After a couple weeks in The Secret World, I’m starting to figure out this offbeat MMO. I thought I’d share some of my hard-learned lessons and tips in the hopes that it might save some of you frustration.
- As many have noted, you really want to have two weapons equipped, not just one. Work your way up the ability wheel so that you can get two finishers, one for each weapon. At that point, your DPS will greatly increase.
- There’s a really lovely self-heal ability in one of the Misc. trees. If your weapon builds don’t have a heal, this might be worth your while (and AP) to get. It’s like having a good health potion every 30 seconds, and it’s saved my bacon in so many fights.
- You can click on the same dialog option multiple times to continue a conversation on a topic. Once the conversational thread is exhausted, you’ll see a green check mark by the topic.
- Quests can be run again after a day goes by. It’s worth noting the quests that are quick and easy to do, because those might be good candidates for repeats.
- Explore! Going off the beaten path will reveal both lore objects and many side quests — and you always want to be doing side quests.
- Take your time. You want to be around QL3 in both weapons and gear by the time you leave Kingsmouth for the Savage Coast.
- Double-tapping a directional key does a dodge or roll. This is invaluable for tougher mobs that have “charge up” attacks with a specific radius or cone.
- Have a notepad and take notes from time to time. You’d be surprised how many details from earlier in the game come in handy later on.
- Shotgun turret is pure win. Live it, love it, learn it.
- Save up those sequins in the first area, but don’t start spending them until the second — QL3 gear isn’t hard to find, and the gear you can get in Savage Coast with these sequins is way better.
Of course, many of you have been playing longer or had different experiences — I’d love to hear your tips as well!
Also I would add make sure you don’t stand in the circles. A lot of mobs will put white circles or directional symbols on the ground indicating they are about to do a big attack. Make sure your out of the radius or you’ll get stunned and the last thing you want happening when your trying to finish off a mob before it ends you is to get stunned.
You can also dodge by pressing the shift key and a direction if you don’t like double tapping.
For tip #9, there’s a nice deck for Illuminati called Grifter that uses Shotgun and Elementalism turrets. If you dig turrets.
Check out Yokai’s / Sarcan’s blog for LOTS of in-depth mechanics and strategies around builds at http://yokaiblog.wikidot.com/guides:build-mechanics – and they have pics of the faction deck costumes
#4 isn’t quite accurate. Sure on solomon Island quests can be repeated every 18-ish hours I believe, but in Egypt all the quests are on a 48 hour cooldown. I would expect Transylvania to be even longer. Bit of a pain in the ass actually.
I believe it’s probably because the easier missions have a overall shorter cooldown for repeatability and the amount of AP the potentially generate doing them again on higher lvl ones vs lower lvl ones. Thus kinda give added reason to go back to lower lvl zones somewhat to repeat shorter cooldown missions.
My tip is look behind every corner nook and cranny as the harder the zones get the more Lore item are hidden in obscure places and in weird places as well. The other is in each zone you move on to make sure to actually visit the Argatha entrance to that zone, it will save you no being able to conduit travel to that area especially when you’ve doing quest there and trying to easily get back from London or New York via Argatha.
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Yup agree with everything said. I’m only at Savage Coast and I spent too many sequins on QL3 gear in KM. Following the quest chains is good as well. I happen to stumble on the SC Argatha point exploring. But the quest that leads there was so much cooler.
Also as a healer I found after I target my group mate I can do a quick heal on myself by holding the ALT key down which will target me.
Some other tips:
Get familiar with the crafting interface and crafting (press Y to open it). Some quest require you to assembly items to progress.
Don’t vendor stuff you don’t use. Disassemble it to crafting mat instead and keep for later. Even potions can be disassembled for materials or runes. You can upgrade tier of crafting materials. 5 pieces of lower tier give you one piece of higher tier. Though crafting items are usually not better than items you can buy from Council of Venice or PvP reward vendors (unless you buy or manage to find blue or purple crafting kits) it can help you to upgrade some of the gear slots if you are short of the Sequins or Marks or if you can not find an item with the stats you prefer for your build.
If the atmosphere gets heavy on you or if you are frustrated of being killed by those blasted mud golems in the moon swamp in Blue Mountain over and over again when trying to pick up that fricking cat, try to relax in the PvP persistent battleground Fusang projects. Sounds like an oxymoron but I really have a relaxing time there
. Running in Templar zerg, steamrolling opposition (Arcadia dimension, don’t know what is the ratio of factions in the others)… fun time 
. Though quite laggy. Capturing the objectives or eliminating opposition players will earn you nice chunk of xp (SP and AP) and the PvP currency which you can use at the PvP vendors to upgrade you gear.
Good tips but I strongly question #6. I didn’t spend a single AP or SP and used only whatever weapons/gear dropped, meaning mostly Q0/Q1. I didn’t even begin to notice a slowdown until I was well into the Academy in Savage Coast. I compare this with doing the same content in the beta weekends, when I did spend all my points and had almost entirely Q3 gear – couldn’t honestly say I could tell the difference.
I’ve spent the points now and I have some Q2 gear on – don’t think I have any Q3 yet, not really paying attention – and I am managing to do some stuff in Blue Mountain and the first Egypt zone. I’d much rather explore widely and die more often than get fully geared up before pushing on.
I’d add, though yall prolly already know this, that you can continue conversations with folks past the initial one, and you’ll know you’ve heard it all when the green check appears next to that dialog option. Guess I’ve got to go back and talk to the crazy scientist in the Illuminati starting area.