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. While it may not be the MOST optimal, it is a solid start. Any improvements to this guide should be submitted so new players can start off on the best foot!

Instead of choosing combat or gathering 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 a very long time, so no extra rat hides will go to waste.

Once you're fighting, click over to “Mine” and start gathering from an Orthoclase vein. Choose a vein with the most exp to start. This will help you get higher Mining level faster, which is necessary for unlocking masteries. Masteries are a big boost to your ore income, so focusing those as soon as possible is optimal. Later you may want to change to a vein with higher Purity so you can gather more ore at once. This matters less until you have some good masteries under your belt.

As you fight rats, you will want to craft Rat gear in the crafting window. You'll see that each crafted item 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 energize it. Using the scraps you got from deconstructing, unlock 3 energizement lines on the gear. You might not be able to craft any energizing shards at this point, but if you can afford to buy a couple off the market, it might be worth rerolling some bad 1% lines into good 3% lines. If you are short on scraps, don't craft more rat gear to deconstruct, just craft the scraps themselves. They give more exp for fewer mats and will also be needed to craft higher tiers of gear.

Repeat this for all your armor slots you can craft rat gear for. 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.

At this point, you should have a high enough crafting level to craft reinforcements and you should also be able to kill Lava Worms relatively easily for their teeth. Farm up a good chunk of reinforcements, you'll want to reinforce all your rat gear (and your hunting rifle) for a mix of +5 savagery and +5 fortitude.

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 Skrivets, 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 (yeah that rat gear was T0 it was so bad).

Repeat the same process with Skrivet gear as 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 upgrade items on the market rather than crafting them yourself. At this point you'll be able to decide on your own progression goals what you want to do.

While you're gearing up, you'll want to balance your gold spending between landing +5 reinforcements and unlocking masteries. The first mastery you should focus on getting as early as possible is Pack Hunter. This lets you kill more than 3 mobs at a time, and is crucial for farming drops to craft upgrade items and gear. Once you unlock it, make sure to queue it up a couple of times so it starts training. Level 3 should be sufficient.

You'll also want to increase your ore income. A great early-game mastery for increasing ore income is Surface Mining, which requires both Orthoclase Specialization and Anorthite Specialization to be at level 4. Surface Mining is also necessary for any higher-level mining masteries, so getting it up earlier will speed up your progression later on. After a few levels in Pack Hunter, make Surface Mining 4 your next goal.

The other 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. So focusing on mining masteries early is smartest.

Check in regularly to make sure the node you're gathering from has plenty of ore left and is the node with the most exp. Shift around if you need to.

Depending on the market (and your masteries), it may be smart to switch to Anorthite as soon as you unlock it. You may be able to sell the Anorthite and get more Orthoclase that way than by mining the Orthoclase directly. Anorthite will also give significantly more exp so you can level up faster.

When in doubt, focus on your gear progression, then mine the ore that you're shortest on for that progression.

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 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 Production level. If you are planning on being self-sufficient, it's a must to complete this every week. If you aren't sure, it's still worth it to complete for a few weeks to at least get you easily into T3. Then you can weigh whether or not the progression is worth it depending on your own goals.