This guide is to help people decide what early and mid game skills to use, as well as some progression and items to get. It will also include some basic beginner traps you will want to avoid.

THIS IS NOT A LIST OF END GAME BUILDS NECESSARILY. WHEN I TALK ABOUT CERTAIN SKILLS BEING WEAK OR NOT RECOMMENDED, IT IS IN THE CONTEXT OF A NEW SOLO PLAYER REACHING THE MID GAME AND NOT END GAME PLAYERS IN GROUP DUNGEONS OR EVEN ALL END GAME SOLO BUILDS

Doing end game solo builds is boring, all builds work at end game and the only distinction is that aoe skills are better than single target skills, you might want some mitigation and movement speed is good. I think mid game solo builds are much more interesting to cover because it's about balancing the strength of the skills with the investment and upkeep required for them.

End game group builds can be found by looking at Ranperre's skill tier list:
https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2801-Ranperre-s-March-2021-Skill-Power-Index

Only big changes are the nerf to privacy field for warden and animal handling has been nerfed and is no longer particularly strong. I think staff and necro are a bit better than he says too.

This guide will include some tips about levelling or money making, but it is not a specific levelling or money making guide. I would point to this guide for levelling:
https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1358080653

This guide misses 70-80 , I would recommend doing that in the tower view/amaluk valley cave in Gazluk. Additionally, around level 50-60 you probably want to do war caches in Ilmari, these are mediocre exp and money, but offer great chances at gear, especially through the minotaur chests. The barter gives level 55 gear and the chests give level 60 gear.

But in short, always aoe farm if possible, always kill lower level mobs and always kill in dungeons.

Dungeons offer faster respawns, denser mobs and closer respawn points. Mass farming lower level mobs will be both more exp and more money than slowly killing higher level mobs.

As for money making, it depends on what you want to do, but my general tip is to try to kill animals you can skin whenever you can for levelling (excluding some time in goblin dungeon levelling, the goblinese levels you get there are critical later on and the exp is really good). They offer the same loot as other mobs, but give skins as bonus money ontop. At low levels it will be minor, but as you level more it becomes better and better. At end game, one mob can drop an additional 500 councils worth of skins as a guaranteed drop. Compared to butchering, you get an additional 100-200 and for non-animal mobs you get 0 extra, or possibly a skull worth around 50-100. Tanning the skins before selling them is always more profit than selling the basic skin alone.

Try to join casino dailies as soon as you feel comfortable (on my alts I am comfortable joining right from lvl 10, a new player might typically start closer to around lvl 30 or 40). 9/10 times the group will be more than strong enough, so you don't need to worry about being a burden. You can also run the dailies more than once per day, you just don't get the extra cash from the quest turn in. The gear alone is worthwhile, either to use as favour or to sell for cash. This offers pretty decent exp rates too, depending on the speed of your group. Just look for people advertising in global, the message will be something like "LFM WN daily", "LFM casino daily" or "LFM wolf cave". The 4 possible dungeons are Winter Nexus (WN), Wolf Cave (WC), Yeti Cave (Ice Cave) or Dark Chapel (DC). The only one you shouldn't join at a low level is Dark Chapel. It has mobs with aoe attacks which will instantly kill very low level players and groups will often wipe there if carrying a low level player.

I will not be covering everything to do on the island, there are already a few guides available for that. This was the best one I found:

https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2610-New-Player-Speed-Guide

I recommend taking your time on the island anyway, it is the most optimal place to level to at least level 10. You can pick up crabs and mushrooms and should autopsy every mob you kill. Don't bother picking up any gear unless it is an upgrade to what you already have. Completing all/most of the tasks on the to do list for the island is a good goal to have before leaving. Strange dirt is worth more than it says because it is used for gardening. In general, keep anything that stacks but feel free to fill the rest of your inventory before leaving. You should also try to get as many unique deaths as possible. Level 10 in dying unlocks an important ability.

But what skills should you use on the island?

You can get sword, unarmed, psychology and archery on the island. Out of those, sword and archery are the strongest and can be paired together. I would not actually recommend this choice however, because archery will end up being a complete pain in the early game and will actually only hold you back as you progress a bit further. You really don't need the extra damage since the early game is so easy regardless. Just don't use unarmed and do use sword.

I would recommend sword and psychology as your starting pair of skills. Psychology will provide tangible benefits later in the form of extra movement speed, while sword provides the damage to actually kill the mobs. Take note that you must use an ability from each skill line in order to get the exp from killing the mob. Don't worry about what abilities you're using too much at this point. You likely don't have enough to even fill your bar yet.

If you left the island before reaching level 15, then I would recommend heading to Serbule to find the Serbule sewers to level there. You have a chance at a ring of jaunty traipsing drop from the dinosaurs or chest there and the mushrooms have a chance at giving myconic exp needed later. It's not a bad idea to leave around level 10 then level to 15 in the sewers.

I would recommend unlocking teleportation, but leaving through the dungeon. Once you have left the island, move onto the next section of the guide.

Now is the time for you to unlock a new skill. The first place you want to head is to the inn in Serbule hills. If you left through the spider cave, you will already be in Serbule Hills, just follow the road West and you should see the inn. If you teleported out, then assuming you gave the correct coordinates, you will be in the East part of Serbule. I would recommend first heading West to Serbule town and talking to all the npcs there, Nelson Ballard will give you 1k for free which is a great starter boost and buy an amazing skinning knife from the player shops in the South of Serbule and some first aid and armour patching kits from Marna. Once you have done that, head South and find the portal to Serbule Hills (check the map on the wiki if needed). The inn is just a bit South of where you'll be after taking the portal.

In the inn, you should talk to all the NPCs and pick up all their quests (there is no cap to the number of quests you can have at one time in this game). But the most important person will be Tyler Green for now. He's the man around the corner from the entrance in the shabby clothes. You need to reach comfortable favour with him so that he can teach you the shield skill. The easiest way to achieve this is to do his 2 quests, Rubbery Tongues and The Melted Shield. For the melted shield, you just need to head into the spider cave and pick up his shield which you can find on the ground, spoilers here[wiki.projectgorgon.com].

Rubbery Tongues will require you to obtain a rubbery tongue from a ranalon, which are to the South East of the inn. With level 15 in sword, this should be relatively straightforward, especially if you followed my advice and paired it with psychology, as you will have the pep talk ability at lvl 10, which heals you for a decent amount. It should also be easy with sword/archery and probably easy even with sword/unarmed, but please for your own sake switch off unarmed sooner rather than later. I will go into more detail later, but it is a bad early game skill. Body pulling, i.e. entering the enemies aggro range without hitting it is the most effective way to pull single mobs. Try to avoid the Ranalon Stone-Shapers if you're struggling, but don't be afraid to give it a few tries if you fail. They have an rng based evasion mechanic which means some fights can go horribly for you, while other times it will be just fine. The drop is not guaranteed, but is relatively common. If you're really struggling then head to the Serbule sewers to level a bit more first.

Once you've finished these 2 quests you can go back and unlock shield. I will not bother to cover everything else you can do in Serbule Hills or all the other quests, for example to unlock bard, dancing or surveying as these are either unimportant or only important later on in the game, so you can return later if you wish. I would recommend doing as many of them now as you can just for exploration and fun purposes however.

You now have all the tools you need for the early game, assuming you unlocked psychology on the island. If you didn't unlock psychology on the island, then you should return and unlock it. Otherwise you need to travel all the way to Eltibule and pay Yetta 1k, which is far more difficult in the early game. To return to the island you can go back through the spider cave (there is a secret room on the left from the Serbule Hills entrance which has a lever to open the rock) or you can pay the boatman in Serbule to return there.

You will want to go to Serbule if you haven't already, because it's important to start training first aid and armour patching. Not only do they provide sidebar healing methods useful for every build, but mid game you need first aid levelled to cure diseases and bones and late game you need it to learn resusitate (bringing dead players back to life) which is absolutely crucial for end game dungeon runs. Armour patching is needed to learn blacksmithing which in turn is needed for augmentation, another critical skill. Use them once every 60 seconds, whether you need to or not, to ensure you keep gaining exp in them. You can also pick up your free 1k from Nelson Ballard, which I highly recommend spending on an amazing skinning knife from the player shops, just find one of the purple golems and search for amazing skinning knife. They typically go for around 500-800. Your remaining cash should go on first aid kits and armour patch kits and you should mostly sell your items to whoever buys them, Marna is your last resort. Note: some players will recommend gifting for favour at this stage of the game, however, from my own experience, the amount of favour you get from these super early game items is miniscule and even the minor amount of money gained from selling is more useful to buy first aid kits or basic gear from Joeh if needed. Do not vendor strange dirt or mushrooms. These can be sold to players for much more money or used yourself later on. To sell them to players, the easiest way is through the player work order board, just North of the player shops in the Serbule Keep, strange dirt should go for around 100 each.

This is also where you should try and farm more dying exp. Dying from rage attacks can normally give a different death to dying to the regular attack and different enemies with different damage types will have different deaths. There is also deaths from the environment such as drowning or falling. Level 10 in the dying skill unlocks some extra free portals for teleportation that can be used once every 8 hours.

I would also recommend setting your teleportation bind to Serbule, but amethysts will be in short supply at the start of the game anyway.

I will now explain what skills you should use and why. Your first priority should be sword/shield. You want to level shield up to level 8 to unlock an ability called take the lead. This is the entire reason you got the shield skill, but late game it is one of the best tanking skills too, so don't worry about wasted effort. Sword should already be around level 15 and serves as a good power levelling tool, letting you hit lvl 8 shield in no time. If you picked archery then you take another loss here as archery and shield share the same slot, archery cannnot be used to power level shield. Levelling to 8 can be done in the Serbule sewers as you have the possibility of getting a ring of jaunty traipsing there, which is a ring which adds +1 movement speed. Make sure to pick every mushroom as they have a chance of giving myconic experience instead, which is required for unlocking the myconian cave dungeon. If you don't get the jauntry traipsing ring drop from levelling shield to 8, don't worry since you can return later.

Take the lead boosts your movement speed by +6 for 10 seconds. Movement speed is one of the biggest barriers in the early game, and even into the mid game when you unlock mounts, take the lead stays relevant in dungeons where mounts cannot be used. There are higher level versions of the ability, but they are not worth the investment at this stage. Just level 2 of the ability for example isn't unlocked until level 28 and only provides 1 extra movement speed, it adds 1/6 as much as unlocking the ability at all, for a much higher time investment.

After you have unlocked take the lead, we are not done with movement speed. You will want to switch shield for psychology and use sword/psychology again. Your goal here is to level both sword and psychology to 30. Sword will likely be a bit further ahead, but the important part here is getting psychology to level 30. This will be where you return to the Serbule sewers if you did not get your ring of jaunty traipsing drop. It may also be worthwhile to return regardless so you can reach your myconic goal of at least 8 for the myconian cavern (better to get at least 10 to speak to all the npcs for questing there). Eventually you will want to move on to the other dungeons in Serbule such as the under the hand dungeon or the Serbule crypt. You can refer to the levelling guide linked in the introduction for more information.

Level 30 in psychology unlocks 2 very important mods (the effects on gear that you find). One is for the helmet and one is for the boots but they have the same effect, "Positive Attitude boosts your Out-of-Combat Sprint Speed by 4 for 60 seconds". The skill positive attitude has a 60 second cooldown, so this is essentially a 100% uptime boost of +8 sprint speed. Needless to say it is absolutely massive and is the best movement speed option that can be obtained at a low level. It may be difficult to find the helmet and boots with the correct mod, but make sure to keep an eye out, both in the buy used tabs of npcs, as well as the loot you find yourself.

Once you have obtained these mods, you will now have a dedicated movement speed build of shield/psychology.

You've got your shield/psychology movement speed set, perhaps missing a psychology mod or 2 and you have your sword trained up to around level 30.

What now?

This is where the game opens up a bit more, there are a few key items you will want to acquire and this is where you will start really favour and money grinding to unlock the next skills which will be your build into mid game and possibly even end game.

These are the items you want:

• Amazing skinning knife if you did not buy one earlier (500-800)
  
• Multipurpose knife for butchering and skull extraction (500-800)
  
• Carbon-form scrutinizer array for autopsying (2k)
  
• Shaman's rat belt for an additional +8 inventory (2k)
  
• High level cloth pants and shirt with pockets added and no requirements to equip, astounding is level 80 and what you want to aim for. This is for inventory space and you can use this as your main armour all the way even to level 70 or 80, but it is recommended to switch them out around level 60. You will still keep them as inventory gear to change into when you are crafting or moving items around. (15k - 20k for each piece)
  
• Mount and the gear for it which is the saddle, saddlebag, reins and horseshoes (3k if you do the quest but I wouldn't recommend waiting until you can, just pay the 6k instead)
  
• A generic (no requirements) Amazing magic ring, amazing in this case is level 80 and this ring gives +45 direct damage to every ability, very op in the early game but not required and you may have to specially order one from someone on trade chat. This should be replaced around level 50 or 60, depending on what rings drop for you. (3k - 4k maybe a little extra as a tip)

For a total price of around ~50k. These items let you overcome the 3 biggest hurdles in this game that every player complains about:

1. Movement speed from the mount
2. Inventory space from the cloth gear with pockets
3. Money from the skinning knife and multipurpose knife

This is the stage where you want to move to Eltibule. The mount seller is in the North of Eltibule and there is an entrance to the casino in the South West. You can get in if you jump on the rocks on the side.

I do not think an organ knife has any real value. You can get one later if you wish, but it is not required and takes up an extra inventory space. 99% of the time you should skin over butcher since it provides more money. Your chance at an organ is so low with low anatomy levels that the 5% bonus from the organ knife provides essentially nothing and then the only valuable organ is the stomach, with plenty of trash drops you can get instead e.g. heart, spleen, guts, brain, eyeball, claw, gallbladder

So how do you get all this?

Especially ontop of earning favour with NPCs and unlocking new skills this might seem impossible.

Well the answer is money making and I said I wouldn't dive too deeply into it, but basically the best way now is to start doing casino dailies. Level 30 is enough to reasonably survive all of the casino dailies apart from Dark Chapel. You won't add much to the group, but as long as you don't run ahead or attack too early you shouldn't drag the group down either. Don't forget to use take the lead in the dungeon to keep up if you're falling behind. You can run the daily more than once per day and in fact I highly encourage it for your first few times to get all the money you need. You should get around 30k from a daily run with the quest, but your first run you will need to gift the gear to get favour with the npcs, so realistically you'll probably need to do about 3 or 4 runs to get all the favour and money you need for this. You will also get some decent exp and you might want to have a think about your midgame build before you do these runs so you can start gaining exp in that immediately. If you got unlucky and dark chapel is the daily for that day, then don't despair, you can start levelling your skills by killing animals, to get your skinning up or you can go back to the sewers to work on your myconic. Other useful activities are levelling goblinese in the goblin dungeon if you're a slightly higher level or starting to work on surveying. Surveying should only be done when you have gotten your movement speed first. Keep an eye out in buy used tabs of NPCs for ring of jauntry traipsing or amulet of the rugged traveller, as these provide movement speed boosts.

What should you play in mid and possibly late game? Well it's perhaps easier to start with the skills that you shouldn't play at all:

• Knife fighting is just weak. Additionally it is poor solo as your most important abilities do only half damage if the target is focused on you. It is possible to get around this with a pet or mez, but pet skills are generally quite weak too at the moment. Some end game players can viably play this, but it requires significant investment in consumables and gear and only works effectively in groups. Solo mobs do not have enough health for DoT abilities to be good.
  
• Shield has little offensive ability and it's defensive abilities are much better against elites than normal mobs, making it ineffective for soloing. Some players will use it for movement speed or fire shield, but fire shield is just a weak version of privacy field for warden or molten veins for fire magic and offers very little actual utility. For movement speed, battle chemistry provides the same but is more useful in combat. It is a good group tanking skill, but not good for soloing
  
• Unarmed is another tank skill which is weak solo. It gives mostly % mitigation which isn't very helpful solo and it lacks damage too. Some niche builds at end game can make use of it to get actual good damage, but this requires significant investment in gear first. Do not use unarmed in mid game.
  
• Animal handling is another beginner trap. It is bad in the very early game since you will not have first aid levelled enough to revive your pet, resulting in multiple lengthy trips back to town if your pet dies (very likely if you are an inexperienced player). Later on that problem becomes insignificant, but aoe farming becomes much more important later on in the game too, which animal handling severely lacks.
  
• Druid is another grouping skill. Most of its best abilities such as healing sanctuary and rotskin only show their full effects in groups. The damage is mostly weak and relies on DoTs, which just like for knife fighting, solo mobs do not have enough hp to justify DoTs being good.
  
• Fairy magic is usable by fairies only. Fairies have harsh death mechanics which make them unfriendly to new players. If you're really good at the game then feel free to play this skill, it is very strong, but if you're not, playing this will likely make you rage quit the game.
  
• Mentalism has been made completely irrelevant by fairy magic. It is worse in every regard and you will feel like you're a complete sucker if you ever run into a fairy. Even past that, it lacks any kind of good damage and requires phrenology levelled to be even somewhat decent.
  
• Psychology is good only for the movement speed and killing strong single mobs. Killing strong single mobs in this game is close to worthless however, and aoe farming is multiple times better, something that psychology has none of. It also requires significant gear investment to be anywhere close to good as well as phrenology just like mentalism.
  
• Despite using it for a lot of the start of the guide, sword is something you will want to drop. Don't fall for the sunk cost fallacy, it performed its job well, but now you should leave it behind. You want aoe and sword just doesn't provide that. You will also notice as you get further in the game that swords damage just starts to fall behind. There's nothing worse than going all the way to end game slowly grinding with sword, just to realise you're completely outclassed in the end game dungeons AND solo farming.

Skills not recommended to play but not terrible:

• Animal forms are not recommended for new players. Multiple NPCs will only talk to humanoid players and this includes important unlock trainers like the endurance trainer Kleave, as well as multiple storage NPCs in Serbule and Kur mountains. Going animal after favouring these NPCs will make your life much much easier. Of course some like deer with druid or cow are relatively easy to switch out of, but they also limit the skills you can pair with them, and most are not strong until you make a good build at end game. If you're willing to take a risk then feel free to play a build like cow/warden, it is quite good with privacy field, but has been nerfed and cow is easy enough to switch out of that the NPCs not talking to you is not an issue. WIthin animal forms, it should be noted that pig is a healer and should not be played solo as it lacks damage. Rabbit is also incredibly weak and I believe was designed for players looking for a tougher challenge.
  
• Bard has strong aoe and seems like an excellent solo farmer. But realistically, it's damage is very weak without good gear and items like the amazing magic ring do not boost the song damage. There are also a surprising number of mobs with knockback which cancel your songs, but perhaps most importantly, to unlock past 50 you must level performance, vocabulary, poetry appreciation and flower arrangement. A steep requirement for a mediocre skill. You can play it in the late game if you want, but there are much better alternatives.
  
• Necromancy isn't terrible but there's basically nothing outstanding about it, especially when it comes to soloing. The aoes are relatively weak or long cooldown. The pets die frequently but are no longer a pain to summon at least. The only strong part is the single target damage, which isn't that good for soloing. It's at least better than the likes of unarmed, psychology or mentalism.

The skills you should play, are basically any with strong aoe or just really good single target damage:

• Fire magic is easily the best soloing skill, especially in the mid game. It has very strong aoe, ranged attacks and is cheap until lvl 50. Past lvl 50 or 60 it becomes a pain to obtain the mats, but as long as you run your dailies you can just simply buy them. Fire breath aoe mod on gloves is super important. Learnt from Velkort in Serbule.
  
• Archery has strong damage, both aoe and single target. At mid game you can justify the arrow cost and it's a great skill that pairs well with fire magic. Learnt on the island from looting the chest with the bow. Alternatively, from Elahil in Serbule.
  
• Staff pairs really well with both fire magic and archery, it offers fantastic flat mitigation making tanking mobs a breeze, but somehow still has pretty good damage too to let you kill things quickly. Learnt from Hogan in Eltibule.
  
• Ice magic is kinda like fire magic but with some more cc, potentially making it even better in some situations. Unfortunately cold was then decided to be the most resisted element, meaning you almost never get full damage and lots of mobs are straight up immune to you. Has the same downsides of fire magic with requiring expensive mats. Learnt from Landri in Kur.
  
• Hammer pairs well with archery, it has strong single target damage. It has strong aoe too but it requires mods to turn 2 of it's abilities to aoe. Learn augmentation and augment these mods wherever you can. Absolutely critical to the skill, but you'll feel op if you have them. Learnt from Agrashab in Sun Vale.
  
• Battle Chemistry is amazing. It gives you everything you need in one skill, aoe damage, mitigation using extra skin mutation, cc from freezing mist and movement speed from haste concoction. 10/10 skill for soloing and even useful in groups. The only downside is that it's quite expensive and has hefty requirements of 50 alchemy, but then additionally meditation, fishing, gardening, mycology, cooking and lore. Unarmed is required for knee spikes, but that can be ignored. Learnt from the chemist in Rahu (can be easily reached through the casino).
  
• Priest isn't a particularly good solo skill by itself, but it's big flat damage mods give great bonuses to other skills. It has fantastic single target damage too and some heals to stay alive. Bonus points for the heat it can give you in cold areas like Kur. Learnt from Gloria in Kur.

So in summary, the best solo mid game builds in this game are made from picking 2 compatible skills from the last list. Any combination of skills will work, but some will be much more effective than others if they have good synergy.

Here are some examples of builds you can pick as well as explanations for why they are good:

• Fire/staff is in my opinion the best mid game soloing build. Staff will make you practically invincible via blocking stance and deflective spin while fire magic deals all the damage through molten veins, ring of fire and aoe fire breath. If that wasn't enough, both staff and fire offer great single target damage ontop and staff even has it's own thorns damage ability via phoenix strike. The only issue with the build is a lack of movement speed. If you decide to use it in dungeons you will still perform excellently, but there are some slight to moderately better pure dps builds.
  
• Fire/battle chemistry (bc) is very similar to fire/staff, but it's a more advanced version. It has less mitigation, but better movement speed. This means you need to have better gear to achieve better damage in order to kill the mobs in time. But if you can do that then it is more efficient at the end game. Bc might be prohibitive for some people in the mid game, unless you're truly willing to abuse the game via getting carried through dailies.
  
• Hammer/bc is similar to fire/bc, hammer can basically substitute for fire in providing the damage, but unfortunately hammer cannot be paired with staff
  
• Archery/bc, archery/staff same as above builds, archery has multishot abilities for aoe and strong single target, but I would say not as effective as either hammer or fire due to the aoe damage being a bit lower and it requires arrows as consumables
  
• Hammer/archery has synergy, it is possible to mod the abilities to provide damage to nice, core or epic attacks which are shared across skills. Not as strong anymore after Citan nerfed the restorative arrow mod for buffing damage, but still a very solid combo. Has big power drain so more of an end game build than a mid game build, unless you can afford good food.
  
• Fire/archery has synergy with the fire damage mods that archery has. That buffs your fire magic damage as well as your archery damage.
  
• Ice magic can also be subbed anywhere for fire magic or even paired with fire magic itself. Ice magic offers mitigation through ice armour and tundra spikes has a nice aoe root
  
• Priest is the final skill on the list and is best paired with either fire magic or archery for synergy with the fire damage mods

The problem with staff is that you do not need the tankiness of staff in group dungeons, unless you are tanking, in which case you would want to go with a full tank build. Fire/staff is still fantastic as it easily lets you swap into fire/priest for full dps or staff/shield for full tank if you decide to specialise later on. Even if you don't, staff/fire itself will provide a lot of dps and 90% of players will have a worse build than you.

For a full list of skills based on end game dungeons check out this link:
https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2801-Ranperre-s-March-2021-Skill-Power-Index

How do you choose abilities?
There's a pretty simple general rule for picking which abilities to use for a particular skill. Generally, there might be 1 or 2 key abilities in a skill line which are always picked, then you fill the rest with whatever does the highest damage. This will be variable depending on what level you are, what the mods on your gear are etc. For example, even if at end game, a player uses ability x, if you have x at lvl 2 and y at lvl 3, y might end up being the better ability for you. You should change the abilties you use based on the damage they do. Don't worry about cooldowns, you will almost never be in the scenario where you have all 12 of your abilities on cooldown, even if you use the longest cooldown skills. Another important aspect is that you should only have 1 basic attack in total, do not use the basic attack from both skills as it is pointless. Which one you choose to use depends on which skill is doing more damage for you or which basic is more useful. Generally ranged basic attacks are much better than melee ones.

So for example, staff you will always pick blocking stance and deflective spin. These are super important mitigation buffs and the entire reason you choose staff. If you went damage only, you would be better off picking a damage only skill as that would give you better damage. You fill in the rest with the abilities that do the most damage, highest to lowest, preferring aoe over single target.

For fire magic, it would be molten veins, thorns damage is very strong and fire breath if you have the aoe mod for it. Rest is just filled with whatever provides the most damage.

Archery, the critical ones are your multishot abilities.

Hammer it is pound to slag and seismic impact with the mods to make them aoe. Hammer also has way of the hammer, which can be used before combat as a "free" buff to your damage.

In case you need some advice about what to do once you're past the early game and you've decided your build. This section is for you.

Assuming you already have all the items listed earlier in the guide (pocket gear, amazing skinning knife, upgraded autopsy kit, mount and damage ring) you will already have most of the items you will need for the mid and even end game. Most belts in this game are garbage. The only 2 worthwhile ones are shaman's rat belt for the inventory and shaman's dodging belt for 18% projectile evasion. The dodging belt is good for tanks, whilst almost everyone else can just use the inventory belt. You can get an extra mod on the belts and the one you want to aim for is accuracy which helps counter enemy evasion. Don't worry about that too much right now however, this can be rerolled later with transmutation.

There are skill and favour goals to have in mind though:

• Transmutation should be learned as soon as you reach Eltibule by doing the quest for Kalaba in Eltibule Keep. It lets you reroll mods on gear and is how you make builds at all
  
• Start industry in Serbule as soon as you can, early game it will provide bad rewards, but once you are a higher level it starts to make really nice profit. It really helps mitigate the cost or break even while training many crafting skills too.
  
• Working towards augmentation is not strictly necessary, as other players can always pull augments for you, but it is a nice quality of life for obtaining your own prisms and not needing to buy them. It requires level 25 in alchemy, blacksmithing, toolcrafting, leatherworking and tailoring
  
• Blacksmithing itself requires level 25 in armour patching, so make sure to level that as soon as possible
  
• Goblinese is an incredibly important skill, it is required to talk to many NPC vendors, as well as learn toolcrafting, which is necessary for augmentation. It is trained by reading the cards dropped from killing goblins.
  
• Level riding as much as possible when you reach a new zone. Levelling riding lets you use better quality equipment (buy it from players) which lets you move faster and store more.
  
• Myconic is important to unlock the myconian cave dungeon. You need level 8 to unlock the dungeon, but there is an end game level 85 dungeon which requires level 15 in the skill. Myconian cave is a good early game money maker through the heartshrooms which can be bartered with Yagreet in Sun Vale for enchanted holly seeds, which can then be bartered again for potions worth 250 each. Heartshrooms are a good favour item and can be sold themselves to players for a good amount of money, as well as the mushroom and strange dirt drops in the myconian cave.
  
• First aid is critical for learning rez and curing bones. Rez is practically required in late game dungeons, but getting the first aid level and favour requirement can be challenging.
  
• Meditation is a fantastic auxiliary skill that should be levelled relatively early on. It has specific meditations such as meditation 39 which provides 20% fire resistance. Some of these meditations are considered almost required for end game content, but helps even with mid game content such as Dark Chapel.
  
• Endurance will naturally level as you take armour damage in combat, but it is important to not over kite mobs, if you're not taking damage, you're not levelling endurance and endurance adds hard requirements to use certain pieces of gear. It also gives you faster armour regeneration and extra inventory space.
  
• Get a mystic saddlebag, it lets you remotely store items in it which is very useful during dungeon runs.
  
• Unlock your alternate bind for teleportation at level 27, you use each pad once, either bind or teleport from it
  
• Buy a bunch of amethysts, teleportation is great, use it.
  
• Unlock the item summoning ability from Irkima in the casino for 10k. It's a great quality of life
  
• Unlock stowing items to storage ability from completing Wintria Irasce's quest in Rahu. This, combined with the mount saddlebag can save you long runs across the zone to store items. As long as you have at least 1 of a stackable item in storage in the zone, you can simply pop your head out of the dungeon for a second, stow your items and head straight back in for efficient farming
  
• Good NPCs to favour first are any storage NPCs or NPCs with a shop, as well as NPCs that teach you the skills you need for your build. So for example, Joeh is fantastic to favour in Serbule, he buys equipment and has storage. The skin vendors (primarily Kleave in Eltibule and Sirine in Rahu) are also great choices in early to mid game. SIrine offers storage as well as her shop.
  
• You can buy more slots of council storage and the first few are very cheap. Recommended to buy at least 5 - 10 extra slots

End game goals:

• Carpentry to make the highest level storage crate, so you can extend dungeon runs and carry more loot
  
• Play every event you can to earn live event credits. These can be spent on unlocking small box of space and vendor fox in a box which provide additional storage and a portable vendor respectively, allowing you to make more money in dungeons
  
• Try to make the best speed loadout you can. Depends if you play animal form or not, but fire magic, battle chemistry, shield and psychology offer the best movement speed for humans. For animal forms it is usually the animal form plus psychology. This is an end game goal because mounts will cover you most of the time, this is for use in dungeons.
  
• If you use bc, you can make a 2nd set of gear for modding your mutations. That way you can get the fully modded mutation but then switch to your battle gear to not limit your damage
  
• Specialise a group build as well as a solo build. Probably go for the solo build first, as it can still be used in groups, but making the group build later may give you some optimisation
  
• Favour every equipment vendor to soul mates. Frequent dungeon runs at max level can easily empty out most of the vendors in the game and is a great way to make money. They are the most important vendors at max level.
  
• Favour every storage NPC to soul mates. Storage is critical for keeping everything you need for levelling skills, gear for builds etc.
  
• Level gourmand as much as you can so you can use the highest level food possible (cheese for dps and healers, cooked meals for tanks)
  
• Make a full max-enchanted yellow build, augmented with rerolled mods. You can use Gorgon Explorer[gorgonexplorer.com] to plan builds. This is not really necessary whatsoever. Max-enchanted purples are much more highly recommended as they are far more economical and not much worse. But it's a fun end game goal to make a full yellow build.

• You can plan builds using https://gorgonexplorer.com/
  
• Daily runs are your key to everything. Start doing them as early as possible. Your alternative if you really don't want to, is just aoe farming as many skins as you possibly can.
  
• Level dying to 10 for extra free teleports
  
• Right click on an item and click more info. It's your friend and lets you know which NPC likes that item as a gift, what recipes it is used in and where you have it stored
  
• Unlock the quality of life upgrades such as storage stowing and item summoning
  
• Gems or equipment are usually the best things to favour NPCs with. Just buy gems from the player shops for super cheap (currently going for as low as 120 each but worthwhile even if they are 250 or 300 each) or use gear from daily runs
  
• Join a guild. If the guild does guild quests you earn guild points which can be exchanged for money, new players aren't expected to contribute much to guild quests so this can essentially be free money. Even if the guild doesn't do quests, it's still beneficial to get groups and information/help
  
• If you need help, just ask. Plenty of people are willing to help you get to certain NPCs, or will portal you to Kur, remove boss curses, cure bones etc.
  
• Don't be afraid to switch up your build. You might feel like you're wasting potentially 10s of hours by switching skills, but in truth you still have gained potentially bonus levels from levelling that skill and your second skill will be MUCH quicker once you know what you're doing or if you choose to power level with a higher level skill
  
• Train augmentation and transmutation early, they are essential at higher levels
  
• Learn rez as soon as possible, hold onto any silver you get for favouring Yagreet
  
• Just buy food from the player shops. Cooking and cheesemaking are huge endeavours which don't really pay off until you're right at the end game. Starting off you may want to cook some yourself, but there is free snacking bread available in the Goblin Dungeon and Kur Inn which works fine as an early game snack. There is also stew in the Goblin Dungeon you can drink from for a free meal. Other than that you can buy from NPC used tabs, but player shops can actually be cheaper.
  
• Don't be afraid to experiment, even if I said you shouldn't do certain skills, that's because this is a guide aimed for mid level solo builds. Skills like shield, bard, druid etc. all shine a lot better in groups