How far can you get in nine chronicles without spending any coins? To be honest, I don't have the final answer yet, but so far I've made it to stage 105 but I'm far from over :). I'll try to document my progress and logic behind it in a small series, and this is the first part of it.

In case you have never heard of it, Nine Chronicles is a decentralized idle mmorpg game, working fully on its own Blockchain.
Every single item in the game is an NFT and every single thing you do is a transaction - with zero fees.
If you want to learn more check my initial review about it. It's old but still valid.

Since July 2020 you need an invitation to be able tot play so you can use mine or join the official discord and get one from there.

This video is not about how far you can get as a free to play player - since I have been in the top for the last 6 months and I never spent any real money on this game - but it did upgrade my pc to be able to mine.

It's about how far you can get with spending no NCG. Nothing, zero! That means no items from the market and also no upgrades past +3 since at +4 there is already a blacksmith fee. 

I started trying this after Hotsauce stated in discord that it might be possible to get to 150 with no ncg. I'm not sure of that but it seemed like a nice thing to try out - since, after all, it costs nothing :) - and with the recent increase is the ncg value this is a nice aspect 

This is not a guide since this is by no means the smart, efficient way to progress. You can sell basic items for some coins and get way better gear than what you can craft for under 50 ncg and that will take you to stage 150 and beyond super fast, unlike what I am doing here.

I got the idea of actually making a video about this rather late so I don't have any screen captures from the lower levels - but those are easy anyways.

What's the strategy?

The strategy is to always craft multiple items of the best recipe you can as soon as you unlock it and to upgrade to +3 the best roll you get. If you don’t get a good enough roll to pass the stage, you farm more mats and craft until you get what you need.

Since you are having quite bad stats it becomes very important to have a higher level than the enemies - each level over them gives you a higher chance to hit them. Also, on each level up you gain some stats, and at this level, they matter. One important choice you get to make in 9c is what stats you should chase. Multiple combinations work but I will mostly go for each slot with the secondary stat the same as the base: swords attack, belt speed, neck hit, . For chest and rings health and Def work just as well, but I prefer health if I get a good roll fast enough. If you get a great roll of some other stat try it out - you should have enough fodder to upgrade multiple items to +3 to experiment.

The first stage where I got stuck for a long time is 90. I had to craft multiple option 2 chests to get a huge health roll in order to pass it.

Some levels, usually before unlocking a new recipe, felt harder than the rest. But after each wall you should slash to the next stages since you will be over leveled and armed with new cool items.

I expect the game to become way harder soon but my plan is to go for spells on the ring and sword - those deal huge damage compared to the normal attacks and the spells ignore the enemy defense. This strategy would have been impossible a few months ago when the second crafting option used to cost a lot of coins. But now it’s just a long grind :)

I will follow up on my progress with (S)kyler so If you find this kind of video informative subscribe on YouTube or just keep an eye on the official discord or on publish0x for them.

Have a nice day!