Need a Tower of Fantasy guide to get you started as a new Wanderer touching down on Aida? This new open-world RPG game is pretty, has a slick, action-focused combat system, and countless menus. If you’re not careful it can be easy to get confused about wondering where to start.
These six Tower of Fantasy tips are designed to get your head in the right frame of mind, but also to prevent you getting distracted and missing out on the full range of features this game has to offer. As a game with more action-focused combat than most, there are few things you should keep in mind as well while going toe-to-toe with Aida’s biggest and baddest. Let’s take a look at the top six things you need to know before getting started.
Don’t get distracted, follow the story to unlock features
Tower of Fantasy begins on a relatively small island in the corner of the map called Astra, where you’ll be operating out of the Astra shelter. The game will unlock new features and aspects over time, so don’t fuss too much about exploring this island straight away. Instead, focus on working through the initial storyline for the most part, although between key story-beats where you’re travelling to somewhere new, like the first Omnium Tower of the fighting tournament, you can take some time to experiment and wander around. Getting to Hykros quickly is a must, because you then get your first of the many Tower of Fantasy vehicles.
Even at Wanderer level 25, you’re still unlocking new gameplay features, so don’t rush to try and figure everything out or go wandering around collecting materials. A minimal amount of poking around should yield enough materials to see you through to the end of the introductory segment, where you’re tasked with going out into the wider world of Aida. From this point on, the game truly opens up and you can then take your time to explore every nook and cranny.
Make sure you understand leveling because it’s confusing
If you haven’t read our how to level up in Tower of Fantasy guide, we suggest you give it a once-over. Leveling in this game requires you to keep track of quite a few aspects. Your HP alone is a cumulative number based on the weapons you have equipped plus your Supressor level, and there are more aspects that feed into HP as you unlock more features. Weapon matrices unlock at level 20, while character gear unlocks at level 25.
The ability to take three weapons into battle means there are three seperate things you need to level up in order to take on powerful opponents. If you don’t keep your weapons in tip top shape, you won’t be able to take out the hero bosses and stronghold leaders. Consider having your weapon level around double your Wanderer level and ensure you upgrade your Supressor the moment you’re able to, pending materials.
Customise your avatar carefully because it’ll cost after the first time
Tower of Fantasy has a powerful character customisation tool that lets you recreate the look of almost anyone, even faces from rival Genshin Impact. In the pre-login menu, you can use the creator tomake whatever skins you want, either to keep for yourself or to share out into the world. Players can download other skins using import codes, saving you the work of making Naruto yourself from scratch.
When you start Tower of Fantasy for real, you have to choose either a male or a female avatar using a default skin. Not too long after that, you get the opportunity to customise your character properly. If you spent some time creating or importing skins beforehand, you can choose one of those, otherwise this is another chance to use the full power of the creator.
You can take as long as you’d like, but know that this is the only ‘free’ customisation window that we know of right now. After this, the customisation area can be accessed again via an in-game menu, but you will be charged at least 100 Dark Crystals per session for any changes you make, so consider your outfit carefully.
Do not play this like Genshin Impact because you’ll die, repeatedly
If you’ve never played Genshin Impact, then this piece of advice won’t mean much to you, but for the likely legions of Genshin fans looking to try out something that’s very obviously a competitor, we’ve got a word of advice – do not play Tower of Fantasy like Genshin Impact.
For starters, you’ll keep double jumping and then falling to your death as you repeatedly forget there are no deployable wings on the second tap. Eventually, when you get the jetpack, you might remember to press 2 instead. But there’s plenty more to consider, such as the fact that Tower of Fantasy characters and their weapons are basically the same thing, that you can equip three weapons at once, and combat in general is very different, as you’ll see in the next section. It’s arguably way more fun than in Genshin, but that’s not really the point – you need to forget about Teyvat in order to make the most of things. Speaking of combat…
Dodging and shield breaking are king in combat
Focusing on combat specifically for our last tip, there’s a bit more to master here than with other games. There is a lot more movement – dodging left and right, jumping, pulling yourself towards an enemy while in mid-air, launching an enemy into the air then jumping up for some aerial play… as we mentioned before, it’s a lot of fun, and easily the game’s best feature.
Getting a perfect dodge is key, as it’ll activate a slow-motion field that will slow down enemy attacks and instantly max out your weapon’s discharge meters, allowing you to get many hits in. In addition to this, most strong enemies will have a shield that you will need to break before you can start doing serious damage. You’ll want at least one weapon equipped with a high shatter value, which you should use until the shield is broken. The first SR weapon you get for free from the storyline – Echo’s Thunderous Halberd – is a shieldbreaker, and will serve you well until you can pull something better.
There are plenty of quality of life features, so learn them
The Tower of Fantasy developers have had a lot of time to study the competition and figure out ways in which they can make a player’s journey through Aida as comfortable as possible. There are plenty of quality of life features in Tower of Fantasy, so make sure you make use of them, for example:
- You can have up to three weapon sets you can switch between easily, which will let you set up loadouts for exploration, combat, and other scenarios.
- Similarly, you can create relic sets as well, letting you switch between exploration and combat sets.
- Both the minimap and the main Tower of Fantasy map are pretty powerful – make sure you make full use of them both for finding what you need.
- You can turn Auto-Climb (and other things) off in the settings menu.
- There’s more than one way to mitigate fall damage if you accidentally take a tumble, such as the double jump, normal attacking, and dodging when close to the ground.
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That concludes our Tower of Fantasy guide with the best top tips for the budding Wanderer. For more, check out our guide to the Tower of Fantasy battle pass, and we also have a Tower of Fantasy codes guide where we list out all the promotional codes for free stuff.