Hello there, I started playing 6 days ago. I’m really new to the game and I have no concept of anything.
I wanted to share what exactly I, as a new player, was thinking when I was playing the game. This might also give insight into why this game has trouble retaining newer players like myself.
I actually don’t expect anyone to read all of this. This is to give you guys an idea of just how confused I was while playing this game. I joined the Tree of Savior discord and was able to ask questions there. Everyone was very helpful and I managed to dip my toes into some endgame content thanks to them. But not all new players will join the discord or know what questions to ask - they don’t even know what they don’t know.
So here’s a list of what was going through my head as I was playing.
- There wasn’t a lot of options in character customization which made me sad. I wanted to change my hair color, too.
- I saw two chests in my inventory and had no idea what it was. Players told me it was “guardian gear”.
- I had no idea what guardian gear was or how to upgrade it.
- I didn’t know your character can hold four weapons (with two of them just being stat sticks).
- I have 4 extra guardian gear boxes left. What to do with it?
- I didn’t know how to distribute my stats.
- There are so many currencies I don’t know what to do with like those blue tokens, vaivora coins, or “mercenary badges”. I had no idea what to even use them on. I have no idea how to even access the shops where these currencies are used. How do I get Gabija tokens and what do I use them for? How do I get more TOS Coins?
- What should I spend my currencies on?
- How do I get more tokens/currencies? Do I just farm for them out in the open? Where are the best spots to do that?
- I was completely clueless about the card system in this game and still am. Can cards be upgraded? Which cards should I get? Where do I get them?
- What’s an ark? What are seals and how do you upgrade them? How do I get accessories, belt, and shoulder gear?
- I didn’t know what gems were for. I didn’t know they could be upgraded or how to do that.
- I had no idea how important doing the story quests called episodes were. I didn’t know doing episodes gave really important rewards. I didn’t even think to click on the treasure chest icon to claim my rewards.
- What are vaivora visions and how do you get them? Which ones are good to get?
- What’s an “ichor”?
- What’s an “assistor”? Cards?
- What are mystic tomes?
- What are all these vouchers for?: Goddess’/Demon God’s Armor Register Voucher, Luciferie Accessory Set Create Voucher, etc…
- What are these Savinose Weapon Selection Boxes for? I have so many. Aren’t I supposed to be sticking with my guardian gear (or I guess it’s called Falouros gear now)?
- What do I do with these Monster Card Selection Card Albums? What do I pick?
- What items should I use Sandra’s Magnifier on?
- Why did questing get so difficult around level 450 or so?! Everything is killing me. What do I do? Is there something wrong with my gear?
- How the heck do I get rid of all the notifications from the achievement journal! (I was told you needed to right click on the icons which opens up a drop down menu. So that’s how you do it.)
- Where do I go to do dungeons? I didn’t know you could just press F10 to open up the dungeon menu.
- Why can’t I enter dungeons? I never knew there was a limit to how many dungeons I could do a day. I never knew what time the daily reset was.
- I had no idea I could use vouchers to re-enter a dungeon after I reached my daily limit.
- How do I check what gear score I need to enter a dungeon?
- What is an attribute achievement rate and how do I raise it so I can enter dungeons? Which attribute are good to level?
- I didn’t know what a Sole Hunt was, or that I needed to do that to get more attribute points in order to increase my attribute achievement rate.
- I didn’t know I needed to do Delmore Battlefield in order to enhance my 470 accessories and increase my gear score.
- I didn’t know I needed to do Sinking Seizure to get a belt to increase my gear score.
- I didn’t know I could start doing Turbulent Core raids to enhance my weapon and armor respectively.
- I didn’t know the Thurible off Salvation raid gave materials to enhance my 490 accessories.
- I didn’t know what a challenge mode is or why I should do them. I had no idea what to do with Nucle Powder and Sierra Powder that drops from this. I also didn’t know players usually skip the bosses and just kill the mobs. Had no idea why they did that.
- I didn’t know the TP shop gives you up to 5 TP free, or what to even use the 5 free TP on. I didn’t know it replenishes or that it caps at 5.
- I didn’t know how to trade people. I didn’t know what a trade grade was.
- How do I get into PvP?
- I didn’t even know there was housing.
- I didn’t know how to create a party.
There’s so many other things I probably forgot to mention.
Honestly… Tree of Savior’s player community carries the game hard. If I didn’t have anyone guiding me, I would have given up. This game has way too many systems and it’s not new player friendly at all.
I love the art aesthetics of this game, it’s beautiful. I love the class variety (but I wish there was more class balancing). After learning about guardian gear, I thought it was a brilliant system (But that was only after someone explained that system to me). Doing the story quests and leveling felt very smooth and enjoyable until you get to around level 450. It was around 450 where it became very difficult and frustrating to progress through the story without a veteran player’s help. It’s not like I could form a party with players around my level or story progression because there are none.
What I’m really trying to say is… it’s a shame this game has trouble retaining new players, and it’s a shame the player population is so low. I’ve been talking to a lot of veterans of this game and they seem to really want new players to join the game. Not gonna lie, it seems like they are starved for new players to join and interact with. They will do whatever they can to help because they want new players to stay! lol
I really hope someone from the Tree of Savior team takes feedback like this into consideration. This game would be so much easier to get into if all the systems were easier to learn. There’s so many systems, currencies, etc… and it’s overwhelming.
