Hi everyone! Welcome to what I hope will be a general guide for new players, to help them get started and understand the mechanics of ToS.
Introduction
I’m Marinus / Holokai on the Klaipeda server, and I’ve been playing ToS from the Founder’s access for a while now. At least to me, Tree of Savior has been an extraordinarily enjoyable experience – but at times very confusing and opaque as well. As a result, I hoped to write / compile a guide of sorts for new players just starting out with the F2P launch! I was a big fan of resources like MapleTips for MapleStory and similar sites/databases for RO, and hoped that we could create something similar for ToS.
Hopefully this benefits at least some new players. For veterans or returning players, I hope that you’ll share things I undoubtedly missed so that they can be added to the guide!
Disclaimer: I exclusively play Archer (Marinus) and Swordsman (Holokai) classes on ToS, so I may very well miss things that may be helpful / useful for starting players on Cleric or Wizard. Again, I do hope other players will contribute on this front!
##The Basics: Unique Features of ToS
Tree of Savior comes with a number of features that are more or less unique to the game, which, if not well-understood, could detract from your experience.
- Map completion: ToS encourages exploration of the entire world (and each particular map) by rewarding EXP cards (explained below) for “completing” an entire map; that is, traversing the entire land. (See Excrulon mods below for extremely useful help on map completion.) You can “turn in” your completion (i.e. get rewarded) by speaking with the Wings of Vibora NPC in each town.
- Monster completion: Similarly to map completion, upon killing a monster in ToS, you will notice at the bottom left corner of the screen that you have killed X / Y monsters. Upon killing all Y monsters, you will receive an alert at the top of your screen. This can also be “turned in” to the Wings of Vibora NPC in town to get more EXP cards!
- "Quest grinding": Aside from completing maps/monsters, you should pretty much not have to grind severely in ToS (at least until around 100 or so). Instead, you should travel between both Klaipeda and Orsha (the two starting towns) and complete all quests in each area. These quests not only provide EXP cards, but also give you motivation to kill certain mobs. (See Quest Map and Leveling Guide below for very useful resources on this!) You can buy a Klaipeda / Orsha Warp Scroll from the Item Merchant in each town for 500 silver, which you can use to travel between towns.
- Collections: Another unique feature of ToS is collections. Most maps in ToS have a hidden chest somewhere on the map, which, when opened, yields a Collection: (Map Name). You can turn these collections into the Magic Association NPC in each town (for example, above the goddess statue in Klaipeda). Each collection requires a set of “junk” drops from monsters in the corresponding map. Upon collection all of the required items, you receive a permanent buff to that character, as noted on the collection!
- EXP cards / resets: EXP cards are a way of rewarding players for making progress in ToS. Instead of quests giving experience upon completion, quests instead yield a number of Level X EXP cards, with higher level cards yielding more EXP. Moreover, ToS features an EXP reset system, occurring every 40 or so levels (see Base EXP Table for more information). This is to coincide with your rank upgrades as your progress through the game (see Ranks / Circles). As a result, the amount of EXP required to level up becomes rather high (and grind-y) as you get close to an EXP reset point (i.e. level 46 or 86). Thus, most players suggest saving up all your EXP cards until about 5-10 levels prior to the reset, and then spamming them to push you over the “grind wall” into the new lower-EXP tier. To see what level you would end up at given your current level and cards, use the EXP Card Calculator.
- Ranks / Circles: Like many other MMOs, ToS features a “class” system that consists of Ranks and Circles. Currently, ToS has 7 ranks, with your initial class choice (Archer, Swordsman, Wizard, Cleric) being Rank 1. As you level up your class level to 15, you can then advance to the next Rank, and choose a “new” class. One distinguishing (and sometimes confusing) feature is that rather than choosing an entirely new specialty, you can dedicate a Rank to becoming better at a current class, and this is called leveling up your Circle. For example, suppose you started out as an Archer, Rank 1. At class level 15, you have 3 choices: 1) Become a Rank 2, Circle 1 Ranger; 2) Become a Rank 2, Circle 1 Quarrel Shooter; or 3) Become a Rank 2, Circle 2 Archer. Similarly, after you reach class level 15 again, you can become a Circle 2 Ranger or Quarrel Shooter (depending on which class you picked previously), a Circle 3 Archer, or a Circle 1 of a different class. (Trying this out is worth a thousand words: check out the Skill Simulator at ToS Base to construct a build.)
##Getting Started: Mods & Useful Resources
One thing I sincerely wish I knew when I started ToS was the number of extremely useful mods available for the game. Note that (as of this writing) mods are sanctioned by the developers!
- Excrulon Mods: A number of extremely useful mods that help you track your experience and map completion, Excrulon offers a number of mods. The most useful to me were the EXP trackers (i.e. tells you how many more of the mob you need to kill in order to level, with an ETA based on your previous averages) and the fog of war mod (i.e. highlights the areas you haven’t explored in red so you can more easily complete maps).
- BetterQuest Mods: One thing that’s pretty hard about ToS is finding people who give you quests. BetterQuest facilitates this by giving you a complete list of all possible quests at your level (subject to certain quests not having the right format, etc.). It can be an overwhelming amount of information, though, so use it if you find it helpful! It’s also good for telling when to switch over the Orsha and vice-versa for questing purposes.
- ToS Base: I’ve referred to ToS Base a number of times already, but I should do it again, since this site / database is amazing. The skill and stat simulators are very well-built, and you can click Public Builds in the Skill Simulator page to see popular builds that people have developed for public use.
- Leveling Guide: Pretty much every player I’ve encountered on ToS so far uses this amazing guide for leveling purposes. Full credit to /u/JiggaJack on Reddit for compiling this. Along with this guide, you can use the Quest Compendium by Riunia to keep track of where you are and what quests you need to complete on that map.
- Quest Map: Another beautiful resource for leveling purposes, both the map and the plaintext version (see top comment) provide a great way to figure out what to do / where to go at every stage in the game. Coupled with the Quest Compendium above, you basically can’t go wrong or get lost on ToS.
- World Map: An excellent map for doing map completions and collections. It’s often pretty hard to find all the chests and NPCs on each map, and this interactive (and rather complete/comprehensive) world map makes that easy. I usually keep this open on one of my tabs at every moment of gameplay! (Possibly because I have horrible memory ;))
- EXP Card Calculator: As noted earlier, this is a simple but very useful resource when quest grinding to figure out at what level you can start spamming EXP cards to get over that next grind wall hump. The Leveling Guide above gives you general guidelines for this, but personally it’s been very helpful to figure out exactly how much I need to level up before making those EXP cards rain.
##General Tips
These are more personal / subjective tips from my own experience (and those of other players) that makes life a little bit easier in “Kingdom”.
- Start in Klaipeda: In general, most people recommend starting Klaipeda for leveling purposes. In particular, you can warp on over to Orsha at around level 30 (after reaching the Tenet Garden map from Klaipeda) and pick up the main Orsha questline immediately at Koru Jungle (level 29). This is more difficult (impossible?) to do the other way around.
- Report bots!: For the sake of the community, please use the Report Bot function to alert GMs to any bots in your area. (Right click the character and click “Report Bot”.)
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Keep Klaipeda/Orsha Scrolls Stocked: Having to find a goddess statue every time you want to warp to town is a pain! Moreover, having town scrolls lets you jump between the towns to continue questing and building up your cache of EXP cards. Before these were available, you had to manually walk yourself over to Orsha (or Klaipeda), so take advantage!
- Start with DPS: Of course, you should always go with whatever class suits your tastes the most. However, if you don’t have any diehard preferences for classes, I strongly recommend picking Archer or Wizard as your starting class. Ranged characters are much easier to level early on, and your high DPS will help you progress through the story/bosses more easily.
- Prioritize Job Advancements: When the Job Advancement button comes up, immediately teleport back to town and do your job change quest! Otherwise, you will be receiving EXP for your base level without getting anything for your class level! (Once you max out at class level 15, you no longer receive class EXP when killing mobs / using EXP cards.)
- Don’t Stress Stats: Many debates have been held and much blood has been shed over the eternal question of “STR or DEX???”, and that should tell you something. If there was a clear answer, there wouldn’t be any debates. ToS is a game in which stats don’t do the majority of the work, especially in late game. Although it is true that all classes receive STR and INT 10% boosts every time they rank up, this does not make spending points in DEX or CON or SPR useless. In fact, with high-level mobs often hitting in the thousands, it’s suicidal to not allocate some of your points to CON (especially if you like PvP!) for health and DEX for evasion and critical chance. Of course, for physical damage classes, I do highly recommend putting some plurality of points into STR, but neglecting DEX / CON is not recommended.
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Get Buffs!: Another unique feature of ToS is that buffers can “sell” their buffs by setting up shop. You can usually find a number of such players near the central fountain in either starting city, so make sure you get Aspersio and Blessing (plus Sacrament if possible) when you go back to town
##Discord / Contact / Further Questions
If you have any further questions or comments, or want to contribute to the guide, please feel free to contact me either on the forums (@Marinus) or in game (Marinus or Holokai will always work).
I’m also hoping that we might be able to get together a persistent chatroom for players to help each other in terms of Q&A. (Note: no free items!) To that end, I’ve set up a Discord server, which you can reach at:
I went back to Ashaq Prison (1st floor) to kill Blue Dumaros for them in Orsha, or from Crystal Spiders in Crystal Mines in Klaipeda.