Video version
If you prefer watching a video over reading, here's one that covers the beginner guide:
Start and Progression
Reroll
When you play the game you should first decide if you want to reroll or not. Rerolling doesn’t take much time after completing the tutorial the first time and is a great way to start the game with a few strong Hunters or weapons.
You can find our reroll guide linked below but to keep it short, you should try to get the current featured pick-up Hunter and then focus your rolls on getting Seo and Emma (Min is another great character, as he can fit in all teams as a dedicated support). For weapons, considering you can get Scythe for free we suggest focusing on weapons that could work nicely with it, namely Plum Sword and Book of Thesis.
Here are the three characters we mentioned:
And here are the weapons we mentioned earlier:
Demonic Plum Flower Sword
Rarity: SSR
Element: Dark
Type: Sung Jinwoo
After Plum Flower: Swift Flight is used, the user applies the [Plum Flower] effect. After successfully performing a Dash followed by Plum Flower. Swift Flight, they apply the [Full Bloom] effect.
[Plum Flower]: Increases Critical Hit damage by 12% (stacking up to 3 times). Duration: Infinite.
[Full Bloom]: Increases the usage speed of Plum Flower: Swift Flight by 20%. The user's Attack increases by 4%. The user's Critical Hit Rate increases by 4%. Duration: 8 seconds.
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When the user sheathes after using Plum Flower: Swift Flight, applies the [Amplifying Draw] effect. ([Amplifying Draw] Increases the chance of the user landing a Critical Hit on the next attack by 32%. Increases skill damage by 32%. Duration: 3 seconds.)
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Increases Dark damage by 10%.
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When the user uses Dash, [Amplifying Drawl lasts for 5 seconds and additionally increases Critical Hit damage by 32%.
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Decreases the cooldown of Plum Flower: Swift Flight by 20%.
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Adds the [Plum Flower] effect. Increases the user's Dark damage by 5%. Applies 2 stacks of [Plum Flower] when entering the stage (stacking up to 5 times).
Thethis' Grimoire
Rarity: SSR
Element: Water
Type: Sung Jinwoo
When Water Spray hits, has a 100% chance to inflict the [Cold Ice] effect on the target.
[Cold Ice]: Interrupts the target. When the effect ends, deals additional damage equal to 10% of damage taken during the duration. Duration: 4 seconds.
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Applies the [Deep Erosion] effect to targets with the [Cold Ice] effect. ([Deep Erosion] Increases Weakness damage taken by 24%. Duration: 15 seconds.)
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Increases Water damage by 10%.
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When the [Cold Ice] effect ends, increases the user's additional damage to 20%.
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Decreases the cooldown of Water Spray by 20%.
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Increases damage dealt to [Frozen] targets by 50%.
And here's our reroll guide:
After you finish rerolling you should start pushing for Story Mode as far as you can. There is no need to focus on getting missions done in all stages as you can always revisit the previous missions when you are stronger, especially the ‘speedrun’ missions requiring you to clear within x seconds.
It’s worth noting that you can obtain a lot of Summoning Tickets for clearing the story, so you should avoid spending your precious Essences (premium currency) on the standard banner and only use it to pull on the Rate-up banner.
Gold issues
Gold is a HUGE bottleneck early on, so you should focus your resources on only a few Hunters and weapons. You will use a lot of Gold to upgrade everything in the game, so use it wisely. We suggest keeping an eye on our tier list for Hunters and Weapons, before investing into someone:
Overall, SR weapons are very important while progressing through the game, as you can obtain dupes more easily and they can give a lot of early power/precision. So don't sleep on the lower rarity Weapons (and don't dismantle them!) early on and we also suggest working on your Light weapons and Dark weapons for Jinwoo, as they will prove helpful in clearing some difficult story stages and farm artifacts.
Stat allocation for Sung Jinwoo
It’s also important to properly allocate your stat points, as stats were not made equal.
Players should focus mostly on Strength and Perception stats, as they are universally useful regardless of the weapon. How much Perception you need depends on the dupes of your weapons - since dupes will give you additional Precision, a stat that influences the minimum amount of damage when attacking. A maxed out SSR weapon provides 4000 points of Precision (2000 for the first dupe, 500 afterward) while a maxed SR weapon provides 2000.
You can start out with a 4:1 STR/Perception build and reset your stats as you get more dupes in your favorite weapons to get more points of STR.
Equipment
Main and sub-stats
We can split equipment in two groups: left side and right side. Left side equipment can be obtained playing Gates and doing Encore Missions, while right side equipment can be obtained playing Instance Dungeons. More to this later!
Some equipments will have fixed main stats while others have a randomly assigned one:
- For left side gear, Helmets can have additional or % based ATK, DEF and HP, Gloves and Chest will always give additional DEF, gloves will always give additional ATK and lastly, boots have crit damage, defense penetration, healing given increase %, defense %, hp%.
- For right side gear, Necklace will always give additional HP, Bracelets give element % damage up, Rings give additional or % based atk, HP or DEF and Earrings always give additional MP.
Early on you should not upgrade your gear past +5, as you want to focus on getting purple gear or above as soon as possible. While substats are helpful, start by targeting the correct main stat first and then replace pieces as you get better substats. Also, percentage based increases are stronger later in the game as you gain more stats and increase your level, while ‘flat increases’ are very helpful while progressing considering they can quickly boost your stats.
For a lot of Hunters, you can simply stack their preferred stat early on in order to clear the first tiers of Encore Missions.
For Jinwoo you should focus on attack bonuses (be it additional or % based), critical hit chance and you can also raise pieces with defense ignore. Critical Hit Damage is currently bugged and only working when above the stage suggested CP, so when it gets fixed the value will increase significantly if your crit rate is high enough.
If you don’t know what stats you should focus on, you can tap ‘Recommended Stats’ on the artifact page of your Hunter:
Sets
Equipping pieces of the same sets will give you a set bonus for 2 or 4 pieces. Obviously getting the desired sets is preferred, but when starting out don’t be afraid to use ‘broken’ sets or pieces as long as they have the correct stats. That being said, try to at least use a 2/4 bonus as they can provide a lot of free stats - the popular Toughness set gives 8% crit rate at 2/4, while you can also get some % stats with sets like Noble Sacrifice (HP) or Armed (Atk%).
For more details about the Stats and Sets check our dedicated guides:
Skills, Runes and Blessings
Skills are the bread and butter of Jinwoo and hunters, allowing them to deal damage or support their allies.
Hunter skills
Every Hunter has 2 basic attacks - a normal one and a ‘core attack’ that happens when you fill the bar - two basic skills and four special skills.
- The first special skill is the character’s support skill when selected as an assist. Every dupe will increase this passive for a total of 1/3/5/7/10 extra levels. You can also level this passive using Hunter skill scrolls,
- The second is a QTE skill, Quick Time Event. These are the skills that Hunters use when doing a ‘switch in’ when you are doing a Hunter stage,
- The third one is their Ultimate skill and can only be used when the power gauge is full.
- The last one is the passive skill, that generally defines the character’s “identity” and adds unique mechanics to their kit. Every dupe will add one ‘star’ to the character, allowing them to get extra charges of their skills or even change how they work, morphing their existing skills in specific conditions like Choi’s first dupe.
Levelling skills up costs Hunter Skill scrolls 1 up to level 4 and level 2 scrolls up to level 7.
As you increase the skill level you will also need to reach a specific level in order to proceed with the upgrade. Level 8 and 9 upgrades require level 3 scrolls and Mana dusts, these are extremely rare and should not be used without a lot of consideration.
Jinwoo skills
In the case of Jinwoo, you will get more skills as you progress through the game.
- You can customize his skill layout to select two basic skills and one ultimate skill,
- You can also select the QTE skill when dodging and the ultimate skill.
The skill upgrades are similar to the Hunter skill upgrades, they just use a different skill scroll type. Also, Jinwoo can level up the skill of his weapons.
Every weapon has a Basic Attack skill, a Core Attack and an Ultimate, so you should upgrade the ones that you use the most first and then gradually increase the skill levels of your strongest weapons to increase your damage. Of course, apply discretion - if you only use a weapon as a ‘switch in’ for their ultimate, there is no immediate need to raise the basic attack or core attack skill.
You can find the option of levelling up weapon skills in the ‘Weapon’ menu after selecting the weapon you want to upgrade.
Runes
It’s very important to know that Jinwoo can also equip runes. Runes can be obtained by crafting and can change the skill they are equipped to, adding extra effects or changing the element of the attack. Unlocking a rune for a skill adds an extra skill level to it and every skill has four different runes that can be unlocked, even if you can only equip one at a time.
Runes also come in different rarities: Basic, Epic and Legendary. Epic runes provide a stronger buff and adds 2 skill levels when equipped. You can craft runes with the Fusion menu.
You can exchange 100 rune fragments for a random rune - most likely it’s going to be a basic rune. When you obtain a new rune it will be automatically added to the list of runes for that skill. However, if you obtain a rune that you already have, it will be stored and you can use it to try and craft a higher rarity rune with the skill fusion.
The chance of obtaining a higher rarity rune is displayed on the screen and increases every time you fail to generate a higher rarity rune - the % will go back to default after you manage to get one. Should you get a dupe Epic Rune, you can do the same for the Legendary rune fusion.
Blessings
Considering the nature of runes, it’s a great time to mention the existence of Blessings. Blessings are basically ‘free’ passives that you can equip with a different set of effects. You start with only one Blessing slot and increase a new one as you hit level 50/60/70. Some blessings offer extra damage, others offer damage buffs or even extra abilities like the ‘Daily quest completion’.
You can obtain Blessings by fusing blessing powder and the process is the same as the rune fragments - as you get dupes, you can try to fuse them for higher grade blessings and so on.
Best Skills, Runes and Blessings for Jinwoo
To find the best skills and runes for Jinwoo, check our other guide:
Army of Shadows
After progressing through the game (Chapter 9) you will unlock Jinwoos trademark skill - the Army of Shadow. The army is composed of generic shadows that do damage as well as named shadows that have special effects on the party, possess skills and overall contribute a lot to the battle.
Your Army Level influences the Army Total Power and the maximum shade capabilities. You can level up your army with Shadow Energy, which can be obtained by playing the game - mostly in gates and story. While early on you will have to be a bit careful with the usage of your shadow army, as you progress you will start obtaining a lot of shades, that acts as a sort of ‘stamina’ for your army.
Every time you bring your army to a mission, they will consume a set number of shades. You can see the total shades consumed per mission in the pre-battle menu, after tapping on your ‘named’ shadows and checking their party menu.
Named Shadows
Named shadows are more ‘elite’ shadows that will be deployed with the shadow army and are notable enemies turned into allies during the story. Some are original to the game like Blades, the elf that Jinwoo regret not being able to turn into a shadow. By default, you will have Igris as your first named shadow.
Every named shadow has a Rank, a Growth level (much like Hunters), a passive skill and some skills that will be activated when you summon them.
Increasing the growth level of your named shadows boosts your Army’s power. The materials needed for the upgrade can be obtained from gates as well as from the battlefield of time game mode. To increase the rank of your named shadow you need to use the same currency that you use to unlock shadows: Traces of Shadow.
Game modes - Story mode
Story mode will explore the story of Solo Leveling, showing you how Sung Jinwoo became the strongest Hunter. The story works like a flowchart, where completing a chapter unlocks the next one. Some story chapters also unlock ‘side chapters’ that cover extra stories related to the supporting characters.
Achievements and Rewards
Story chapters provide a reward for clearing the chapter and for completing all the achievements in every mission, for a total of 4 standard banner Tickets per chapter.
The achievement can range from the classic ‘clear within x seconds’ to more specific achievements, like ‘kill x monsters before the end of the time’ or ‘deal the last hit using this specific character’ or ‘using a hunter of said element’. This is especially true for the Side Chapters, where you will be forced to use some of the characters involved in the story and control them.
If you do not own the character, the game will provide you a ‘free’ copy to use for the mission, if you own the character then the game will use your own version, provided that it’s stronger compared to the free one. This is great as it was recently changed to consider the strongest between the two - early on you would be forced to spend a lot of gold to level up SR characters.
After progressing enough in the story (chapter 8) you will unlock ‘Hard mode’. Hard mode is like normal mode, except it’s well, harder. The story segments will also be removed, only leaving the combat missions.
Players should focus on completing chapter 8 as soon as possible, considering it unlocks an important mechanic, the Army of Shadows. Progressing with the story also unlocks the other game modes and gives a lot of XP, so it should be your priority!
Game modes - Gates and gate mining
Gates are instance dungeons that are generated periodically. Every gate has:
- A difficulty rank (from D-Rank to S-Rank),
- An entry condition (it’s either a solo gate where you use Sung or a gate where you can only use Hunters),
- A gate type. Currently, you can find Normal Gates, Dungeon Breaks gates, Treasure gates and Red Gates.
If you don’t like the gates currently available you canrescan the available gates every 10 minutes. You can also pay some Essence Stones to rescan.
As you increase your level you can progressively increase your difficulty rating - higher difficulty means more difficult gates but better rewards. At any time you can lower or increase the difficulty when doing a rescan, so don’t hesitate to do it if you want a bigger challenge or feel like you overestimated your power.
Challenges may require you to clear specific gate types, so keep that in mind - mostly, they will ask you to clear ‘Dungeon breaks’ or ‘Red gates’. The game will show you the current progress so it’s very easy to see how close you are to the goal.
Gate Mining
From the Gate menu you can also access the Gate Mining option.
Mining a gate takes time depending on the gate rank and provides different rewards based on the rank and typing of the gate. Each gate mined will increase the XP of your miner team, and as you level it up you will gain a variety of useful perks.
Game modes - Encore Missions
Encore Missions are unlocked as you progress with the story and offer a way to obtain Artifacts, aka equipment. .You can only use Hunters in this mode.. There are two bosses per difficulty tier, one providing Helmets and Chest pieces and the other providing Gloves and Boots.
Kasaka and the Mage Forces can drop Artifacts up to level 35, meanwhile Cerberus and Arachnid drop items between level 40 and 55.
Every boss has different difficulty tiers, increasing the difficulty and the rewards you can obtain. If you can complete all the battle missions for a Tier, you will unlock a special buff that gives you 50% extra damage and reduces the damage received by 50%. This is huge and is great if you just want to auto through the boss at a lower difficulty to burn your keys instead of doing a higher difficulty manually.
Depending on the character you rolled for you may found Cerberus to be quite harder compared to Arachnid, so focusing on the boss you can clear more easily first is a valid strategy to get power to push through the other boss more easily.
Just make sure to alternate the two or you will risk not having pieces with the correct mainstay to gear your Hunters!
Game modes - Instance Dungeons
Instance Dungeons allow you to farm the 'right side' equipment, so accessories. And compared to Encore Missions where you could only use Hunters, here you can only use Sung Jinwoo.
The Steel-fanged Lycan will drop Necklaces and Bracelets, meanwhile Igris will drop Rings and Earrings.
Instance dungeons have the same format as Encore Missions, meaning you will progress through the tiers in order to get better accessories. Having a wide variety of breakers will make your progression much easier!
Game modes - Others
Battlefield of Trials
This mode offers some challenging stages that you can clear for resources and draw tickets. Every 5 stages will reward you with 5 tickets, so it’s a great source of pulls around midgame. There are two versions: one for Jinwoo and one for Hunters.
Battlefield of Time
A more ‘end-game’ focused mode, this mode lets you challenge bosses from story in a ranking mode, where you will receive rewards based on your personal best damage on top of a ranking reward based on your performance in your group.
Bosses are unlocked over the season. Some of the challenge mode missions will require you to register a new best time in this mode, so you may want to play it more careful early on if you don’t want to get stuck. There is also a Challenge mode where you can get rewards by beating bossed of increasing difficulty.
Power of Destruction
Power of Destruction is a raid battle where you fight a big boss, Pitch-black flame Ennio. The goal is to break his hands as fast as possible to deal damage on the end, rinse and repeat for the duration of the fight.
Weapons that can inflict powerful debuffs like Poison/Bleed can deal a LOT of damage to the boss when you can target their head and it already caused the nerf of a popular cheese weapon, Kasaka’s Venom Fang, that could abuse this to insane levels.
At the end of your run you can either retry the fight, go back to the menu or register it. After registering the score you will be added to the ranking and will be given a score+some rewards based on the point threshold you reached.