This is a guide to an easy early game. By the end of it, you will have quite a few levels on you, the ability to make a ridiculous amount of money and several hidden achievements. I will avoid as many spoilers as possible but there will be at least a few due to the nature of needing quest rewards for optimal results.

I hope everyone finds this guide helpful and please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions to improve the guide.

• Your choices here don't actually matter much but I recommend choosing "I was seeking an ancient site of worship" and "...Yes, I study healing magic" as this will give you the best results the fastest.
  
  • This gives you the Blood Transfusion Spell which will help a lot with the Hidden Achievement at the end of the tutorial.
• Explore the dungeon thoroughly.
  
  • You should find an Origin Potion, a Blood Transfusion Spell, and a few quests.
    
  • Don't cook any food or make any potions. The ingredients will be more useful when you've got some levels on you.
    
  • You can leave behind most armor/weapons as they are heavy and not actually worth a lot. Carry as much as you feel like but hold onto any potions, ingredients, food, spells, jewelry, and other valuables that are low on weight.
    
  • There are a lot of nooks and cranny's so you'll probably miss something your first time through. It's not a big deal so long as you get the Origin Potion, Blood Transfusion Spell and the quests.
• Optional Hidden Achievement + Items required for another Optional Hidden Achievement: Kill your savior, Caradoc - Rewards Hidden Achievement, gear needed for another Hidden Achievement and several levels.
  
  • Dual Wielding Blood Transfusion and building up bleed stacks makes him easier. Just don't let the stacks run out.
    
  • It's possible to get him stuck on the boat to bleed him more easily
    
  • If you don't mind missing some dialogue, you can kill him the first time you meet him instead of at the boat.
  
  
• Don't level just yet, as I'll explain it in the section below.
  
• Leave the tutorial once you've finished exploring.
  
  
  

There are a few different ways to build at the start. You can either go full combat to make leveling easier, but it will cost you an Origin Potion to respec for money making, or you can go full crafting to be prepared for money making and at most need a single Origin Potion to respec to combat. I recommend either Crafter or Full Practicality since Origin Potions are limited, but it's your choice.

For every build, there is an optional couple of skills to get.

• Spirituality > General & Buffs > Mana Battery > Invigorating Energy > Necrotic Empowerment

The reason to get this is because you will eventually end up with dozens of large corpses in your way and these corpses can block your spells and slow down your ability to kill it. You don't need this, which is why I don't put it in the builds, but know that your screen will end up looking like this.



And you'll have to cast your spells through it.

Will be the hardest/slowest during the leveling process, but will get you started money making as quickly as possible while saving an Origin Potion. I recommend this options if you want to get a quick bunch of money so that you purchase every recipe, ingredient, relic, spell, unique equipment, etc... that you come across without worrying about running out of money. You will only need to grind to 14 to do this build but a higher level increases your profits by a little bit each level.

• Put every Attribute into Practicality
  
• Use your Skill Points in the following order:
  
  • Practicality > Crafting & Trading > Mercantile Skills x4 > Side Dish Mastery x3 > Optimization Methods > Reusable Resources > Crafty > Mobile Blacksmith > Master Craftsman > Lightweight Alloys

Will be slightly harder/slower killing things during the leveling process, but will save you an Origin Potion so that you can have it for later use if you decide you want to use a different build. Note that you will need to reach level 25 for everything I recommend and it takes ~30 minutes to reach 15 with this build. I recommend it if you're really wanting to grind out levels right from the start before doing any quests. This can be beneficial if you want to use strong items early or use specific dialogue options when talking to people.

• Put every Attribute Point into Practicality.
  
• Use your Skill Points in the following order:
  
  • Spirituality > General & Buffs > Mana Battery x5
    
  • Practicality > Statuses > Exploitation of Afflictions x1 > Potent Poisons x3 > Exploitation of Afflictions x2
    
  • Practicality > Crafting & Trading > Mercantile Skills x4 > Side Dish Mastery x3 > Optimization Methods > Reusable Resources > Crafty > Mobile Blacksmith > Master Craftsman > Lightweight Alloys

Will make killing things easier/faster during the leveling process, but you'll have to spend 2 Origin Potions instead of 1 once you get to the money making step. I recommend this build if you just want to level right now and plan to do a lot of questing and level the natural way before going into the money making method. You can use this to get into a good spot for the build you actually want to run and not feel stuck using magic for combat.

• Put your attributes into whatever you want.
  
• Use your Skill Points in the following order:
  
  • Spirituality > General & Buffs > Mana Battery x5
    
  • Anything you want.

Will make killing things easiest/fastest during the leveling process, but you'll have to spend 2 Origin Potions instead of 1 in order to change your build for money making and then back to your normal build. I recommend this option for pure leveling and/or if you want a magic build for questing for a while before money making.

• Put the first 10 Attribute Points into Spirituality
  
• Put any remaining Attribute Points into whatever you want for your build, more Spirituality will do more damage, regen mana faster and give more mana to work with.
  
• Use your Skill Points in the following order:
  
  • Spirituality > General & Buffs > Mana Battery x5 > Power in Swiftness
    
  • Practicality > Statuses > Exploitation of Afflictions x1 > Potent Poisons x3 > Exploitation of Afflictions x2
    
  • Spirituality > Combat > Arcane Teachings x5

• From the beach, head directly West and go into the middle of the lake of blood. Interact with the statue for a Blood Transfusion Spell if you didn't start with one or somehow missed the other.
  
  
• Continue West to the town and stash anything you're not using. Make sure to keep x2 Blood Transfusion Spells equipped.
  
  • For a Hidden Achievement: Go to the gate but don't talk to the gatekeeper. Climb the rocks to the North and the West to get into the town and talk with the Quartermaster.
    
  • Things like arrows, potions and ingredients may say they don't weigh anything, but they actually do so keeping a lot on you will weight you down. Keep it in your stash until you plan to use it.
• Continue far north to this location to grab the Tomb of the Good Druid Fast Travel.
  
  
• Optional: Collect and equip the Blood Ring from this chest in this location. Note that you will need to jump up onto the stone henge to grab it.
  
  
  
• Go West to find a Croakmaw here and kill it with Blood Transfusion stacking.
  
  
• Once killed, place a campfire and wait 24 hours to kill it again.
  
  • If possible, wait until 22:00 first so that night time starts This will give you 350xp extra because night give 50% additional experience.
• Repeat until satisfied with levels. It will take approximately 30 minutes to reach level 15 as an example.

Now to finally make money. You'll make plenty just from having all of your points in Practicality but if you have all the skills as well then you'll make a lot more a lot faster.

First off, you'll need to respec into the Crafting build from the leveling section:

• Put every Attribute into Practicality
  
• Use your Skill Points in the following order:
  
  • Practicality > Crafting & Trading > Mercantile Skills x4 > Side Dish Mastery x3 > Optimization Methods > Reusable Resources > Crafty > Mobile Blacksmith > Master Craftsman > Lightweight Alloys

There are a few vendors you'll want to go to every day. Some are more important than others to visit.
Important

• Ruairc in the Kitchen and Jann in Jann's Quarters.
  
  • They are both in buildings with the blue tents across from the Quartermaster and nearby the Stash.
    
  • You'll buy all the ingredients from Ruairc every day. You can cook next to him and sell the food to him.
    
  • You'll buy all the recipes from Jann and then all of the ingredients from him every day. You can make the potions in his house and sell the potions to him. You'll probably want to Stash your Origin Potions so you don't accidentally sell them. Eventually you'll buy Jann's Origin Potion.

Optional

• Osbryht the blacksmith on the South side of the keep.
  
  • You'll want to buy all of the Leather from him every day. You can buy the recipes and the ore from him as well but I don't recommend crafting with them right now since they don't get restocked every day. The wood isn't worth the price and neither are the feathers.
• Hefin the fishmonger in The Village south-west of the keep. He is at the blue tent on the beach.
  
  • You'll want to buy all of the ingredients from him every day. He doesn't have as much as Ruairc but still has a decent amount.
• Ron the innkeeper in The Village south-west of the keep. He is in Ron's Tavern.
  
  • You'll want to buy all the ingredients from him every day, or at least every time you run out of alcohol while making potions.

You'll get your potion recipes from Jann and the tutorial but you don't have to buy cooking recipes in order to learn them. Just enter cooking, put the ingredient in and cook to learn the recipe. Here is a list of the cooking recipes you'll want to learn. I also recommend cooking them in this order to avoid running out of some ingredients too early.

• Cooked Fruits - 1 fruit of any kind
  
• Cooked Vegetable - 1 vegetable of any kind
  
• Cooked Meat - 1 meat of any kind (I recommend trying to save the Wyrdmeat for potions but it's not necessary if you find it too much of a hassle)
  
• Cooked Seafood - 1 seafood of any kind
  
• Oatmeal - 1 Oats
  
• Cheese Pie - 1 Flour, 1 Butter, and 1 Cheese
  
• Custard - 1 Milk, 1 Egg, and 1 Honey
  
• Noodles - 1 Flour, and 1 Egg

For fastest money, just stick to Ruairc and Jann as you can always just rest repeatedly later if you really want the Leather from Osbryht or the alcohol from Ron. The fish from Hefin is mostly good for if you want a bunch of Fish Oil.

Optional: You can sell all of your Wyrdmeat before starting to get a big gold boost. You won't make as much money by cooking it as you would selling it. You can still cook it for levels of course, but you'll be sacrificing a little money to do so.

• Start by purchasing all of Ruairc's ingredients, cooking on his stove and selling the results to him.
  
• Next go across the street to buy all of Jann's ingredients, turn them into potions and sell the results to him.
  
• Optional Steps:
  
  • Visit Osbryht and buy his Leather on the way to the fast travel point.
    
  • Fast Travel to The Village and buy all of Hefin's ingredients.
    
  • Visit Ron and buy all his ingredients as well.
    
  • Fast Travel back to The Horns of the South keep.
• Make a campfire and Rest for 24 hours
  
• Repeat
  
• Optional: Once you have done a few roations, you can do multiple rotations of buying and resting before crafting and selling to save some time.
  
  • Patch Note: After Patch 1.04 this is even more important as the shops do not stock every item every day anymore, so multiple days worth of ingredients will be needed to make all the recipes.

Your exact results will vary by level but even with just the skills at level 14, you'll make anywhere from 2500-5000 gold each rotation and you will slowly increase the gold earned as you raise your Cooking and Alchemy levels. Each rotation takes about 1 minute once you have enough money to just buy and rest several times before crafting and selling. This results in anywhere from 150k to 300k gold per hour.

Most looking to make money have seen the Cheese method and you may be wondering why I didn't use it in the guide? It's because it's fun but inefficient. I'll show the math.

• 1 Summon = 20 Cheese
  
• Cast Time to Cheese = 8 Seconds
  
• 60 / 8 * 20 = 150 Cheese per minute
  
• 1 Cheese Ball = 3 Cheese
  
• 1 Cheese Ball = 18 Gold Base(at 100% Sell)
  
• 150 Cheese / 3 Cheese * 18 Gold = 900 Gold

Only 900 Gold and that is without adding in Cooking time so it isn't even half of what buying ingredients is. There are some variables of course, such as saving 1 Cheese 50% of the time, but you get that same bonus with the single ingredient recipes which just makes this method terrible by comparison.

It's fun, but I don't recommend it for actual money making.

I hope everyone finds this guide helpful and if you have any questions or any ideas to improve the guide, please let me know.