Brighter Shores – Our Best Tips & Tricks for Newbies

Brighter Shores was created by one of the original makers of RuneScape, and you probably thought it was going to be nothing but a mundane grind from start to finish when you first hopped in. To be fair, it largely is exactly that, but there are a lot of new things they are trying here that are easy to miss.

In order to help you navigate the early stages of this work in progress game, this guide will cover some tips and tricks that should clear up a bit of the confusion and worries that you might currently (or will eventually) have.

Our Best Tips & Tricks for Newbies

Before we get started, you should know that the following tips are going to include stuff that you actually will not have to worry about until after you are already several hours deep. These will be relevant though, promise!

Tip #1 – Modify Your UI

The user interface of this game is actually fairly customizable. To save you from having to click too many times, make sure to interact with the arrows at the leftmost and rightmost corners of the screen.

By doing this, you will bring up all of the important menus, such as your inventory, map, professions, and even the quest list. This is incredibly convenient for certain grinds, as it will make it easier to tell if your inventory is full, for example, or if you are close to getting a knowledge point (more on this later).

On top of that, both of these menus can be resized. Simply hover your mouse over to the edge and your cursor should change into a double arrow icon, which indicates that you can drag to resize it. Here is an extreme example with both menus open and set to varying sizes:

Tip #2 – Learn Where to Store Items!

It is very important to clear your inventory whenever you can. If you have played RuneScape before, then you probably already have the habit of “banking” everything that is not essential to your current grind.

This same logic is essential in Brighter Shores, as poor inventory management will significantly affect your efficiency in the long run. Unfortunately, storing items can be a bit obtuse in this game.

Luckily for you, we have a guide on how to store items that should help you navigate the game’s storage system. Just to give you a summary, here is a quick rundown of what you need to keep in mind:

• Storage containers will have a wardrobe/cabinet icon in the map, making them very easy to find once you finish exploring.
• Most professions that involve creating stuff (e.g. alchemy and carpentry) will usually have a storage container in the same or adjacent room where it is trained.
• Weapons & armor are stored at the Quartermaster in the first region. You can access this remotely using the Quartermaster spell that you get very early in the game.
• Resources from gathering professions (e.g. forager, gatherer, fisher, woodcutter) are usually stored in the place where they are used for other skills. For instance, the materials from both forager and gatherer professions usually go in the Potions Reagents storage container.

Tip #3 – Try to Get Level 20 In Every Profession ASAP

When you first get to level 20 in any profession, you will be able to make use of knowledge points. These are something that you gain passively after doing any action, whether it is combat or otherwise.

Every time the knowledge progress in your professions menu hits 100%, you will be asked to spend it on varying rewards. These following are the rewards you can choose from:

• A small amount of money
• EXP for any profession that is at least level 20
• Unlock a passive training method for any profession, as long as you have the required level for it

As you can see, by getting to level 20 in all of your professions, you can essentially indirectly train certain skills without ever actually doing them. That, or you can significantly speed up horrible grinds, such as the level 32 carpentry requirement for a specific quest.

For this tip, there is heavy emphasis on the word “try”. If you find yourself getting burnt out while training a single profession to 20, do not pressure yourself into hitting it no matter what. You can always just move on to a different grind until you are ready to come back to it.

Tip #4 – Combat Professions Are (Currently) King

Building on the previous tip, combat professions are currently one of the best ways to grind money while also training other skills. For some reason, combat will give you a lot of knowledge point progress with very little effort.

You can gain up to 3% progress with each kill on mobs that are under your level, with potentially higher gains against evenly matched enemies. Coupled with how fast these encounters can be, you can get huge injections of EXP for free every few minutes.

On top of the knowledge gains, you also get a decent amount of money every kill with literally zero investment needed. The possible gear drops also add to this, and if you are fighting appropriately leveled enemies, you can upgrade your own setup as you go.

There is no indication that they will change this right now. While the developers still do not consider it too broken, take full advantage of how good training combat can be as an overall grinding method before it is (possibly) nerfed in the future.

NOTE: We also have a guide on combat in Brighter Shores with some additional tips that you might find helpful. Check that out if you are going to be relying on combat for most of your grinds!

Tip #5 – Get Level 32 Carpentry!

This is what the disclaimer at the start of the guide was for. When you reach episode 2, it is advised that you try to get level 32 carpentry as fast as possible. This is one of the requirements for a quest that rewards you with the ability to store items without going to a storage container.

It is going to be a really slow and mundane grind, so it is recommended that you weave carpentry training in between other activities. Once you hit 20 carpentry, you can passively train it via knowledge points to avoid burnout.

Closing Tip – Just Have Fun

Brighter Shores is still in early access, and anyone who spends a lot of time with it can tell you just how much it lacks incentives to keep grinding to high levels. Right now, all you really do is grind solely to see numbers go up.

Later down the line, you can pay for the premium subscription to unlock new areas and activities. That should help keep things fresh in the event that you start getting bored by the lack of variety while progressing through the second region!