This guide is written for the new player that might have gotten 1 or 2 characters to level twenty and is looking for the next step in their adventure besides unlocking new characters. I also assume you have a good knowledge about the abilities of the different classes. If you need reference information, just check the wiki; the community has done a very good job with it.
For your convenience:
‘Godlands’ is the colloquial term for the region of black rock and snow that represents the mountainous peaks of the Realm. This wasteland is barren but for scattered boulders and dangerous pits of lava. It is generally located toward the center of each map, far from the much safer beaches and forests. It is home to some of the most dangerous monsters in the game, commonly referred to as the gods, and is often where some very nasty event bosses spawn as well. The godlands, like every other part of the game, can be entered at any level, but it is highly recommended to reach at least level 15 if you’re going it alone or you’re still new to the game.
Simple: stronger monsters tend to drop better loot. The gods are likely the first monsters you’ll fight that have a chance of dropping something you can realistically sell to other players. Additionally, they drop stat potions, one-use items that increase your base statistics by one point each (see character pages for maximum stat increases). A long-term goal in RotMG is to max out your character’s stats, and the only way to do it is to hunt down the gods for their goodies. Additionally, stat potions are always in high demand, so you can trade your extras for quality gear. When you see people in the nexus trading for the acronyms ‘SPD’ and ‘DEF’, they’re looking for speed and defense potions. The practice of killing the gods to collect their stat pots is called farming (farming is a term used across many games similar to RotMG in which people kill tons of a certain kind of monster to earn their loot).
Aside from stat potions, you can also find intermediate level gear, including tier 8 weapons and tier 9 armor. This gear isn’t quite the epic stuff you’ll see in the hardest areas, but it can still put a smile on your face.
Well, sure. I did. Unfortunately, as I was quick to find, the process of learning in RotMG involves a lot of death. The godlands, with the exception of wherever the event gods happen to spawn, is the most dangerous point on the regular game map. If you do something stupid, you’ll get yourself killed. More importantly, you might get other people, like me, killed. Don’t be the careless jerk that throws others under the bus. Forewarned is forearmed.
If you’re new, I promise you’ll come out of reading this with something you didn’t know - and that just might save your life.
Remember that when I discuss strategy, and the various characters, that it’s in the context of their performance in the godlands. Some classes aren’t made for soloing gods efficiently, but can rock dungeons or boss fights like nobody’s business. Don’t judge whether you want to play a class or not solely by what you read here; the godlands are simply one part of a very awesome, very big game.
It’s always a good idea to have at least a couple HP or MP potions along with you when you go to the godlands. They come in handy in a pinch and can make the difference between living and dying. Until you know all the gods and their bullet patterns, stay patient, conservative, and cautious. When you do know all the gods and their bullet patterns, stay patient, conservative, and cautious anyway. When in doubt, get the heck out. It’s better than dying and losing hours of work.
On that note, if you haven’t already set your teleportation to the nexus on a hotkey that’s easier to reach than F5, do it now. It’s easy to find in the options menu; click the wrench icon on the HUD or press the O key when in-game. Personally, I use the R key for the nexus (that is my own opinion. You may use whatever key is most familiar to you.); it’s just a tap over from WASD. When you get surrounded, or you bite off more than you can chew, you’ve got your bail pail in hand and ready to go.
Different classes will want to take different things in terms of potions and equipment. If you have spare equipment and you’re planning on fighting for a while, it might be a good idea not to risk your best stuff. Priests, who can heal themselves, are better off taking more MP potions to replenish their magic. Wizards, who already do excellent damage and have a cheap ability, but have low defense, are probably better off with more HP potions. Use common sense and take into account your personal style.
You might have heard the word ‘soulbound’ tossed around a bit in RotMG. Soulbound loot appears in bags other than the boring brown bag - purple, blue, and white bags. Only you can see and collect this loot. This stops others from swooping in to steal the great gear you’ve earned.
To earn the chance that a god drops loot soulbound to you, you must be responsible for a specific, minimum about of damage to the god, which is referred to as the soulbound damage. For more information, see the suggested reading links elsewhere in the wiki.
This is not Skyrim; this is Realm of the Mad God. The godlands are a dangerous place, and if you stay there long enough, you will die. You will lose your character. You will lose your stuff. Death is part of the game. Learn from your mistakes, and look to improve. Right now, you are a silly, silly noob. But one day, far in the future, you’ll look back at your noobish self and chuckle, chuckle like an experienced pirate captain with a grizzly grey beard and a parrot, or a great shark.
There are three major tactical styles to traversing the godlands. There are advantages and disadvantages to each which differ depending on your class.
Success in the godlands means learning the enemies. Each one has a particular behavior and firing pattern. Each pattern can be abused to keep you safe and keep them dead. Study the tips on the wiki and maybe watch a few videos, unless you want to learn the hard way. It’s also good form to at least be familiar with the godlands before you ask to join groups. Practice should occur while you’re alone so you don’t ruin someone else’s day.
Some gods are deadlier than others, but it’s when they come in groups that the shit hits the fan. Some combinations are simple, others, lethal. Generally, you want to fight them one at a time. Clear a ‘safe zone’ that you can retreat into, then lure them back one by one. For monsters that won’t move or chase you, clear the area around them before fighting with them.
I’m not going to go into detailed tips for each god here; for combat strategy, see their pages on the wiki. And remember: when in doubt, get the heck out. Your nexus button is right there. The annoyance of a forced retreat isn’t much compared to losing the character you’ve worked on for so long.
In the following section, I’ll discuss tactics for each individual class.
Wands have the longest range of any weapon in the game. This offers them an immediate layer of protection because they can keep themselves at a distance from the always-dangerous gods. Depending on the god you’re fighting, you won’t want to be that far away, but don’t forget you’ve got options.
I started here because the priest is probably the best class to solo the godlands for the beginning player. With the longest range in the game, the ability to heal himself, and a great wisdom statistic to regenerate MP, in professional hands, the priest is practically immortal. However, his low damage output requires patience; he kills slowly. Think of it this way: you’ll get plenty of practice dodging!
When you run out of MP, wait for it to recharge. The priest’s ability is his saving grace. Without heals, you’re a crappy sniper with no defense. If you get impatient, you could walk into a group of multiple gods and bite the dust just like that.
The priest excels at soloing because of his self-sufficiency, and he also plays a vital role and obvious role in small groups. However, he fades inside trains. Despite his ability to keep everyone in good health, his poor rate of fire just won’t earn you soulbound damage as often as other classes. With everyone attacking at once, gods die quickly.
While in the godlands, people will expect heals, and it’s possible people will stick near you for easy access to health. Priests are the main healers of RotMG, so if you’re going to play one, respect and understand that role. You’re almost always the most valuable player on the field.
Once you’re more skilled, you might want to consider a dexterity-boosting ring for your priest as opposed to something like a health or defense ring. That should help up the kill count slightly without a big investment of stat pots.
Alone, the sorcerer doesn’t perform all that great. He has better damage output than the priest, but the ability to heal is more than worth the lack of damage.
On the flip side, the sorcerer is a machine within large groups. His ability can strike multiple gods in a moment, instantly earning him soulbound rates on everything in sight and contributing reliable amounts of damage very quickly. The protection of the group makes him a more capable sniper than the priest when he runs out of MP. He is amazing in trains, knocking off soulbound damage on large groups of enemies while the wizards and archers mop up.
They perform similarly in the godlands, which is why I’m grouping them together.
The bow classes excel at farming for their high damage and spreading shot. The piercing quality of their arrows enables them to take down even clustered groups of gods very quickly, and their abilities let them pin enemies in place for easier destruction.
Like the wizard, archers are good simply for the rate at which they kill, but they have to be careful when alone. In groups and trains, they are the backbone of the damage dealers, killing quickly and capable of taking a bit more punishment than the wizards and necromancers. Coral Bow users often take the lead in trains.
Staff classes in general have a higher damage output than the wand classes in terms of their weapons, which makes it easier for them to rack up kills and qualify for soulbound loot.
A damage-dealing force with excellent range, wizards do very well in the godlands. They’re a serious upgrade from the priest’s slow kill rate, but this comes at the cost of no healing. On the other hand, their powerful spell ability makes getting soulbound damage on even multiple gods much easier.
While soloing, wizards need to stay cautious. They have low defense and can easily be smoked by fire from several gods at once. At the same time, they simply kill things faster and with greater than almost any other class. If you’ve reached the point where you can consistently dodge what the gods throw at you, the wizard is one of the best godlands farmers, especially when their statistics reach maxed levels.
In small groups, the wizard plays the role of a ranged damage dealer, standing behind the tanks to lay down their attacks. Wizards shine in trains. Their long range and high damage will net you soulbound rates more often than not, and the train’s natural protection makes up for their poor defense.
Arguably the most well-rounded godlands farmer, the necromancer combines the healing of the priest with the damage of the wizard. It can’t do either task quite as efficiently, but their flexibility makes them one of the strongest solo characters in the game. With good damage and their HP-replenishing fallback, necromancers are an excellent choice for beginning players in general.
Alone, the necromancer excels. They don’t have the pure damage potential of a wizard, but their ability drastically increases their survival rate.
Necromancers are also great in small groups. They can provide healing and high damage without stealing a soulbound chance from other classes by killing too quickly. They are effective in trains for the same reasons.
Constructs, the rotating statues scattered through the godlands, are a great resource for necromancers. Constructs are both very hard to kill and very easy to ignore, and that makes them perfect for the necromancer’s life-stealing ability. Time your attack so it catches all three at once.
The mystic can be great in the godlands. Her ability to freeze enemies lets her control the battle and take multiple gods alone with a lot less pain than other classes. However, she doesn’t quite have the damage output of the wizard or the archers.
The mystic is the easiest class to use when killing constructs, especially when alone. Constructs are relatively stationary and easily ignored, but enterprising mystics should note that they can drop attack pots.
The mystic is great in groups, where she can contribute solid ranged damage and rest within the protection of fellow fighters. She can also reduce the risk of accidents, freezing several gods while the group deals with another threat, or stopping an unexpected aggro from forcing a retreat to the nexus.
Until their stats are maxed out, sword classes probably have the toughest time in the godlands. They can kill very quickly once in range, but getting into that range can present a huge problem, especially against monsters that can do hundreds of damage if multiple shots make contact. It’s better to use another class to help boost up a melee fighter first rather than farm with one directly.
The easiest melee class to play loses a bit of his strut in the godlands. Many attacks do enough damage to make it through his tough armor, requiring a fair level of caution even for this mightiest of tanks. When his statistics are maxed, he is a tough wall of armor, but when he’s just reached level 20, he’s quite vulnerable, making the knight difficult to play alone.
In small groups, the knight stands tall. He can take shots for the less-armored players, as well as stunning single or even multiple gods to prevent them from firing on the group. A knight-priest combination is formidable. Throw in a damage-dealer like an archer or wizard, and you’ve got a god-killing trifecta.
In trains, like the priest, the knight has trouble. Gods can die before the knight even reaches a range close enough to do damage, stopping him from earning soulbound loot. Because of the chaos, he can’t always depend on the attention of the healers to keep the HP bar on the high end, forcing him to bench himself while he recovers.
Arguably the most solo-friendly melee class, paladins can quickly kill gods when in range and heal themselves to continue the fight with less downtime.
Alone, the paladin has less to fear than other classes. With his healing activated, he can bear the brunt of one or two hits to get in range, and his damaging buff will make short work of his target. Be careful not to get too overzealous; it’s still important to dodge as normal. Paladins die because they think their healing makes them invincible, but it needs time to work. (Think of it as a buffer, not a shield, unless you have the Seal of Blasphemous Prayer, which will tank everything in-game, EVEN full Leviathan shotguns)
Like the warrior, the paladin’s damaging buff enhances groups to a higher tier of destruction. His presence is greatly valued, but he’s difficult to master.
The Rogue and Trickster are good soloists, but the dagger classes have a tough time in groups - they don’t have the range and damage output of the magic classes, and they don’t have the defense of the melee classes. If you’re looking for a class that can farm for stat pots more easily, I’d suggest looking elsewhere.
Ah, the Rogue. A source of both grief, and great bounty, the Rogue is high-risk, high-reward.
The Rogue is intrinsically an excellent soloist. You can literally activate your cloak, walk up to a god, and kill them without them doing a single thing. However, at any point your invisiblity could wear off, and the god will instantly shoot at you, and there will be much death and many tears. Also be wary of Djinn as it may fire even with you being cloaked. The Leviathan will shoot, even if you are cloaked when it is in its light blue shotgun phase, but will not shoot at cloaked rogues in its dark blue shotgun phase.
When soloing with the rogue, and especially when your cloak is activated, stay in motion. Pretend as if the god is actually firing on you. Also, make sure you count seconds before you will come uncloaked. Once you have about 1.5 seconds left, start moving away from the god, so then you won’t get caught when your cloak runs out. Due to the cooldown of cloak in between uses, make sure you aren’t backing into another group of gods.
The fact that it’s very easy to get overconfident - and that people can and will screw you up - make the rogue a difficult class to farm with. After reaching level 20, he doesn’t have the damage output of other classes that have more range, and groups that don’t know what they’re doing can get him killed. He’s especially undervalued inside a train.
The assassin isn’t well cut out for the godlands.
He’s an ok soloist. Without the concealment of the rogue or the damage output of the trickster, he has trouble farming by himself and is very reliant on his ability for damage; you’ll find yourself running out of MP quickly.
In groups, the assassin is somewhat better. His poison bomb can net him soulbound damage on large groups, like the sorcerer, but unlike that magic-oriented class, he not only has less MP, but his ability is more expensive. This is also combined with the fact that your poison requires time to deal full damage, if your group kills a god in under 3 seconds, you might not get enough damage. If your farming relies entirely on your ability, you simply won’t be doing that much effective farming.
On the flip side, he does have the excellent speed and dexterity of the other dagger classes. Performing is certainly possible - just don’t expect it to go as swimmingly.
The trickster’s performance in the godlands relies on clever use of her ability, and that ability is probably the toughest in the game to master.
When alone, the trickster does well. She has a significantly higher attack at level twenty than either the rogue or the assassin, and a higher overall potential to boot. Her teleportation/decoy cannot only distract a god, but propel her to safety, quickly earning her kills damage-free. This is a lot harder than it sounds, and definitely not recommended for a player new the game.
In groups, the tricker’s abilities fade somewhat. Her decoy relies on strategic placement, which is something other players can easily mess up. Like the Assassin and Rogue, she can struggle to get in her hits for soulbound damage when five wizards are wiping out enemies before she can reach them. With a good group of friends that have fought often and know what to expect, the trickster can be extremely powerful, but is otherwise best used alone.
The Ninja is a big damager, but only if he is cautious and has a lot of mana/wis with an itchy trigger finger on the space bar.
Alone, the ninja is a killing machine, much like the Assassin. He uses his katana to deal damage without having to tank like the melee classes, but still enough circling space to not die as much. He is reliant on a good speed stat to backpedal, strafe, or circle, and whilst using his shuriken’s damage and he can pull significant god kills, and combining this with his speed boost he can even dodge Ent or Slime God shotguns. What lets him down is his low defense, and usually, hugging something like a Ghost God can mean doom. So ninjas usually have defense rings until they get defense potions, if not from then on. The ninja is somewhat more or less offensive in pairs, trios, or quads, as melee classes will tank shots for the ninja whist the ninja and the other attackers like Archers or Wizards slay the god/gods. However, the team melee class character will most likely get the soulbound drop, meaning the ninja is a support class in small groups and trains.
Ninjas are weak inside trains lest they use their shuriken, which costs MP, so ninjas in trains have to either bench themselves, wait for pets to heal their mana, or drink magic potions which will run out quickly. However, they may rush forward using their shuriken and get a few hits on an incoming god or gods, dash back, and repeat.
Phew! That concludes the tips we have for each individual class. Next is general etiquette and behavior expected from your fellow RotMG players.
I don’t want to sound like your mother, but seriously, a little bit goes a long way. Everyone is playing to have fun. Give people the benefit of the doubt. This applies not just to the risky godlands, but to all aspects of play.
Nothing annoys me more than being out in Godlands farming for pots when someone calls a fake cem/horse. I teleport expecting to jump into a portal but I end up on the beach with 20 other people laughing and calling other lies. This is a very common not funny trick that for some reason people love to do. If you encounter this do not join in.
Few things inspire as much terror in my heart as when a man runs past me dragging a heaping pile of angry gods. I’ve been killed because of such idiocy several times because my finger wasn’t quite fast enough on the escape latch. If you’re going to run, run to the nexus, not into your neighbor’s backside. If you’re going to fight, do your best to corral them or circle them in as small an area as possible, for your own sake (you don’t want to aggro even more) and for those around you.
Teleporting to the godlands has its own inherent risks; you might wind up in the crossfire of an epic battle. Going from 0 to 60 in half a second can be dangerous.
In the case of rogues, it can be instantly lethal.
There’s probably more than one person in the godlands; pick a safe player to teleport to. Your best bet is a small group, or if that’s impossible, a sub-level 20 (sub-20’s are fragile and most clued players play them fairly cautiously). Nothing’s more frustrating to a Rogue than being caught with his pants down because of someone else’s stupidity (“Ooh, look! A Ghost God!”).
As for the melee classes, think about where they might be - right in a god’s face, swatting them with their glorified whacking sticks, dodging left and right to avoid 600-damage point shotguns. Is that where you want to be? No. I heavily advise against teleporting to them as well, especially knights, or warriors with the Helm of the Juggernaut, who might be in the middle of intentionally tanking shots that could easily shred any other player to ribbons.
Take extreme caution when teleporting to priests. While many priests (especially those farming the godland) stay at a distance and are fairly safe to teleport to, maxed priests carrying Tomes of Holy Protection often wade through walls of gods or charge headlong into events, tanking shots that would easily annihilate any other character. Unless you’re a maxed melee (or another priest with Holy Protection), teleporting to those priests can easily result in instant death.
If someone’s off doing their own thing, don’t stick to them without asking first. The last thing anyone needs is someone causing gods to unexpectedly aggro while they’re in the middle of another fight. Teleporting to them is fine, but if they’re off on their own, pick a different direction.
If you’re leeching for experience, stick to the center of larger groups. That way you’re not really bothering anyone, because gods are being lured in constantly, and you have a bit more protection from insta-death.
You’re more than entitled to keep and attempt to sell everything you earn, but when you find your third Robe of the Master in a row, maybe it’s time to give back a little. That tier 4 paladin seal that just won’t sell is collecting dust in your vault, but it’s a valuable godsend to a new player. Random generosity is one of the coolest parts about RotMG, and for people that haven’t reached the godlands, it’s really awesome to get that equipment.
Oh yeah, never give anything to people that beg for it. They’ll just leap off, die, and beg some more, rather than learn to earn for themselves.
You might eventually reach a point in your illustrious RotMG career in which the gods no longer pose a direct threat to your life with every bullet. Congratulations! You’re now an intermediate level player.
The next step is to start learning the dungeons and going after the really serious loot.
On top of that, I highly suggest you raise one character to be a farmer. This is a character slot you have dedicated to a good farming class, whether that be solo or in groups, that you can rely on to kill a lot of gods safely and effectively. This is the first character whose stats you’ll max out, and as you’ve probably seen by now, maxed characters are quite different from a fresh level 20 character. Such classes include the priest and necromancer, and if you’re up for higher risk, the archer, huntress, and wizard.
Once you’ve established a farmer, you’ll be able to rake in pots much more quickly, helping to boost the stats of your other characters and purchase whatever equipment you have trouble finding. Many classes, such as melee classes, are infinitely better when they’re maxed out than when they first reach level 20.
Hope I see you out there! Best of luck!
See 
Archer & Huntress 
