Strategy guide

Your first week: what to take, spend and level

Skill first and leave combat for later. Do the quests that need nothing, let your levels spread across your skills with some extra on Vigor, and keep most of your skill credits for later. Alms 25 comes quickly from quests and gold, and Luck 25 is the slow half of the +1% XP perk.

Checked against the game data from 2 October 2026

What you start with

A new account has 239 total skill credits (200 plus a total level of 39), 10 individual credits in every skill, and 200 reroll credits. Total credits grow by 1 for every level you gain in any skill. Individual credits grow by 1 for every task you finish in that skill.

Credits pay for levers. Every lever moves in steps, from −5 to +5, and each step up multiplies a skill's weight in the task roll (its share of the queue) by 1.25. Total credits pay for the skill levers, the Luck lever and the Quests lever. Individual credits pay for the levers inside a skill: which activity, how many, which node.

The cost doubles with each step. Reaching +1 costs 25 total credits, +2 costs 75, +3 costs 175, +4 costs 375 and +5 costs 775, for weights of 1.25, 1.56, 1.95, 2.44 and 3.05 times an untouched skill. Inside a skill the same ladder costs 5, 15, 35, 75 and 155 individual credits. Moving a lever back refunds the exact difference, so trying a setting costs nothing.

What to level first

No skill is a must at the start, apart from Vigor below. These rules hold whichever you favour:

• Low levels are cheap. Level 10 takes 4,385 XP, 10 to 20 takes another 12,584, and 20 to 30 takes 33,879. Every level adds a total credit and counts toward the total level that grows your queue and your task sizes, so an XP point buys the most in your lowest skills.
• Levels 10 and 20 matter most. Activity tiers unlock at levels 10, 20, 30 and so on. A new tier pays about 1.41 times the XP per success, though you fail more often at first. Get the skills you use most past those marks before you go deep in any one.
• Gather before you process. Fish and Cook, Mine and Smith, Forage and Craft, Invoke and Imbue, Farm and Brew work as pairs. When your bank has no materials, a processing task falls back on scraps, which pay half XP. Train the pair together and keep the gathered goods in your bank.

What each thing is worth depends on what you train. In XP percent, the Luck and Alms perk is +1% in every skill, a first-tier skilling tool is +0.5% in one skill, and a first-tier combat tool is +1% in one combat skill. If you train four skills, the perk gives you what eight first-tier skilling tools would.

Vigor

Vigor is rollable like the gathering skills, and it also trains while you walk, but slowly, at 1 XP per 500 pixels. It helps everything else you do:

• Walking. It sets your base movement speed, from 10.2 at level 1 to about 24.95 at 99, and other bonuses multiply that.
• Skilling actions. Each Vigor level takes about 0.005 s off every skilling action, so level 20 is about the 0.1 s a first-tier tool gives, in every skill at once.
• Attacks. It shortens your attack interval by 0.25% per point, up to 50%.

Two early quests pay Vigor XP: The Long Haul (650, needs only level 1) and The Wanderrest Camp (4,200, needs Slay 20). The Enchanted Trainers, Vigor's tool, drop from Feeble Imp.

Spending credits

• Take the first steps, skip the last. One step on a skill you want to level costs 25 credits. The fifth step costs 400 more than the fourth for the same 1.25 times. Credits you don't spend aren't lost; they keep growing with your levels.
• The Quests lever raises how often quest steps come up in your queue. Only 24 quests need level 20 or less, so a step or two brings them up sooner.
• The Luck lever adds 0.2% to the chance that a skilling task is Lucky. The default is about 0.51%, so one step makes it about 0.71%. A Lucky task pays double XP, and the same amount again in Luck XP.
• Reroll credits cost 5 per reroll in the skilling lane and 10 in the slay lane. You earn 1 for each skilling task and 20 for each quest.

When quests pay off

A quest pays a fixed amount of XP, gold, items and 20 reroll credits, so quests matter most while levels are cheap. Thirteen quests need only level 1 and no earlier quest, and 24 need at most level 20. Those 24 are almost all visit steps; only The Wanderrest Camp has a kill. They pay about 77,000 XP across your skills, 61,875 Alms XP, 9,350 gold and 480 reroll credits. Burnt Supper, for example, pays 1,100 Cook XP and 1,100 Alms XP, and Sandscale Burnt Supper pays 9,100 of each.

• Only 5 quests can be active, so pair them by location. A step completes when you interact with its node: bank there, do a skilling task there, or kill there. A task in your queue gets a quest icon when it touches the right node, so quests at the same place finish together. Pausing a quest costs 1 reroll credit.
• Four quests unlock something permanent. Reefrun Short Change (Barter 20) gives Trader's Charm, which lets you flip a row in the Barter panel. Pebblehill Drift Marker (Discover 25) gives the new tasks bar. Riverwatch Market Audit (Barter 40) gives Barter's Penny, which pays Barter reroll credits for slay tasks. Riverwatch Grand Audit (Barter 60) gives Auditor's Docket, one extra row in your task queue.
• The big ones come later. Ninety-seven of the 180 quests need level 51 or more in a skill, and together they pay about 35.7 million XP. Alms 25 raises quest XP by 25%, so reach it first.

Luck and Alms 25

When Luck and Alms both reach 25, every skill gets +1% XP. Each needs 29,798 XP.

• Alms pays 1 XP for each gold you spend on it, and quests pay Alms XP equal to their skill XP. The 13 level-1 quests alone pay 10,075 and the 24 quests up to level 20 pay 61,875, which is Alms level 31. Alms also gives you an item for every 5 levels, all the way to level 120. Gold you don't need elsewhere can go into it.
• Luck comes from Lucky tasks (their XP, one to one) and from new collection log entries, which pay 10 Luck XP per Luck level. If entries were the only source it would take about 260 of them, so Luck 25 is a project for the weeks after this one. See Collection logging.

Combat, tools and the Fortress

Combat needs gear: a weapon for your style, ammo for ranged and magic, and food in your bank. Holding it back until you have those is a good choice, and most players have their first fights within the week. When to start combat covers what it costs and when it pays.

Skilling tools drop from Feeble mobs on slay tasks, at 1 in 100 each, and those mobs need Slay level 9 to 28 depending on the mob. A first-tier tool gives +0.5% XP in its skill and 0.1 s off each action. Treasure chests also give tools, and Tools has every source.

The Fortress is open to everyone, but early on you won't do well in it. It is a five-player skilling run: each player works a gather and process pair and feeds one army stat, with the first wave at two minutes and another every 20 seconds. It pays Fortify XP only, not XP in the skills you work with, so a run is time away from them. The prizes are milestone pieces: a first-tier Banner (your team reaches wave 20) and a first-tier Ledger (800 stat points of your own deposits in one run) each give +0.25% XP to every skill and +0.25% movement speed. Every Fortify level also gives a point for the Fortify tree.

A plan

1. Leave most of your credits unspent. Add a step where you know you want one, such as the Quests lever.
2. Accept up to five quests that need only level 1, grouped by location.
3. Let the queue roll and take what comes. Reroll when a task isn't one you want; each skilling task earns a credit back.
4. Keep materials in your bank before processing, and give Vigor some of your time.
5. Put quest gold you don't need into Alms, and claim the Alms Path item each 5 levels.
6. Take the skills you use most to 10, then to 20, and do the level-20 quests as they open.
7. When you have gear and want tools, run slay tasks on the Feeble mobs that match your skills.