Soul Bishop — Soul's Remnant Faith Build Companion

Briefing — what you're walking into

Soul's Remnant is a free-to-play 2D platformer MMORPG by Chaomoon — one developer since April 2016, a second (Rajah) since 2025 — that hit Steam Early Access on August 13, 2026 and immediately went Very Positive (82% of 322 reviews, ~2,000 concurrent at launch). It is very deliberately a love letter to old-school MapleStory: side-scrolling maps, platform grinding, party play, dungeon crawls, life skills, even a fame stat.

The EA build ships with 72+ skills, ~100 monsters, 200+ maps, 19 bosses, 3 dungeons, 150+ quests, 700+ crafting recipes and 10 villagers. No more character wipes — progress is permanent from here.

The one big difference: there are no classes

Soul's Remnant is classless. Any character can learn any skill. Skills are grouped into four damage families — Melee, Range, Magic, Faith — plus hybrids that need two families. "Being a Bishop" here means: pump SPR, carry a faith-scaling weapon (Focus, Cross or Holy Arrow — see Gear), and build your active-skill bar from the Faith tree. Nobody assigns you the role — you assemble it.

The Bishop translation table. Every MapleStory instinct you have has a direct analog here:

MapleStory (Bishop)	Soul's Remnant	Notes
Magic Claw / mobbing basic	Nova	360° pulse around you, hits 3, even behind you
Big Bang / Genesis	Smite (Faith 30)	Wall-piercing 5-target nuke, no line of sight needed — highest faith scaling in the game
Heal	Revitalize	Heals party and sears enemies in the same pulse, classic Cleric style
Holy Symbol	Divine Blessing (Faith 11)	+EXP buff that party members share at half strength — costs 0 SP
Teleport	Blink (Magic 9)	Phase through walls/floors, 3 SP flat — mandatory splash
Bless / defensive buffs	Burst Shield, Vanguard	Shield that reflects 5× damage; party damage-absorb bubble
Resurrection (almost)	Divine Protection (Faith 25)	Cancels the next killing blow on the whole party — pre-emptive res
MP Eater / Infinity	none	SPR raises MP + regen breakpoints instead; Focus weapons add MP regen
no analog — classless bonus	Taunt + Shadow Twin	Free cross-tree buffs no MapleStory Bishop could touch: an auto mob-gatherer and a clone that recasts your Smite at ~48% — see Skills

Good to know before you queue

Death costs 8% of the current level's EXP and dumps you back at Spawn. Group instances give 3 in-instance respawns first.
Night is real: 7pm–5am world time ≈ 22 real minutes. Maps darken, some get genuinely more dangerous, and all four world bosses only spawn at night.
The game fights AFK grinding: a Darkness Crystal spawns while you grind — clear it with two arrow inputs for a random 10-minute buff (+10% EXP among others). Ignore it for 50 kills and you get nothing — no EXP, no drops.
One shared world server with channels (CC to swap). Channel-changing currently strips buffs, including your 2× EXP coupon — don't CC mid-coupon.
Monetization is cosmetic-only — Chaomoon's published policy: "Nothing in the cash shop gives stats or combat power." Subs add auction slots and auto-loot range, not power.

The Steam Launch — why "day one" actually means day one

Soul's Remnant didn't appear from nowhere on August 13 — it ran a decade of invite and Patreon playtests, every one of them temporary. Knowing that history explains the economy you're stepping into.

The era timeline

Era	When	Fate
2022 Playtest	2022	wiped
Season 1 (first Godot build)	Dec 2023 – Jan 2024	wiped
Summer Playtest (trading & channels added)	Aug 2024	wiped
Christmas Playtest (backpack slot debuts)	Dec 2024	wiped
Playtest O → Next Fest → final playtest	Mar 2025 – Jul 2026	wiped
Steam Early Access	Aug 13, 2026 →	permanent

The developer's own words, July 2026: "With the early access launch, will there be any data wipes still? No! There will be NO MORE WIPES once early access launches, and your progress will be kept." The last playtest closed in early July; launch day repeated it: "finally launching! And with no more wipes!!"

What that means for you, economically

Nobody carried anything over. No playtest gear, no hoarded Soul Crystals, no pre-stocked Auction House. The richest player in the game has been rich since August 13 at the earliest — veterans carried over knowledge (routes, recipes, echo priorities), not wealth.
The economy is days old and price discovery is live. AH price-history graphs barely have a week of data. Mid-tier crafts (each 6-level gear step) are in real demand from the leveling wave — a crafting Bishop can genuinely fund themselves right now.
The leveling wave is compressed: launch-week reality is no-lifers at 45+ sharing maps with fresh characters (Steam threads are already complaining about overleveled players crowding low maps). Channel-hop when a spawn is contested.
Real-money purchases started with EA — the community reads that as the strongest guarantee the no-wipe promise holds (the only open question anyone raises is EA→1.0, and the developer has given no indication of a reset).

Practical launch-window notes

One single global server — every region plays together, in the developer's own words, with channels rather than regional shards. (A launch-week forum reply reportedly promised EU/Asia region support "hopefully soon", but I couldn't re-verify it in any reachable source — treat regional servers as unconfirmed rather than announced.)
Launch-day login hiccups ("already logged in to a channel server") mostly cleared in the first days; hotfixes ship fast but patch notes live on Discord, not Steam — join it if you want the numbers behind each rebalance.
Botting is being actively policed — the Aug 16 patch updated the anti-cheat, RMT and botting systems and a ban wave followed. The anti-AFK Darkness Crystal system isn't decorative.
Population: ~2,800 peak concurrent in week one and climbing, Very Positive at 82%. Small enough that crafter reputation (maker's marks!) is a real thing, big enough that parties fill.

The Build — a Bishop with extra steps

Identity: SPR-main faith caster. AoE mobbing with Nova → Smite, party EXP via Divine Blessing, heals and death-prevention in group content. Solo-viable, party-desired.

Stats — what the six numbers do

Stat	Governs	This build
SPR	Faith damage, slight magic damage, max MP, MP-regen breakpoints	Main stat — dump here
CON	Max HP, HP regen, Defense, slight melee & faith damage	Secondary — ~1 point in 4
INT	Magic damage	Only if you splash magic nukes seriously
LUK	Crit rate (~0.75%/pt up to 60, diminishing past ~90), slight range dmg	Skip — faith kit converts crit poorly
STR	Melee damage	Skip (that's the paladin build)
DEX	Range damage	Skip

The allocation rule: you get 5 stat points per level. Community launch-week consensus is a ~3:1 SPR:CON split (≈25–30% into CON) — even 5 CON visibly grows your HP bar and adds +1 DEF. Raise the CON share if you're dying in 20+ content; a dead Bishop buffs nobody.

Respec safety net: stat resets are free under level 10, then cost escalating Soul Crystals, limited to once per real-life hour. Experiment early, settle by ~15.

Weapon identity: the Focus

Weapons don't lock skills — they decide which attack stat your gear feeds. Eleven weapon lines exist; three matter to us:

Weapon	Scales	Bonus lines	Verdict
Focus	Magic + Faith (dual)	MP Regen, Elemental Potency	The build's weapon. Both damage stats you touch, plus caster-support extras
Cross	Faith only	Attack Speed, Damage	Slightly higher faith attack per tier (+10–15 vs +7–11 at Stone) — pure-faith purist option
Magic Wand	Magic only	Attack Speed, Damage	Only if you drift into a mage instead

Also real: Holy Arrow weapons (Range+Faith — the "priest-archer" line), Shields (Melee+Faith paladin line), Orbs (global attack, jack-of-all). If you ever want the melee-faith paladin variant, that's Shield + Cross skills — a different site's problem.

Element — your "Holy" doesn't exist, so pick one

There is no Holy element. Seven elements exist, and your element comes from your weapon, not your skills — changeable later via Transmutation (Alchemy 15). Two character stats govern them: Elemental Chance (how often a proc fires, base 15%) and Elemental Potency (how hard it hits, base 50%).

Your build cares about elements more than any other build in the game. Nova gains +40% Elemental Potency at max level, the Faith passive adds +19% Potency / +11% Chance by 99, and Elemental Charge adds +157% Chance for zero skill points. Stacked, that's roughly 183% Chance — meaning every single hit procs your element. The numbers in the table below stop being occasional bonuses and become part of your basic damage.

All seven, in full (effects quoted at 100% Potency)

Element	What a proc does	Verdict for a Bishop
Normal	+80% damage on the proccing hit. No rider, no conditions.	The best single-target proc in the game and the default choice for bosses. Boring, huge, never wrong.
Ghost	Haunted: 120% damage over 2.5s and pulls other enemies toward the target. Two Haunts active at once; spreads to another monster if retriggered. On death, half the per-tick damage transfers onward. Stacks infinitely on normal monsters.	The grinding king. A free mob-gatherer on a 2D platformer is worth more than raw percentages — it does Taunt's job passively. But it resets every 6s on bosses (and on Mighty monsters, which count as bosses), so it's the wrong pick for boss nights.
Ice	Frozen for 6s, slows. Each stack makes the target take +10% damage, max 3 stacks (+30%). When a Frozen monster dies, up to 2 nearby take 6% of its max HP per stack.	The party element. That +30% damage-taken debuff benefits everyone hitting the target, which is exactly the support identity. The on-death splash also chains nicely through packs.
Water	Slight slow, and instantly restores your HP and MP — plus up to 2 other players inside the radius.	The sustain pick, and the answer to MP pressure. With Elemental Charge draining 12 MP/tick, a Water weapon can fund your own toggles while healing the party passively. Caveat: multi-hit skills share one burst rather than proccing per hit.
Fire	Initial target +50%, up to 2 nearby take +25%, and the initial target burns for 36% over 3s.	Solid all-rounder — decent single-target and spread. Never the best at either, never bad.
Lightning	Chains to up to 4 nearby enemies: 65% to the first, then −40% per bounce (500 → 325 → 130 → 52). The initial target takes zero bonus damage.	Read that last clause carefully — it's purely a clear-speed element and does nothing single-target. Great over dense packs, actively the worst choice against a boss.
Metal	Enemy loses −3 DEF per stack; you gain +3% damage reduction per stack. wiki contradicts itself on the cap — one line says max 5 stacks (−15 DEF), another says 10 stacks (−10 DEF, +30% DR).	The only defensive element. Its DEF shred stacks with Armor Pen echoes, and the self-DR is real mitigation for Dark Fire's HP drain. A niche but coherent tank-Bishop pick.

Picking one, practically: Ghost while levelling and grinding (the pull is a free gather), Normal for bosses and the Abyss (+80% flat beats every rider), Ice if you party seriously (the debuff multiplies your whole group), Water if MP or survival is your bottleneck. Lightning only if you exclusively farm dense packs; Metal only if you're building tanky. And since transmutation is repeatable, this is a reversible decision — keep two weapons if you can afford it.

Two things that make this easier than it looks. First, monster elemental weaknesses aren't active — the game has a complete resistance matrix built but disabled, with the developers' own note that you "can use whatever element you want without worrying about dealing less damage." So there is no wrong element for a zone, only a wrong element for a situation. Second, transmute before socketing Souls: every echo already on the weapon inflates the transmutation cost by 30%.

For future-proofing, the disabled chart reads: Fire beats Ice, loses to Water · Ice beats Ghost, loses to Fire · Ghost beats Metal, loses to Ice · Metal beats Lightning, loses to Ghost · Lightning beats Water, loses to Metal · Water beats Fire, loses to Lightning · Normal is resisted by Ghost and Metal. If that system ever switches on, Ghost and Metal become the defensive picks and Normal gets worse.

The real constraint: buff slots, not SP

Party buffs cost 0 SP but you can only run 2 active buffs at once (3 after the level-60 "Unlocking Potential" quest — post-50 goal). The whole support game is choosing which two: Divine Blessing (EXP) is near-permanent; the second slot flexes between Dedication (heals/shields +25%+), Elemental Charge, Vanguard, or Divine Protection before dangerous pulls. A 5th-line aura echo can add +1 Buff Slot — that's the endgame support chase item.

Skills — the Faith tree, in full

How skills actually work here (read this once, save hours)

Press K → drag skills from the tree into your Active Skills bar. No trainers, no skill books.
Unlocking costs materials (Dull Life Essence, Soul Crystals, later Dungeon Crystals) and is permanent — materials are never refunded. Unlock deliberately.
SP is a shared pool cap across all active skills, not per-skill currency. Lower a skill or shelve it and you get every point back instantly and free. Respeccing your SP layout is trivial; only the unlock materials are sunk cost.
SP income (wiki figure): 1/level, +1 extra every 5 levels, +1 more every 10. Skill levels cap at 20; skills also gain their own mastery EXP through use, and raising a skill's level costs essences/souls.
The "Faith Lv X" requirements below refer to the Faith passive, which levels itself to 99 just by using faith skills — it lags a bit behind character level, so unlock levels are approximate milestones.
Buffs cost 0 SP (max 2 running, 3 after lv 60). Macros: 5 slots × 6 skills. Loadouts save equipment+skills+macros (swap costs Soul Crystals).
The Faith passive itself pays out: +1% Elemental Potency per 5 levels, +1% Damage Reduction per 6, +1% Elemental Chance per 9.

The leveling build is not the final build

Here's the uncomfortable truth about pure faith: every Faith damage skill worth the name unlocks at Faith 30+ (Smite 30, Dark Fire 35), and Nova is the slowest basic attack in the game (1.7s vs 0.4–1.4s elsewhere). Nobody in the meta grinds 1–30 on Nova alone — and thanks to two hybrid basics, you don't have to leave the faith identity to fix it.

The trick: Shield Bash (Melee 5 + Faith 5) and Holy Arrow (Range 5 + Faith 5) are hybrid basics that scale off your Faith attack — full damage in your SPR gear — while the melee/range damage they deal levels the Melee and Range passives. Those passives are the door to two free buffs every serious faith build runs:

Skill	Req	Cost	What it does for a Bishop
Holy Arrow	Range 5 + Faith 5	0 SP +1/lv	Your real leveling basic: a blessed homing arrow that chains between targets, 1.4s CD, full Faith scaling (75%+45%/lv on both lines). Tap for ⅓ damage, full draw for all. +3% Elemental Chance every 3rd level.
Shield Bash	Melee 5 + Faith 5	1 SP +1/lv	Lunge that bulldozes mobs into a pile — a mob-gatherer that feeds Nova and (later) Smite. Faith scaling 100%+50%/lv. +12 Max HP per level as a perk. One point is enough.
Taunt BUFF	Melee 11	0 SP	Auto-roars every 3s: forces mobs to attack (= gather on you, exactly where Nova hits), and every monster hit stacks Berserk: +global damage, Speed and Defense. The budget Gravity Well, free forever.
Dash	Range 8	2 SP flat	I-framed dash through terrain — you pass Range 8 on the way to bigger things anyway. Pairs with (not replaces) Blink.
Heaven Arrow	Range 28	1 SP +1/lv	A halo fires 25 homing arrows while you keep fighting or running. Carries Faith sub-scaling (8.5%+8.5%/lv). The white rain you see in every faith farming video.
Shadow Twin BUFF	Range 30	0 SP (toggle)	The endgame engine: a shadow clone repeats every skill you cast at 7.2%+2.4%/lv — ≈48% of your damage at Lv 18, so it near-doubles Smite. Bonus: if a blow would kill you, the twin dies instead and you live at 1 HP. Leveling it costs materials, never SP.

The mechanic that makes this mandatory, not optional. Skills gain their own Skill EXP by being used — but each type levels differently: damage skills only level on the last hit, healing skills level by healing, and buff skills level only by hitting enemies with a physical skill while the buff is active.

Read that last one again. Without a physical attack on your bar, your buffs cannot level at all — Divine Blessing, Taunt and Shadow Twin would sit frozen at their activation level forever. Holy Arrow and Shield Bash aren't just faster leveling; they're the only way a faith build grows its buffs. (Also worth knowing: a support in a party of heavy DPS will struggle to level damage skills, since those need last hits — and skills stop earning EXP once they have enough to level until you actually spend it in the crafting menu.)

The proof it works: the highest-level faith build on record — a Lv 95 "Faith build training at Deep Cave 9" video from the late-2025 playtest era — is exactly this shape: a glass-cannon SPR caster (416 HP / 1,681 MP!), paired damage numbers at ~50% (that's a maxed Shadow Twin echoing every cast), Smite's wrath-sigil plus Heaven Arrow's holy rain on rotation, and a stack of buffs anchoring a party-EXP feed. No text guide documents a pure-faith archetype yet — the closest published archetype is the melee-faith "Paladin" — which makes this hybrid-faith path the closest thing to a real Bishop meta.

Buff-slot math, revisited: Taunt and Shadow Twin are buffs, so they compete with Divine Blessing for your 2 slots (3 after lv 60). Practical rotation: leveling solo = Divine Blessing + Taunt · duo = Divine Blessing + Armor Link · bossing/late farm = Shadow Twin + Taunt (drop Blessing only when EXP stops mattering more than speed) · post-60, three slots = Blessing + Taunt + Shadow Twin, the full Lv-95-video loadout.

Core kit — attack & heal AOE CORE

Skill	Req	CD	Faith scaling	Targets	What it is
Nova	Faith 1	1.7s	160% +80%/lv	3	Your mobbing basic: 360° pulse that hits everything in a circle including behind you. Grows +8% Elemental Potency every 4 levels. Free to activate (0 SP base).
Burst Shield	Faith 4	5.0s	100.8% +32.7%/lv	3	2.5s shield on you + nearby party: next hit reduced 30%(+2.5/lv) and the prevented damage is reflected five-fold, splashing nearby mobs. Defense that farms.
Revitalize	Faith 10	8.5s	559.5% +260.8%/lv (heal & dmg)	self + ~2 allies	The Heal: one pulse heals the most-wounded party members and sears enemies inside it. Also restores %max HP/MP. Huge scaling — a main damage button, not just triage.
Smite	Faith 30	12s	635.5% +441.1%/lv	5	The Big Bang. Wrath falls on the 5 nearest enemies through walls and floors, no line of sight. Highest faith scaling in the game. The build's identity button from 30 on.
Dark Fire	Faith 35	toggle	57% +28%/lv per tick, 2×/sec	4	Grind aura: damage circle that ticks twice a second and gains +3% damage per enemy inside (max +15%). Costs 5% max HP + 7% shield per second but can never kill you. Turn it on, hold a spawn point.

Party buffs — the support toolkit SUPPORT (all cost 0 SP)

Skill	Req	Duration	Effect
Divine Blessing	Faith 11	126s +6/lv	Holy Symbol lives. +2.5%(+1.75/lv) EXP, +1.5%(+1.5/lv) Skill EXP, +2.37%(+0.79/lv) Faith damage. Party members near you share the EXP bonuses at half strength. Effectively permanent uptime — recast on cooldown forever.
Divine Protection	Faith 25	24s +4/lv (≈2min CD)	Everyone's first killing blow is cancelled, leaving ~13%(+5.2/lv) HP instead. Pre-cast before boss mechanics and risky night pulls.
Armor Link	Faith 12	persistent while together	Bond one partner: they take 35% less damage (45% at 100 CON) — you take it for them; half of every heal you receive flows to them. The duo-leveling skill.
Elemental Charge	Faith 28	toggle (MP-regen drain)	+100%(+3/lv) Elemental Effect Chance, every proc adds bonus elemental damage; party in range gets half the chance. Pairs absurdly well with a Lightning or Water Focus.
Vanguard	Melee 12 + Faith 8	toggle bubble	Party inside your bubble takes ~21%(+1.25/lv) less damage (you absorb it); mobs inside take ~4%(+1.55/lv) more from you. For tanky-Bishop variants.
Life Line	Faith 25 + Range 25	pair bond	Share stats with a partner; if they'd die they survive at 15% HP and you lose half your max HP. Deep-duo insurance (needs Range investment).
Divine Benevolence	Melee 22 + Faith 22	stance	When you get hit, the party heals for 7%(+0.95/lv) of the blow. Martyr stance for melee-hybrid supports.

Solo amplifiers

Skill	Req	Effect
Dedication	Faith 29	Passive stance: everything you heal or shield is +25%(+5/lv) stronger. The healer multiplier — near-mandatory second buff slot in group content.

Worth splashing from Magic AOE

Skill	Req	SP	Why
Blink	Magic 9	3 flat	Teleport, including straight up/down and through walls. Unlock: 10 Dull Life Essence. Non-negotiable — 3 SP forever, never level it further. Get your Magic passive to 9 early by weaving Magic Burst into grinding.
Soul Bomb	Magic 8	3 +1/lv	Proximity-mine AoE that carries real Faith sub-scaling (+65%/lv) — the best magic splash for a SPR build filling Smite's 12s cooldown.
Gravity Well	Magic 35	2–3 +1/lv	Vacuums mobs and crushes them 3×/sec — but Taunt + Shield Bash already gather for free, and Magic 35 is a whole third passive grind. Skip unless you're deep in Magic anyway.
Familiar	Magic 26	0 (buff)	The Rabbit familiar vacuums soul drops and finds extra Soul Crystals — real farm income, but it eats a buff slot and needs Magic 26. Late luxury.
Mana Shield	Magic (buff)	0	Halves HP damage by redirecting to MP — your SPR MP pool is huge. Solo-grind buff-slot option.

Since the hybrid path levels your Range passive anyway (see above), the Range+Faith actives — Holy Field, Heaven Arrow, and Medishot (Range 12 + Faith 16, a heal-seeking projectile) — come nearly free. Magic stays a 3-SP Blink splash unless you deliberately build toward Familiar or Gravity Well.

SP order, 1 → 50 — the hybrid-faith path

When	Do this
Lv 1–4	Unlock + raise Nova. Cast constantly — everything below is gated on passives that only level through use.
Melee/Range/Faith 5	Activate Holy Arrow (0 SP) and Shield Bash (1 SP). Holy Arrow becomes your main basic — it chains, it's faster than Nova, and it scales off Faith. Bash to pile mobs, Nova the pile. All three passives now level together.
Faith 4	Burst Shield at 1 point — utility now, reflect-farming later.
Range 8	Dash (2 SP flat, i-frames) — free stopover on the road to Shadow Twin.
Melee 11	TAUNT (0 SP). Your mob-gatherer for the next 90 levels. Melee passive can retire here — Shield Bash keeps it ticking anyway.
Faith 10–11	Revitalize, then Divine Blessing (0 SP — free EXP and free Skill EXP, which speeds every passive grind on this table). Recast forever.
Magic 9 (optional)	Blink (3 SP) if you weave Magic Burst into your grinding; Dash covers mobility until then. Magic Burst's MP-regen perks are their own argument.
Faith 12 / duo	Armor Link if you level with a friend.
Range 18 + Faith 23	Holy Field (0 SP base) — radiant AoE zone + 40% slow, dual Faith scaling. Your Range investment starts paying dividends.
Faith 25–29	Divine Protection → Elemental Charge → Dedication as they unlock (all cheap/0 SP).
Range 28	Heaven Arrow — 25 homing arrows with Faith sub-scaling, fires while you do other things.
Faith 30	SMITE. Everything into Smite. Drain Nova and Holy Arrow down (free) and feed the +441%/lv curve.
Range 30	SHADOW TWIN (0 SP toggle). Every Smite now casts twice. Level it with materials as they come — each level is +2.4% echo.
Faith 35	Dark Fire for stationary grinds; off vs bosses that punish the HP drain.
Slack SP	Revitalize → Holy Field → Heaven Arrow levels. Soul Bomb if you went the Magic route instead of Range.

Dark Fire at Faith 35 is the last thing you will ever learn. The highest unlock gate in the entire game — across all four trees — is passive level 35. There is no Faith 40, 50 or 60 tier; the tree simply ends. Passives keep climbing to 99 but pay only in stats, and for Faith that's +1% Elemental Potency per 5 levels, +1% Damage Reduction per 6, +1% Elemental Chance per 9 — reaching +19% / +16% / +11% at 99.

So the entire second half of the game is depth: pushing skills toward level 20, chasing the third buff slot at 60, and grinding gear tiers and echoes. If you were waiting for a capstone skill to arrive, stop waiting and go level Smite instead.

What maxing a skill actually costs

Skill levels are the strongest damage lever in the game (see Theorycraft) and priced accordingly. From the Dark Fire cost table:

Level	Cost
2–8	A few dozen to ~125 Dull essences plus small Soul Crystal fees — trivial
9	+ 1 Dull Dungeon Crystal (Dull crystals carry skills to level 9)
11–14	200 → 925 essences per level, plus Blue Crystals and Ambitious Souls; costs roughly 2.5× per level
15	500 Radiant essences + 30,000 SC + 1 Radiant Dungeon Crystal
16	800 Radiant essences + 1 Radiant Crystal + 3 Transcendent Souls
17	2,000 Radiant essences + 1 Radiant Crystal
18–20	undocumented — the wiki's data blocks are empty. Extrapolating the curve, expect several thousand Radiant essences each.

Levels 15→17 alone cost about 3,300 Radiant essences, 90,000 Soul Crystals, 3 Radiant Dungeon Crystals and 3 Transcendent Souls. Radiant Dungeon Crystals are the real bottleneck — one per level from 15 up, obtainable only from dungeons or the auction house, and you need one more for the level-60 buff-slot quest. Plan around crystals, not essences.

Remember: SP reshuffles are free — the "order" above is about unlock materials (permanent) and passive-level gates, not point regret. When Smite arrives at Faith 30, just drain Nova down and pour everything into Smite. Try that in MapleStory.

The Loadout Board — your bar at every level

The road to Smite is ~30 levels — and the meta doesn't walk it on Nova alone. This board runs the hybrid-faith path: Holy Arrow and Shield Bash carry the early game (in full SPR scaling) while quietly leveling the Melee and Range passives toward Taunt and Shadow Twin. Drag the slider (it syncs with the Roadmap slider); green pips mark what changed since the previous stop.

My level Lv 1

Reading the board: skill levels cap at 20 pips. Copy the shape, not the totals — the two sources on SP income genuinely disagree (the official wiki says 1/level plus bonuses at every 5th and 10th; the community guide says 2 points every 4 levels and 3 every 12, roughly half as much). The board uses the wiki figure, so if your real pool is smaller, keep the same priority order and just trim the tail — rebalancing costs nothing. "Faith 25/30/35" unlocks track the Faith passive, which lags your character level slightly; the board budgets for that lag.

Roadmap — 1 to 99

The world fans out from Spawn in a level-banded ring: Outskirts (1–10) → Plains (11–17) → Beach (18–21) → Savannah (22–26) → Misty Forest (27–30) → Sulfuric Plains (31–35) → Lost Plains (37) → Forest (40+) — and Forest 1 warps straight back to Plains 1, closing the loop. Caves hang underneath the Outskirts; Deep Caves, Ocean, Desert and Snowy Mountain are your 50+ future.

The launch-week speed route. The fastest documented start isn't a grind spot, it's a quest chain: do every quest in each area, back to back, until you reach Troppo territory (Seashell Cove, ~level 20 mobs) — roughly 90–120 minutes — then farm there for 10–15 minutes. One creator hit character 24 with a mastery at 30 in about 4 hours that way, on a level-6 weapon the whole time. Two things make it work: quest givers now sit in each area rather than back at Spawn (so you never backtrack), and every biome has an easily-missed field quest giver — Plains 1, Around the Seashore, the start of Savannah. Look for them. Levels 10–15 are the slow patch; push through.

Where am I? Lv 1

1–5

OUTSKIRTS

Tutorial & first Slimes

Do the Shepherd tutorial (drop through platforms with ↓+jump, learn a skill with K, spend stat points with O). Then Slimes (lv 1, 6 EXP) and Jels (lv 5, 20 EXP) in Outskirts West/Northwest and Flower Field. Grab everything on the Quest Master's board at Spawn — the quest spine carries you more than grinding does.

Faith note: unlock Nova immediately — its 360° circle already out-grinds everything at this bracket.

5–9

OUTSKIRTS S/SE

Pin Pins → Slips → Hoppers

Rotate south: Pin Pins (7) in Outskirts South, Slips (8) at the Pond, Hoppers (9) in the SE. Run the Exploring the Outskirts daily chain while you're there (ends with 2 Ambitious Souls). Detour into the Caves for Glowsnails (10) if you want early Yellow Shards.

Unlock Burst Shield at Faith 4. Start weaving Magic Burst casts — you want that Magic passive at 9 soon for Blink.

9–10

THE BARRIER

The Shepherd's Barrier — your job advancement

At 10, the Shepherd in Outskirts Northwest sends you into Slime Garden Normal (the "???" sign, Behind The Garden). Clear it and the barrier drops — the whole world opens. Rewards along the way: a free Normal Dungeon Pass, 500 EXP, 500 Soul Crystals.

This is the closest thing the game has to a job advancement — treat it with the same ceremony.

10–13

PLAINS 1–2

Cloudsheep fields + Slime Garden reruns

Cloudsheep (12) in Plains 1–2 are your first flat, dense AoE field — Thin the Pasture (100 sheep) pays 4,400 EXP. Dungeons I (clear any Normal dungeon) pays 8,000 EXP — rerun Slime Garden while you hold passes. Unlock Revitalize (Faith 10) and Divine Blessing (Faith 11) — your EXP buff is online for the next 40 levels.

Kmitty's quest chain opens at 10 (Spawn, top-right): 8 steps, 500→35,000 EXP. Villager daily requests unlock at 12.

13–17

PLAINS 3–4

Black Cloudsheep

Black Cloudsheep (16, Lightning element) in Plains 3–4. Tag the Goddess Statue in Plains 3 — your warp network begins (100 SC per warp beats walking). The Plains Dungeon entrance is here too; you'll be back at 20.

17–20

BEACH

Snappers & Crushers

North through Outskirts North to the Beach: Snappers (18) then Crushers (20). Shiny Thing Hunt (120 Snappers) pays 8,800 EXP; the Around the Beach chain adds 25,000 more. Keep Crusher Shell Pieces (14.29%) — Kmitty's chain wants them (9,000 EXP). At 20: Plains Dungeon Normal and your first Red Aura (dungeon Silver Chests).

Beach Shepherd PQ (Secret Cove, lv 10+, party of 4–6) becomes worth queueing — Bishop heals shine in stage 5.

20–26

SAVANNAH

Licki → Bananek → Citruslime

Through Seashell Cove into the Savannah: Lickis (22), Bananeks (23), then Citruslimes (25) in Savannah 2–3 and Windy Savannah. The Licki kill quest pays 15,700 EXP. Slime-family mobs on open ground = Nova heaven.

Unlock Divine Protection at Faith 25. Alchemy 15 should land around here — transmute your Focus (Lightning to farm, Water to support).

26–30

MISTY FOREST

Monoghouls in the mist

Monoghouls (27, Ghost element) in Misty Forest 1–2 — Souls in the Mist (200 kills) pays a fat 32,100 EXP. Push to Misty Forest 3 for Sadlings and Dark Pumpkins (~29–30) when comfortable.

Faith 28–29: Elemental Charge and Dedication complete your support kit. At 30: SMITE. Drain SP from Nova and feed the nuke. Cave Trial Normal also opens (Deep Cave 5 — Ferryman ride costs 5,000 SC each way).

30–35

SULFURIC PLAINS

Stinky Sheep

Stinky Sheep (32, 6,070 HP) in Sulfuric Plains 1–2. Sheep pack density + Smite-through-walls + Dark Fire (Faith 35) = your first real farm loop. Run Cave Trial Normal for Dungeon Crystals and the Dark essence shop.

35–40

LOST PLAINS

Rainbow Cloudsheep

Rainbow Cloudsheep (37, 14,044 HP) in Lost Plains — Burn It All (300 kills) is a monster 114,000 EXP payout that will basically carry this bracket. Slime Garden Hard opens at 40 (Dungeons II: 50,000 EXP).

40–50

FOREST

Ferni → Soultree

Forest 1 (tag its Goddess Statue — it links straight back to Plains 1): Fernis (40, An Honest Hunt: 300 kills → 50,000 EXP + Otto's Honest Shop), then Soultrees (42, 25,543 HP) in Forest 2–3. Weave in: Daily Hunt 2× coupons, Abyss Trial floor pushes (12,000+ EXP per milestone), Slime Garden Hard reruns. Plains Dungeon Hard at 50 caps the journey.

From here the world stops being a ring and becomes a chain — see below.

43–49

OCEAN

Sweel → Giga → Bubble Snake

Through the Swamp from Forest into Ocean 2 (Goddess Statue + the Tailor). Sweel (44, 36k HP), Giga (46) across all four Ocean maps, Bubble Snake (48, 50k HP). The Tailor's zone chain here is a colossal EXP jump: Settle the Current (500 Gigas) pays 410,000, Open the Path (500 Bubble Snakes) 490,000, The Last Tangle (500 Sweels) 350,000.

Ocean 1 is a single-mob map (Giga only) — the cleanest AoE routing in the bracket. Gigas also drop the lv-48 Deep-tier gear.

49–57

DESERT

Cactus → Rokkik → Slabbit

Ocean 4 links to Desert 4 (statue + Quest Master). Cactus (50, 60k HP) and Rokkik (52, Metal) in Desert 3–4, then Slabbit (54, 93k HP) in Desert 1–2. The two published zone quests here are the largest in the game: Clear the Sand Path (600 Cactus) 700,000 EXP and Among the Ruins (600 Rokkik) 817,000 EXP.

Also here: Plains Dungeon Hard opens at 50, and Desert 1–2 hide the Sandy Cave and Desert Hideout (Lost Bard, lv 95 — do not wander in early).

57–64

SNOWY MTN

Slibbit → Blizzy → Snowball

Reached from Misty Forest 2, not from the Desert — an easy connection to miss. Snowy Mountain 1 has a statue and the Ferryman. Slibbit (58), Blizzy (63, 195k HP), Snowball (66) across SM2–4.

Level 60 — the third buff slot. Start "Unlocking Potential" from the Quest Master. Three stages: talk to the Tailor → gather 200 each of all 7 base essences (1,400 total) → clear Plains Dungeon Hard and bring the Smith 3 Transcendent Souls, a Radiant Dungeon Crystal and 500,000 Soul Crystals. Per Theorycraft, a third multiplicative buff is worth roughly +30% damage — the single biggest upgrade available in this bracket. Start hoarding essences at 50.

64–72

ROCKY PATH

Rokkak → Cat Golem → Cat Guardian

Rokkak (67, 328k HP), Cat Golem (69) and Cat Guardian (72, 490k HP); Rocky Path 3 has a statue. Gold Ore spawns here and needs Mining 60 — if you've kept mining up, this is where it pays for the Radiant-tier weapon crafts. Slime Garden Extreme opens at 70, and the Scythe Ticket instance is recommended at 65.

Wiki data flags Cat Golem's attack as 37,266 — identical to its own MP and 38× the higher-level Cat Guardian. Almost certainly a typo, but approach politely.

68–78

DEEP FOREST

Shroomie → Tallshroom → Fernek

Three villagers relocate out here — Jeweler (Deep Forest 1), Kmitty (Deep Tree Way) and Shopkeeper (Deep Forest 2) — so it's a genuine second hub. Lost Peak has the statue. Mining yields Dreamstone and Dream Fragments (the Mystical-tier weapon material at 72).

Deep Forest 1 also opens onto the Giant Tree — Scythe Reaper's arena (level 210). Look, don't touch, until you have a raid's worth of friends.

78–84

DEEP OCEAN

Soulfish → Ancient Soulfish

Lost Peak drops you into Deep Ocean 4 → 3 → Deep Ocean 1 (statue). Soulfish and Upsivase throughout; Ancient Soulfish (82) in Deep Ocean 1–2 is the faith endgame farm — it drops the level-84/90 Faith-line weapons. Mining here gives Ocean Heart, Ocean Shard and Arcane Crystal for the Arcane tier at 78. Plains Dungeon Extreme opens at 80.

Deep Ocean 1 also fronts the Great Trench — Reaperfish (165), the second-easiest world boss.

84–93

DEEP DESERT

Saowl → Blaze → Phantom

Deep Ocean 2 connects to Desert Coast (statue), then Desert 5 and 7. Saowl (86, and Desert Coast is a single-mob map), Blaze and Haunted Flame (88, Fire), Phantom (92, Ghost). Cave Trial Extreme opens at 90.

Don't walk the long way. Desert 8 is an empty connector map with a Goddess Statue that links Desert 2 (level 55) directly to Desert 7 (level 85). Tag that statue early and the whole deep-desert bracket is one warp away.

93–99

DEEP CAVES

The last grind — Deep Cave 9

The Deep Caves are two difficulty bands wearing one name: the mid-caves are level 32–42, then Deep Cave X and Hall Of Might jump to 95 and Deep Cave 9 is map level 100 — the highest field map in the game. It holds exactly one monster type, Lost Ruins (level 100), and that combination of single-mob and above-level is precisely why the game's highest-level recorded faith player farmed there.

It's also the best-paying farm in the game for what you now need: the zone yields Radiant Ghostly and Radiant Cave essences — the exact tier that skill levels 15+ consume — and mines Black Diamond, Darkshard, Starmetal and Obsidium, the level-90 and 96 weapon and armour materials. Skill materials and gear materials from one map.

Getting there: the Ferryman in Cave 3 ferries you to Deep Cave 5 for 5,000 Soul Crystals each way — or carry a Return Crystal, which the wiki recommends instead. Also out here: Hall Of Might (Shadow Golem, level 120, single-mob) and the wandering Puppet Reaper at night.

Two honest gaps for the 50+ half. First, the wiki publishes no EXP values for any monster above about level 5 and its grinding table is entirely commented out — so nobody can tell you EXP-per-hour or time-to-level, and anyone who does is guessing. Second, the zone kill-quest chain simply stops after the Desert: there are no published zone quests for Snowy Mountain, Rocky Path, Deep Forest, Deep Ocean or the deep Desert, so from roughly level 57 onward your EXP comes from grinding, dungeons, the Abyss and dailies rather than quest turn-ins.

Monster reference, 1–50

Monster	Lv	HP	ATK	Element	Where
Slime	1	20	8	Normal	Outskirts W/NW/E, Flower Field
Jel	5	83	11	Normal	Outskirts, Caves 1–3
Pin Pin	7	161	13	Normal/Fire	Outskirts S/SW/SE/E
Slip	8	237	14	Normal	Outskirts Pond
Hopper	9	307	15	Normal	Outskirts S/SE/SW
Glowsnail	10	443	17	Ghost/Lightning	Caves 1–3, Glowsnail Cave
Cloudsheep	12	622	20	Normal	Plains 1–2
Black Cloudsheep	16	1,056	31	Lightning	Plains 3–4
Snapper	18	1,510	37	Water	Beach maps
Crusher	20	1,927	43	Water	Beach, Seashell Cove
Troppo	22	2,618	51	Water	Seashell Cove
Licki	22	2,345	51	Fire/Lightning	Savannah 1–2, Windy Savannah
Bananek	23	2,702	54	Normal	Savannah 1–3
Citruslime	25	3,425	65	Normal	Savannah 2–3
Monoghoul	27	4,541	72	Ghost	Misty Forest 1–2
Stinky Sheep	32	6,070	89	Normal	Sulfuric Plains 1–2
Rainbow Cloudsheep	37	14,044	144	Normal	Lost Plains
Ferni	40	21,223	171	Normal	Forest 1, 3
Soultree	42	25,543	191	Normal/Ghost	Forest 2–3

Per-monster EXP values are still blank on the wiki (game is days old) — HP/ATK are confirmed. Watch for Mighty (rare elites, which count as bosses mechanically) and Shiny monsters (starry particles, up to 87× player EXP) — never skip a Shiny.

Monster reference, 44–100

Monster	Lv	HP	ATK	Element	Where
Sweel	44	36,931	213	Water	Ocean 2–4
Giga	46	36,387	236	Water	Ocean 1–4 (Ocean 1 = single-mob)
Bubble Snake	48	50,642	261	Water	Ocean 2, 4
Cactus	50	60,882	287	Normal	Desert 3–4
Rokkik	52	66,002	316	Normal/Metal	Desert 2–4
Slabbit	54	93,880	346	Normal	Desert 1–3
Slibbit	58	147,446	388	Ice	Snowy Mountain 1–2
Blizzy	63	195,004	590	Ice	Snowy Mountain 2–4
Snowball	66	253,002	683	Ice	Snowy Mountain 3–4
Rokkak	67	328,955	787	—	Rocky Path 1–2
Shroomie	68	—	—	—	Deep Forest 1–3
Cat Golem	69	372,657	bad data	Normal	Rocky Path 2–3
Tallshroom	71	—	—	—	Deep Forest, Lost Peak
Cat Guardian	72	490,499	980	Normal	Rocky Path 3
Soul Squid	80	—	—	Ice/Ghost/Water	Squid Den (hidden, single-mob)
Ancient Soulfish	82	—	—	—	Deep Ocean 1–2 — drops lv84/90 Faith weapons
Saowl	86	—	—	Normal	Desert Coast (single-mob), Desert 5, 7
Blaze / Haunted Flame	88	—	—	Fire	Desert 5, 7
Phantom	92	—	—	Ghost	Desert 7
Lost Bard	95	—	—	Ice/Ghost	Desert Hideout (hidden, single-mob)
Lost Ruins	100	—	—	Ghost/Metal	Deep Cave 9 — single-mob, highest field map
Shadow Golem	120	—	—	Ghost/Metal	Hall Of Might (single-mob)

HP and ATK stop being recorded past roughly level 72 — the wiki has the levels and locations but not the stat blocks. Single-mob maps are called out deliberately: with no published spawn layouts anywhere, a map with exactly one monster type is the most reliable AoE routing signal you have.

Dungeons & group content

Content	Where	Tiers (rec. lv)	Notes
Slime Garden	Behind The Garden (Outskirts NW, "???")	N 10 / H 40 / E 70	Your barrier-breaker; boss room features Angeling
Plains Dungeon	Plains 3	N 20 / H 50 / E 80	Grassy→Stone essence exchange shops
Cave Trial	Deep Cave 5	N 30 / H 60 / E 90	Ferryman ride 5,000 SC each way; Dark essence shop sells all Souls/Gems
Beach Shepherd PQ	Secret Cove	10–99, party 4–6	5 stages: seashells → platforming race → slime-herding quiz → barrel puzzle → Gloopy. 30-min limit, costs a Normal pass
Abyss Trial	Behind The Grave (Caves)	endgame tower	Weekly floor-push, 1–8 players — see Features

Entry consumes a Dungeon Pass, offered by the party leader and erased on entry — no refund if you wipe or leave. Passes roll their own echoes; see Dungeon Passes for how to get them.
You can't enter content whose recommended level is 15+ above yours. Inside: 3 respawns, the 4th death ejects you.
Random room types: Key Room (light red) → carry the Boss Key; Loot Rooms (yellow, 1–4 chests); Boss Room (bright red). Everyone gets a personal Silver Chest after the boss (Auras! Dungeon Crystals!) + essences + damage-share Soul Crystals.

The quest EXP spine

Quest	Kill	EXP
Thin the Pasture (Plains 1)	100 Cloudsheep	4,400
Dungeons I (any Normal)	—	8,000
Shiny Thing Hunt (Beach 3)	120 Snappers	8,800
Cat Slime quest (Savannah 1)	150 Lickis	15,700
Souls in the Mist (Misty Forest 1)	200 Monoghouls	32,100
An Honest Hunt (Forest)	300 Fernis	50,000
Dungeons II (any Hard)	—	50,000
Burn It All (Lost Plains)	300 Rainbow Cloudsheep	114,000
Kmitty chain (8 steps, from lv 10)	fetch/kill mix	500→35,000
Level up! I–V (lv 5/10/15/20/25)	—	200→15,000 SC

EXP levers — stack them all

Party bonus: kill EXP splits by damage, then bonus EXP is added per member — the single biggest lever in the game. Shrinks past a 10-level gap and eventually hits zero at a large enough gap, so party up with people near your level. As the Divine Blessing carrier, you are the party bonus.
Daily Hunt (Quest Master, every 20h, resets 5pm PST): 200 near-level kills → scaled EXP + a 2× EXP coupon + a Tear of the Abyss. Pop it on your densest grind. Duration is disputed — creators report both 15 minutes and a full hour, possibly two different coupon types. Either way: don't change channel while it's running, which wiped buffs on launch day (a hotfix went out, so it may be resolved).
Research tier 10 per monster: +5% EXP vs that species (tier 20: +10% drops). Feed Research Essence to your bracket's grind mob first.
Darkness Crystal: +10% EXP for 10 min when cleared. Also mandatory (see Features).
All multipliers stack multiplicatively with Divine Blessing. Coupon × party × research × crystal × Blessing is a very silly number.

World bosses — night only

Boss	Where	Gimmick
Scythe Reaper	Giant Tree (Forest)	5 slash patterns, enrages at 40% and 20%
Seeker Reaper "Chompy"	Pyramid (Desert)	Seeking chomps + Mini Seekers
Reaperfish	Great Trench (Ocean)	Underwater; Ravenous Charge
Puppet Reaper "Pea"	Deep Caves	2-phase hand + string-linked Ghost Puppets

All four spawn only at night (7pm–5am world time) and return as the Abyss floor-99 gauntlet. Reaper-variant mobs list at lv 120–210 — a spectator sport at our bracket, but Scythe Reaper's tree is in your 40+ neighborhood: go watch one die.

Gear Progression

Gear tiers unlock every 6 levels (tier N = level 6×N). Everything is craftable, everything drops (rarely) from bracket-appropriate mobs, and tier-1 pieces are sold by Spawn villagers. No set bonuses exist — mix slots freely.

Buy, craft, or farm? READ FIRST

Three ways to get any piece, and the right answer changes with your level. The mechanic that decides it:

An echo line's maximum value is capped by the item's level. A perfect Ruby roll on level-30 gear is often worse than a mediocre Gray roll on level-70 gear. Since a new tier arrives every 6 levels, anything you're wearing in the mid-game is scaffolding — you will bin it shortly. Do not pour Souls, Gems or crafting effort into gear you'll replace in an hour.

Route	What you get	When it's right
Buy (auction house or player stalls)	Someone else's finished roll — you can see exactly what you're getting, including echoes already on it	Almost always, through the mid tiers. Fastest, and Focus/Priest demand is a fraction of sword demand so caster gear is cheap. Walk the Market Hub stalls before the AH — players routinely list good gear under value.
Craft	A blank item you push toward max via the card minigame, with a shot at echoes on top	At the tiers you'll actually keep — and when your profession level exceeds the recipe's, because that specifically raises your echo chance.
Farm (monster drops)	A random roll, at brutal rates — most tier gear drops at 0.01–0.04%	Never as a plan. Treat drops as a bonus while you're grinding for other reasons.

So should you craft your own?

Two things make crafted gear genuinely better than bought gear — but only if you're set up for them:

The card minigame pushes stat lines toward maximum. Crafted items start with no echoes and low, not minimum stats; a good run closes the gap to max. The developer's own phrasing is that "a good craft can come out noticeably stronger."
Crafting below your profession level raises your echo chance. This is the sleeper rule — if you're Weapon Smithing 40 making a level-30 weapon, you get better echo odds than someone crafting at exactly the requirement. Your Artisan passive (+1% Echoes Find per 8 levels) stacks onto crafts too, not just drops.

The cost is profession level and materials. Craft requirements sit roughly 3 levels below the item's level for weapons (a Petrified weapon at 30 needs Weapon Smithing 27) and 3–5 below for armour. If you're not already near that, buying is strictly faster.

The practical rule: buy through the middle, craft at the plateaus. Gear tiers arrive every 6 levels, but upgrade slots only jump at specific points — and those are the pieces worth building rather than renting:

Weapons	5 slots at 48	6 at 60	7 at 84	8 at 96
Cloth armour	4 at 48–54	5 at 60–84	6 at 90	7 at 96

Below level 48, buy or take whatever drops and spend nothing on it. From 48 onward start crafting deliberately, and from 60 — where weapons hit 6 slots and cloth hits 5 — a well-crafted, well-gemmed piece will carry you for a long stretch. The endgame pieces at 84/90/96 are worth real investment because that's where the echo ceiling and the slot count both peak.

If you're on the Holy Arrow line (Range + Faith) rather than Focus, you're on the same path the only published launch-week faith build used — it's fully viable, and it makes Holy Field, Heaven Arrow and Medishot cheap since you're levelling Range anyway. Just know what you've chosen: your damage is split across two attack stats, so Focused Mind is a trap for you (it boosts your highest stat but penalises the other by 30%), and you'll want percentage echo rolls over flat ones — the launch-week build's own advice was "you want percentage levels, you don't want any flat levels."

Aug 16 patch "Pure ranged combat skill damage" was buffed 20% — but the wording matters and isn't defined. If "pure ranged" means Range-only skills, your Range+Faith hybrids (Holy Arrow, Heaven Arrow, Holy Field) are excluded and nothing changes for you. If it covers anything Range-tagged, they gained a fifth of their damage. Worth watching your own numbers — nobody has clarified it.

And plan your exit at 48. Two things age this weapon: its built-in Elemental Chance line goes dead once Elemental Charge (Faith 28) saturates your proc chance — while the Cross's Faith Attack Speed and the Focus's MP Regen stay valuable forever — and Smite/Revitalize/Nova read only the Faith half, where the single-stat Cross carries ~25% more at every tier. It's also the expensive crafting class (~33% more ingots than Cross or Focus, every tier). At Deep 48, audit your rotation: if Heaven Arrow and Holy Field genuinely carry weight, stay the course toward Messenger at 84; if you mostly press Smite, migrate to the Cross.

Weapon — the Focus ladder CORE

	Focus	Lv	Faith+Magic Atk	Extra	Slots	How to get
	Stone Focus	6	+7–11	—	2	2,000 SC shop · Weapon Smithing 3 · Jel/Pin Pin drop
	Copper Focus	12	+11–15	—	3	WS 8: 15 Copper Ingot + 20 Dull Life Essence
	Quartz Focus	18	+15–21	—	3	WS 15: 20 Refined Quartz Ingot · Cloudsheep drop
	Iron Focus	24	+21–27	—	4	WS 19: 15 Iron Ingot · Snapper drop
	Petrified Focus	30	+27–33	+1 MP regen	4	WS 27 · Citruslime/Monoghoul drop
	Stinky Focus	36	+33–39	+1 MP regen	4	WS 33 · Dark Pumpkin drop
	Eerie Focus	42	+39–45	+1–3 MP regen	4	WS 39: 35 Malachite Ingot
	Deep Focus	48	+45–51	+2–4 MP regen	5	WS 45: 40 Cobalt Ingot · Giga drop
🔸	Repressive Focus	54	+51–59	+2–5 MP regen	5	WS 51: 45 Bismuth Ingot, 130 Life Essence
🔸	Sharp Focus	60	+59–66	+3–5 MP regen	6	WS 57: 50 Titanium Ingot, 180 Raging Essence
🔸	Radiant Focus	66	+66–74	+3–6 MP regen	6	WS 63: 55 Gold Ingot, 250 Eternal Essence
🔸	Mystical Focus	72	+74–81	+4–6 MP regen	6	WS 69: 60 Mithril Ingot, 10 Dream Fragment
🔸	Arcane Focus	78	+81–89	+5–7 MP regen	6	WS 75: 65 Arcane Ingot, 15 Ocean Shard
⭐	Divinity FORM CHANGE	84	+89–107	+6–8 MP regen · +8–20% Elem Potency	7	WS 81: 70 Eternal Ingot, 20 Moon Shard
⭐	Psyche	84	+89–107	+6–8 MP regen · +2–9 CON	7	WS 81: 70 Eternal Ingot, 20 Moon Shard
⭐	Radiant Divinity	90	+107–116	+7–9 MP regen · +12–25% Elem Potency	7	WS 87: 90 Star Ingot, 10 Black Diamond
⭐	Inverse Divinity	96	+116–126	+8–10 MP regen · +15–30% Elem Potency	8	WS 93: 120 Obsidium Ingot, 20 Bloodstone (craft only)

"Form Change" is just the level-84 tier name, not a mechanic — it's simply where generic names give way to uniques, where a 4th stat line appears, and where slots reach 7. Level 96 "Inverse" weapons are the only 8-slot items in the game. Of the two lv-84 Focuses, Divinity is the caster pick — its Elemental Potency compounds with Nova's perk, the Faith passive and Elemental Charge. wiki note the data module records Radiant Focus at level 60, which collides with Sharp; its craft level of 63 and every other weapon line confirm 66 is correct.

If you go pure SPR, the Cross beats the Focus. This is worth knowing before you invest 90 levels. Cross is single-stat, so it out-raws Focus on Faith Attack at every tier — at level 96 it's +138–149 vs +116–126 — and it carries a Faith Attack Speed line, which matters enormously given cooldowns only come from weapons and auras. Decisively: the lv84+ Cross uniques (Faith → Radiant Faith → Inverse Faith) are the only equipment in the entire game with a % Faith Damage line (+2–5%, +3–7%, +4–9%).

So: Focus if you genuinely use both Magic and Faith (Soul Bomb, Flame Barrage, Mana Shield's magic side); Cross if your damage is purely SPR — which by level 90 most faith builds are. The Focus's MP-regen line is the counter-argument, since it funds Elemental Charge's 12 MP/tick drain.

Armor — Priest & Scholar cloth

Two caster families, both crafted via Armor Crafting or bought at tier 1 from the Tailor: Priest (Robe/Bottom/Hood/Shoes — Defense + Max MP + HP regen) and Scholar (Robe/Pants/Hat/Shoes — Defense + Shield). Sixteen tiers, one every 6 levels, all the way to 96:

Lv	6	12	18	24	30	36	42	48
Tier	Green	Cotton	Coconut	Yellow	Glowing	Silverleaf	Fern	Coral
Lv	54	60	66	72	78	84	90	96
Tier	Cactus	Ice	Red	Eon	Arcane	Historic	Eternal	Raging

Upgrade slots on cloth: 4 at 48–54, 5 at 60–84, 6 at 90, 7 at 96. For scale, the level-96 Raging Priest Robe is a different species from the Coral one you'll wear at 48.

The +6 treadmill — every transition, rated

Weapons, cloth and rings all tick on the same 6-level cadence, but the tiers are not equal — most are pure stat bumps, and a handful actually change what your gear is. Here's every transition with an honest verdict:

Lv	Weapon · Cloth	Wpn slots	Cloth slots	What actually changes	Verdict
6	Stone · Green	2	2	First real gear; tier-1 sold by Smith/Tailor	Buy from shops
12	Copper · Cotton	3	~2	Weapon +1 slot	Pass through
18	Quartz · Coconut	3	~2	Numbers only	Pass through
24	Iron · Yellow	4	3	+1 slot on both weapon and cloth	Decent stop
30	Petrified · Glowing	4	3	⭐ Weapon gains its 3rd stat line (Focus: MP regen; Priest bottoms pick up HP regen here too)	Real upgrade
36	Stinky · Silverleaf	4	~3	Nothing structural — same slots, same lines, ~+6 attack. The cheapest tier to pass through in the whole ladder.	Buy cheap, invest zero
42	Eerie · Fern	4	~3	Weapon's 3rd line widens (e.g. Focus MP regen 1→1–3)	Pass through
48	Deep · Coral	5	4	⭐⭐⭐ +1 slot on both — the first keeper tier. Full modding sequence becomes worth it; Coral Priest Robe adds a real Max MP line	THE stop. Craft this one.
54	Repressive · Cactus	5	4	Numbers only	Skip if 48 is well-built
60	Sharp · Ice	6	5	⭐⭐⭐ +1 slot on both — and it coincides with the 3rd buff slot quest and the White Aura. The whole build steps up at once	Second keeper
66	Radiant · Red	6	5	Numbers (Gold Ingot era begins — Mining 60 pays off)	Pass through
72	Mystical · Eon	6	5	Rare materials begin (Dream Fragment)	Pass through
78	Arcane · Arcane	6	5	Numbers (Ocean Shard)	Pass through
84	Form Change · Historic	7	5	⭐⭐⭐ Named uniques, a 4th stat line, 7 slots. Your line's pick: Messenger (+CON)	Endgame begins
90	Radiant FC · Eternal	7	6	Cloth +1 slot; Hearts Aura lands here	Strong stop
96	Inverse FC · Raging	8	7	Maximum slots in the game; weapons are craft-only	The ceiling

Slot counts marked ~ are inferred from the confirmed pattern (the wiki records cloth slots at 6/24/30/48+ but not every tier between). The through-line: slots jump at 24, 48, 60, 84/90 and 96 — everything else is rent. Craft and mod at the jumps; buy the cheapest listing at every tier in between. Ring tiers tick on the same cadence (Jeweler makes one ring per 6 levels), so grab the matching ring only at the same stops.

⭐ At level 35, here's your exact next move. The 36 transition (Stinky Holy Arrow + Silverleaf Priest set) is — honestly — the least interesting tier in the ladder: same 4 slots, same stat lines, roughly +6 attack. So treat it accordingly:

Buy the cheapest Stinky Holy Arrow and Silverleaf pieces listed — don't craft them (Holy Arrow's class costs ~33% more ingots, wasted on a pass-through tier), and put nothing into them beyond a cheap element transmute (before any souls, as ever).
Everything you already own that isn't tier gear survives this transition untouched: your SPR/Faith-AS aura, Cross Earrings, rings, bag.
Bank everything else for 48. Deep Holy Arrow is the first keeper — 5 slots, the full gem-then-souls sequence, and by then you'll have made the Cross-vs-Holy-Arrow call. Weapon Smithing 45 is the craft gate; if yours is near, start levelling it now (Barrier Forge pays WS EXP directly).
The lv-35 face/hat options (Goggles, Wolf Ears) change nothing — Cross Earrings remain best-in-slot.

Confirmed sample	Lv	Stats	Slots
Green Priest Hood	6	+0–1.5 DEF, +2–3 Max MP	2
Green Scholar Robe	6	+3–4.5 DEF, +5–6 Shield	2
Yellow Scholar Hat	24	+3–4.5 DEF, +9–11 Shield	3
Glowing Priest Bottom	30	+4.5–6 DEF, +1–2 HP regen	3
Coral Priest Robe	48	+13.5 DEF, +1–2 HP regen, +23–28 Max MP	4

The other slots — where the sleeper items live

	Slot	Pick	Why
	Face	Flower Tiara (lv 15)	+0–5 to EVERY attribute (only SPR/CON matter to you — call it +3/+3 realistically), +0–12% Speed, +0–5% Jump, +2–12 DEF, 5 slots. General 0: 60 herbs + 10 Refined Fiber. It's tradable — check the AH before farming flowers, and gather opportunistically rather than making a dedicated trip. Worth it mainly because the face slot is empty until 25–30 and the Speed/Jump compounds on a platformer.
	Ring	Ring of Light (lv 20)	+INT, 5 slots, and it literally lights up the map — a lantern for Caves and night grinding. Jeweler 5: 20 Yellow Shards (Glowsnails!) + 5 Fireflies.
	Backpack	Small Bag (10,000 SC)	25 inventory slots and bags roll echoes — Damage Balance on a bag is a top DPS line. Endgame: Void Bag, 49 slots, 1.5M SC from Kmitty's post-questline shop.
✨	Aura	Red Aura (lv 20)	From dungeon Silver Chests or 30 Abyss Essence at the Ferryman. Auras + weapons are the only slots that roll Attack Speed; aura 5th lines can roll +Skill Points / +1 Buff Slot — the support chase item. Ladder: Red 20 → Yellow 30 → Blue/Gray 50.
🎭	Face extras	Cross Earrings (25), Angry Face (30), Goggles (35)	Gevil sells the 30/35 pieces at Spawn for hefty SC.

The face slot is a permanent dead end — and that's actually useful to know. Only five face items exist and nothing above level 35. Which means Cross Earrings (level 25) stays best-in-slot for a faith caster at level 99: it's one of only two items in the entire game carrying an SPR line (+2–8), plus +9–15% Elemental Chance. The only trade-off is its low item level capping its echo ceiling, so it's a stat-line-versus-echo-quality call against Angry Face's +6–12% Global Damage. Same story with hats: the unique-hat line stops dead at Top Hat / Flames (50), so past 50 your head slot is a crafted Priest Hood or Scholar Hat.

Endgame rings and auras

Lv	Ring	Slots	Lv	Aura
48–60	Ruby → Sapphire → Amber	5	50	Blue / Gray Aura
66–84	Dreamcatcher → Arcana → Star Bounding → Eternal Oath	6	60	White Aura
90	Blood Ring / Ring of Chaos	7	70 / 80	Cold / Purple Aura
95	Reaper Ring	7	90	Hearts Aura

Aura stat lines are completely undocumented on the wiki (every aura page is a red link), but the ladder is confirmed — and per Theorycraft, the aura is your single most valuable slot regardless of its base stats.

What to chase on a ring

Rings work like auras: the Stat line is rolled from a pool and permanent for that copy, so it's a shopping criterion. Top-end rings (Blood / Chaos / Reaper, all identical pools) show what the ceiling looks like:

Priority	Line	Why
★★★	Elemental Potency up to +31–35%	The biggest source in the game. With Elemental Charge running you're past 100% Chance, so every hit procs — which turns Potency into a flat multiplier on all your damage.
★★	Damage Balance +10–14%	Raises your minimum roll — smooths Smite's damage swing
★★	Max HP · Defense +100–150 · +24–37	Genuinely needed once Dark Fire is burning 5% HP per second
★	Echoes Find · Soul Crystal Find +20–23%	Farming-loadout lines, not damage
✗	Elemental Chance +16–18%	The trap. It reads perfect for a faith build and is near-worthless — Elemental Charge alone saturates you past 100%.
✗	Crit Rate · Crit Damage	Faith has no crit scaling (unless you run Arrow Infusion, which converts crit into elemental)
✗	Speed · Jump · Accuracy	Movement and misc

Two structural limits. No ring rolls SPR or Faith Damage as a Stat — but both are in the echo pool, so judge the Stat line for Elemental Potency and hunt SPR / % Faith Damage / Bonus Damage on the echoes. And rings can never roll Attack Speed — that exists only on weapons and auras, so don't go looking for it here.

Worth knowing at low level: Ring of Light (20) carries 5 upgrade slots, unusually generous for its tier, and lights dark areas — which stops being a novelty in the Deep Caves. Its own Stat is a weak +0–1 INT.

Modifying gear — the complete workshop manual

Three verbs, all done from your inventory or the Alchemy window — none of it is hidden behind an NPC:

Verb	How you physically do it	What it changes
Soul	Drag the Soul from inventory onto the item	Adds or rerolls echo lines. Unlimited uses — but post-launch applying a Soul now also costs Soul Crystals, so heavy rerolling has a running cash cost on top of the souls themselves.
Gem	Drag the Gem onto the item	Permanent +1 to a line, and the item's name gains a (+1). Each gem consumes one upgrade slot — finite, and lost when you replace the item.
Transmute	Alchemy window (needs Alchemy 15) → slot the weapon → pick element → pay Matters + a matching essence + SC	The weapon's element. Weapons only — armour and auras have no element. Can't re-pick your current element; Dark items excluded.

First thing, always: hover the item and count its echo lines. Bought and dropped gear often comes with lines already rolled — and every decision below branches on how many there are.

Order matters more than anything else here. The steps below are a sequence, not a menu. Out of order, the same materials buy you half as much — this is the most common way players burn their early economy.

The sequence, with the why

Transmute the element first (weapons). Every echo already on the weapon raises transmutation cost by 30% — four lines makes it roughly double. Element before any echo work, always.
Gems before Souls. A Mystic Gem gives +1 to a randomly chosen existing echo line. With exactly one line present, every gem is a guaranteed hit and all your slots funnel into that stat; on a filled item it's a 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 lottery. The bonus is position-locked and survives every later Soul reroll — which is the whole trick: gem while the item is nearly bare, then build lines around the investment. (If your item already has 3+ lines, skip gemming it unless a Primordial/Turbulent pass first turns one line into something worth locking in.)
Build line count with the cheapest Soul that does the job. Energetic fills to 2 lines, Ambitious to 4, Transcendent to 5 — and once an item is at that count, the same soul rerolls those lines instead. That dual behaviour is the engine of everything below.
Refine with Turbulent, not Primordial. Turbulent rerolls a line's value and can't change what the stat is; Primordial rerolls which stat a chosen line is. When a line is right but low, Turbulent is risk-free; Primordial is for converting a junk line, accepting you might land on different junk.
Lock last. An Eternal Soul protects one line for the next 5 soul uses (max 2 locks). Expensive — see the positional trick below for when you don't need it at all.

The free lock — positional soul strategy. Souls reroll the first N lines by position: Energetic touches 1–2, Ambitious 1–4, Transcendent all 5. So:

A keeper line in slot 5 is only ever touched by Transcendent → once you're at five lines with your best roll last, churn lines 1–4 with Ambitious forever, zero risk, zero Eternal Souls.
A keeper in slots 3–4 is safe from Energetic → on a 4-line item, churn the first two cheaply.
Corollary: reroll early, not late — a bad line on a 2-line item costs an Energetic (5 essence) to spin; the same bad line on a 5-line item costs a Transcendent (100) and risks the rest.

Reference — every Soul and Gem

Soul	What it does	Exchange price
Energetic	Fills to 2 echo lines, then rerolls those 2	5 essence
Ambitious	Fills to 4, then rerolls those 4	60
Transcendent	Fills to 5, then rerolls all 5	100
Chaotic	Randomizes one of: a main stat's value, an echo line, or the element (the only non-Transmutation element reroll)	120
Turbulent	Rerolls the value of one random line — stat identity safe	150
Eternal	Locks one line for 5 Soul uses, max 2 locks	180
Transitive	Moves all echoes onto another item of the same slot type — destroys the source; gem bonuses don't transfer; values rescale to the target's level (quality tier carries)	210
Primordial	Rerolls which stat a chosen line is	—

Gem	Effect	Exchange price
Nurturing (green)	+1 to a random base stat line. No fail chance.	7 (15 at Slime Garden — don't)
Mystic (blue)	+1 to a random echo line — position-locked, survives rerolls	10 (20 at SG)
Calamity (red)	Gamble — outcomes include destroying the item, but also +upgrade slots and free enhancements. The game's only destruction mechanic.	15 (20 at SG)

Where the materials actually come from

Source	What it supplies
Any monster	Souls and Gems drop rarely from everything, scaling with monster level — same global pool as Dungeon Passes. Grind high, get more.
Dungeon essence exchanges	The prices above, paid in that dungeon's essence. Gems cost double at Slime Garden — buy at Plains or Cave Trial. Souls cost the same everywhere.
Beach Shepherd PQ	The single best early pipeline: 25% Energetic Soul per clear, and 14.3% each for Nurturing, Mystic and Calamity Gems. If you're PQ-ing with friends anyway, your modding budget builds itself.
Outskirts daily chain	Ends in 2 Ambitious Souls — repeatable.
Abyss Trial	Weekly Gold Chests: Chaotic at floor 30/50, Transcendent at 60–80, Eternal at 90, 3× Transitive at 99. Plus the Ferryman's shop (Mystic 40, Ambitious 80 Abyss Essence).
Alchemy	Crafts Souls directly at higher levels (Energetic craftable from Alchemy 15 — expensive, treat as overflow, not supply).

⚒️ Worked example — a level-30 Holy Arrow, today

Say you're level ~30 on the Range+Faith path with a Petrified Holy Arrow (4 upgrade slots) and the Glowing Priest set. Here's the exact play:

Count its lines. A bought weapon usually has 1–3 echo lines already.
Transmute before anything else (if you have Alchemy 15 — if not, this is the reason to rush it). Ghost for grinding: the Haunted pull gathers mobs into your Nova/Smite for free. Re-transmute to Normal later for boss nights — every echo you add between now and then makes that swap 30% pricier, so decide your element now.
One good line already? (% Faith damage, % Range damage, Elemental Potency, any Attack Speed, Bonus Damage — percentage rolls over flat, always.) If yes and it's line 1–2: spend a couple of Mystic Gems from PQ drops — guaranteed hits while the line count is low. If its lines are junk: Energetic-spin them first (5 essence a spin), gem after.
Fill to 4 lines with Ambitious from the Outskirts daily. Stop there — the 5th line isn't worth a Transcendent on a weapon you replace at 36.
Nurturing Gems into any leftover slots — a free +1 to Range/Faith attack, no risk.
Hard stops: no Transcendent, no Eternal, no Transitive, and never Calamity — this weapon has six levels to live. Everything expensive goes in the bank for Deep tier at 48.

Same logic, cheaper, for the Glowing Priest set: Energetic spins for a Defense/Max MP/HP-regen line if a piece came blank, nothing else. And when you do hit 84: the Holy Arrow uniques are Messenger (+CON) and Smite (+LUK) — take Messenger; CON feeds faith damage and HP, while LUK is crit, which faith doesn't scale.

✨ Aura modding — the full treatment

The aura deserves its own manual because it's the highest-leverage slot in the game and the easiest to ruin by investing at the wrong time.

First, two things the tooltip won't tell you.

1. "Stats" and "Echoes" are different sections and different rules. The Stats block is rolled when the item is created and is then fixed for that copy forever — Souls never touch Stats. Only Nurturing Gems (+1 to its value) and Chaotic Souls (randomize its value) affect that block, and neither can change which stat it is. The Echoes block below is the rerollable part.

⭐ The consequence for auras: two auras of the same name and level can carry completely different Stat lines — one Yellow Aura rolls +9.9% Jump, another rolls +8.7% SPR. Since you can never reroll it, the Stat line is a shopping criterion, not something you fix later. For a faith build, SPR is the jackpot (no ring in the game rolls it), and Jump is dead weight. Read the Stats block before you buy — it's the one part of the item you're stuck with.

2. There is no reset. Nothing in the game wipes an item clean. You can only add lines or reroll existing ones — so "make it what I want" isn't a setting, it's rerolling until RNG obliges. That's why which item you do it on matters more than anything else on this page.

Worked read: a real Yellow Aura

Actual level-30 aura, in-game tooltip:

Shown	Which block	What you can do
+9.9% Jump (gold orb)	Stat	❌ Permanent for this copy. No soul changes it — a great roll on a stat you can't use. Another Yellow Aura might roll SPR instead; that's a different item to go and find.
+8.6% Elemental Potency (gray)	Echo 1	✅ Rerollable — and a genuinely good line for this build
+4.4% Echoes Find (green)	Echo 2	✅ Rerollable — a farming stat
Upgrade slots 3 / 3	Gems	All three unused — a used slot adds "(+1)" to the item's name, so a plain name means untouched

What each tool would do to that exact aura: Energetic fills to 2 — already there, so it rerolls both lines. Ambitious keeps them and adds two more (to 4). Transcendent opens line 5, the only place the exclusives live. Mystic Gem is a coin flip between the two echoes. Nurturing Gem would guarantee +1 Jump — a wasted slot.

The Nurturing Gem rule, both ways round. Nurturing hits a random Stats line — and auras carry exactly one. So it is always a guaranteed +1, which makes it either the best or the worst gem you can use, decided entirely by what that one Stat rolled:

Stat is +SPR → every Nurturing is a guaranteed +1 to your main damage stat. Fill all slots with them.
Stat is +Jump (or anything you don't use) → every Nurturing is a guaranteed wasted slot. Use Mystic Gems instead, and use them while the echo count is low.

⛔ The one-line trap: an aura sitting at exactly 2 echoes will have both rerolled by an Energetic Soul, because Energetic "fills to 2" and it's already there. If one of those two is a Faith Attack SPD roll you paid for, Energetic destroys it. Use Ambitious instead — below 4 lines it adds rather than rerolls — and then stop, because a second Ambitious rerolls positions 1–4 and your keeper is in that range.

Verdict: spend nothing. Elemental Potency at 8.6% on a level-30 item versus +31–35% for the same line at level 90 is the whole argument. Wear it, bank the souls.

So: shop for the Stat line, then the Attack Speed. A Yellow Aura carrying +SPR and a Faith Attack SPD echo is worth buying outright even at a low tier — and that's not a contradiction of "don't invest in low auras," because buying costs Soul Crystals, which regenerate, whereas investing means burning Transcendent and Eternal Souls, which don't. Skip the RNG with money; save the scarce materials for the level-90 aura.

Worked comparison at level 30: an aura with +8.7% SPR / +12.6% Faith Attack SPD / +9.7% Echoes Find beats one with +9.9% Jump / +8.6% Elemental Potency (gray) / +4.4% Echoes Find so decisively it's worth six figures of Soul Crystal. The Attack Speed alone is ~12% more Smites, Revitalizes and Novas forever.

wiki gap Every aura page on the wiki is a red link with no stat lines recorded anywhere, so this comes from in-game tooltips. Observed Yellow Aura (lv 30) Stat rolls so far: +Jump and +SPR — confirming the Stat block is a rolled pool rather than a per-aura constant. Attack Speed note: it applies by a skill's category tag, so Faith Attack SPD speeds Smite, Revitalize and Nova, but likely not Holy Arrow if that skill is Range-tagged.

Same as other gear	Different
Souls and Gems work identically — same drag-on, same positional rules, same one-line gem trick	No element — nothing to transmute, so step 1 vanishes and the sequence starts at Gems
Echo values cap by item level	The aura's echo pool is unique — lines no other slot can roll (below)
Max 5 lines, no duplicate stats	gap Aura upgrade-slot counts are undocumented — check your own aura's tooltip before budgeting gems for it

What can roll on an aura, and what you're hunting:

Line	Why it matters
Attack Speed (any of the 5 types)	Auras and weapons are the only two slots that roll it, and both can roll multiple types at once — the wiki's own phrasing is "at least two lines of Attack Speed no matter your build," and that a good aura can cut cooldowns "to half or even more." For you: Faith AS (Smite, Revitalize), Range AS (Holy Arrow, Heaven Arrow), Global AS (everything).
+1 Buff Slot 5th line only	The chase item of the entire build. Buffs multiply, so a slot ≈ +30% damage — a fourth slot on top of the level-60 quest's third is the biggest single upgrade that exists.
+Skill Points 5th line	Free skill levels, and skill levels are the steepest damage curve in the game.
Generic pool	Damage %, elemental lines, stats — fine fillers while you fish for the above.

The finished-aura recipe (what "done" looks like): five lines — two or three Attack Speeds + a 5th-line exclusive, ideally the buff slot. The path there is the standard sequence with no transmute step: get the aura → Energetic/Ambitious to 4 lines hunting AS rolls → Transcendent to open line 5 → keep Transcendent-spinning until the 5th line is an exclusive worth keeping → then the slot-5 free lock applies in reverse: your exclusive sits at position 5, so… it's the one line Transcendent always touches. This is the one place Eternal Souls are genuinely for — lock the 5th-line exclusive (and your best AS line), then spin the rest.

Aura	Item lv	Abyss Essence	Verdict
Shepherd's Aura	?	Beach PQ drop, 4.5%	Your realistic first aura — free from the PQ you're already running. Wear it, invest nothing.
Red / Yellow	20 / 30	30 / 45	Wear if found (dungeon Silver Chests). Echo ceiling too low to fund.
Blue / Gray	50	68 / 101	First tier where a good roll has real numbers. Still not the investment target.
White / Cold / Purple	60 / 70 / 80	152 / 228 / 342	Investment-worthy if Hearts is far. White 60 lines up with your third buff slot quest.
Hearts	90	513	The endgame target. Highest echo ceiling → save the full sequence, the Transcendent spins and the Eternal locks for this one.

The aura timeline, then: Shepherd's/Red now for free → don't spend a single soul on any aura until at least Blue/Gray 50 → run the full 5-line hunt on the highest tier you can afford, which is where your banked Abyss Essence goes. Traps: Dark Auras (Berserker/Thievery/Reaper, from minigames) cannot roll aura echoes at all — rarer, and worthless for this; and a 5-line Yellow Aura is a museum piece, not power. One honesty note: the 5th-line exclusives are documented in wiki source that's currently commented out — treat "+1 Buff Slot exists" as very likely but not yet re-verified in the live client. If you roll one, you've settled it.

Your modding roadmap, stage by stage

Character stage	Weapon	Aura	Bank
Now (~30)	Transmute Petrified Holy Arrow → Ghost; Mystic gems if it has one good early line; Ambitious to 4 lines; Nurturing the spare slots	Wear Shepherd's/Red free, invest zero	Everything ≥100 essence; all Abyss Essence
36–42	Replace at each tier; transmute each (cheap while echo-less), Energetic spins only	Yellow if a Silver Chest coughs one up	Keep banking; PQ gems accumulate
48 — Deep (5 slots)	First keeper. Full sequence: transmute → gem the good line while count is low → Ambitious to 4 → Transcendent to 5 → keeper in slot 5 → churn	Blue/Gray 50 becomes wearable-worthy	Radiant essences begin to matter
60 (6 slots · 3rd buff slot)	Sharp-tier rebuild, same sequence, more slots	White 60 — first investment aura if Hearts feels far; start the AS-line hunt	Transcendents for the aura hunt
84–90 (7 slots)	Messenger (the CON unique) → full treatment incl. Eternal locks; later Transitive a perfected low piece up	Hearts 90 — the real one. 5-line hunt for AS ×2–3 + buff slot; Eternal-lock the exclusive	—

Reading results: item-name outline Gray → Green → Blue → Purple → Red = overall echo strength; each line's orb Gray → Green → Blue → Gold → Ruby = that line's quality tier. Quality tier is what a Transitive Soul preserves when migrating — values rescale to the target's level. And the ceiling rule one last time: item level caps every line's maximum, which is why this whole page keeps telling you to save the good materials for the high-level bases.

Milestone purchases — the non-tier items

The treadmill above covers tier gear; these are the one-off items that don't replace themselves every 6 levels:

Lv	Get	Holds until
~10	Small Bag (10,000 SC) — inventory + a Damage Balance echo home	Void Bag (100 Dungeon Essence — never pay the 1.5M SC)
15	Flower Tiara — AH first, else craft (General 0)	Cross Earrings at 25
20	Ring of Light (5 slots, lights caves) · first Red Aura from dungeon Silver Chests	Ring: tier rings at 48+ · Aura: a good rolled one (SPR Stat + AS echo — see aura modding)
25	Cross Earrings — one of two SPR items in the game	Level 99. Nothing above 35 exists for the face slot.
~30+	A well-rolled aura off the AH (Stat = SPR, echo = Faith/Global AS) whenever one appears cheap	White 60 / Hearts 90 via Abyss Essence
50	Top Hat / Flames if cheap — joint-highest unique hats, 8 slots on Top Hat	Crafted Priest Hood at 60+ if you prefer stat lines

Echoes — the potential system

Echoes are the random bonus lines on gear — MapleStory potential, wearing a different hat. No duplicate stats on one piece, each equipment slot draws from its own pool, and drops and crafts roll them automatically. The final line unlocks slot-exclusive echoes — that's where the treasure is.

How many lines, 4 or 5? Sources genuinely disagree. The wiki describes 5 (and the Transcendent Soul's own text says it "adds a line until the item has 5"), but the party quest's in-game riddle answers 4, and launch-week players describe filling gear with 2 Energetic + 2 Ambitious souls for four lines total. Best guess: four ordinary lines plus a fifth exclusive slot, or the quiz is legacy content. Plan for four and treat a fifth as upside until you can count it in your own client.

"Speed" is not Attack Speed — and the difference is expensive

These are two completely separate echo lines and confusing them is the most common way to waste a roll:

Speed — your movement speed. Rolls on almost any slot, pairs with Jump, and does nothing whatsoever for your damage. (It's what the Flower Tiara, the Fishing passive and the guild Agility perk give you.)
Attack Speed — cooldown reduction on your skills. There are five separate stats: Melee, Range, Magic and Faith attack speed, plus Global Attack Speed. This is the one that matters, and it only rolls on weapons and auras.

A third trap: a weapon's flat Global Attack stat is not Global Attack Speed. Different stats, similar names. And note attack speed applies by a skill's category tag, not by what the skill scales off — several faith skills are tagged Range, so check each one before buying speed for it.

Which echoes to chase — ranked

Every slot draws from its own pool, and the full pool is large (~50 lines). Here's how it sorts for a faith caster whose damage is gated by cooldowns and buff multipliers:

S-tier — reshape the build

Echo	Where it rolls	Why it's top
+1 Buff Slot	Aura, 5th line only	Buffs stack multiplicatively, so a fourth slot on top of the level-60 quest's third is worth roughly +30% damage — more than any weapon tier. Rarest and best line in the game. How to actually hunt it: Aura modding.
Attack Speed	Weapon + Aura only	Cuts every cooldown. Both slots can roll all five types at once, and the wiki suggests a good aura alone can halve cooldowns. Smite on a 12s timer is your whole damage profile.
Extra Skill Points	Aura, 5th line	Free skill levels — and skill levels are the steepest damage curve in the game (see Theorycraft).

A-tier — always good

Echo	Why
Elemental Potency	The one most people get wrong. Once Elemental Charge is running you're already at ~183% Elemental Chance — every hit procs — so extra Chance is worthless and Potency becomes a straight damage multiplier. Stack Potency, not Chance.
Faith Damage (%)	Direct multiplier on everything you do. Note the flat and percent versions are separate lines; percent scales better.
SPR (flat and %)	Your main stat, and gear is one of the only places to get it outside level-ups.
Bonus Damage	Flat damage added after the formula, once per cast — so it rewards low cooldowns and fast basics like Nova.
Damage Balance	Raises the floor of your damage range. Called out on the wiki as the best DPS line for bags specifically.
On-hit MP Regen	The structural answer to Elemental Charge's 12 MP/tick drain — this is what lets you run a third toggle.
Armor Pen	Flat defence reduction; stacks with the Metal element's DEF shred.

Situational — good in the right slot

Echo	When
Echoes Find	Improves echo quality/quantity on items you craft as well as find — and all endgame gear is crafted. Farm-set staple.
Drop Rate · Soul Crystal Find	Income lines. Put them on a dedicated farming loadout, not your damage set.
Skill Duration	Genuinely strong for Holy Field, Messenger and Medishot — dead for Smite and Nova.
Skill Range	Bigger Smite and Holy Field footprints. Underrated for AoE routing.
Damage Reduction · Max HP · Defense	Survivability, and specifically what keeps Dark Fire's self-damage sustainable.
MP Regen · Max MP	Buff and toggle upkeep.
EXP · Skill EXP	Levelling accelerators, worthless at cap.
Knockback Resist	Quietly useful on a platformer where being punted off a ledge costs a Smite cast.
Gathering / crafting lines	Frenzy %, rare-node %, and "+turn" / "+reroll" for weaponsmithing, jewelry and armormaking — see Life Skills. Put these on a life-skill loadout.

Skip for this build

Speed · Jump (movement only) · Elemental Chance (saturated by Elemental Charge) · Crit Rate / Crit Damage (faith has no crit scaling — unless you run Arrow Infusion, which converts crit into elemental) · Melee / Range / Magic damage lines (unless you're genuinely hybrid) · Light Radius (nice in Deep Caves, that's all) · Accuracy · Shield · Knockback · HP-on-hit · and Pierce, which is flagged in the game data as not implemented.

Slot cheat-sheet. Echo pools are tracked per slot — Hat, Top, Bottom, Shoes, Face, Ring, Cape, Aura, Weapon and Bag. Practical consequences: Attack Speed and buff/skill-point exclusives live only on weapon and aura, so those two slots are your entire damage-ceiling budget; Damage Balance goes on the bag; rings roll the elemental lines at the highest values (+31–35% Potency at the top end); and everything else is where you park survivability and farm stats.

Dungeon Passes roll echoes too — passes with Monster Level and Spawn Rate lines juice a run's EXP/drops, and Double Trouble doubles difficulty and rewards. Hoard spicy passes for coupon windows. (Time Trial and Darkness lines exist for the brave.)

Dark Items (purple box — Old Sickle, Soul Stealer Staff, Dark Auras…) take no Souls and no Echoes, scale with your level instead, and can't be transmuted. Fun novelty, wrong tool for an echo-driven build.

Theorycraft — the maths that decide your damage

Dug out of skill-page templates and the developers' own probability spreadsheets. If you read one section on this page twice, make it this one — two of these findings change how you spend everything.

How a hit is actually calculated

Every skill carries two independently authored numbers: a flat Power value (Nova 19 +9.5/lv, Smite 42 +21/lv) and a Scaling percentage against your damage stat (Smite: Faith 635.5% +441.1%/lv). They aren't derived from each other. A hit resolves as roughly Power + (Scaling × your damage stat), rolled inside a min–max band — which is what Damage Balance tightens by raising the floor.

⭐ Skill levels dwarf gear

Each skill level adds 40–70% of the skill's base value, and cooldowns don't change with level. Compounded to level 20, a maxed skill is roughly 8–14× its level-1 version. Smite goes from 635% to about 9,016% faith scaling across five targets, through walls.

No realistic gear upgrade competes with that. When you're deciding between farming a weapon tier and farming Dungeon Crystals to push Smite another level, push the skill. This is why Dungeon Crystals sell at a premium — and why the Dull (to level 9) and Radiant (to 15+) crystals are worth more of your dungeon time than the gear that drops alongside them.

⭐ Buffs multiply — which makes buff slots your scarcest resource

Two separate skill descriptions confirm damage buffs "multiply with other active buff bonuses" rather than summing. At skill level 20 with three slots running, that's 1.174 × 1.240 × 1.600 = 2.33 — +133% faith damage, where simple addition would give +101%.

So the +1 Buff Slot echo on an aura isn't a nice-to-have — it's the single biggest damage upgrade available to this build, and it only exists on the aura's exclusive line. Everything in the Endgame section about saving Abyss Essence for the highest-level aura you can reach follows from this one multiplication.

The buffs, with real numbers (all at skill Lv 20)

Buff	Numbers	Verdict for a Bishop
Divine Blessing	+17.4% Faith damage, +37.5% EXP, +30% Skill EXP · 240s duration on a 5s cooldown	Permanent. The duration so far exceeds the cooldown that it's effectively always on. Never unslot it while levelling.
Mana Shield	+24.0% Faith damage · +7.5 MP/tick · shield scaling with INT · halves incoming HP damage and bills it to MP	Mandatory, despite being a Magic buff. Magic passive 10 is trivial since passives self-level. It turns your huge SPR mana pool into an effective second health bar — and it's the mechanical reason a faith caster wants some INT.
🧠 Focused Mind	+60% to your highest damage stat, −30% to the others	The biggest damage buff in the game — if you're mono-stat. For pure SPR running Nova/Smite the penalty costs nothing. It's a trap on the hybrid path: Shield Bash and the melee-faith skills scale equally off Melee and Faith, so it cuts half their damage by 30%.
🌙 Blue Moon	90% damage reduction for 11.3s, 50s cooldown that Attack Speed cannot reduce (−22.5% for allies)	A hard 22.6% uptime defensive window. No gear ever improves it, so plan boss mechanics around the cycle rather than hoping to shorten it.
Elemental Charge	+157% Elemental Effect Chance · costs 12 MP/tick	Pushes you far past 100% chance, so every hit procs — see the element note below.
Divine Protection	Blocks one lethal hit · 100s duration / 120s cooldown	Near-permanent party insurance at max level.

The MP tick economy. At level 20 the draining toggles cost real regen: Elemental Charge −12.0/tick, Focused Mind −3.85. Against that you have Mana Shield +7.5 and the Magic passive at 99 +8. Net: you can sustain Elemental Charge plus one other drain, not three. Want a third? Add a Water-element weapon, on-hit MP-regen echoes, or weave the Magic Burst basic attack (its perks are MP regen).

Attack Speed lives in exactly two slots

Only auras and weapons can roll Attack Speed echoes. Hat, top, bottom, shoes, face, rings, cape, bag — all contribute exactly zero cooldown reduction. For a build whose damage is gated by Smite's 12-second cooldown, your entire cooldown budget comes from two items, and both can roll every Attack Speed type at once.

Category tag vs scaling — the hybrid trap

Attack Speed applies by a skill's combat category, not by what stat it scales off. The game proves the distinction: Onslaught scales off all four damage types, but only Melee Attack Speed reduces its cooldown, because Melee is its category tag.

That matters enormously on the hybrid path. Skills carrying Range scaling alongside Faith — Holy Arrow, Holy Field, Medishot, Messenger, Flare Arrow — may be filed under Range, in which case your Faith Attack Speed does nothing for them. unverified the wiki doesn't expose these tags cleanly; check the skill's own tooltip in-game, which has a combat-category field.

But this matters less than it sounds, because cooldown reduction is worth most on long cooldowns. Even if your basic attack gets nothing, Faith AS still lands on everything that actually gates you:

Skill	Cooldown	What 20% AS saves
Divine Protection	120s	~24s — the biggest single win
Smite	12s	~2.4s per cast
Revitalize	8.5s	~1.7s
Nova	1.7s	~0.3s
A 1.4s basic attack	1.4s	negligible either way

Global Attack Speed is the hybrid's real answer — it applies to every category at once and sidesteps the tagging question entirely. Weapons and auras can roll all five AS types simultaneously, so prioritise Global and treat category lines as a bonus.

Three unknowns to hold loosely: the cooldown-reduction formula is unpublished, so 20% Attack Speed does not necessarily equal 20% shorter cooldowns (the numbers above are illustrative, not derived); no cap or breakpoints are documented; and whether AS affects cast/channel time as opposed to cooldown is unrecorded — which matters for chargeable skills like Holy Arrow. What is stated is that a good aura can cut cooldowns "to half or even more." One hard exception: Blue Moon's cooldown cannot be lowered by Attack Speed at all.

Elements: the twist nobody mentions

Monster elemental weaknesses do not currently exist. The wiki has a full element-versus-element chart built — and commented out, with the note that element damage is not in the current build. So there is no resistance chart to play around and no "wrong" element for a given zone. Pick an element for its proc effect alone (Lightning to chain, Water to heal, Fire to spread), exactly as the Build section recommends.

And if you run Elemental Charge, stop rolling Elemental Chance. At +157% chance every hit already procs, so additional Chance echoes are worth literally nothing — stack Elemental Potency instead, which scales how hard each proc lands. Nova at level 20 hands you +40% Potency for free, and the Faith passive at 99 adds +19% more.

Echo drop odds — why you build 5-line gear instead of finding it

From the developer's own probability sheet, the chance a drop or craft at a given level carries N echo lines:

Item/monster level	1 line	2	3	4	5	Any echo at all
10	28.5%	5.5%	2.1%	0.5%	0.05%	36.6%
30	38.5%	9.2%	4.3%	1.2%	0.1%	53.3%
50	48.3%	14.2%	8.3%	2.8%	0.3%	73.8%
72	56.7%	20.2%	15.8%	6.5%	0.9%	100%
100	44.0%	19.0%	22.9%	12.1%	1.9%	100%

Level 72 is the saturation point — from there every single drop carries at least one echo, and the "one line" share starts falling as weight shifts into 3, 4 and 5 lines. Farming base gear much below that throws away a large share of drops as echo-less junk.
A natural 5-line item is under 2% even at level 100. You are not meant to find one — you're meant to build one with Souls. Budget accordingly.

⭐ Two Soul and Gem tricks worth real money

1. Souls reroll by POSITION — so slot 5 is a free lock. Energetic touches lines 1–2, Ambitious touches 1–4, Transcendent touches all 5. That means a keeper line sitting in slot 5 is only ever touched by Transcendent: once you're at five lines with your good roll last, you can churn everything else with Ambitious Souls indefinitely and never risk it — no Eternal Souls required. Same logic one tier down: a keeper in slot 3–4 can be churned with Energetic. Eternal Souls (5 protected uses, 2 locks max) are for when your keeper is stuck in slot 1.

2. Gems before Souls, always. A Mystic Gem adds +1 to a randomly chosen existing echo line — so on an item with exactly one line, every Mystic Gem is a guaranteed +1 to that line, and all your upgrade slots funnel into it. Gem first while the item is bare, then Soul it up to fill lines 2–5; the Mystic bonus is position-locked and survives the rerolls. Do it the other way around on a filled 5-line item and each gem has a 1-in-5 chance of landing where you want — a fivefold loss of value. Best known target for the trick: the level-50 Top Hat — 8 upgrade slots and zero stat lines.

Small confirmed facts that change decisions

Aggro is pure last-hit — there is no threat table. Which means Taunt is genuinely your only aggro tool, and no amount of healing will pull mobs onto you.
Mighty monsters count as bosses for mechanical purposes — relevant to element procs that behave differently on bosses.
Fee ladder: direct trade 0% < player stall 4% < auction house 5%. For a known buyer, trade directly and keep the difference.
Fame grants no stat bonuses whatsoever. It's pure reputation — don't chase it for power.
Shiny monsters' "87× EXP" is real wording but conditional ("in some cases") — treat it as a jackpot range, not a flat multiplier.

What genuinely isn't published anywhere — treat any number you see for these as someone's guess: the Attack-Speed-to-cooldown formula and its cap, the SPR→faith-damage conversion rate, HP/MP gained per stat point, crit damage multipliers, the defense mitigation curve, and Calamity Gem outcome odds (the dev's sheet for it exists but is an empty template).

Endgame & Party Content

There are no raids and no leaderboards in Soul's Remnant. The largest group in the game is eight, and the de-facto raid is the bottom of the Abyss. What the endgame actually consists of: a weekly tower, three dungeons at three difficulty tiers each, four world bosses that only exist at night, and one party quest.

The support case, stated plainly. This game has no forced trinity — but read the reward model: Silver Chests, Wooden Chests, Gold Chests, essences and EXP payouts are all per-member and none are damage-weighted. A healer seat costs the party nothing in loot. Meanwhile deaths are brutally punishing (3 strikes then ejection; in the Abyss a death also rewinds you up to 9 floors against a clock that doesn't stop). Prevention beats throughput. The single measurable cost of playing support: the post-boss Soul Crystal bonus is split by damage contribution — you get a smaller slice of one bonus currency, and nothing else.

Abyss Trial — the weekly tower

Behind The Grave, hosted by the Ferryman. Entry costs one Tear of the Abyss and only the party leader's is consumed — so a support who tags along pays nothing. Party 1–8.

Floor slot	What's there
X1–X8	Wave floors. Each opens with one lone Slime — killing it spawns the real wave. Exactly one wave per floor (unlike dungeons).
X9	Boss floor.
X0	Break room — safe. Potion shop, weekly-reward sign, a memory collectible, the Gold Chest, and portals onward/out.

The clock is the real boss. You get 10 minutes per 9-floor set to reach and kill the X9 boss. Hit 00:00 and the Abyss claims your entire party. Critically: dying does not reset the timer, and a death sends you back to the previous break room — so one death deep in a sector means re-running up to nine floors on the same clock. That's usually a run-ender.

You get 3 respawns; the 4th ejects you to Spawn. (The wiki contradicts itself here — three content pages say 3 per player, the Beginner Guide says 3 shared per party. Per-player is better supported; if it turns out to be shared, a dedicated healer becomes far more valuable.)

Elevator checkpoints are the progression spine. Reaching a break room permanently unlocks the elevator to it — next run you start from the deepest one you've touched. And the payoff mechanic the wiki endorses outright: a Gold Chest pays out every floor you've ever unlocked, all at once. Once you have deep checkpoints, enter, walk to floor 10, open the chest, and collect the whole week's haul without descending. Do this every week.

Weekly Gold Chest rewards

Floor	Reward	Floor	Reward
10	Abyss Essence ×20	60	Transcendent Soul ×1
20	Abyss Essence ×30	70	Transcendent Soul ×2
30	Chaotic Soul ×1	80	Transcendent Soul ×3
40	Abyss Essence ×50	90	Eternal Soul ×1
50	Chaotic Soul ×2	99	Transitive Soul ×3 + Pathfinder Hat

Rewards rotate weekly — ask the Ferryman "What rewards await this week?" before committing. The Pathfinder Hat is completely undocumented beyond "floor 99 guarantees one."

Why deep floors matter: they're the Echo-rerolling economy. Floors 60–99 are the only reliable weekly source of the top-tier Souls, and the endgame gearing loop runs on them — Transcendent (fill an item to 5 echo lines) → Eternal (lock your 2 good lines) → Transcendent again (safely reroll the rest) → Transitive (migrate a perfected roll onto a higher-level item). Note Transitive destroys the source, requires the same equipment category, doesn't carry gem upgrades, and rescales values to the target's level — so you can bank a perfect low-level piece and move it up, but never buff low gear with high gear.

Floor bosses — and why they hit harder than the floor number suggests

Floor	Boss	Level	Kit
9	Angeling	20 +11	Summons Jels, heals itself, projectiles
19	Deviling	—	Summons Shadow Sprites, projectiles
29	Goldling	—	Summons Gilded Slimes; spinning coins that explode on touch or on a timer
39	Big Slime	45 +6	Goo-puddle projectiles, telegraphed charges that occasionally defy gravity
49	Blorp	80 +31	Summons Blorpghouls (Lv 52, 64,824 HP each); heavy goo projectiles
59+	Genuinely undocumented — the wiki has nothing on floors 59/69/79/89. Community/Discord territory.

Every documented Abyss boss is a summoner, and they all out-level their own floor — Blorp sits 31 levels above floor 49. Since fighting above-level monsters means you deal less and take more, X9 floors spike far harder than the waves before them, and the gap widens with depth. Adds plus chip damage on multiple targets is exactly the scenario where Revitalize is load-bearing rather than decorative.

Practice tip: Angeling and Big Slime also roam the overworld as Visitor bosses (Plains 2 and Forest 1) with the same core kits — learn floors 9 and 39 for free out there.

How a Bishop actually plays the Abyss

Wave floors (X1–X8) — your job is tempo, not healing. Nothing about healing beats a clock; clear speed does. Pre-cast Divine Blessing and buffs in the break room, never on the timer. Then it's Taunt to gather the wave into one clump and Smite/Nova to delete it. Burst AoE beats sustained damage here because there's only ever one wave per floor.

Boss floors (X9) — your job is death prevention. A death costs the party a respawn and up to nine floors of re-running on a clock that never stopped. Preventing one death is worth more than any damage you could have contributed. Divine Protection before the pull, Revitalize on cooldown through the add waves, Burst Shield on whoever's tanking.

Floor 99 is all four world bosses back to back, then your leader empowers one for a final rematch. That's the closest thing to a raid this game has.

The Abyss Essence shop — and the aura insight

Abyss Essence drops from any monster inside the Trial. The Ferryman's shop sells consumables cheap (Chocolate 2, Health Potion 3, Mana/Return Crystal 4, Tear of the Abyss 25, Mystic Gem 40, Ambitious Soul 80) — and the entire aura ladder:

Aura	Item level	Cost	Aura	Item level	Cost
Red	20	30	White	60	152
Yellow	30	45	Cold	70	228
Blue	50	68	Purple	80	342
Gray	50	101	Hearts	90	513

Do not waste essence on cheap auras. Echo line values are capped by item level, so the Lv-90 Hearts Aura isn't a cosmetic upgrade over the Lv-20 Red — it's a strictly higher echo ceiling. Save for the highest-level aura you can reach. This matters more for us than for anyone else: auras and weapons are the only slots that roll Attack Speed (which lowers all your cooldowns — the wiki suggests a good aura alone can halve them), and the aura 5th-line pool is where +1 Buff Slot and +Skill Points live. A buff-slot roll directly solves the 2-slot cap that constrains this entire build. Trap to avoid: Dark Auras from minigames cannot roll aura echoes at all.

Dungeons at Hard and Extreme

Dungeon	Normal	Hard	Extreme	Real minimum entry
Slime Garden	10	40	70	Hard at 25, Extreme at 55
Plains Dungeon	20	50	80	Hard at 35, Extreme at 65
Cave Trial	30	60	90	Hard at 45, Extreme at 75

You're blocked from any dungeon recommended more than 15 levels above you — hence the real minimums above. What actually scales with tier: essence payout is linear (Normal 1 of each, Hard 2, Extreme 3), monster levels track the tier band, and drop tables shift Dull → plain → Radiant. World Boss Tickets have been reported dropping in Cave Trial Extreme.

Warning — Cave Trial Normal is not tuned for level 30. Launch-week players report the final room containing two elementals at level 105; a level-33 player had every single attack miss. The community reads this as untuned rather than bugged, and the wiki has struck through the level-30 recommendation. Bring a group, or postpone it.

Dungeon Pass echoes — your difficulty and loot dials

Echo	Effect
Monster Level	The key line. Raises monster level (all stats up) and increases the chance monsters drop Souls or equipment with good echoes. Difficulty knob and loot-quality knob in one.
EXP	More Player EXP and Skill EXP
Item Drops	Better drop chances
Monster Spawn Rate	More monsters in every room, boss room included
Maze Dungeon Rooms	Guarantees more rooms (no effect in minigames)
Monster Size / Damage / Speed	Bigger, harder-hitting, faster — pure difficulty
Darkness	Fog around your character; more darkness, less vision

Separately, Bonus Events sometimes float above a dungeon entrance: an hourglass (Time Trial — clear before the timer for bonus rewards) or a sword (Double Trouble — monsters twice as hard for double EXP and drops). Passes can also gain echoes via Alchemy and be combined into higher tiers. Some of this is commented out of the live wiki — possibly stale.

Reading a dungeon like a veteran

Standard rooms seal completely until cleared — no portals, not even the one you came through. Every room opens with a lone Slime that spawns the first wave when killed.
Key Room (light red) is harder than standard; the Boss Key drops from the final, hardest wave and someone must pick it up. The Boss Room only opens for the key holder, who must enter first.
The boss room's opening Slime is a free regroup window — while it lives, nothing else spawns. Buff up there.
Loot Rooms (yellow) hold one Wooden Chest per member, max 4 — and you can clear them after the boss.
The bright blue path trick: a blue line between rooms means both are cleared and you can walk through freely. It only draws when a room is cleared, not entered — so a half-drawn line tells you a teammate is still fighting in there.
Dungeon Crystals from Silver Chests are how you level combat skills: Dull takes skills to level 9, Radiant to 15 and beyond. They sell at a premium on the Auction House.

Dungeon Passes — the real bottleneck

Every dungeon, every minigame and the party quest costs one pass, and they are the thing that most limits how much group content you actually run. Here's the complete picture.

There is exactly one repeatable source: killing monsters. Passes aren't on any individual monster's drop table — they sit in a universal pool that scales with monster level. In the wiki's own words, "the higher a monster's level, the higher the chance it has to drop these." So there is no secret pass-farming spot; the rule is simply the highest-level monster you can kill quickly.

Hard and Extreme passes drop directly too, so higher tiers are not gated behind combining. Players describe the ordering plainly: "the hard ones are rarer than the normal ones and the extreme ones are even rarer than those." Hard passes are reported dropping from around level-40 monsters onward, which fits the level-scaling rule.

On frequency, no percentage exists anywhere. The best qualitative read from someone with hundreds of hours: "they're not like rare, but also they don't drop super often." One newer player measured 2 passes in 7 hours. Budget somewhere in between.

Every guaranteed pass in the game

Source	Passes
Level up! I (reach level 5)	1 Normal
The Shepherd's Barrier (reach level 10)	1 Normal
Kmitty III · Kmitty VII	1 + 2 Normal
The Abyss VI (reach floor 60)	2 Normal
Lifetime total	7, all Normal

That's it. No quest anywhere gives a Hard or Extreme pass, no daily or repeatable quest gives passes at all, and no vendor sells them — every shop and exchange inventory in the game was checked. Passes are confirmed tradeable between players and storable in your stash, so buying or borrowing one is legitimate. They almost certainly don't stack, since each carries its own echo roll.

How to maximise your drop rate

Grind the highest-level monsters you can kill fast — that's the whole mechanic.
Push Research to level 4 (20 essences) on that monster for +10% drop chance.
Always clear Darkness Crystals — and since the Aug 16 patch each player clears their own. Ignoring yours for 50 kills hard-stops your drops, and clearing it can roll +10% Item Drops for 10 minutes.
Level Jeweler — a permanent +0.8% Item Drops every 14 levels.
Stack Item Drop echoes on a farming loadout.

Myth worth dispelling: don't stack LUK for drops. You'll find alpha-era videos saying "luck increases item drop rates" — that's where the belief comes from — but the game's current stat documentation lists LUK as crit rate plus a little Range damage, nothing more. Use Item Drop echoes and the Jeweler passive instead, which are unambiguous.

Two things the game doesn't tell you

The combine mechanic is undocumented. The wiki says in a single sentence that passes "can have Echoes added via Alchemy, and can be combined into higher-tier Dungeon Passes" — and that sentence has never been expanded since the page was created. The ratio, the input count, the level requirement, the cost, where you even do it, and what happens to echoes on the inputs are all unpublished. Five separate investigations — the wiki's own data modules, community sites, Steam, and two YouTube sweeps totalling 80+ hours of captions — have found zero players describing it. Treat it as either unimplemented or gated behind something nobody has reached. Alchemy does have a documented tier-conversion system for essences (Dull → normal → Radiant), so a similar shape is plausible, but nobody has published the recipe. If you work it out in-game, you'll know something the internet doesn't.

And ignore the "rarity 1–3 / 4–6 / 7–9" table you'll find elsewhere. It survives only inside an HTML comment describing a legacy system, and the developer's own archived item database from that era lists a single untiered "Dungeon Entrance Ticket". The three named tiers were added to the wiki on launch day. What actually determines a dropped pass's tier isn't documented. One popular fan site reproduces that stale table verbatim — it's a scrape of the wiki including its hidden comments.

But it wasn't invented. In the January 2024 playtest the offering slot took any item, with its rarity setting the difficulty — there's video of a player entering a dungeon by offering iron ore. The wiki editors then commented the section out, which suggests it was removed before launch. Worth a 30-second test in your own client: if non-pass offerings still work, the entire pass economy changes.

Spending them well

The leader pays — for everyone. The in-game tooltip is explicit: "when the party leader uses it to enter dungeon all party members on the same map also warped into the same dungeon." One pass admits a whole group, and it's erased at the moment of entry, so a wipe, a timeout or an early exit can't refund it. Take turns leading and a six-person group costs each of you a pass every sixth run.
Dying out costs a fresh pass. Someone outside who offers the same item joins your instance — that's how a player ejected on their fourth death gets back in, and it's a second pass gone.
Don't touch the exit portal by accident — though this got safer. Leaving still means you can't return without another pass (one streamer lost a pass rolling +24% EXP that way and needed a GM to put him back), but the Aug 16 patch added a 5-second confirmation delay on leaving a dungeon and on disbanding a guild, so a stray spacebar no longer instantly commits you.
"Time Trial" is not a fail state. Seeing it on entry is fine — the timer only gates bonus rewards, and the run continues normally either way.
Dungeons are solo-able — you don't need a party to spend a pass, whatever some pages imply. Minigames need 2–6 players, and the Beach Shepherd party quest needs 4–6 and takes Normal passes only.
Higher tiers pay linearly better: Dungeon Essence yield is 1 / 2 / 3 of each type for Normal / Hard / Extreme — and essence is what buys Transitive Souls (210), Eternal Souls (180) and the Void Bag (100).
Minigames accept all three tiers, but Hard requires level 30+ and Extreme level 60+ regardless of the pass you hold.
Don't feed spare passes to the Forge unless you're genuinely surplus — it's solo, needs no unlock, and is explicitly the game's dump for burning through pass reserves.
Spend passes with good echoes on your best content. A pass rolling Monster Level raises difficulty and the chance of Souls and well-rolled equipment dropping — those are worth saving for a full group rather than a solo clear.

World bosses — you never out-level them

Boss	Level	Where	Notes
Puppet Reaper "Pea"	160	Deep Caves	Start here. Simplest pattern — but its Ghost Puppets are level 180, higher than the boss itself, so the add-killer has the dangerous job. Wiki prescribes a 3-role split: aggro holder / puppet killer / puppet wrangler.
Reaperfish	165	Great Trench (underwater)	Ravenous Charge; summons Mini Reaperfish that fire projectiles
Scythe Reaper	210	Giant Tree (Forest)	5 slash patterns, enrages below 40% and 20%. The hard tier.
Seeker Reaper "Chompy"	210	Pyramid (Desert)	Its Mini Seekers are only level 70 — killing the anchor is vastly cheaper than fighting the body. Rewards stacking: "move to dodge in the same direction."

Level 160–210 against a player cap of 99. That deficit never closes — you cannot out-gear a world boss, you out-execute it. Which is good news for a support build: your value (death prevention, add control, keeping people stacked) doesn't scale down as the party gears up.

And there's a hard 22-minute clock. They spawn only at night (7 PM in-game), and if they aren't dead by sunrise they vanish and drop nothing for anyone who fought them. Their maps are completely safe during the day.

Beach Shepherd — the only party quest in the game

Secret Cove · levels 10–99 · party of 4–6 required (stage 4 needs four bodies) · 30-minute limit · costs a Normal Dungeon Pass, whose echoes modify the EXP payout. The wiki claims its EXP rate beats grinding, and lower-level members get a much larger share — so run it early.

Stage	What to do
1. Seashells	Kill everything; each monster drops 1 Seashell (expect 22). They're tradeable and the leader must hold all of them before talking to Shepherd.
2. Platforming	Skills are disabled and Speed/Jump forced to base. Pure parkour — but one player clearing it opens the door for everybody. Send your best platformer and have the rest of the party wait at the bottom.
3. Quiz	Answer by killing slimes down to a two-digit number: Platform 1 = tens, Platform 2 = ones. Both platforms always spawn exactly 9. Count your kills instead of the survivors — equip Ninja Throw (single-target) and unequip your weapon so element procs don't overkill. Four correct answers to clear.
4. Barrels	It is the Kerning City barrel puzzle, unchanged — any old KPQ guide applies, except these barrels aren't numbered. Three members stand on three of six while the leader tests the combination. Work it systematically: everyone on the top three, then walk the right-hand player down one barrel at a time (1·2·3 → 1·2·4 → 1·2·5 → 1·2·6), then move the second player and repeat.
5. Gloopy	Giant blue slime, lobs water and slime globs. The arena has no side walls — don't plan on wall-jumping out of a corner. This is the easy Gloopy; the version in Shepherd's Pet Problem is drastically nastier.

The published answer key has known errors. A launch-week player found the wiki's answer for the map-count question was flatly wrong (it said 9; the correct answer was 10) and warns that others may be too. Treat the list below as a starting guess, try your own count first, and remember a wrong answer just respawns the slimes.

Answers seen so far: Outskirts maps 09 · Small Health Potion 60 · Small Mana Potion 85 · founded 16 · villagers in Spawn 06 · Kmitty 01 · Magic level for Gravity Well 20 · monsters in stage 1 22 · max echoes 04 · members for a Lv-5 guild 04. One reward roll per clear: 25% Energetic Soul, 14.3% each for the three Gems, then 4.5% each for Ambitious Soul, Shepherd's Aura, Shepherd's Ring and three cosmetics.

Party mechanics worth knowing

EXP splits by damage dealt, then bonus Party EXP is added on top per member. The wiki's hidden text claims the killer keeps full EXP and members' shares cost them nothing — commented out, treat as unconfirmed — but every source agrees partying is the biggest leveling lever there is.
Stay within 10 levels. Past a 10-level gap the free EXP starts shrinking, and at a large enough gap you get zero — both player EXP and bonus. A level-95 friend cannot power-level you.
Party sizes: Abyss 1–8 · dungeons soloable (Wooden Chests cap at 4) · minigames 2–6 required · Beach PQ 4–6 required.
Campfires boost HP and MP recovery for everyone nearby and can't be placed in dungeons — but break rooms aren't dungeons, so they should work in the Abyss. Worth testing.
No in-game guild browser exists. You find a guild through the Discord's guild thread, then need to be on the same channel as a leader or officer to receive the invite.
Guild perks are bought per member, per hour in Soul Crystals, and active perk slots cap at 5 from guild level 4 — higher levels buy member capacity and stronger tiers, not more simultaneous perks.

What doesn't exist

No raids (8 is the max group size anywhere). No leaderboards or PvE rankings — the closest progression markers are your deepest Abyss checkpoint and your guild level. No PvP, none planned. Three event maps exist: Mountain Challenge and Tropical Road are parkour events that disable skills and buffs entirely to level the field (so your build is neither an advantage nor a handicap), and Fishing Contest is presumably life-skill based. All three are essentially undocumented.

Life Skills — the second progression track

Three gathering skills, eight crafting professions, all capped at 99, all leveled by doing, all free to keep active (0 SP). Every one is unlocked by talking to a villager at Spawn, and every one pays a passive combat bonus just for leveling it — life skilling is stat progression here.

The roster

	Skill	Unlock from	Passive bonus while leveling	This build cares because
	Herbalism	Shepherd	HP/MP regen every 19 lvls	Herbs feed Alchemy; lv 15 unlocks Nature's Veil (15s invisibility that persists while gathering)
	Mining	Shepherd	+1 Light Radius / 15 lvls	Ingots feed every Focus you'll ever craft
	Fishing	Kmitty	+1 LUK / 10 lvls, +6% Speed / 30	5× the gathering EXP of herbs/ore; Glowfish for the Food Stall minigame
	Alchemy	Shop Keeper	+1 Max HP / 4 lvls, +1 Max MP / 6	The priority. Potions, Return Crystals, essence conversion — and lv 15 = Transmutation
🍳	Cooking	Shop Keeper	+1 Knockback Resist / 19 lvls	Meals with crafting echoes; food = villager gift fuel
⚒️	Weapon Smithing	Smith	+2% Damage Balance / 15 lvls	Your Focus ladder, tiers 2–8
🧵	Armor Crafting	Tailor	+1 Defense / 15 lvls	Priest/Scholar cloth every 6 levels
💍	Jeweler	Gevil	+0.8% Item Drops / 14 lvls	Ring of Light at Jeweler 5; the drop passive is a farm stat
🪑	Artisan	Tailor	+1% Echoes Find / 8 lvls (!)	The echo-quality passive; furniture later
🔨	General	General NPC	—	Campfires and the Flower Tiara live here, at level 0
	Transmutation	via Alchemy 15	—	Weapon element swaps (see Gear)
🏪	Merchant	—	—	Your personal market stall, 4% fee vs the AH's 5%

Do this on day one: every villager offers a starter quest for their skill, and each one grants "sufficient Skill EXP to level the skill several times." Take all twelve before anything else — it's free multi-level progress across every profession, and it costs you nothing but a lap around Spawn.

The breakpoints that actually matter

Gathering skills aren't a smooth grind — they have three hard unlock levels that change how fast you gather forever. Rush to them.

Lv	Skill	Unlock	What it does
10	Mining	Prospector	Raises the chance of special nodes (increased yield)
10	Herbalism	Botanist	Same, for foraging and harvest nodes
10	Fishing	Angler	Raises the chance of special catches
15	Herbalism	Nature's Veil	15s invisibility that persists while gathering — strip nodes in lethal zones. Overworld only, no boss maps or dungeons.
15	Alchemy	Transmutation	Change your Focus's element (see Gear)
20	Mining / Herbalism	Pickaxe / Sickle Frenzy	The big one. Gathers can erupt into an all-or-nothing three-line input for massive yields. Miss it and you forfeit everything.

There is no Fishing frenzy. Yield scales on two axes at once — rarity and stack size — so gathering accelerates as you level. Push through the early levels rather than spreading effort thinly across all three.

Gathering technique

The reveal-cast covers the entire map, not a radius. Both Herbalism and Mining reveal every node on the map in one cast, so where you stand when you cast is irrelevant. The optimal loop is: enter map → cast once → sweep every node → rotate to the next map or channel. Don't wait around for respawns.

The arrow minigame rows are yield multipliers, not flavor. Interacting with a node (Space) offers one or more rows: 1×, 2×, or 3× quantity. Longer input strings for bigger rows. Always take the highest row you can reliably execute — that choice is your gathering rate.

Normal arrow → press the direction shown
Purple arrow → press the OPPOSITE direction
Faded arrow → press nothing, skip it

Strings run to about 8 inputs. The failure mode is almost never speed — it's misreading a purple or faded arrow. Train yourself to read colour before direction.

Fishing is a tracking game, not a timing tap: cast, wait for the yellow ! (there's an audio cue, so you can look away), press again, then keep the fish inside the gray box with ←→. Three stats make it easier — Fishing Bar Size (bigger box), Fishing Catch Rate, and Double Catch Chance (a free second catch).

Crafting: the card game, properly explained

Equipment professions craft through a card minigame — draw 3, play 1 (costs a Turn) or reroll. Two rules decide whether you're good at it:

1. Rerolls are free. Rerolling replaces the card set without consuming a turn. There is never a reason to end a craft holding unspent rerolls — this is the single most under-used lever in the game.

2. Percentages close the gap, they don't multiply. A "+50%" card moves the line 50% of the distance between current and maximum. So +2.0 on a 10.0-max line becomes +6.0, and +9.0 with a +75% card becomes +9.8. Percentage cards are strongest early, when the gap is widest. And because values always round up — including whole-number lines — even a tiny late gain still ticks a line upward, which is how you actually cap one.

Card	Effect	Rarity
Polish	Bump every main stat by 15 / 30 / 50%	Common → Mythic
Sharpen	Bump the listed stat by 25 / 55 / 70%	Common → Mythic
Imbue Echo	Add 1 random Echo	Common
Wild Reroll	Randomize a random main stat's value	Common
Nurture / Mystify	+1 to a listed stat / Echo — does not consume a slot	Rare
Lucky Strike	Bump a random main stat by 55%	Rare
Echo Trade	−35% to all main stats, but add 2 random Echoes	Rare
Targeted Echo	Add a listed Echo (item dependent)	Rare
Targeted / Total Reroll	Randomize one / every main stat value	Rare
Scrap	Destroy the item, refund 50% of materials	Rare
Soulbet	50% to max one main stat — 50% to DESTROY the item	Mythic
Patient Forge	+2 extra turns	Mythic
Echo Devotion	Sacrifice one Echo to boost the listed stat by 80%	Mythic
Double Imbue / Mystery Strike	Add 2 random Echoes / bump listed stat by a mystery amount	Mythic
Boundless Forge	+3 extra turns	Legendary
Triple Imbue	Add 3 random Echoes	Legendary
Mastercraft / Apotheosis	Max out the listed stat / max out EVERY main stat	Legendary

Play order that wins

Burn every reroll — they cost no turn.
Take turn-adders on sight. Boundless Forge (+3) and Patient Forge (+2) compound: more turns also means more chances to draw Legendaries.
Front-load percentage cards while the gap is wide. Polish beats Sharpen on multi-stat items; Sharpen wins on single-stat ones.
Finish with flat and max cards — Nurture (+1, free slot-wise) and Mastercraft. Combined with round-up, this is what actually caps a line.
Echo Trade is a turn-one card only. −35% of a low number is cheap; −35% of a finished item is a disaster.
Apotheosis is an instant take. Soulbet is a coin-flip that can destroy the item — spam crafts only, never your Focus.

Two quiet multipliers: crafting below your profession level gives a higher chance of echoes on the result — so craft down for quality and use Auto Craft when you only want XP (XP is a fixed per-recipe value, unaffected by how well you play). And Alchemy has no minigame at all — everything is instant, which makes it both the fastest profession to level and the only semi-idle one.

Maker's mark: everything you craft carries your character name permanently, through every trade and shop listing. Small thing, but on a server this size it's a real reputation — be the Bishop who sells Focuses.

Cooking is the force multiplier KEY

Cooking looks like the least useful profession and is actually the engine behind every other one — it's the only source of the consumable buffs that speed up all the rest. Food uses its own card pool, and its maths are inverted (cooking items count as already at maximum, so cards calculate off current value).

Cooking for…	Cook this
Any XP grind	Choice Wanderer's Spice → Skill EXP Gain, plus a duration extender
Gathering sessions	Choice Forager's Garnish → Special Node Chance / Frenzy Node Chance
Crafting sessions	Choice Artisan's Garnish → More Turns / More Rerolls
Villager gifting	Tailored Recipe (+30% hearts) + Generous Portion

Duration cards stack the loop: Slow-Cooked +25%, Preserved Feast +50%, Eternal Repast +70%. One warning the wiki makes explicitly — food buffs are timed and can expire mid-craft, so eat immediately before you start the activity, not before you walk to the station.

⭐ The fastest way to level a profession isn't crafting

Minigames pay profession EXP directly, as a completion choice, scaled to your current level and the difficulty tier — and this is documented nowhere on the profession pages themselves. Seven of the nine professions can be levelled this way without gathering or crafting a single item yourself.

Barrier Forge is the standout: one clear pays out at two NPCs, so you take Weapon Smithing EXP from the Smith and Armor Crafting EXP from the Tailor in the same run.

Minigame	Needs	EXP you can claim
Barrier Forge	Mining	Smith → Combat / Mining / Weapon Smithing · Tailor → Combat / Armor Crafting both, per run
Kmitty's Food Stall	Fishing	Combat / Fishing / Cooking
Shepherd's Pet Problem	Herbalism	Combat / Herbalism · and the Shop Keeper always pays Alchemy EXP, scaled by how few Black Potions you brewed

Only Jeweler and Artisan can't be levelled this way — those two must be hand-crafted. Difficulties: Normal (rec. 15) · Hard (rec. 45, needs level 30+) · Extreme (rec. 75, needs level 60+). Gathering inside a minigame also pays normal gathering EXP, so a Barrier Forge run levels Mining twice over.

They're also the best bulk-material source in the game. Silver Chests scale hard with difficulty: Normal gives Copper/Iron Ore and Dull essences ×10 at 20% each; Hard gives Malachite/Cobalt/Titanium and full essences; Extreme gives Gold/Mithril/Obsidian Ore and all seven Radiant essences ×10 at 20% each. That matters twice over — Radiant essences are the scarcest thing in the economy, and Obsidian Ore appears on no map in the game data, making Extreme Barrier Forge its only recorded source.

Spam recipes — what to make at each stage

The wiki's recipe pages render blank, but 561 recipes exist in the underlying data. Here's the cheapest thing to mass-produce per profession:

Profession	The grind item
Alchemy start here — instant crafts	The "3 wood + fruit + plant" essence family, one per band: Lv 7 Dull Life Essence (Apple + Cotton Ball + Oak Wood ×3, all 100% gather rate on Plains 1–4) → Lv 15 Dull Nurturing (Seashore) → Lv 25 Dull Raging (Sulfuric Plains) → Lv 30 Dull Historic (Savanna) → Lv 38 Dull Eternal (Misty Forest). One map, herbalism only, no combat needed. Also at Lv 5: a 1 full Essence + 100 SC → 2 Dull duplicator for burning surplus.
Cooking	Lv 18 Fish Sauce — Salt ×1 + Trout ×1. Two items, the cheapest recipe in the game, and the Trout half feeds Fishing at 5× EXP simultaneously. Salt is the universal reagent (in 8 of 8 known recipes): Mining Lv 2, 34.8% on every Outskirts map, forever.
Jeweler	Grind Rods — one material, 5 units, roughly 10× cheaper than rings — and make a single ring per 6-level gate. The cleanest tree in the game: rings land exactly every 6 levels, rods 3 levels before each.
Weapon Smithing	Cheap-class one-handers only: Sword, Bow, Focus, Javelin, Wand, Spellblade, Cross, Kunai. Never Orb, Shield or Holy Arrow — they cost ~33% more ingots for identical essence cost, at every one of 14 tiers.
Armor Crafting	Always the highest-tier Shoes you can make. The tree runs a strict 4-level cycle (Hat → Shoes → Pants → Robe) and Shoes are the cheapest slot in all 18 cycles; a Robe costs roughly double.
Artisan	no recipes exist — the word appears four times in the entire wiki. Its +1% Echoes Find per 8 levels is real, but nobody has documented how to level it.

One formula worth memorising: everything in this game runs on a 16-tier spine — ores, herbs, fabrics, ingots, rods, rings, weapons and armour all share it, one tier every 6 levels. The wiki records only two gathering level gates in total (Gold Ore = Mining 60, Salt = Mining 2), but Gold Ore lines up exactly with the Amber Ring at Jeweler 60, which gives you mining requirement ≈ (tier − 1) × 6 for the whole ladder.

Proficiency gear — and where it actually comes from

Proficiency is the "hidden levels" stat that lets you gather above your nominal skill level. The answer to where it comes from is specific: Dark life-skill gear, obtainable only from minigames. Three complete five-piece sets exist:

Set	Pieces	Drops from	Rate per piece
Mining	Pickaxe · Hat · Shirt · Pants · Shoes	Barrier Forge	3.0% Normal 4.0% Hard 5.0% Extreme
Fishing	Rod · Fisher Hat · Shirt · Pants · Boots	Kmitty's Food Stall
Herbalism	Herb Basket · Hat · Coat · Skirt · Shoes	Shepherd's Pet Problem

Each piece rolls independently, so roughly a 15% chance of some piece per Normal chest and 25% at Extreme. As Dark Items they need no level requirement, at least one stat line scales with your player level so they never fall off, and they take Gems but no Souls or Echoes. Gathering Proficiency raises the tier of reward a node can give you; crafting Proficiency grants extra Turns and Rerolls in the card minigame. The individual item pages don't exist, so exact values per piece are unrecorded.

The one loop that does everything: run Barrier Forge / Kmitty's / Shepherd's at the highest difficulty you can enter, take the profession EXP every clear. That single activity levels the skill, supplies the bulk materials, and drops the Proficiency gear — which then makes all your ordinary gathering better. If you only do one life-skill thing, do this.

Villagers

Bonding with villagers mails you free crafting materials every day — the Quest Master's Nature Essences are the exact material that levels combat skills. It's a big enough system to have its own section: see Villagers.

Group minigames — and the fact that you pick the payout

Minigame	Needs	EXP you can choose	What happens
Kmitty's Food Stall	Fishing 15	Combat / Fishing / Cooking	Fish Glowfish, cook at three stations, fill orders — each order spawns a wave. The Stuff Oven and Grill burn if unmanaged; the Sushi Table can't burn — give it to whoever is also fighting.
Shepherd's Pet Problem	Herbalism 20	Combat / Herbalism + Alchemy	Brew three colour-combo potions, then fight Gloopy. Alchemy EXP scales with how many Black Potions you avoided — the one case where execution quality pays skill XP.
Barrier Forge	Mining 20	Combat / Mining	Mine Barrier Ore, turn it in, then defend the core through 3 repair cycles
The Forge	none	—	Solo-able. 5 waves from 4 entry points; the Forge Crystal survives 10 hits. Pure material farm.

Why these matter more than they look: they're the only content that pays Cooking and Alchemy EXP without consuming materials — both professions are otherwise gated by what you can afford to burn. Food Stall is the best known Cooking XP source and Pet Problem the best known Alchemy XP source, purely because you choose the payout. Party 2–6, everyone needs the relevant gathering skill, entry costs a Dungeon Pass. Tiers: Normal 15 · Hard 45 · Extreme 75.

Pet Problem potion recipes (all use 6 flower heads): Red 6R · Blue 6B · Green 6G · Yellow 3G+3R · Pink 3R+3B · Azure 3B+3G · White 2B+2R+2G. Vials process instantly and can't be emptied — a wrong potion makes Gloopy stronger. His Cannonball must be jumped, not walked out of.

Research — the collection log that pays

Research Essence drops from monsters and gathering nodes; press B to spend it. Creators call it "probably the most important thing in the game" and they're right — the bonuses are permanent and stack with everything else.

Research level	Essences invested	Unlocks
1	1	Monster registered; kill counts tracked
2	5	HP bars, stats and element typing visible
3	10	Full loot list revealed split disputed
4	20	+5% EXP and +10% drop chance from that monster — and this is the cap

This table reconciles two sets of numbers that look contradictory in the wild: the wiki quotes essence counts (1/5/10/20) while players quote research levels (1–4), and level 4 is the current maximum. Creators disagree slightly on exactly which bonus lands at 3 versus 4 — but they agree on the destination, so just take your main grind mob to rank 4 and you'll have everything. Research works on life-skill resources too (1 essence registers a node), and the same window tracks villager bonds. Boss research is a different scale — one creator estimates running a dungeon "like 100-plus times" to max a boss.

Which skills pay a Bishop the most

Priority	Skill	Why
1	Fishing	Wins on every axis at once: 5× the XP of herbs or ore per gather, +1 LUK every 10 levels (the densest stat interval in the game), and +6% Speed every 30 — and movement speed accelerates every other gathering skill you own.
2	Alchemy	+1 Max HP every 4 levels — the tightest interval anywhere — plus Max MP, and no minigame at all (everything is instant), which makes it far and away the fastest profession to level. Level 15 unlocks Transmutation — and, per three independent players on video, also gates disassembly ("you need alchemy 15 to disassemble this"). That second gate isn't in the wiki's data at all, but it's well attested in the live game, and it makes Alchemy 15 a hard requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
3	Artisan	+1% Echoes Find every 8 levels (+12% at cap) — a permanent loot-quality multiplier on everything you find and craft.
4	Herbalism + Mining	The passives are weak, but Lv 10 and Lv 20 unlock Special Nodes and Frenzy, and they feed Alchemy and your Focus ladder. Cast the reveal on every map you pass through.
5	Weapon Smithing / Armor Crafting	Keep just ahead of each 6-level gear tier (WS 8 by lv 12, WS 15 by 18…). WS also pays +2% Damage Balance per 15 levels.
6	Jeweler / Cooking	Jeweler +0.8% Item Drops per 14; Cooking's passive is weak but its consumables multiply everything above.

There is no true AFK life-skilling. Every gather needs directional input, every craft needs card selection — the design is deliberately input-gated, and Darkness Crystals cut off EXP and drops entirely if ignored for 50 kills. Alchemy's instant crafting is as close to idle as this game legitimately gets.

Aug 16 patch The anti-cheat, RMT and botting systems were all updated, and a visible ban wave followed. Third-party input automation was always risky; treat it as actively dangerous now. Two players have publicly claimed bans while using the game's own built-in macro system — unverified, and quite possibly they were doing something else as well, but enough that you should not leave a macro running unattended. Press it yourself.

Villagers, Hearts & Bonds

Ten villagers live at Spawn: Smith, Tailor, Shop Keeper, Gevil, Quest Master, Auctioneer, Shepherd, Mysterious Man, Kmitty and the Ferryman. Bonding with them is not flavour — it's a daily materials pipeline, and one of them mails you the exact resource that levels your combat skills.

How hearts work

Source	Value	Notes
Relationship dailies	+500 each	Unlock at player level 10. 3 random per day, so up to +1,500/day — by far the biggest source, and they cost you no items.
Gifts	+150 to −30	5 gifts per day total, across all villagers. The limit rises as you level, but the breakpoints are undocumented.
Special quests	up to +1,500	Rare. Most quests give zero hearts. The only documented one is Kmitty's "Cats?! Those Are ROCKS." at +1,500.

Gift tier	Favorite	Love	Like	Neutral	Dislike	Hate
Hearts	+150	+80	+30	+10	−15	−30

Do the dailies before you worry about gifts. One relationship daily is +500 hearts and needs nothing from your inventory. Five perfect gifts are +750 — but five neutral ones are only +50. Gifting is worth it when you know a preference and worthless when you're guessing.

Bond levels

Bond	1	2	3	4	5	6–10
Hearts needed	600	1,000	1,500	2,000	2,500	unknown
Cumulative	600	1,600	3,100	5,100	7,600	—

Max bond is 10, but thresholds past 5 are literal placeholders in the wiki — nobody has published them. The heart bar resets to zero each bond level, so it shows progress within the level rather than a running total. Hover it to see where you are; the Research window (B) sorts villagers by your highest bond.

The only thing bond levels actually give you is better daily mail. That's worth stating plainly, because it's easy to assume otherwise: there are no bond-gated emotes, discounts or titles, and the shop and life-skill unlocks people attribute to bonding are gated by questlines or simply talking to the villager instead. Bond for the mail, not for imagined perks.

Who to bond first

Priority	Villager	Daily mail
1	Quest Master	Nature Essences — the exact material combat skills consume — scaling ×5 → ×10 → ×15 → ×25 across bonds 1–4
2	Auctioneer	350 Soul Crystals a day, flat, from bond 1
3	Smith · Tailor	Ingots · Fabrics — free crafting-XP feedstock for Weapon Smithing and Armor Crafting
4	Kmitty · Shepherd · Gevil	Fish · herbs · mining materials
5	Shop Keeper · Mysterious Man · Ferryman	Potions and assorted odds

The Quest Master snowballs on his own. Of the 24 relationship dailies in the game, 8 belong to him — a full third of the pool — so with three random picks a day he'll passively outpace everyone. He is also the only villager with a documented Hate item, so the one thing to get right is not undoing that progress (below).

What "daily mail" actually is

Once you reach bond level 1 with a villager, they start sending you a package of items every day, for free, forever — delivered to your in-game mail. Each villager sends things from their own specialty, and both the quantity and the tier improve as the bond deepens. You do nothing to earn it beyond having bonded once; it simply accrues. Over weeks it's a substantial passive income of exactly the materials you'd otherwise farm.

This is also, mechanically, the entire reward for bonding — so this table is the bond reward table:

Villager	Theme	Bond 1	Bond 2	Bond 3	Bond 4
Quest Master	Nature Essences	Dull Nature Essence ×5	×10	×15	×25
Auctioneer	Soul Crystals	350 SC	no data
Smith	Ingots	Copper or Refined Quartz Ingot ×5	Iron Ingot ×5	Petrified Ingot ×5	Stinky or Malachite Ingot ×5
Tailor	Fabrics	Coconut or Cotton Fabric ×5	Yellow Fabric ×5	Glowing Fabric ×5	no data
Kmitty	Fish	Clam or Shrimp ×3	Trout ×3	Starfish ×3	no data
Shepherd	Herbs	Red Herb ×5	Blue Herb or Copper or Apple ×5	Pineapple or Aloe Vera ×5	no data
Shop Keeper	Potions	Small Health Potion ×5 or Speed Potion ×1 see note	Small Health Potion ×10	no data
Mysterious Man	Assorted	Blue Herb ×2	Red Shard ×3	no data
Gevil	Mining	Quartz ×5	no data
Ferryman	Assorted	Lemon ×2	no data

Bond 5–10 mail is undocumented for every villager, and most villagers trail off after bond 2 or 3 — only the Quest Master and Smith are recorded as far as bond 4. Expect the pattern to continue (bigger stacks, higher tiers) but nobody has published it. wiki error the Shop Keeper's entry lists Small Health Potion twice; the second slot is almost certainly Small Mana Potion.

Read the table as a shopping list and the priority becomes obvious. The Quest Master is the only villager whose mail scales fivefold across the documented range — and Dull Nature Essence is the exact material combat skills consume, which you will need by the hundred. The Auctioneer just hands you money with a wonderfully awkward note attached: "L-leftover from a listing. Take it... please." Everyone else mails crafting feedstock worth having but not worth chasing.

⭐ Which gifts to give — the honest answer

Almost nothing is documented. Across all ten villagers the wiki records exactly 12 gift preferences in total, and the tables are blank tabs rather than missing pages — Shepherd has no gift data whatsoever, and only one villager's Favorite tier is known. Anyone publishing a full gift chart right now is inventing it. Here is everything that's actually confirmed:

Villager	Favorite +150	Love +80	Like +30	Neutral +10	Dislike −15	Hate −30
Kmitty	Glowfish	—	—	Bowtie	—	—
Smith	—	Malachite Ingot	Stinky Ingot	—	—	—
Mysterious Man	—	Turbulent Soul	Black Calamari	—	Banana Bread	—
Quest Master	—	—	—	—	Bowtie, Dango	Light Essence
Auctioneer	—	—	Chocolate	—	—	—
Tailor	—	—	Glowing Fabric	—	—	—
Ferryman	—	—	Dark Essence	—	—	—
Shop Keeper · Gevil · Shepherd	No preferences documented at all.

Never give Light Essence to the Quest Master (−30, the only documented Hate in the game) — he's your top bond priority. And watch the Bowtie trap: Kmitty's questline has you collecting Bowties, which she's merely Neutral on and the Quest Master actively dislikes.

How to work out a preference yourself

Since the tables are mostly empty, the practical move is to read the villager's reaction — each one has a distinct line per tier, so a single test gift tells you where an item sits:

Villager	What they say, and what it means
Smith	"Pretty good." = Love · "Not bad." = Like · "Mhmnn-" = Neutral
Quest Master	"Thank you, this will be useful." = Like · "Thank you." = Neutral · "Thank... you?" = Dislike · "I appreciate the thought but... I would prefer you not giving it to me next time." = Hate
Auctioneer	"Th-thank you. Really. This is... nice to hold." = Like · "Oh. Um. Thank you. I-I'll find a spot for it on a shelf." = Neutral
Tailor	"Thank you dear~" = Like · "Oh, thank you." = Neutral
Kmitty	"Omg... Kmitty's favorite!!! No way...!!! 0w0" = Favorite
Mysterious Man	"Heh. Nice find. Got any more like this?" = Love
Ferryman	"A fair gift, and welcome. You have my thanks, traveler." = Like
Shop Keeper · Gevil	Only their Neutral lines are known — "Oh thank you kindly!" and Gevil nods. "Thanks for thinking of me."

Spend a few of your five daily gifts on cheap materials in each villager's own theme — ingots for the Smith, fabrics for the Tailor, fish for Kmitty — and read the line. The pattern in the confirmed data is that villagers like the material class they deal in, which also means their own daily mail partly feeds their own gifts.

Two loops you can buy your way through. The Ferryman sells Chocolate for 2 Abyss Essence — and Chocolate is the Auctioneer's Like (+30), making it the cheapest repeatable heart source documented. Better still, the Mysterious Man sells Turbulent Soul, which is his own Love (+80) — you can literally buy his affection back from him.

Cooked food is the ceiling play

A common misconception worth correcting: food is not a universal favorite. What food has is an inherent gift bonus that stacks on top of the normal preference tier — and villagers have separate food preferences on top of their item preferences. Cooking items also enter play "already at maximum value, including hearts gained from gifting," so the bonuses multiply from the top rather than from a low roll.

That makes the theoretical maximum: a cooked dish that is also that villager's favourite food, carrying the Tailored Recipe card (+30% hearts, and you pick the villager) plus Generous Portion. The catch — no villager's favourite food is documented anywhere, and Generous Portion's magnitude isn't stated. See Life Skills for the cooking cards.

Unknowns worth not guessing about: bond thresholds 6–10, the gift-limit progression past 5/day, the daily reset time, and whether hearts decay or a bond can be lost — the wiki says nothing either way on that last one, so don't assume you're safe from Dislikes.

Economy — Zero to Rich

Read this first: nobody can tell you what things sell for. There is no price API, and of 477 items in the game's data only 30 carry shop prices — all of them level-1 and level-6 starter gear. Every "X sells for Y" claim online is someone's memory. What is exactly documented is the other side of the ledger: every cost, fee and sink. So this section works backwards from what people are forced to buy. Your only real price oracle in-game is the Auction House Price History tab (day/week/month/year graphs) and the Recent Average shown when you list — check it before pricing anything.

The one thing to understand: the skill ladder is the economy

71 of the game's 81 skills share one identical upgrade cost table, and it is brutal. Taking a single skill from level 1 to 17 costs roughly:

Per skill, Lv1 → Lv17	A realistic 6–8 skill build
193,200 Soul Crystals 3,300 Radiant essences 3 Radiant Dungeon Crystals 4 Transcendent Souls	1.16M – 1.55M Soul Crystals ~20,000+ Radiant essences 18–24 Radiant Dungeon Crystals ~25 Transcendent Souls

That table is also your sales catalogue. Everyone who plays this game eventually needs those four things, in those quantities, and most of them are gated behind content newer players can't reach. Sell the bottleneck.

Radiant essences are the scarcest thing in the game. They drop at 5.56%, and the only monsters with mapped locations that drop them — Blorpghoul (52) and Cursed Cloudsheep (85) — are both inside Plains Dungeon Hard. You need 3,300 per skill. If you want one sentence of financial advice for this game: get to level 50, farm Plains Dungeon Hard, and sell the surplus.

Zero to rich, by bracket

1–20

QUEST

Quest — do not grind

Grinding pays around 0.6 SC per kill at Slime level. Meanwhile the Quest Master's "Level up!" chain pays 200 → 1,000 → 2,500 → 6,000 → 15,000 SC for simply reaching levels 5/10/15/20/25 — 24,700 SC total for things you were going to do anyway.

Learn all life skills on day one — each is a free quest from a villager and comes with a starter quest worth several skill levels.
Get Alchemy to level 2 and craft your own Return Crystals (3 Blue Shard + 1 Firefly) instead of paying 400 SC each, forever.
Bank in the Magic Storage Chest — it's shared across all your characters.

Realistic bankroll at level 20: ~15,000–25,000 SC, nearly all from quests.

20–50

DAILIES

Lock in the daily floor, start selling essences

The Auctioneer's bond mail (350 SC/day) plus three relationship dailies at roughly 400–750 each gives you about 1,850 SC per day for ~20 minutes' work, before any grinding at all. That's the floor everything else sits on.

Sell dull essences. You generate them constantly and everyone above you needs hundreds. The two best published rates in the game are Crusher (lv 20, 25%) and Stinky Sheep (lv 32, 40%).
Always run dungeons in a party — every member gets their own Silver Chest, so loot scales with party size while costing one pass each.
Push Research level 4 (20 essences) on your farm mob for +10% drop chance.
Join a guild, but buy Tier I perks only (300 SC/hr) — see the break-even table below.

50–80

THE MONEY MAP

Plains Dungeon Hard, repeatedly

This is where income changes character. Plains Dungeon Hard is the only mapped source of Radiant essences, which every player above level 50 needs by the thousand. Farm it for yourself and for the market.

Level 65 — World Boss tickets. The Scythe chest alone pays 3,500 SC at 96.9%, plus 5 guaranteed Radiant Life Essence, a guaranteed Mystic Gem and a guaranteed Calamity Gem.
Abyss Trial: push to floor 40+ once, then harvest 100 Abyss Essence + a Chaotic Soul weekly from a single short run, forever (see Endgame for the gold-chest trick).
Budget for the level-60 quest: 500,000 SC plus 1,400 essences. Start banking at 50.

80–99

SELL THE WALL

Sell what everyone below you is blocked on

Extreme dungeons pay 3 of each essence per clear and the best Dungeon Crystal rate in the game. Your inventory is now other people's progression: Radiant Dungeon Crystals (3 per skill, per player, forever), Radiant essences, Transcendent Souls, and Auras — the only slot besides weapons that rolls Attack Speed, and the only one that rolls bonus Skill Points.

Abyss floors 90–99 pay an Eternal Soul and 3 Transitive Souls weekly. Consider a Market Hub stall — 4% fee instead of 5%, and a subscription takes you from 10 listings to 25.

⭐ Arbitrage: five ways the game overcharges you

Trap	What to do instead
Void Bag for 1,500,000 SC from Kmitty	It also costs 100 generic Dungeon Essence. At Extreme rates that's 34 clears. The two NPC anchors imply a 75× spread on the same currency — this is the single biggest overpay in the game.
Buying gems at the Slime Garden exchange	Gems cost double there — Nurturing 15 vs 7, Mystic 20 vs 10, Calamity 20 vs 15. Buy at Plains or Cave. Souls are priced identically everywhere, so farm whichever dungeon you clear fastest for those.
Gevil's Santa Hat at 100,000 SC	Kmitty sells it for 20,000.
Ferryman round trip, 10,000 SC	Pay 5,000 in, then leave with a 400 SC Return Crystal (or a free crafted one).
500 SC World-Map warps	Walk to a Goddess Statue and hop for 100 SC, or use a Return Crystal.

The sleeper flip: Transitive Souls transfer echo quality and rescale the values to the receiving item's level. That means a low-level item carrying 4–5 ruby-quality lines is worth far more than its level suggests — it's endgame feedstock. New players routinely vendor or disassemble exactly this. Buy it from them.

Fees and the big sinks

Fee ladder	Cost
Direct player trade	0%
Merchant stall (Market Hub)	4%
Auction House	5%

Sink	Cost	Sink	Cost
Return Crystal	400	Ring of Power / Magic / Swiftness	50,000 ea
Statue hop / Map warp	100 / 500	Goggles (Gevil)	100,000
Guild creation	1,000	Backpack (Gevil)	150,000
Small Bag	10,000	Angry Face (Gevil)	750,000
Ferryman → Deep Cave 5	5,000 each way	Level-60 quest	500,000
Skill upgrade, Lv14+	30,000/level	Void Bag	1.5M or 100 DE

Guild costs escalate viciously — upkeep runs 3,000/week at level 5 but 240,000 at level 11 and 900,000 at level 13, and missing upkeep drops the guild a level. Upgrades reach 18,000,000 by level 14. Also note NPC prices aren't flat: items with echoes cost more.

Guild Soul Crystal perk break-even. The tiers cost 300 / 1,000 / 2,500 / 5,000 SC per hour for +5/+10/+15/+20% Soul Crystal find. So they only pay for themselves if you're earning 6,000 / 10,000 / 16,667 / 25,000 SC per hour respectively. Tier IV is a money-loser for almost everybody — buy Tier I early, and don't upgrade until you've actually measured your income.

Launch-economy read

No observed price data exists anywhere, so this is reasoning rather than reporting. Structurally scarce right now: Radiant Dungeon Crystals (gated behind level 50–90 dungeons that almost nobody can run yet, and everyone hitting skill level 15 needs three), Radiant essences, Dull Dungeon Crystals (the level-9 skill wall arrives within hours for everyone while dungeon-capable players are rare — sharp, early, short-lived demand), Dungeon Passes, and Auras. The likely trajectory: Soul Crystal faucets are uncapped while the big sinks are one-time, and crystal supply is hard-gated by dungeon clears — so expect materials priced in Soul Crystals to rise steadily as the population reaches 50+. Buy materials early, sell them later.

Guilds & Perk Priority

Guild perks are the only permanent buff source outside your own gear, and they're also a recurring drain on your wallet — which is why choosing wrongly costs more here than anywhere else in the game.

The thing everyone confuses: there are two completely separate costs.

Cost	Who pays	What it buys
Unlock / upgrade 5,000 → 20,000 → 90,000 → 400,000 SC	Guild Fund (leaders and Jr. Leaders spend it)	Makes a perk tier available to the whole guild. One-off, but takes 1h → 4h → 12h → 24h real time.
Activation 300 / 1,000 / 2,500 / 5,000 SC per hour	You, personally	Turns the perk on for you, for as long as you paid for. Every member pays their own.

So "which perk should we upgrade?" and "which perk should I run?" are different questions with different answers. Note the neat loop: a portion of what members spend activating perks flows back into the Guild Fund, so an active guild part-funds its own upgrades.

You will only ever run 5 perks at once. Active perk slots cap at 5 from Guild Level 4 — every level after that buys member capacity and higher tiers, not more simultaneous perks. So this isn't a collection game: pick five, and make them count.

Every perk, ranked for a faith build

Perk	Per tier	Verdict for a Bishop
★★★ Attack Speed	+5 / 10 / 15% Global Attack SPD	The best perk in the game for you. Attack Speed otherwise only exists on weapons and auras — this is a third source. Crucially it's Global, so it ignores the category-tag problem entirely and speeds Smite, Revitalize, Nova and your Range-tagged hybrids alike.
★★★ Stats	+2.5 / 5 / 7.5 / 10% of a guild-chosen stat	If your guild sets the stat to SPR, this is a flat +10% to your main damage stat. Set it via Guild Menu N → Misc tab → "Guild stat boost". The catch is political: a mixed guild has to agree on one stat for everyone.
★★★ MP Regen	+1 / 2 / 3 per tick	Directly answers this build's hardest constraint. Elemental Charge drains 12 MP/tick, and per Theorycraft you can only sustain about two draining toggles — +3/tick is a meaningful slice of a third.
★★ Skill EXP	+2.5 / 5 / 7.5 / 10%	Underrated. Skill levels are the steepest damage curve in the game (a level-20 skill is roughly 8–14× its level-1 form), and this is the stat that gets you there faster.
★★ Damage	+2 / 4 / 6 / 8% Global Damage	Simple, universal, always on. Nothing clever about it — it just works on everything you do.
★★ HP Regen	+1 / 2 / 3 per tick	Becomes real once Dark Fire is burning 5% of your max HP every second. Pairs with Priest-set regen lines.
★★ Agility	+10 / 20 / 30% Speed and Jump	Looks like fluff, isn't. The single best Abyss Trial perk — that mode is a 10-minute timer across 9 floors, and traversal is most of it. Also just makes the whole game less tedious.
★ EXP	+2.5 / 5 / 7.5 / 10%	Good while levelling, worthless at cap. Stack it with Divine Blessing and a 2× coupon for burst sessions.
★ Soul Crystals	+5 / 10 / 15 / 20% SC Find	The only self-funding perk — see the break-even table below before you trust it.
★ Drops · Max MP · Max HP	+2.5–10% · +5–15% · +5–15%	Solid filler. Max MP helps toggle uptime; Max HP helps Dark Fire survive.
✗ Crit Rate	+5 / 10%	Skip. Faith has no crit scaling at all — unless you run Arrow Infusion, which converts crit into elemental.
✗ Defense · Knockback	+2–8 DEF · +5/10 KB	Flat values that fall off hard. Knockback resist would be useful; raw knockback isn't.
◆ Glow	+33% Light Radius (single tier)	Situational but genuinely nice: it counters the Darkness dungeon-pass echo and makes the Deep Caves — including Pea's map — readable.

Your five: what to actually run

Situation	The five
Levelling (you now)	Attack Speed · Skill EXP · EXP · Damage · MP Regen — all at Tier I while they're 300 SC/hr
Farming / money	Soul Crystals · Drops · Attack Speed · Damage · Agility
Abyss / group content	Agility · Attack Speed · Stats (SPR) · MP Regen · HP Regen
Bossing	Attack Speed · Stats (SPR) · Damage · Max HP · HP Regen

When is a higher tier actually worth it?

Activation is charged per hour, so a tier upgrade multiplies your running costs — Tier IV is 16× the hourly rate of Tier I for, at best, 4× the effect. The Soul Crystal perk is the only one where the maths is objective:

Tier	Cost/hour	SC Find	You must be earning…
I	300	+5%	6,000 SC/hr to break even
II	1,000	+10%	10,000 SC/hr
III	2,500	+15%	16,667 SC/hr
IV	5,000	+20%	25,000 SC/hr — a trap for almost everybody

The other perks don't pay for themselves at all — Damage, EXP and Attack Speed generate no income, so you're buying speed with cash. That's fine, but be deliberate: Tier I at 300 SC/hr is cheap enough to leave running (roughly 7,200 SC for a full day), while Tier IV at 5,000 SC/hr is 120,000 SC a day — comparable to a serious gear purchase, every day. Treat III and IV as burst tools for a raid night or a coupon window, not defaults.

Guild levels, and the upkeep trap

Guild Lv	Upgrade cost	Time	Members needed	Weekly upkeep
2	1,000	2 h	1	—
4	12,500	4 h	3	—
5	30,000	5 h	4	3,000
6	75,000	6 h	5	7,500
7	150,000	8 h	6	15,000
8	300,000	10 h	7	no data
11	no data	18 h	10	240,000
12	4,800,000	20 h	11	no data
13	10,000,000	24 h	12	900,000
14	18,000,000	28 h	13	no data

Miss the weekly upkeep and the guild drops a level — losing member capacity and perk access with it. Upkeep runs at roughly 10% of that level's upgrade cost, which is survivable at level 5 (3,000/week) and genuinely dangerous by level 11 (240,000/week) and 13 (900,000/week). Don't level a guild past what its members can sustain; a stable level-7 guild beats a level-11 one that de-levels every fortnight.

Practical rules

A guild can only work on one thing at a time — a guild level or a single perk upgrade. Cancelling refunds nothing, so queue deliberately.
Start upgrades before you log off. They run on real-world timers up to 28 hours; a level-7 upgrade is 8 hours, which is exactly one night's sleep.
Fully maxing any perk requires Guild Level 10 minimum, so early guilds should spread Tier I–II widely rather than chasing one Tier IV.
The Reset button cancels every active perk with no refund. Never press it to "clean up".
Only one instance of a perk runs at a time — activating a lower tier while a higher one is live is blocked outright.
You can refresh a perk before it expires, so there's no need to let uptime lapse.
Creation costs 1,000 SC (N menu); names are 3–16 characters, letters and numbers only. Emblem edits are Leader-only at 10,000 SC each.
There is no in-game guild browser. You find a guild through the official Discord's guild thread, then have to be on the same channel as a leader or officer to receive the invite.
Hardcore Group Ironman forms a guild for free and ignores the member-count requirements for levelling.

Field Notes — technique the wikis don't carry

Everything below comes from launch-week creator footage rather than the wiki. Where a claim comes from the pre-Steam playtest era it's flagged, because balance moved at launch.

The single best trick found: skills level the tree of their icon colour

A cross-tree skill awards mastery XP to the tree matching its icon colour, not the section of the tree it's drawn in. One launch-week player demonstrates it with Dash Strike: it sits in the melee section, but its icon is orange, so casting it levels Range. He runs it deliberately to level three passives at once.

Why this matters enormously for us: the hybrid path needs Melee 11 for Taunt and Range 30 for Shadow Twin. Check the icon colours on Holy Arrow and Shield Bash in your own client and slot accordingly — a correctly-chosen basic attack can feed two or three passives simultaneously instead of one.

Macros are the biggest quality-of-life win in the game

The developer calls macros a designed feature, not a workaround: one key fires up to six skills back-to-back. A working launch-week faith layout looks like this:

Key	Contents	Purpose
Macro 1	Main attack + secondary attack + party buff + zone skill + Revitalize + Divine Blessing	Your whole rotation on one button, hammered continuously — buffs re-apply themselves as they lapse
Macro 2	Burst Shield + Dash	The "oh no" button

Macros save per loadout, so you set them once. You get 5 macro slots × 6 skills each, and you drag the macro itself onto a hotkey.

Aug 16 patch Press your macros, don't automate them. The patch updated the anti-cheat, RMT and botting systems and a ban wave followed. Macros are an official, built-in feature and using them normally is fine — but two players have publicly claimed bans while using the in-game macro system (unverified, and they may well have been doing more than that). The safe line is simple: never leave a macro firing unattended, and don't pair it with any external automation.

Movement tech

Wall-cling. Double-jump, stick to a wall, then jump again to scale it. It isn't in the tutorial, and launch-day footage shows crowds of players stuck at walls one person simply climbed. This gates real map shortcuts.
Drop through platforms with ↓ + jump.
Blink is universally recommended, by every creator, for every build — "a must-have on every character," worth splashing ~10 levels of Magic for on its own. It's also an escape tool in dense mobs and boss fights, not just travel.

Interface details worth knowing

The inner ring of the skill wheel is basic attacks only — those go in the basic-attack slot and are what you spam. Outer rings hold actives and buffs.
"Manage Level" lets you deliberately down-level a skill to cut its mana cost and free skill points. Most players never touch it; it's the cleanest way to fix an over-invested skill or an unaffordable mana bill.
The world map is a resource database. Press M and click any zone to see its monsters and its gathering resources. This is the answer to "where do I find X" — far faster than searching a wiki.
Chat box feels stuck? Settings → untick "Lock HUD positions" and you can drag it anywhere. community fix
Bind your loot pickup key. It matters more than you'd think in the party quest, where the leader must physically hold 22 collected shells.
Guild members' positions show on the map — handy for finding which channel your guild is actually farming on.

Economy tricks

Shop the player stalls in town before the auction house. Walk the Market Hub, press Space on stalls and preview their stock — players routinely list genuinely good gear cheap, and it's the fastest way to fix a damage gap early.
High-tier fish are a launch-week money printer. The server's rank-1 fisher funds himself selling rare catches, purely because almost nobody has the proficiency to catch them yet.
Slot an Item Drop echo on your bag. It does nothing for damage and everything for income.
Inventory space is the real bottleneck once you start farming seriously — it's the one cash-shop purchase creators consistently call worth it (that and auto-loot range; everything else is cosmetic).
Start a guild upgrade before you log off. They run on real-world timers — a level-7 upgrade takes about 8 hours.

Proficiency — the hidden life-skill stat

Beyond your visible life-skill level, gear can carry Proficiency, which functions as hidden extra levels. The rank-1 fisher describes catching species several tiers above his nominal level 44 purely on stacked fishing proficiency: "all your fishing proficiency is basically extra levels towards your existing level."

Practical read: a dedicated gathering outfit isn't cosmetic — it changes what you can gather at all, which is where the money is. (He also notes guildmates enhancing proficiency stats and flags it himself as possibly a bug — don't build a plan around enhancement specifically.)

Corroboration: a real launch-week faith build

The only published faith build from the live game (level 27, launch week) runs a Holy Arrow weapon rather than a Focus — the Range+Faith line — and its progression matches this site's hybrid path almost exactly: level on Nova, unlock Burst Shield → Revitalize → Divine Blessing, then pick up a Range basic and Holy Arrow, then rush the party buff. Stats spirit-first with luck and constitution behind, and constitution rises in priority specifically once Dark Fire is running, because the toggle eats your health.

Two things worth stealing from it: he prizes percentage echo rolls over flat ones ("you want percentage levels, you don't want any flat levels"), and his linchpin is Bull's Eye — a buff that hands everyone near you crit, luck and dexterity. If you drift toward the Range side of the hybrid, that's a party-wide buff worth a slot. He also wanted Shadow Twin as his third buff, which is exactly where this build's roadmap ends up.

Where the real theorycraft lives: the most-viewed build video on YouTube contains no build at all — just a link to the official Discord. Patch notes are Discord-only too, and no creator has published an Abyss Trial or world-boss strategy since launch. If you want advanced material beyond this page, Discord is the higher-yield room.

Features You Won't Find in MapleStory

The night cycle

Night runs 7pm–5am world time — about 22 real minutes. Maps darken (players glow), the soundtrack changes, select maps turn genuinely dangerous, and all four world bosses only exist at night. Your Ring of Light stops being a joke item at exactly 7pm.

Darkness Crystals — the anti-AFK pact

While you grind, a Darkness Crystal periodically spawns nearby. Clear it (two arrow inputs) for a random 10-minute buff: +7% damage, +10% EXP, +10% Skill EXP, +10% drops, or +10% SC find. Ignore it for 50 kills and the game cuts you off entirely — zero EXP, zero drops. The grind is a conversation; keep answering.

Aug 16 patch Darkness Crystals are now per-player, not shared. Previously one party member could clear it for the whole map; now every player must clear their own to keep earning EXP and drops. In a party, that means everyone stops and does it — you can no longer have the support handle it for the group. The patch also added a tutorial explaining the system.

Villagers — bonds with benefits

Ten villagers run Spawn (Smith, Tailor, Shop Keeper, Gevil, Quest Master, Auctioneer, Shepherd, Mysterious Man, Kmitty, Ferryman). Gift them daily (favorites +150 hearts), run their 3 daily requests (+500 each, unlocked at lv 12), and bond levels 1–10 pay out daily mail of profession materials that scales with bond. Kmitty's questline ends in a private shop (Void Bag lives there) and a unique dungeon; the Ferryman's Abyss Essence shop sells every Aura tier.

Abyss Trial — the weekly tower

Endgame tower behind The Grave, hosted by the Ferryman. Entry: one Tear of the Abyss (Daily Hunt reward — only the leader's is consumed), 1–8 players, 10 minutes per 10-floor set, waves on X1–X8, boss on X9, break room every 10th floor with a shop, a weekly reward chest and — crucially — elevator checkpoints: reach a break room once and you can skip there forever.

Weekly gold chests: floor 10 = 20 Abyss Essence … floor 50 = 2 Chaotic Souls … floor 99 = 3 Transitive Souls + the Pathfinder Hat. Floor 99 is a gauntlet of all four world bosses, then the leader picks one to empower for a final rematch. Bishop value: Revitalize + Divine Protection through wave floors is exactly what parties shop for.

Ironman modes

Old-school-RuneScape-style self-found modes, toggled at the Deferri Crystal (below Spawn's bridge, behind a platforming challenge): solo Ironman (no trade, no outside party), Group Ironman (2–5, free interaction inside the group, auto-guild), and Hardcore variants with shared lives pools. De-ironman anytime — storage gets mailed to you.

Economy corner

Auction House: buyout-only, 7-day listings, 5% fee, 10 slots, with price-history graphs (day/week/month/year) — check the graph before pricing your crafts.
Merchant stalls: plant a personal shop at the Market Hub (4% fee, 72 hours, BBCode signage) selling your AH listings in person.
Soul Crystals are the money; Souls and Gems are the enhancement sinks; disassembly (toggle) turns vendor trash into crafting Matters instead of pennies.
Magic Storage Chest at Spawn is shared across your whole account — mule-free muling.

Quality-of-life worth knowing

Thing	Detail
Goddess Statues	Touch once to unlock, then warp between them. The Great Goddess Statue is your death respawn. Two different prices, both correct: 100 SC to hop statue-to-statue when standing at an activated statue, but 500 SC for the World Map's "Warp to Map" button from anywhere. Walk to a statue first and save 400.
Return Crystals	400 SC (Shop Keeper) or Alchemy-crafted; ~1-minute one-way portal to Spawn your party can share.
Campfires	Craftable (General: 1 Red Shard + 5 Wood); HP+MP regen aura for everyone nearby. Can't place in dungeons/water.
Item locking	Lock toggle prevents selling/enchanting a keeper; the Simple Cape you start with is untradeable anyway.
Setups & Loadouts	Numbered save profiles for equipment/stats/skills; full loadout swaps (equip+skills+macros) cost SC.
Commands	/dps /find name /time /save /p /g /w — /time matters because of night.
Map search	M world map has a search bar that locates any monster or material by name. Use it constantly.

The business model, for the suspicious

Published policy: "Nothing in the cash shop gives stats or combat power." Subs ($2.49–$24.99/mo) add auto-loot range, auction slots and cosmetics; one-time buys are skins, dyes, inventory space, megaphones, emotes. Solo dev funded partly by Patreon (~€1,100/mo). Early Access plan: 6–12 months — more bosses, balance passes, full controller/Steam Deck at 1.0, possible housing. No PvP, none planned.

What's Coming — 2026 into 2027

There is exactly one official roadmap for this game, and it's the "How is the full version planned to differ?" block on the Steam page. Everything below is either from that, from the developer speaking on record, or clearly labelled as inference. No 1.0 date has ever been given.

Early Access target: 6 to 12 months. In the developer's words — "We estimate staying in Early Access for 6 to 12 months, depending on community feedback and how quickly we can refine and improve the content in the game. We want to take our time with development and get it right, rather than rush it." That puts 1.0 somewhere between February and August 2027. Given they've already slipped one date, plan around the later end.

The official 1.0 list — and how firm each item is

Planned for full release	How committed
More endgame content — additional bosses with unique mechanics, more areas for high-level players	Committed
Balance passes on all four skill trees, plus further development of melee/ranged/magic/faith skills	Committed
Full controller and Steam Deck support (controller partly shipped already)	Committed
Deeper crafting, gathering and life-skill progression	Committed
Quality-of-life — UI polish, clearer feedback, smoother tutorials	Committed
More cosmetics and equipment	Committed
Ongoing economy, drop-rate and balance tuning from live data	Committed
Player housing · seasonal gameplay · entirely new areas	"potentially"

That last row matters: all three sit inside the single hedging word "potentially" in the official text. They are the least-committed items on the list — even though two of them are revivals rather than inventions, which makes them feel more certain than the wording supports.

Housing and seasons are returning features, not new ones

This is the most interesting thing the research turned up. Housing already existed and was removed — the wiki states housing "is currently not available" and that the page will be updated "once it returns", and furniture still drops from dungeon Silver Chests today with no use whatsoever. A December 2024 playtest note even records the developer adding "a bug feature where everyone swapped houses." So the furniture piling up in your storage is a bet on a feature that has a track record of existing.

Likewise "seasonal gameplay" most likely means the return of Seasons — the game ran a numbered Season 1 back in Dec 2023–Jan 2024, before the wipe-free era.

The near-term bet: Christmas Den

The strongest unannounced signal is a level-35 seasonal dungeon called Christmas Den. It appears in the dungeon recommended-level list, has an empty wiki page, is absent from Steam's official "3 unique dungeons" count, and the game already carries Christmas skin variants on monsters plus a prior "Twelve Days of Chaosmas" event and a Christmas 2024 playtest. Nothing has been announced — but if you're reading this in December 2026, go look.

Confirmed not coming

PvP. On the record: "there's no PvP on the road map… if they ever do add it in, the plan is for it to be more of a for fun mini-game."
Price changes. The game stays free-to-play with cosmetic and convenience purchases only, during and after EA.
More wipes. Settled at launch — see Launch.
Taming, pets, grappling hook, transmog. Don't wait for these: Taming is marked deprecated on the wiki, pets were removed with their return "unclear", and transmog returns zero hits anywhere. They're cut content, not upcoming content.
A rising level cap or new skill trees. No evidence anywhere.

Patch log

August 16 Update latest

The first — and so far only — post-launch patch notes published to Steam.

Balance: pure ranged combat skill damage +20% · Divine Thorn −15% · profession dungeon EXP now scales properly with ticket difficulty · reduced monster spawn rate in Sandy Cave.

Systems: Darkness Crystals are now per-player rather than shared (plus a tutorial) · dungeon timer stops once the boss dies and chests appear · 5-second confirmation delay on leaving a dungeon or disbanding a guild · leaderboards count EXP past max level · anti-cheat, RMT and botting systems updated.

Fixes: Focused Mind EXP curve · cursed throw spreading across the map for huge damage · disconnects when changing channels · Iron Man and general looting · fishing resource appearance rate · loadouts not saving.

QoL: other-player skill SFX slider, graphics presets, capes render behind hats, Grapple Strike is mouse-aimable. unlogged a separate build shipped on 14 August with no notes at all, so some changes are undocumented — enemies going invulnerable at 1 HP appears to have been quietly fixed.

What this means for the numbers on this page. The faith tree was not touched — Nova, Smite, Revitalize, Divine Blessing, Dark Fire, Elemental Charge, Divine Protection, Taunt and Shadow Twin appear in no patch note, and the game's skill data has had one trivial edit since launch. But any absolute damage figure for a pure-ranged skill is now 20% low, and Divine Thorn is 15% high.

Patch notes are inconsistent: the developer directs players to Discord for specifics, and one build shipped with nothing published anywhere. Since "balance passes on all skill trees" and "ongoing drop-rate tuning" are explicitly committed, treat every hard number here as a mid-August 2026 snapshot — and note the wiki hasn't absorbed this patch yet, so it's currently a pre-patch reference.

One footnote you may enjoy: the launch slipped from 5 August to 13 August specifically to avoid colliding with MapleStory Classic World's second test — the developer noting "we share a lot of the same playerbase as Classic World." Which is exactly why this site exists.

Resources

Official site · Steam · Official wiki (wiki.gg) — the numbers source
soulsremnant.wiki — unofficial guide site, launch-week build opinions
Skills reference · Echoes · Abyss Trial

Data honesty: this game is days old. Everything numeric here is from the official wiki as of Aug 15, 2026; per-monster EXP values, the EXP curve, some upgrade tables and several armor-tier levels are still undocumented (armor tiers marked by the 6-level rule are inferred). Balance patches will move numbers — check the wiki's changelog before arguing in party chat. Known dead end: sro.wiki (expired domain — ignore Google results pointing there).