This guide is current as of September 13, 2024. It is written for Miners Settlement PC Windows 10 Steam version. But it should be MOSTLY good for the mobile version, too.

In-game, I just hit level 50 so I haven't seen some of the mid-game and end-game content yet. The guide only covers what I've seen so far. It is still a work in progress, I might come back and updated it after I play longer and unlock more of the locations, enemies, items, and runewords. So for now, this guide is best suited for new players in the early part of the game, at or below level 49.

Hello! I'm Dave. I'm not a developer or programmer or anything, just a guy who occasionally enjoys playing video games.
This guide is a WORK IN PROGRESS, meaning it is STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION, so some of the sections might not be complete yet. Please be patient while I get it done.

This guide is intended for NEW players, to help you figure out the game's mechanics and some of the sticky spots in the early quests. This should take you as far as level 60 or so, the end of the "Mitar" missions. After that, you're on your own... sort of. A couple of gamers (not me) made an ONLINE GUIDE - fully interactive - to help you figure out everything in the game. Monster info, runeword locations and effects, crafting recipes at each forge, EVERYTHING. It's pretty nice. Much better than this thing I made.
Check it out by clicking here if you are so inclined.[www.miners.bytelligence.com]

This game is "always online" and it has a chat window where you can talk to other players, either in a global room or just with your friends/guild. And you can join a guild, but they have limited benefits really. There is also an "open market" where you can post items for sale, or buy items from other players. That shop uses its own currency known as "Trade Coins" that you will either trade in-game resources for, earn as quest rewards, or purchase for REAL MONEY. That is the extent of your interaction with other players. It's basically a single-player game with multiplayer chat and a player-trade market.

At first, you will be ALONE and you'll need to do some logging and mining to rebuild a small village. Everyone has THEIR OWN village, other players are not allowed in your village AT ALL. Once you have the village rebuilt, you'll be sent deeper into the mines and into a dungeon that are also 100% private for your own use.

Once you defeat the necromancer and the dungeon king, you'll gain access to a nearby city. This city will be your hub for the special events they run periodically, joining a guild and taking part in guild activities, the "open market" where you can buy and sell items for trade coins, and a few special shops that won't really be very useful for you until MUCH later in the game. In the city, you'll see other players running around, but you can't interact with them directly. There is also a PVP arena in the city, where you can equip yourself before starting a fight and then watch as you auto-battle against another player. The winner rises in rank, while the loser drops in rank. If your rank rises high enough, you win special goodies from the arena. Once the city is open, you also unlock a few more side quests as well as more of the main story.

The story is fun. The combat is simple auto-battler so the real trick is in how you PREPARE with different types of magic and different stat buffs beforehand. And you will need to change out your gear REALLY OFTEN in this one, since enemies frequently change up their resistances from one room to the next. And changing your gear and runewords is EXPENSIVE, this game has over a dozen different types of currency you'll need to farm extensively for, as well as fifty-something items that drop from monsters or you grow them on your veggie farm or you dig for them in the mines. It has raid bosses that drop special loot (and require special items to access them), time-limited events, and more. So not only are you constantly grinding and farming... you're grinding and farming for over 80 different things ALL THE TIME.

If you don't like a game that leans VERY HEAVILY on pay-to-skip and pay-to-speedup content and a ridiculous amount of grinding for lots of in-game currency, crafting ingredients, and combat XP... then stop now and just uninstall this one. Because at its core it is a GRIND-FEST.

In the beginning, you'll be VERY WEAK - like a basic rat monster can kill you. So be careful. You'll spend most of your time chopping wood and mining a few metal ores so you can buy your first monster slaves and force them to go work in the mines. Mwa-ha-ha (evil laugh). Then you'll try your hand at combat, but you'll be confined to the village's dungeon because anywhere else is TOO DANGEROUS for you at this point. Your weapons and armor will be very weak and almost useless, too. And so, most of the special event quests that happen from time to time will be out of your reach for a while longer.

You'll have a few crafting recipes unlocked, pay special attention to the recipes for Town Portal Scroll and the HP Potion. You can safely finish the village's dungeon, and maybe even take down half of the Necromancer's Lair at the bottom of the mine. Oh, and you'll get access to the entire mine. This will take some time since you need to grind the mine for ore to unlock each individual mining site. But you'll get there. You'll also gain access to the city, so feel free to explore a little bit. But don't join a guild yet, and don't try to enter the tower or fight the guardian just past the tower yet because you're still pretty weak and you will die if you try. But you can now equip weapons and shields that have a YELLOW OUTLINE on their icons. These are stronger than the gray or green ones, and on top of that you can equip a couple of basic Runewords to give you small stat buffs, too. You can start attempting some of the event quests, depending which ones are currently active. But some of them will still be beyond your ability.

You can start attempting the tower now, and you can safely hang out in the Necromancer's Lair if you really want to. You can equip weapons and armor with ORANGE OUTLINE on their icons. Those are nice, and they grant access to some MUCH BETTER Runewords for bigger and better stat buffs in combat. You won't get very far in the tower yet, maybe as far as floor 50 or so, but at least you don't die in the first ten floors anymore. You still can't handle the guard after the tower though, for that you'll need ELEMENTAL MAGIC. Also, if you're still enjoying the game and you plan to keep logging in at least twice every week, then you can consider joining a guild now. You can also start to tackle opponents in the city's PVP arena, if you are so inclined. Good luck! Also, you unlock another Runeword slot! Nice. And this is when you can start attempting most of the special event quests. This is basically when the game starts to get good. But you still have more work to do before you get good, so don't get cocky.

You get access to your first ELEMENTAL MAGIC!! You need to equip the weapon and armor with RED OUTLINE on their icons, plus the right set of Runewords for them, in order to get magic... but you can do it. You can get a little higher in the tower now, but still not all the way to the end of it. And you can actually attempt to fight that elf guard past the tower, if you equip some elemental magic damage runewords!! You might not be able to kill him yet, but you can try.

This is "late game" now. You can use BETTER weapons and armor, and you unlock your final Runeword slot. Some new content opens up to you if you can beat that elf guard. New areas, new monsters to fight, new crafting recipes, new quests. I'll say more about this if/when I get that far!! I'm still only level 50.

End-game content, baby! Congratulations, you're the world's deadliest warrior or whatever. Go fight he golden dragon and finish some of the end game quests.

You gain experience by defeating monsters in combat. Every time you gain a level, you earn a stat point. Each stat point can be used to unlock one stat block on the levelup tree.

• The red heart adds +20 HP.
  
• The green boot makes you walk a little faster.
  
• The blue shield adds +1 physical Defense.
  
• The yellow sword adds +1 physical Attack damage.
  
• The orange sword lowers your attack cooldown.
  
• There is a maximum number of points you are allowed to put into each stat block. In this screenshot I have 4 points currently in that Def block, so it can take (25 - 4) = 21 more points if I want to put them there. But you don't need to max out each block before you unlock the next one.
  
• The number below each stat block shows how many of all previous stat blocks need points before you can unlock this one. If it is still locked, it will have a padlock icon over the stat block image. For instance, in this screenshot the orange sword has a number "1" under it, and THREE stat blocks connected above it. This means that if the orange sword was still locked, I would need EACH of the three stat blocks above the orange sword to have at least 1 point added, and then the orange sword would be unlocked and I can start putting points into it on the next levelup.
  

Attack speed is key for winning monster battles, especially if you buff yourself with a stun attack, critical hit chance, or elemental damage. Because EVERY time you make an attack, those have a chance to trigger. So the more often you attack, the faster you kill the enemy - even if your attack damage is a bit low for each hit.

Defense is key to surviving monster battles, too, because remember that each point into defense will negate a point of physical damage from EVERY attack that hits you. If your defense is higher than the enemy's attack (and no magical damage is involved) then you take zero damage. So Defense is more useful than HP, at least until you hit level 50 - when you gain access to better weapons and better runeword buffs as well as elemental magic.

Attack damage is only relevant to upgrade before you hit level 30. After that, your (yellow) sword should have such a huge attack power on it that your own attack power doesn't even matter anymore. Also remember that enemies with OP defense numbers are basically immune to your physical attack stat; you'll need elemental magic damage to deal with them.

Extra HP is nice, if you feel like your other stats are pretty well balanced already or if you need to put points into HP in order to unlock the next stat block.

Walking speed is only useful if you're in a hurry to get somewhere. LOL.

When selecting equipment to match your leveled up stats, I like to divide the "attack" value (combine the magic and physical damage together) by the cooldown time. This gives me a DPS value for that weapon/shield combination. I look for gear that lets me maximize DPS while also having a variety of physical and elemental damage types so I don't get stuck on any enemy because they have resistance to all the damage types I can produce. Know your enemy ahead of time. Plan your equipment and runewords accordingly. And your stat block upgrades will help after that's done.

Your village is your own. Nobody else has access to your storage chest or the shops in your village. After you rebuild the little town, you'll have access to a few things there.

Upstairs, you can use the wardrobe to change your appearance. Oooh, let's play dress-up! LOL.
Downstairs, you'll notice a MAGIC DOOR that leads to the magical garden.
Outside, you'll find a mailbox. This is where you'll receive any "news" about the game, occasional login gifts or other rewards, and purchases from the city's Open Market.
Also outside, you'll find your storage chest. You can put spare items in here to free up space in your backpack. But if you want to use or spend those items, you'll need to pull them out of storage first and put them back in your personal backpack. The chest starts out small, but you can spend purple gems to upgrade it with more item slots.

• You earn Harvest XP each time you harvest a fruit or veggie.
  
• Each crop has THREE plots you can unlock. The first gives five of that item, the second gives ten, the third gives fifteen. But ALL plots only give you 1 Harvest XP each time you farm it.
  
• Each time you cook a meal using those ingredients, you earn Cook Tokens. These can be used to unlock additional recipes at the food truck.
  
• By delivering meals to the notice board, you earn golden fork tokens. Spend those at the magical shop nearby.
  
• There are a few town portals for you to rebuild, more fruit and veggie gardens to unlock, and some mysterious statues you can un-curse by providing certain foods to them. The statues eventually unlock a giant door, but... I haven't unlocked them all so I can't say what's behind the big door.

At the store, you can buy and sell wood and ores, for the regular in-game money which I'll just call "cash" to avoid confusion with gold ore/ingots and such.
The pet trainer does a couple of things for you. One tab gives you access to a FREE LOOT CHEST every few hours, which always gives you ONE shard of a pet upgrade. Collect enough shards to upgrade that type of pet. There are several types of pets but they all do the same thing. If you equip a pet, you get a few extra backpack slots. Upgrading a pet gives it one extra slot. The only other way to get more backpack slots is to pay for them with purple gems. So pets are cool.
The pet trainer's other shop tab lets you spend cash to buy upgrades for your mine slaves. You cannot equip these animals like you can do with the pets. Instead, you send them into the mines and they will automatically gather ores, gems, and wood for you. Notice that each upgrade is more expensive than the previous one, and it gets CRAZY EXPENSIVE pretty fast. So you sell wood, ore, and gems to earn cash... then spend that cash on slave upgrades so they will bring you more wood, ore, and gems. It's a vicious cycle.
The blacksmith lets you craft scrolls, potions, weapons, shields, runes, and basically EVERYTHING ELSE that you'll need. But first you need to collect all the blueprint fragments to unlock the recipe for each item, and then you need to bring him the ingredients required by the recipe. Some of the more advanced recipes have 64 fragments, so there will be some "grinding" required.
The balloon brings you a couple of FREE blueprint fragments every day. You can also spend purple gems to buy extras, but it's not usually worth the price. It also has a LOOT CHEST that gives you more fragments if you spend red gem shards on it. This is the ONLY use that I've found for those red shards, so spend them all here.

You'll want to grab worms from the dirt mounds. You can use these as bait at the first fishing hole. Or save them, combine them with Slime Gel at the bait shop to turn them blue, and then use them at the second fishing hole. Both holes work the same way but give you different kinds of fish from each hole.
The bait shop at the back sells fishing poles and bait. And you can sell your fish to him and he'll pay you in Fishing Tokens.
You can spend your fishing tokens at the bait shop, or at the shop in front of the pond that sells a few RUNES. Remember these are here, they'll come in handy later.

You can spend purple gems to buy blueprint fragments.
Or you can upgrade the wagons and then provide some resources for a trading caravan to take to a distant land. They'll return in a few hours with some red crystal shards, which you can then spend on more blueprint fragments at the balloon.

Dump your useless items on the goblins. They'll pay you for them, but all they'll give you is red crystal shards.

Outside, you'll find a very tall tree. You can chop sections out of it to receive Wood. It never runs out of wood.
Inside, each floor has a different kind of ore. You can use a pickaxe to mine the ore. Each ore takes longer than the previous one to mine, and you can upgrade your pickaxe to mine tougher ores in fewer hits.
As you're mining, there is a chance for you to receive "Material for the Enhance Stone" (which I'll call "MES" from now on because it's too long to keep typing) in addition to the regular ore. These only drop if you are manually mining with your pickaxe. As you go deeper, the drop chance increases until you reach the Jade mine. After Jade, the drop chance goes back down.
At the pet store, you can hire animals to be your mining slaves and go get these resources for you automatically. But animals won't get you any "MES" items.
There is also a dragon living near the Emerald mine who has an Enchanter machine that you will learn to use much later in the game.
The bottom of the mine has a gate to the Necromancer's Lair, which is dangerous below level 40. I'll discuss that later in this guide.

At this totem pole, you can feed it enhancement stones to boost the production yield of your animal slaves as they work in the mines. But you won't have the resources to do this until later in the game.
Each animal has its own Enhancement Stone, and each stone requires its own set of Blueprint Fragments to unlock it. Plus, the stones are quite expensive to craft. So just be advised this will be a grind-fest if you want to buff your slaves.

These are all combat areas, which I'll describe in a later section of the guide.

This is locked until you finish a certain main story quest, and a guard will not let you pass until then.

Beyond this point, you will DIE without access to magical damage and resistances. So you will need equipment at level 50 or higher. And Runewords are a good idea, too. The gate's guardian WILL KILL YOU if you challenge him with no magic. He has 0 attack power, 10000 defense, and he deals 100 water damage which is elemental so it totally evades your "defense" stat.

Before I send you out there to kill things, I should take a moment to tell you how combat works in this game. So...
Areas with monsters have spawn points for those monsters. Each spawn point has a MAXIMUM number of monsters it can produce at any given time; if the max number of monsters are currently ALIVE for that spawn point, the timer freezes. The timer resets only when you kill one of the monsters, leaving space for another monster to be born... or when it spawns a monster and there is still an open space for another monster it will reset the timer and spawn another one when it hits zero again. It shows you the timer on screen. Some timers are only a few minutes, others are over an hour. It depends on the area and how tough that monster is.

You have a few stats that affect your combat prowess.
HP: your life force, if it hits zero then you die.
Attack Speed: how often you swing your weapon. "Attack Speed" is calculated as HIGHER is better, even though the target goal is to get the "Cooldown" (which is the number shown in combat) as SMALL as possible. So "Attack Speed +X" buffs are good, while "Attack Speed -X" is a bad debuff.
Attack: your physical attack damage. Can be blocked by the opponent's Defense.
Defense: your physical defense, 1 Defense point blocks 1 point of attack damage. This is USELESS against elemental magic attacks though, it only blocks the physical portion of damage.
Elemental Attack: does magical damage in addition to your regular attack damage.
Elemental Resistance: blocks magical damage, but not physical damage.
Elements: each element has its own separate attack and resistance stat. So 100 Fire Resist will block up to 100 Fire Damage, but not any Water Damage. That 100 Fire Resist will only block the first 100 damage if the attack did over 100 Fire Damage.

You: 50 Attack, no magic, etc.
Enemy: 40 Defense, 70 Fire Resistance, 10 Water Resistance, etc.
When you attack, the enemy's magic resistance is useless since you're not doing any magical damage. And your attack is higher than their defense, so you deal (50-40) = 10 physical damage.

You: 50 Attack, 50 Water Damage, etc.
Enemy: 60 Defense, 70 Fire Resistance, 10 Water Resistance, etc.
When you attack, the enemy's defense is higher than your attack so you deal ZERO physical damage. You're not doing any Fire Damage, so their Fire Resistance is useless. Then your Water Damage is bigger than their Water Resistance, so you deal (50-10) = 40 Water Damage to the enemy.

You can equip a weapon and a shield. At later levels, you might unlock some additional options, too. Then you can also equip Runewords (how many depends on your current XP level and if you bought the VIP pack for REAL MONEY). The stats listed on your gear come in two flavors: +X, and +X%. The +X version just adds directly to your current stats. Simple, right? The +X% adds a percentage of your base stats PLUS a percentage of your gear's base stats.

Example:
You naked: 10 Attack, 10 Defense, 300 HP, no native magic.
Sword: 240 Attack, 20 Defense, 30 HP, 2.3 seconds cooldown, +50 Fire Damage, +20 Water Resist
Shield: 0 Attack, 60 Defense, 240 HP, -0.3 seconds cooldown, +40 Water Resist, +30 Lightning Damage
Total Base Stats: (10 + 240 + 0) = 250 Attack, (10 + 20 + 60) = 90 Defense, (300 + 30 + 240) = 570 HP, (2.3 - 0.3) = 2 second cooldown, 50 Fire Damage, 30 Lightning Damage, 60 Water Resist

Now let's say you add a runeword on top of that, which buffs you with the following...
+25% Attack Speed, +10% Life Steal, 10% chance of +200% Defense.
Those percentages act on your ENTIRE total base stats. You naked plus your equipped gear.
Cooldown = 2 - 0.25 * 2 = 1.5 seconds, then ten percent of the time that an enemy attacks you you'll have a defense buff happen and get 3 * 90 = 270 defense instead of your usual 90, and your lifesteal will be (0.10 * 250) + (0.10 * 50) + (0.10 * 30) = 25 + 5 + 3 = 38 HP if you hit an enemy with ZERO defense and ZERO resistance. But remember defense and resistances will reduce the damage you do, so they also reduce the amount of lifesteal HP you recover.
But if you then add a second runeword, it will NOT buff the first one it will only add buffs based on your total base stats, and then the effect of the second one will simply be added to the effect of the first one. So if you add a second runeword with THE SAME BONUSES as the first one, you get the same amount of buff again. So your cooldown instead of being 1.5 will be 1.0 seconds. And your defense WHEN THE BUFF POPS will be 270 + (2 * 90) = 450, instead of the 540 you would expect if that bonus buff +200% also acted on the effect of the first runeword.

I hope that makes sense. If it doesn't, just experiment on your own as you play and you'll figure it out eventually.

In combat:
RED numbers are physical damage.
GREEN numbers are healing HP recovery.
PURPLE numbers are damage for critical hits.

To start you out, the village has three zones where you will need to fight enemies in order to get through. Fortunately, enemies sometimes drop items that you can use to craft items - and they give you XP for leveling up. So the fighting isn't all for nothing. But in the beginning you will struggle for a while with the low-level rats and slimes before you find stronger equipment and level up a bit. If you're still below level 40 and using gray, green, or yellow gear then YOU ARE WEAK. Level 40, the orange gear, is where you are "mid-game" and finally able to survive these first few combat zones on your own. Level 50, the red gear, is where you start to unlock the ability to do magical damage and gain magical resistances. So if you're looking to start a fight, plan accordingly. Bring HP potions and make sure your level is high enough to tackle the area you're heading for.

Closest Teleport: Eastern Village.
Runestones for low-level gear on floors 1, 6, and 13.
This is accessed from a cave in the village. There is a chest outside where you can store your things. It has 13 floors, and the monsters here are the easiest in the game. Pay special attention to the Slimes, since you'll need their Slime Drops to make HP potions, to turn red worms into blue worms for fishing bait, and for a few other things as well. So you'll come back here to farm those slimes pretty often, if nothing else. Several of the monsters in here also drop meat and steak, which you'll need for making HP potions.

Closest Teleport: Insatiable Stone Mine.
Runestone for gear at level 40 & 50 on the fifth floor.
Runestone for lower level gear in the Emerald Mine nearby.
At the bottom of the village's mine, there is a gate to enter this place. It is full of undead monsters, the first floor is safe but beyond that they're all full of monsters stronger than you met in the Dungeon. It is worth noting that the monsters in here, except for the basic Skeletons on the second floor, all have stat buffs (or debuffs that affect YOU) from the equipment they're using. The one that is the most devastating for you is probably "enemy defense -50%" on the Ghosts on the fourth floor, or the seventh floor Skeleton Champions have a chance to do critical hits that will absolutely demolish you but at least those only happen sometimes. That defense debuff is active for the entire fight, so ALL of the ghost's attacks are doing more damage than they technically should.

Closest Teleport: Eastern Village.
Requires (and consumes) 1 Tower Trial Key to enter. These keys are dropped by all sorts of enemies at random, but they are pretty rare so you might need to buy one from the Open Market if you run out.
Each floor of the tower has a single enemy for you to battle. If you win, you move to the next floor. If you die, you get kicked out of the tower and respawn back at your house. The enemies seem randomized, and they can have buffs or debuffs as well as magical attacks or resistances. Most of them come equipped with some level of stun resistance, which is pretty annoying if you have a stun attack buff from a runeword equipped. And you cannot take a break between fights; as soon as you finish one fight you immediately start the next. That means you don't get to change your equipment or drink HP potions between fights in this place. If you plan on making it more than 20 floors up, you'll definitely want some Life Steal or HP Regeneration ability.

If you are level 40, you might survive to the 25th floor but you won't be able to finish the entire tower yet. At level 45 with decent runewords, you might hit tower floor 50 but you're still not done here! The main thing you want from this place, other than defeating the boss monster on the final floor, is to collect Dark Angel Feathers & several blueprint parts from your fallen foes. If you go into the tower, let the game run by itself while you go play outside or make a sandwich for about half an hour. I'm not even kidding. When you come back, you'll either be still fighting, victorious, or respawned back at your house. Good luck.
NOTE: I've only reached floor 54 so far, because I'm only level 48 in the game. Based on the leader board, it looks like it may have 299 floors in total. If you get in the leader board's top 50, you win PRIZES: trade coins, scrolls to open portals to uber bosses, and purple gems.

Work in progress. I'm still at level 50 so I haven't seen ALL the monsters yet. But here is a table showing the type, number, and XP drops from the monsters in the Village Dungeon and the Necromancer's Lair. More to come as I unlock more dungeons and monsters as I progress through the game into the higher-level content.

Once you rebuild the village and pass a certain point in the main quest, the city gates will open to you. This city has a lot going on, and the first thing you'll notice is there are OTHER PLAYERS running around now. Feel free to use the chat window to talk to people, but this is basically the only way to interact directly with other players.

The first thing you see in town is the leader board, displaying the strongest adventurers in the world.
Just past that is a town portal that needs to be rebuilt before you can use it, then your mailbox and storage chest.
Then the Open Market. There are two things you can do in the Open Market. You can sell your own items to earn Trade Coins. And you can spend Trade Coins to buy items listed for sale by other players. Any Trade Coins or items acquired will be sent to your MAILBOX, not directly to your backpack. CAREFUL IT IS BUGGED. If you try to buy an item that is still listed even though someone else already bought it, the server kicks you off and then logs you back in. You don't spend the coins or get the item. If this happens, you're better off exiting the game and wait five minutes before you log back in.
The next building you can enter is the shopping mall. This has all sorts of shops that take special types of currency or have lottery-based loot chests. If you can't find something that you KNOW is in the city, it's probably inside the mall.
Next up is the "Event Hub" portal. If there is a special limited-time event happening, you can find it inside the portal.
After that is the PVP arena, which I'll describe in detail in the next chapter.
Then you'll see the Guild Hall. AFTER you join a guild, you will be able to enter your hall here. Each guild enters through the same door but has their own private hall.
The next door requires you to complete the Einlor story and craft the shadow insignia before you can enter. This is "end-game" content.
The next door requires you to finish the Mitor story before you can enter. This is "end-game" content.
At the far edge of town is a road leading to Old Town. Old Town is home to the game's newsletter office (which isn't up and running yet), a lounge that seems to serve no purpose currently, and a big gate that you can't use until after you finish the main storyline.

If you're below level 40, you can only use weak equipment and the runewords available are pretty crappy. But they're still better than not having runewords equipped at all. The low-tier runewords are scattered around at rune totems in several locations. Note that some of them require you to have specific weapon or shield equipped; if you unequip the required gear item then you lose the effects of the runeword. If you then re-equip the item, you get the runeword effects back. So pay attention to what equipment the runewords ask you for!! Also, if you buy a runeword, and then manually delete it from your list later (to make room for a different runeword later) that runeword is permanently lost. If you want it back, you need to go back to the rune totem and pay for it again. I'll start you off with a list of the rune STONES that are used as payment for runewords. These stones are also used in certain crafting recipes, and as payment at certain shops, too.

And now here's a list of the low-tier runewords, grouped by the totem location. For these lists, I've highlighted my personal favorite runewords to use at a low level. One set for when you have "green" quality gear, and one set for when you have "yellow" quality gear. I made TWO sets for each gear level, because I feel like these particular combinations have pretty good synergy. So for example stack yourself up with the runewords highlighted in BLUE for one good set of effects, or use the ones in PINK for a different good set of effects. But that's just what I run with; feel free to experiment and try different combinations on your own. There are NO WRONG ANSWERS here.

Your first runeword will probalby be the one you find as part of a quest; the totem for it is inside the shopping mall in the city, in front of the Rune Shop. After that, the easiest ones to find are in the village's dungeon, just behind the rats on the first floor.

Deeper in the village's dungeon, you'll find a second totem on the sixth floor down, next to the group of bandits (they look like fauns, human legs but head like a goat).

Deeper still, the next totem is behind the Dungeon King on the bottom floor of the village's dungeon.

The final set of low-tier runewords is at a totem located near the Emerald Mine. To reach it, just keep unlocking the deeper levels of the village's ore mine until you find the giant emerald vein. You'll know you're in the right place if you see a big blue dragon walking around (don't panic, he's friendly).

Now that you're familiar with the basics of runewords, and you've reached combat XP level of 40 or higher, you have access to better quality swords and shields starting at level 40. Then you get EVEN BETTER gear starting at level 50. You also gain access to stronger runewords, depending how good your sword and shield actually are. At level 50 some of the runewords give you elemental magic damage added to your attacks and elemental resistance for protection from magical enemy attacks! The runewords for these mid-tier are all found at the same rune totem, which is on the fifth floor of the Necromancer's Lair. The Necromancer's Lair can be reached by continuing down from the emerald mine until you hit the absolute bottom of the village's mining cave. There is a big glowing door there and it leads to the Necromancer's Lair. It is full of skeleton-type enemies, most of whom have various combat stat buffs. You basically need to be level 35 or higher just to reach this rune totem.

Again, I have highlighted two sets of runewords that I find particularly interesting when grouped together (one group in blue, the other in pink) but this time only for the level 40 runewords. For the level 50 ones, it really depends on the weapon and shield you are using because it's quite expensive to craft these items and it takes FOREVER to collect enough blueprints for the recipe, so you'll have to depend on the will of RNG-Jesus for drop rates on the completed weapons, or go buy them from the Open Market if you prefer. And if you are looking for a specific type of elemental damage or elemental resistance from your runeword, then you'll need a VERY SPECIFIC set of sword and shield to make it happen. So there are many random factors that affect your plan. However, I did highlight different colors on runewords that are good together because they require THE SAME WEAPON OR SHIELD, so JUST AS AN EXAMPLE you can use BOTH of the level 50 green runewords (Deadly Infection & Bloodthirsty) if you want to be the king of life steal, as long as you have the Souleater sword equipped. Because the level 50 runewords are crazy powerful compared to the lower level stuff, you should pair up two with the same sword, and then put one on your shield that complements your sword's buffs, for maximum buffness.

FAIR WARNING: If you are NEW to elemental weapons, and you are about ready to fight the elf guard at the east end of the village, YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST GET THE SOULEATER SWORD AND EQUIP IT WITH BOTH RUNEWORDS. Otherwise you will not be able to complete the next quest in the Elf temple (the Mitar questline). Because fire damage is the only tool that works against the goblins in Mitar. Especially if you pair it with LIFESTEAL so you also become harder to kill. The shield you pair with it is less important, but a lot of people on the in-game discussion boards like the Final Stand since it buffs your Attack Speed while defuffing the enemy's Attack Speed, both by a whopping 40%. Personally, the Barrier of None was my first choice because the first miniboss in Mitar does earth damage and the BoN resists it a bit. Since the Souleater sword has such a fast attack speed to start with, I prefer critical hits and the ability to debuff my enemy's attack speed rather than buffing my own speed, too. But hey, you do your own thing.


Furthermore, if you open your character screen in your "backpack" menu you'll see some buttons there indicating that you can use multiple gear loadouts. You start with 3 by default, but can buy more for a LOT of purple gems. Each loadout uses its own weapon, shield, amulet, etc. AND its own runewords, too. You can swap between them anytime you are not in combat.

For your SECOND set of gear and runewords, I highly recommend the Titanslayer paired with the Final Stand. After the miniboss in Mitar, the next room has enemies with fire resistance but no Earth resistance, and they do fire damage instead of earth damage. After that room, you'll basically have to swap between loadout sets in every room to match your attack type to the enemy's resistances. So you'll need to either plan ahead, or throw yourself at the enemy totally blind and probably die a few times before you figure out what you need.

In Mitar, after you complete enough of the story quests in there you unlock the ability to wear AMULETS. The first one you NEED is the Amulet of Truth, because it lets you see which door is the correct one in a small maze before the miniboss. My advice: after you get through the little maze, build the town portal you find just before the miniboss, that way you can unequip the Amulet of Truth later and still be able to reach the miniboss again without it, by using a portal scroll to get there.
In Mitar, you will want an amulet for EARTH RESISTANCE on your first equipment loadout, and one for FIRE RESISTANCE on your second loadout.

NOTE: I've only ever made it ten rooms deep into Mitar (the Stoneater monsters); I managed to REACH the Warboss in the eleventh room but haven't defeated him yet. But his elemental setup is basically the opposite of the previous miniboss, or the same as the Orc Champions. He does fire damage and is only weak to earth damage. I can't beat him yet though, because he attacks SO FAST and has SO MUCH HP that I just can't survive the battle. I need more levelups first. Good news is: as I'm writing this today, I just hit level 63! Which means I have unlocked my fourth runeword slot for all my loadouts. There is a FIFTH slot available, but only if you pay REAL MONEY for the VIP subscription.

Without further ado, here is a list of the rune totems in Mitar.

WORK IN PROGRESS, UNDER CONSTRUCTION, PLEASE WATCH YOUR STEP AND DON'T FALL INTO THE WET CONCRETE. HARDHAT REQUIRED BEYOND THIS POINT. etc.

Being in a guild comes with benefits, but also with responsibilities. If you are a "casual" player who only logs in once a week (or less) you'll probably be kicked out of your guild for being too inactive. Basically you'll be taking up a guild slot and preventing a player who actually WANTS TO BE HERE from participating.
IF YOU ARE IN A GUILD, THEY WILL EXPECT YOU TO PLAY THE GAME SEVERAL TIMES PER WEEK AS A BARE MINIMUM. Usually they will expect you to actually participate in the guild, too.
So if you are "lazy" and don't log into this game very often, then the life of a guild member is not for you. Sorry.

If you want to make your own guild, the cost to set it up is 1000 purple gems.

Being in a guild grants you access to your guild HQ in the city. Inside the HQ you'll find:

• a couple of shops that sell customization options to change the guild's flag and sigil
  
• a blacksmith shop
  
• a shop that sells tokens that give access to the golden dragon's lair
  
• the guild workshop along with a town portal nearby (the workshop is only accessible during a certain event)
  
• portals to the dragon's lair, which can only be activated by the guild leader
  
• a box where you can collect any gifts left by guild members who paid real money for the VIP Pass

I've never participated in the workshop event or the dragon's lair events so I'm not sure what awaits there. But these, along with access to the blacksmith's shop and a few extra daily quests, seem to be the only real benefits to joining a guild.

If you are in a guild, and the guildmaster activates the dragon sigil, then your guild can combine forces to beat up a dragon, and at the end of the fight you get special loot. At least I THINK that's how it works. Honestly I've never been part of a dragon raid so I can't be sure. More info may come someday if I ever do one of these events.

The PVP station consists of a few things.

• A stash of PVP arena coins, which respawns daily.
  
• A board where you can watch replay videos of your recent fights.
  
• A shop where you can spend Trade Coins to buy arena coins.
  
• An equipment stand where you can setup your gear AND some unique runewords.
  -- This loadout is ONLY used in PVP matches. When you're done with PVP you go back to your original loadout. Next time you come back for more PVP, you will keep the same PVP-specific loadout that you set last time you were here.
  
• Current PVP leader board.
  
• Arena signups where you can instantly jump into battle.

When you start a PVP battle, you're thrown in against a RANDOM opponent. Both of you will use the gear and runewords that you setup at the PVP equipment stand next to the replay board.

The battle progresses automatically, just like a fight against an enemy monster in the dungeon. Depending on your XP levels, gear equipped, and runewords you could be MUCH stronger or MUCH weaker or evenly matched. Good luck!

The winner rises in rank, the loser goes down in rank. Raise your rank high for bragging rights!

These Runewords can be activated at the equipment stand next to the PVP arena sign-up desk in the middle of the city. These are ONLY used for your PVP arena loadout; when you leave the PVP arena you re-equip your normal Runewords. This PVP loadout will re-equip the next time you play a PVP arena match though so you won't have to spend rune stones twice for the same runewords. Note that ALL of the PVP runewords require the BLUE rune stones (Rune X, Rune XI, and Rune XII) so you can only equip them at very high levels. If you attempt PVP in early or mid game before you have access to the blue rune stones, you won't bring any runewords into the arena with you.

Note: I have highlighed some of the runewords that I find most useful for PVP. Feel free to use whatever combination of runewords you like, really any combination will do fine for PVP. I only highlighted them to give you an example of the ones I think are the most interesting for PVP.

This game frequently runs events that will only be available for a few days before they expire.
There are several varieties so I can't give specific information here about each one since I never know what's current or what's coming up soon.

In general, these events have special event quests, usually they reward you with special event tokens that are SPECIFIC to each event. You can spend them at the event's shop (if the event has a shop) to earn special loot and a chance to fight special enemies. But the event loot WILL VANISH once the event ends, so use it while the event is active! You can also try to sell certain event items in the Open Market; maybe someone else out there needs your event tokens even if you're finished with the event.

So yeah... keep an eye out for limited-time events. Some are seasonal and repeat each year. Some are seemingly random. Some they will announce ahead of time, and some they won't.

After level 50 you start to get runewords and weapons that focus on elemental damage and resistance. Get an elemental weapon (FIRE DAMAGE preferably) to defeat the elf who guards the temple grounds to the east of the mystical frozen tower. Once you beat him, you have access to the temple grounds. There is a town portal you can rebuild, plus the temple itself requires a few rune stones to rebuild.

Just beyond the temple door, you will find the Summoners Wall, where you trade Sacred Soul Stones for items that you'll use in the nearby Archstone to summon BOSS DRAGON monsters for guild fights, as well as ELITE MONSTER fights. You can also use the Summoners Wall to trade Elite Slayer Tokens (they look like tiny skulls) for some powerful weapons and shields, or for some high-tier runes, or some of the seasonal and elite currency tokens. At the end of the balcony, there is a memorial to a fallen friend.

Within the temple, once you rebuild the entrance, you'll find additional chapters of the "main story questline." The first one available is the Mitar adventure. The other two are locked until you finish the Mitar quests. Clicking on one of the chapters will take you to a new area, with new NPC's and shops and enemies and quests. Be careful, enemies in these locations are MUCH more dangerous than the ones you've seen so far. But give it a try, and have fun!

Key words here:

• fire damage is the ONLY thing that works here for the first half, then Earth damage
  
• earth resistance will come in handy after you unlock amulets
  
• don't use stun attacks, everything here is immune to it
  
• all enemies in here will decrease your attack speed by 40%
  
• you need SPECIALIZED EQUIPMENT from now on, and the enemies only drop it as loot AFTER you needed it so you'll be spending a metric ton of trade coins to get it.

As soon as you enter Mitar, assuming you're above level 50 and didn't cheat to get here, you'll be able to buy some amulets from the first blacksmith shop you find. They're pretty expensive though. Just past that is another rune totem that has runewords specifically for those amulets.

In the cave beside the rune totem, you'll find a bunch of enemies who are basically INVINCIBLE to physical damage with their defense stats being around 2000, and they also have enough magical resistance to block all of your elemental damage if your gear uses the wrong element. FIRE DAMAGE is the only way to hurt them. Critical hit ONLY APPLIES TO PHYSICAL DAMAGE so it is useless here. The goblins in the first room have resistance to wind and lightning. In the second room they resist wind and water. And it only gets worse after that.

There is a puzzle in the statue room, one of the rescued dwarves will give you three special coins that you need to put on the statues. The correct order is:

• Pickaxe
  
• Sword
  
• Lantern

As you go deeper, you'll eventually find a room with FIVE glowing green tunnels. You need the Amulet of Truth to get through here. If you take the wrong door, you go back to the beginning. Exiting the room by the front door at any time will take you back to the previous part of the tunnel. If you equip the Amulet of Truth, you will start to glow when you stand in front of the right door. The order is (from left to right):

• FOURTH door
  
• THIRD door
  
• FOURTH door
  
• FIFTH door
  
• back door to continue on

The next room will have a town portal you can rebuild. After that, there's another rune totem with level 90 runewords, and then a boss fight against Sharra. Take note, she has a WICKED NASTY stun attack (4-seconds) and deals a lot of Earth Damage... also immune to physical damage and resists every element EXCEPT for fire. So come packing fire damage and earth resistance or you will die.

Immediately after Sharra, you'll face off against a room full of Orc Champions. They have FIRE RESISTANCE, so you'll need to swap over to Earth Damage. And they also deal FIRE DAMAGE, so you'll want to load up on Fire Resistance, too. Well, it's time to change up your weapons and runewords I guess.

The IDEAL setup is to get yourself to XP level 60 first. And then get a whole bunch of runes. Pick up the Souleater and the Barrier of None plus an Amulet of Truth from the Open Market (you'll need a bunch of trade coins of course). Max out your runewords for your weapon and for Barrier of None and for the Amulet of Truth. This will be your loadout #1. Fire damage and earth resistance, those are key for this set. Make a run through Mitar until you beat Sharra.
Now go back to the Open Market and buy Titanslayer, the Final Stand shield, and an Amulet of Protection. Set them (with the proper runewords) as your loadout #2. You'll use this set for the Orc Champions once you get past Sharra. Earth damage and fire resistance, those are key for this set. But you can consider skipping the "Perfect Hit" runeword since everything in this area is IMMUNE to physical damage anyway, and use the Stone Skin runeword for extra HP and Def instead. Your call on that.

You can keep three different loadouts by default, you can add more if you pay for more loadout tabs in your character profile sheet in the "backpack" menu, and you can swap loadouts on the fly as long as you're NOT in combat. But you can only have ONE loadout actively equipped at a time. The rest just sit and wait in storage until you need them. Each loadout can have its own weapon, shield, amulet, etc. PLUS its own runewords. So swapping between your different loadouts won't mean you need to buy new runewords every time, just the first time you set each loadout.

This game has SO MUCH content, and it takes SO LONG to grind for every little bit of progression... and they continuously change the content by rotating the limited-time events and adding more stuff to the game... it's nearly impossible to cover the high-level and late-game content in full. Especially since as a 100% FREE TO PLAY player, I'll probably never reach level 80 and beyond. So, this has been fun. But this is where we part ways. I have faith that now you understand the basics, you can figure out the rest without me. If you have questions, get into the game's Global Chat and just ask. People are pretty friendly and helpful, even if sometimes they'll laugh at your ignorance LOL. Or go ask on the game's Discord server.

One more note: As far as I know, the BEST place to AFK farm for XP is to stand right on top of the spot where the Necromancer spawns, in the Necromancer's Lair. It takes 10 minutes for him to respawn, but when he dies you get 300 XP each time, for a whopping 30 XP per minute. As you get deeper into the game, the enemies might have more XP, but they also take a lot longer to respawn. So if you're after the fastest XP gain so you can let your character just stand there and win fights and get swole... let him stand on the Necromancer for a few hours while you go to work, or take a nap, or take your sweetheart to the dance, or whatever.