Solo Leveling: Arise Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Solve the Mystery of the Gates

In a world not too far from our own, mysterious portals called gates opened, bathing the world with mysterious energy. These gates were both a blessing and a curse: on one hand, dreadful otherworldly beasts spilled forth from them, ravaging all in their path; on the other, the strange energy pouring forth from the gates empowered some select individuals. These people gained supernatural abilities and were dubbed Hunters. And among these Hunters was a particularly weak one named Sung Jin-Woo, who, it seemed, was destined to die in an ignominious grave.

Or so it would seem, but fate had other plans.

In Solo Leveling: Arise, you play as Sung Jin-Woo, the former “World’s Weakest Hunter”. Blessed by a mysterious power and turned into a “player”, you’ve been blessed by a mysterious voice with the ability to level up. With this boon in hand, you’ll be able to train and surpass your fellow Hunters, becoming a warrior without equal. Grow, become stronger, and surpass your limits; perhaps one day you’ll solve the mystery of the gates and put an end to it.

Solo Leveling: Arise is available on the Google Play Store, the App Store, and on PC via the Netmarble Launcher (which you can get from NetMarble’s website). For reference, I’ll be using screenshots from the PC version.

In this beginner’s guide to Solo Leveling: Arise, we’ll be going over:

• Hunter Basics – every RPG player must have at least a basic understanding of how their characters work. Here we’ll go over Jin-Woo as well as his support crew.
• You Alone Level Up – while Jin-woo’s ability to level up is a large plot point in the web novel, it’s more standard fare for us players. Here we’ll discuss how to power up your heroes (in ideally the most efficient way possible) by gaining levels, distributing stat points, pumping up their skills, and honing their gear.
• Battlefield Control – your combat options, such as Extreme Evasion, Break Gauges, enabling QTEs, and team building.
• A Hunter’s Pay – where to get the resources you need to become stronger.
• Overcoming the Gacha Gate – the different kinds of premium currency, the gacha mechanics, and how to reroll.

Lastly, if you’re looking for a quick rundown, feel free to jump to the “Quick Tips” subsections.

Hunter Basics

Every RPG requires its players to understand its systems. In this section, we’ll be going over the basics of both your normal Hunters as well as Jin-Woo.

Quick Tips:

• While Jin-Woo also has stats, levels, and skills like other characters, his progression is unique and much more complex and in-depth than other characters.
• Hunters have levels. Each level improves that character’s base HP, attack, and defense.
• Your other Hunters can’t exceed Jin-Woo’s level.
• Apart from the bonus HP, attack, and defense per level, Jin-Woo also gains five skill points at each level that you can freely assign.
• Each character has multiple skills that they can call upon in battle.
• To activate a Core Attack, use your Basic Attack enough times.
• Basic Skills are strong but have a cooldown.
• Support Skills trigger when a character is summoned as a support. As Jin-Woo can never be a support character, he doesn’t have a Support Skill.
• QTE Skills require you to press a button during specific circumstances. Jin-Woo has multiple QTE Skills that are unlocked with story progression.
• Ultimates are immensely powerful but require energy to be used. Keep fighting to gain energy.
• Jin-Woo’s Basic Skills and Ultimate can be swapped out. You unlock more options as you progress.
• There are two types of weapons: Jin-Woo weapons and Hunter weapons. Jin-Woo can only equip Jin-Woo weapons, while Hunters can only use Hunter weapons.
• Weapons boost a hero’s stats and confer a passive bonus. In Jin-Woo’s case, the passive bonus is access to a weapon skill. The higher a weapon’s rarity and level, the better it is.
• Jin-Woo’s equipped weapon determines his Basic and Core Attack. This gives you a lot of options when it comes to playing as him.
• Jin-Woo can eventually equip two weapons. Use a weapon’s Weapon Skill to switch to that weapon.
• Each hero can equip up to eight artifacts – the left side is for armor and the right side is for jewelry. You’ll unlock the right side as you continue playing. Artifacts have main stats and substats, both of which improve their Hunter’s performance.
• Artifacts also have a set bonus that triggers if you have two or four pieces of that set equipped.
• Uniquely, Jin-Woo undergoes job changes at some points in the campaign. This gives him more stats and new skills that you can switch between.
• Blessing stones provide Jin-Woo with passive abilities. You’ll unlock them as you play the game.
• The first, default blessing stone prevents you from dying and grants you an emergency heal, once per battle.

It’s Called Solo for A Reason

Before we begin, you should know that much, if not all of the game’s progression revolves around Jin-Woo. Thismakes perfect sense; the title of the franchise is “Solo Leveling”, after all, and we’re following his story.

This means that while Jin-Woo does have basic RPG characteristics such as levels and skills that he shares with the rest of the cast, Jin-Woo often has an additional layer of complexity and depth in each of these aspects.

Levels

As with most RPGs, gaining experience allows your characters to level up. While thematically, it would make sense if only Jin-Woo could level up, that’s too finicky a mechanic for even this game.

Each level up grants a hero a small amount of base HP, attack, and defense. Nothing too fancy, but small steps like this are necessary for growth. Note that your other Hunters can only level up to Jin-Woo’s level. You’ll also need special materials (Mana Power Elixirs) at certain levels to unlock even more power, but as those are somewhat far-off for a new player, we won’t discuss them here.

For Jin-Woo, leveling works mostly the same, but in addition to the base stats he gains with each level, he also gains five stat points that you can freely assign to five stats. This lets you build Jin-Woo in a variety of ways.

We’ll discuss the stats in greater detail later.

Skills

Each Hunter has access to several skills that they can call upon to help them in battle. There are several types of skills, so let’s go over them in detail.

First off are the two normal attacks:

The one on the left is your Basic Attack, which happens when you tap on the button. As you use your normal attack, it accumulates energy, which is indicated by the white pips around its icon. Once it’s full, it transforms into a Core Attack – the one on the right – a much stronger ability. Once you fire your Core Attack, you need to build up energy for it again.

Next are your two Basic Skills:

These are more powerful abilities that form the core of a character’s kit. They can range from dealing damage to healing allies or even strengthening or weakening characters and enemies. Both of these skills have a cooldown.

Finally, there are the three special skills and your duplicate passives.

Clockwise from the upper left, these are the Support Skill, QTE Skill, Advancement Passives, and Ultimate.

• Support Skills are activated when Jin-Woo summons that character in a Solo level.
• QTE Skills are skills that are only accessible for a very brief moment. QTE skills can usually be activated in response to something, such as when a monster is knocked down/into the air, when a Core Attack is performed, or when you perform Extreme Evasion. Think of them as conditional follow-up skills that allow for free damage.
• A Hunter’s Ultimate is their strongest ability. As a character fights, they gain energy, and once you have enough energy, you can unleash their Ultimate. Ultimates tend to have massively powerful effects on a long cooldown, so it’s your job to determine when to unleash these game changers.

As with leveling, Jin-Woo is special when it comes to skills. While he more or less follows the same route as his peers, there are some differences:

• Jin-Woo doesn’t have a Support Skill since there’s never a point in the game where he serves as a support character.
• Jin-Woo has multiple QTE Skills, which are determined by your story progression. In the beginning, you’ll only have Collapse and Death, which allow you to get free damage on foes that are knocked down or airborne.
• Most importantly, Jin-Woo’s Basic Skills and Ultimate can be freely swapped among all the skills you’ve already unlocked for him.

This last perk means that you can tailor your Jin-Woo’s play style to match your own. For example, a quick way to deal bonus damage in the early game is to equip any skill that allows Jin-Woo to either knock down an opponent or render them airborne, which will then allow you to use his QTE for a quick, powerful follow-up!

Weapon and Weapon Skills

Each Hunter can also equip weapons to improve their performance in combat.

There are two types of weapons in the game: Jin-Woo weapons and Hunter weapons. As you might have guessed, Jin-Woo weapons are exclusive to him, while Hunter weapons can only be equipped by Hunters. Both of these offer their bearers stat boosts, as well as another bonus. For regular Hunters, each weapon has a passive effect, and SSR Hunters also have their exclusive weapons, which can be crafted (more on crafting later).

However, all this pales in comparison to Jin-Woo’s ability to use Weapon Skills.

Yup, that’s right. Jin-Woo not only has a customizable Basic Skill 1, 2, and Ultimate, but he also gets a special skill depending on the weapon he has equipped, bringing his active skills to three. Different weapons offer different skills, and naturally, rarer weapons are better. Later on, you’ll gain the ability to give Jin-Woo two weapons, giving him access to a total of four active skills.

Note that Jin-Woo’s Basic and Core attacks will also change depending on the weapon type he has equipped. As he can freely equip any type of weapon, you can choose whichever Jin-Woo suits you best. Want to pelt enemies from afar? Sure. Fast swordplay? Can do. Slow and powerful unga bunga? Sure. And once you get the ability to wield two weapons, you can use a weapon skill to switch to that weapon, giving you extreme versatility in combat.

Artifacts

Each Hunter can also equip up to eight artifacts, which provide even more stats as well as a nice set bonus.

There are two sides on the artifact screen. The left side, which is unlocked in the image above, is for armor. The right side is for jewelry and unlocks later on. They perform the same, however.

Now, each artifact confers stats (and substats) to the hero it’s equipped to and also has a set bonus, which triggers if you have two or four pieces of that artifact set equipped.

We’ll talk about artifacts in greater detail later.

Jobs

As you progress through the story, Jin-Woo will gain the ability to undergo job change quests. Each of these quests usually accompanies an important story event and improves upon Jin-Woo’s abilities.

Each job change grants Jin-Woo some stats – yes, you can assign those points – as well as new skills for you to try out. As mentioned above, you can freely switch between Jin-Woo’s many skills, so pick whichever ones you like the most.

You also get a costume with each job change (that you can freely switch in and out of) though sadly, you can’t change back to the dorky Jin-Woo you were playing as at the start of the game.

Blessing Stones

Jin-Woo also has the unique ability to benefit from blessing stones.

Think of blessing stones as Jin-Woo’s passive abilities. As you progress through the story, you’ll unlock more of these stones, thus improving Jin-Woo’s strength even further. These are more mid to late-game stuff, though, so we won’t tackle these.

Note that the first stone grants you a once-per-battle resurrection and an emergency heal if your health drops below zero.

You Alone Level Up

Now that you know what your heroes can do, it’s time to delve into how to make them stronger. From leveling up, improving stats, pumping skill levels, and getting better gear, here’s what you need to know to ensure your heroes are always at their best.

Quick Tips:

• Exercise prudence and good sense when spending strengthening materials as farming in this game is markedly slower than in others.
• Leveling up your heroes is the most basic way of making them stronger. Each level grants a hero some HP, attack, and defense.
• The level of your other Hunters is tied to Jin-Woo. Thus, you need to level him up to get anywhere.
• Jin-Woo gains experience by clearing stages. Story stages give the most experience, so I suggest going through the story ASAP.
• Jin-Woo gains five stat points per level on top of the base stat bonuses. You can assign these stat points to Strength (attack and skill damage), Vitality (HP and defense), Agility (crit rate and crit damage), Intelligence (MP and faster cooldowns), and Perception (raises minimum damage).
• As Jin-Woo is tailored to be a main DPS, I suggest investing primarily in Strength with some leeway for Agility and Perception.
• You can reset Jin-Woo’s assigned stats in the stat allocation screen. This costs gold.
• Fuse duplicates of a hero to improve their ascension level. Each ascension level grants powerful passive boosts to that Hunter.
• Weapons, like Hunters, can also be leveled up. At certain thresholds, you’ll need to Limit Break weapons by sacrificing special materials that come from Dungeon Breaks (purple gates).
• Weapons also have an ascension level that boosts their skill (for Jin-Woo weapons) or passive effect (for Hunter weapons).
• Each ascension level also gives a sizeable precision bonus to a weapon. The higher the rarity, the higher the boost.
• Skills can be leveled up by spending skill scrolls and gold. Skill scrolls come from red gates.
• Jin-Woo can also equip skill runes, which augment each of his skills by changing how they work, their multipliers, their element, and so on. The rarer the skill rune, the bigger the numbers on it.
• Each skill rune for a skill also passively increases that skill’s level by one.
• Get skill runes by hunting for rune fragments in red gates, then fusing those. This has a very low chance of creating a high-level rune, so just keep at it. You’ll get one eventually.
• Fusion allows you to create new skill runes from 100 rune fragments or gamble three runes to get a chance to make a purple rune. You can fuse from the Management NPC in the guild.
• Rune fragment fusion has a very low chance (2%) of yielding a purple rune. More often than not, you’ll get a blue rune. Any duplicate runes you get are put in your bag.
• You can more reliably fuse for higher-level runes by sacrificing three blue runes, with a 65% chance of making one purple rune and a 35% chance of making one blue rune. This system has pity – each fusion that doesn’t yield a higher-rarity rune adds one draw point, and at full draw points, the next fusion is guaranteed to be “very successful”.
• As you progress, you’ll gain the ability to fuse blessing stones. We’re not covering blessing stones in-depth in this guide, but keep this in mind.
• Each Hunter can equip up to eight artifacts (the right side unlocks much further on). Each artifact has a main stat and several substats, depending on its rarity (blue – purple – gold, with gold as the best).
• Artifacts come from Encore Missions, where you refight a story mode boss. The more progress you make in the story, the more Encore Missions become available. Clearing an Encore Mission on a certain difficulty unlocks the next tier; the higher the tier, the better the chance for rarer artifacts.
• You can spend enhancement chips and gold to upgrade artifacts to a maximum of +20 regardless of rarity. Note that enhancement can fail, which will cause the materials spent to vanish.
• At every 5^th level, an artifact either rolls for a new substat or rolls to improve one of its substats. Higher level artifacts have more of their substats already revealed, meaning that they’ll have higher substats at max level.

Spend Wisely

Before we begin, I should warn you that any form of strengthening in Solo Leveling: Arise gets expensive very quickly. Apart from that, strengthening materials aren’t exactly easy to farm – most of them can only be acquired from gates, so unless you’re willing to swipe or spend valuable Essence Stones, it’s better to be prudent and spend wisely.

Some ways you can conserve resources are:

• Only level up the Hunters you’ll be using.
• Save weapon ascension materials for your SR and SSR weapons.
• Only level up the skills you use (i.e., if you’re only using a character for their Support Skill, it’s wasteful to level up their other skills)

Leveling Up

Like most RPGs, your characters need to gain experience to level up. But as mentioned earlier, the level of your other Hunters is tied to Jin-Woo’s level, so we need to level him up as quickly and as often as possible. Luckily, all you really need to do is play the game to help Jin-Woo gain levels.

Every battle you clear – even team-based ones where Jin-Woo doesn’t play a part – gives you some experience, which is added to Jin-Woo’s pool. The best way by far to level him up quickly is to play the story, which also unlocks a ton of new gameplay features and mechanics for you.

Remember what I said about spending wisely: while early levels are relatively cheap, the gold cost for leveling up scales faster than you might expect. Therefore, try to focus only on the Hunters you know you’ll definitely be using.

Distributing Stat Points

As mentioned earlier, Jin-Woo is a special character in that he gets five stat points per level which he can distribute.

The five stats you can put points into are:

• Strength raises attack and skill damage.
• Vitality increases HP and defense.
• Agility improves both critical hit rate and critical damage.
• Intelligence gives Jin-Woo more MP and cooldown reduction.
• Perception boosts precision, making your damage more consistent by raising your minimum damage.

Honestly, there’s nothing with wrong with just dumping more points into Strength, and optionally Agility and Perception. Since Jin-Woo is meant to be played as a main DPS, it makes sense to pump his offensive ability as high as you can go.

If you don’t like how your Jin-Woo is performing, you can always reset his assigned stats by pressing the button at the bottom of the stat allocation screen. Note that this costs gold!

Ascension

One thing that normal Hunters can do that Jin-Woo can’t is ascension. Ascension is the process of fusing duplicates of a hero to empower them.

Each duplicate that you sacrifice will boost a Hunter’s ascension passives by one level, to a maximum of five times – this means you need to pull six copies of a Hunter to complete their ascension. Ascension passives tend to greatly improve a character’s performance, though the caveat here is that there’s nothing you can do to accelerate this growth method aside from getting lucky in the gacha.

Weapon Development

As with Hunters, weapons can also be leveled up. Unlike Hunters, however, weapons aren’t capped by Jin-Woo’s level.

To level up a weapon, you’ll need to feed it gold and Weapon Enhancement Gears, which you can get from gates or sacrificing other weapons (as a last-ditch resort). However, every so often, you’ll need to Limit Break a weapon, which involves sacrificing special materials that you get from Dungeon Breaks, a special kind of gate.

As with Hunters, weapons also have ascension levels which can be acquired by fusing duplicates of a weapon. Aside from improving a weapon’s skill (for Jin-Woo weapons) or passive boost (for Hunter weapons), each advancement level confers a sizable precision bonus; the higher the weapon rarity, the bigger the precision boost.

I’ll repeat my advice on leveling up Hunters here: upgrading your weapons gets very expensive very quickly, so try to stick to the weapons you actively use.

Skill Levels

Improving a Hunter’s skill levels is a slow but sure way to make them stronger. Each skill level improves the already generous numbers on that skill, allowing you to deal more damage.

To improve a skill, you’ll need Skill Scrolls. There are two types of these – Player scrolls for Jin-Woo’s skills, and Hunter scrolls for anyone who isn’t Jin-Woo. Each level will consume some skill scrolls as well as gold; at higher levels, you’ll need to spend more (and rarer) scrolls as well as more gold. You get skill level materials from red gates.

As with other upgrade methods, this gets expensive quickly, so exercise prudence and only level up the skills you’re actually going to use. For example, if you’re using Lee Joohee solely for her Support Skill in Solo missions, there’s not much point in spending resources leveling up her other skills.

Skill Runes

Once again, Jin-Woo has an extra layer of customization when it comes to souping up his skills. This comes in the form of skill runes, which can strengthen or even alter how his skills work.

Each of Jin-Woo’s skills Basic Skills has four runes, each of which alters it in different ways. For example, Double Slash can become Full Moon Wheel, which not only vastly increases its damage output but also improves the damage it does to non-boss monsters by 45%. Some runes can also change the elemental damage type of a skill, allowing you to pinpoint boss weaknesses with the right runes. Lastly, each rune for a skill you possess gives that skill a free level, meaning that just collecting runes makes Jin-Woo stronger.

Skill runes also have rarity. In ascending order, these are blue, purple, then gold. The rarer a skill rune is, the better the bonus multipliers are. For example, compare the blue rarity Full Moon Wheel with the gold one:

Getting more skill runes isn’t a straightforward process. You’ll need to start by getting rune fragments from red gates, then fuse those runes via the fusion mechanic (more on that later) and pray to the RNG that you get a higher-rarity rune. Oftentimes, you won’t. It’s a long and arduous process.

As with his Basic Skill and Ultimate customization, be sure to sort through Jin-Woo’s runes every so often as most of them offer direct upgrades to his kit!

Skill Rune Fusion

You’ll rarely (if ever) get skill runes in a usable state. To reliably get more of the stuff, we’ll need to perform fusion. Start by getting some rune fragments from red gates. Once you have at least 100, visit the Management NPC at the guild.

In the fusion menu, you can select what you want to fuse on the left side of the screen. On the right side are the materials you’ll need to sacrifice to perform fusion. Simply slot the materials (or tap “Simple Fuse” if you don’t care what materials it’ll grab) and pray that the RNG is kind, because that 2% you see in the image above is the chance to create a purple skill rune.

One hundred rune fragments allow you to gamble for a chance to get a purple rune (2% chance, 98% chance to get a blue skill rune). If you get duplicate runes, they’ll instead be thrown into your bag, where they can instead be used for a chance to get a purple or gold rune:

This second method of fusing runes has a higher chance of yielding purple runes, but there’s a catch – you have to sacrifice three “extra” runes in your bag, and while there’s a 65% chance to get a purple rune, there’s a 35% chance that your three runes are just going to become one blue rune.

Fortunately, there’s a pity system:

Each time you fuse and it’s not a “very successful” result (meaning the runes didn’t rank up), you’ll get one draw point. At full draw points, the next fusion is guaranteed to yield a “very successful” result, so there’s at least a safety net, even if it takes forever to get there.

As you progress through the game, you’ll eventually unlock blessing stone materials and gain the ability to fuse blessing stones.

Artifacts

As mentioned earlier, each Hunter can equip up to eight artifacts – one set of armor and one set of jewelry. Each artifact has a main stat as well as several substats, both of which can be improved to boost the artifact’s performance.

Let’s start with the basics. To get more artifacts, you’ll need to unlock Encore Missions. You gain access to this game mode as you progress through the story. Each Encore Mission involves fighting a story boss, except this time, you’ll be forced to play in Hunter mode, meaning no Jin-Woo.

The further in the story you go, the more Encore Missions you unlock. Clearing the previous tier of an Encore Mission also opens the next tier, allowing you to challenge an even harder version of the boss for rarer artifacts.

Note that you only have three Encore Mission runs a day, so be sure to use them. If you really must, you can buy more keys with Essence Stones.

Now, let’s talk about upgrading your artifacts. Here’s an image, for reference:

The rarer an artifact – blue, purple, gold in ascending rarity – the better its base stats, the higher its level cap, and the more substat rolls it gets. To level up an artifact, you need to feed it Artifact Enhancement Chips and gold. As an artifact’s level increases, its main stat grows, but the amount of gold and chips – as well as the rarity of the chips it needs – will increase. Note that artifact enhancement can fail, which will consume the materials with no benefit. The maximum enhancement level for any artifact, regardless of rarity, is +20.

At every 5^th upgrade level, an artifact will either unlock a new substat (for common artifacts) or upgrade one of its existing substats (for rarer artifacts).

This is all up to RNG – if you’re lucky, you’ll consistently hit the stat you want. More likely than not, you’ll upgrade something else. Because rarer artifacts come with more of their substats unlocked, they’re almost always superior to their common brethren since they get more chances to roll on their substats.  

Lastly, each artifact belongs to a set.

By equipping artifacts from the same set, you can trigger a two-piece or four-piece passive bonus. These bonuses are usually very potent, so try to progress as much as you can in the story before committing to a certain set – there might be a better one just around the corner.

As a new player, don’t try to get perfect artifacts just yet. Instead, focus on getting Jin-Woo and your main Hunter team some decent artifacts. Any bonus is better than none at all!

Battlefield Control

Now that you know how to read your heroes and make them stronger, it’s time for some live practice. Combat in Solo Leveling: Arise is both fast and ferocious, and it’s a good idea to study some of the more intricate combat maneuvers and concepts that you’ll need to master to always come out on top.

Quick Tips:

• Extreme Evasion happens when you dodge just before an attack will hit. This slows down time and allows you to continue your assault.
• The main use of Extreme Evasion is to enable Jin-Woo’s Shadow Step QTE (in Solo mode) or tag in with other Hunters (Hunter mode).
• Some bosses have a white break gauge below their health bar. Until this gauge is depleted, they’ll take much less damage from your attacks.
• Only attacks that deal break damage can hurt a break gauge. In each skill’s description, it will state if it does light, medium, or heavy break damage.
• Once a break gauge is depleted, the boss will be stunned and have lowered defenses, thus leaving them open to a powerful counterattack.
• Don’t neglect your QTE Skills as they allow you to deal large amounts of bonus damage. Jin-Woo has access to three powerful QTE Skills and more as you progress. All you need to do is give him skills that knock enemies down, send them flying, and use Extreme Evasion whenever you can.
• Elements in Solo Leveling: Arise don’t follow a rigid weakness system. In general, each boss is weak against an element, and in most stages (not story mode) you can see what element they’re weak against in the stage info panel.
• While Hunters only have one element, Jin-Woo can access multiple elements at once: his Basic Attack, Core Attack, and Weapon Skill’s elements are determined by his weapon, while his other skills can change element via skill rune.
• There are two game modes in Solo Leveling: Arise – Solo and Hunter. In Solo mode, you control Jin-Woo, and your other Hunters are relegated to using their Support Skills. In Hunter Mode, you don’t control Jin-Woo and have access to the full kit of your three Hunters.
• Characters with potent Support Skills can help Jin-Woo perform much better. Look out for characters that debuff enemies, gather them, create shields, deal AOE damage, or just heal Jin-Woo.

Extreme Evasion

One of Solo Leveling: Arise’s core mechanics is Extreme Evasion, which happens when you dodge an attack right before it hits.

In most cases, you’ll get a hint as to when an attack is about to be performed. Most enemies’ eyes will flash redjust before they perform a strong attack, while AOEs fill up and flash just before the attack is launched. Projectiles are simplest to dodge – just tap the button before they collide with you. Normal attacks are the hardest to do this against as you’ll just have to memorize the animation and tells of an enemy to reliably dodge them. While it may seem simple to perform Extreme Evasion in a one-on-one fight, the truth is it’s a lot trickier than it first seems, so don’t fret too much if you can’t pull it off perfectly.

The main use of Extreme Evasion is that it slows time, allowing you to continue an attack by using Jin-Woo’s Shadow Step QTE Skill or tag out with another Hunter via their QTE Skill.

Breaking

Some particularly tough enemies have a second white bar below their HP. This is their Break Gauge, which is an extra layer of defense that needs to be shredded if you want to deal any significant damage to them.

To damage an enemy’s Break Gauge, you’ll need to employ Basic Skills that deal break damage. There are three tiers of break damage, from light to heavy, and the higher the tier, the more damage they deal to the Break Gauge.

Once a monster’s Break Gauge has been depleted, it’ll enter a stunned state where it will be unable to act and have vastly lowered defenses. This is the perfect time to counterattack, especially with an ultimate!

Because of how much damage the Break Gauge mitigates, it’s almost always a good idea to run with at least one break damage skill when you’re playing as Jin-Woo or have someone in your Hunter team that can deal break damage.

Make Opportunities for Your QTEs

Don’t make the mistake of overlooking Jin-Woo’s QTE skills as they’re a fantastic way to deal more damage!

All of Jin-Woo’s QTE skills require you to perform specific actions. In the early game, these are:

• Shadow Step requires you to perform Extreme Evasion.
• Collapse requires you to knock down a foe.
• Death requires you to knock an enemy airborne.

With that in mind, be sure to incorporate Basic Skills that can enable Jin-Woo’s QTEs. Skills like Crushing Blow and Double Slash render enemies airborne, allowing you to follow up with Death for some quick and easy damage!

Elements

Solo Leveling: Arise’s Hunters and weapons each have their own element.

The five elements in the game are Fire (red), Water (blue), Wind (green), Light (yellow), and Dark (purple). Unlike what you might expect, there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to elemental damage. Instead, each boss has an elemental weakness, and it’s up to you to build teams and use weapons that exploit that weakness to deal greater damage to that boss.

Note that Jin-Woo and Hunters use elements differently. While Hunters are pretty much stuck with a single element, Jin-Woo has supreme elemental coverage: his weapons determine the element of his Basic Attack, Core Attack, and Weapon Skill, and his skill runes can change the element of his Basic Skills.

In certain game modes, the info panel of each stage shows you what element has an advantage against the level boss:

Be sure to exploit these weaknesses as the damage bonus is huge!

Combat Modes and Support Teams

While the game is called Solo Leveling: Arise, Jin-Woo doesn’t act alone. His friends and comrades stand ready to support him when he embarks on his personal quests, and they can take care of some business on their own, too.

There are two general game modes in Solo Leveling: Arise: Solo and Hunter.

• In Solo mode, you control Jin-Woo. Your party members are relegated to a support role, and you can call them in to use their support skills. You can toggle automatic or manual call-in by tapping the partner icon in the upper left of the screen:

• In Hunter mode, you control your other Hunters. In this mode, you can swap between them and use their skills freely.

Jin-Woo is plenty powerful on his own, but his kit is made entirely for dealing damage. You can make him more effective by pairing him with Hunters who can augment his already considerable skillset. Use buffers or debuffers, gatherers, healers, or better yet, shielders to make Jin-Woo even stronger.

A Hunter’s Pay

We know how to read our characters, we know how to make them stronger, and we know how to use various battlefield tricks to get the upper hand. The next thing we need to discuss is how to get the many resources you’ll need to pump everyone up.

Quick Tips:

• I’ve included a table to help you find the materials you need.
• You can always tap on an item, then tap “Source” to see where you can get more of it.
• Explore the other game modes to get even more resources. Modes that have daily limits should ideally be done every day.
• Rush to chapter six of the story to unlock story mode auto-combat. This will let you sit back and idle as the AI unlocks more of the game for you.
• Fusion allows you to recycle materials that you don’t need for materials that you do need.
• AFK rewards will store up to 24 hours’ worth of gains via the Activity Funds system. Level up Jin-Woo and your other Hunters to improve your AFK earnings.
• While you have a growth package (including the free trial), you’ll get an extra 6 hours’ worth of AFK rewards by tapping on the “Special Funds” button. Be sure to maximize this as they do help.
• You can craft some materials by sacrificing gold and mana crystals. Low-tier Mana Crystals can be acquired from mining gates and must be traded in the Mana Crystal shop for Advanced Mana Crystals, which are needed for crafting.
• The Mana Crystal Exchange also sells more daily keys for some game modes.
• Gates are mini-dungeons that can be cleared for character experience, gold, resources, and more.
• There are four types of gates: blue ones drop general resources, purple ones can also drop weapon Limit Break materials, gold ones tend to drop higher-quality materials, and red ones drop skill scrolls and rune fragments.
• Each gate is played either in Solo or Hunter mode. You can tell what party mode a gate requires by looking at the icon beside its rank.
• The higher a gate’s rank, the more resources it yields. The level of gates that can appear is determined by Jin-Woo’s strength.
• You can increase or decrease the difficulty of gates by tapping on Rescan at the lower right, as well as generate new gates. I recommend always playing at the highest difficulty you can manage to make your grinding more efficient.
• Completed gates can have a mining team dispatched to them. Mining teams will work on a gate to bring back extra resources. The higher a gate’s level, the more resources they’ll unearth, but the longer it will take.
• You can dispatch up to three mining teams at once. You can buy more teams with Essence Stones if you want to.
• You must manually claim the resources from the mining screen to get your prizes and free up your miners.
• Miners also gain experience as they dig. Higher level miners grant buffs to your mining team.
• Since new players are railroaded into a free sample of the growth package, you get bonus experience for Jin-Woo every time you complete three missions. Do these as they will vastly accelerate your early game progress.
• You can sweep gates to automatically clear them if the power level between Jin-Woo or Hunters (in Hunter mode) far exceeds that of the gate. Sweeping a gate consumes some sweep points, and Jin-Woo and your other Hunters have their own stock of daily sweep points. These points regenerate daily and don’t carry over.
• You can sometimes use a special sweep that costs no sweep points and doesn’t factor in relative combat strength. If you have the growth package (including the free trial), you gain five uses of this sweep daily.
• Gates are limited by keys. Each entry into a gate costs a key, and you can only get more keys either on daily reset or by buying them from the cash shop. Always finish your keys every day.
• Do your daily and weekly missions for some Essence Stones and Reputation (account level).
• Each story mode stage has three extra objectives. Clear these for some Essence Stones and to claim Custom Draw Tickets from each chapter.
• Bonds are collection bonuses for sets of Hunters. As you develop those Hunters, you’ll be able to claim more bonuses.
• The cash shop has daily freebies. They’re not much, but they help.

Reference Sheet

If you already have a solid grasp of what resources are needed for what and just need to know where to get them, you can refer to this sheet:

Resource	Where To Get It
Experience	One-time rewards from story missions (don’t forget hard mode), repeatable rewards from daily tasks such as gates and Encore Missions
Gold	Pretty much every mission, though gates and gate mining yield the most. You can also sell artifacts you don’t need.
Weapon Enhancement Gear	Gates
Weapon Cubes (for ascension)	Dungeon Breaks (purple gates)
Skill Scrolls	Red gates
Artifacts	Encore Missions. Occasionally drops as a one-time reward from story stages; can also appear as a reward from gates.
Artifact Enhancement Chips	Gates
Rune Fragments	Red gates
Mana Crystals	Gates (mining)

Sourcing Items

Any time you need to figure out where to get more of an item, you can tap on it and select “Source” to find where to grind for the stuff.

Note that this method will also include cash shop bundles and packages. If you’re looking to get resources via in-game means, stick to the first few sources.

Alternate Game Modes

There’s more to Solo Leveling: Arise than just plowing through the story.

Be sure to explore these other game modes to get even more resources:

• Gates are your one-stop destination for almost every resource. We’ll talk about them in greater depth in a bit. This mode has limited daily entry. We’ll talk more about gates later as they’re very important.
• Encore Missions are where you farm artifacts. This mode has limited daily entry.
• Hard Mode allows you to replay story missions at a higher difficulty for more experience, gold, and one-time rewards.
• The Hunter Archive lets you play through the stories of the Hunters you’ve recruited. This mode gives you Essence Stones as a one-time reward for finishing certain chapters.
• The Battlefield of Trials pits you against formidable foes, often with modifiers slapped on them just to make things harder. There’s both a Solo and Hunter mode here, and both modes give you great rewards for both clearing and perfecting them.

As you progress further through the game, you’ll unlock even more game modes.

Auto Combat

One of the most important things you need to do to make grinding and story progression easier is to unlock auto combat. In the beginning, you only have the choice between semi-automatic and manual mode, which you can toggle here:

Semi-automatic combat will suffice in the beginning, but if you watch it, you’ll quickly realize it’s not very smart, especially when it comes to avoiding attacks. Full auto-combat is unlocked once you reach chapter six, and from then on, you can just leave it on as it will use skills, supports, and dodge more effectively. This means that you can just sit back and relax as the auto-combat AI clears the story stages for you, unlocking even more features.

Note that you can use full auto-combat immediately in gates, but you’ll need to unlock it for story mode.

AFK Gains

Solo Leveling: Arise will store up to 24 hours’ worth of AFK gains for you via the Activity Funds system.

The Activity Funds system will generate gold, experience, and other rewards based on your tier. To raise your tier, you’ll need to both strengthen Jin-Woo and level up your other Hunters. Do note that AFK gains cap at 24 hours, and anything beyond that will just vanish. Be sure to log in and claim your prizes at least once a day!

If you have a growth package, you’ll also be able to claim 6 hours’ worth of AFK gains for free – just tap on the “Special Funds” button to nab these freebies. Make sure to do this every day until your trial runs out!

Crafting

Some items can be crafted, which helps ease up grinding requirements. To craft, go to the “Management” NPC in the guild. You’ll need to give her both materials and gold to craft items.

Most items will require Advanced Mana Crystals to craft, which come from the Mana Crystal Exchange in the cash shop (or just tap “Source” on the Advanced Mana Crystal in the crafting menu). You’ll need Low-tier Mana Crystals to buy stuff in this shop, which comes from both clearing and mining gates.

While we’re on the topic of the Mana Crystal Exchange, be sure to check out the other stuff it offers – such as extra keys for limited game modes.

Gates and Gate Mining

Gates are Solo Leveling: Arise’s main resource farm. Each gate you complete not only nets you some resources and experience for Jin-Woo but they can also be mined to yield even more materials.

There are several types of gates:

• Normal gates are blue. They contain an assortment of useful materials.
• Dungeon Breaks are purple. These gates hold Limit Break materials for weapons.
• Special gates are gold. These gates tend to drop lots of higher quality materials.
• Red Gates are red. These gates drop important progression materials such as skill scrolls and rune fragments.

In each gate, you’ll be challenged to complete a mini-dungeon either as a Solo or a Hunter mission. You can tell what kind of mission it is by paying attention to the icon beside each gate:

The higher the level of a gate, the better the resources it drops, but the harder the monsters become. To gain access to harder gates, you’ll need to improve Jin-Woo’s strength. Once you have enough, this screen might appear….

Always say yes to this – higher-level gates may be more difficult, but they also yield more rewards, thus dropping more resources for each of your keys. And if the new gates are too difficult, you can always lower the difficulty via the scan/rescan button (lower right of the menu). Rescanning also refreshes the available gates, so you can use it to generate new dungeons for you to loot.

Once a gate has been completed, it can be mined for more resources.

Tap on the mining helmet to go to the mining menu. Here, you’ll be able to dispatch your three mining teams to completed gates; the higher the level of the gate, the more goodies they’ll dig up. Mostly they’ll bring back gold, but sometimes you’ll get other stuff too. You can dispatch three teams at once, and if you want to, you can buy more teams using Essence Stones. Your mining teams will also gain experience with each successful dig, granting buffs and generally making them more efficient. Note that resources must be manually collected to free up a team.

In addition, you’ll have a new player bonus, since the game pretty much railroads you into trying out the VIP package for free:

Whenever you finish three gate missions, one of the pips on the left will light up. At three pips, you’ll gain a large amount of character experience for Jin-Woo. Make sure to do this as the extra experience will help you blitz through the early game and unlock new features.

Gates can also be swept once you reach chapter six.

If the power difference between you and the gate is high enough, you can choose to sweep it, which will automatically clear the gate for you. In the case of Hunter dungeons, you’ll need to pick your team first before the game decides if they’re strong enough to sweep the dungeon. Each sweep consumes a certain number of points, but luckily, Jin-Woo and your other Hunters’ sweep points are in separate pools. Sweep points regenerate daily, but don’t carry over from day to day.

Occasionally, you’ll be able to use a special sweep that doesn’t factor in strength (meaning you can use it on gates closer to your current combat strength) and doesn’t cost sweep points; if you have the growth package – yes, including the three-day trial – you can use this sweep five times per day.

For all the good that gates can do for you, they have a catch. Gate access is limited by keys, which regenerate when the server resets or can be bought with Essence Stones. Because of how much the game is gated by resources, it’s very important to finish all your keys every day, ideally on the hardest gate rank you can manage.

Seriously. Always use all your keys.

Clear Rewards

You may have noticed that you get trophies for completing objectives during a stage. Each stage in story mode has three optional objectives for you to complete. Sometimes these are easy, such as finishing a stage before a certain amount of time has passed. Other times, they’ll be more specific, such as requiring you to bring in and use a specific support character.

Clearing each of these objectives is very important as not only do you get one-time bonus rewards for fulfilling them, but you also contribute to the chapter’s full clear bonus. Each chapter holds some Custom Draw Tickets – standard banner gacha pulls, in other words – that you can claim if you fulfill enough bonus objectives.

To claim your clear rewards, tap on a story chapter, then tap on the prizes that appear in the info panel:

And while we’re on the topic, don’t forget to clear the side chapters as well!

Daily and Weekly Missions

Like almost all live service games, Solo Leveling: Arise has daily and weekly missions.

Both daily and weekly missions contribute to their respective bars, and at certain thresholds, you can claim a prize from these bars. Daily missions, in particular, are very easy (with one quest being, I kid you not, talk to an NPC) and will serve as a good way to build up your Reputation (think account level), which means more freebies. Filling the bar all the way helps a lot, too; completed daily bars net you 100 Essence Stones, while completed weekly bars give you 300 Essence Stones.

Bonds

Characters that have special relationships between them, such as Jin-Woo’s previous guild, have a special Bond between them. You’ll get rewards just for collecting each member of a bond, and as you develop those characters, you’ll be able to claim more character growth rewards such as gold, Mana Power Elixirs, and rune fragments for your fusion attempts.

You can access the Bonds tab from the main menu.

Shop Freebies

The item shop has a bunch of freebies for you to collect.

These freebies are:

• You get a resource pack for every 10 levels that Jin-Woo attains. There’s both a free and paid pack, but you can get the free one first.
• A daily crate that holds some gold. It’ll help pad your wallet.
• Daily gems. A terribly minute amount, but still.

Overcoming the Gacha Gate

Finally, let’s talk about Solo Leveling: Arise’s gacha system, which is important for any gacha game. We’ll talk about premium currency, tickets, the different banners, and how to reroll if you really want to.

Quick Tips:

• Both Diamonds and Essence Stones are premium currencies.
• Diamonds can be used to pay for item packs, costumes, and other cash shop bundles. They can also be converted into Essence Stones, but not vice-versa.
• Essence Stones are usually used to pay for gacha tickets. They can also be used for some quality-of-life features. These can be earned by playing the game.
• Solo Leveling: Arise has both a standard (“Custom”) and a rate up banner. The standard banner uses black Custom Draw Tickets, while the rate up banner uses white Rate Up Draw Tickets.
• Save your Essence Stones for the rate up banner.
• The standard banner has a wishlist where you can put four SSR Hunters or weapons. Your wishlisted SSRs have a higher chance of appearing if you draw an SSR at all. This doesn’t affect the base chance of getting an SSR, it just weighs the chances toward getting one of your wishlisted SSRs.
• Some of the more popular SSRs to pull for via the wishlist are Seo Jiwoo, Emma Laurent, Choi Jong-In, and the Demonic Plum Flower Sword.
• Soft pity begins at 64 pulls at which point the chance of getting an SSR rises by 5.8% per pull. Hard pity is at 80 pulls.
• When getting an SSR on the rate up banner, there’s a 50% chance it will be the rate up character, with other SSRs split into a pool.
• If you fail to get the rate up character, the next SSR you pull on the rate up banner is guaranteed to be the rate up character.
• Pity carries over between rate up banners.
• You’re guaranteed at least one SR Hunter or weapon every 10 pulls, though it seems you must do a 10-pull according to the banner.
• You get Commemorative Coins whenever you pull on the gacha. Rares yield normal coins while SRs and SSRs yield platinum coins. These coins can be exchanged in a special shop for extra goodies, including more tickets. This shop resets every so often.
• If you’re going to reroll, play with a guest account (only available on mobile devices or emulators). Once you clear the tutorial, reset the account. From then on, you can skip the tutorial when you make a new guest account.

Diamonds versus Essence Stones

First, let’s talk about the two kinds of premium currencies in Solo Leveling: Arise. These are Diamonds and Essence Stones.

Diamonds are the shiny white gems on the left side of the image above. These are bought with real money and can be used to buy cash shop items, packages, costumes, or converted into Essence Stones. Note that turning Diamonds into Essence Stones is a one-way affair – you can’t turn Essence Stones into Diamonds. You also cannot earn Diamonds by playing the game.

Essence Stones are the pink gems on the right side in the image. These can be used to pay for quality of life stuff (like buying more keys) but are mostly just used to buy tickets to pull in the gacha. Essence Stones can be earned by playing the game.

Banners

Now, on to the banners. Solo Leveling: Arise has two banners – the standard (“Custom”) banner and the rate up banner.

• The standard banner – labeled “Custom” – hangs around pretty much forever and accepts black Custom Draw Tickets as currency, which you can earn from playing the game, mostly from completing chapters and doing beginner tasks.
• The rate up banner, on the other hand, only stays around for a couple of weeks before being rotated out. It only accepts white Rate Up Draw Tickets, which can only usually be bought with Essence Stones.

Both of these tickets cost 150 Essence Stones, but I strongly, strongly recommend you only use your Essence Stones to buy Rate Up Draw Tickets as limited characters tend to be far stronger than those in the standard banner.

The Wishlist

One bonus that the standard banner has over the rate up one is the ability to put four SSR Hunters or weapons in a wishlist. When you draw an SSR from the standard banner, there will be a much higher chance that it will be one of the SSRs you put on your wishlist. Do note that the wishlist does not increase the base chance for an SSR to appear at all!

Of the current offerings in the standard banner, these SSRs stand out:

• Seo Jiwoo is an excellent brawler who can apply shields, inflict break damage, and reset her own cooldowns every so often. Since Solo Leveling: Arise is a very offense-oriented game, she’ll fit right in with any team.
• Emma Laurent is an amazing all-around unit who shines in Fire-based teams. Her skills provide massive AOE, reactive healing, and DEF penetration.
• Choi Jong-In is a fire DPS who packs DEF shred in his Support Skill, making him well-suited to either clearing the field on his own or boosting Jin-Woo’s damage.
• The Demonic Plum Flower Sword boasts a powerful weapon skill as well as a permanent boost to crit rate every time you use it.

Pity

Next, let’s talk about pity, which is called “Draw Support” in the game. Thankfully, Solo Leveling: Arise has a very basic pity system:

• Soft pity begins at 64 pulls. Each pull after this point increases the rate of an SSR by 5.8%, meaning hard pity is at 80 pulls.
• For rate up banners, there’s a 50% chance that an SSR will be the rate up character. If it isn’t, the next SSR is guaranteed to be that character.
• 50/50 carries over between banners.
• Every 10-pull guarantees at least one SR Hunter or weapon. Based on in-game documentation, it seems you must do a 10-pull to avail of this guarantee.

You can see your pity count on every banner page:

Commemorative Coins

As with most other gachas, you also get a special kind of currency by pulling on the gacha. Every R (blue) pull gives you Commemorative Coins, while SR and SSRs will drop Platinum Commemorative Coins.

These coins can be traded in at the Exchange Shop for some extra items, such as more draw tickets, crafting materials, character ascension materials, skill scrolls, and gold if you really need it.

The coin exchange shop refreshes its stock every so often, so make sure to nab the things you want before rollover.

Rerolling

And finally, let’s talk about rerolling.

Rerolling in Solo Leveling: Arise is thankfully simple if you want to do it. However, I will warn you that you won’t have enough pulls to guarantee an SSR on a rerolled account since Solo Leveling: Arise kind of spreads out its beginner resources. Reroll at your discretion.

The first and most important thing you should do is play the game on mobile or an emulator. This gives you the ability to play as a guest account, which you can’t do on a PC. Play through the tutorial – around 10-20 minutes and faster if you skip – then roll with the resources you have at hand. If you don’t like what you got, go to account settings and reset your account. This gives you the ability to skip the tutorial when you log in as a guest again, thus saving you precious time and letting you get straight to the rerolling. And if you did get the characters or weapons you wanted, good for you – go link your account properly.

If you’re looking for who to gun for, you can check the popular units – the game lets you know who’s hot and who’s not – but I would venture to say that all SSRs (as of now) have their niche.

However, if you’re looking for the best possible SSRs, I once again recommend Seo Jiwoo as an all-around offensive tank, Emma Laurent as a Fire AOE DPS that can enable Fire teams, Choi Jong-In as a Fire DPS and offensive support for Jin-Woo, and the Demonic Plum Flower Sword as it’s a fantastic all-around weapon that relaxes your Agility/critical hit rate requirements.

The World’s Ex-Weakest

Solo Leveling: Arise is a game that keeps on giving. The stronger you get, the more of the game you unlock, the more difficult the foes become, and the more paths to becoming the world’s strongest Hunter reveal themselves.

That concludes this beginner’s guide to Solo Leveling: Arise, and I hope I was able to help you find your bearings and give you a basic understanding of the things you need to know to grow even stronger. If you have any corrections to make or have any suggestions on how to improve this guide (especially for completely new players to the genre), let us hear your voice in the comments below!