Levels 1 to 5

Primal World

*This section includes a tutorial. If you are an experienced player, you may decide to completely skip this part and immediately head to your home city by seeing Teleporter Oinklets [see below: Your Main City (Levels 6 to 10)].

After you click “Complete” on the “Create a Character screen” and you pop into existence in PWI, the first window you will see is the “Newbie Guide.” You will be confronted with this every time you do something new, such as level up for the first time or use your wings/flyer for the first time. It’s helpful if you’re new to the game and relatively easy to ignore if you’re not. The tabs in the bottom right hand bottom corner will come in handy frequently. To access the “Newbie Guide” (a.k.a. Rookie Guide), just click the “Functions” tab, followed by the book icon for “Encyclopedia,” and it will be part of the options.

Please also rely on these tabs to log out, speak with a GM, when you forget which hotkey is for something in the game, and do many other things. For a list of hotkeys, or shortcuts for when you want to access another window quickly, press K. They are very convenient and you will use them at least every few minutes. For example, to look at the stats for your character just press C. To see the map, press M. To exit out of the window, press the same key again.

Speaking of Map, the place you are in looks like this, right?

Walkthrough

This is Primal World, the starting point of all characters. All new characters, including those of other classes, have the same quests (see Leveling Up: Quests) as you at this point. These quests were designed to introduce you to a little bit of everything: killing monsters, gathering items, equipping armor, flying, hatching pet eggs, teleporting, and more.

Before you go off to explore, you should speak with the NPC (non-playable character) Qinglong twice to receive the Cerebean Sentinel. Bring this item to the Guide for your race, who should be very close by, to receive temporary armor and weapons you can equip. You also have an item called Place of Origination, which gives you temporary access to four skills you receive a later level when you equip it.

Do not take the second quest from NPC Teleporter Oinklets just yet. That quest completely takes you away from the area and you will not be able to return. Instead, go on the quest to see the directions for the task Qinglong gives you. This will start you on a string of other quests in which NPCs ask you to do tasks and direct you in who you should see next. If you can’t find an NPC, just click on the name, highlighted in purple in the quest box, to auto-path your character there!In between quests, you should fight monsters to become familiar with the battle system and gain experience points. It gets to be annoying clicking on the same icon 30 times in the span of 2 minutes when attacking, right? To fix this, create a macro.

Creating a macro is very helpful for combat because it sets up an automatic sequence of spells or attacks at one click. To create a macro, press R to bring up the Skills window, click new at the bottom of the window, select an icon for the macro, then click and drag the icons, representing skills from the Skills window. For my cleric at the moment, I have two macros: an attack macro and a healing/buff macro. I can combine the two into one macro at any time and in any way I wish. I have the two kinds of spells separate for now because I use the offensive spells a lot more than I use the spells for healing and buffing. If I put everything into one macro, I would be needlessly casting healing/buff spells and wasting mana points every time I clicked on that macro icon.

This video is a tutorial for creating a macro. The person who made it is a high level assassin, so please bear in mind that you won’t have as many skills to choose from so it won’t be as overwhelming in choices.

In addition to experience points, you also be able to pick up items from monsters. The fireworks do nothing for you, except look pretty in the sky, but hang onto the potions as they will come in handy when you fight higher levels.

You also will get aquametals, which can be traded for some nice items if you have enough by talking to Little Dawn (next to Qinglong). I tried to fight monsters to collect aquametals for as long as I could, but within an hour I gave up because it became so boring. I have respect for anyone who has the patience for the hours it takes to do this. If you want a quicker way to obtain aquametals, you can gamble at the Cute Rush, a mini event in which you can bet on 1 of 5 monsters to win in a 3-minute race near the Ridge of Awakening and outside of Celestial Residence. There is a low stakes race and high stakes race for you to choose. If you win, an NPC appears to award you your chips, which you trade in for aquametals.

Once you are done exploring, killing monsters, and completing quests, take the quest, "Leave Place of Origination" from Xuanwu. At this point you will be transported to another city within Perfect World depending on your race.