cashew | Tales of Wind First Four Days (Reply)

So, I've been playing Tales of Wind and so far the game has been very friendly for new players. There's plenty of resources to get the new character off the ground, and the game implements a server level cap, so the power levelers don't get ahead of you by too much. The level cap increases every few days to make sure that everyone progresses at more or less the same pace. I'm not sure why the game does this, but it does. So if you don't want to hit the level cap too early, then start a character on an older server.

Oh, and don't worry, there's like 165 servers at the time of writing and I imagine they'll keep creating more over time. I'm not sure why they want to create such a system, but there you have it.

However, as I mentioned before, the tutorials for Tales of Wind have been completely incomprehensible. So, I'll break it down here:

Experience (XP)

Experience in Tales of Wind (ToW) doesn't work like other games. In ToW, experience is broken down into two components, limited and unlimited.

ToW implements a soft daily XP cap. Most of the events (both daily dungeons and timed events) contribute to the limited XP cap. Once you fill it up, you're not allowed to earn anymore. After hitting the soft XP cap, you can only earn additional XP through the unlimited XP events. These include XP from Farming (more on this later), main story quest, side quests, and NPC challenges. For a more detailed break down, tap the "Power Up" button next to your character summary in the upper left corner. It will show you which events are limited XP and which events are not.

Due to this double system, it's highly advised that you leave the unlimited XP events for last and focus on doing limited XP first. I wouldn't worry too much about this soft cap early in the game (aka pre-level 40), as you're unlikely to actually reach the soft cap daily. It's only when you start hitting level 40+ that you are able to earn more.

Any unlimited XP from whatever events are available that you miss out on will be automatically stored at the Retrieve EXP tree-crystal ball-witch thing. It effectively allows you to accrue experience without having to be particularly active. However, you'll be missing out on a lot of money and reward items and XP is easy to come by in this game.

Currency

As with any MMO these days (and mobile games in general), there is a shit ton of currencies. Here's a full list.

The game will slowly introduce you to them as you level up and unlock access to different parts of the shop. For a beginner, here are the relevant pieces:

Silverstar - this is the basic in-game currency. You need this for equipment upgrades, card upgrades, guardian upgrades, buying from NPCs, retrieving XP. All the basic stuff. Silverstars are earned through doing quests. In ToW, only quest completion give rewards (XP and money). So don't go slaughtering a bunch of monsters for no reason.

Shells - Shells are used for, mainly, the Market (AKA Trading Post). Shells can also be converted into Silverstars. Shells are earned through certain Guild Quests, World Boss events for getting in the last hit, and selling your items to other people through the Market. Obviously, you can also buy shells with premium currency. If you don't play the market, you won't have much of a need for shells.

Spirals - Beware, Spirals come in paid and free form, do not mix the two up! Your paid and free Spirals are all pooled together, but free Spirals have limited buying power, so I recommend buying things with free Spirals first before spending money to get the paid Spirals.

Free Spirals - Free Spirals are given through daily escort quests when you share the postcard after full completion (I recommend making a game-only facebook/insta/twitter account for this purpose). You also get a limited amount from completing in game achievements. Free spirals have limited use, mostly for buying more inventory space. The cost increases exponentially as you buy more space, so this is where you should be spending most of your free Spirals before paying for them.

Paid Spirals - Bought with real money and can be traded for basically every other type of currency.

Arena Points - Gained from PvP-ing in the Arena with a daily allowance once you start participating. Used mostly to buy talisman cards (more about cards later).

Mana - Earned through quests and dismantling cards. Needed for upgrading cards.

Fame - earned through kingdom quests. There is a cap on Fame earned daily, so make sure you get your full batch. Can be used to buy much needed Mana and Diamonds, which are needed to enhance your equipment slots (more on this later). It can also buy fishing rod/axe/pick-axe. Fame is useful to kick start farming early without having to wait for Farm Coins to build up. And speaking of Farm Coins...

Farm Coin - Earned through doing Farm quests and can be spent in the Grocery shop. Grocery shop mostly holds decorative items for the farm, but holds a few important things, like dogs for your farm to go on shopping trips, and tools needed to fish, mine, and log. The materials gained from fishing, mining, and logging can be used to fulfill more farm requests and expanding your farm storage. The farm is basically a self-contained mini-game.

Hearts - Hearts are earned at the Farm and needed to be collected at least every 12 hours (the hearts stop generating if you don't collected after 12 hours). Hearts are used to speed things up at the Farm for those of you who don't have the patience to wait. At the later levels, the wait times can get pretty long, so start collecting those hearts early.

There's plenty of other currencies, but for now, these are the important ones that you'll be interacting with.

Upgrades

Everything combat is based on Battle Rating (BR). The BR is a comprehensive score that does all the complicated math for you. If you're sitting there wondering if you should trade off Vitality for more HP and when those break-even points are...just look at BR. All equipment will be compared via BR. Higher BR good. The End.

Here are the main sources of BR: Level, Equipment, Cards, and Guardians. There are other minute tweaks to squeeze out the last bit of advantage, but for early game, it's pretty straight forward. Just keep getting better Equipment, Cards, and Guardians.

Equipment

There are three major sources of equipment upgrade: Enhance, Socket, and Reforge.

Enhance and Socket are permanent upgrades to the equipment slot, while Reforge is limited the equipment piece itself. So at the start, don't hesitate to Enhance and Socket when you have the resources. Meanwhile, hold off on Reforging until you've gotten higher grade weapons.

Enhance - This gives the +number to the equipment slot. The plus number is tied to the slot, not the item itself. To enhance the slot, you need Diamonds and Silverstars (see above). The most steady source of Diamonds is bought with Fame. Sometimes quests will also give Diamonds. Different kinds of Diamonds are needed depending on the +number. Star Diamonds for low level upgrades (+1 to +6), Moon Diamonds for mid-level (+7 to +12), and Sun Diamonds for high level (+12 to +18). Lower level diamonds can be fused into higher level ones.

Socket - This increases the number of Cards that can be attached to the equipment slot. (More on cards later.) Socket is level limited and requires Fame and Silverstars to unlock once reaching the appropriate levels. Sockets and the associated Cards are linked to the slot, so weapons can freely swap in and out and retain these upgrades. The only exception to the regular socket method is the Headgear. Headgear sockets require access to Artifact maps. Using Artifact Maps, you can dig up purple grade headgear, which is then disassembled into socket scrolls. 20 scrolls are needed to unlock one socket. It's a really complicated system mostly for people who are willing to pay, as Artifact Maps are pretty much pay only.

Reforge - This increases the stat bonuses on the weapon item. This, unlike the previous two, is not linked with the equipment slot, and therefore is lost when you swap equipment. Do this only after you've settled on a piece of equipment that you'll be using for a while. Reforging uses metals (bronze/iron/mythril/adamantine in increasing order). These metals can be gained from dismantling equipment that you don't need. And if you're running your daily allotment of kingdom event quests, you should be swimming in equipment you don't need.

Cards

Cards can be added to equipment sockets to provide additional bonuses and skills. Cards are split into four categories: Weapon, Glove, Armor, Talisman, and Headgear. Only one copy of a card can be added to the same piece of equipment. (You can have multiple copies of the card across different pieces of equipment.)

Weapon - Weapon cards only apply to your weapon. Almost all of the weapon cards come with transformation skills. These transformations can be used consecutively through your weapon skill hotkey and transforms you into a monster for 20 seconds. During this time, you will have access to the monster's skills instead of your class skills. The cool down for each transformation is 300 seconds. Once you've unlocked the full set of sockets, you get four transformations that will sequentially load until you've burned through all of them, at which point you'll need to wait for the cool down from the first transformation to finish. Transformations are good for mostly saving your butt in the middle of a really bad battle as the process refills your HP.

Glove - Glove cards only apply to your gloves. They also come with skills, although not as frequently as weapon cards. Unlike weapon skills, you can only set one glove skill at a time. However, you can change which glove skill you're using through the skill menu. They act as an extra skill with 30 second cool down. This skill can be used to supplement your current bar with either more damage or some form of control/debuff depending on what class skills you've decided to invest in.

Armor - Armor cards can be applied to chest piece, pants, belt, or shoes. These cards are mostly used for passive abilities, such as reflect damage, drain life, extra damage to monsters, etc. This is where you can stack the same type of card by spreading them across different armor pieces to increase the effects.

Talisman - Talisman cards can only be applied to the talisman. The difference is that unlike other cards which drop from the card dungeons, these cards are bought with Arena Points. So better join in the arena battles and start earning points.

Headgear - Headgear cards only apply to headgear. Not really relevant to F2P as headgear sockets can only be unlocked through payment based methods.

All cards can be further enhanced using Silverstars and Mana. The most steady source of Mana is through purchases in the shop (all types of currencies), dismantling cards, and Farm quests. For upgrading to +6, the card is guaranteed to succeed. Beyond +6, the card will start to fail at a higher and higher rate. However, there is an anti-frustration feature that will lock the gear to their +rank at +6, +9, and +12, guaranteeing that once you've reached those ranks, even if you fail, you won't drop below those ranks. Card +ranks are tied to the card, not the slot, so choose wisely where you want to invest your resources.

Guardian

Guardians are pets that you can carry with you to do extra stuff. You can't control what they do, but they'll add a little bit of extra damage during battle. However, the better use of Guardians is their ability to be put into the Guardian Array. Here, a portion of the pet's stats will be transfer into your character's BR.

Guardian pets can level up by following you around during quests or by feeding them Summer Juice. You'll get a lot of Juices just by doing daily quests, so there's very little reason to buy them unless you're power leveling Guardians. Once Guardians reach max level, they can undergo an evolution process, but honestly, at that point, you're getting into paying territory.

To get Guardians, you need Nets. You can either buy nets, or fuse them from tickets that drop from doing the daily Bug Hunting event. This is the best way to get higher rarity and thus more powerful Guardians to put into your array. You'll also get a free gold Guardian from the 7-day login rewards.

Because Guardians are so painfully difficult to upgrade, it's better to focus on getting higher rarity Guardians first and leave the Guardian level ups to end game.

Party System

Like any MMO, ToW is very party focused. While it might be harder to get into a serious party, you can always start your own and recruit AI party members. AI party members' BR rating is 1 grade lower than your rating. But it's always worth it to party up as dungeon reward rate is increased for being in a full party. Basically, unless the dungeon is a solo-quest only, always party up in this game. Especially when you're doing Kingdom Events, it's really worth it to stay in a party for the extra drops.

Anyway, that's the basic stuff during the early stages. Obviously, things get way, way more complicated later on, and as a mobile MMO, it's betting that you'll want to pay to ease some of the advancement complexities. However, there's still plenty of progression to be had by free players, so why not give it a whirl?