Advice to improve for new players

[jasonreseller604]

Hi. Just started TOS 2 days ago. Made a level 1 char, killed a few monsters, died to a mob. Exit and made a 440 character. Jumped him to 450 from cards. History: Ragnarok Online 2004, Diablo 2 2005, Tibia 2006-2011 (on/off). Ragnarok Online 2008. HON/Dota 2 2010-2015. 2020-Present: FFXIV, checked out WoW, Lost Ark.

Ok. I’m pretty good at games, it’s not my first rodeo. Anyways, I did some MSQ (Orsha) after 450. I got to 80% of a level, then I asked someone if I should be using the EXP cards if all my classes are maxed. They said yes, no point of holding onto them. So I used my EXP cards, jumped up to 455. I made it to an area that had like 464 recommended level. I had to kill a demon’s tent while groups of demons were attacking me.

It’s a wall for me. That’s fine, I need to level before I continue, I’m “underleveled” anyways. Ok here’s where the issue is for a new player.

I never got a single level from killing monsters. They were all from EXP cards. On top of that, I have looked around for an “EXP to next level” indicator. Eventually I found the EXP bar that is under your hotkeys. I don’t remember if it shows you exp remaining if you highlight it… But I also don’t think monsters show the amount of EXP they give you. I remember seeing loot messages in my chatbox.

So that being said: As a new player who isn’t a complete noob at games, I literally have no idea what I’m supposed to do. Am I supposed to go around and kill mobs? Am I supposed to P2W? Someone in chat told me to do a challenge dungeon. I remembered seeing them on the map on my way, they were indicated on the map with a target symbol. I went back like 2-3 maps and couldn’t find them. I went to town, there were level 460 challenge dungeon warps. None for 450 as far as where I looked.

So yeah… I literally don’t understand the system yet. Is this one where you grind on random mobs for levels? Or is this a quest hand in MMO (like all the current, bad mmos)? Or is this a “grind dungeons for EXP cards” MMO?

Games usually provide the solution nearby when you hit a wall. They could send you a notification that says “having trouble clearing a quest? Try leveling on some random monsters”. Then you know what to do. Or it could tell you to go do a dungeon or whatever. Or it could tell you to get new gear.

This game doesn’t tell you anything. So yeah, there’s significant room for improvement if you’re giving everyone level 400+ skips you can’t assume they understand the system. Kudos on the music in the game, it’s the best feature so far.

The second major issue is even coming on this forum, you’ve got the be absolutely nuts to ask us to sign in with Facebook/Gmail. I signed in on my regular account just to see, and it did in fact use my real name. That’s nuts. No one wants to make a second gmail account if they don’t already have one to post on the forums.

[yochuico2]

Official game discord: discord.gg/9MMX6dwG8C

There’s a level 460 boost once per account.
It’s inside an achievement after that 450 start you did, talk to the guard right on the bridge of orsha (all on the bottom right).

You level up with quests + minor grind, 450-460 is the great wall, you can skip it the first time with that boost. Just use it because it becomes slower and slower, once you hit level 461 it becomes fast again.

Once you have a character at level 480 you can boost your alts to 460 with potions that fill with the experience of that character (they fill fast).

To level up the regular way without the boost you do all the story episodes from 12-1 to 13-2, use the cards and kill monsters, monsters drop “exp orbs” in your inventory that give exp like the cards every x kills. Another solution is using events to buy dungeon reset/multipliers, or running “challenge mode field” (too tedious honestly). Just use the boost on the first character, easier.

As per progression, after using the boost go back and clear episode 12-1 and 12-2, then do 13-1,13-2.
Achievements are claimable from F4 (Journal) and episodes are on F5 (Quests).
Come on the discord for more help.

[draconis]

@jasonreseller604

Just started TOS 2 days ago

Sincere condolences… the game is not really “made” for new players at this point. But give it a shot anyway, you may enjoy it.

@jasonreseller604

Made a level 1 char, killed a few monsters, died to a mob

Considering that the game is so easy you can pretty much oneshot everything up to level 300 with basic attacks I’m speechless here. Well I guess that’s why they made the Moroth tutorial for new players, you can pretty much skip the whole game and start at level 440 with a fully equipped character.

@jasonreseller604

I asked someone if I should be using the EXP cards if all my classes are maxed

Yes you use all your EXP cards because they will eventually be restrained and all you are able to do is discard them, so you may as well use them before it happens.

@jasonreseller604

I made it to an area that had like 464 recommended level. I had to kill a demon’s tent while groups of demons were attacking me.

For the last episodes, the difficulty increases exponentially. Episode 13 requires level 460 and the Vasilisa equipment that comes with it, it will be hard to complete it solo with only your Growth stuff. If you want to continue, consider asking other people for party (if you just started I imagine you joined the ToS support guild, you should be able to find someone to help there). If you want to solo, your best bet is using a x32 exp tome and spamming Challenge Mode solo on the highest map you can handle. However if you’re a new player, I think you get daily connection boxes and one of them contains a card that can instantly level a character up to 460 (I was on a hiatus during August and I had one in the returning player pack so I imagine it’s the same for new players).

@jasonreseller604

I never got a single level from killing monsters.

Mobs give almost zero exp until episode 14 and the last three maps (I was doing episode 13 quests yesterday with an alt and the whole episode increased my exp from 58.7% to 58.9% at level 471).

@jasonreseller604

As a new player who isn’t a complete noob at games, I literally have no idea what I’m supposed to do.

Game is basically: start, use all the boxes from new player pack + daily connection, get a fully equipped level 460 char, forget about 99.99% of the game and start spamming raids with entry vouchers. Then you use raid rewards to catch up and fully equip your character with the latest equips. The game has reached a phase where it is “on maintenance” and has pretty much no new content to propose as every event is a copy-paste of the previous one and nothing much happens in the story anymore.

@jasonreseller604

Am I supposed to P2W?

Not even. Long time ago, you had loot boxes with an insane amount of useful stuff and fancy costumes. Today, those boxes mainly contain MORE entry vouchers and outdated costumes. If you really want to catch up you can of course buy the packages that contain a lot of raid vouchers so you’re not limited to the fixed entries each week if you have time to do more raids, it really speeds up the process, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Your best bet is simply to find people to play with you and help you level up to a point you can participate in everything endgame.

@jasonreseller604

Someone in chat told me to do a challenge dungeon. I remembered seeing them on the map on my way, they were indicated on the map with a target symbol. I went back like 2-3 maps and couldn’t find them. I went to town, there were level 460 challenge dungeon warps. None for 450 as far as where I looked.

Challenge portals only exist in latests maps or in town for level 460-480. If you want to generate a portal on a random map, you need to kill a fixed amount of mobs on that map. After a while, a “special” mob will be generated (with a purple glow). When you kill that mob, a portal will appear. You can enter if your level is between (maplevel - 80) and (maplevel + 30). It’s fine to exp grinding, but you need to use exp boosting tomes otherwise it’s not worth it.

@jasonreseller604

Games usually provide the solution nearby when you hit a wall. They could send you a notification that says “having trouble clearing a quest? Try leveling on some random monsters”. Then you know what to do. Or it could tell you to go do a dungeon or whatever. Or it could tell you to get new gear.

ToS is REALLY bad at that. For example, you may take a quest line for episodes 11-14 and after a while there are no more quest markers, and you can even see the NPC for the quest and it has become unresponsive. What the game doesn’t tell you is that the quest line requires you to be as high level as the map, but since you don’t get enough exp from the quests you may have become underleveled and so the rest of the quest becomes unavailable until you level up again. Your best bet is just ask in game when you’re lost.

[yochuico2]

They removed the boost card from gifts and now it’s in the achievement i wrote about above.
Also i don’t think it’s a good idea to tell people to spam challenge field without gear AND use an exp tome, how can they even have a x32 to begin with? How can they clear without assisters?

@draconis

he game has reached a phase where it is “on maintenance” and has pretty much no new content to propose as every event is a copy-paste of the previous one and nothing much happens in the story anymore.

Maintenance mode means receiving no content, this game gets new content multiple times per year.