Beginner Route: Level 1 to 40

Four things gate your progress:

• Player level opens buildings, features and Exploration stages. It is capped by season: 40 in Season 1, 50 in Season 2, and 10 more each season up to 100.
• Days since your world opened. Some World features wait for day N of your world in Season 1, even when your level is high enough. Day 1 is the day the world opened.
• Season. Your season comes from the world you are in. It decides the level cap, which heroes can be recruited and which recipes exist.
• Event schedules are set by the game server and are not covered here.

• Opens: Fishing Chair and Warehouse at 1; Fish Processing Plant and Resident Requests at 2; Scavenger Ship, Seawater Plant, Command Center and Forgotten Sea Cleanup at 3; Small Shack and Seafood Kitchen at 5.
• Main quest: collect Wood, build the Fishing Chair and fish, make Sashimi, finish a Resident Request, build the Scavenger Ship and scavenge, build the Seawater Plant, build the Command Center and assign a hero, build a Small Shack, make Grilled Fish, then reach 9 Resident Requests in total.

Hidden requirements:

• The Seawater Plant needs a Scavenger Ship first.
• The quest to assign a hero comes right after you build the Command Center, but the first post (Production Speedup) only opens at level 4. The Building Speedup post opens at 6.
• A finished building is not done until you tap it. When the construction timer runs out, tap the building (or its button on the building menu) to complete it; the game only sends the finish request when you do. See Building and finishing.

• Opens: the Hero screen, Exploration (the main stages, played from the Exploration Ship) and the Broadcast Station, where you recruit.
• Main quest: build the Broadcast Station, recruit once, clear Stage 5, recruit 10 more times, raise 4 heroes to Lv.15, clear Stage 10.

Hidden requirement: heroes cannot go past Lv.5 until you are player level 7. The hero level cap follows your player level (Lv.15 at player level 7, Lv.100 at 20, Lv.200 at 40), so the "4 heroes to Lv.15" quest waits for level 7.

Clear Stage 40 to rescue Mia, a Legendary hero. The same milestone gives 10 Recruitment Cards, the Formation - RES Boost blueprint and 100,000 Hero EXP.

• Population is a threshold, not a cost. Factories ask for a minimum population and do not use it up. If you build every Shack as soon as it unlocks, you always have enough: the Furniture Workshop at level 15 asks for 100, and by then you can have 103. If a factory says you are short, there is a Shack you have not built. How population and its cap work is on Buildings, Population & Construction.
• The Medium Shack needs three Small Shacks first, and the Large Shack needs two Medium Shacks.
• Scavenging at sea only brings in Plastic, Wood and Cloth Scraps. Metal and glass come from diving.
• Fishing, scavenging and diving each get an Auto button at Lv.2 of that activity. Raising it to Lv.2 takes Enhance presses paid in Gold, then a second Fishing Chair, Scavenger Ship or Diving Dock; building the second one alone is not enough. See Fishing & Diving and Scavenging.

• Opens: the World, Alliance, Hero Gear, Hero Themed Dungeon, Fleet Dock, Expedition Fleet and Seed Selection Plant.
• Main quest: build the Expedition Fleet, form a fleet, defeat 1 pirate troop in the World, farm Wheat, recruit troops for an Alliance city, occupy 2 Oases, 2 Factories and 2 Oil Tanks, build the Seed Selection Plant, defeat 5 pirate troops, enhance a piece of gear to Lv.5, clear Stage 100.

Hidden requirements:

• Level 16 alone does not let you into the World. At exactly level 16 you also need an Expedition Fleet and its tutorial; without one, the game says Form Expedition Fleet 1 before entering the World. From level 17 only the level is checked.
• Your first gear comes from pirates. The quest asks you to enhance gear before you can build the Gear Factory at 17. In Season 1 the first four levels of each pirate drop Uncommon gear on the first kill: Homemade Pistol (Pirate Vanguard), Goggles (Pirate Elite) and Wooden Stick (Pirate Boss). Pirates of each kind are beaten in order, one level at a time, and the first-kill reward comes once per level.
• Everything in the World runs on Gasoline: attacking, marching and repairing ships.
• City battles run every day from 20:00 to 21:00 server time, starting on day 2 of the world in Season 1.

If Expedition or the Exclusive Weapon tab is still grey at level 30, check the day of your world: in Season 1 both wait for day 15. From Season 2 they open on day 1.

• Season 1 stops at level 40. The main quest chain stops at Upgrade to Lv.41, and you can clear Exploration up to Stage 1199; Stage 1200 needs level 41.
• Every "clear Stage N" quest in the chain can be done at the level where it appears.
• Unconfirmed: whether you can reach level 40 before Season 1 ends. How fast you earn player EXP is not published.

• No Exotic gear recipes, no auto-attacking pirates and no City War Tasks. These come with Season 2 (auto-attacking comes from the Season Pass). See Seasons for what each season adds.
• No chips. The Chip Factory, Silicon Ore Factory and Armory need level 51, which only exists from Season 3, and chips themselves open in Season 3.
• No dismantling of Legendary or Exotic gear until Season 2.
• 31 heroes can be recruited in Season 1; later seasons add more.

• "Unlocks at level X" is not always the whole story. Features that also wait for a day of the world (Stranded Freighter, Point Match, Expedition, Exclusive Weapons) only check the day in Season 1; a feature whose day is 0 for a season does not open in that season at all.
• The Fishing Guide's rewards past tier 6 cannot be reached in version 1.3.4. The 40 fish are worth 800 points in total, tier 6 needs 770 and tier 7 needs 1,070.
• Unconfirmed: which hero you start with. The quest asks you to assign a hero before you can recruit, so you start with at least one; Tom appears in the opening, but the starting roster is sent by the game server.