A general guide for new/returning players

[Hungibungi]

Hi-hi!
Since I couldn't find any relevant guides for new/returning players that is actually up-to-date, I decided to write one that should stand the test of time.

 

Before you can begin reading this guide, there are 4 requirements:

1. If you're in North America (NA, Yura), you need to join the Cerulean Order. Crimson League is niche and should only be chosen if you know what you are doing! It's the opposite in Europe (EU, Jinsoyun) where most players are in the Crimson League.
   • This is where most of the community is for each region, and it will give you access to the corresponding Faction Chat channel.
   • If you joined the wrong order by accident, you can swap it later. Just focus on the quests.
   • If the Crimson League is full, you can swap it later, just focus on the quests.
   • To swap factions, you need to go to Silverfrost Mountains -> Zaiwei -> Merchant Square and talk to the NPC Sul Lipin:
2. You need to complete the yellow (main) quests.
   • Make sure to boost your character once the Soul Boost button is available below the mini map!
     
3. You need to complete the purple quests. If you get stuck with one, there are YouTube videos about them (as they are the same as 5 years ago). You can also ask in World or Faction Chat (check which one is more active in your region).
4. You need to complete the orange quests up to a point where you can accept the weekly challenges. You won't be able to finish them all, but just do them till you can.
   • Dawn of Khanda Vihar, Aransu School, Demonsbane and Emperor's Tomb orange quest side acts are the ones that can be completed solo, primarily with a special solo instance marked with the orange quest arrow. Emperor's Tomb also requires the player to walk inside to talk to Juna first, then walk out to access the solo instance.

 

You are all set and ready to do dungeons? Nice! But before that, let's rather start with your inventory, as it will fill up quickly and you don't want to trash useful items, do you? 😜

1. Use the wardrobe for storing weapons, outfits, pet skins, and other cosmetics
2. The cheap inventory expansion rows should generally give you enough space to hold on to everything.
3. Basic junk thresholds would be any non-consumable items with a level lower than 50 and any gear that you have better of.
4. Generally speaking, keep everything that you get from Soul Boost, Dungeons, Battle Passes, Daily and Weekly Challenges.
5. Food is usually useful, even the bonus XP ones will come in handy later:  These pictures are just examples, there are other ones as well.
6. Charms are usually useful:  These pictures are just examples, there are other ones as well.
7. General upgrade materials that you will need for a lot of things: 
8. Accessory-specific upgrade materials that you will need to upgrade accessories. These items will change over time, but usually they have the same name as the accessory piece, so it's easy to spot them: 
9. Weapon-specific upgrade material that you will need to upgrade your weapon. It will change as you progress, and it has the same name as the weapon, so it's easy to spot: 
10. Soul/Heart/Pet/Talisman-specific upgrade materials: 
11. Crafting guild materials that will depend on your crafting guild: 
12. Coins. There will be more of these later. The ones below might not be useful anymore. I think you should keep all of them and once you feel like looking at every shop you can decide which ones are still relevant: 
13. Insignias, Scale Chests, Unity Stones (or boxes), Etching Stones, Repair Tools, Keys to open Demonsbane Chests, Psyches , and Gildstones are all useful.
14. If it can be sold on the marketplace, keep it, or sell it!
15. Again, if it drops from a Dungeon, Raid, Daily or Weekly Challenge, Soul Boost, or a Battle Pass, they are most likely useful 🙂
    1. Duplicate accessories can be added to your Compound with a 420 Power Potential. The bonus stats in [Shift P] will increase depending on your Power Potential. The Compound system consumes accessories you are not using to unlock Rune slots for Etching Stones to be used on. You can't recover any accessories your use this way, so always triple check if it's the one you're not going to use, or was replaced by a stronger accessory. There are special Hongmoon Accessories with no stats that are for this that you can put in as well.

 

Now that you know what to keep and what to trash, let's get you started!

Again, make sure that you joined Crimson League if you're NA or Cerulean Order if you're EU!
As a fresh lvl60 character your first day will look like this:

1. If you are completely new to this genre, I would recommend doing the following:
   • Press [F8] and then Dungeon
     
   • In the picture above you can see the following parts:
     • At the top left, it's the party finder. People can post party recruitments there. Feel free to try it out. You can either join a party or recruit for one 🙂 Just make sure that you only do easy mode and/or stage 1!
     • At the bottom left, it's the usual chat. When you join [F8], it won't delete the chat you had before. Let's use it to teach you about another way to join parties!
       • You can press on the number in the top left to put a link to your party into the chat. If people click on it, they will join your group. Usually you just click on your number, write which dungeon you want to do and at which difficulty, and people will join. Or you can join others by clicking their link in chat.
       • If [F8] feels dead as you play at ungodly hours, or if people don't use it anymore, don't worry! As you can see in my chat above, people recruit directly in World and Faction Chat as well. 🙂 Feel free to join those party invitation, or make your own! 
     • On the right of the window, you can see the available Heroic and Demonsbane dungeons. If you hover over them you can see the rewards they will give as well
       • If they have a blue icon next to their name, that means they are part of today's Daily Challenge. Make sure you do them every day!
       • If you are the leader of a group, you will need to select 1 dungeon and press Enter Dungeon at the bottom of the screen.
       • If you don't want to interact with the party finder or chat, press LFP. I would recommend selecting 3 heroic dungeons and waiting 10 secs for LFP. If it doesn't find anyone, enter a dungeon and press the "Recruit Party Member" button on the top left:
         
   • If you are not comfortable with 'parkouring' yet, I would recommend you to enter the dungeons solo and learn how to reach the 1st miniboss or watch a video on YouTube before you join a group. This will feel really bad when the others are already at the main boss while you are struggling to get there.
   • Try to do every dungeon at least once to complete the Daily Challenge and to get rewards from Daily Quests.
   • If you are still not bored and have more time, farm your favorite one(s). 🙂 
2. If you are a returning player and/or you have experience in this genre, I would just recommend you do every dungeon at least once and farm the one(s) you like until you get bored or don't have time left. 🙂 
3. Make sure to accept the Weekly Challenge quests!
   • You can join Raid groups in the World or Faction Chat by right-clicking on their name and press Apply to Party. You don't need to do it on your fist day.
4. You will die a LOT! Don't worry much about it though. It will take time until you learn how to evade attacks with your class.
5. Watch and read a guide on your class. The Academy discord server will probably be around when you read this, and they have great guides for every class/spec!
6. NOTE: General player patterns have shifted away from Cross-server ([F8]) usage due to an increased presence of Dungeon trains to complete Soul Boost. It's still used to more easily access Dungeons, and is mandatory for Demonbane Dungeon access.

 

Your basic weekly routine should look like this:

1. Do Daily Challenges every day.
2. Do Weekly Challenges every week. Only doing 4/5 is fine. Do the ones that are easy.
3. Do Daily Challenges on your alts every 3rd day (more about this later).

 

Stuff to do other than the basic weekly routine:

1. Check out the Hongmoon Store (hit [F10]), in particular the Hongmoon Coin tabs for free items.
2. Soul Boost:
   • Soul Boost will give you a lot of items to get you started.
   • If there are Dungeons that were taken out of F8 and are still needed for the Soul Boost, you can either find groups in World of Faction Chat, or you can make your own!
   • To enter some Dungeons, you might need to do a quest. Look at your Quest Journal (hit the j' key) and look for Quest Letters!
   • The World and Faction Chats are usually helpful. Feel free to ask other players if you get stuck with a quest.
   • Current solo dungeon of interest are: Shrouded Ajanara, Circle of Sundering, Den of the Ancients, and Spectral Shrine.
3. Alts:
   • You can get more character slots from the Hongmoon Store. To get hongmoon coins use F9.
   • I would recommend every new player to have 1 main char and 3 alts.
   • You only need to do 1 alt every 3rd day, meaning that with 3 alts you only need to play 2 characters a day.
   • Each alt will give you an 2k extra gold daily, meaning 6k gold per day. This might change later, but the 3-day rest should stay.
   • You can send over most upgrade materials to your main via in-game mail.
   • Since they are just Daily Challenge slaves, you don't need to worry about upgrading them, but you should still use Soul Boost on them. They will level up by doing Daily Challenges.
   • If you hate leveling, you can skip alts!
4. Farm out the easy mode and stage 1 accessory set:
   • You can check the loot table in the Game Guide (hit [Ctrl+J]).
   • Once you have all of them, upgrade them to +11.
   • At +6 they will get a random stat, you want to get the highest Mystic stat on them. You can reroll it by salvaging the same tier accessories.
5. Farm out the Soulshield Set:
   • You can use easy mode, or Chaos Supply Chain stage 5 drops the best-in-slot Soul Shields and is entry level. The basic Poharan (provided by Chaos Supply Chain stage 5) set is also slightly better than the Shadow Fury set from easy mode.
   • You want to have Crit and Accuracy on 2, 4, 5, 6, 8.
   • You want to have Crit on 1, 3, 7.
   • You need to use the Crit Primers on each piece to get extra Crit on them.
   • You can max out the stats on the Soulshields by feeding them to each other. Make sure to feed into the one that has the correct stats.
   • I know that in the future they will probably have Mystic etc stats as well, but imo Crit and Accuracy is more important for a new player.
6. Make your unity stones Awakened (hit [Ctrl+H]😞
   • You get a lot of unity stones while doing dailies.
   • You shouldn't worry about what their stats are until they are all Awakened.
   • Usually you should only get Boss Attack Power ones, but you might lack Accuracy or Crit, so keep those as well until you have enough Crit and Accuracy.
   • You can fuse them by clicking the Refine Splendor Stone button.
7. Join 2 craft guilds:
   • I would recommend you to join the Earthseers and the Acquired taste ones, as they will give you resurrection charms and pretty good food. The weaker you are, the more boost it will give.
8. Join a clan:
   • It might be difficult to join a clan when you just started, but if you see a good sounding clan recruiting in World or Faction Chat, go for it! 🙂
9. Farm out outfits you like:
   • Press [F3] and look through the selection 😄 Some are dyeable, and you can press Ctrl+C to customize them. You can get Chromatic Threads for pretty cheap in [F10]. Just make sure to get Hongmoon Coins from [F9].
10. Farm solo dungeons:
    • Sadly I don't know what the future holds, but check out the NPC shops to see if there is any solo dungeon worth doing.
11. Do events:
    • They are almost always really worth doing, most of the time you will need to do it on your alts as well!
12. Use the Psyches you got from Soul Boost (this picture is just an example):
    
    Don't use the Soul Boost Psyches on legendary accessories, because they can't be used in the succession system so it's a complete loss when you'll get your Starcross Accessories.
13. Gildstones can be put inside accessories, they can be upgraded as well:
    
    I would recommend focusing on these once you can do stage5 Demonsbane dungeons. You can either get them from an NPC or by farming Dungeons. Check the loot table from the Game Guide (hit [Ctrl+J])!

14. Gems. There are 2 types of them: Weapon and Pet gems. You get pretty solid ones from Soul Boost, so I wouldn't worry much about them. You can farm them from Dungeons if you want to get better ones. Not a high priority, unless you are farming stage 8 Dungeons and want to do stage 12 or higher. You can upgrade them in the Transmute window from your inventory.

15. Fish while you sleep:
    • Not mandatory, but leaving your char fish at night will get you a lot of extra items.

 

Once you have your easy mode and stage 1 accessory set at +11 with Mystic stat, the Soulshield set done, and you completed Soul Boost, it's time for you to start doing more difficult content:

1. Before you join anything other than easy mode or stage 1, make sure you know the content mechanics!
2. Hard mode might still be out of reach, but at this point you should be able to join one. I would still recommend doing easy mode as it's way faster.
3. Stage 5 Demonsbane should be 'easily' doable with your stats now, just make sure that you don't join a group that wants 6k+ Boss Attack Power (bap) 🙂 
   • From there you need to farm out the best accessory set:
     • You can use your current +11 accessories with 'Succession' to make them +6. It will keep the Psyches.
     • You can upgrade these as much as you would like, since they are the best ones.
     • Make sure to get Mystic as the random stat.
   • From there you need to farm out the best Soulshield set.
     • These Soulshields can have other stats as well. Please ask in World or Faction Chat what to get on them.
   • From there you need to farm out the weapon.
     • You need to salvage the same tier of weapons to get essences that are required for upgrades
     • Make it at least +6.
   • Upgrade your Soul/Heart/Pet/Talisman as you get the materials from events etc.
   • Start focusing on Compound (hit Shift+P)
     • You mainly want Boss Attack Power, Mystic, and Debuff damage on one page, and full Debuff Damage on the second one.
   • Start focusing on Insignias (hit Ctrl+K)
   • Start focusing on Portaits (hit Ctrl+M)
   • Start focusing on Achievements (hit u)
     • Prioritize the Attack Power ones.
   • NOTE: Stage 5 Demonsbane dungeons are doable without +11 Starcross accessories, even +0 will suffice. Damage requirement for stage 5 is low enough that a mid-Soul Boost character without any Starcross accessories can manage to avoid enrage, depending on the player and character.
   • There might be a new system when you read this, generally speaking press the Esc key to get to the main menu and look through all the menus.
4. Once you have all of these done, you are more than ready for hard mode and stage 8:
   • It gives more rewards.
   • It drops the best weapon.
   • NOTE: Hard mode has similar damage requirements to stage 6 Demonsbane dungeons. It's possibly doable with the full +0 Starcross+full Soul Boost gear, but will require a bit more caution and knowledge of the dungeon.
5. Stage 9 and onwards are usually not farmed, unless you do it for rankings or farm it with your clan.
   • Stage 8+ dungeons require a lot of Accuracy to be able to hit the boss. Landing CC or even DPS will be nearly impossible if you don't meet the cap.
6. Post-Soul Boost gear: your primary focus should be what to roll on the Compound system. Active selection for stats is required when re-rolling runes, compared to Splendor stones having tier as a priority over their exact stat roll.

 

Solo Dungeon farming:

• There are many solo dungeons in the game, each increasing in difficulty. You can learn your character and game mechanics by doing them. You can even try the first few while leveling up, because some of them are lower level contents.

  • Low level (45-60) solo dungeons are in Mushin tower. You have to do the "Calling of the Naryu sage" quest (see the Quest Journal [J]). The quest is easy, you just talk to the NPC.

    • Mushin tower floors 1-8

    • Mushin tower floors 9-15

    • Mushin tower floors 16-20

    • Outlaw island. You need to do the "Blackram battle royal" quest.

• Easy Mode Dungeons: probably the easiest way to farm Skystealer crystals, Starcross crystals and Oculus stones, plus Insignas. If you can't solo one of them, just recruit 1 or 2 people but it's not mandatory.

• Sanctum of the Masters: This is an odd solo dungeon in Ajanara Monastery. It has easy, normal and hard modes. It's just a horde mode, but with a twist: our healing is decreased. It gives useful insignias, so do it every day. It has auto-combat built in, so you don't have to kill trash mobs for 10 minutes if you don't want to. You can activate auto-combat with [Shift+F4] by default.

 

Extras:

• The Unity system is explained in a side quest available after level 55 (?). See the Quest Journal by hitting [J] and look for the corresponding Quest Letter. It explains the system well enough, but it doesn't explain that the Unity Level is account wide, so all of your characters benefit from it being higher.

• Check the Dragon Express (fifth icon from the left at the bottom of your inventory) and then the Solar Energy Tab (second from the left) for 3x Celestial Forgestones and 1x Thornbreaker Forgestone. This will give you access to a fast-tracked upgrade route for your weapon. You will need to click on the Forgestone in the upgrade menu to use them though.

 

I think this guide will be correct as long as the Demonsbane system remains, but I am going to try to edit it if things change.
Please make sure to comment on things I got wrong or forgot to add! Or if a part should be explained in more detail!
Also, if people agree that this is correct and useful, would it be possible to pin this? I am sure that many new/returning players would appreciate this and the topic will get lost after a week or two unless it's pinned 😅

PS: Expect some edits as I am sure I made some typos / grammar errors 😄 

[Hungibungi]

I can't edit it now, but I forgot about gildstones and gems!
Gildstones can be put inside accessories, they can be upgraded as well:

I would recommend focusing on these once you can do stage5 demonsbane dungeons! You can either get them from an NPC or can be farmed from dungeons. Check the loot table from ctrl+j!

There are 2 types of gems:

1. Weapon gems
2. Pet gems

You get pretty solid ones from Soul Boost, so I wouldn't worry much about them. You can farm them from dungeons tho if you want to get better ones. Not a high priority, unless you are farming stage 8 dungeons and want to do stage 12 or higher. You can upgrade them in the Transmute window from your inventory.

[Immunity]

there is now world chat, so faction chat is not needed any more.

i think you have to manually add it to the "all" chat tab.

 

check the f10 hongmoon coin tab for free items, especially after maintenances.

 

also there is an offical post from gm about this topic:

[Draknalor]

6 hours ago, Hungibungi said:

 

 

Before you can begin reading this guide, there are 4 requirements:

1. You need to join the Crimson League; Cerulean Order is niche and should only be chosen if you know what you are doing!!!

Please add that crimson is only for EU.

The NA servers use cerulean

 

Edited December 11, 2022 by Draknalor

[Draknalor]

Also @Green Storm any way to have this somehow pinned? or even endorsed on the launcher or ingame.

 

Seems like a very detailed guide, would be shame if it fell off the front page

[Hungibungi]

18 minutes ago, Draknalor said:

Please add that crimson is only for EU.

The NA servers use cerulean

 

I can't edit the original message anymore, so would be probably a better idea to collect the feedback you all send and ask a moderator to edit the guide for us 😄 Thanks for the info! 🙂 

[Hungibungi]

23 minutes ago, Immunity said:

there is now world chat, so faction chat is not needed any more.

i think you have to manually add it to the "all" chat tab.

 

check the f10 hongmoon coin tab for free items, especially after maintenances.

 

also there is an offical post from gm about this topic:

I just checked, and you are correct! I never knew it even existed, as the main tab is called 'All', yet it has that disabled... Would be cool if that feature would be enabled by default, so more people would use it. 😄 

[Hungibungi]

I AFK-d with world chat enabled and on EU it seems kind of dead. There were 3 messages sent in world chat vs 40+ in faction chat.
With that said, I will still add this into the guide as they might enable it for everyone, so people know it even existed.
I will wait a full day for other feedback to come in; then will write the edits for the guide in 1 message that the mods could possibly add (in the past I did one guide and they were able to edit the original message for me, so should be okay now as well). 😁

[Green Storm]

On 12/11/2022 at 11:10 AM, Draknalor said:

Also @Green Storm any way to have this somehow pinned? or even endorsed on the launcher or ingame.

 

Seems like a very detailed guide, would be shame if it fell off the front page

 

I do plan to review what's written here (big thanks to @Hungibungi for putting this together!) and if it looks good, not only pin it but also promote it on all our social media channels. I've started many weeks ago a first attempt to update our official New and Returning Player Guide, but lacked the time to complete it, so that content may also be used to do that (once I check with our Legal Team).

[Green Storm]

On 12/11/2022 at 11:22 AM, Hungibungi said:

I can't edit the original message anymore, so would be probably a better idea to collect the feedback you all send and ask a moderator to edit the guide for us 😄 Thanks for the info! 🙂 

 

Feel free to message me with modifications and I'll include them! At some point this week, I'll go through the whole thread so I may end up doing the edits myself (if that's ok with you of course!).

[Hungibungi]

10 hours ago, Green Storm said:

 

Feel free to message me with modifications and I'll include them! At some point this week, I'll go through the whole thread so I may end up doing the edits myself (if that's ok with you of course!).

Yes, go ahead! 🙂 Thank you!

[Hungibungi]

I got some feedback that +11 accessories are not needed for stage5, it is doable with weaker gear.

[Soulris]

Not to overplay my own horn, but I happen to have a starter/returning player guide of my own that I've been maintaining since September 2020 (I won't link it here as it was removed the last time I posted it when Greenstorm asked for tips for new players). I made Hungi aware of its presence earlier today as we both happened to be in the BnSAcademy Discord server it was prominently featured in (Hungi mentioned this Academy Discord server in the original post), and Hungi suggested I also mention my own guide here.

I would like to ask for permission to link or share it here. It's more description-based than the prescription-focus of Hungi's guide.

As for feedback on Hungi's guide:
Requirement 1: Factions-World chat presence and differing faction strengths for each server already mentioned.
Requirement 4: Orange quests-Dawn of Khanda Vihar, Aransu School, Demonsbane and Emperor's Tomb orange quest side acts are the ones can be completed solo, primarily with a special solo instance marked with the orange quest arrow. (Emperor's Tomb also requires the player to walk inside to talk to Juna first, then walk out to access the solo instance).
Item hold suggestions: Generally too much to remember and very sensitive to item and game changes. At this point, wardrobe (for storing weapons, outfits, pet skins, and other cosmetics) and cheap inventory expansion rows should generally give new players enough space to hold on to everything they get. Basic junk thresholds would be any non-consumable items with a level lower than 50 and any gear that you have better of.
Cross-server (F8): It appears that general player patterns have shifted away from Cross-server usage due to an increased presence of dungeon trains due to Soul Boost. I had removed the section referring to Cross-server in my own guide due to the lack of advertising activity in Cross-server. (It's still used to more easily access dungeons, and is mandatory for Demonbane dungeon access).
Early Soul Shields: Due to Chaos Supply Chain stage 5 dropping best-in-slot Soul Shields and being entry level, Chaos 5 would be a more natural source of Soul Shields than easy mode dungeons. Also, the basic Poharan set is also slightly better than the Shadow Fury set from easy mode.
Outfits and clan are optional.
Current solo dungeon of interest is Shrouded Ajanara. Circle of Sundering, Den of the Ancients, and Spectral Shrine are primarily only of interest to Soul Boost characters.
I happened to be the one to mention that stage 5 Demonsbane dungeons are doable without +11 Starcross accessories, even +0 will suffice. Damage requirement for stage 5 is low enough that a mid-Soul Boost character without any Starcross accessories can manage to avoid enrage. (depending on the player and character, of course).
Hard mode has similar damage requirements to stage 6 Demonsbane dungeons. Possibly doable at the same full +0 Starcross+full Soul Boost gear as the above stage 5-ready gear point, but will require a bit more caution and knowledge of the dungeon.
Post-Soul Boost gear suggestions: Feel a bit over-prescribed as all of the possible targets for boosting damage are listed. Primary focus should be what to roll on Compound (as active selection for stats is required when re-rolling runes, compared to Splendor stones having tier as a priority over their exact stat roll) and farming Demonsbane Stage 5 for weapon and accessories. (Soul Shields were covered earlier). Other gear targets are more opportunistic.
 

[Green Storm]

38 minutes ago, Soulris said:

I would like to ask for permission to link or share it here. It's more description-based than the prescription-focus of Hungi's guide.
 

 

Could you please send me the link in DM? I'll take a look when I can (and I also can't remember what happened when it was first removed).

[Hungibungi]

1 hour ago, Soulris said:

Not to overplay my own horn, but I happen to have a starter/returning player guide of my own that I've been maintaining since September 2020 (I won't link it here as it was removed the last time I posted it when Greenstorm asked for tips for new players). I made Hungi aware of its presence earlier today as we both happened to be in the BnSAcademy Discord server it was prominently featured in (Hungi mentioned this Academy Discord server in the original post), and Hungi suggested I also mention my own guide here.

I would like to ask for permission to link or share it here. It's more description-based than the prescription-focus of Hungi's guide.

As for feedback on Hungi's guide:
Requirement 1: Factions-World chat presence and differing faction strengths for each server already mentioned.
Requirement 4: Orange quests-Dawn of Khanda Vihar, Aransu School, Demonsbane and Emperor's Tomb orange quest side acts are the ones can be completed solo, primarily with a special solo instance marked with the orange quest arrow. (Emperor's Tomb also requires the player to walk inside to talk to Juna first, then walk out to access the solo instance).
Item hold suggestions: Generally too much to remember and very sensitive to item and game changes. At this point, wardrobe (for storing weapons, outfits, pet skins, and other cosmetics) and cheap inventory expansion rows should generally give new players enough space to hold on to everything they get. Basic junk thresholds would be any non-consumable items with a level lower than 50 and any gear that you have better of.
Cross-server (F8): It appears that general player patterns have shifted away from Cross-server usage due to an increased presence of dungeon trains due to Soul Boost. I had removed the section referring to Cross-server in my own guide due to the lack of advertising activity in Cross-server. (It's still used to more easily access dungeons, and is mandatory for Demonbane dungeon access).
Early Soul Shields: Due to Chaos Supply Chain stage 5 dropping best-in-slot Soul Shields and being entry level, Chaos 5 would be a more natural source of Soul Shields than easy mode dungeons. Also, the basic Poharan set is also slightly better than the Shadow Fury set from easy mode.
Outfits and clan are optional.
Current solo dungeon of interest is Shrouded Ajanara. Circle of Sundering, Den of the Ancients, and Spectral Shrine are primarily only of interest to Soul Boost characters.
I happened to be the one to mention that stage 5 Demonsbane dungeons are doable without +11 Starcross accessories, even +0 will suffice. Damage requirement for stage 5 is low enough that a mid-Soul Boost character without any Starcross accessories can manage to avoid enrage. (depending on the player and character, of course).
Hard mode has similar damage requirements to stage 6 Demonsbane dungeons. Possibly doable at the same full +0 Starcross+full Soul Boost gear as the above stage 5-ready gear point, but will require a bit more caution and knowledge of the dungeon.
Post-Soul Boost gear suggestions: Feel a bit over-prescribed as all of the possible targets for boosting damage are listed. Primary focus should be what to roll on Compound (as active selection for stats is required when re-rolling runes, compared to Splendor stones having tier as a priority over their exact stat roll) and farming Demonsbane Stage 5 for weapon and accessories. (Soul Shields were covered earlier). Other gear targets are more opportunistic.
 

While it’s true that the base Poharan SS set is better than the easy mode SS in this patch, I think it’s still better to do easy mode SS -> True Poharan, because:

     -I don’t know how a new/returning player is supposed to do stage5 without a full crit+acc+crit primer ss set (even if Poharan is the easiest demonsbane)

     -I returned for the Bard update and stage5 was way out of my league until I le-learned some basics; and by then I got my full easy mode set with correct stats (as the people said in Academy, I needed a good ss set or people just autokicked me for low crit&acc)

     -Stage1 doesn’t really drop any ss, I got like 2 base ss from 200 runs

 

Ps: I wrote it from my phone, so it might be a bit unreadable sorry

 

 

[Soulris]

I figured Chaos 5 was entry level due to the damage requirement being 7 million damage per second per player [15 billion HP/(540 second enrage timer x 4 players)], and Chaos 5 Poharan having roughly HP/player as REV-A DEV-A in Steelbreaker. Given that Soul Boost gives Steelbreaker gear very early on, progression-wise, it's reasonable to assume that a party full of halfway through Soul Boost characters would have the damage to clear Chaos 5 even with no crit rolls, as they'll have gear better than what's needed to clear REV-A DEV-A (ie. better than Thornbreaker/Scarlet Gear), to say nothing if someone with massively more firepower helps out.
Don't know about the accuracy requirement for Chaos 5, but Soul Boost does provide crit primers.
As for others kicking you out, well, that's out of the scope of what's theoretically doable. Some players do care about gear for stage 5, others don't.
Chaos overall is an easy fight compared to the other dungeons. No mechanics besides eliminating adds, slower attack speed, mostly frontal attacks, fewer cc attacks compared to, say, Chrysus in Trials.
The primary reason that I do not actively suggest new players farm easy modes first is that, on top of already being doable mid-Soul Boost and Chaos being a Soul Boost target itself, it would help to concentrate new players in already active farms. Easy mode feels a bit like going out of the way. It can be done, but it doesn't feel efficient.

This debate is going to be a moot point with the next Soul Boost through, as Soul Boost 3 will hand out Shadow Fury Soul Shields, assuming we get a match with the Korean server's Soul Boost 3. With that, easy mode farming won't be necessary to get Shadow Fury Soul Shields, and it would be natural progression to go straight to Chaos 5.

[Immunity]

you could also mention that you can play the game very casually like me:

daily/weekly challenge only sometimes, only easy mode and stage 1 demons bane, no raids, no farming, minimal participation in events, only few alts, not spending any real money 

and still get to over 5.5k boss ap and be able to solo everything needed.

with soul boost you dont even need to play the game for years to get there.

[Pimboli]

Awesome thread, thank you so much 🙏

[Pimboli]

 

There's also Miggy On The Track's youtube channel & discord server "dedicated to helping current/new/returning players understand and enjoy Blade & Soul."

Besides the Blade & Soul Academy discord, it did help me a lot when i returned to the game 2 months ago.

 

For instance, and for anyone still looking, there's a chimera lab stage 5 guide available on his channel:

 

 

You'll find the link to his discord server in the description field, below the video.

Have fun everyone 🎮

[Metatime]

On 12/15/2022 at 7:21 AM, Pimboli said:

 

There's also Miggy On The Track's youtube channel & discord server "dedicated to helping current/new/returning players understand and enjoy Blade & Soul."

Besides the Blade & Soul Academy discord, it did help me a lot when i returned to the game 2 months ago.

 

For instance, and for anyone still looking, there's a chimera lab stage 5 guide available on his channel:

 

 

You'll find the link to his discord server in the description field, below the video.

Have fun everyone 🎮

Thanks never heard of this guy. Subbed 

[DragonClaw]

You stressed out several times that players should join the Crimson League instead of Cerulean Order, but I couldn't find any description about why is that so.

Does Cerulean Order make you loose on some items or something or it's just because you prefer the Crimson League?

Could you please elaborate on this?

 

Why players shouldn't join whatever faction they feel more suitable for their character?

What benefit does Crimson League give to the players that Cerulean Order does not?

[Draknalor]

27 minutes ago, DragonClaw said:

You stressed out several times that players should join the Crimson League instead of Cerulean Order, but I couldn't find any description about why is that so.

Does Cerulean Order make you loose on some items or something or it's just because you prefer the Crimson League?

Could you please elaborate on this?

 

Why players shouldn't join whatever faction they feel more suitable for their character?

What benefit does Crimson League give to the players that Cerulean Order does not?

You won’t see the faction chat for the large population faction if you pick the lower population one thus making it much harder to find groups for dailies andother group content.

 

You are free to pick whichever you want, But you are adviced to pick the high pop one for a better experience.

 

Remember, Crimson is the populated one on EU servers.

 

cerulean is the populated on NA servers

[Immunity]

4 hours ago, Draknalor said:

 pick the high pop one for a better experience.

or pick the low one to balance it out.

 

faction chat is not a reason anymore because world chat and f8 exist (and even f7): use it!

 

the only reason could be finding a clan beause that is same faction only as fas as i know.

[matthew]

Any tips on farming fusion stones and synthesis stones?

[Green Storm]

Apologies for not being to get to that guide before the holiday break. I'm also pinning this thread for now so that more people can see it.