Dark Nemesis: Infinite Quest is a multiplayer action RPG on iOS and Android, where you go in instanced missions and kill the heck out of monsters for loot, all in the name of keeping the peace as a Universal Peacekeeper. While there is a fairly effective auto-battler, you’ll be spending quite a bit of time on manual controls, particularly for more advanced missions that may involve special mechanics, deadly mazes full of traps, or simply enemies too murderously violent to tank.
The amount of grinding options in Dark Nemesis: Infinite Quest will, oddly enough, make the actual story campaign relatively easy to get through, at least if you don’t decide to spend all of your earlygame stamina freebies in a single giant barrage too early. If you do your daily grinding quests, allocate your stats and earnings diligently, and learn how to dodge and avoid big attacks, you’ll quite often find yourself hideously overleveled for the story campaign in your first several days.
You’ll likely rush past the missions, especially since there is a heck of a lot for you to do even before you remember the story mode exists! This means a lot of this Dark Nemesis: Infinite Quest beginner’s guide will be focused more on the daily grind and the various upgrades you can get rather than the actual story mode. That being said, do your story missions: The amount of stuff you have on your plate makes them easy to forget about, but Campaign missions are the main way you get Refinement Scrolls!
So without further ado, let’s delve into our Dark Nemesis: Infinite beginner’s guide for some useful tips, tricks and strategies to get started in the game and slash your way to victory!
POLISHING YOUR GEAR
Your main way of getting stronger is powering up your gear, since that’s the one you have the most control over: Most of the strength you get from powering up your character tends to be fairly generalist. Equipment, on the other hand, has quite a few options for trimming your build to be specialized towards a job, with Enchants being a particular standout. So we gave gear upgrading its own section!
Forge Enhancement
The biggest wallet-burner you’ll run into early in the game, the Forge Enhancement upgrades your equipment. Upgrading equipment, obviously, makes you stronger, but even upgrading stuff you aren’t currently using can contribute to your strength: Upgrade enough of your gear and you can upgrade the ratings on their sets, making you stronger even if you aren’t wearing them, similarly to Wings.
Forge Refining
Very similar to Enhancement, Forge Refining is increases the same stats Enhancement does for your equipment, except with much higher bonuses. This makes sense, since instead of only Gold, you need equipment Scrolls for such upgrades, with a specific scroll for each type of gear.
The maximum level of Refining available to you depends on Gear Augments, which is next on the list. You typically get such scrolls by rolling through the game’s Story missions, so there shouldn’t be much trouble getting these, especially if you went on a grinding spree and happen to be massively overleveled compared to your current chapter.
Augments
Augments are again similar to the previous two, in which they upgrade the same stats but bigger and you have more control over it. Augmenting gear increases a gear slot’s star level, which makes it stronger and allows you to further use Refinement on such equipment. You use Augment Stones to augment gear, which you can get from the Dream Realm.
Putting such stones into your gear raises that piece’s EXP, and when it fills up, it goes up one star level. This is one of those parts of the Forge that allows you more build freedom, as it is entirely possible to focus on starring up specific pieces of gear to upgrade specific stats.
Enchantment Rolling
Gear Enchantments let you pick from a randomized set of buffs to insert in a piece of equipment. You’ve got 5 unlockable slots for every piece of gear, and you’ll have to put in the grind since they unlock everytime you reach a certain level. Pressing Enchant changes the choices based on your Luck bar, with a better Luck rating increasing the chances for high level Enchants.
Inlaying Gems
You’ve likely seen this before if you’ve played other MMOs in your time, the Inlay screen. The Inlay screen lets you socket various gems onto your equipment. Oddly enough, unlike Enchantment, you have less control over which stats you get, as each piece of gear only accepts a certain color of Gems, with the first half of your set in the Inlay Screen’s list getting defensive Gems, and the second half getting offensive Gems.
After your missions, always make sure to combine gems so you can get bigger, shinier ones that give out higher bonuses. Just like Enchants, you get more Inlay slots as you reach certain levels.
Infusion
Infusion lets you use Infusion stones to upgrade specific pieces of gear. Using Infusion Stones, you unlock nodes around your gear, with each upgrade unlocking a specific node with a specific bonus based on the piece of gear.
Once you unlock all the nodes, the Infusion tier goes up, and a new set of nodes are given to unlock. Focusing on specific pieces of gear to upgrade allows you to focus on specific stats you want, so this is a priority to unlock so you can have more freedom with your stat build.
THE STRENGTH TO ENFORCE THE UNIVERSE
The more modifiable equipment upgrading makes it the fun part of making a character build, but you shouldn’t neglect things outside of gear enchants and focused gear infusions. If the gear is your flavor, then all the more generalist upgrades are your bread and butter: They give you the basic strength behind your build, covering for the weaknesses it might have, balancing things out like purely offensive infusion focuses.
After all, being a Universal Peacekeeper is a big job, and you need more than just good equipment to keep the peace across such a huge place.
Skills
Your character has 3 skills and a three-level Ultimate. You can power these skills up at the Skills tab, whereupon you spend Gold to increase their effectiveness. The Quick Level Up button is generally a good idea since skills can’t be upgraded past your level anyway, so you might as well max all of them out evenly.
As a side note, you can preview your skills in the skill tab, which makes your character shoot that unlucky target dummy mook in front of them.
Killing With Style
Once you reach a certain level, you can unlock interchangeable Skill Styles which change your basic skills depending on the class you picked when you started in the game. You can swap between these styles anytime, and they maintain the same level as your old Skills and each other after you upgrade them. The game handily tells you what a style is specialized in, whether it be for PVP, solo fighting, or highly efficient teamwork.
Companions: Your Friendly Helpers
Companions are pets who assist you in combat, usually with some form of autoattack and a big fat stack of stat boosts. Upgrading your Companions, equipped or not, will increase your BP along with a wide array of your stats ranging from HP to damage dealing ability, much like how Wings work.
The easiest way to get Companions is by engaging in “friendly” sparring and exercises in the Arena with your fellow Universal Peacekeepers, and going to the Arena shop afterwards.
Spirits: Gun And Ride In One
Not only do these big guys count as your mount, they also determine how your weapon looks! Spirits are creatures that not only increase your stats when upgraded, they also provide a main stat buff, and an active skill that can range from giving you a passive damage buff and changing your basic attack’s damage attribute, to acting as a healing spell separate from your healing potions. Gun for a specific Spirit and equip them, since they can make a real difference in a fight.
Alarmingly High Talent
Don’t be alarmed at the insane-looking level requirements for Talents: They’re not based on your actual character level, but the total numbers for your Skills’ levels. Talent slots are unlocked when you level your Skills up sufficiently, and each slot gives you a choice between an offensive buff and a defensive buff. You can change your choices at any time, so swap them out according to your current needs.
Majestically Flightless Wings
Speaking of wings, you unlock your first set of Wings come level 40. You can treat them as a separate piece of equipment away from the Forge. You can equip whichever pair of wings you think looks best on you with no penalty, and you can even take them off entirely, as collecting and upgrading wings is what makes you stronger.
Leveling up unequipped wings increases your BP and stats as if you levelled up one that was equipped. Wings get a lot easier to nab if you have a Guild, since they sell wing shards in the Guild Warehouse.
ENFORCING PEACE WITH VIOLENCE: COMBAT NOTES
Combat in this game is fairly simple, but tight. You have skills that often need to be aimed, you need to avoid big enemy attacks marked by red hitboxes on the ground, and you have a handy dandy dodge button that’ll save your life more often than is comfortable. While the auto-combat AI is typically good enough to finish simple kill-everything fights because of its ability to pour out DPS much faster than a thinking player, it’s not all that good at a bunch of other things.
Like say, keeping the player alive against high-damage enemies, or prioritizing more advanced targets for more thoughtful fights that may require you to hit specific enemies or so, or running through a gauntlet of deadly traps while an unkillable sea horror is chasing you. Here’s some notes regarding combat.
Auto’s Not All That Auto
The auto combat in the game is the skill-spammy kind, doing as much damage as it can in as little time as possible, and nothing else. It won’t dodge, and it will only walk towards its current objective instead of walking to evade attacks. Early on, you can get away with it but even then enemies can already do noticeable damage with their red hitbox attacks.
If you’re planning on using auto, focus on dodging attacks yourself since the AI isn’t smart enough for that. You can also check the Settings screen’s Combat tab to tell the AI whether or not to chug a Healing Potion every time you hit 50% HP, or whether or not you want them to spam your Ultimate whenever it’s ready.
Lead Your Targets
Certain skills need to be aimed, and enemies can run fairly fast. When aiming a skill, aim for where they’re going and not where they are. That way, they run into your attack’s hitbox and eat it all.
Also, once you get your Style upgrade, make sure to preview the new skills you just got first: They tend to work differently enough from your old skills that your muscle memory will get a little messed up the first time you use them.
Kiting Into A Cloud
Since most attacks tend to have an area of effect, you can make the most of them by getting the enemy to follow you rather than striking immediately. Kite the enemy squad into a large blob, and let rip with your skills.
That way, you can blow through them in a single skill barrage or so, rather than having to pick stragglers off with your basic attacks as your skills cool down.
DAILY TASKS
Like in any MMO, you’ll soon find yourself developing some daily habits in Dark Nemesis: Infinite Quest every time you log in. There are many modes in the game, and doing them at least until their daily tries are all empty is your main way to grind and get the materials and EXP needed to get stronger. Keeping on top of these will ensure the story campaign becomes a cakewalk, and will make your character stronger.
Arena Combat
The Arena lets you fight other players in the game. Unlike in a lot of PVP modes in mobile games, you have the option of taking direct control of your character, which gives you a greater advantage compared to letting the auto AI do its thing.
That being said, even with the advantage of controlling your character, it is still generally inadvisable to attack enemy players with a markedly higher BP than you: Not only will their attacks hit much harder, players typically don’t wind up or telegraph attacks like NPC enemies do, and the Auto AI, while too stupid to dodge, can pour out some serious DPS through sheer spamming power.
Fighting in the Arena allows you to get Honor to spend in the Honor Shop, which sells shards for Companions. While you have 5 daily free tries, you CAN accumulate arena tickets over time, so do your five fights a day and you’ll still have some left over, perhaps for a rainy day in case some form of Arena-based event occurs.
Looking Like Free EXP Right Now
Every day, you get one free ticket to enter the EXP Dungeon. The EXP Dungeon is pretty simple: Jump in with a team, preferably a team of guildies, then kill everything that moves. You get a +30% EXP boost for a full team, and another 20% bonus if your teammates happen to be from your Guild.
The enemies here give a disproportionate amount of EXP compared to other places regardless of level or strength, so make sure you do this first thing upon login. It may give you that last inch of power you need to get past whatever level you might be stuck in!
Material Dungeon Crawling
Later on, you’ll unlock the Material Dungeon. In the Material Dungeon, you’ll fight a specific selection of mooks, and killing them gets you either badges or triggers a special effect depending on what you just killed. The more badges you earn from kills, the more rewards you get. You can get Infusion and Companion Stones from this mode, along with Diamonds.
Dream On In The Dream Realm
The Dream Realm is a dungeon where Auto is disallowed if you aren’t a certain amount of BP above the recommended level, and the enemies are generally strong enough to necessitate bringing a team in such a situation.
It’s a classic dungeon, where you run through a linear stage, plowing through mooks to make it to the end boss and either stab him, zap him to death, or fill him with bullets depending on what class you and your teammates picked.
Journal Reading
Journals are randomly given quests with differing qualities. Higher quality quests (the quality comes with typical gacha rules, with R being meh, SR being good, and SSR being really good) give higher quality rewards.
Every time you pick a quest, all three slots refresh, so go for whichever quest is either the best, or carries a specific reward you’re looking for. You have five attempts, and guildies can gift more to you, and vice versa. You also have three free refreshes, so use them if you get nothing but Rs. The typical rewards are Feathers for upgrading wings, Spirit Stones for upgrading Spirits, Potion chests which you’ll need for longer haul fights,
Enchantment stones to power up your gear, and of course, Gold. Depending on the mission (particularly the one where you’re dumped into a treasure room and you have a time limit to open all the chests and kill whatever happens to ambush you from inside), turning off Auto might be a good idea.
Bounty Hunting
Bounty fights have you running after a boss to haul their butt into prison, in as many pieces as you want. They have differing rewards depending on which boss you’re fighting. Depending on whether or not they have special mechanics (Such as some bosses needing to be in a certain area to take full damage from attacks) or if your BP is below a certain threshold, you might not be allowed to use Auto-combat.
This is the last thing you’ll want to do during your log in, so you can use whatever gains you’ve gotten from the previous daily work and get as far as you can so you get better Blitz rewards, available at this screen once a day. Blitzing BEFORE you beat up at least a couple of the bosses here is pretty wasteful.
Trial of Destiny
The Trial of Destiny is the hardest of the dailies, at least every time you actually have to unlock a new fight. Here, you fight a very difficult, powerful boss, and the game gives you more rewards the harder you make the difficulty, since it also comes with Common, Hard and Hell difficulty on top of the boss’s high stats.
You only need to fight the boss once per difficulty, then you can do the real daily part of it: Once a boss is beaten, the Quick Challenge button can autokill the most difficult version of a chosen boss you just beat. If your BP isn’t high enough to fight the next boss or difficulty by the end of the day, just tap Quick Challenge three times to get your rewards.
Otherwise, get in there and pick a fight, so your Quick Challenges get you better rewards. The typical reward you get from Trials of Destiny is equipment.
Wilds Quest Chains
The Wilds, as opposed to the story quests’ self-contained maps, acts more similarly to an overworld. Every day, you can take quest chains in the Wilds, culminating in a reward. The quests are usually you going from A-to-B, either to deliver paintings, supplies, death, or anything else to various NPCs. There are typically 15 quests in a chain, and you can do these once a day.
Treasure Hunting
Another thing to do in the wilds is to dig up loot. You will occasionally find Compasses and Treasure Maps as you play the game. Compasses give normal amounts of loot, and more specifically, R tier Companion Shards. Treasure Maps can give shards for SSR Companions.
Guild Treasure Maps allow you to dig for golden-tier Wing Shards in the Guild Camp. Use up all your Compasses, Maps and Treasure Maps whenever you get them since they’re basically free stuff with extra steps.
Ether Tripping Over
The Ether Trip is a quest chain mode which you can pick the path for, much like the Boardgame Odyssey from Figure Fantasy. Storywise, you travel to the deepest recesses of your mind to clear it of negative emotions, thus letting you fight without unneeded distraction. Gameplay-wise, you pick a path through multiple nodes, which either get you into a fight, give you buffs to keep going further, or pay you with rewards. Your job is to pick whichever is the most efficient path that gets you the most rewards and lets you last as long as possible.
You start out heavily nerfed, missing things like your Companion, Spirit and Styles, though you gain access to them the further you go through the Ethereal World, since they often act as the end nodes for a map set. Oh, and you aren’t allowed to use Auto either.
GENERAL TIPS AND TRICKS
Lastly, here are notes that don’t really fit too neatly in any of the previous categories, but are useful anyway. As with any game, there are a few quirks to watch out for after all.
Damage First, Bulk Next, Because The Timer Hates You
While being tanky is a good idea especially if you’re running a melee class, it’s usually a better idea to focus on attack power first, thanks to the game’s skill-based nature. After a certain defense threshold, your attacks will start plinking the enemy for 1 damage, and you want to avoid that.
Even worse, a lot of modes come with a battle timer (the first time you’ll likely suffer from this is by doing Trial of Destiny fights), so even if you were near invincible, not having enough attack power means you fail the mission anyway once the timer beats your DPS.
Raising your offensive stats first not only eventually lets you kill enemies far above your BP rating, especially in Bounty missions, you’ll be forced to learn to dodge attacks and play carefully. Once you start killing said enemies far above your BP level, THEN you can upgrade your tankiness to augment your ability to dodge smartly.
The timing with which you do this may depend on what class you picked, with a melee class needing tankiness faster than a ranged attacker does, seeing as the shooty classes can hang back and sling bullets or magic to avoid damage.
A good indicator of when to start improving tankiness no matter the class is when you unlock the Ether Trip missions, since you’re likely to end up dealing with trap-filled survival mazes instead of enemies in that mode’s Combat nodes.
Campaign Slow Rush
In the Campaign, it might be tempting to just auto your way past the level, especially if your BP is pretty high and you’re confident you can roll over everyone. If you DO have a high BP, that’s actually a good idea, at least early on, as the AI can put out quite a lot of DPS compared to hesitant fingers. You’ll usually be able to hit the time limit for that last star provided your damage output is high enough and you have at least enough bulk for the AI not to get you killed.
That being said, if you do that, make sure to come back to the level one more time to take it slow: The map often has chests marked out on it, sometimes hidden in branching paths. They contain some good loot, so come back for them after getting your three stars. You can also do it the other way around: Explore everywhere as fast but as thoroughly as possible, and if you miss the timer for the three stars, come back and rush it.
Home Away From Home: Guilds
Guilds in Dark Nemesis: Infinite Quest offer a couple of things that’ll make powering up easier. They have the Guild Tech tree, which lets you upgrade specific stats with Guild Shards to the level available to your guild. Then there is the Guild Shop/Warehouse, which sells Wing shards for Guild Tokens, which you get for participating in Guild activities.
A lot of those activities are held in the Guild Camp, such as the Assembly whereupon you sit around, accumulate loot, and suddenly get attacked by a huge mob of monsters. Who you then proceed to beat into more loot! Like in any online game, joining a guild is normally one of your earliest priorities so you have access to such life-easing amenities.
This ends our Dark Nemesis: Infinite Quest beginner’s guide. We hope this helps you enforce peace across the universe. If you have tips of your own to share, feel free to do so in the comments below!