Beginner Guide: First 10 Hours

What this page helps you decide: what to do in your first sessions, in what order, and which of the three early money sinks - weapons, armour and blessing - deserves your ore first.

Iron Soul: Dungeon drops you out of its tutorial with a starter weapon and no route. This page is that route, in the order the official wiki's own progression and Starless Forest guides give it: find Gray before you queue for anything, clear Trial twice, and put every single ore into a weapon rather than armour until the game forces you to change. Every level number here is a published one, and they are levels rather than power figures on purpose, because the official guide argues that skills and gear are level-locked while battle power is an arbitrary average. Where nothing is published - drop tables, the Tier 4 world, what most potions actually do - this page says so rather than inventing a number. Checked on 4 September 2026 against an official wiki page last edited on 19 July 2026 for game version 10.4.

The difficulty ladder is really a level ladder

Every main world carries the same five difficulties, and the official Starless Forest guide attaches a recommended character level to each: Trial at 0, Challenge at 5, Penitent at 10, Torment at 12 and Inferno at 15. Each difficulty also has a Hell mode variant. Those five numbers are the spine of the early game, because what changes as you climb is which ore tier drops: Penitent is where mythic ore first appears, Torment's Hell mode is where painstone can drop, and Inferno makes magnetite very common. The gap between Penitent at 10 and Inferno at 15 is only five levels, so the ladder moves faster than it looks once your weapon keeps pace.

Why this page never tells you to hit a power number

The official progression guide takes a position on this and it is worth repeating: skills and gear are level-locked, so level is the thing that gates content, while battle power is described as an arbitrary figure that averages your character and overshoots badly on certain items. The same page notes that clearing Frozen Valley below level 20 is possible but carries no benefit, because your clear speed punishes you. Third-party sites do circulate one power number, a 28,000 gate on Oathlost Castle, and three of them agree on it, but it appears nowhere on the official wiki. Treat it as a checkpoint other players report rather than a published requirement.

What ten hours should leave you holding

By the time Frozen Valley opens you want a light weapon forged from a single ore type, a helmet you re-forged until it rolled Attack Bonus together with Skill Damage, one heavy secondary weapon, and roughly 1,200 maximum health. The official sub-stat guidance is specific about the shape of that build: carry at least one Cooldown Reduction roll, no more than two Health Bonus rolls, and up to four each of Attack Bonus and Skill Damage. Base Attack Bonus is the trap, because it raises only your basic melee attack and does not appear on the stats panel at all - you can only see it on a training dummy.

Step-by-Step

1. Finish the tutorial, then go straight to Gray, who stands near the Forge beside a few rocks and a tree. Talking to him is what unlocks your second weapon slot and starts the quest chain that walks you through upgrading gear, forging gear, levelling and clearing dungeons. His first dialogue offers three options: I want to check skill. opens the skill tree, Who are you? is backstory, and Bye. closes the conversation.
2. Redeem the codes that are live before your first run. They pay Race Rerolls and Season Lucky Tickets, and the reroll stock is worth banking early because a duplicate race pull raises that race a star instead of being wasted.
3. Run Starless Forest on Trial twice. Trial has a recommended level of 0, and the official guide is explicit that two clears before moving up is the intended pace rather than one.
4. Spend every ore on a weapon and none on armour at this stage. A light weapon costs 3 ore, and a pure Sand Rock or Verdanite roll comes out at roughly 14 base attack depending on the variant - the official page writes the ore name as Sandstone, but the ore table calls the same rock Sand Rock.
5. Move to Challenge at level 5, and once you are level 10 with about 28 base weapon damage and any set of heavy armour, run the Hell mode of Challenge. Its dark cube drops are enough for a light sword, and uncommon ore is now common enough that armour finally deserves some of it.
6. Sit on Penitent at level 10 long enough to bank your first mythic ore, then hold mythic and legendary ore rather than spending it. The official advice is to keep it until your character level is far past the ore's own level, because a helmet with four sub-stats can pull your whole progression forward.
7. Aim your first real milestone at level 15 with 1,200 maximum health and a pure painstone light weapon in hand. That is the published entry requirement for Frozen Valley, and Frozen Valley is roughly an eight-hour stretch, so arriving under-equipped costs hours rather than minutes.

Data Tables

Source: official wiki Guide (Starless Forest), last edited 19 July 2026 for game version 10.4.

The two relic-scaled rows are missing from both third-party forge guides we checked.

Tips & Notes

FAQ

Recommended level, Trial

0

Frozen Valley entry

Level 15, 1,200 max HP

Light weapon cost

3 ore, 100% output

Blessing +3 success

100%