Hmm..._{warning: wall of text}

When I first started (January 2013), they only had the first zone (Viridian Meadows) open (which is lvl1-25, kind of). Back then, I took a slow no-rush pace. I didn't know breeding existed, and even if it did, I didn't use that part often. I liked having few pets and making sure they were all fed aha.

About a week or month later, the 2nd zone (Umbra Forest) opened. Most active people seemed to zoom through, while I was stuck day after day at big strong bosses that hit my pets for too much damage aha. I still wasn't sure how to allocate points effectively. I'm not sure if I even knew what missions were. It took me about several weeks to a month to finish the content that others finished in 2 weeks (as in, the entire zone, lvl25-50).

The thing is, once you hit lvl50 or roughly around there, Sylestia's super open to you. By then, you supposedly should know how to build your pets effectively for both battles and missions (after my first festival, the first Week of Love event, I had a bunch of lvl50 pets to experiment with on missions). If you're still unsure, at least fighting up until that level made you learn something, aha.

I'd like to think the first time you can be considered "established" is when you hit lvl50 and learn how to make gold in missions. c: That establishes income for you (and anyone can do missions, so anyone can essentially get income), then you can use that income to sprout from there.
You can use that extra gold to breed pets, buy pets, buy fashion items for your avatar, and the like.
And you can even use your time to get to know the community, or get well acquainted with how breeding/battling/selling works on the site.
At that point, once you learn all the different things you can do with your basic income, you can consider yourself a really-established player. It's like a two-step process.

So it took me 3-4 months probably to figure out what I was doing with Sylestia, with the help of friends who also knew what they were doing aha.
Then during the months after, I did a bunch of things that I wanted to do: imparted information to others with guides, started tiny breeding projects, caught/sold/bought my fair share of festival/themed pets.

I'm not gonna lie, the fact that Sylestia is undergoing a big overhaul feels like a benefit. Essentially, everything is at a stand-still. No big changes other than structural changes are being made, no updates added. The level cap and even our system of making gold (the missions, mostly) hasn't changed forever. Most players that know how to make gold have millions upon millions of gold hoarded up.
The best time to learn how to play (for any game, in my opinion) is when the game is still fresh, before giant updates occur, so you can acquaint yourself well with the features that are already there.

So, for now, until the admins complete their overhaul, I'd like to think that now is a great time to get "established" at any pace you wish. c:

_{orz I'm so sorry about the wall of text T___T}

It took me about a month to not struggle. And maybe two months to do things "easily". I'll make a longer post later as I don't have a lot of time for posting at the moment. I'll just say the ease of the game can creep up on you. You won't realize how much better at it you're getting. Then one day you'll look back on what you used to do, and remember "oooh yeah that used to be hard!". =)

I joined about two weeks ago and feel like I've established myself fairly stably, a.k.a. I am consistently making money (though not rich yet), have finished all of the story content, beaten both dungeons, and am getting started on the whole breeding thing and thinking about building an arena team. Haven't spent any real money on the game to do this. Of course, it helps that I just moved to a new country and haven't yet found a job or built up a huge social life and circle of friends, so I was able to dump a fair bit of time into playing Sylestia and getting up to speed on how things work.

I would say the number one thing that helps is to use the resources at your disposal on the forums (so you're on the right track!). People have written a LOT on just about any topic you need to know about -- quests, missions, bosses, etc. Read a bunch of the player guides, especially about building and statting your main exploration pets! Scour each page and pick out all the threads that are relevant to the current point you are at in the game (i.e. look in the Quests board or Zone and Dungeon board) and learn from others' trial and error. If you don't want to spoil anything for yourself, only look if you get stuck, and pay attention to spoiler alerts. It takes a bit to get a hang of things, but once you do get the basics down and start building up your resources, it's pretty easy to figure the rest out. And once you get to about level 25-30 with your pets, stuff starts getting easier and you can make more money on a regular schedule from missions.

I would suggest, in the next festival, finding and collecting all the items and pets. But don't keep them for yourself. Sell them to other plays, you can strike it rich like that. That's how I got my horde of gold.

Is it possible to get more than 1 copy of each item?
I'd kinda like to sell some and keep some :o


Also, thanks everyone for the useful info!
I've actually spent some real money on diamonds for some breeding projects because I was too impatient and already had such a great idea in mind. But that hasn't helped me in making gold so far since the pets are still too you but I am making steady gold now thanks to making mission pets and progressing in the game's storyline :]

Yep, it's possible to have multiple drops of one item. c: (ie if you look at the broker for Avatar Outfits, there are Leprechaun Outfits sold in stacks of 10 lol)
I would think having one for yourself and keeping the rest to sell now or later is smart. (Or, if you're generous, give some away to people who haven't had a chance to get the items on their own, or trade with others)

I'm glad you're enjoying Sylestia. c:

Oh yeah, I had a couple of each item.

If everyone has a chance at getting a couple of each items, doesn't that kind of take away from their value?

i havent read all board, but as much as impatient as i was to start getting the projects i wanted to, i focused on the story until i could do lvl 50 missions and have spammed very hard missions ever since with the ocasional dungeon hunt

now i have my stat project running and i make enough money to exchange them for diamonds needed for stat breeding, i only paid $10 to get an unlimited tester but just because i was very impatient lol

My maximum goal is to have max stat pets instead of really good looking ones, once i have them maxed i can gift some to newbies to help them get tru the story faster or trade them to trait breeders for really cool pets

I've spent 100$ and it's making me feel like I haven't earned what I have xD
So when I get established and have steady income I will be donating 100$ worth of diamonds to sort of make myself feel better lol. Although so far Ive really only spent it on essences, so haven't made any actual money off it yet and I'm up to almost 200k! I actually wish I had waited, it's not so hard too earn gold, just takes time :p