Valley 1:What Is The General Game Flow?

Continent Progression

On each continent in the game, you'll go through the following general progression.

Prepare For Expeditions

There are various supplies that you'll need to periodically stock up on, as well as various equipment that you'll need to acquire once and then keep handy for certain situations. For details, see How Do I Know If I'm Prepared For An Expedition?

Learn New Spells

There are about a dozen spells that you know "for free" at the start of any continent. These include at least one simple ranged spell from each of the six colors, plus a few more esoteric spells that at least some players still don't want to live without (storm dash, ball of light, miasma whip, etc).

Beyond these basic spells, you'll need to gather ingredients -- both common and arcane -- and learn the spells. You learn a spell by "crafting" it once on that continent, and then you can equip as many copies of it as you want to (a copy of your best ranged spell for each of your hotbars? Sure, go right ahead!). But wait a minute -- where do these ingredients come from? Read on...

Gather Common Ingredients From Exploration

Building materials like granite and cedar logs, and common crafting ingredients like cherries or raw gems can be found simply by exploring the environment and destroying background objects. Any time you see a spell cost that includes a given material, you can hover over that material to see where in general you ought to be looking for it.

Complete Missions For More Exotic Rewards

Before you undertake any mission, it will tell you what the rewards will be. Most of the time, it will be either guardian power scrolls OR arcane ingredients (but never both at once). For details, see Everything You Wanted To Know About Missions, But Were Afraid To Ask.

Learn Higher Tier Spells

Thanks to finding both common and arcane ingredients, and getting tier orbs from world map missions, you'll be able to unlock more powerful spells. This is critical to do, as this is the only way you'll be able to take on tougher foes.

Increase The Continent Tier By Completing World Map Missions

World map missions let you gain Civilization Progress (CP), which in turn increases the continent tier. The rule of thumb is that every 5 world map missions, the continent tier is going to go up. That's both good and bad: it makes the monsters harder, but it also strengthens your allies and is the only way that you can get the higher-tier spells yourself. To take out the overlord, you'll probably need to get the continent tier all the way up to 5 (though major props to you if you pull it off early).

Kill The Three Lieutenants (Probably Once You Are Continent Tier 4)

These lieutenants will come to the aid of the overlord if you approach the overlord without killing the lieutenants first, so probably you need to kill those pesky lieutenants in their own evil outposts before you take on the overlord's lair. The lieutenants (and any monsters in their region) will always be at minimum tier 4 (but will move to tier 5 if the continent tier reaches tier 5 before you kill them), so they aren't something to focus on early in a continent.

Finally: Kill The Overlord (Probably Once You Are Continent Tier 5)

All your preparation has come to this. You've improved your character, have a host of deadly tier 5 spells, and you're itching to go try them out on the overlord and all the monsters in his keep.

After The Overlord Is Dead

After the overlord of a continent is dead, a new continent will be discovered and you can sail across the deep sea to find it and start this whole process over again, from tier 1 on up. See more about this below.

But there are still things remaining to do on your current continent, too! There are some unlockables that are tier-gated, and you can pursue those. You can explore around for advanced enchants, and experiment around with new spells. And in future versions of the game, we plan to have a lot more that you can do on a continent after the overlord has been felled.

World Progression

All of the per-continent stuff resets each time you move to a new continent. Moving to a new continent is thus kind of like a "New Game+" option. BUT, the good news is that you can go back and forth between continents at will, and some things carry between continents, so that's actually better than most "New Game+" options. In this section we'll talk about what differs between continents and what stays the same.

Things That Are Per-Continent

Resource Stockpiles

All those resources you have in your settlement stockpile on your old continent? Yeah, you can't bring those with you. You can continue to make use of them on the old continent, but you'll have to gather new resources on the new continent.

NPCs

You'll have to make new friends when you go off to the new school for older kids, basically.

Learned Spells

On each continent you'll have to learn all your spells all over again. But this is actually pretty cool, because that means you can play each continent in a completely different way. You can carry spellgems between continents just fine, but any spell that you've not learned on a new continent simply becomes inactive. So, a couple of examples:

1. If you have Fireball 5 on continent A, and you then go to continent B where you've done nothing yet, that Fireball 5 is going to be Fireball 1 (because Fireball is one of those spells you get tier 1 of for free at the start of each continent). If you go back to continent A at any time, it swaps back to Fireball 5 as soon as you arrive, and so forth.

2. If you have Launch Meteor 1 on continent A, and you then go to continent B where you've done nothing yet, that Launch Meteor 1 is still going to be in your inventory but it will show as red and won't be usable. If you go back to continent A again, you can use it again, but on continent B it is completely inert because that isn't a spell that you get for free at the start of each continent.

Civilization Progress (CP) And Continent Tier

I guess it goes without saying all of that is per-continent, or else the rest of the progression would completely fall apart, eh?

Lieutenants And Overlords

A lieutenant from one continent, if left alive, won't come to the aid of an overlord on a different continent. And each continent has its own "big bad guy" overlord to harass you.

Things That Cross Continents

Your Personal Inventory

All those wood platforms, vitality stones, and whatever else you have with you? Sure, carry them along! Anything that you'd carry with you on your person as you move around one continent is carried with you when you go to any other continent. It's just the central settlement stockpiles (which are at the settlement, not on your person) that don't get carried between continents.

As noted above, of course, some spellgems might work at a different tier or not work at all depending on what spells you've learned in that line on that continent. But nothing will actually mess around with your inventory.

Your Character

Whatever character you're playing as, of course can cross continents. Thanks to the glyph transplant scroll that lets you swap characters, you can actually thus move NPCs around between continents if you really feel that strong a need to... though largely that would be a huge pain and not something worth doing.

As an aside, of course any modifiers to your character (such as from upgrade stones, etc) also come across just like normal.

A Valley Without Wind

Enchants, And Progress Toward Your Next Enchant

Everything enchant-related has nothing to do with any given continent. Thus as you continue to play through the game, you're getting better and better enchants as you hit continents 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, etc. Or however many continents you feel like playing, anyhow, is what we really mean.

Unlockables, And Progress On Any Partially-Complete Unlockables

Like with enchants, everything unlockables-related has nothing to do with any particular continent. This is the primary way that the game continues to change and evolve as you play. On the start of your first continent you have unlocked very little, and so the enemies are more basic, the mission activities are fewer, and so on. You can't even have NPCs with a profession skill higher than 3! And various regions don't even start appearing until continents 2 and 3.

But as you play on each continent, you unlock more and more of the world's content -- for good and for ill. You'll be finding new materials and new spells to learn, along with other helpful goodies to strive for. But at the same time, as you demonstrate your proficiency against lesser monsters, you'll unlock more powerful monsters or even elite versions of the monsters you had already mastered. You'll actually need those enchants that you've been carrying forward with you from continent to continent, because tier 1 of the nastier monsters you're also unlocking are harder than tier 1 of the monsters you started out facing.

Since so much of what is unlocked is based on how you play the game and what interests you (and actually, to some extent that is true of enchants), no two players will have the same sort of experience from continent to continent. Especially as the amount of content in the game continues to grow, player worlds are going to become increasingly divergent.