As a well-established mobile game developer being among the pioneers who began their work as early as 2012, NEXON has been a well-known name for mobile game enthusiasts on both Android and iOS platforms. With successful titles such as Darkness Rises, LYN: The Lightbringer and Returners just to name a few, NEXON’s latest chart-topper, Durango: Wild Lands is guaranteed to be another worldwide success.
Durango: Wild Lands is NEXON’s fresh take on a prehistoric era-themed survival MMO game that is as engaging and as immersive as it can get. The quality of the game’s graphics, for starters, is top-notch and comparable to even console and pc games as far as details and vividness is concerned. The environment itself and numerous features that abound in the game easily gives players an idea of how much work and planning has been spent on the development of the game. While you can play and enjoy the game on your own, having friends to play the game with exponentially increases its enjoyability and level of excitement. So regardless of whether or not you are into dinosaurs and survival games during the Jurassic era, there are plenty of activities and thrills to find in this game. More so, if you have friends whom you can actually play with as you dive into this game.
Durango: Wild Lands starts the story off as a seemingly ordinary train ride that phenomally warps the entire train through time and space to take you, along with all of its passengers to the prehistoric era where dinosaurs still ruled the land. This vast new land called Durango, is an archipelago that offers plenty of opportunities and threats. With creativity, hard work, and the will to survive, you start from absolute scratch and must explore, gather, and build the tools and items you need to make your life a little easier. Adapting to new world takes more than mere survival skills. You must learn to cooperate and work with others as well to accomplish more tasks and make progress faster. At some point, the dinosaurs that serve as threats may even become handy companions for you. Though you start your journey off with a preset specialization, more skills and abilities will become available later on in the game and a lot of the choices you make as you dive deep into the world of Durango will impact future outcomes.
The game’s overall introductory impact as well as the vastness of the map may give you an impression that it is too complex as exhibited by the seemingly overwhelming detail and information you’ll be quickly introduced too. There is indeed much to learn and you ought to read and take note of every bit of information presented to you by NPCs that serve as your guide. Taking things a step at a time is the way to go for starters and focusing on the task at hand will make it easier on you so if the initial pace sort of gives you an information overload, just strictly adhere to the mission at hand.
If you haven’t started playing Durango: Wild Lands and want to learn more about it before you dive in, be sure to read our beginner’s guide which discusses the value of choosing the right class to begin the game with as well as some tips and strategies on general decision points you would best know as you start playing the game.
1. Follow The Missions To Progress
There will be plenty of places to explore, resources to farm, and items to create in Durango: Wild Lands on top of all other activities you will be going through as you progress through the game. From the introductory portion of the story down to early stages of your venture in the world of Durango, you will be made to follow quest lines that give you basic guidelines on several aspects of the game as well as take you through the preliminary stages of your character’s growth and development. The truth is, there won’t be any strict impositions to force you into adhering to the quests and missions on hand and every step of the way, you can almost always freely explore and try to gather items from various resource points scattered about.
There will be some distractions that lie around the further you go into completing one mission after another and considering the volume of resource points you will pass along the way, you will most likely be tempted to gather some of these items especially the ones you have not harvested from yet. Though there’s nothing really wrong with that, keep in mind that gathering the materials you need will form part of missions that you will engage in later on so if moving forward with missions and developing your characters fast is what you want, push as much as you can to focus and complete quests as fast as possible. Likewise, there is a limit to the items you can carry in your bag and while its fun to collect a variety of raw materials from time to time; you need to ensure that you will always have enough space for the items you need to deliver as part of your quest.
2. Take As Much Time As You Need To Choose Your Domain
At some point in the game, you will have an opportunity to own a small piece of land to call your own on an area within a tamed island of your choice. As it goes, there is no time limit within which you have to rush your decision as there are more than enough great choices to pick as you explore around the tamed island.
Before deciding on where to set up your domain, check a good location where the most basic resources for your survival are close by. Food and water are of utmost necessity so choose one close to both resource spots as much as you can. As there will be multiple good choices for you, you can take as much time as you need to choose the best one. Remember that this is a one-time activity and once you decide on a domain, you won’t be able to go back to choosing another one so make a smart choice.
Related: Durango: Wild Lands Crafting Guide: Tips & Tricks on How to Craft New Items and Equipment
As domains are personal territory, it is an unwritten law in Durango to respect every player’s personal space and boundaries. Knowing well that you would not want strangers on your piece of land, you should not loiter around other players’ domains as well, unless you are permitted to do so.
If you are fortunate enough to have played this game along with some friends or if you progress well enough to join and be part of a guild, you can share a Waypoint along with other people and share the same space. Though not a requirement, it is always advantageous to stay at waypoints and be with other people than to live alone.
3. Always Keep Watch Of Your Health, Stamina, And Fatigue Levels
Throughout the game, there will be several things to keep an eye on but the most important ones relate to you as a survivor most especially if you did not choose either the soldier (melee) or jobseeker (defense) class. Some missions include having to do battle with dinosaurs and sometimes, some dinosaurs are aggressive enough to attack you without any sort of provocation whatsoever. Your top priority should be keeping your health up much like in any other game that has health bars. As most classes don’t have much of it to start with, resting and medicine is very important to keep in your inventory for emergency situations.
A lot of the actions you do, especially in battle require stamina which makes it equally important to keep at manageable levels. Depending on the number of activities you engage in, stamina may drop down a lot although staying idle will replenish it back up in just a short while. At some point, replenishment won’t push it back at full so you will need to eat when it goes lower than what you need for the adventure ahead.
Lastly, adventuring outside of camp, especially if you are engaging in a lot of activities will build up your fatigue level and what you would want is to keep it down. There are numerous bodies of water in all areas though so simply clean up and drink water to help lower it down when you need to do so.
4. Accept Missions At The Communications Center
Once the tutorial ends, most of the activities you engage in as you explore Durango will revolve around accepting and accomplishing missions from various support organizations. Though some of them will unlock later on as you meet the minimum level requirements, each one offers the same valuable rewards for completing missions. T-coins are your most basic currency in the new world, and every bit of opportunity to gain some should not be missed. Naturally, you would also want to gain experience points and level your character up as more opportunities and benefits will become available for you on top of the additional stats and skills that comes along with each new level gain. Lastly, and equally important, are the trust points you earn for each support organization that can rank up the trust tier level.
It’s important to know that you can grab as many missions from each support organization daily and though at some point there will be a cool down period for new ones to become available again, you can cycle through the other support organizations, accept and accomplish quests, and earn as much of the important resources as you can. Most of these tasks are simple gathering quests with a bit of hunting quests in the mix and nothing much difficult to handle for the initial levels so for the most part, only time and effort are really required for you make good progress in the game as you take advantage of these missions.
Another thing you may want to consider is to grab extra pieces of the requested items whenever you can afford to especially if those items are hard to come by outside of those missions. If missions require you to go to unstable islands or anywhere far from you domain, you should only bring basic necessities with you to have as much space in your bag as you can for important loots.
Relative to missions at the communications center and support organizations that hand these missions, there are freebies you can receive from each of them from time to time within a day so be sure to grab those as well by clicking on the 2-way radio icon at the left side of your screen and clicking on each available support list. Keep in mind that more choices unlock as your trust tier in a support organization goes higher. Be sure to check what’s in store for you as free supplies on the other tier levels of each support organization once you reach them.
5. Aim To Complete Tasks For Extra Rewards
Though there are already outpouring rewards and incentives for most activities you engage in as you explore and delve into the world of Durango, there are still more to be earned from the various tasks that you can accomplish depending on the activities you do. While some of these tasks can even be accomplished before you even view or identify the objectives within each category, progressing fast and efficiently in the game means taking these into consideration and spending time and effort to actually do your best to accomplish each as much as you can.
To view available tasks as well as check on the ones you may have already accomplished, simply click on the medal icon at the left side of your screen. The easiest tasks to accomplish are daily tasks. Although there are outright rewards to be gained from completing each objective listed here, what you would want to work for is to earn 50 task points from completing some objectives and earn 15 warp stones as a final reward.
There are also achievements and milestones which offer one time rewards. The difference lies in the nature of the task in that achievements relate to activities you engage in while milestones are tied up to story progression. There are also warp stones to be earned from earning task points in both these sets of tasks so accomplishing earlier would do you a lot of good.
6. Regulating Sails And Crafting Baskets
One habit to make early on is to leave some items worth keeping in your domain before sailing on to unstable islands. To do so, you must craft a basket in your domain so you can leave some items behind and make room in your bag for resources you can get from unstable islands as there are some resources that you can earn and gather exclusively from such areas. Depending on the remaining space you have within the boundaries of your personal space as well as the basic crafting materials, you can craft and place multiple baskets to have more storage space at your home.
You may have secured some locked items on some quests which cannot be taken out of your bag and with the exception of some food, medicine, clothing, and some tools; it is very much advisable to leave everything else behind. Keep in mind that unstable islands do hold more resources that can aptly provide for a lot of situations so even food may not be that much of a concern.
Although you can freely sail to an untamed island once you meet the minimum level requirement, and also return to your domain any time you wish, each sail will cost you T-coins. With more baskets at your domain and more space in your bag, it will take a lot more time for you to grab some stuff off of the untamed islands and consequently need to travel back home a lot less. Though you may constantly earn T-coins more than your usual need, it is still relatively not that plentiful and you will never cease to have use for it especially for emergency needs that you can buy from the market so saving it for other needs would be the best way to go.
There are definitely a lot more stuff that needs to be explored in Durango: Wild Lands but as far as basic survival guides are concerned, we can only consider these tips and strategies for now. As a final tip, remember that there are hardly any limitations as to how fast you can upgrade your skills and you can practically spend as much time as you want in the game to really push far ahead early on. Time and commitment is really important if you want to among the top survivors in your server and taking the simple tips and strategies we shared can also help you compete even if you are a totally free-to-play gamer. If there are relevant tips and strategies you know and would like to share the same with us, don’t hesitate to write what you think at the comments section below!
Athena
Tuesday 4th of June 2019
I’m trying to do the pioneer quest since I’m level 30 how do I start that?
Noir97
Sunday 26th of May 2019
have you figured it out yet? if not,
add each other or not either way is fine and go to setting.. you need to give permission for people whom you can choose to enter your island, you can also set your friend as close friend if you want to put a certain limitation towards your friends,close friend and outsider.. after done with the setting and all, just click your friend's name/icon and then click visit island..voila (;´∀`)
WesamSon
Monday 13th of May 2019
I need help in game, How to meet up my real life friend in game? We are both in West server