Beginners Guide – Archeage Unchained

Archeage is a complex game with many layers for new and experienced players to explore. And unfortunately, it does an abysmal job of explaining it to players. Not from a lack of effort, but more in how they do it. I mean, really, who reads the quest dialogues these days.

Now, there is no way to include every detail of the game into a simple beginner guide, but I intend to have the most pressing information here. I’d also welcome any input in the comments below, either due to inaccuracy or stuff you feel should also be in this guide. I am also collecting useful information in a tips and tricks page.

Purchasing the game

The game is a pay-to-play game, meaning you pay once for the game and there are no subscriptions. The game monetizes itself through the sale of cosmetic items and other items. In my opinion, this version of Archeage can not be considered a pay-to-win game. It will hopefully remain that way.

Now to buy the game you need a Glyph account and to download the Glyph client. Log in to your account, go into your library and open the Archeage Unchained version. Be sure that you are looking at Archeage Unchained and not regular Archeage. The account page is a bit buggy for me. As I move from regular Archeage to Archeage Unchained it “logs me off” but if I press the sign-in button again I am immediately logged back in.

On this page, you will have three options, the Archeum-, Gold- , and Silver Unchained Packs. I have no personal opinion on which pack you should get, but you need to buy one to get access to the game.

Applying the Pack

Now, this part is a bit confusing. Once you have purchased a Pack you can log in to the game using the Glyph client. But you first need to create a character on a server before you can apply the pack you purchased to that character. You don’t need to apply it immediately, so you can wait a bit and see which character you want to apply the pack too.

Getting Started

When you log in you start on the server selection screen where you need to select the server you want to play on. Be sure about your choice here as for the moment there is no way to change servers. If you have friends playing the game you must select the same server they are playing on, otherwise, I would recommend selecting a server that is less busy. Ultimately, this is up to you and very little I can advise on.

Character Creation

Once you have selected a server you can now design the look of your character and select the starter class of your character and the starting race. There are ways to change the character’s look in-game with in-game currency, but eventually, it will likely cost credits (real money). There are also options to buy character costumes for credits.

Archeage Races and Their Special Abilities

• Nuian – 10% in combat for 10 minutes after death. REduced time to construct buildings
• Elf – Can hold their breath for 20 seconds longer underwater. 5% increased swim speed.
• Dwarf – 30% increase to mining speed. Can take Juggernaut form.
• Harani – Reduces the cooldown and cast time of Recall by 30%. 10% increase to logging and gathering speeds.
• Firran – 20% reduction to fall damage. 30% increase to climb speed.
• Warborn – 10% faster speed while carrying a trade pack. Can do Warborn transformation.

Archeage Class System

The Archeage class system is somewhat unique. There are 6 skillsets that you can choose from at the start of the game. You need to select one of those at the beginning and then choose two more skillsets from twelve other sets as you level up. You get to chose your second skillset level 7 and the third at level 15. This means that you can create 220 different combinations of skillsets for your character, which, in principle, means that you have 220 classes in the game. In practice, however, that number is way lower. Due to the stat structure of the game, players usually end up with the classic core classes: melee dps, ranged dps, magic dps, tank and healer. You can have a hybrid class, but that usually “gimps” the character as you would need separate statistics on your gear to maximize your character’s abilities.

List of the Core Classes and Which Statistic to Focus On

• Melee dps : Strength, melee damage modifiers
• Ranged dps: Agility, ranged damage modifiers
• Magic dps: Intelligence, magic damage modifiers
• Healer: Spirit, healing modifiers
• Tank: Stamina, damage reduction modifiers

List of Suggested Classes

Here is a small list of skillset combinations that have been shown to work well.

• For Melee DPS
  • Darkrunner – Battlerage, Shadowplay, Auramancy
  • Executioner – Battlerage, Shadowplay, Occultism
  • Deathwish – Battlerage, Shadowplay, Swiftblade
• For Ranged DPS
  • Ebonsong – Archery, Shadowplay, Songcraft
• For Magic DPS
  • Spellsinger – Sorcery, Shadowplay, Songcraft
  • Fanatic – Sorcery, Shadowplay, Malediction
• For Healers
  • Confessor – Vitalism, Songcraft, Shadowplay
  • Cleric – Vitalism, Songcraft, Auramancy
  • Edgewalker – Vitalism, Occultism, Auramancy
• For Tank
  • Abolisher – Battlerage, Defense, Auramancy

These are of course just suggestions. The great thing about Archeage is that you can change your skillsets later on in the game. And it’s not hard, at least until you hit level 50 and get Hiram gear (more on that later). I’d recommend that at some point you spend a bit of time exploring the skillsets.

To change your skillsets you just need to speak with a *** or a Skill Manager NPC. Your new skillset will start at level 15 (in regards to the skills available, not character power) and will level up like normal. Technically, you could get all the skillsets to level 50 this way and there’s even an achievement award for it.

The offset is that if you want to change, for example, from melee dps to magic dps you will need to get a new set of equipment to be effective. If you do it before turning your story quest gear to Hiram you can reverse all the upgrades you have done and reroll for new gear, otherwise, you will need to grind for new gear. Which brings us to the story quest gear.

The Story Quest Gear

Once you have designed your character’s look and selected a skillset to start with you can start playing the game. (Remember to apply the pack you bought to your character). One of the first quests you should see is the first quest of what is called the story quests. NPCs giving a story quest have a green square above them. Doing these quests is really important as they basically tell you a lot about the game and give a lot of experience.

After doing a few of these quests you will be presented with a quest reward which are either an armor crate or a weapons crate. You will get three crates like this and a choice between a flute or a lute. This gear, which you get from level 1 to 10 is the most important gear you get until way into the end-game. Why? Because this gear is upgradeable with infusions and awakening scrolls that will eventually give you an end-game set of gear.

Infusions and Awakening Scrolls

During your journey from level 1 to level 50 you will on occasion get infusions and awakening scrolls as rewards for completing a story quest. DO NOT THROW THEM AWAY. You will need them to upgrade your story quest gear and you only get enough for a single set of gear. If you throw it away there is no way to get more. You should read more about upgrading your story quest gear here.

Questing from Level 1 to 30

For the first thirty levels, you should concentrate on doing the story quest. You can skip the other side quests if you are rushing to 30, but I recommend doing at least a few of them.

In fact, there are three side quests which are really useful to do. These quests will give you a mount, a rowboat, a fishing rod, battle pet, and a glider. The location of these quests depends on your starting race, which is a bit of a bother. But you will get notifications in your tooltip when you are close to the quests that offer these items are rewards. So keep an eye on those tips and when they start speaking of mounts, gliders or boats then look around for an NPC with a regular quest ( yellow ! ). He will most likely have a quest that gives you one of these things.

Labor and What it Does

You will no doubt have noticed that darn thing called labor by now. Labor is required to do tasks, such as crafting, planting, building, and upgrading gear. This meant that it is essentially a balancing mechanism. It slows down the progress of players that can play 24/7 and, if used right, speeds up the progress of players that have very limited playtime. It does this by requiring the use of labor for pretty much anything regarding earning gold and advancing your gear.

How to Get More Labor

You get 10 labor points every 5 minutes, regardless of you being online or offline. If you’re not charging labor after you log in you might need to apply the pack you purchased to your character (see above). There are also items that can restore labor called labor rechargers.

You can also get more labor by sleeping in a bed. This ranges from 50 to 100 labor points depending on the bed. If you also equip pajamas before sleeping you get an extra 50 points for each type of pajamas. You can buy pajamas for vocation points (a form of currency).

Labor Rechargers

Labor rechargers can be purchased by diligence coins (another form of currency) and earned from completing a couple of daily quests. Your labor should not be a concern at the very beginning, but as you progress and start closing in on end game content it starts being troublesome.

Labor rechargers can recharge 1000 labor on use. However, you get a reduced return on the labor if you use many a day. The first use of the day will give you 1000 labor, the second will give you 975 labor, the third 951 labor, etc. You can see the labor “loss” next to the labor counter at the bottom left corner. Don’t ask me how 10% becomes 25 labor lost from a recharger, it’s some weird Archeage math.

Archeage Currency System

As with most MMO games, currency in the game is a major factor for your advancement. In Archeage Unchained there are a few types of currency which are:

Gold, Silver, and Copper

Gold is the most important currency in Archeage Unchained. The exchange rate between gold, silver and copper is 1 gold = 100 silver and 1 silver = 100 copper.

There are not many things in the game you cannot eventually buy for gold, despite those items only being available through other currencies. You also need a lot of gold to upgrade your Hiram gear later on in the game. Each infusion and awakening attempt costs a bunch of gold with an ever-increasing amount required as your gear gains power.

You get gold by looting monsters, completing quests, selling stuff, doing trade runs, etc. In general, fishing and trading are considered good ways to get gold in the game.

Diligence Coins

Diligence coins is an important currency as it allows you to buy Labor Rechargers, Tempering Charms, the Otherworld Storage Chest, Expansion scrolls, and more such items. So of all the currencies, I would place this one at the second spot in terms of importance.

You can earn diligence coins from completing Archepass missions.

Honor points.

Honor points are also a highly important currency in the game. With them, you can buy lunagems and lunastones which are important for enhancing your gear. Decrystallization scrolls which can be a lifesaver if your items crystalize after an awakening attempt while upgrading your Hiram gear, and a Honorforged Medal which is required to advance your character into ancestral levels.

To access the honor shop just open up your character screen with “C” and press the little shopping cart icon next to the line which shows your honor points.

You get honor points from killing enemy faction players during wars, from completing daily challenges like Crimson Rift and a bunch of other missions and challenges. All in all, you can get well over 10.000 honor points a day if you have the time to do it all.

Gilda Stars

Gilda Stars are a special currency that you can use to buy things on Mirage Isle. These include among other things: Outfits, house designs, ship designs, vehicles and more. You should make your way to Mirage Isle and take a look at what is offered there. To get to Mirage Isle you need to go through a gateway with a blueish glow next to a funny looking blue NPC.

Actively farming Gilda Stars is usually hard and requires a lot of leg work. Here is a guide that shows how can farm Gilda Stars.

Vocation Badges

Vocation Badges are earned when you perform some type of gathering action, such as mining, lumbering, farming or gathering. Each action usually rewards you with a single badge.

There are also daily missions available which reward you with up to 500 vocation badges. These missions are at the moment the best way to stock up on vocation badges. Most of them are found in a region’s community center, but you need to own a house to get access to some of those missions.

Vocation Badges can be used to buy special seeds and saplings, in addition to a few interesting items, such as a set of pajamas which increases your labor bonus when you “Sleep”. To see what you can purchase just open up your character screen with “C” and press the little shopping cart icon next to the line which shows your vocation badge number.

Kyrios Badges.

This currency is rewarded for completing instances and arena challenges. The arena shop has items like the Onyx steed, which is a very fast steed. Rank tokens, which give you titles that you can apply for passive buffs to your stats. Stat migration talismans and more useful items. You can access the arena shop by opening up the instance interface and clicking the arena shop tab at the bottom left corner.

Prestige Points

First of all, you need to be in a guild to be able to collect prestige points. Prestige points are then earned by completing special guild missions and hunt requests. You can use your prestige points to buy things from the guild prestige shop, accessible from the guild menu. Personally, I feel like the prestige shop does not really have anything special, with the possible exception of the cloak you can buy for 150 prestige points.

Credits

Finally, credits are the only currency that you can purchase with real money. Credits allow you to buy mostly cosmetics items, with a few other items which affect your ability to play the game. Those items can also be purchased by using other types of credit.

Mirage Isle

As you travel you should also have noticed a gateway with blueish color light. This is the gateway to Mirage Island. On Mirage Island you can buy a variety of designs for interesting items by using your Gilda stars. There are items such as house designs, glider designs, boat designs, costumes, vehicles and more.

You should definitely take a stroll around the island and see what they offer. Just be a bit careful about what you buy as you might be able to get some of the items from the Blue Salt Brotherhood quests.

Playing From Level 30 and beyond.

Once you reach level 30 the game will start opening up to you. You will now get access to the Blue Salt Brotherhood quests and daily quests that give Gilda stars, hunting requests and more. At this point, you have advanced beyond the beginner ranks but there are a couple of things I want to mention.

Archeage Unchained is a PvP Game.

At this point is important to understand that Archeage is a Realm vs Realm PvP game with a splash of players factions and pirates thrown in. If you want to advance meaningfully in the game you have to be willing to take some chances and be relaxed over getting killed by the enemy faction. Besides, there are almost no downsides when a hostile player kills you, except the annoyance of it.

How to Level From 30

To progress beyond level 30 in any meaningful way will require you to venture into regions where faction PvP is active. This means that during most of the day members of the opposing faction can attack you at whim. There are a few safe areas, mostly around guards. However, a few times each day a region enters a period of peace. During peace faction PvP is disabled and you can roam around and do your quests safely during this time.

The PvP active time is divided into unrest, conflict, and war. During the unrest periods, the game balances out low and high-level players, creating a more equal playing field. This does not occur during conflict and war. And during wartime, you aren’t really safe anywhere.

I would recommend not always wait for peacetime as it will hinder your ability to advance. What I did was to use the peacetime of each region to blitz through the Blue Salt Brotherhood Quests and Story Quest. This with some experience from crafting and gathering pushed me quickly to level 40, at which point I started doing the regular quests from Halcyona, regardless of there being peacetime. I then alternated from pushing the story quests and Blue Salt Brotherhood Quests during peace, the regular quests in lower leveled regions during unrest or conflict and spending labor on crafting, gathering and trading. This sort of worked for me until I hit level 50 and got access to Austeria, which is the end-game area.

The Blue Salt Brotherhood Quests

The NPC with the first BSB quest in this quest chain is located in Solisa, Halcyon. These quests are very important to do if you intend to do anything other than PvP. From these quests, you get a 8×8 farm, a farm cart design, 10.000 points to your alchemy proficiency, a 16×16 house, a farm wagon, a regal alchemy table and finally a suit of armor which gives you bonuses to your craft proficiency. Plus something else I am sure to be forgetting. These quests also give a lot of experience, so you see it is well worth doing these quests.

Other Things to Do in Archeage Unchained

There is a great number of other activities in Archeage Unchained. They can range from being a simple farmer to a battle-hardened veteran. You can sail, trade, fish and more. Remember, this is a sandbox game so there are fewer limits on what you can do.

Start Fishing for Large Fish

Get yourself a fishing rod, a lure, and go sport fishing on the rowboat you got from a quest. You just need to find water with a school of fish. Here is a fishing guide for Archeage.

Become a Farmer

When you get your first 8×8 scarecrow farm you can start using it to plant seeds and small saplings. This can be a nice way to boost your income a bit, but the difficult part is finding land to place your scarecrow farm on.

Get Yourself a House

You can also have a house of your own. It comes with several awesome benefits, but it’s also hard to get your first house as land is scarce. But don’t worry too much, you don’t really need it, but it’s great to have. You can read here about how to get a house in Archeage.

Hunt the Players of the Other Faction

Archeage is a PvP game. So when you have some levels under your belt you can start hunting the players of the other faction in the PvP enabled zones. You can also go pirate and start killing everybody, but that lifestyle is a bit hard.

Become a Trade Tycoon.

One way of striking it rich in Archeage is through trading. To trade you need to first create a trade pack at one location and then transport it to a trading post and sell it there for gold. Here is an Archeage trading guide.

So, that’s about it for this Archeage beginners guide. If you found it useful then please share it with your friends and allies that are starting to play the game to give them a leg up. I also have quite a few other guides on Archeage Unchained.

Anyway, good luck and remember to have fun.