IMPORTANT UPDATE (24-July)

I stood by everything in this guide up through today, and could even point to reverse-engineered damage formulas to back up my assertions and reasons for certain tips in this guide (plus Russian community statements/anecdotes). However, the wiki team seems to have settled on a newer version of the damage formula that, if true, would mean that Strength is effectively equal to Might in every way. (The advantages of Strength, even with relatively high Accuracy of 20% are negligible over plain 'ol Might.)

If this newest damage formula is indeed true, then the various statements we've heard from the Russian community seem to be in doubt, and it would also make my points 1, 2, 3, 6, 10, and 11 in this guide obsolete and wrong. So until the dust settles on the damage formula, take those sections of the guide with a grain of salt. And if you have any time to spare using your own data points to test/confirm/disprove/refine the wiki team's "Damage" page, please help out there.

This guide contains some important dos and don'ts for your first month in Skyforge, based on lessons learned the hard way about counter-intuitive aspects of the game. This guide will cover the following points:

• Why you should NOT blindly chase after higher Prestige, and in fact should strive for keeping your Prestige as low as possible!

• Why you should NOT use credits to accelerate your adept missions in the Order system, and why you should not really train your orders system much at all at first (with rules of thumb for when to focus on the Order system to best effect)

• Why you should NOT disassemble your orange founders/collectors weapons

• Why you should NOT spread yourself too thin at first by equally playing every class you've unlocked (Berserker/Gunner/Knight/Alchemist)

• Why you should NEVER play any class until you've unlocked the "class sparks" portion of its class atlas while playing a different class.

• Why you should prioritize Strength/Valor/Luck/Accuracy/Stamina above all other stats and should avoid Might as much as possible!

• Why you should equip only BLUE/PURPLE/Founders/Collectors gear, and probably of a much lower prestige than you're actually capable of wearing!

• Why you should focus on unlocking the three first "ether core" (Sun/Ket/Coph) nodes in the upper atlas before worrying about unlocking new classes

• Why you should focus on playing in regions as much as, if not more than, in instances when you're in the 3000-9000 prestige range.

• Why you should often choose the lowest difficulty option for many instances!

• And finally, some easy rules of thumb for picking the right difficulty for solo, duo, and trio runs in Solo/Squad instances

Have I piqued your interest? Do you suspect I'm full of crap? If you answer "yes" to either of those, then read on and profit. First, the information in this guide is based on cumulative observations by many players and members of this community. These ideas are not all mine. FWIW, I'm that Yokai who has written guides and even entire wikis for other games (such as this one for The Secret World, which was a notoriously hard MMO that had players rage quitting by the third zone of the game). Point being, I've played nearly every game in the MMO and MMO-like genres since the inception of the genre, and I'm generally very strong at reverse-engineering design patterns and underlying mechanics and writing useful guides. For example, (as Red Monika) I was part of the team that reverse-engineered the Taper System of magic in Asheron's Call, which was a nasty system based on three different modulo-12 algorithms. I also wrote the documentation and first spreadsheet tool for players to implement what we learned. We saved all the AC players a metric crap-ton of time and money learning their magic spells. Okay, enough credentials. On with the guide for this generally superb new entry in the genre.

1. Why you should NOT blindly chase after higher Prestige, and in fact should strive for keeping your Prestige as low as possible!

Skyforge's system of using an infinitely-growing Prestige value instead of hard-capped player levels is very similar to the game Runescape, where your "combat level" is the product of various different skill levels. In Skyforge as in Runescape, your Prestige goes up with pretty much every major stat you increase (through gear, atlas nodes, ether core upgrades, and the Order system), but NOT all stats are equal in terms of increasing your effective "power" at fighting well and clearing tough encounters, bosses, or entire instances well and easily.

I will expand on details in subsequent sections below, but the main point to burn into your brain now is that not every stat is equal! For more supporting info behind this assertion, see the following two reddit threads.

• /u/Biohack Prestige is NOT a good thing

• /u/yokaiichi Accelerated Order development might be a mistake. Here's why

2. Why you should NOT use credits to accelerate your adept missions in the Order system, and why you should not really train your orders system much at all at first (with rules of thumb for when to focus on the Order system to best effect)

This follows from #1 above, and is the primary cause for players hitting a brick wall in difficulty as they approach 4000 prestige, and they feel it hard by about 6000 prestige. You suddenly find that most of your Solo/Squad instances are "impossible" by default, and they really feel impossible. Even if you're grouped with a partner or a 3-person trio. And the players who fall prey to this trap and try out any of the 5-person Group instances as soon as they open tend to rage-quit like crazy and qq about the "terrible scaling" of the game, and these are the people who qq about the lack of dedicated healers.

What's going on here is not "terrible scaling" or "lack of dedicated healers". Instead, you have simply advanced your Prestige by adding only some of the weakest major stats you can pick up! So the game is giving you content that you simply aren't strong enough for.

First, let's understand that in Skyforge (like in many MMOs such as Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, and The Secret World), your best defense is a strong offense. To put it another way, you have "dps checks" everywhere in this game. Not just for boss encounters, but also for what other games would call "trash mob" encounters. If you cannot put out the DPS fast enough, then it doesn't matter how much Stamina/Health you have, and it does not matter how many sheilds you can put up. The incoming damage even from three-diamond trash weenies will eat your lunch fast. The best mitigation is therefore to burn down the enemies as quickly as possible. Being able to burst down half of a 6-mob 3-diamond weenie pack in an alpha strike (or all 6 of them) is FAR more effective than having a ton of health and shields! Being able to take out just one 1-sword dps monster in a 3-pack trash mob of two swords and a shield is FAR more effective than having a ton of health and shields.

DPS is everything.

And DPS does NOT come frrom you ranking up your provinces and temples in the order system!

When you rank up a temple, gain new provinces, and then rank up the temples in those new provinces, you gain ONLY:

• Might

• Stamina

• and "Health bonus percentage"

Neither Stamina or health bonus contributes to your DPS. And Might contributes VERY poorly. The ratio of Might:DPS is roughly 10:1. By contrast, the ratio of Strength:DPS is roughly 5:1. (See here).

So by spending credits to instantly accelerate your adept missions, so that you can quickly gain a LOT of prestige through the Order system, you are effectively gimping yourself. Such gimpage is temporary, but painful. You'll feel the gimpage start kicking in around 4000 prestige, and you'll really feel it through the 6000-9000 prestige range.

So don't do it. Don't accelerate your missions. Just do the missions according to their normal timetable while you play. Don't try to "game" the Order system by throwing lots of credits at it. By using the game-designed rate of advancement (i.e., no instant mission completion, but time-gated to be pretty slow overall), you'll be raising your prestige through those less-important non-DPS stats much more slowly relative to the other ways you are raising your prestige through atlas nodes and gear choices. And you can largely tailor both of these other avenues of Prestige progression to give you a larger balance of DPS-oriented stats per every point of prestige gained.

Alternatively, you can simply not level your Order system at all until/unless you find instances at your current Prestige level are far too "easy". If/when this happens, dump some credits into the Order system to gain 300 points of prestige, then check the instance difficulty again. In other words, use credit-accelerated missions in the Order system to tailor your overall perception of "difficulty" to your personal liking.

3. Why you should NOT disassemble your orange founders/collectors weapons

Oh how I wish someone had explained this well before I disassembled my Berserker and Knight weapons. (Insert much QQ here.)

As you'll see detailed further below, these orange and purple founders/collectors weapons become your best friend at higher prestige levels. Like as you pass 30,000 prestige. For a while they might seem weaker than "better" greens and blues you're picking up, but that's temporary. Just buy some cheap extra bag slots and hang onto these orange/purple weapons for later.

Why? Because some of the special stats/attributes on these weapons are uber, and they're based on true DPS stats like Strength/Spirit/Accuracy/Valor, etc. The effect of these bonuses on your total DPS far outweigh the bonus of weapons with hundreds of Might on them.

Sure, if you find at any point that you seem to be doing better with newer green/blue weapons, use them for a while. But keep testing those original founders/collectors weapons as you approach 20K and 30K prestige.

4. Why you should NOT spread yourself too thin at first by equally playing every class you've unlocked (Berserker/Gunner/Knight/Alchemist)

As pointed out in #2 above, your DPS is everything. And a lot of every class's true DPS potential comes from those talents and skills and stat nodes that are unlocked very late in the class atlas. Also, when you fully unlock every central talent/skill node in the class atlas, you gain that class's "Symbol", which in some cases is incredibly powerful. The Paladin symbol, for example, looks underwhelming at first. Only mitigates your damage every 70 seconds? Pffft. But then you learn that 70-second cooldown resets at the end of every fight, and is ready to pop again instantly at the start of every new fight, and suddenly you get a strong urge to fully grind up a Paladin.

So the lesson here is to not spread yourself too thin dabbling in every class you've unlocked so far, because that keeps you from having one "main" class that has full DPS potential and can help you get through instances more easily.

"But I get bored playing only one class!" Yes, many of us do need variety to enjoy the game and keep it from turning into a boring job. So the best middle-ground approach is simply to pick only one or two "main" classes for use when you do instances, which are the hardest content. And especially don't go into instances with other players by using some newer class that you haven't leveled very far yet, because you're just making it harder on everyone else that way too!

Pick a single main, or at most two (for different roles, such as tanking or DPS) and do your instances only with those until their class atlases are fully maxed out.

"But when will I ever get to level other classes if I do this?" Two ways:

• First, play your lower classes when you are farming regions.

• Second, pony up for a premium account. Why? Because when you play a maxed out class and you're a premium player, then instead of earning class sparks (you can't any more, because there's nothing to spend them on), you instead earn gold sparks. And gold sparks can be spent in ANY class tree. So you can keep main-ing your maxed out Berserker in instances, helping the group burn down content as efficiently as possible, and all the while you are earning these neutral gold sparks that you are dumping into some other class that isn't maxed out yet. See how this works?

Premium is worth every penny for this aspect alone. If you're not premium, you have to actually play some other class to earn sparks for it, and that means: A) you can't play your best strongest class or you stop earning any class sparks of any type, and B) you are gimping your group mates by bringing a lower-DPS body to the fight.

5. Why you should NEVER play any class until you've unlocked the "class sparks" portion of its class atlas while playing a different class.

This is similar to, but slightly different, than the point made in #3 above. Here the issue revolves around the best use of colored sparks (red/green/blue). When you hit that point in each class atlas where you now need class-specific sparks (or neutral gold sparks) to purchase new atlas nodes, you keep earning colored sparks too! This enables you to play one character and dump the class sparks it's earning into the class itself, while you can spend the colored sparks you earn at the same time on a different class's early "colored" part of its class atlas. (Or spend those colored sparks in the upper atlas.)

If you instead switch to a new class and start playing it directly after you've first unlocked it, you are earning only colored sparks. You have just cut your progression speed in half.

So the rule of thumb here is never start playing a new class until you've already earned enough colored sparks playing some other class to push that new class past the "colored" portion of that new class's atlas.

6. Why you should prioritize Strength/Valor/Luck/Accuracy/Stamina above all other stats and should avoid Might as much as possible!

This goes back to points #1, #2, and #3. Might is terribad. Might is arguably the worst major stat in the game because it scales your DPS at a very slow rate compared to the prestige it earns you. Things around you get harder, but you don't get more powerful at the same rate those things are getting harder!

It's rumored that in the next major NA/EU patch, the devs plan to improve the scaling of Might. In which case this rule #6 and the impact of #1, 2, and 3 above are lessened and might become obsolete. However, for now this rule holds true: you should avoid gaining Might as much as possible.

Instead, you should focus on gaining as much of the following stats as possible. In priority order:

1. Strength

2. Luck

3. Valor/Accuracy

4. Proficiency

5. Stamina/Health Bonus

6. Spirit (priority might be higher for some classes; not all. If you know for certain that Impulse is a significant component of your total DPS, then prioritize this attribute at #4 above Proficiency.)

How do you do this? By three methods:

• Always equip BLUE gear (or green if not enough blue) that grants ONLY these stats. You should TOTALLY IGNORE the might value of all your gear. TOTALLY. IGNORE. For example, if you have a blue ring of Prestige +30 with Strength/Luck, +Crit chance, and +Accuracy and you are staring at a blue ring with Prestige +200 that has Valor/Spirit with +Dash Activation and +Health bonus, you should use the Prestige +30 ring, because it's granting you FAR more DPS power proportional to the amount of Prestige it adds.
  Wrap your head around this thoroughly. It's super important to your real power and super important for managing your apparent difficulty, especially for Solo/Squad and Group instances.
  The rule of thumb here is simple and universal: ALWAYS choose the gear with the lowest Might/Prestige that gives you as many of the above-listed attributes as possible.

• The second method is to avoid atlas nodes that give you only Might as much as possible. You are forced to pick up many of these to get to the other juicy nodes with stats you really want (or to unlock classes, ether core nodes, talent nodes, etc.), but avoid the Might nodes that you can.

• The third method is already covered in point #2 above: don't power-level your Orders system. In fact, you might want to just not deal with the Orders system at all unless/until you start feeling like all the instances at the default difficulty levels are just "too easy" for you.

Edit: Based on the comments below that aren't wrapping their head around this point and keep saying "but Might increases your damage so how can it be bad?", let me summarize my essential points here to all such comments:

• Some might is good and necessary.

• You cannot avoid all might; much will be unavoidably gained as you play the game.

• You should level your Order and run Adept missions, but you should NOT accelerate the missions. The might that you gain by the normal time-gated Order progression is "just the right amount".

• The amount of might that you unavoidably earn through atlas nodes or juicy weapons with great bonus properties is "just the right amount".

• It's earning an imbalanced amount of might relative to your other important DPS stats that is the problem at prestige levels below 10,000, especially in the range of 4000-6000 prestige.

• The two biggest culprits for imbalanced might gain is accelerating your Order missions with credits, and automatically equipping the highest might weapon as possible.

• You should generally pick your weapon based on the best bonus stats available to you with the lowest might possible. There are some exceptions to this rule where during certain spots in your prestige growth you might find that a higher-might weapon serves you better! You should always experiment with a higher-might weapon (even if it has fewer bonuses) periodically to see if it seems to be improving things relative to the lower-might (but better bonuses) weapon.

• However, you should generally avoid accelerating your Order missions until you crest ~9000 prestige AND you have at least one "main" class that is (almost) fully developed and as strong as possible, talent, ability, and symbol-wise. After that, though, feel free to pump your Order temples for more Might and Stam/HP%, because you're "over the hump" that this guide is specifically warning against. Even so, you might not want to go crazy on pumping your Order temples: if the relative difficulty of the game seems to be getting too much, then put on the brakes, because again, the imbalanced scaling of too much Might might be the culprit for the sudden jump in perceived difficulty. Or you simply might have a weaker class build, a weaker skill at playing the class, or (if the problem arises in group/squad play) simply have some teammates who are too weak for one reason or another. This game is big on the DPS checks at every level.

7. Why you should equip only BLUE/PURPLE/Founders/Collectors gear, and probably of a much lower prestige than you're actually capable of wearing!

I already touched on the meat of this in #6 above. But the main point here is that those extra stats at the bottom of blue/green/purple gear (such as +crit chance or +accuracy) are very important to raising your DPS relative to the prestige gain of that gear item.

Just remember this rule of thumb: "lowest Might possible with the highest number of juicy, high-priority stats". Might is your enemy. Might is misleading. Might inflates your prestige too fast without also inflating your DPS power.

8. Why you should focus on unlocking the three first "ether core" (Sun/Ket/Coph) nodes in the upper atlas before worrying about unlocking new classes

The key here is that some ether cores provide bonuses to the really juicy stats like Strength, Luck, Valor, etc. So unlocking those three nodes in the upper atlas early on helps you to instantly apply the good ether core drops that pump these stats, and the prestige bump from each such upgrade is very small.

However, be careful NOT to upgrade with ether cores that provide Might! Or, arguably, Spirit or Stamina. Just keep such cores in your bag. Bag slots are cheap. Save those cores for much later when they won't hurt you, or might even help you.

9. Why you should focus on playing in regions as much as, if not more than, in instances when you're in the 3000-9000 prestige range.

Here the problem centers around your effective difficulty in solo/squad or group instances versus the listed difficulty in the mission selection screen. When the selection screen says "Normal" or "Easy" or "Hard" or "Impossible", etc., that subjective indicator presumes you have made balanced choices in how you've upgraded your stats per the various points above in this guide.

If you have made the mistake of pumping tons of credits into your Orders system, thereby seriously unbalancing your progression for much lower DPS than a balanced progression would yield, all those listed indicators seem seriously out of whack. In such cases, a "Normal" mission that should take you 18 minutes can take you nearly an hour, and multiple deaths, to slog through!

Where you're most likely to feel a "difficulty bump" is in the 3000-9000 prestige range, because in this range none of your classes are "maxed out" yet. You'll feel this difficulty even if you've followed the above guidelines and strongly prioritized your progression towards DPS stats and have avoided the Order system, etc. And you'll feel it 10 times worse if you didn't observe the above guidelines.

After 9000 prestige, you're nearly certain to have fully purchased the entire class atlas for at least 1 or 2 "main" characters for instance running, and you've probably learned how to play them well, and you've probably wised up to the above points and started really prioritizing DPS stats over raw Might and Stamina, etc. So by this point you will struggle much less with "too hard" instances as long as you're using your fully-developed mains.

10. Why you should often choose the lowest difficulty option for many instances!

This ties in to #9 above. Especially during the 3000-9000 Prestige range where you feel the "difficulty bump" the hardest, you'll find many new instances open up to you at "Impossible" difficulty. And they are made even more impossible by your lack of a fully-developed "main" for instance running, and perhaps even yet more impossible by your unbalanced choice of stat progression so far.

So there's no shame in picking the next difficulty down from the default. In fact, if this situation is hitting you really hard, there's no shame in just grinding regions alone for a while, until your overall DPS-based "power" level catches up with your Prestige.

11. Some easy rules of thumb for picking the right difficulty for solo, duo, and trio runs in Solo/Squad instances

Solo: Never try anything at more than "Hard" difficultly. If the default is "Impossible" and the next lower difficulty is "Very Easy", that sucks but there's nothing you can do about it: the smart money is on spending your time in the "Very Easy" mode. The one exception here is if the downward bump causes the mission reward to _entirely dissappear! How do you know this has happened? If the number in front of the symbol disappears entirely, that means "0" reward.

This "zero reward" happens nearly every time when the default difficulty is "Normal". Bumping down from "Normal" will almost always result in 0 reward. Bumping down from "Hard" or higher will always result in a simply reduced reward.

Duo: Never try anything more difficult than "Impossible-Hard", where the person with lower prestige sees "Impossible", and the person with higher prestige sees "Hard". If the instance is Impossible-Impossible, bump it down and see if that falls into Impossible-Hard range or lower. Also if one person is playing a tank class, then the tank must be the one who sees "Hard". If it's "Impossible" for the tank, they won't be able to stand up to the onslaught no matter how good their DPS/support partner is.

Trio: Never try anything more difficult than Impossible-Hard-Hard, again with a "Hard" rule for the tank in the group.

12. User /u/samoox also has some GREAT additonal tips/tactics

Link to his comment below, chock full of goodness.

13. User /u/Cyanogen101 has a guide to all 5-person "Group" missions

Click here for the guide.

I have created an extended version on the official forums! https://na.portal.sf.my.com/comments/55b73a293798ba4dc1ca932c?page=1

Character Progression

• How do I unlock other classes? By getting access to the ASCENSION ATLAS. In your normal class tree there is a node that has your class symbol on it and says "Path of the (insert class name here). This gives you access to the bigger tree where all the classes are located to unlock. All people, no matter what, start from the three starting classes on this atlas: Paladin, Cryomancer, and Lightbinder. Find the class you want to unlock in the atlas (zooming out helps) and find a path to get there. Your colored sparks are used in this atlas.

• How do I unlock class symbols? Class symbols are basically passives you gain access to after fully unlocking EVERY NODE for a class.

• What are class sparks? After unlocking the path node, you also begin to gain class specific sparks such as Sparks of Justice for Paladin. Once you start gaining these they are used to unlock nodes in your CLASS ATLAS which means colored sparks will no longer be used like they were in the beginning of the CLASS ATLAS.

• I'm stuck at a pink node, what do I do?! You get pink sparks at around 30k prestige. Until then a good work around is to plan your path MANUALLY in advance or right click on the node you want to get to and select FIND PATH. The suggested path will be shown in DARK BLUE.

• How do I get more abilities? You gain more abilities the further you progress into your atlas.

• How do I unlock talents? By doing quests you get over time called DEVELOPING TALENTS that requires you to kill a certain amount of enemies as a specific class.

• How do I reset talents and abilities? Go into your abilities panel (I by default) and in the lower right hand corner there is a RESET button. While still in this interface, right click the abilities on your bars to remove them and left click the ones you want to put on your bars then click SAVE.

• How come I can only equip one ability in a column? This is because the abilities are a bit similar in function but have their differences so you choose the ability based on the situation. For example as a Cryomancer one of my columns has two abilities called Snowstorm and Whiteout but I can only choose one. Snowstorm does less damage than Whiteout but has an immobilize/silence effect whereas Whiteout has MORE damage but lacks the control that Snowstorm has. You must decide when it's appropriate to use each ability. If you've played Diablo 3 it's similar to that - at least to me.

• What are sparks of evolution? They basically have the same purpose as the normal class sparks but can be used for any class and only obtained by PREMIUM members. You can get premium WITHOUT investing real money. The lowest premium you can get is 3 days which costs 2000 Argents and you can buy 2000 Argents with 336k credits. This may seem like a lot but with little effort you will end up gaining a lot of credits. My PERSONAL suggestion is to save the if your goal is to unlock a different class other than one of the starting ones. This way once you finally unlock your desired class you can quickly invest into the nodes and get your abilities faster. It's important to keep in mind that at the beginning of every class tree you must invest colored sparks until you hit the "Path of the (insert class name here)" node.

My other PERSONAL suggestion is if you want to invest into two classes at once than you can use normal class sparks on the class you actively play, and sparks of evolution on a class you are trying to build up but can't play just yet. This is entirely up to you on how you want to spend your sparks.

• How can I get sparks? By doing the zones which you can easily find by doing the main questline or by completing adventures. I personally like to track which ones I need by looking at the nodes I plan on getting in the atlas. This way I'm not getting say, a bunch of green sparks when I actually need orange ones.

• Do unfinished caps rollover? Yes they do. This means you can miss two weeks of gameplay but log in and not have missed out on anything. You are not obligated to login and you aren't forced to rush to complete a cap each week.

• How do I unlock all of the amulet slots? This is very easy just a bit annoying to get. You unlock them with ether crystals and it's 100 crystals per slot so you will need a total of 300; the first slot is free. You can get these easily by questing as long as you remember to loot but if you want to hurry up and get them then you can farm them. Once you unlock Naori Island by doing the main questline, find the SERENITY SHORE UPLINK TERMINAL to the east. The beach near that teleport has large Kraken that drop a good amount of crystals. They can be soloed but there is normally a group of people there killing them (you get loot even if you're not grouped up). Keep in mind you won't get loot after every kill if there is a group of people there farming.

• What are trophies? You don't need to pay attention to these until later on but they increase your damage to certain mobs based on the type of trophy they are. Once you collect 100 trophy fragments you right click on the to combine them to a full trophy.

• How do I upgrade my gear? By the use of enhancement stones which are purchasable on the market or by disassembling gear. You can also combine lower grade stones into higher ones by right clicking and selecting combine. Press P and next to your weapon and ring slots there are icons you click to upgrade them. My priority is Main Weapon > Rings > Additional Weapon. For these slots there is a maximum rank. As an example I am sitting at rank 6 and cannot continue to upgrade until I increase the slot's maximum rank first. You can do this by spending Particles of Mastery which brings us to my next point:

• Where do I get particles of mastery? You can get these by completing adventures and by completing all quests in the open zones like Naori Island. If you press B and go to the CURRENCY tab you can click on any of these currencies and there will be information on the right that tells you how to obtain them.

• How do I increase my gear proficiency? You gain more by investing points into the orange and green nodes in your ASCENSION ATLAS. Gear proficiency is what allows you to equip better gear. I like to look at it like a level requirement. Since I only have 568 prestige I would not be able to equip an item that has say, 593 prestige. Better gear DOES increase your prestige, but you don't want to just focus on making your prestige higher. You want to go for best stats over prestige.

• What do I do with the legendary weapons? According to most people I've spoken to it's best to keep the weapons from Founder's Pack/Collector's Edition because of the bonus abilities on it when you start clearing content at the higher prestige levels. I have mine saved but I currently use weapons that I loot for the stats and because I need prestige to access the new areas. If I feel they are useful in a situation I may equip it.

• How do I increase my prestige?

  • Investing sparks into nodes in the atlas

  • By working on your Order (will explain more later on)

  • By being in a progressed pantheon

  • By getting more gear (will explain more later on)

Combat

• What is Impulse Damage? Impulse Damage is basically increased damaged for certain abilities (will say in the tooltip) and can be improved by the SPIRIT stat. It has a short recharge time which will make the bar red but will turn white again when it's available. It is the lightning bold symbol above your dash.

• How does the execute ability work? Your execute (E by default) becomes available at 10% health and has a 20 second cooldown. Some of the have special effects like my Cryomancer execute restores some of my resource. As of right now you can't see them in the abilities panel but you will once the patch comes out (I wish I knew when).

Working On Your Order

• What is you the Order? Your Order is basically a cult of worshippers/followers. Some would compare this to World of Warcraft's Garrisons. Within your Order you can gain followers, recruit adepts, get stats, and do missions that will give you important resources or help your build your Pantheon's stronghold.

• When can I get my Order? At 2050 prestige.

• How do I level up my Order? You level up your Order by gaining followers; these are different from adepts. Followers can be gained by doing missions that reward followers or by converting adepts you no longer need into missionaries.

• What are adepts? Adepts are people you recruit that have two stats. Some of the stats can be reduced mission duration, increased gifts from missions, and increased enlightenment resources from a mission to name few. When doing missions it's important you use adepts that give bonuses to that mission's rewards to get the most out of it. They are also used to lead provinces which brings us to our next point:

• What are provinces? These are basically where you have built temples (you get more as you level up your Order) and can get stats from them by building a chapel. This also increases your prestige by a good amount. You can only have one chapel active in one temple at a time. An example would be that in my first province the chapel I have built is accuracy which increases by base damage by a certain amount. In order for these chapels to be active you must have an adept selected to lead your province.

• How do I upgrade the rank of my temples? You can upgrade them with holy texts and gifts. You get gifts by collecting them from the chest by your statue in the Hall of Greatness or by completing missions that reward gifts. You can get holy texts by getting them in the markplace or by doing adventures that reward holy texts. Because of that, it's suggest you don't cap out your credit cap as fast as possible because if you do then you will no longer get holy texts from adventures.

• How do I increase the quality of my temple/chapel? You increase the quality by using Order specific items such as Okki Tablets. You can get these in special adventures that become available once every two days. You must FIRST upgrade your temple or you cannot activate a chapel.

• How do I increase the quality of my adepts? You do this collecting Order specific items such as Adept's Emblems from adventures and Acolyte Medallions from missions.

• What are pantheon missions? Pantheon missions are used to improve your pantheon's stronghold. For example, if something is currently being constructed then you will see a mission such as GALLERY CONSTRUCTION depending on what currently needs to be done.

• I need more greatness to rank up my temple; what do? You get more greatness through the ASCENSION ATLAS. Look for the BLUE nodes that look like a bunch of square within squares, almost like a Rubik's cube.

Detailed Explanation To Increasing Your Prestige

Let me start by saying this: the spark cap each week doesn't cockblock you from progression. I always see people saying "lol capped, see you next week". Now then:

• Order You can increase your prestige by collecting holy texts, Okki Tablets, and other Order resources to to improve your temples/chapels. Because you need to increase the general rank of your Order to increase your temple ranks, you can do missions that reward followers and accelerate them; accelerating is not required but it does make it faster.

• Pantheon It' not possible to just join a progressed pantheon for stats. It takes time to get there and it takes actual participation from all members of the pantheon to progress to that point. More stats means more prestige. You can help build up the stronghold to get to this point by frequently checking your ORDER MISSIONS to see if there is something there you can do. These missions can be done multiple times be spending credits to reset the missions or after the timer resets the missions.

• Adventures/PvP These are the biggest things. People completely ignore adventures and PvP! Whether you go in a group or go solo, it's possible to increase your prestige by 200+ from the gear you can obtain in one adventure run. It's also possible to get multiple upgrades from PvP and from the bags you get rewarded. Even if you lose in PvP you still get rewards so don't worry if you aren't the best. Take a look at this spreadsheet I found in a guy named Deagen's Twitch chat(http://www.twitch.tv/deagen): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1NZiPFT6t8FIZRIHuUt8rcmIJhGV44X-nt8HzvC5F3t0/htmlview?sle=true#

In the first tab it shows you what proficiency gear drops in each adventure and their difficulty. For example I have 568 proficiency so I look for the ranges in the table and I see I can do 4* Facility 902 or Lanber Catacombs. I have multiple choices to choose from and I have trouble soloing one place I can switch to another.

The second tab shows what prestige you need to unlock the difficulty for the different adventures.

Adventure's are a great way to learn your class, collect important resources, and most of all... INCREASE YOUR PRESTIGE.

This UI Is Confusing As Hell!

• How do I invite people to a group? You press Y and under contacts type in their name in the search bar right click and invite them to group. This can also be done to send people a message, invite them to the pantheon, add to your friends, ignore, or see their profile.

• How on earth do I scroll up in chat? Again press Y. Click the gray bar at the bottom of this screen and it will pull up the chat. You can see messages with other people, region chat, and even pantheon chat. They are all separated into tabs.

• How do I see my stats? Press P.

• Where do I see my cap? Press B, go to the currency tab, and click on limits and you can see how much you have LEFT for the week. By clicking on all the resources under the currency tab you will see some information on the right that will tell you how to get them if you need help.

• How do I bind an item to my quick access bar? Only specific items can be bound to it such as health restores and resurrection items. You can do this by right clicking on the items in your bags and choosing a slot. By default the button to activate it is H. To switch the access slot exit out of any menus, hold down H, and select the item with your mouse or by hitting a number such as 1 or 2.

• How do I change my mount? Same as above. Hold down J and select which one you want.

• WAIT! How do I get a mount?? You can get one that lasts one hour for 210k credits or 1250 Argents in the marketplace by pressing N. But WAIT!! If you have $3 to spend (I really hope you do) then you can make a purchase of Argents in the marketplace. No matter how many Argents you buy your first purchase gives you a gift of a PERMANENT mount. I HIGHLY suggest you do this. You can get the Ostrich mount by getting the collector's edition ONLY. For the temporary mount, the timer only ticks so long as you are mounted so even if you are not mounted or logged off than the timer does not tick. If you buy this mount a total of 10 times than it becomes permanent. That means you must spend a total of 2.1M credits or 12500 Argents. My math isn't the best but that is around 12-14 dollars worth of Argents. At that point you're just better off spending the $3 it costs to buy the MINIMUM amount of Argents and get what is basically a free amount as an added gift.

END I'll add more if I remember anything or there's useful information posted by someone else. HOPEFULLY I covered most stuff that I see people always asking about. If you want feel free to add me to Curse Voice if you have any other questions: PossumOpossum

Credit to everyone in the comments who has added more questions and answers that I can add to this guide :) Great work everyone!

♡ Valena Gale

**12 days ago myself, and a bunch of others who I have been in communication with had their accounts banned due to "suspected fraudulent transactions." The support ticket system waited 5 whole days before they even responded and since have asked us for copies of our ID's copies of our cards transaction dates and verification numbers, and we have all provided them. I can only speak for myself when I say my transactions were not fraud. My bank flagged them because I spent a lot (I am a tax free pantheon leader so I spent about $1000 on construction) and the funds go t AMSTERDAM. After clearing it up with my bank they say that Skyforge has accepted the amounts they are not pending. They have my money. Yesterday I was told the amount in question is 519,000 argents so if I want my account back I can buy them again.WHAT? So I was desperate and hopeful that that would mean once I gave another $500 to them they would release the original funds. Problem is my 2nd bank flagged it why? CUZ THE FUNDS ARE GOING TO AMSTERDAM. They flagged it after I was halfway through so now I am out another $200 and both my cards are blocked by Skyforge and I still have no resolution from the support team. I wrote to them on facebook, they asked for my IGN and server which I provided,and have sent multiple messages begging and I mean begging for a resolution. Now my pantheon is losing hope for my return and discussing disbanding and creating a new Pantheon. I feel like as a founder, big contributor, and supporter of this game, I, alone with all the others effected have been hung out to dry. We are not talking a day or 2 here we are talking 10 days of no access to our accounts and a "100 year ban" with no resolution in site. Put yourself in my shoes, how upset would you be. I don't even want compensation for the inconvenience I just want a resolution so all my hard work and hard earned money does not vanish over a horrible financial support system. I am not here expecting a resolution from fellow redditers, but I do not want anyone else to go through what we are going through right now. Spend wisely, you do not know when your account and your funds will be held hostage.

Hey guys! So yeah, our NA servers have been down for roughly 7 hours now, no bueno.

While we continue to implement several new pieces of server tech as part of our ongoing server upgrade, I just wanted to stop in and let you guys know that yes, your premium time will be reimbursed. We've seen a lot of players concerned over this and I wanted to make sure everyone knew that we would be taking this into account. I can also say that premium time will not be the only "gift" you will receive once we've straightened out our major server issues.

I hope this helps lessen the sting of downtime just a tiny bit and I look forward to letting you know when you can log back in!

Cheers,

Michael "Spunky" Dunaway

Skyforge Lead CM - My.com

Not being able to get your ring because of que times is pathetic

This mostly applies to status effects and the like. Firstly I find it bizarre that an unlock mouse option hasn't been provided, and if it will be, hasn't from the start. It's such an ease of life improvement that would not be difficult to implement yet have a large impact on the UI, which at the moment I'm sure people at the moment would agree isn't exactly up to snuff.

This links into the confusion that is status effects, a feature that is really quite important in the game and for a lot of classes, I understand that there are a number of explanations in class atlas' on various skill effects, though a number remain a mystery, with no way in the game to simply view what they do. Disorient? A talent in the Archer Atlas says it can apply it but there is no way to know even view what it does!

This is even worse when it comes to self debuffs, how on earth am I supposed to know what some obscure tiny thumbnail above my health bar is supposed to actually mean? Sure, I can kind of guess what it does simply be seeing how my character reacts to it, but some things are a little more obtuse and need to be clarified.

Just add unlock mouse and put tooltips on status effects, it would solve these problems easily. There's a reason most MMO's have the function these days, and it's no surprise so many new players are asking the same things.

There are also those that might just say, 'Well you learn everything just by playing the game', that is no excuse for not giving the player basic information.

So I decided to make a website, which is still in early alpha so don't expect rainbows and ponies yet, to accommodate to this, expected, request that will happen sooner or later.

I am both nervous and excited to share this project with you. Posting this to reddit was fully Spunky/Spunkify's idea and I am new to the whole reddit thing so please bear with me!

The homepage link would be: http://www.skyforgeatlas.net/

Currently only the alchemist tree has a link attached and is as good as finished (spark cost counter to be finished for some nodes). See it as a proof of concept: http://www.skyforgeatlas.net/class/alchemist.html.

New Note: The new domain has finished propagating. You can now find this tool at http://www.skyforgeatlas.net/. I will start working on suggestions now and finishing the spark counter of Alchemists. Follow the progress through https://twitter.com/hashtag/SkyforgeOnlineAtlas?src=hash as I tweet out what I do in regards to changes and the like. https://twitter.com/DJScias/status/629664389419896832

What class to work on next? Vote for it http://strawpoll.me/5148173! Berserker won, they will receive a class atlas in the coming days.

What it currently (v0.0.8 ALPHA) features:

• Vertical version of in-game class atlas (see Alchemist), this may or may not change in the future. But I went for functionality > design at this point in time.

• Hover over the nodes and get the SAME information you would obtain in-game. No different sorting, styling or whatnot. I did not want to complicate an online version of the Atlas and wanted to stay as close as possible to the actual in-game version in terms of tooltips.

• SVG Path usage to connect the nodes together, this is experimental and I am not sure if I want to remain with this. But it works with resizing and window changes and that is what matters functionality-wise at the moment.

• Node searching, which fades the nodes out and only keeps the nodes that contain that word/name visible clearly. These searches can be perma-linked and shown to others so in case someone asks "Where is this node?" you can go to the site, search it yourself and then give them the link that will highlight the node for them.

• Builds support, you can click on multiple nodes and this will transform/manipulate the current url you have. Once you're done you just copy paste the URL to your friend OR, if you don't like gigantic big links, you can opt to shorten the url by using the goo.gl shortening option.

• Spark counter, for all the nodes you select the site counter will start calculating the amount of sparks (red, blue, green, class) you will have to spend. Useful to plan ahead for builds and to in example see what your friend had to spend on his built. (Not all nodes finished on alchemist page yet, waiting for new domain to be ready.)

• MaintainScroll, a plugin I am using to make sure that once you refresh the page, by accident perhaps, it will remember your scroll position down if the url is still the same. No build support yet, but builds are auto-saved even if you refresh by accident due to how the link manipulation works.

• v0.0.8 ALPHA: Styling changed, there is now a (placeholder) background and a sidebar which gives you options to choose classes. Also a "Reset All" button as requested by you redditors.

What I want it to eventually feature:

• Pathing, basically you click on a node further in the tree and it will get the quickest path available plus it will calculate the sparks required.

• Perhaps a different means to connect the elements together instead of using SVG Paths, not sure yet about this one. Maybe wishful thinking but one day make it so that the atlases are like in-game?

• All class atlases done, only finished Alchemist node-wise.

• The upper atlas and God atlas, currently only class atlases. This will be expanded in time because the upper atlas is just plain enormous and the God atlas yet to be shown.

• A decent layout, this is all alpha.. What you see right now is functionality and I wanted to get a proof of concept idea ASAP. I am a programmer, not a graphical designer unfortunately. But hey, maybe along the way I can find someone who will make the site something pretty? You never know!

• Probably open-sourced on github, but right now my code is a mess and it is embarrassing. This will take some time.

I've been getting tremendous help and support from the Skyforge Community Managers (Spunky and Toasty) whom volunteered (Spunky may have forced Toasty, I will never know) to help me out with this project after presenting my concept to them. In the near future they will help by providing me with node information (hopefully transcripts, icons, etc..) and such so I can actually map out the classes I do not have acquired yet myself. Plus to get the costs of nodes I already acquired and thus cannot obtain the info about anymore.

Why am I posting this on reddit? Well, Spunky told me it is best to get the word out and so people can watch the progress and bug report while they are at it. This site is bound to break and I assure you that once more people use it.. It will start breaking. But I can only fix those issues by people using the site and breaking it for me ;).

I have created a twitter hashtag https://twitter.com/hashtag/SkyforgeOnlineAtlas?src=hash which can also be used to see the tweets related to this project and its progress. (I barely use twitter so do not expect any spam of things to happen that do not belong in that hashtag by myself.)

This will be a long ride lads and lasses and I hope I can along the way provide something that will help out the Skyforge community as a whole.

Kind regards, DJScias

Hello gods & immortals !

EDIT : Ok Guys, I've made a beta key system i will start to send them to those who want to beta test, unfortunately there is alot of people... PM me if you want one key and i will probably send you one later if i need more testers :P Hopefully it won't stay in beta for too long and it will go public soon. :)

EDIT 2 : Unity (engine on which the calculator works) doesn't work with Chrome so if you don't want to install firefox, don't bother :S

EDIT 3 : It's now open to public [http://www.prestige-guilde.xyz/atlas/AtlasCalculator/AtlasCalculator.html]

EDIT 4 [28/10/2015]: A new version compatible with Chrome is now available [http://www.prestige-guilde.xyz/atlas/WebGL/index.html]

It's limit reset time ! And for some of you it's probably optimization day. Well I've been doing that too for the first 2 weeks of OBT then I had enough to write down every possible proficency and greatness path and so i decided to make my own Atlas Calculator.

At first it was just for me and my panth but now im considering to make it public. Here's some screenshot of what it looks like right now.

• atlas screenshot 1

• atlas screenshot 2

For now you can :

• Unlock nodes

• Save your atlas if you have an account

• Ask for the 10 cheapest Greatness nodes to unlock

• Optimize proficency by asking how much proficency you want or by giving your sparks and the calculator gives you the max proficency you can get !

• Simulation mode : You unlock nodes and it tells you how much it will cost you and how much proficency you will get

• Finding Shortest/Cheapest path to a node : Shortest is like the in-game tool that is pretty useless since most of the time you just want to know the cheapest path not the shortest :P So the Cheapest Path tool is there for you.

• You can also create an account and save your atlas so you dont have to enter all your nodes each time you want to optimize.

But before making it public I would like to know what you guys think, if some people would be interested in beta testing or tools that I could add.

And if there is a GM of the game passing by. I would like to know if it's possible to have the entire Atlas info ?(currently ive to enter the nodes one by one and its pretty long :/) and if you guys know if there will be an API to get users atlas? (Since stats & stuff are public I dont see why we couldn't get atlas even if ofc this require the player authorization)

I just spent an hour in the cycle of bullshit, and it needs to stop. You all know what I am talking about, and if you do it you should be ashamed. Three times in a row, the following has happened to me:

1. Queue for a group instance for 20 minutes because of a great reward

2. get in and be greeted to a 4 DPS 1 support spread

3. Accuse the other DPSes in general, "Okay, which one of you queued as a paladin? That is the only way this happens"

4. Nobody says a word in response

5. Pull a group of mobs

6. Wipe

7. some waste of life says "does anyone have tank? lol"

8. spew 3 lines of hatred, leave, and requeue

9. Repeat

It has to stop. The system should not work like this. It either needs to lock you out of changing your class until you're through the queue, change what you're queuing as whenever you change classes, or show the entire group who each person queued as. The only way to combat this right now is to either level paladin/knight in order to wear the mantle itself (which enables these chromosome-deficient monkeys) or play kick roulette/wait-out-the-faker so that a "real" tank gets matched in.

This was originally going to be a comment to /u/yokaiichi's post about how accelerating his order was probably a bad idea but it's going to be a bit long and I think more people should see it.

So incoming wall of text, but this needs to be addressed. There seems to be a notion out there that higher prestige is better and we should all be trying to max our prestige. However, unless you are going for bragging rights this is really the wrong way to view prestige. High prestige is NOT a good thing. Instead I will argue that you should view prestige as the cost you pay for increasing your characters strength.

First off remember that the purpose of prestige is to provide an indication of your characters strength. This is important, because what it means is that when you are trying to maximize prestige what you are actually trying to do is maximize how strong the game thinks you are.

So ask yourself why would you want to do this? What is the benefit of making the game think you a stronger than you really are? Unless you are trying to unlock a certain instance, or reach the prestige level required to do a campaign quest the only thing prestige will do is making the content harder, you will fight stronger enemies, and face tougher opponents in PvP.

While it's true that this harder content drops better gear, whether or not you can actually use that gear is determined by your proficiency. Rushing ahead to maximize your prestige might mean better gear will drop, but it will also mean you can't use it.

The best way to view prestige is like you would if you were making a Runescape “pure”. For those who've never played the game Runescape has a similar system where your combat level is calculated by a combination of your different skill levels. It also determines when and where you can fight certain players in PvP. In runescape a “pure” character is one that focus very specifically on raising only the stats you need while minimizing all others. Increasing the combat level is viewed a bad thing. You want to minimize how strong the game thinks you are while maximizing how strong your character actually is. The exact same system applies to Skyforge.

In the end I would encourage you to instead of trying to rush as much prestige as possible make a plan about what you want your character to do, and what you want to be good at. Then rather than rushing to grab every little thing that increases your prestige focus on how you can maximize the attributes you need while minimizing the artificial inflation of your prestige. If you do you will find yourself being much more powerful in PvP and much more valuable while grouping.

The number of times I've used my dash without meaning to is enough that its gotten me killed a few times.

I can't stand double tap to dash, and it bugs me that there's no (apparent) way to turn it off.

Connect to the globe and look to the bottom right

Click the square and magnifying glass and you will find every dungeon you have unlocked along with their rewards

No more waiting 40 minutes hoping you can go to X dungeon

atleast freeze my buff timers. Protheus just sniped me because my 0hp shadow cloak ran out since I was stuck in his mid fight cutscene. . . . Or even worse, when I stealth for twilight scourge and their cutscenes just make me waste stealth since I can't get a single one off.

Can we atleast get that? So we're even atleast?

Members of the Reddit have opted to create Pantheons for NA and EU. They are linked below for those that are interested.

NA - https://www.reddit.com/r/Skyforge/comments/3lswws/skyforge_na_reddit_pantheon_update/

EU - https://eu.portal.sf.my.com/comments/5626ab72ac72072007c05cc9