Or, things I wish I had known in the beginning. These aren't in any particular order.

Don't worry about buying snare traps. They fail a lot and are expensive. There are much more important things you'll want to spend your gold on, such as opening party spots. Also, you get a few from Jinxie the Fairy in a fairly early quest.

You will get your second Sylesti via a scripted quest in the first area. It's not your first quest (personally I think it should be) but you will get it before you leave the first area.

Starter pets are cheap. I didn't realize until 3 days in that you can buy pets from other people--I thought you could only trade. This is because the pet search is buried in a very non-intuitive location; the advanced search that you can't access from every page, only from Home and Social/Forums. I bought my first set of mission pets for less than 50 gold total. For 5 Sylesti. This is why you don't need traps.

Upgrades are expensive. This is why you want to save as much money as possible by not buying traps or overly expensive Sylesti. I had to grind for a few hours to make enough money for my third party slot (you get it in the second area), made all the more frustrating because I wouldn't have had to if I hadn't bought so many traps. I ended up buying 5 or 6 of them total and only ended up with one Sylesti to show for it. Definitely not cost effective, but I didn't know pets were so inexpensive. I also didn't know traps have a high failure rate.

Your active pet is the one that occupies your middle party spot, but it is not your middle party spot in the party menu. It's the first spot. You want to put your tank here if you have one so a quick rule of thumb, your tank should always be your active pet. (A tank is a Sylesti with high health that will take lots of damage easily so you don't have to worry about your attackers getting KO'd.)

Missions are important. They don't seem like it because the low level ones are thoroughly unimpressive in rewards, but the higher leveled ones will be a main source of income for you later. Start training a set of mission pets as soon as possible, which becomes most feasible when you get your third party spot opened. If you don't mind grinding you can do it earlier with just 2 party spots. You want more than one pet dedicated to missions because each one will specialize in only one stat in order to give you the greatest possibility for success. A set of mission pets will be 5 Sylesti, one for each stat: health (HP), strength, intelligence, dexterity and agility.

Your player level is like your level limit--you cannot use a Sylesti higher than your player level in battle. Your player level is determined by your highest leveled pet. This means if you buy, say, a level 60 Sylesti and your player level is 5, you can't use that Syesti in battle until you level one of your own Sylesti to level 60. I assume this is so you can't power level your way through the story mode. You can of course use Sylesti of lower or equal level that you bought or caught.

That's all I can think of to start, may update if I think of anything else. Some of this information is scattered across the various guides and FAQ threads, some of it is knowledge I couldn't find myself and had to learn the hard way.

New tip: Something that's proving to be a major source of income for me personally is equipment vendoring. I have figured out that it really isn't worth it to try to sell anything lower than epic (purple) rarity via broker, for two reasons: price and time. The prices on lower rarity gear is horrendous and in many cases equal to or less than what you'd get by just vendoring it. The second is the fact that it takes much longer to broker an item than it does to vendor it, so it ends up just not being cost effective. Usually I sell all of the green (uncommon) gear straight away unless I need it to fill a gear slot (don't forget to equip your mission pets too). Blue I keep only until I get a rarer (read: better) version of it.

New tip: Level appropriate doesn't always mean having gear that is closest to your pets' current level. In some threads I've noticed people saying to have gear for your level which is true, but you really need to compare stats before deciding to upgrade. Rarer lower leveled gear will often have better stat boosts than the next tier or sometimes even two tiers if it's legendary or mythical. It's also important to have gear that focuses on the stats important for each pets' role in the party, so it would be more precise to say you should use the best, most appropriate stat gear available to you.

For example, as of this writing I have a level 49 tank who isn't wearing gear higher than level 40 because the stat boosts on his gear are far superior to the level 45 pieces I've collected. Yes I could just buy new gear but honestly a good stat spread and judicious use of abilities makes it unnecessary. So if you're broke and having trouble in your current area, go ahead and farm for lower leveled gear. You'll make some money, get some exp and hopefully find gear that can fill in any gaps you might have until you're in a better position to continue. This is particularly true if you farm in Dungeons where you're more likely to encounter minibosses and bosses who drop rarer or unique gear that can help quite a lot.

New tip: Item sorting! Did you know if you click the tiny green folder with blue arrows on it underneath the inventory box it will sort all of the items in your inventory or equipment (depending on which one you're in)? I didn't figure this out until yesterday. It's much, much easier to find things when they're all neatly sorted. Equipment sorts by rarity first and then level, which is kind of annoying but still much better than trying to poke through multiple tabs worth of equipment when trying to upgrade gear.

Er, there's technically a thread like this already. XD But nice!

The tips for newbies thread is more of an explanation of the game's features and how they work, not general advice. I've read most of the guides and FAQ threads and still haven't had all of my questions answered. I suspect a lot of it is because there are things players who haven't been new for a long time take for granted so I thought perhaps a new perspective might help others running into the same issues I am. :)

Yeah there is that very helpful newbie guide. But this is the more in-a-nutshell version. Like if you had to narrow it down to a few things first instead of just saying everything all at once.

I think this thread is a good idea. I could have used this when I first joined. Everything was so overwhelming. All the features and buttons and switches. Didn't know what to learn first. But I eventually figured everything out anyway. :3



Oh, and another INCREDIBLY useful tip for newbies:

Don't waste time manually clicking on the "A Q 1 2 3" with the mouse and then clicking the enemies in the battles. USE THE KEYBOARD KEYS to choose the weapon then click the enemy. You will save a lot of strained mouse-hand cramps.

I know the newbie guide already mentions this, but there were so many instructions thrown together that I completely missed the obvious, lol.

Not unless you don't have a keyboard! XD Like people with iPads, phones, or whatever mobile device, face the pain like me. O.o

Another useful tip: Don't waste all your good pet name ideas on all your plain starter animals. You'll want to save some of your good name ideas for when you get good at breeding awesome colors and mutations. xD

Otherwise you'll wind up with all these Un-named beauties that are hard to tell apart on the breeding generator list, lol.

Thanks for the additional tips. :) I figured out the keyboard thing pretty quick myself, so much easier. I just wish there was a way to select the enemy target via keyboard as well but I suppose that would be too easy.

Anyway I just wanted to say that I added a couple of new tips to the OP, both marked. One is something I figured out myself and the other is something I already know from entirely too many hours playing RPGs over the years that may prove useful to anyone who hasn't played them before.