Ashes of Creation Rogue Leveling Guide

Hello and welcome to the ultimate leveling guide for the Rogue archetype! Inside this guide we'll cover everything you need to know while you level your Rogue to level 25. Note that the level cap upon release of the game is 50, however currently during this testing period the level cap is 25, which can still take over 100 hours! As your character progresses, there are many things you can do while leveling to make your journey go much smoother, regardless if you're leveling solo or in a group. Here are a few of the best ways to be most efficient with your time, and maximize the overall experience gained.

This guide includes separate tips and tricks for every single level dependent on if you're in a group or not. As a Rogue, your leveling experience will be quite drastically different than other the other archetypes in the game. Rogues have undoubtedly the most crowd control, or CC, (pending Summoner) in the game and can be the most frustrating archetype to play against, while also the only archetype that has True Stealth. They can put out lots of burst damage, DoT damage, and have relatively high mobility ingrained into their kit making them one of the most versatile archetypes to play.

While this game is made to play with friends and not really tailored for the solo adventurer, Rogue is actually one of the best solo levelers in the game. While it's not extremely easy to pull multiple mobs as a Rogue, you can easily find ways to sustain your way through enemies with a lot of HP and are higher level than you for the most part which will grant a lot of experience. Let's not forget that you can limit test frequently by starting to pull a mob and escape just about any encounter if it becomes too dangerous by going stealth to avoid that nasty experience debt.

Learn more about the most efficient way to level as a Rogue within a group in Ashes of Creation! Using the scrolling feature below, select your level and unlock a list of best practices on how to level, including recommended skills, leveling locations, tips and more.

Set the slider to your level, but expect information from the previous level bracket to disappear at specific thresholds. This is done to make the information on the page more condensed and easier to read.

Important note: While this guide only has a section for group leveling, the solo leveling advice would be the same. However, it's highly suggested to level in a group, since solo leveling in the current iteration of the game is a miserable experience for most classes. While Rogue can solo level, you will still level more efficiently in a group than solo. You may have sustain and a good overall kit for soloing mobs, but you're still squishy and you will need gear in order to breeze through PvE in Ashes of Creation. Without gear, it's extremely difficult, and the best way to gear up is in higher risk and more dangerous areas with groups. So don't gain unnecessary experience debt and hold onto your glint and find a guild or some friends to play with!

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

As you log in for your first time, directly in front of you is a guard that will give you a quest called "Welcome to Verra". This is just a breadcrumb quest that will lead to some free, easy experience in a bit, just by talking to a few NPC's. Scattered all along the floor and walls by that entrance next to that quest you picked up is a bunch of starter weapons. You want to look for the Rusty Greatsword, Unadorned Daggers, Splintered Longbow, and Splintered Shortbow. You already start with a Unadorned Daggers, so once you grab your secondary weapon, you are good to start off on your journey! Figure out what weapons you like the most by killing Sickly Goblins in the starter area to see what you prefer, but as a general note: you will probably be using a Longbow in your final build, so you may want to start leveling a Longbow regardless if you like other weapon types.

As you level you will find gear or buy gear that will be better, but for now this is what you got! Just walk out the door and kill some goblins as you make your way to Lionhold. Once you've arrived, start "The Sweat of your Brow" which will reward you with a free horse as a mount. This quest is very easy to do and is all done in the town, he just asks you to go around gathering and crafting some stuff. Here is a great video you can use as a reference on how to get your first mount for free.

Once you hit Level 2 you get your first skill point and can get your first new Ability! The way Abilities work in Ashes of Creation is based off your archetype's base power. For Rogue it is Physical, so make sure when you're looking at gear that you are looking for Physical Power gear. Physical Power is increased by the Strength stat as well, but a lot of the time Strength is a bit of a bait stat. Always look for Physical Power before looking at Strength increase.

Here is the hard part; picking your first ability. The Rogue class is pretty overloaded early with good abilities it can make the choice hard. Thankfully, you can respec at any time so you can test them out.

Adjust the level Slider to follow along with which abilities you should be taking as you level up!

1. Flurry
2. Acrobatic Strike
3. Lacerate
4. Feint
5. Soothing Shadows
6. Draining Poison
7. Sap
8. Thrash
9. Doublestrike
10. Expanded Toolbelt
11. Smoke Bomb
12. Shadow Cascade
13. Ruthless
14. Kick
15. Thump
16. Throw
17. Umbral Cloak
18. Shadow Step
19. Ethereal
20. Grappling Hook
21. Unstable Compound
22. Ricochet
23. Caltrops
24. Foreshadowing

The table below will adjust based on your level, providing you with a quick at-a-glance list of information for your level range. Notes have been included under the table to clear up any confusion or to add extra detail.

IMPORTANT NOTE: These spots will be available in the Riverlands, but as the game progresses and the Anvil's starting area comes online and PvE balancing starts coming online, this is subject to change for Phase 3. The guide will be updated as more information comes along.

Be wary of strictly following these locations as players — especially at launch — will group to some of these places and you may need to find another grindspot. There are plenty of places in Verra to explore that are not listed here that you can find a suitable replacement!

Levels	Best Location	Pref Mob	Food	Scroll
1 - 4	Lionhold	Humanoids Undead Vermin	None	None
1 - 5	Samia's Hope	Humanoids Undead Vermin	None	None

Levels	Best Location	Pref Mob	Food	Scroll
5 - 7	Lionhold	Humanoids Undead	Fresh Salad	Novice Scroll of Strength Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
5 - 7	Baneswood Cemetery	Humanoids Undead Bears	Fresh Salad	Novice Scroll of Strength Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
5 - 7	2nd Sword Outpost	Humanoids	Fresh Salad	Novice Scroll of Strength Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
5 - 7	Outside Oakenbane Keep	Humanoids Plantoid	Fresh Salad	Novice Scroll of Strength Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience

Levels	Best Location	Pref Mob	Food	Scroll
7 - 10	Gemspring	Beasts Vermin	Fresh Salad	Novice Scroll of Strength Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
7 - 10	Titan's Ring	Humanoids Beasts	Fresh Salad	Novice Scroll of Strength Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
7 - 10	Korra'Loch	Humanoids Beasts	Fresh Salad	Novice Scroll of Strength Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
7 - 15	Oakenbane Keep	Humanoids	Fresh Salad	Novice Scroll of Strength Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
7 - 15	Highwayman Hills	Humanoids Beasts	Fresh Salad	Novice Scroll of Strength Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience

Levels	Best Location	Pref Mob	Food	Scroll
7 - 15	Oakenbane Keep	Humanoids	Fresh Salad	Novice Scroll of Strength Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
7 - 15	Highwayman Hills	Humanoids Beasts	Fresh Salad	Novice Scroll of Strength Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
10 - 15	Church of the Seven Stars	Undead Beasts	Beef Steak Sandwich	Novice Scroll of Strength Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
10 - 20	Halls of Judication	Humanoids Undead Plantoid	Beef Steak Sandwich	Apprentice Scroll of Strength Apprentice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
10 - 20	Ursine Caves	Humanoids Beasts	Beef Steak Sandwich	Apprentice Scroll of Strength Apprentice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
10 - 20	Remnants of Sephillion	Humanoids Undead Beasts	Beef Steak Sandwich	Apprentice Scroll of Strength Apprentice Scroll of Adventuring Experience

Levels	Best Location	Pref Mob	Food	Scroll
10 - 20	Halls of Judication	Humanoids	Beef Steak Sandwich	Apprentice Scroll of Strength Apprentice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
10 - 20	Ursine Caves	Humanoids Beasts	Beef Steak Sandwich	Apprentice Scroll of Strength Apprentice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
10 - 20	Remnants of Sephillion	Humanoids Beasts	Beef Steak Sandwich	Apprentice Scroll of Strength Apprentice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
15 - 20	Daragal Estates	Humanoids Beasts Plantoids Undead	Beef Steak Sandwich	Apprentice Scroll of Strength Apprentice Scroll of Adventuring Experience
15 - 20	Steelbloom Citadel	Humanoids Beasts	Beef Steak Sandwich	Apprentice Scroll of Strength Apprentice Scroll of Adventuring Experience

Levels	Best Location	Pref Mob	Food	Scroll
20 - 25	Befallen Forge	Humanoids Constructs Beasts Undead Arcana	Beef Steak Sandwich	Journeyman Scroll of Strength Journeyman Scroll of Adventuring Experience
20 - 25	Carphin Tower	Undead Plantoids Constructs Beasts	Beef Steak Sandwich	Journeyman Scroll of Strength Journeyman Scroll of Adventuring Experience
20 - 25	Gravepeak	Undead Plantoids Constructs Beasts	Beef Steak Sandwich	Journeyman Scroll of Strength Journeyman Scroll of Adventuring Experience

Make sure you're grabbing Embersprings as you go along your journey!

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Flurry should be the first ability you level as you get three charges and they increase your attack speed allowing for more ability casts early and it does not interrupt your weapon combo. This allows you to learn how to weave in your weapon combo finishers and see how your auto attacks work early. If you care more about AoE, then you may want Lacerate instead. Out of all of the abilities listed, Throw might be the strongest, but it pulls extra mobs that can kill you and may be dangerous early on in the leveling process. You have to be extremely careful when mobs pulling mobs with it because it bounces dangerously far.

Acrobatic Strike will strike your target three times, generate Advantage, and give you a CC ability early. You could get Kick, but most mobs this early in the leveling process don't need to be kicked for any mechanic and you won't be PvPing anyways. You can replace it with either Lacerate for AoE damage or Feint as it can grant you "Guile". This gives you 20% evasion and is an Advantage generator on your next weapon combo finisher, pairing well with Flurry.

Once you reach level 5 or so, it's highly suggested to head out to the Laboratory, Smithy, and the Cookhouse to buy some gear and consumables. If you're hurting on money, then just spend 10-15 minutes cutting down every tree and picking every plant you see and just go vendor them. There's also some quick and easy World events that happen all over the place that you should do if you they happen to be live when you pass by. These are shared progress with every player who's doing the event, which makes the events go by pretty fast, but also provides you with a large chunk of experience, as well as a chunk of much needed Glint.

You've reached the second tier of your talent tree! From here on your choices as a Rogue don't get easier as there are still a lot of good options. Feel free to test different abilities as you're leveling.

Soothing Shadows is a great way to regen between pulls, but feel free to avoid this if you're in a party with a tank and healers and go into more damage with Thrash. Once you spec into Thrash you can do a nice combo with Flurry and learn to weave in your auto attacks between abilities and finish your weapon combo. However, you can just spam between the two buttons too!

Sustain	Damage	Heal-Cut	Utility
Draining Poison	Withering Poison	Wounding Poison	Chilling Poison

We suggest using Draining Poison for constant uptime and sustain, but a good second choice would be Withering Poison. There are few PvE mobs that will require Heal-Cut and choosing Chilling Poison could get in the way of the snare debuff that Mages heavily rely on while you're in a party and doesn't provide much for solo gameplay either.

Around Levels 8–10 you should probably have your poison and Sap for more health regeneration and damage output. Stacking your poison is vital and you will basically only use Sap if you have max poison stacks to generate extra Advantage. You can generate poison faster with the help of your Flurry/ Thrash combo. You can earn the most damage output possible with weaving in auto attacks between each ability usage since both of those abilities do not cancel your weapon attack combos. Simply wait a second in between each ability usage for max damage unless you're really counting on the health regeneration from Sap and need to dump everything quickly for quick poison stacking.

Once you hit Level 10 you will have most of your core abilities from the first and second tier. Once again, Ashes of Creation will be a game that you have to adapt to your surroundings, what and who you are playing against among other variable factors. Guides like this are just to help you get a baseline. You may have to respec based on what you're facing and you should be adaptable as a Rogue being one of the most versatile archetypes in the game in terms of playstyle and options.

Expanded Toolbelt is by far your most important talent on the tree. You get two poisons, two sleep darts, two smoke bombs, two grapple hooks, two caltrops, two shurikens tosses, and pretty much two of everything. While Padded Toolbelt can be an option for ganking players or getting away from danger, to me it is never more viable than Expanded Toolbelt. The added utility is too good. Even if you don't have any other tools other than your poisons, it is the best first option because having two charges of your poison is really good for keeping poison uptime on your target.

Smoke Bomb will be your next best ability as it allows you to recast your stealth ability inside, granting you an Advantage generator, and reduces the cooldown to go back into stealth immensely! Not to mention the evasion it gives you is very strong in both PvE and PvP. Remember, mobs will de–aggro off of you if you go invisible and step outside of your smoke bomb but they won't if you stay inside of it and attack quickly. You will be able to re–up your Soothing Shadows this way to give you regen in combat.

Shadow Cascade is the Rogue's "Ultimate Ability". This is the "Omae wa mou shindeiru" slice you in half like Rurouni Kenshin anime katana master ability. It can only be used while you have a stack of Advantage and will consume it. It exposes all enemies that are already Poisoned, and all targets hit suffer Bleeding. If they are below 50% HP then they suffer Hemorraging. This ability is pairs incredibly well with prepping your poison, using Throw, and hitting all targets before hitting them with the imaqtpie classic "Nothing personnel, kid" and dashing through them.

As for where to level, once Level 10 you can do one of two things, depending on if you are solo or in a group. If in a group, aim for Halls of Judication, or Oakenbane Keep. These will be much more experience and drops much more Glint and gear than if solo, with the downside of finding a group and dealing with other human beings. However it is 100% worth it! Even when solo grinding, make the time to go spend an hour or so in Halls to get gear upgrades, like the Flayer's Fleshripper from the Boss NakNak or find Gnashgut of Hearthsong for the easiest ways to obtain it. But if those guys are flooded with people, try Oakenbane for Slayer Draags, Rhaags, or Slaags. Or simply, buy one off the market after running some glint via crates and/or caravans. If you're solo and just looking for XP, shardlings and scorpion broodlings in the desert are easy to solo. As well as otters in the Riverlands, and crabs in the Tropics. However, gear drops primarily from humanoid creatures. So if you can, try to kill humanoids and get lower tier gear drops and focus on named mobs for rare materials for crafters as villages and towns are built.

The great and bad thing about Rogue is there are a lot of options you can spec into. Level 16-20 is a good area to experiment with and respec for the situations you're putting yourself in. We can't tell you what is "best" in this area because everything is situational; it depends on content you're planning on playing against, or if it requires multiple talent points.

Once you hit this level you pretty much have your core abilities and require two talent points for the beneficial passives for your abilities like Shadow Step needing Ethereal for the CC break in PvP and Sleep Dart wanting Anemia in order to not cancel the Incapacitated status effect whenever you bleed an opponent.

While you're waiting for the two extra talent points you can add more into abilities you haven't skilled before or take Grappling Hook for more mobility.

These abilities will be your core for the most part that allows you the most versatility and can handle most situations with Advantage generators, consumers, and finishers and moving forward you can focus on more utility.

For utility spells you can look at the following.

• Adrenaline
• Caltrops
• Foreshadowing
• Sleep Dart
• Unstable Compound
• Withering Poison

These options allow you to focus on your defensives or allow you to have a second option with poisons. Generally, the second poison is not necessary and you can use that extra talent point for something else, but if you do decide to spec into a secondary poison, Withering Poison is a good option as it gives you the greatest effects as previously discussed in the poison section.

For your primary choice in utilities, take either Adrenaline or Foreshadowing.

Adrenaline will grant you a burst of movement speed and some extra stamina for ganking in PvP giving you that extra mobility you otherwise wouldn't have in order to stick to your opponent or make a quick escape.

A highly underrated ability for both PvE and PvP and one of my personal favorites is Unstable Compound. This ability procs off you or your party's auto attack finisher and if you have Expanded Toolbelt you can Throw your shurikens back to back and it will proc off the first shuriken. Throw is probably one of your highest damage abilities, has one of the fastest cast times, and paired with Unstable Compound it can do a lot of damage in an AoE—which Rogue severely lacks. To add even more AoE you can also use Ricochet to hit more targets. It is generally not worth picking up Ricochet unless you are confident in large pulls and not pulling extra mobs, or in PvP where you want to hit as many targets as possible anyways.

Another class favorite utility is Caltrops. This is generally rated lower than Foreshadowing, but Caltrops can be useful and can do a lot of damage if used properly. For PvE you won't find a lot of usage as mobs won't be running through them often if your tank is keeping aggro. They also only proc a singular stack of poison, so it's not quite effective for poison stacking either. However, they do provide some good zone control and anti-dive for PvP when you throw them down on your own feet.

Foreshadowing will be another Advantage generator for you to build up more of your extremely valuable class resource by finishing an auto attack finisher every time you exit stealth. This ability pairs well with Smoke Bomb as it will greatly enhance your Stealth cooldown. You can even use it at range as long as you stay inside of the smoke for both PvP and PvE as it doesn't distinguish between melee or ranged.

It isn't worth picking up Sleep Dart unless you have two talent points for Anemia, as it will allow you to CC others while you have your bleeds up. This talent is primarily only used for PvP and will rarely help you in PvE unless you over pull and are trying to help your tank out.

Now that we've highlighted the abilities that are good to choose from, we will cover the ones that are left out.

• Agile
• Death's Mark
• Cold Embrace
• Shiver Vapor
• Trounce

There is some reason to pick Agile, but in actual gameplay it's very difficult to execute the combos that you can do and even while in melee it can mess up what you are trying to accomplish. It requires high execution to use this ability properly so while it isn't worthless, keep in mind it's harder to execute than other options. It essentially acts the same as Ranger's Disengage while in melee range of your target. This can allow for some combos using Shadow Step building an Advantage generator to proc Ruthless abilities or in combination with Acrobatic Strike. There are a myriad of possibilities, and if you choose to use this ability it is worth the time to practice using it properly.

While Death's Mark sounds like a good ability, there are some major downsides to using it. Not only do you take 10% more damage while your mark is active, but you give away your target as well. The person you Death's Mark will have an icon above their head and be notified you are targeting them. You will then have 60 second window to execute your opponent to reset the cooldown and heal you for 50% of your target's max health, or your max health, whichever is lower. This would be good in PvE if you didn't have to use it while in Stealth requiring you to either, not be tanking, or use it while in Smoke Bomb AND moving 15m away in order to Death's Mark. It is an extremely inconvenient pattern which also makes Cold Embrace just as difficult to proc even with Shiver Vapor just making both of these talent points very un–intuitive.

Trounce is probably one of the worst abilities to pick. Due to it consuming Advantage and giving very little return—making it the most high cost, low reward ability on the tree. Having Flurry or Thrash having AoE is almost never worth the added benefit of consuming one stack of your Advantage, especially if you're running Ruthless.

Note: It's not necessary to go to any Point of Interest (PoI) at any particular point in your journey. The world is a dungeon and you can explore many spots. As Intrepid is developing the game, you may find better grind spots where less players are leveling. Even if they're not the most experience, you may just do better in a spot that's less optimal but has less competition, especially on launch.

Congratulations on hitting the current max level in the Ashes of Creation Alpha! If you skipped ahead to the end there's some important information on the slider you might have missed, so be sure to go back and check to make sure you didn't miss anything!

Going forward, it is in your best interest to read up on end game guides to better adjust your build for the new options available. Continue on to either our PvE or PvP guide to learn how to best excel with a max level character in Verra.

Below is a map showing recommended grind locations based on level ranges. If the locations we listed above are too hotly contested, this map can be used to find other, smaller locations that may suit your needs better. Use the following key to identify each area's optimal level range.

• Level 1–10: Light Blue Zones
• Level 10–15: Dark Blue Zones
• Level 15–20: Red Zones
• Level 20+: Pink Zones

When selecting a grind location, prioritize areas with a high concentration of mobs that your party can efficiently cleave through using AoE abilities. As a general rule, you should aim to farm mobs that are as high over your current level as your group can comfortably handle. This maximizes both experience and loot gains while keeping your pace efficient.

While on your leveling journey, you will be wanting to keep a look out for all types of gear. These can drop off mobs, bought off vendors and even crafted throughout all levels. While armor is important, since it makes you less squishy on an already really squishy archetype, it also proves stats that will help you do some more damage. But the most important part of your gear is your weapons. They carry an extraordinarily high percentage of your Physical Power. If you ever feel like you're lacking damage, the first item to replace is your weapons. Remember: your ranged and melee weapon both provide Physical Power to your character and your abilities do a % damage to your Physical Power. That is why you will see some Rogues with Greatswords instead of Daggers. Below is a brief overview of some of the quick and easy gear you can pick-up while leveling to be as efficient as possible.

The gearing itself isn't confusing, but the weapon system can be, since we have so many options and different trees for the weapons. To keep this super simple, just equip whatever gives you the most Physical Power. Care about nothing else but that until after you have reached level 25 and start hitting Diminishing Returns. You have three choices for ranged weapons: Longbow(two-hander), Shortbow (two-hander) and a Wand (one-hander, so you use an Energy Focus in your offhand with it). Each of them fire differently, have various ranges, and have different weapon finishers. There are some arguments for an Energy Spellbook for ranged AoE mob grinding, but since you are a melee archetype as a Rogue and Energy Spellbooks are very off–meta.

Once you reach Level 5 and completed some of the early quests to get your mount and start your beginning commissions and quests to possibly start getting your Sanctus Tokens for Starter Gear, you'll want to at least start aiming to get better weapons:

Item Name	Location	Level Requirement
Copper Daggers	Smithy Vendor	Level 1
Common Dirks	Surplus Equipment Vendor	Level 1
Copper Greatsword	Smithy Vendor	Level 1
Muckmaw's Greatsword	Muckmaw the Flayer	Level 1
Copper Shortbow	Smithy Vendor	Level 1
Copper Longbow	Smithy Vendor	Level 1

Most armor and defensive gear you gain will be gained through your mob grinding process, but we highly suggest buying weapons or start your quest progression to getting your Sanctus Gear through the opening questlines. If you would like to see how to do those quests, RitchieSH made a fantastic guide on how to receive all the Sanctus Tokens for the Surplus Equipment Vendor.

The items listed above are some quick and easy items to pick up to help kick-start your leveling journey. You will pick-up additional gear naturally as you start progressing towards level 10. If you're lucky, you'll get some lucky armor or wand and book drops! Also if you have the gold, make sure to check out the Marketplace located in different towns that players may have posted that you can buy for cheap.

As you continue to level, you may come across certain weapons and gear that could maximize your overall damage potential. There are a few specific items that drop from certain locations that may be worth grinding for to make your leveling experience a bit easier (especially if you are leveling solo). The list of items below are considered some of the best options you can pick up once you hit level 10. You can find these things out in the world, or to make it even easier you can just farm the materials up and have someone craft it. The higher quality materials, the higher quality the piece of gear or weapon will be, the more stats you will receive from it. Additionally, once an item reaches a certain quality, it will sometimes unlocks additional stats. The gear listed below is some of the best options you can pick up at level 10. It's set to rare quality, which is blue gear. It goes goes without saying that you want to aim for the highest quality, so if you're getting anything crafted, make sure to get the high quality gear!

Early in the phase, crafting is not available, since it takes quite a bit of time to unlock the Journeyman Stations. Not only that, but recently Intrepid removed all the gear outside of Copper gear off the vendors and you now need to get Surplus Coins from quest rewards to purchase middle gear or LV 10 gear from the vendor next to the General Goods Vendor in every Node.

Once you hit level 20, you can gain access to some of the most powerful gear and weapons in the game. As soon as you hit level 20, it's suggested to replace your level 10 gear with as many of the items listed below as possible. These can be farmed by killing the mobs that drop them, or you can get them crafted. It's suggested to get as high as quality materials as you can and get this list crafted as soon as you can. Make sure to check out the Marketplace if you got some gold, as it can be exrememly easy and sometimes cheap to buy some of the materials needed to craft your end game gear.

Important note: The higher quality a piece of gear or weapon is, the more stats you will receive from it. Additionally, once an item reaches a certain quality, it sometimes unlocks additional stats. The gear listed below is some of the best options you can pick up at level 20. It's all set to Heroic Gear, which is a strong breakpoint in this game. It's okay if you can't get the Heroic quality crafted, just try to get as close as you can to it, or even higher if you can! Epic and Legendary gear is far superior to the Heroic and lower qualities.

If you are able to craft (or have a friend that can craft these items), it is highly recommended to go that route rather than trying to get lucky with picking up these items from mobs. There's still a chance of getting a majority of these items from mobs, but if you want to guarantee certain qualities, crafting is the best approach (Mobs items drop up to Heroic at best—but more-than-likely they will be Uncommon or Rare—so if you want the BEST OF THE BEST, you'll have to find the recipes and craft them into Legendary gear when Nodes gain access to the stations.

Please note: If you can afford to, it's highly suggested that you also use Journeyman Enchanting Scrolls to enchant your Level 20 gear, which will greatly boost your stats even further. The more you enchant a specific item, the more expensive it gets as you upgrade it.

Item Name	Location	Level Requirement
Gryphon Hood	Crafting and/or dropped from many different LV 20+ humanoids, primarily goblins.	Level 20
Iron Pauldrons	Crafting and/or dropped from many Level 20+ Humanoids and Undead (Enchanted Armor Variants)	Level 20
Iron Wing Breastplate	Crafting and/or dropped from named mob Shrill-Master Gallea (Jundark).	Level 20
Grizzler Hide Sleeves	Crafting and/or dropped from Grizzler (near Gravepeak)	Level 20
The Infernal Fists	Crafting and/or dropped from named mob Lotox (Befallen Forge).	Level 20
Lungs of the Abyss	Crafting and/or dropped from named mob Malrhos, Dar'kuu Gravekeeper (near Ursine Caves)	Level 20
Brine Briches	Crafting and/or dropped from named mob The Brinefather in the Tropics(The Brig)	Level 20
Boots of the Tardy	Crafting and/or dropped from named mob The Monitor (Carphin Courtyard).	Level 20
Winstead Citizens' Cloak	Purchased from the Node Citizen Reputation Vendor or Marketplace.	Level 20
Lumadon Necklace	Crafting and/or dropped from many Level 25+ mobs in the world.	Level 20
Lumadon Earring	Crafting and/or dropped from many Level 25+ mobs in the world.	Level 20
Obsidian Ring and/or Iron Ring	Crafting and/or dropped from many Level 15+ mobs in the world at lesser quality.	Level 20
Iron Greatsword	Crafting and/or dropped from many Level 15+ mobs in the world.	Level 20
Bloomthorn Blades or Jackal's Knives	Crafting and/or dropped from Level 31 named mob Bloomthorn (Jundark) or Level 29 named mob Sharpclaw Talrith (Desert).	Level 20
Beastwarden's Prod and Steel Shield	Crafting and/or dropped from Level 29 named mob Wartrainer Rhogan (Desert).	Level 20
Rividium Longbow	Crafting and/or dropped from many Level 15+ mobs in the world.	Level 20

The items listed above showcases some of the best gear options for the general Rogues starting at Level 20 and end game. However, based on your overall gameplay, there may be other items that you may prefer. If you would like a more detailed look at what stats you are trying to hit before reaching the Diminishing Returns, check out the PvE and PvP section!

Regardless of if you're in a group while leveling, or solo, there are a handful of tips and tricks that will make your leveling process more fun and efficient. These best practices can be found below.

There many types of scrolls in the game that gives you a variety of different types of buffs. Some give a minor amount of experience, such as the Novice Scroll of Adventuring Experience giving you an additional 1% exp on all kills or the Novice Scroll of Strength which gives you some Strength, boosting your damage, since your abilities and weapon damage come from your Strength stat! Don't make the mistake of thinking Dexterity will help you much in Ashes of Creation. However, make sure to pick up some scrolls and use them often! They are relatively cheap and extremely useful early.

It's always a good idea to carry along consumables with you as you level, such as Rations providing HP/Mana regen if you sit and eat it and Fresh Salad which gives you 275 Physical Power Rating, as food grants small but useful buffs for an hour. Make sure to have these on you at all times! Health and/or Mana Potions share cooldown with each other, so you can only use one at a time!

Positioning as a Rogue is critical! Starting at level one you gain the passive ability Ambusher which grants you 10% bonus crit chance when standing behind your target. There will be cases where you cannot gain this passive, but generally, you would like to position behind your enemies for extra crit chance and in some cases gain extra damage from abilities like Stab, when behind turns into Backstab, and does even more when you have "Advantage"—more on advantage in the next section.

Beyond positioning behind your target, the best place to be as a Rogue is within melee to get off a lot of your abilities. This can be a dangerous place to be if you are a glass cannon rogue. Later when we cover gearing, we'll talk about ways to combat those dangers and throughout the leveling process you will see that there are ways to syphon back health through certain abilities, like Sap, or Soothing Shadows.

While you're free to play the game how you want, with whoever you want, there will be a best comp for Rogues that players should abide by if they want to play efficiently. For the perfect mix, you will want to aim to have the following.

• Tank
• 1–2 Cleric(s)
• 1–2 Bard(s)
• 3–4 DPS archetypes

You will want the Tank so they can keep the aggro, one-two healers with the Clerics, a mana Bard, optional Bard for DPS or Healing melodies, and the rest is up to you when it comes to DPS Archetypes. Ranger, Mage, and Fighter all have good AoE and can help the leveling process. Rogue tends to have less AoE but still provide useful damage, have good crowd control, and enough AoE with melee cleaves and Lacerates to benefit any party looking for an extra DPS. Luckily Ashes of Creation has an abundance of support classes that DPS aren't oversaturated like other MMOs at the moment.

Players do tend to dislike Rogues, as you are generally putting yourself into an easier position to die (melee range) and have less AoE damage that some other archetypes like Ranger or Mage. However, your single target damage is by far the best, so if there are some high HP priority targets, it is good to have a Rogue in the party to focus them down. Not only that, but you provide a lot of CC for interrupts, silences, snares, etc. for your party when your tank is inevitably sleeping on the job.

It's important to know that as your character progresses, you don't only unlock points to be used for your class skill tree, but also points towards separate skill trees for each of your melee and ranged weapon and your passive stamina tree. Be sure to invest points into these areas to enhance your overall leveling experience! This means taking the AoE skills more often than not.

Glint in money in this game and extrememly important. You need it to sell for gold which is then used to purchase commodities. As you kill more mobs and players, you'll obtain quite a bit of Glint and it's easy to forget about. After a few hours of leveling, you might find yourself sitting on a ton of glint. Make sure to take a break from leveling every so often and hit the closest town and put all your Glint in the storage so you won't lose it! A note about selling it, it's always good to sell your glint if you need gold to repair. That's it though. Glint is a major end game currency since the best way to get gold is to run Caravans, which you need Glint and only Glint to purchase the commodities that you'll be transporting for Gold. So don't hastily vendor all your Glint; instead save it and only vendor when you truly need gold and cannot wait. The gold return on selling Glint is atrocious.

You should always be aware of your PvP status while leveling, and how exactly it works. Players can manually turn on their PvP mode by clicking Alt+F--not to be confused with Alt+F4--allowing them to attack other player. As a Rogue, you may be a bloodthirsty player in an open world PvP game. However, you should be aware of the dangers when entering PvP in Ashes of Creation. There are three common states of a player:

• Non-combatant
  • This is also labeled as a "green" player, however the nameplate in-game will be the default color: white and will not have a flagging marker on the nameplate itself to players outside of your party/raid. This is the default state a player can be in. They have not issued an attack on another player; therefore they are a non-combatant. Note: that you can flag for PvP and still be a non-combatant. Just because you press Alt+F or see that someone is flagged, does not mean they have entered a PvP state. It just means that they are ready for combat in the open world. You will see an image of crossed swords below your, or your target's, health bar when flagged for PvP.
• Combatant
  • These players are referred to as "purple" players. This means after flagging for PvP AND doing damage to another player—regardless of their combat state—you will enter this state. This means, if another player attacks you while you are flagged, they will be a combatant; however, you will still be a non-combatant. You will be able to tell by their nameplate changing colors and they will have a purple symbol next to it.
• Corrupted
  • When a player enters a corrupted state, they are "red" or Corrupted. This means a Combatant, or purple player, has killed a non-combatant, or green player, without the non-combatant attacking back. So be careful when attacking players in the open world. The penalties for being corrupted are severe. You may take 4% more experience debt upon death and lose more materials than normal, as well as dropping equipped items and gear. Taking gear off in a corrupted state does not save your gear either.

Exceptions: If both players are in a combatant state, then you will receive less experience debt upon death than normal and drop less materials. You will also not drop equipped gear if both parties are in a combatant state. Upon killing the other combatant you will not become corrupted. After some time (subject to change) you will again return to a non-combatant state.