Playmage Forum

Hi future dream world players:)

This is a really fun game...but at least for now there is no way to restart...so sadly by the time you learn many parts of the game it is too late to get much use out of it!! Therefore, I thought it would be a good idea to post a few starting tips.

In the help file (Which I suggest you read) it says to boost your sword/gun/magic skills early on and only concentrate on stats later. This is very good advice although you can boost con if you want early on as well. In the long run you are going to want one of your weapon skills (at least) boosted and it helps alot to get them to level 10, 20 and 40.

A main reason for this is you can gain stat boosts from puzzles in the game...but you will only gain boosts this way till your stats hit 32 (this is also the highest I belive you can increase your strength through surgeries). There is no limit that I have seen to how high you can boost con through surgeries...so this would be the only stat that makes sense to boost early on (you could boost strength as well since you would be saving some money that way...but I think it's probably best to just get it to 32 using surgeries if you boost it that high at all).

Boosting your con at least 1 point every level through surgeries is a great idea and makes a HUGE difference late in the game in arena combat. Anyone with less then 50-60 con is an instant target on the arena list. By lvl 50 you probably want at least 80+ con...which is only doable if you boost your con through surgeries. It's possible to have a 100+ con if you boost con through skill points as well (Especailly if you do any of the offers for gems etc).

By the end of the game the aim is to make yourself so hard to beat (Even when your dumb AI is fighting for you) that nobody wants to attack you (or waste all the spell points it would take to win)...and you want to be able to take out other players as easily as possible. For defense the best bet is to have a healing ally, regen armor (with highest defense possible) and use shield or guard (or both) for any long battles. Guard increases your chance to block enemy attacks but requires you to wield a sword (but it stays on if you switch weapons), Shield reduces the damage you take from all attacks (Also stays on if you switch weapons so stacks with guard basically).

The gun special skill is aim....which makes you not miss. Sadly it does not stop your opponent from blocking your attacks...and you never miss when using skills.....which makes aim a bit obsolete in my opinion. That is why I would suggest going with either sword or magic....or both.

As far as classes, in my opinion the biggest over all bonus is gained from being a sword based class....as you gain a block % bonus at sword 10/20 and 40. At 40 you add 15% to your block %.....and that is not including the bonus from guard. Mages (magic skill/weapon) gain a bonus to skill usage damage of 15%...but you can not have both bonuses on at the same time (you can choose a combo class that gives 8% block % and 8% magic damage boost though.

Don't waste time buying learning points with gems early on. You can safely buy the 21 gem items that boost con/quickness/strength etc by 3 early on if you want as it's a magic bonus...not a straight bonus to your stats (it doesn't increase the cost to raise stats with LP...and it does not factor in to the 32 point limit on stats from puzzles). The amount of LP you gain from using gems increases as you level...so if you buy LP at lvl 20....you'll get far less bang for your gems then if you buy LP at lvl 50 later on. So again..it's best to wait before spending gems on LP. Instead get the 20% block chance item asap...it rocks...and next I suggest trying to get the high cleric...she is very useful in pvp later on.

Ah, another BIG mistake I made was waiting till my late 40's to buy the +30 energy item with gems. There are tons of ways to get gems for free by doing surveys etc through the guardian......do them....and get the bonus energy ASAP!! IT almost doubles how fast you can advance..and it quickly lets you be away from the game for 8 hours and not waste any energy at all (nice if you like to sleep, work, go out with your wife etc).

I suggest you do not waste money on buying armor early on in the game at least (and even later really) since you can get it randomly from quests and random encounters. Also ifyou do not have a free bank...you can use armor as a buffer that allows you to sell items until you have enough to raise your con before you log off (after spending all your energy). This means you have no money for other people to take if they beat you in the arena...and it helps you boost your con as much as possible as you level up. I would put getting the free bank fairly far back in the list of things you should by with gems.

If the puzzles seem hard or frustrating at first....don't worry they become very easy eventually. In fact I think it's great that this game helps us practice the math and logic skills needed to the point where it is cake to do the problems in our head. Chests give crystals and puzzles can give stat boosts (up to 32). Take your time and answer them correctly because it's very worth it!!

If I was going to start from scratch now ...I would probably go straight for 12 magic with my LP to get shield and light heal as soon as possible. Then I would go straight for Sword 40 to get my 15% block chance bonus, and then I would boost my magic up a bit more to at least 21 for heal.

That is doable by 50 or so with a few yellow crystal trade ins etc. At that point I would probably concentrate on boosting int (increases skill damage and max skill points) after it was naturally already 32 from puzzles. I'd keep boosting con as much as possible with money and run as a dragon slayer (40 sword class) who wields a staff and uses magic skills. 35 quickness is a decent stopping point (and you should have that without investing anything in quickness by 50 or so...if you grab the +3 quickness item with gems and maxed out at 32 quickness from puzzles).

Oh one other thing.....if you want high arena kill counts I suggest fighting in the arena along the way as you level up. It does level you faster for the energy and averages less coin per kill ...which can mean less con late game...and it means less chances to get a puzzle/guardian etc.....but if you fight in the arena 5 times every level by the time you hit 50 you'll have 250 kills already. You need 300 pvp kills to get a golden pvp bade (the platinum one takes 1000 pvp kills which I don't think you can do by lvl 50...but maybe you can.....I wouldn't try it thats for sure). Getting 5 per level though is totally doable and then you only need 50 more for the golden bade!:)

Anyway thats a few starting tips for now. I think this game is great and alot of fun. I hope more is added to the end game soon but I am still enjoying the game right now and hope to continue doing so for along time.

A few more tips for later on:)

You can change class as many times as you want once they are opened. It is a good idea to be in an offensive class when you are attacking (that would be wizard classes for the boost to magic damage)....and a defensive class when you are not playing (warrior for the block boost).

Now you can easily have no money at all lying around for people to take by attacking you.....but if you have a high block percentage and a huge pool of hp along with regen armor and a healing ally....you can often make enemy players run out of skill points and eventually die or give up (same as dying) when trying to fight you. Thats free exp and money and free pvp wins as well.

Meanwhile while you are actually trying to kill other people in the arena defense should not really be a problem. The real loss in such fights is to skill points and the way you eventually lose if you do (I have not yet but I'm careful) is by running out of skill points. Boosting the damage you do increases how much bang you get from each skill point spent allowing you to kill faster.

Basically a 15% boost to damage means you can kill a player with 15% more con with the same number of skill points. A 40 con character is pretty easy to kill but with 15% bonus magic damage you can almost kill a 50 con character with the same number of skill points used. Toss in a 20% magic damage enchanted staff....and your saving alot of skill points per arena combat.

The new recent changes do make it nice to have some skill points for random combat now though. Just your lvl 1 skill is all that is really needed but you might want to factor in using 200+ skill points for random battles now just to speed things up a bit.

Another way to keep a steady supply of skill points is to get the bank upgrade. This allows you to deposit with no penalty which has more then one use. First it allows you to prevent opponents from getting money from you and lets you use your inventory slots only to hold alternative weapons (so you can use sword and staff skills for instance). Second it allows you to deposit your money into the bank so you don't have a large amount when you run into dust merchants. That gives you plenty of fairy dust and the ability to use way more skills then normal (it also makes arena fighting MUCH easier when your blowing 45 skill points a round instead of 4!!

I'd hold off on the bank upgrade till after you get the extra energy at least........but especially post lvl 50 it can be very useful to have. It also is a big help if you are actually going to try for the 1000 pvp battle badge.

"Now you can easily have no money at all lying around for people to take by attacking you.....but if you have a high block percentage and a huge pool of hp along with regen armor and a healing ally....you can often make enemy players run out of skill points and eventually die or give up (same as dying) when trying to fight you. Thats free exp and money and free pvp wins as well."

The regen gear does not work on defence, only attacks. I've attacked 100s of players who have regan gear on, and not a single regen from them on defence. Thats why you see high players equiping red dragon scales of speed +3 for the defence, since the regan doen't work on defence. If it did, it would probobly be to over powered with high block and healer combo ;O

Dragon Slayer with staff is nice, but you don't need to wield it all the time.
20% extra block chance from Guardian weapons is too good to ignore.
Whenever you need shield or heal, you can just switch your weapon to staff and cast it since you can always switch your weapon anytime in the battle. I always carry staff around even though I almost never have to cast any heal anyway. ( 15% block from class , 20% from sword , 20% from charm, with healing from ally and regen armor makes my health almost never go lower than 10% at all )

Thanks Gwen and Sei,

Hmm it seems like enemy players regen in the arena when I attack them but maybe that is just their ally healing them. If regen armor does not work then I probably need to switch my armor around as well....my high priestess never gets a chance to heal me as it is right now most of the time.

I just recently started working towards getting my sword up for block bonuses etc.....thats partly why I posted all this...because much of these took me till lvl 50 to figure out *heh*. I'm not about to reset and start over (I have used a ton of gems already and don't want to lose all the extra LP etc) but I figured at least I could post for future players so they have more of a heads up.

At least I didn't invest too much into speed/int/dex (maybe 10 points all together before 20) and I did boost my con every level (had an 81 con I think it was by 50) so I didn't end up too bad...but there are many things I would do differently. I think it would be useful to have a guide for new players to review if they want to plan for the future a bit.

Anyone else who has advice please feel free to post. I think I have covered almost everything I have noticed so far but I am sure I missed a ton. I also don't have any experience playing up as a warrior or gun character which may be very different then playing as a mage.

Another important point especially later on seems to be how damage is calculated.

Through testing it seems like skills determine damage by multiplying your base attack. I think (not sure here) that int provides a boost to that multiplier and of course higher skills also boost the multiplier. I am not sure if the increase from int is additive (meaning your lvl 1 skill multiplies damage normally by 300% and a 20 int makes that 320%......or if int just increases over all damage by a fixed % (so the 300% base lvl 1 skill would jump to 360% base damage with a 20 int).

What does seem to be true though is a higher base attack weapon....and higher strength....seem to help damage across the board. Both for normal melee attacks (Based directly on your attack) and for skill attacks (based on a multiple of your attack).

I tested this today by increasing my strength 8 points (it was really cheap as I had left it at 13 before) and observed a significant increase in my lvl 1 flame arrow against the same monster. Both the low range and max range of it's damage increased as I boosted my strength.

What is more...the 20% bonus you get from having an enchanted weapon (you get them later) also seems to be a multiple of current max damage after other factors. This means they higher your base attack...the larger advantage you get from using an enchanted weapon. This is what first clued me into the difference because I had a lower attack enchanted staff.....and I notice I was doing LESS damage when I switched to it them my Star Staff of Life +3 which had over 100 more attack.

So for new players this means you can't go wrong boosting strength even if your a wizard. It has the largest direct affect on your melee attacks (non-skill attacks) from what I have seen at least (which means you kill enemies faster with melee attacks.

I am not sure how this all works with gun using characters as I have not used a gun. It would be interesting to know if the attack bonus from strength also boosts your gun damage. Since there seems to only be one stat (attack)...and strength boosts that as does a higher level gun....it would make sense that strength also boosts your gun damage as well.

I still need to figure out exactly how int affects skill damage as this could mean that boosting strength (which increases your base attack thus making enchanted more effective etc) will actually increase skill damage more then int....while boosting base melee damage as well.

Hi wolfy42,

Thanks so much for this. I haven't read it all yet but I will as I learned the hard way that I had wasted a lot of time in some other games for not having this kind of info. I appreciate the time you put into this.

My pleasure:)

After further testing btw it seems that while stats may affect skill damage....your base attack does not (you can tell by equiping a very low attack weapon and using a skill...the only effect weapons have on skill damage is if they are enchanted (which gives a 20% boost).

Int makes a difference to skill damage then. I'm not sure about the other stats and it is no longer easy for me to test it out.

Long term damage seems to be key if you plan on advancing quickly. Arena combat gives a far better exp to energy ratio then random battles post 50...and to win in the arena it basically all comes down to your offense. You can cast a defensive power like shield...and heal yourself if need be....but the higheryour offense the easier it will be to over come the other players blocking and healing.

Sword is great for defense...and still worth boosting, but Magic is vital to have boosted to at least 40 by the time you make level 50 or 51....the bonus damage from grand mage makes a huge difference in the arena and the bonus skill points save a ton of money on fairy dusts.

How long does the magic skill "shield" last for?

The whole battle.


All the support skills do:)