Tower Of Fantasy Beginner's Guide: Tips For Getting Started In The New Anime MMORPG

Tower of Fantasy is off to a strong start, with more than 10 million downloads following its global release on August 10. Though heavily inspired by Genshin Impact--with an emphasis on open exploration, gacha-style character collecting, and action RPG combat--Tower of Fantasy does more than enough to stand on its own. Part of that is thanks to the game's MMORPG elements, with options to join guilds, team up to tackle world bosses, help fellow players with puzzles, and more.

It can, however, be a little overwhelming at first, as the game throws new systems at you rapidly in its opening hours. If you've never played Genshin Impact or gacha games, you'll be even more confused. Thankfully, Tower of Fantasy is not quite as complicated as it seems, and once you spend a little time in the world developer Hotta Studio has created, you'll be exploring, battling, and upgrading your character like a pro. Here are some essential tips to get you started.

Create Your Character Carefully

In true MMORPG fashion, Tower of Fantasy comes with a full-fledged character creator where you can make the anime character of your dreams. However, many of these choices are permanent unless you make an entirely new character, so make sure you are happy with your avatar. While you can change certains parts of your character, like your clothes, accessories, and hairstyle post-character creation for a fee, other aspects of your character, like gender, are permanent. Just keep that in mind before you log in for the first time.

Get Through The Tutorial (Then Take Your Time)

Though it can be a bit of a slog, getting through Tower of Fantasy's opening few hours as quickly as possible is generally a good idea. Once you reach the first Omnium Tower, the game truly begins, and you'll be able to engage with the gacha system to unlock new, more powerful weapons.

Once you reach that point, however, don't feel like you have to continue speeding through the main story or level up as fast as possible, mostly because you can't. Tower of Fantasy has a number of systems in place limiting how much progress you can make within a certain amount of time. If you notice your XP bar is full but you're not leveling up upon receiving additional XP, you've hit the cap for the day. On your first day, for example, you'll only be able to reach level 18. The same can be said for the main story, which will tell you to come back in a certain number of hours to continue if you do too much of it too fast. That can be frustrating, but it encourages you to engage with some of Tower of Fantasy's other content, or to simply log off and go touch some grass.

Ditch The Starter Weapons Fast

Once you've gotten through the tutorial and unlocked the gacha system, it's time to get some more powerful weapons. You should stop using the blue-quality starter weapons as soon as possible and avoid putting any resources into upgrading them. From simply playing the game and claiming various login rewards, you'll have enough currencies to start "pulling" for some new weapons. You'll want to snag some SSR and SR rank weapons, as these are more powerful and have better stats than the blue starter weapons (they also have cool characters you can choose to play as, called simulacrum, attached).

The trick is that the best SSR-rank weapons are extremely rare. More than likely, you'll start to accumulate purple, SR-quality weapons. While not as good as SSR weapons, these can still get you through the game no problem. As you receive duplicates of each weapon, that weapon's star rating will increase, and they'll start to get stronger and unlock additional abilities. For that reason, once you've started to accumulate a few SR weapons with a few additional star ratings, figure out what your favorite weapons are and start upgrading them. Though you'll likely unlock a SSR weapon eventually (you're guaranteed to get one after 80 pulls on the game's standard banner that uses the Golden Nucleus currency), having some powerful SR weapons will get you a long way.

Didn't Get A Specific Character You Want? Consider Rerolling

The alternative to simply being happy with the luck of the gacha draw is if after your first few handfuls of pulls you don't get a SSR weapon, simply make a new account and try again. This can be time consuming, but if you're dead set on unlocking a certain weapon to kick off your journey, it is an option. The further you progress in Tower of Fantasy, the fewer resources you'll have for making pulls without spending money, and you'll likely have already spent a large number of resources upgrading your other weapons. Starting over while still in the game's early stages is a legitimate strategy if you want to get an ideal start, but it's far from required.

Equip Weapons With Different Elements

Elemental statuses play a large role in Tower of Fantasy's combat. Flame-based weapons can ignite enemies and deal damage over time, for example, while frost weapons can freeze them in place. Certain enemies will also be weak to one element or another, or have a shield that can only be broken by using a different element. Many environmental puzzles also require certain elemental weapon types to solve. For that reason, it's good to have some elemental variety in your arsenal so that you're ready for any situation. You can equip three weapons at once, and it's also not a bad idea for one of those weapons to be capable of dealing damage at range, as you'll encounter flying enemies who can sometimes be challenging to take out from the ground.

Pay Attention To The Charge And Shatter Stats

Two of the most important stats on any weapon are its Charge and Shatter rates. A weapon with a high Shatter stat will be more efficient at breaking enemy shields, while a weapon with a high Charge will more quickly fill up the meter that allows you to unleash a powerful attack when switching between weapons. Knowing which weapons excel at which is a large part of your combat strategy, so make sure you don't have three weapons equipped that all excel at Shatter but hardly build up any Charge. When an enemy is unshielded, use a weapon that excels at building Charge before swapping to your best Shatter weapon once the enemy gains a shield.

Choose Your Role

Tower of Fantasy doesn't have classes in the traditional sense. Instead, your role is determined by how many of a particular weapon style you have equipped. Equip two defense-style weapons and you essentially become a tank, taking less damage, dealing more Shatter, and you are better at grabbing the attention of enemies in group content. Having at least two DPS-type weapons will make you deal even more damage in group content, while having two support-style weapons equipped will greatly increase your ability to heal. As you unlock more weapons you'll have more options on what weapons you prefer and what kind of playstyle you might enjoy, so keep that in mind as you start to put together builds for your character.

Do Your Dailies

This one is a little obvious, but it still needs to be said. Each day, you can complete four bounties that reward a large amount of various currencies as well as XP. Especially if you've been locked out of the main story for a set amount of time, doing your daily bounties is a great way to continue leveling up. Aside from bounties, you can also do a set number of other activities per day, many of which consume a stamina resource that recharges over time. To make sure you're getting as many upgrade materials as possible, try to complete a few Joint Operations or Dimensional Trials each day, so you're not letting your stamina go to waste. Completing various daily and weekly tasks will contribute to filling up a weekly progress bar, which unlocks additional resources at certain milestones. In short, if you keep up on your dailies, each week you'll be getting the maximum amount of rewards.

Join A Crew

This isn't mandatory, but it's so easy, you might as well. As Tower of Fantasy is a MMORPG, you can join what are essentially the game's versions of guilds, called Crews. In addition to having a group of friends to potentially join up and play with, being a part of a Crew grants you access to Crew missions and Crew donations. Completing these will grant you more rewards, as well as a Crew-based currency that can be used to unlock certain items. As the Crew missions are things you'll likely be doing anyways, being part of a Crew is just another way to get a little more out of your daily and weekly activities.

Explore

Like Genshin Impact, a big part of Tower of Fantasy is exploring the game's open world. You'll want to do this, as solving puzzles or finding various collectables will grant you the resources to do more gacha pulls, XP, upgrade materials, and more. Certain milestones of exploration completion in each of the game's zones will grant you even more rewards, such as a mushroom that will permanently increase your stamina or powerful Relics.

Move Like A Pro

Going hand-in-hand with exploration is being able to navigate Tower of Fantasy's world efficiently. Thankfully, you have a number of tools at your disposal that make traveling the open world engaging and fun. For starters, by the end of the game's tutorial you'll have both the jetpack and jetboard. These are essential to getting around quickly. The jetpack will cause you to leap into the air, after which it functions similarly to a glider. When used in conjunction with the ability to climb nearly any surface (as long as you have enough stamina), you'll be able to get just about anywhere you need to go. Keep in mind that you can activate the jetpack as many times as you want while in the air, so deploy it in conjunction with your dash ability to cover huge swathes of land. The jetboard, alternatively, excels at going downhill or skating on top of water, and while you aren't very maneuverable while using it, you do go fast. The jetboard and jetpack can also be upgraded using Relic shards, which isn't a bad idea considering how often you'll be using them. Don't forget, you will also gain a mount at a certain point in the game's story, which can be used to drive around faster than you're able to run.

When you're just starting, climbing can be a challenge, as you don't have a large stamina bar. The good news is there is a way to climb that doesn't use any stamina at all. When climbing, simply detach from the wall (on PC, this is done with ctrl by default) without moving in a specific direction. Then, double jump upwards and reattach to the wall. This doesn't use any stamina (which kind of seems like an oversight on the developer's part) and lets you reach heights that would be impossible were you to simply try and climb your way to the top normally. With this pro-tip in hand, no mountain or cliff is too high, so explore to your heart's content.

Pick Up Everything

It never hurts to be prepared in a RPG, and Tower of Fantasy is no different. You have a fairly large inventory space, so don't be afraid of picking up every vegetable, fruit, or upgrade material you find out in the open world. Not only will these all be useful at some point, whether for cooking or upgrading your weapons, but occasionally your daily bounties or a side quest may require you to have a certain amount of a specific item. If you've already been picking all of these up as you explore the world (you can even pick up items with a simple button press while riding your mount), you'll be able to quickly complete some bounties and quests without having to really do anything at all, which is always a win.

Complete The Main Story Side Quests

If you absolutely feel like you have nothing else to do and have been locked out of progressing the main story, consider completing some of the core side quests in each region. Each zone has two of them (which sometimes are actually multiple quests tied together), and are required to unlock the full story progress rewards in each region. Who gives out these quests and where they can be found is displayed in the Story section of the Terminal tab under each corresponding zone. While you're there, be sure to claim any rewards you may have already unlocked through simply playing through the main quest. You should be at 70% story completion in each region by the time you complete the main story, so finishing these side quests will push you to the finish line and grant you some great rewards to boot.

The above tips will help you hit the ground running in Tower of Fantasy, but don't take too long to complete the main story. Hotta Studio recently announced the game's first expansion, which will add the desert region of Vera and the cyberpunk city of Mirroria, is coming this fall.