Hello, little ones!

This guide aims to serve as your introduction to the realm of ATLYSS and as a reference should you need it in the future. We'll go over some basics together to get you started and establish your place in this shattered world.

Your time has not yet come, little one. Your assistance is needed for this realm to be restored.


The first thing we will discuss is the Character Select screen. This is where you'll create your character by deciding their species and initial stats. There are 5 species to choose from all with their own unique skills. Once you select your species, you will not be able to change it for that character.

Imps
Imps are an aquatic species of forsaken demons who, of their own volition, had no free will and followed orders from those who summoned them. Imps start with the Siphon Leech skill, which deals initial damage on hit and siphons health from the hit enemy, healing the caster.

Poons
Poons are ancient dryads from the Deep Forest who've adapted to be agile and cunning. Poons have the Leg Up skill to increase their movement speed and slightly boost evasion for a small amount of time, most useful for diving in and out of combat with ease.

Kubolds
Kubolds are a reptilian species hailing from a secluded desert, they are naturals when it comes to magic and start with the Alacrity skill. Upon using Alacrity, they will gain the "clearcast" status and the next skill/spell cast will not cost any mana, stamina, or health.

Byrdles

Byrdles are dexterous avian creatures in search of their eternal destiny. Their starting skill is Inner Focus which guarantees your next attack is a critical strike, no matter the weapon or skill used.

Changs

Last but certainly not least, Changs are rodent-esque creatures from a mysterious yet advanced civilization. Their Sturdy skill gives you immunity to knockback and automatically parries incoming melee attacks.

You will start with 6 stat points that can be allocated into 4 different stats. Strength will increase your attack damage with weapons like swords/hammers and your max stamina (used for blocking). Mind will increase your magic damage with spells and your max mana. Dexterity will increase your dexterity damage (used with bows/daggers), attack crit chance, and magic crit chance. Vitality will increase your max health. These can all be reallocated later (see The Adventure Begins section).

Once you're finished customizing your character, allocating their stat points, and giving them a name, all that's left to do is select them and hop in!

A plea has been made, your soul and its strength are needed, before they are lost forever.


After a strange summoning, you will be dropped into Sanctum, seemingly the world's last bastion of peace. Here is your place of rest and your new home, it's now time to take your first steps into ATLYSS!



Firstly, we should visit the large and slightly ominous tower straight ahead of us to begin our journey. Entering the tower, you'll see the first signs of life in this world: Angela!




Angela Flux is the Mystic Guardian of Sanctum who seems to have been the one who called us to this place. She appears surprised their summoning had worked, but is thankful nonetheless.

Talking to her will grant you your first quest: A Warm Welcome! The level next to a quest is the recommended level you should be to take on said quest. You'll also see a description of the quest, it's completion requirements, and what you'll receive for completing it.

At Angela's request, we should explore around Sanctum to get our bearings. The large structure with glowing blue circles in the middle of Angela's tower is the World Portal. This can be used to warp to and from various waypoints in the world once unlocked. If you wish to safely return to Sanctum, you could use the waypoint portals scattered throughout the world or alternatively use your Recall spell with the G key by default. We will go more in depth into skills later, but keep the Recall skill in mind as it will be your main way of travelling back to Sanctum, lest you intend to make the trip by walking all the way back or retracing your steps to an activated waypoint.




This is where Sally and her pet mimic, Spike, reside. Sally will supply you with adequate gear and consumables, acting as your primary source of buying basic equipment and selling unwanted gear or items you find along the way.

Spike the mimic acts as your living storage for any and all items. Items you store with Spike will persist between different characters, so if there's an item you think would be best equipped on a different character, Spike will help you transfer it to them! (Don't worry, he doesn't bite).


Sally's inventory will change as you progress through your adventure and they're always willing to buy shiny things off you! She will also have a few quests for you to do here and there as you explore, maybe they'll figure out a use for all the trade items you'll be getting?

If you accidentally sell an item or have second thoughts, don't worry! Sally has a buy-back feature that will keep your sold items for 2 minutes and can be bought back, albeit at a mark-up. After 2 minutes, the items will be recycled and gone forever.

There are a few other shops who are selling rare and unique items, but it's up to you to find them. Some harder-to-find merchants will only relinquish their items for tokens earned by defeating tough opponents...

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Enok, the Fighter Guardian, resides here. He's an intense Poon fighter who will shed more light on combat abilities such as parrying and the Fighter class, one of the three class options we will go over together later. He also will supply you with a variety of quests involving defeating different enemies in field zones or dungeons.

Try selecting "I would like to know..." when talking to him and ask him about Parrying and Resistances. Parrying is an essential skill in ensuring your survival out in the wild, you'll get a moment to practice parrying on real enemies soon.

As Enok will confirm, each enemy has their own elemental type and takes less damage of their own elemental type and more damage of another type. You won't need to worry much about these elements yet, but it will be useful knowledge to have when deciding which gear you'll want to equip later down the line.

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Finally, we have the Gateway next to Angela's tower. This is the portal that will take us out of Sanctum and into the outside world, full of danger and adventure.


There are also two training dummies to test your skills and might against, I recommend swinging your weapon at them a couple times to get used to how the weapons handle. When you're on the ground, weapons have a basic swing, but when jumping you'll perform a jump attack (excluding scepters/staves).




You can click the middle mouse button to target a specific enemy or cycle through targets, perfect for focusing on a specific enemy in a group. Give it a try on the practice dummies and get a feel for it!



When facing or targeting an enemy you can see their health at the top of your screen along with their level, physical and magic defense, and elemental type.

This symbol displays an enemy's level. The higher the level, the stronger the enemy. Enemies that are much higher level than you have a high chance of blocking your attacks.

This gray shield icon represents physical defense and determines how much physical damage is taken by your attacks.

Similarly, this blue shield icon is a creature's magic defense. This determines the severity of magic damage taken.

After exploring Sanctum and getting acquainted with its inhabitants, check back in with Angela to complete their quest. You can track up to 5 quests at a time, which will be shown in the top right of your screen. Angela's quest will reward you with a small amount of crowns and a newfold halo to get you started.

Angela, Sally, and Enok will intermittently provide you new quests and challenges to complete throughout your time here. Quests to progress the story will be colored blue and attuning new sigils will open new areas to traverse. While exploring you may meet others that will also offer you quests, though if you're not sure where to go or what you should be doing, check in with Angela!

After completing A Warm Welcome, the Gateway portal will be opened. Feel free to accept the quests Sally and Enok have to offer if you wish, however to progress you will need to accept the Communing Catacombs quest from Angela. When you've accepted the quest and finished your business in Sanctum, step into the Gateway we visited earlier and enter the small blue portal to take your first steps into the Outer Sanctum Field Zone.

Field Zones are areas where you can explore, engage enemies, and find occasional loot. Your first enemy encountered depends on the time of day, if trekking during the day you'll encounter the fearsome Slime.


These deceptively cute creatures use their ears to attack and are surprisingly sharp, if they group up on you they can be trouble. Remember your training with your weapon on the practice dummies and Enok's tips on parrying and you should be able to dispatch them without much issue.


If venturing out in the night, you may encounter the ghostly Wisps instead. Wisps are debilitating creatures of the night and can be dangerous when paired with other creeps. If one strikes you, it might inflict Hex. This status condition will decrease your power stats, be wary if afflicted.


Slimes are Normal type and do not have any elemental strengths or weaknesses, denoted by this symbol next to their health bar.

Wisps on the other hand are Shadow type. They will take less damage from Shadow and more damage from Holy.

Enemies will have varying lengths of wind-up and may turn a bright purple or orange color before attacking, watch their movements and time your blocks to parry them and create an opening. You can't block or parry if you don't have any stamina. Parrying will also not use any stamina and will stun your enemy if done correctly, however if your level is much lower than your enemy's level the parry will falter, cost stamina, and the enemy will not be stunned.

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Congratulations, you should have received your first level up after defeating a few slimes/wisps! When leveling up, you may gain some skill points as well as stat points. To access the Stats page press the P key, and to access the Skills page press the K key.

You can use your stat points towards your desired stats (keep in mind the kind of weapon you're using and the damage type) and your skill points to gain the Recovery, Rock Throw, or your species' unique skill. Your species' unique skill, Recovery, and Rock Throw will be automatically added to your hotbar at the bottom of your screen when learned and can be freely assigned to whichever slot when in a safe zone. Recall is a soulbound skill that cannot be assigned, unlearned, or changed and does not take up one of your hotbar slots, so you won't need to worry about being stuck in a dungeon.












I recommend gaining Recovery and Rock Throw to heal yourself without bunpots and use an early ranged attack if you don't have a bow or staff on hand. If you want to update your stat or skill points and reallocate them later, Sally will happily sell you a Tome of Naivety or a Tome of Unlearning after you reach level 7.

It may not be immediately obvious, but both weapon slots also have their own skills hotbar. For instance, you can equip a sword and melee-focused skills as well as a bow with more ranged-focused abilities. Pressing Q will switch your currently equipped weapon and hotbar, allowing you to be more flexible in combat. Drag a skill from your skillbook to a slot in your hotbar to equip it and right click a skill in your hotbar to unequip it. Be warned that changing or removing skills can ONLY be done in a Safe Zone and cannot be done in the field or dungeons.

After reaching level 4, Angela, Sally, and Enok will offer you a skill scroll as a glimpse into their respective classes, more on that later. Skill scrolls can be used to learn extremely powerful skills and can either be purchased at specific vendors, rewarded after completing certain quests, or very rarely found in the wild. I recommend trying out each of these starter skills at least once to get a feel for the play style of each class and get used to having more than your three basic skills equipped at once.

After defeating more enemies, you may have noticed some weapons or gear say "Magical", "Lively", or something along those lines in front of their name and have a blue glow. That means the item is enchanted and has extra buffs. If you want to enchant your current gear or re-roll an enchantment, visit the quaint building to the left of the path to the barracks.



This is where Vivian stays, she's Angela's mystic apprentice and will enchant your weapons, armor, and accessories to increase their power or defensive capabilities! Enchanting requires crowns for payment, but may also include trade items necessary for the enchantment to be successful.


You should have a good supply of crowns by now to give it a try, however some items like your starting armor may not be enchanted. Hovering over an item will show you its stats and attributes, if an item is enchanted it will have a small glow to it on your person and will have blue text when hovering over it in your inventory, showing which stats it has enchanted/enhanced. Items can only be enchanted once, once they are enchanted they can only be re-rolled.


There are also strange stones that can be found in the world that transmute a weapon's damage to a different type. For instance, by default a sword's damage is based off of your strength stat. With an agility stone, that damage can be calculated based off your dexterity stat instead!


After you are comfortable with fighting slimes and wisps, you should press forward. You'll be looking for this structure with a red gem to progress through Angela's second quest, here you will find the Sanctum Catacombs entrance.

Entering the catacombs, you'll eventually come to a wide room with a structure similar to the one found in Angela's Tower. This is a waypoint that we learned about earlier, to activate it simply walk near the orange crystal in the middle. Once activated, it will glow blue and you'll be able to teleport to and from here, the World Portal in Sanctum, and other waypoints.


The next room will have the entrance to the first dungeon. Note: If you did not accept the Communing Catacombs quest from Angela, the dungeon will NOT be accessible. The portal will only open after you have accepted this quest. The purple portal will ask your destiny, giving you the option to select the first of three different tiers of the Catacombs. The Dungeon levels are the minimum and maximum levels you can expect the enemies to be in that tier as well as the minimum level you must be to enter that dungeon tier.



Just because you're able to go into the next tier dungeon doesn't mean you should! Higher level dungeons have higher level gear, but if you enter too early you may not be able to equip it yet. I recommend being at least one or two levels higher than the minimum to stand a good chance.

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Inside the Dungeon

The depths of dungeons are a vastly different place than Field Zones and treading carefully is key. You'll get a minimap of the dungeon in the top left corner of your screen to help you navigate. The dungeons shift and change every time you enter, meaning the next time you enter a dungeon you may not be going through the same rooms as you did before. They are not completely random however...



When you enter the dungeon, you may first notice another large structure with white mist. This is a respawn gate. Normally, if you get knocked out you'll release your soul. This will allow Angela to revive you and bring you back to Sanctum. In dungeons however, you will return to this respawn gate and you can decide if you want to press on further into the dungeon or Recall back to Sanctum.


The rooms you've already cleared will stay cleared, though you will have to make the trip back to where you were knocked out and resume the fight where you left off. Enemies will heal but will not reset, meaning if you defeated 3 wisps in the next room and return to it, those 3 wisps will stay defeated.


Rooms with enemies inside of them will be filled with a purple mist low to the ground. If you notice this haze before entering a room, it may be wise to use your skills to buff yourself up or heal back to full health before entering. When you enter these rooms, you won't be able to leave until either you defeat all the enemies, you are defeated, or you use Recall to return to Sanctum.






Upon clearing these rooms, you'll be rewarded with treasure in the form of a chest! There may also be chests hidden around the dungeon, be sure to keep a lookout for them.



Occasionally you may find a Dungeon key, these keys are usable only in the dungeon you're currently in and cannot be taken out of the dungeon. While they have no use with chests, they are used to unlock locked doors or passageways and can be hidden quite well, so if you're looking to completely clear out the dungeon make sure you keep your eyes peeled for anything that looks suspicious.

The sigil that we're looking for to complete the Communing Catacombs quest looks like this and will usually be located near the end of the dungeon. Do NOT leave the dungeon before attuning the sigil, otherwise you will need to complete the dungeon again to get back to the sigil.



Once the sigil is attuned, you can use the G key to cast the Recall spell or there will be a familiar-looking blue teleport circle at the end of the dungeon that will take you out of the Catacombs and back to the Outer Sanctum Field Zone. While this dungeon tier ends after you attune the sigil and make it to the blue portal, future dungeons may have a boss at the end of them. You have the option of returning to Sanctum without defeating them, but if you're feeling confident you can take on the challenge...



If you're lower level than an enemy, you can expect a tough fight. If you're higher level than an enemy and the fight still seems too tough, check the level of your gear and weapons. Don't forget you can enchant your equipment!

After attuning the sigil in the Catacombs, you are now completely open to exploring, completing quests, dungeon-delving, and leveling up as you go from here, but why do you still show up as "Novice" in the character select screen and why are they called "general skills" you ask? That's because once you reach level 10, you'll unlock classes!



There are 3 classes you can become: Mystic, Bandit, and Fighter. Each has their own play style, and generally any species can learn to excel as any class. You can speak to Angela, Sally, and Enok respectively to learn more about these classes and their specialties, but we will also go over them briefly here so you can know what to expect before making your decision!

BE WARNED: Once you select a class, you will NOT be able to change your class for this character. Notice the extra character slots in the character select screen? Those are for you to experiment with and play around with different classes on different characters. Your characters will persist from Singleplayer to Multiplayer and vice versa, so don't worry about leveling up one character and not being able to bring that progress online/offline. All classes have class-specific armor that can only be equipped by said class, for example if you're a Fighter you can't equip Mystic armor and vice versa.

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Mystic (Angela):


Mystics, like Angela, focus more on the arcane arts than physical damage and use bells, scepters, and staves as their secondary source of damage. A Mystic's main source of damage is their spells, which can be extremely powerful in the right paws/claws.


Mystics most benefit from having a large mana pool for their spells/skills, and their class armor complements having more Magic power and Magic defense over anything else. The Kubold's Alacrity skill also nullifies the magic cost of the next spell cast, which can be extremely useful for Mystics. Magileaves are used to immediately replenish some of your mana, so be sure to stock up if you decide to become a Mystic.

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Bandit (Sally):


Bandits excel in evasion, weaving in and out of combat, setting traps for enemies, and taking targets down from afar with ranged weapon skills. Sally will impart some secret knowledge for daggers and bows to teach you how to use them most effectively, however I find pairing one of those two weapons with a sword or scepter enchanted to deal dexterity damage proves useful as well.



Bandit armor and equipment focuses on boosting the Dexterity stat and evasion, similarly to the Poon's Leg Up skill. Bandits also gain more movement options such as a triple jump and turning invisible for a short time with certain skills.

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Fighter (Enok):



Fighters excel in up close combat using swords, axes, hammers, and spears. Generally, fighters will be in the middle of the fight the most, with their skills complementing being in the enemy's face and drawing attention away from other party members.





Fighters should focus on upgrading their strength stat over anything else as their weapons all depend on it. Most Fighter skills are focused on dealing large amounts of damage and bleeding/stunning opponents.

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To choose a class, talk to the person offering the class tome of your choice and read it from your consumables. Reading a class tome will bind you to that class. You will immediately gain access to that class' skills, but you will need to allocate skill points to those skills to be able to use them just as you did with your initial skills. Your skill points will be reset automatically after reading a class tome, so you don't have to worry about purchasing a Tome of Unlearning to readjust your skills. You'll also have the option of receiving scrolls for a class' preferred weapons to unlock their true potential! These scrolls will NOT lock you to a certain class and all three can be learned.

This may be the best time to rethink your skills, as I'm sure you'd rather not be throwing rocks instead of casting a devastating spell or ability. Your skillbook does not have a limit, so you needn't worry about managing which skills to learn. If you drop a class tome, it'll disappear. Speak to the person who gave you the tome and they'll hand over another. No cross-class shenanigans!

If you're looking for a relaxing activity after delving through dangerous dungeons or are eager for more ways to bolster your stats, I'd recommend giving fishing a try! You can find Sanctum's lake by heading through the rightmost portal behind Sanctum's spawn area, there you will meet our resident fisher Torta.


Torta will part with a fishing rod for 200 crowns and will offer you a variety of potions in exchange for the various fish you can catch. On top of fish selling for a decent amount of money, Torta also offers experience tomes!


You can only cast your line in dedicated fishing spots, which can be found by ripples on the water's surface. There are two spots in Sanctum's lake, but there are other fishing areas outside Sanctum as well.


Not all fishing spots are created equal, and certain spots can offer different items in addition to the fish you can normally catch. If you're lucky, you might even get some hard-to-obtain items too...

Your fishing rod can be assigned as a consumable slot and will light up when near a fishing spot. Using it will automatically cast a line into the water, no aiming required!

You can bring up the "Who" menu by pressing the O key, from here you can manage other players in the lobby. Progression is saved just like in singleplayer.


To explore a dungeon with other players, you'll need to invite them to a party or join another player's party. Loot is NOT shared so other players won't be able to take items from you. You can, of course, still drop items for each other.


Quests and money also aren't shared, however experience points are equally shared amongst party members, so don't worry about falling behind. Before venturing out, be sure to accept the same quests as your friends!

Enemies and bosses will not regenerate health as long as there is one party member alive in the room. If all party members are knocked out, all enemies in the room will be back at full health.

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Thanks for making it this far, I hope you enjoyed reading this mini-manual and that you learned something new. Good luck, and happy adventuring!


Consider also checking out the featured guide below!
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