Monsters & Memories: 10 essential launch tips
Optimize your first hours in Night Harbor with this practical guide. Find out where to grab useful items like the free 6-slot bag outside the West Gate, and master early tricks to smooth your path through the world of Monsters & Memories.
Build a balanced group
The game rewards cooperation. To beat the toughest creatures, form a group with a tank to draw hits, a healer to keep everyone alive, three damage dealers, and a crowd controller to lock down extra enemies.
Finish the gnome's first quest
In the starting area of Night Harbor, head to the west gate and talk to the suspicious gnome by saying 'interested'. You'll get a free six-slot bag - fill it with six pieces of cloth looted from skeletons or stray dogs for a gear upgrade.
Manage brightness and your torch
Night-time exploration is very dark. Open the options menu to adjust the gamma slider for better visibility, or open your inventory and right-click the torch to light up your surroundings - just remember to turn it off during the day to avoid waste.
Use woodworking to make money
Use a woodcutting axe on wood nodes to gather logs and resin. Sell the raw materials to merchants, or use them to craft rough torches via the survival skill - that roughly doubles the return compared to selling raw components.
Place campfires for real bonuses
Build campfires with eight pieces of wood to light up the area and speed up health and mana regen while sitting nearby. Beating monsters while under the rested effect also grants extra experience.
Craft sharpening stones
Gather stones from ore veins near the rocks outside the west gate and bring them to the anvil in the market to craft sharpening stones. Use your weapon's tarnished version together with the stone to upgrade it - but watch out, failures destroy the weapon.
Get the beetle armor
Complete Hult Beetlewrangler's quest at the travelers' camp by hunting beetles in the starting area to collect shells and legs. Turn in the required materials for armor pieces with good stats and a distinctive green tint.
Check secondhand vendors
Always check local vendors, since the game runs on a player-driven trade economy. You can find advanced gear discarded by experienced players and stumble on sudden upgrades for your equipment.
Manage campfires properly
Rest near a campfire to get the rested bonus, which boosts experience gained in combat. Drag a piece of wood from your inventory onto the flame to keep it fed, and cook raw meat there to eat for free instead of spending gold.
Adjust the gamma setting
Open the game's options, go to the graphics tab, and move the gamma slider from fifty up to a hundred to improve visibility during night hours and explore without fear.
Get extra inventory bags
Talk to the suspicious gnome outside the west gate and type the word interested to get a free six-slot bag. Hold off on guild master quests that eat up precious slots until you've bought roomier backpacks.
Navigation and the lack of a map
The game has no minimap or any automatic location system at all. To find your way around, you rely on visual landmarks in the world, like the giant castle to the west or the lit-up domes of buildings at night, memorizing routes so you can find your corpse again if you die.
Inventory and weight management
Your inventory works on a slot system that accounts for both item size and carry weight, which scales with strength. Big items take up your main bags, while small items like teeth quickly clog up space if you don't move them into pouches manually - risking weighing your character down enough to slow their movement.
Talking to NPCs in text
You talk to non-player characters by typing commands or specific phrases to move conversations forward and accept quests. Drag items from your inventory straight onto an NPC to complete trades, while dedicated text commands handle your other interactions with the world.
Solo play versus grouping
Fighting solo takes a lot longer to clear enemies and regenerate health, while playing in a group speeds up fights by splitting experience and loot among everyone. Healing classes keep a clear edge in recovering HP compared to anyone forced to sit and rest for long stretches.
Using OOC chat and the wiki
Use out-of-character chat to ask players in your area for help when you hit a snag or need directions. Check the community wiki for useful information, and only send petitions to game masters to resolve genuinely blocking progression issues.
Scribe high-level spells early
You can scribe spells into your spellbook even above your current level, before you're even able to memorize them - saving inventory space instead of letting them clutter your loose items. The spellbook has to be equipped in the belt slot, not the waist slot - the two are easy to mix up - to scribe or memorize; once a spell is memorized, though, you don't need to keep the book equipped to cast it.
Use /LFG to find party members
Type /who all LFG to see who's looking for a group in your area, and /LFG on to flag that you are too. The game rewards organizing: solo, almost any tough creature turns into a much longer, riskier fight.
Your bind point can be moved
When you die, your gear stays on your corpse and you respawn at your "bind" point - by default, wherever you first logged in. Certain spells and items let you change it: before heading into a dangerous zone, it's worth updating your bind so corpse recovery doesn't turn into a whole trip back.
The lantern glows blue near Memories
Point the lantern around you when it glows blue - it means a Memory is nearby. The same lantern, pointed off into the distance, also lights up Abyss Objects - fast travel points and hidden challenges you'd otherwise walk right past.
If you get stuck, use the emergency commands
/reload forces the game to reload assets and data when something isn't behaving right, while /rewind, /stuck or /unstuck return your character to the last free position - handy if you end up wedged inside a boat or under the map, a problem that still crops up now and then.
