I started playing last week. I think I'm getting the hang of the game, but it still feels like there's a lot of tribal knowledge I'm missing. And a lot of the forum guides I've found are from 10+ months ago and seem outdated.

My question: is there a specific thing that I, as a new player, should prioritize spending pebbles/moonstones on? My short term goal is "get good enough at grinding to get all the Goldsea apparel & companions that I want", longer term goals would be finding an efficient way to level up/release wolves for profit/knucklebones (assuming there is an efficient way; leveling is very slow compared to the other pet sites I'm used to), and making it so I don't keep running out of food & crafting materials.

I've been earning about 10-15 moonstones per day from achievements/etc, plus 30-50k pebbles. So far I've sold a few MS for pebbles (to unlock the special Goldsea reward path), bought a couple of new tabs + slots for my den because it was getting overcrowded, and unlocked several cheap profession upgrades. My next cooking and mining expansions are both 250kp each, hunting expansion is 25 MS, nest expansion is 25 MS... all expensive enough that I don't want to make the decision lightly.

Also, I've heard that bonding with companions is a good way to make money in this game, but I assume the companions I see listed in the mole market are not an efficient use of funds. Please let me know if I'm wrong on that.

PS - posting this in Discussion rather than Help because the topic seems somewhat broad, but mods, feel free to move it if needed.

The best money-making companions are actually found in the Mole Market. The River & Shadow Kapura will give pebbles when bonded with, and are very cheap (450 pebbles). The Furmus and Deer are also good to grab, as both will give pebbles. Furmus also come with the "Intersect" ability, which can be incredibly useful.

When it comes to levelling wolves, I find that giving them the Kuzma and Basidio while you're not focusing on levelling them is a good move. Both of those companions will give XP when bonded with. If you breed wolves to release later, giving them those companions as puppies will take care of a lot of the levels while they grow up.

I upgraded my Cooking first to help me cook enough food to keep up with my early days. If you find yourself struggling with keeping your wolves full of stamina while you go about your daily tasks, then focus on that. I'd upgrade Cooking, then upgrade Mining to that same level. As soon as you can manage it, get your mining wolf a Golden Pickaxe, as that negates any stamina loss during mining. It makes a HUGE difference as you no longer need to manage their stamina while mining.

When it comes to grinding for event tickets, the consumed bosses on the areas tend to be harder than the normal ones. I usually do a team of 3 wolves and 2 companions (granted, one of those companions are generally ones I'm levelling for the achievement). For Goldsea, having Kits and a Furmus are super useful, as they are good against the Vespen. I also use a Direwolf and random companion, but I don't really know how useful a Direwolf is compared to a Kit or Jocol. I just like Direwolves a lot.

Also don't put money into the hunting expansion, there's something going on with that, since some people, like me, have all the slots and didn't pay a thing. It's glitched in some fashion, either unlocking when it shouldn't or having an expansion for sale when it shouldn't. I suggest just leveling it and seeing if that slot unlocks by itself (I think I'm level 73 or something and I've had all the slots for a long time).

@Delotha thank you for the advice!

I keep seeing people mention Intercept, but I still haven't figured out where to go to see what the various companions do in battle.

I also noticed there were two Basidios stocking in the shop: a cheap green one and a more expensive alternate color one. Does the alternate color one give better EXP rewards, or is it simply aesthetic?

Weirdly, I've had no problems beating the Vespen with my team (even while leveling 1-2 wolves), but the event Canictonis keeps beating me at least 50% of the time.

@Stellori

Thank you, that's very good advice on the hunting expansion. I'm still low enough level on hunting that it's barely worth the rewards, but I'm guessing that will improve with higher levels, right? I think the best I've gotten so far is around 25 EXP, and that was for a very long hunt. Doesn't really seem worth it when I could get more, much faster, grinding enemies in Campaign.

@Kyo I actually made a Team Builder & Model Finder so you can look up the various companions and see what they do, and what their synergies are. I updated it last month, so the new Goldsea companions aren't there yet. However, all of the easily obtainable companions are there.

Using the dropdown menus, you can select a companion see not only what abilities they have, but what those abilities do as well as their synergies. It will also tell you what level of synergy you have, and how many more you need to get to the next level. The other tab will let you find companions or wolves based on synergy as well as abilities, so you can select "Intercept" and find out which companions & wolves have that ability.

I hope that helps you to find what you're looking for in terms of companions.

As far as the different rarities of companions, as far as I know, there's no real difference. The green companions have a 2-hour cooldown when you bond with them, and I think they do give you higher rewards, but ultimately it's effectively the same as the regular white companions. The white rarity companions will be cheaper in any event.

The alternate colored basido is just a rarity tier upgrade-- uncommon instead of common, with a 2 hour CD instead of an hour. You may want to level one to ten at some point anyway for the achievement unlocks related to total companion level, but I wouldn't rush.

Here is where companions are listed (it's found under Den>Companions), so you can see their stats and hover over their abilities to see what they offer.

Cooking slots are good to unlock, but most of the high tier recipes are not a good use of your cooking slots-- no matter how big your pot, you can get more stamina per cooking slot by just cooking meat and fish, because they only take up one slot each. The recipes that take several items per slot will net you less stamina overall per slots used, even if the finished item is higher in stamina. You can cook 4 feasts for 320 stamina, or 24 fish for 480. :P Some of the mid-tier recipes you'll want to cook anyway, but to feed to the farmers when you want to grind farming, not to use for your wolves.

In your den, there is also an actions tab to the lower right. Try to remember to check the "manage auto feed page" here fairly regularly as you acquire new items. A lot of items are set to auto-feed by default when you may not want them to, so you can remove items you'd rather use elsewhere (like those recipes useful for farming).

@Stellori What is this hunting expansion? As far as I am aware, there's only mining, and cooking. Unless you mean the pebble path for the Goldsea event?

Edit- sorry for the double ping. If it's the cooking expansion and the mining expansions, then some folk who paid for those expansions when they cost moonstones were allowed to keep those expansions when they reverted to pebbles. I'm pretty sure that's not a glitch.

Thank you to everyone who's replied to this so far. I am learning a lot of things! The fact that there are cheap companions that consistently give more than 100 pebbles each (ie more than Nana costs to auto play with them) seems wild to me. Also potentially economy-breaking based on the returns I'm seeing the few times I've played with them all, though I will not complain too much since I need the pebbles.

@Vissyn at least for me, I have 2 hunting slots unlocked, with a third unlocking at level 15, and a button that says "purchase quest space" for 25 moonstones.