With limited info available and a very quiet Discord I thought it might help some people with some very basic game direction
This guide will have little information on builds since I don't have the experience yet but I will drop down what little I know


Lets start with Gems
This game is relatively f2p friendly if you are prepared to put in the work.

If you are lucky you will have started playing when there is a valid coupon on offer, the dev's are quite active and seem to be fairly generous when the game has any issue.
Beyond that, gems are not too difficult to acquire provided you take gem perks in an appropriate manner.
Daily quests offer a range of gem rewards between 20-40 total per day.

First purchase no question should be for a Dragon Tooth Artifact.

While ignoring any additional bag space purchase will be aggravating to say the least it is still the best course as this single Artifact will net you many more gems via map quests and achievements.
Just craft your materials to higher tiers to condense your bags for a while.
To this end I might suggest a Novice Pack purchase for only a few dollars although you may still need to grind some out.

A Dragon Tooth will get you through to Tier 3 with only very basic stat optimization:
your chosen spec attribute plus a little VIT for hp pool.

Total stats acquired by leveling are comparatively small to gear and only offer around 5% total stats by current level cap at 150 so put all of your stats into a single primary stat.
Putting all of your points into VIT is not a terrible choice since healing and healing potions are based on your total Hp pool. Some shields as well.

Bare in mind that your damage and hp will increase just by gaining levels, that is before you spend any attribute points.
This value is notably less in 450 gears so use these stats to get you a little deeper early game.
If you make a mistake no biggie, since your total level rewarded stats don't offer all that much and you can acquire a free stat reset potion simply from login rewards.

After finally purchasing a couple of bags its now worth looking at the Extended Inventory Slots Artifact.
This Artifact is arguably more important than having 4 or even 5 bags total.

If you decide to purchase Automatic Execution artifacts i would advise to start with 4 and work your way backwards to 3 then 2 unless your planning to buy all of them outright.
There is a much better auto perk available via Magical Forge with the Antique set but it will take you some time to grind it out. Most important of note is a 2 piece set will activate skill slot 1, and the 4 set bonus will activate skill 2 etc.. getting the 8 set bonus is a lengthy grind.


As for determining your spec I will offer only a couple of tips, this is not an area i can help with significantly
Most people tend to agree that a STR build offers the most damage, since I have not toyed with a STR build i cannot say, however STR builds seem to be generally centred around the passive skill Berserk in the warrior branch of the Berserk tree.
I have not seen a single build for an INT focused spec so there seems to be no basis for comparison
I went with DEX believing it would be the best choice for an AFK build, I have since discovered they are all eventually AFK builds so its up to you.
At this point with limited knowledge, i believe a VIT based build is not viable since companions do not crit and therefore you will struggle on boss enrage timers and while there are enemy hp% based skills available they have a very high cd although there -may- be enough workarounds for this to still be ok.
*a note on skill points. you will not use all of your skill points on your focused spec, in fact you may only use around a third (DEX build). so you have some wiggle room here if you decide to mess around. when you wall i almost guarantee it will be a result of low ilvls and not enough in your primary stat and little to do with skill point distribution, thats not so say go nuts but theres certainly room for testing and mistakes

With a Dragon Tooth artifact you will clear a number of maps with almost no opposition and so when you finally wall you are likely to feel at a loss for direction.
Hopefully you are in Tier 3 maps by this stage and so your goal will be to set your self up for some reasonably efficient crafting.

First you need to set up an efficient farm.
This will net you a very basic amount of materials, a good number of Stage Keys and more importantly, Challenge Keys
Challenge Keys are where its at so lets look at how to get plenty

The most basic map for this is Tier 1 Mine or Mine Field
My preference is Mine Field as your bags will stay much cleaner.
It is worth noting at this point, that the material rewards offered on the stage select screen are either wrong or misleading. Monster Cores can still be gathered from trash mobs at a low chance. you can check this simply by tracking your current total cores. If you want to try for extra cores here grab the Farmer passive skill from the ranger skill tree but honestly the rates are so low you really wont miss anything substantial.
Its possible to do this on Normal difficulty i guess but you may not get keys and i have not tested it.

You will need at least 10% Damage penetration, preferably more and depending on your gear you may be ready for additional Max.Multiple Kills
*You must have both for the following mechanic to apply~

With some stats in each you will clear stages much faster as you can SKIP THE DELAY between mob kills.
Penetrating Damage and Max.Multi are only useful in farming low Tier maps. They are no good for progression fights.

You start the game with 2 Max.Multiple Kills so at best you can kill 2 mobs with essentially one hit although the mechanic does not quite work instantly, in the simplest terms - it does
Penetrating Damage will appear in white digits onscreen so you can compare your carry over damage to decide if you need better ilvls or more pen, or more multi kill
If you can kill a second mob with the carry over damage (from pen) then its time to look at more multi kill.
Do this before you add more Penetrate and you start to see for yourself how the mechanic functions
With just a little work you can kill 5-6 mobs with a single hit and likely clear T1 Mine in maybe 10secs
This is optimal for farming Challenge Keys and will likely require significant hours of afk farming, preferably overnight.

Challenge Keys are hands down the single best place for crafting mats and offer Monster Cores at a low chance at even the lowest brackets.
The higher you auto the bigger the potential returns so getting your first 450 item with a decent stat roll is highly desirable.
If a few keys are destroyed dont worry but in general try not to advance any keys higher than you can safely auto. Keeping a large stockpile of advanced keys are going to save you some time later and levels will randomly be acquired within a few stages of your auto stop so try to keep them neat in your bags as they can get messy very fast.
Later, as you attempt to auto-replay high level stacks, just shift your level 1 keys to back of you pack.

Stage Keys offer various rewards but i mainly use these for chests and hopefully some set items which you can add to your Magical Forge for permanent set bonus buffs. At Tier 3 there may also still be some gear upgrades for you.
As well as epics, any chest that offers ilvl 100 or better items has the potential to give a legendary item and each legendary item has a 1 in 10 chance to proc a Titan reward instead.
Needless to say you will need to open a massive amount of chests to get anywhere with this method but with the goal of crafting in mind you will acquire a vast amounts anyway.

This is a tough one.

There are certainly some set perks that you will be dying for but i would still suggest your best option is to hold out and try to acquire as many set bonuses from chests as you can. Depending on your progression this may not even be optional yet.

If you managed to get a decent farm going you should be netting a pretty decent stack of stage keys. You really want to be a position to clear these quickly and if you cant then perhaps your best bet is to focus on better gear. By gaining and clearing Stage Keys rapidly your overall gains will be much better.
Multi-killing Stage Keys is ideal.

If chest drops are not giving you what you need, you can try focused crafting. That is, crafting for a specific slot.
As noted in Discord, the most efficient crafting brackets are:
Rare set - ilvl 30 crafts (blue)
Epic sets - ilvl 50 crafts (purple)
Titan sets - ilvl 100 crafts (orange crafts w/ 1in10 chance teal results)
Results do not seem to change the frequency regardless of ilvl so craft the cheapest brackets.
In most cases, set bonuses are not worth equipping as they prevent any possible unique effects.

Some rewards that are worth looking for:

Ignore any other stat on this aside from Penetrating Damage
You can make up stats on your other gear slots. Even the ilvl is not relevant since the perk is just too good.
Switch them in for farming. Use something else for progression.



Again, while stats are nice to have the only important part of this item is the bonus multi kills.
This item can be upgraded once more for even more bonus kills.
This weapon can be farmed in map stage Graveyard


*on a side note, weapon damage seems to be of little value, stay stat focused and use a 1hand + shield if its good for you.
However there are some very notable 2Hand options
2H weapons (blue) that offer 10% Str Dex Int or Vit can be upgraded in the magical forge to maximum of 50% in said stat. these are powerful and can be farmed directly in the relevant map stage.
There is also an equivalent unique stat on head gear at 50% each.
Additionally there are stat % bonuses on various other slots for different builds.
Str 30% Boots (epic only?)
Dex 30% Shoulders (epic only?)
Int 50% iirc legendary rings
Vit 30% gloves (epic) and rings 50% legendary
Even at only 30% increase to your main stat it easily out weighs the few points you will miss from using an epic over a higher tier, just make sure your ilvl is nice and high also.




Essential for leveling companions, beyond that gold is of little use.
There is also an Epic variation with 60% gold per stack. Either is fine and again ignore its stats and ilvl. It is useful for a specific purpose so make sure you grab an alternative when possible.
I would suggest at this point to keep this item no matter where you are at since the next big patch includes new companions and an ascension system(?)

End Game:
(should still be mostly valid post patch 0.18.0 with 550 gear becoming the highest craftables)

So you're in 450 gears, got some pretty neat uniques and you must have worked pretty hard to get here but you still cant beat all of T8..

Well now your challenge keys are going to become really important so i hope you set an auto stop cap and saved a few.
Quite a few

If you thought you did a hard grind before guess what?
Now your only source of gear comes from challenge key chests.

From my observations so far Challenge Key chests can randomly offer gear up to 100ilv's higher than the ilv of the chests.
That means a ilv400 chests -may- drop ilv500's and -may- even drop an epic grade or legendary - woot.
In 450 gears you may get access to a few 450 chests but mostly they will come lower.

In its current state i feel this will be a hard wall for most people and likely for me as well.
Having to gear from random chests i have no issue with, but in order to get high level chests you will also accumulate many low level useless chests and the only way to eliminate these is to open them and sell the contents. Its extremely tedious and time consuming and completely negates AFK playstyle.
It is an extremely intense dynamic that mostly consists pointless clicking.

Given the low probability of actually acquiring a item of use, you will need to process a significant amount of chests. Significant.

With the update 0.18.0 comes the ability to reforge and batch open chests, hopefully that may alleviate this issue to some degree but i feel the problem will still exist.
Which is a shame for those of you who have come so far

more drafting and additional information to be added