Pretty Useful Blade & Soul Tips for Even Level 45

1. You regain full windstride stamina when you change channels. Use this to your advantage by changing channels (hold alt, select above minimap) to double your windstride amounts.

2. You can do most dungeon based important dailies by going to the cross server dungeon, which includes the relevant quest npc after you find a party - saving you valuable travel time and windstride costs. This also gives you access to a limited vault (no marketplace), which is extremely useful for initial moonwater quests chapter 3 where you are stuck without a dragon union for the first portion. (flying back to cinderlands or viridian coast at this point costs you 3 silver and above - they're an entirely different continent!)

3. When in any dungeon, press escape and select "escape" in the options to teleport back to the entrance. Works for all dungeons - saves you travel time and you don't need that dragon pulse at all!

4. EASY BONUS ATTRIBUTES

When you hit blackram narrows, consider grinding it 10 times. You'll get an achievement for killing the final boss that gives 400 hp. RECOMMENDED - COME BACK AT LEVEL 26+ TO SOLO/SPEEDFARM WITH CROSS SERVER DUNGEON.

If you don't mind possibly losing some wins in arena, grinding for 10 wins in arena unlocks another easy bonus of 70defense (better than 400hp after 3k hp)

Edit: to clarify you can only activate one bonus attrib of which the pvp is better but it means you have to win games and possibly lose in pvp matches if you try to get this achievement early.

5. Mining stones are indicated for on the map as "quartz", but not all of these map indicators are for the zone rocks - some are gathering unlocks, indicated by not having the option to mine it. Try to make detours to them and change channel to increase your chances of finding them. Even if you don't have a pickaxe, you can easily deliver one from the marketplace (F5) which gives you a high value rate (pickaxes are 0.2 to 1x of an ore's cost) as the ores drop in 1,2, or 3 quantities.

Best mining locations:

Viridian Quartz - channelswap outside sentinel outpost cliff. 3 rocks there with many channels

Cinderlands Silicate - at the quest regarding the naryu tomb, there are 3 stones within proximity.

6. ALL SOULSHIELDS CAN BE SALVAGED FOR FUSION POWDER! As you level up they have a higher chance of dropping fusion powder, which sells better than 1 copper on the marketplace. There are two types of shields, fusion shields and equip shields, generally indicated by their quality - white and green are for fusing, blue and purple are for equipping.

Recommended soulshield paths

Stalker (jiangshi wheel of fate)

Jadestone Shield (valor stone exchange)

Deva (right side of Cinderlands map, no mainstat crit)

Yehara Mirage Shield (valor stone exchanger)

Scorpion King (Pinchy boss, outside Yehara's Mirage - make sure a party is around to help, annoying boss that requires the bomb scorpion mechanic)

Infuse YM shield into scorpion king shield

Note: a reasonable amount of people have reasonably informed that TOE shield isnt worth farming. While I would agree on the standpoint of cost (24 hongmoon charms or 16 unsealing charms), the shield offers a good balance for difficulty:grind at this point in my opinion.

By all means equip the moonwater town shield and/or lycan shields instead of TOE if you find that the game is still easy and you are capable of handling dungeons and/or party play. They are far cheaper and much more friendly to obtain, and profane soulshield at level 45 is the one most people would recommend.

7. Evolving equipment - check market for the evolution gear - if its tradeable it will show up. NEWBIES READING, THIS MEANS DON'T USE KEYS FOR STALKER WEAPON BOXES!

ALL equips are indicated as "evolution material" if they are used for hongmoon level ups, so those are the key drops. Nevertheless you can buy these gear unsealed from market cheaper than using a 10 silver unsealing charm, so consider that especially as it will allow you to have your gear levelled up to stage 10 earlier.

8. Keep ALL equip drops in page one of your bank. Use your auxiliary storage (bank 2) for everything else. When you enter moonwater area, equips start to have odd infusing costs - up to 10 silver to level up your gear even though the evolve amount is minimal. Keep all old gear to use and you'll be fine. Don't salvage weapons and accessories, it doesn't do anything early game - salvaging is for gems and soulshields. WEAPON TREASURE CHESTS ARE USELESS 99% OF THE TIME, TRASH THEM

EDIT: To clarify because some people pointed it out. Past level 40 its worth salvaging items for crafting mats that allow you to create weapon evolve exp gems (same shit they like to give from some quests)

The reason I don't recommend that is because most gear you get prior to moonwater zone is directly usable to upgrade your gear, and there's no point to salvage them for the chance at the powders when you can use them directly to evolve.

Level 45 gear is different; using purple eq will cost soulstones to evolve (expensive and bad use) while green gives no exp, so salvaging thede for powders to make exp gems with is better (but using blue gear is still the best)

9. You can buy a good traded version of a diamond or ruby off the marketplace for 1-3 silver which is better than using keys and risking bad rolls. Amethyst tip remains the same (there is a hongmoon one granted in wuestline or lvling, no need to buy one)

10. Leveling up = doing quests, earning money = doing quests and crafting, and not opening or farming unnecessary items like blackram narrows soulshield. Don't "grind" combat exp, it doesn't work like that in this game!

11. Crafting - as confusing as it is, just know that the one and only money making profession is POTTERY. Join merry potters and treecutting regardless of whether you are going Radiant Ring, Soul Wardens or Earthseers (the three other crafting guide combinations)

Treecutting in particular gives ths most copper:time gathering ratio simply because its used in making Merry Potter refiners and earthware, which are used in most other crafting professions. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND SOUL WARDEN for easy access to money (craft transformation stones, especially ultra rare moonwater ones) and endgame (strong fusion soulshield primers)

That means your 4 combi will be:

Green Thumbs (clay for pottery, but can buy off marketplace too)

Treecutting (sap)

Merry Potters (refiners and earthware - ignore the pots)

Soul Warden (transformation stones and endgame shields)

Make alts or marketplace for everything else you can't get your hands on.

12. "MISC" tagged items are purely JUNK no matter how shiny the name is (broken piece, raptor feather, iron blade, blah blah) and always sell for 1 copper. They are grey names unlike crafting mats and are autosold when you visit any shop and select below their selling menu "sell all inferior goods"

13. PREMIUM MEMBER TIPS - press f3 to store your costunes in the wardrobe. There is an option below your inventory called dragon express which lets you spend 30 instead of 40 insigna for the blackram/bamboo spectre costumes

14. dragon pouch and inventory management

You want to have minimally 3 rows of gear/all bank, 6 rows of auxiliary bank, and the rest in your inventory prior to level 38

After that you can spend for one more row of gear bank or save for inventory row depending on whether you are an inventory scrubber (constantly cleans out inventory)

I generally find that storing all crafting items in inventory helps with remote ordering a lot, but you need good inventory management to achieve that with limited dragon pouches

15. Saving/earning money

-coming soon-

Some of the content in this thread comes from reading other guides, others through experience. I'll make a part 2 if this is useful to you all! (including stuff like how to manage your chat tabs for useful info, ui arrangement, class tips, earlygame money guide)