, craft the scraps themselves from the crafting page or buy from market if you're feeling lazy. As the prices of every energizement and reinforcement below the maximum tier are abundant and thus extremely cheap on market, you can buy the required reinforcement and energizement shards for cheap. reinforce all your rat gear (and your hunting rifle) for a mix of +5 savagery and +5 fortitude.

Repeat this for all equipment slots that you can craft rat gear. While working on this, you'll also want to complete the first leg of the Sidearm Instructor quest. This will give you a Troatic Sidearm, which can also be energized for %Damage, which will give you a nice boost.

After getting +5s across the board craft some energizing shards to reroll so 2 out of your 3 lines on your rat gear is 3% in either savagery or fortitude (or damage if it's your weapon or sidearm). Speed is useful, but a bit less so since you have such a low base speed to start with.

As soon as you can reliably kill the max amount of Skrivets (which is 15), stop investing in your rat gear. It will get replaced with Skrivet gear very soon. Start farming Skrivets for their pelts, as this is the main ingredient needed for T1 armor.

Repeat the same process with Skrivet gear as you did with rat gear. You'll find it's a bit more expensive because there are now 4 reinforcement slots to fill rather than 1, but your power will spike quickly. Keep farming!

This process will be repeated for T2 (Razen) and T3 (Karth) gear. Except at this point, you may find that it may be more beneficial to sell your drops to purchase crafting materials for the next tier on the market rather than farming them yourself. At this point you'll be able to decide on your own progression goals what you want to do.

Now that you know the basics, let's dive a bit deeper into the game.

===== Recyclobot=====

Recyclobot (which is shortened to Rbot) takes monster drops (of any kind) and converts them to points. Then, you spend 250k gold and an increasing amount of points (starting from 10k, increasing by 1k until 21st plat, then increasing by 500) to craft a platinum (called plat from now on). It goes on like this:
  * Plat #1: 250k gold + 10k points
  * Plat #2: 250k gold + 11k points
  * Plat #3: 250k gold + 12k points 
...
  * Plat #21: 250k gold + 20k points
  * Plat #22: 250k gold + 20.5k points
  * Plat #23: 250k gold + 21k points
and so on.

Plat is then used in Companions (Drone, Drake, Merchant, Prospector) to give passive bonuses that range from essential to powerful to niche to useless.

Recyclobot has 2 types of infinite upgrades: ore (level bonus) and gold (level exchange). The ore boost gives you a chance to craft another plat from thin air every time you craft one (you can get multiple plat from a single click if you level it high enough). The gold boost increases the points you get from drops.

At the start of the game, as your companion levels are low, investing into companions by spending plat isn't as lucrative. Therefore, you should craft and sell plat for profit. When you have none of the Rbot upgrades, you should craft 10 plat (subject to market prices of course, but it's mostly stable) by buying "Drop of Aether" from the market, converting it to points, crafting a plat, selling it on market and repeating it until you have crafted 10 plat and sold them all. This should give you up to 10M gold income per day; a pretty good income early on.

===== Companions=====

Companions gain experience passively and level up with every combat action you make, so it increases at a steady rate without you having to min-max it. Companions have passive bonuses that come with level alone, and abilities that each have to be leveled by spending plat. You can find more info about these abilities and prioritization (depending on which path you want to priorizite) in another guide (soonTM).

As a beginner, the abilities aren't that impressive. However, the passive companion bonuses definitely are. When you hit the max level of your companion (you still keep getting exp even if companion level is capped, don't worry), you should raise it by another 5 levels by spending plat. The passive bonuses, especially the combat ones are really significant early on.

There are 4 companions, and they all look at different parts of the game by granting bonuses and having abilities related to those areas. These are:
  * Drone: Defensive. Lowers enemy stats. Has combat utilities.
  * Drake: Offensive. Increases player attack. Has combat abilities.
  * Merchant: Combat income. Increases combat related income. Gives extra loot. More combat utility.
  * Prospector: Mining. Increases ore/geodata gain. Faster mining. Much better omninodes.

Beware: some later abilities are more expensive than others (2x or 5x cost to upgrade).

=====Making money early on=====

The best way to make money early on is through data chips, platinum and platinum emporium.
After an hour, you should get your first data chip. Selling it on market would get you around 3-4M gold, which is enough to bankroll the next step: crafting Plat for profit.
You should buy one the prime plat materials: Curved Blade, Drop of Aether, Unsorted Materials. Currently, the best price is at Drop of Aether. You should buy 3080 Drop of Aether and craft your first plat. Then, you sell your crafted Plat on market. With the gold gained, buy more Drops of Aether and repeat the cycle until you sold 9-10 Plat. This should get you around 10M net gold, which is quite a lot. Do this every day.

If you have any money problems, stop getting masteries and instead sell a data chip or 2.

The greatest income comes from Platinum Emporium, but is dependent on the deals (so you're under the blessing/curse of RNG). Every day, you should check out the daily and weekly deals at the Platinum Emporium under Market --> Enter Shop --> Platinum Emporium. In there, there are deals that all need Platinum, and some of these deals are a net positive. You can easily calculate if they're worth taking by checking if the trade rewards are sold for more in market. For example: if a deal wants 9 plat and gives 1.5M omnium, make this calculation:
  * If market price for plat is 3.5M, then 9 plat costs 31.5M gold.
  * If market price for omnium is 70, then 1.5M omnium costs 105M gold.
  * This trade would get you 73.5M gold.

This is why you should always keep a reserve of gold to craft or buy plat for these deals. Keeping a buy order 
for plat materials like drop of Aether for the next day is a good idea.

The most expensive deal is the fame token deal where you need up to 45 plat. Therefore, when deciding how much you want to save and how much to spend, the answer is simple: save 45 plat, spend the rest.

=====Quests =====

Quests are important to progress as they grant many different things such as dungeon unlocks, dungeon runs, combat/fame experience, the ability to trade with other players, many drops, uncraftable equipment and many others. There are 2 types of quests:
  * Main quests: the real deal, some key progression elements in the game are tied to these. When the following guides (or anyone in the game) mentions quests, they mean these.
  * Repeatable quests: There are many daily quests which grant you a bit of drops if you kill certain monsters and several daily/weekly quests that grant dungeon runs and permanent actions. With the current status of the game (early 2023), the early dungeons are entirely useless, so don't feel obligated to do these quests (they require turning in ore and drops, you spend money for getting more dungeon runs).

Early game, most of your income will come from selling Plat and deals from Plat Emporium. It will take a long time to change that, so don't worry about not max killing the monsters you're fighting. Progressing through quests and gathering exp is more important than optimal combat early on.

Finish the 'Sidearm Instructor' questline up until your first sidearm. Do this as soon as possible, it's a free item with decent stats and can be energized for %Damage, which will be a good boost this early.

Once that's done, focus on the main questline by completing 'A Grand Beginning' first. You might get gated at the final step of the quest (which requires killing Skrivets) but complete it when you can.

Then complete 'The Outlier' followed by 'Maintaining Supply Routes'. The end of 'Maintaining Supply Routes' will give you your first augment, which is another boost to your stats. It will also unlock 'The Gishin Excavation' questline, which will unlock your other 3 Gishin augments. These can be reinforced for stats that other items can't be, which you can see on the [[equipment_slots|equip slot]] page.

The 'Hunter's Bounty' daily quest is always worth completing as much as you can. The monsters to kill are the "main tier" monsters, meaning their drops are used to craft the armor for that tier. Drops will always be useful in either crafting the gear itself or scraps needed for higher tiers of gear.

The 'Pod Building' weekly is a good way to boost your experience gain and gain permanent action. At the start, it may seem a bit expensive, so it may be skipped for week 1.

===== Masteries =====

Masteries is where you spend data chips to get permanent abilities and modifiers. Masteries are useful in every field in the game; covering mining, combat, income, injections and various miscellaneous areas.

For faster progression, exp masteries are a must. They are cheap to pick up and level up fast too. Any player that wants to progress fast should take these masteries, both for mining and combat.

Some combat masteries may look inviting, but they won't pay off for a while and might not even take effect at all (1% more gold from 8 gold is…still 8 gold) until you hit higher monsters that have higher income that you can kill many of. An exception is the drop rate masteries; these are decent. In my opinion, focusing on mining or exp masteries early is a good option. You can buy data chips on market to increase your masteries instantly.

DO NOT invest into cybernetics; they are designed as a data chip sink for end game players that grant some decent benefits for massive costs. It's much better to get your masteries maxed and progress with other masteries ASAP. 

When in doubt, focus on your gear progression, look for quests to complete, and focus on what brings you the most exp.