Launching as a free MMORPG on both mobile and PC, Tower of Fantasy comes out of the gate swinging with tons of content. One look at this bright, stylized game might make you think it’s just a ripoff of Genshin Impact, and while there are certainly some similarities, Tower of Fantasy has an entire set of systems and mechanics all its own. The game will do its best to ease you into the experience, but there are plenty of things the game either glosses over or outright doesn’t tell you that are vital to a smooth first few hours in this new world that blends fantasy and sci-fi elements together
Between combat, exploration, puzzle-solving, and more, Tower of Fantasy has a lot to take in when first embarking on your new adventure. Depending on how much experience you have with other MMOs, or gacha games in particular, your experience coming to grips with this game will be heavily swayed. That doesn’t mean players new to the genre shouldn’t try out this hit new title, though, which is why we’ve come up with some essential tips and tricks that can help players of all skill levels get started with Tower of Fantasy.
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Daily caps and server resets
Before we get into the game proper, there are some things you should be aware of about Tower of Fantasy that will directly affect the way you play. This game, unlike traditional MMOs, has daily caps on things to keep players from progressing too much too quickly.
The first and most important cap to be aware of is the daily level cap. No matter how much you may want to, you can only grind and level up a certain amount per day while playing. On your first day, that is level 18, followed by level 24 on the second, with all future caps listed in your Wanderer’s Log. Always check to see what the daily cap is before you go off on missions or grinding, because any XP you earn after you hit the daily level cap is wasted — it won’t carry over into the next day.
Each day also has four daily quests you should complete before they reset for some nice rewards, as well as claim your daily log-in bonuses.
All daily caps and quests reset at 5 a.m ET, so figure out what that is in your specific time zone to know when it is safe to start running missions and dailies again.
Weapon types and rarities
While not an overly explicit loot game, there is still a ton of weapons in Tower of Fantasy that are divided up by type and rarity. Each weapon type has their own attacks, role in combat such as range, melee, heavy, fast, etc., and unique abilities and ultimate skills. With 12 in total, pick one of each up whenever you can to try them out to see which you feel most comfortable with, but also know that you can keep three weapons on your character at once and easily swap between them for different scenarios. Here are all the weapon types:
- Sword
- Spear
- Scepter
- Bow
- Gun
- Dagger
- Shield and Axe
- Hammer
- Claymore
- Scythe
- Chakram
- Cube
Whenever you grab a new weapon, make sure you also check out their combos by going into the warehouse. You can find this in the Weapons menu and then selecting Warehouse. Here, simply highlight any of your weapons to get a breakdown of all its skills, stats, and abilities.
Finally, weapon rarity is a bit of a complex issue since it doesn’t exactly follow normal rarity traditions. There are three rarity types, and they are all color coded, but not in the same way most other games tier them. From most to least rare, they are:
- SSR — Orange-colored and have constellations and unique traits
- SR — Blue-colored and have constellations but no unique traits
- R — Purple-colored and have no constellations or unique traits
Additionally, SSR and SR weapons can be upgraded up to six times to grant them new passive effects, but you can only get weapons of this tier by drawing them from the special card pool.
Improving your gear
Speaking of upgrades, while levels are capped daily, your gear never is. Even after you’ve earned all the XP you can in a day, you could still collect materials and spend some time upgrading your equipment. The two ways to do this are by general upgrades, as well as increasing slots.
Upgrading a weapon has two stages, starting with enhancing them. To do this, just go to the Weapons > Warehouse menu and choose the weapon you want to upgrade. So long as you have the proper materials, all you need to do is hit Upgrade to increase its stats. You will need a small bit of gold for each upgrade too.
Augmenting weapons are the next stage of upgrades once a weapon has reached its maximum enhancement level. You will do this in the same place as enhancement, but it requires much rarer and specific materials. Specifically, you will need shards like Firecore, Magcore, and Rockcores depending on your weapon.
Upgrading your slots works the same way, but are a more permanent upgrade in the sense that they enhance whatever item is equipped into that slot.
Pack a lunch
Along with all the upgrade materials you will gather, Tower of Fantasy is full of ingredients you will pick up that you can either eat raw or prepare into different meals. Unlike other RPGs where food is mainly just used as an optional way to buff your character for duration of time, it is almost required to eat in Tower of Fantasy. Yes, it will give you different effects depending on what you eat, but it also is necessary for staying alive.
You will notice that you character has a hunger meter that needs to be managed. Each food item and meal will replenish a certain number of points to that meter. Every five minutes your character’s hunger will increase by a point to restore any missing HP, with each 10% of your max HP healed reducing your satiety by one. The more satiety you have, maxing out at 100, the faster your HP will be restored.
Eating a meal will restore far more satiety points than a raw ingredient, plus give you some buffs, though they do have one potential downside. Aside from requiring recipes to know how to cook new meals, some meals have a cooldown attached to them so you can’t eat multiple meals in a row. Even so, aside from just keeping yourself topped off, you should always opt for a cooked meal over raw ingredients you collect around the world.
Simulcra are just skins
One of Tower of Fantasy‘s gacha systems grants you what look like new characters called Simulcra, but they aren’t actually as deep as that. Unlike Genshin Impact, where a new character is actually, you know, a whole new character, Simulcra are just new skins to look like a new character.
While these Simulacra, or character skins, don’t change any stats, you can actually unlock things called Simulacrum traits by giving gifts to the real character in game. These traits will vary based on which character they’re based on.
Use your mini-map, but don’t rely on it
You mini-map has a lot of utility in Tower of Fantasy, but at the same time you shouldn’t keep your eyes glued to it while going from point to point. This is mainly due to how constricted it is, often causing you to miss out on points of interest just out of its range. Whenever you’re exploring, make sure to take a second to open your proper map to see what chests, supply pods, or other places are nearby that your mini-map might not be showing you.
At the same time, your mini-map does give you a lot of information on what is immediately around you. For instance, different symbol types will appear based on what is in the area, such as orbs for orb-shaped chests, diamonds for puzzles that reward you with Black Nucleus, and white diamonds for other points of interest. Go off the beaten path and check out every point of interest you can. Not only do they offer rewards on their own, but you will likely also earn some Exploration Points.
Explore, explore, explore
And that leads us perfectly into our next topic: exploration. Tower of Fantasy will gradually unlock new areas of the map as you get through the story, but once it’s all available to you, the landmass at your fingertips is absolutely massive. Not only is exploration worth it just to soak in the beauty of the world but it’s chock full of resources to find that you will need later on. This includes obvious stuff like gold, ingredients, and upgrade materials, as well as environmental puzzles, hidden photos, and Teleport Towers.
Teleport Towers are particularly important to reach first since they allow you to fast travel between them, making repeat trips across the map much more convenient.
If you needed a more numerical reward for exploring, then Exploration Points are there to scratch that itch. You will earn Exploration Points for each individual region in the game, with various rewards unlocking when you hit certain point thresholds, plus an overall percentage for total progress. You can earn Exploration Points by doing the following things:
- Finding scenic points
- Finding Omnium Towers
- Completing Ruin dungeons
- Opening supply pods in hideouts
- Linking spacerifts
- World Exploration
When you’ve got enough Exploration Points, you can claim your rewards by opening the map and selecting the specific region you’ve earned enough points for. Here you will see a screen that looks like a battle pass where you can claim each reward as your progress bar reaches them.
Focus on the main quest
Your top priority early on should always be doing main quest missions. The story is split into chapters, and by going through them you will not only unlock all the regions, but also Relics like the Jetpack, which make traversal much more enjoyable and fast. As much as you may like doing side activities, hold off until you’ve at least maxed out the current story or feel you need to level up to beat the next mission.
Tweak your settings
Finally, there are a few settings we recommend you tweak to make Tower of Fantasy just a little more enjoyable over the long run.
First, go ahead and turn the discharge skill animations to off. These are prolonged animations that, while cool to watch the first few times, quickly slow down the pace of the game. To find the option, go into Basic > Camera Options and then set Discharge Skill Animation to off.
While it might sound handy, we also strongly encourage you to turn auto-climb off. This is essentially a clamber you would see in other games, where your character will automatically pull themselves up on ledges if they’re close enough, but not high enough for a clean landing. Because of how often this can trigger when you don’t want it to, especially during exploration sequences in more-confined areas, it can easily become more frustrating than helpful.
Last up, we highly suggest setting the Same Screen Wanderer setting down to either 15 or 10. This is set at 20 by default, and determines how many other players you will see in the game with you. Naturally, the more players you can see at once, the more strain on the game, and thus higher likelihood of frame-rate drops.
