Beginner guide: the first hour

The build defines 4 heroes and marks 3 of them locked in the demo, so the Warrior is not one choice among four — it is the only choice. Every number on this page belongs to that one hero.

The other half of the first hour is the map. The demo opens woodland, corrupted woodland and dungeons, and the enemies in them run from level 1 to level 25. Nothing in the game states that range, and there is no tutorial to state it for you: the first hour is spent working out which tier is worth standing in.

Six steps. Each one is here because the build prices it that way, not because it is a habit worth having.

1. Play the Warrior. The demo ships one hero, so there is no build decision to make yet: gear, talents and abilities all go to the character you were given.
2. Start in the woodland’s first tier, where the enemies are level 1 to 2. Fighting close to your own level is what makes a kill count for something.
3. Move up a tier the moment the enemies stop paying. The build awards zero experience once an enemy is 8 levels below you, so a comfortable tier quietly turns into a wasted hour.
4. Level abilities on purpose. An ability takes 50 experience for its first rank and two more for each rank after that, up to a ceiling of 10 ranks, and that experience is taken out of the same kills your character is levelling on.
5. Finish one piece of equipment before starting the next. Upgrades stop at +10, so a piece that is done is done, and the next materials belong to a different slot.
6. Spend talent points as if they were permanent. Refunding a spent point costs 8, which turns a scattered tree into an expensive mistake rather than a free experiment.

Every step above is a price in the build’s own config. These are the numbers behind them, and they are the same numbers the reference pages print.

Both of the demo’s enemy growth rates compound. Health rises twelve percent per level and damage ten, and a level 25 enemy is what those rates produce over every level between 1 and 25: about ×15.2 the health and ×9.8 the damage of a level 1 enemy.

Elites are the other half of that. They start at three times a normal enemy’s health and one and a half times its damage, and the build stores a separate scaling rate for them, so the gap keeps opening as the tier climbs.

Three habits cost more than they return before the demo’s ceiling, and all three come from the same place: treating what a forum post says as if the game had said it.

• Spreading upgrades across slots. Every slot takes upgrades and the ceiling is ten per piece, so five half-upgraded items are five unfinished decisions. Finishing the slot you actually rely on is the cheaper order to work in.
• Waiting for the locked classes. Three of the build’s four heroes are marked locked in the demo, and nothing available in the demo unlocks them. The Warrior is this demo’s character, not a stand-in for another one.
• Trusting community numbers as if they were the game’s. Damage figures, timing measurements and “best build” claims in threads and videos are player reports; this site marks them as reports wherever it repeats one.

Two questions sit underneath the first hour. Neither is answered by playing longer or reading more carefully: one is a disagreement between official statements, the other is official silence.