. : Shades of Silence : . -- Walkthroughs (GuildWars: Factions)

First things first. As this is an MMO with lots of different professions (eight for Factions), writing a walkthrough for this game can get really confusing really quickly (I learned this the hard way when I was writing the Prophecies walkthrough). Finally, I seem to have found a way that works. Basically, things that everyone can do will be written in this white font, and things that are profession-specific will be listed in colours appropriate to that profession (see the "Key" just above this paragraph). I find this lessens the confusion as much as possible. Alright, on with the actual walkthrough! When you load, Master Togo greets you and gives you two options: 1) Talk to Instructor Ng to learn the basics, or 2) go with Master Togo into the Monastery. Now, even if you're NOT new to the world of GuildWars, I still suggest you do the tutorial. Not only do you get EXP from the monsters you're going to kill, but also items and gold. The trophies that the enemies you're about to fight drop (and by "trophies" I mean "a specific item that all members of that monster type can drop") can be traded for a belt pouch later, which will increase your inventory space. Check the How to Play page for more information on increasing your inventory space, and on how to play the game in general. Also, the gold will be useful because, unlike Prophecies (if you've played that campaign), as soon as you finish this, like, two-minute tutorial, you'll gain access to a town with a storage box, but you'll need 50g to open the box, and the money and non-trophy loot you get from these tutorial monsters will usually get you that much, or at least really close to it.

Well, I'm going to assume you took my advice, so here we go (if not, skip down to the Shing Jea Monastery section). Talk to Instructor Ng, then turn around (press X to make it easier) and find the chest over there. I'm really going to force the tutorial to skip ahead a bit because 1) I'm impatient, and 2) you have the How to Play page that explains everything a lot more completely than Instructor Ng does. Ignore what he says and go to the chest, pick up the weapon that comes out of it, and equip it. Go talk to Ng again, cause he's got a quest for you (anyone who's got a glowing green exclamation point over their head has a quest for you, and if someone has a glowing green arrow instead, it means they've got information for you about one of your current quests). Accept the quest, and here it gets kinda annoying cause you have to wait for your party to get going, and you really shouldn't try to take on the mantid mobs without them cause you will probably die. However, you should try to get at least one hit in on every mantid you come across so you can actually get EXP for it (if Kisai and Mai, the henchmen in your current party, kill it themselves, you won't get EXP for it). Talk to Ng again, who gives a rather brief explanation about quests to you. Can we get on with it, please? You're leaving so much out and therefore are not very helpful...

After Instructor Ng puts the fear of mantids into Kisai, you finally get to go inside the training grounds. You get to take on the first mantid all by your lonesome, but remember what I said earlier about taking a whole mob on by yourself. You've not got any skills yet, so just whack the thing to death (or wand it to death, if you're a caster). Head to the next group, kill them, then Ng gets all morbid. The gate opens but don't go in yet, because Ng wants you to talk to him again, and he stays outside the gate til you do. Talk to him, then go inside and run to the res shrine (the shiney glowing thingy). Talk to Ng again, who explains a bit about res points and then... then... THEN HE KILLS YOU! OMFG WHY! ^>___<^!!! Well, don't get yer knickers in a knot. He explains about DP (Death Penalty) a bit, and then removes your DP. However, you shouldn't get used to the idea that your DP magically goes away, because in the tutorial is the only time this actually happens. There are several ways to remove DP by certain percentages, so check the How to Play page for that. Ng gives you two basic skills, tells you how to use them (go ahead and mouse-over the skills in your bar to see what they do while Ng is babbling), then runs off to the next gate. Talk to him again to continue.

Now Ng talks about the infamous aggro bubble (which he calls "The Danger Zone" for whatever idiotic reason), and then lets you and your party loose on the rest of the mantids. After a few more mobs, all of them are dead, and Ng wants to speak to you again. Talk to him for your quest reward (2,000 EXP (level up, yay!) and the Resurrection Signet (woo!)) and for a brief explanation about level increases, and skills and attributes. Talk to him for a bit more information on this subject, then talk to him yet again for even more info on the same subject. Even mooooore information on the subject can be found on that How to Play page I keep mentioning, yay. :op (stop doing my job for me, Ng! You suck at it anyway!) Once he's done with his lesson, go through the gate he opens and follow the path up the hill (northwest). You can stick around and listen to the conversation between Kisai, Mai, and Instructor Ng if you really want to, but it's not important. Plus, the game keeps pinging Ludo, which is annoying, so talk to Ludo when you want to enter the Monastery. He gives you your first actual quest, then lets you inside.

Quests: Locate Jinzo (sin), Locate Ronsu (ele), Locate Mei Ling (mes), Locate Sister Tai (monk), Locate Reng Ku (necro), Locate Sujun (ran), Locate Professor Gai (rit), Locate Talon Silverwing (war), Forming a Party

Alright, well, your next quest objective is pretty much right where you spawn, so talk to your Headmaster for your reward and next quest. Assassins, Headmaster Lee wants you to find balance by finding her two apprentices, Jinzo being first on the list. Ritualists, Headmaster Quin is quite cranky about some weird experiment some necromancer decided to let loose outside and wants you and Professor Gai to go take care of it. Now, before we do any of that, let's get some in-town things out of the way. If you go north-ish from this area, you'll enter into a large open courtyard-type place. There are two storage locations in this town: one on your far left and one on your far right. If someone in town says that they are by storage, they mean the one on the far left. I'll walk you to both though, while we do our little tour of the monastery here. Turn right and go forwards. These two NPC's here are called Quartermasters. If you've played the Nightfall campaign at all, you already know what these guys do. Otherwise, basically as you run about this island (also called n00b island or Shing Jea Island, if you wanna be proper about it) and do quests, some of the quests will have the additional reward of a Monastery Credit (further on in the Factions campaign you'll get other things instead of Monastery Credits, like Imperial Commendations (Kaineng City), Luxon Totems (the Jade Sea), and Equipment Requisitions (Echovald Forest), but they all work the same way). You can trade these Monastery Credits in at these Quartermasters for various items. This can be really economical since, for example, a Rune of Holding is 500g each at the merchant, but you could trade three Monastery Credits at the Quartermaster for one Rune of Holding. Easy! Cheap! Yay!

OK, on with our tour. Beyond the Quartermasters is a long flight of steps up to the east which lead to a portal. This portal leads to Linnok Courtyard, which you'll be seeing a lot of on this page, however, you don't need to go there right now. About halfway up the flight of stairs is a break in the stairs where you can go left. Here's one of the storage boxes I mentioned. Talk to the Storage lady to open your storage account if you've got 50g. If not, well, we'll be back later. Continue along this green area and you'll soon come upon the armourers. Unless you have another character (in any campaign), you probably don't have any materials yet (and you need 50g more on top of the "open my storage account" 50g fee to get access to your materials storage in your storage box anyway), but just remember where these guys are. Also, each one of these armourers offer different armour sets (although each armourer has 15 AL armour (if you're a caster), 25 AL for assassins and rangers, and 35 for warriors) so you have different options for what your char wears. Considering your current armour has really crappy AL at the moment (AL 5 for casters, 10 for sins/rangers), you're gonna want to come back here as soon as you have the gold and materials to buy upgraded armour. Each armourer's list will show you what materials and how much gold you need for each piece of armour. Continue west along the path and down some steps to find the Guild Registrar (create a guild) and Guild Emblemer (make a cape for your guild (must have a guild first)) NPCs. More information about guilds can be found on the How to Play page. Turn southwest to find an area covered by a tall tarp. Under this large tarp are two merchants (in the middle), the Dye Trader (on the right), the Rune Trader (on the left), and the Materials and Rare Materials traders (further left). Go sell your extra crap to the merchant! (cept don't sell any mantid pincers you might've found, as you'll need three for that belt pouch I mentioned earlier) If you don't have the 50g for the storage yet, don't worry, you'll have it soon enough (although if this is your first character, you'll want to save up for new armour first).

Further west from the merchants are the henchmen and also the portal outside, but we're not going outside just yet. We are almost done with the town tour though. Go through the arch southeast of the material traders, and just on the other side of it you'll see the Festival Hat and Costume Maker NPCs on your left, and just beyond them is the skill trainer (although you'll soon get a few more free skills, so I'll let you know when you should go see him. Not now, anyway). Go right to pass some random NPCs on your right that will have quests for you later on, and go up the hill. You'll pass the Arena Guard on your left, which grants access to the Shing Jea Arena, which is PvP for all characters lv 10 and under. Further south is the main storage I mentioned earlier, and now we are finally done with the tour. Wooooo... Alright, one thing I want to mention before we go outside. All of the quests I've listed at the beginning of this section? Everyone will get to do them. Yes, all of you, even if you're not that profession. See, GuildWars has this nifty thing where you get to have two professions instead of one. More information about each profession can be found on the Professions page linked in the menu up top, but basically you can have all of the attributes of two professions (once you choose a secondary, which will happen soon enough) except for the primary attribute of your secondary profession (again, check the professions page for info). So later on when we go to choose our secondaries, I'll just send you back to the next paragraph so I don't have to copy-paste the whole thing again. :op Head to the portal outside, grab the quest from Ludo (he's next to the henchies), find a party (hench or otherwise, although Ludo's quest requires you to have a hench in your party. If you're using only hench, I'd suggest picking Taya, Aeson, and Kisai for now, since both Taya and Aeson have healing skills), and head outside into Sunqua Vale.

Quests: Opening Strike (sin), Track Down Panaku (sin), Dual Strike (sin), Spark of Interest (ele), Track Down Kai Ying (ele), Sparring Elements (ele), Cleansing the Shrine (mes), Track Down Lo Sha (mes), Lo Sha's Gift (mes), Stale Mate (monk), Track Down Brother Pe Wan (monk), Seeking a Cure (monk), Little Creatures (necro), Track Down Su (necro), Reaping the Naga (necro), Free the Fur (ran), Track Down Zho (ran), The Yeti Hunt (ran), Minions Gone Wild (rit), Track Down Ang the Ephemeral (rit), Shackled Spirits (rit), Talon's Duel (war), Track Down Weng Gha (war), The Crop Thieves (war), An Audience With Master Togo (all)
Skills: Unsuspecting Strike (secondary sins), Dancing Daggers (sin), Death's Charge (sin), Twisting Fangs (sin), Shroud of Distress (sin), Brutal Weapon (rit), Union (rit), Generous was Tsungrai (rit), Spirit Rift (rit)

Come back here during the secondary profession quests! (don't worry about this red note for now, I'll let you know when it's important) Now, I'd like to mention something before we wander off to do stuff. If you played Prophecies you might have heard of something called "green" or "unique" weapons. I won't go into details here, since that's what the How to Play page is for, but I will mention that in Factions EVERY boss can drop a green (same for Nightfall and GW:EN). Of course, that doesn't mean that they're all good greens, or even max greens, but yeah. Just giving you a heads up. One more thing: in the area immediately surrounding the Monastery most enemies will not attack you unless you attack them first, cept during quests and in one of the caves nearby. Once you get up into the hills and beyond the enemies tend to be more aggressive, just fyi. OK, go talk to Ludo (he's a couple of feet in front of you) for your quest reward. Well, before we get on with the profession quests, go kill off some mantids until you have three mantid pincers, Head to the southwest part of this area while holding down your left Alt key, and you'll soon see an NPC named Marik Kuri [Collector] in the distance. This is the guy who will trade you a belt pouch for those three mantid pincers I had you get. Honestly, there's a quest later that will get you a free belt pouch but who really wants to wait that long for more inventory space. Plus, you can still do that quest later for the EXP and just merch the extra belt pouch or give it to another char. He's also going to be our local resident sign post for some of these quests we're about to do (Marik: ... hey! >_<;; ). Oh yes, one last thing. All of these profession trainers will send you off to yet another trainer immediately after you complete their quest, and they're all in other explorable areas, so I've put all of the first trainer quests first, and then the second trainer quests after all of those. Also, even if your next quest isn't in Panjiang Peninsula, there's a town between Sunqua and Panjiang that you're going to need for later anyway, so you might want to read how to get there anyway. Assassins, if you click on Locate Jinzo in your quest log (L menu), you'll see you need to head north/to the right of Marik, so go ahead and head over. Talk to him to get your reward for finding him (tag, Jinzo's it!), and to get your new quest. He wants you to kill some undead minions provided by one of the necromancer trainers. There will be five, but they only show up one at a time, after the previous one has died so don't worry too much about being overrun. He also gives you two new skills. If you read the skill descriptions, you'll see that sin skills are kinda complicated. You can't just use most sin skills just whenever you want. Assassins use "skill chains" in that certain skills are only useable after certain other skill types. If you try to use something that says, for instance, "must follow a lead attack" without using a lead attack first, that attack skill will miss completely. The same is true if you have, like, a four-skill skill chain and you happen to miss with the first one or you got blinded or what-have-you, then your entire skill chain is screwed until the first skill in the chain recharges. Anyway, you only had lead attacks til now so that's why I didn't mention it before. So you can only use Fox Fangs after Unsuspecting Strike or Dancing Daggers (from the skills you currently have (unless you were cheating and got skills elsewhere. Are you cheating??)). You can also use Death's Charge to heal if there's an enemy nearby, or Shadow Refuge at any time, so keep that in mind. When you're ready, talk to Jinzo again to start the quest. Oh yeah, there's some other irrelevant student here that will help you but he's a pompous jerk who thinks he's the best thing since cheesecake was invented and yet starts screaming as soon as the quest starts so don't count on him too much for help. Good thing I had you bring henchies, huh. Once all five minions are dead, talk to Jinzo again for your reward, and for the quest to find Apprentice #2, Panaku.

Ritualists, if you look on your radar (if you have your rit quest active in your quest log (L menu), you'll see another NPC marker just west of Marik. This is your first trainer, Professor Gai. Go talk to him for your quest reward, and to acquire a new quest. Apparently, some fool necromancer couldn't control his own minions. *facepalm* You also get some new skills, so look them over, then talk to Gai again to start the quest. The minions will spawn one at a time in the room behind Gai, so plant your Pain spirit in the middle, drop your Union spirit when the minions start attacking, and toss Painful Bond at the minions whenever that skill finishes recharging. Use Weapon of Warding to heal yourself. I wouldn't bother with Spirit Rift for now cause these enemies die pretty quickly and not only does Spirit Rift have a long cast time but it takes awhile for the skill to activate after you cast it too, so save that for harder enemies. After the five minions are dead, go speak to Prof. Gai for your quest reward, and to acquire your next quest.

Panjiang Peninsula quests. OK, we need to go through that one town I mentioned earlier to get here, so I hope all of you are reading along for this part cause you'll all need this town eventually. From Marik head straight west past Professor Gai, continue west, and eventually you'll find the portal into Tsumei Village. There aren't any quests here yet, but there will be soon enough. Run through the town to the other side to find the portal to Panjiang Peninsula. Some of you have your next quest in another area so skip down to the paragraph coded with your profession's colour for your next couple of quests.

OK, so from Tsumei Village head back into Sunqua Vale and head north (don't hug the mountain on your left or you'll spawn an annoying enemy called an oni. Oni exist throughout the entire game, appearing out of nowhere, and get harder as the game progresses so if you can avoid popping them things will be less annoying). Once you reach the naga (snake guys) continue north into the mountains, past (or through) some hostile tengu), north between two houses on hills, then take a left after the houses (you'll know you're going the right way if you pass a bridge on your right). Keep going west through some archways. You'll see a boss named Jin the Skull Bow on your right but don't aggro her at your level because she's got some friends hiding in the trees that come to her aid. You can come back when you're at or above her lv (6) if you really want to kill her. Keep following the path and you'll find the portal to Kinya Province. Go on through and then immediately head right no matter what your quest arrow says cause as soon as you zone a large mob of Crimson Skull starts heading towards your position from the left. Go past the res shrine, across the bridge, then head left past Zho (who's on your left), left again across another bridge, and past the cave with the lv 12 yeti (please don't aggro this guy ^@__@^;; ). Once you get to the grass, turn right and just follow the mountains til you find Panaku. Grab your reward and your next quest (and to find out Panaku is kinda a psychopath ^<__<^;; ). Well... this... quest doesn't... really... sound like it's the best idea in the world... but... this is a game, right? What could possibly go wrong? (famous last words, says Bubsy the Bobcat as he gets run over by a giant cheesewheel...) He gives you another chain skill which you can use after Fox Fangs, and a nice "help me I'm dying" skill. Once you're ready to go, speak to Panaku and follow him as he runs off, complaining about how slow you are. Since he's being a dick, let him aggro the naga up ahead, then run in after they are focusing on him. Take out their spellcasters first (anything that isn't a "Naga Whelp") because they hurt, a lot. After they are dead, Panaku runs off again and mutters something about how you need to keep this on the downlow and how he doesn't really know or care whether your target deserves to die or not. ... ^<_____<^;; I am starting to like this guy less and less. Eventually, you reach your target, who is a tengu and claims that he "did it for his family." And Panaku basically leaves you to kill him by yourself. Well, your henchies should be enough but you can also flag your henchies (using the flag thingy on the compass) next to Panaku and pull the tengu towards Panaku (get him into your aggro bubble and walk backwards towards Panaku) you can make Panaku help you. :op That way if we're doing something wrong hey guess what, he did it too ^<__<^;; Anyway. Once Soar is dead, talk to Panaku for your reward, and some threats about what will happen if you mention this quest to anyone. :\ Can we leave now? Oh, we can? Awesome. Panaku sends you back to the Monastery to talk to Master Togo, so map back to the Monastery and skip down to the Shing Jea section below.

OK, rits. Let's find this Ephemeral guy. Head out into Panjiang and follow the path til you find the encounter between the Crimson Skull chick and Farmer Xeng Jo. This encounter is completely pointless, so just run by them and head right. You'll pass an NPC named Weng Gha on your right, and see some Kappa enemies up ahead. Find the lv 6 kappa in the group and target him first (do this for any kappa group unless the group doesn't have a lv 6). Take another right and head northwest past the collector. Just past him there will be a single Oni spawn. Oni are demons that live in another dimension, which is why they appear out of nowhere like that. The good thing about oni is that they have specific spawn points, and I'll always tell you about them if we get near one. Anyway. Just a bit west of the now-dead oni is your quest objective. Go talk to ... buh!? He's DEAD! ^.__.^;; As in, ghost dead. Well, talk to him anyway for your quest reward and another quest (along with new skills, yay!). Once you've reviewed your skills, talk to Ang again. Basically, he imprisoned some bandits into these chests you see around you and now you have to get rid of them. I highly suggest you only open one chest at a time and only move on after the spirit inside is dead. Unlike most NPCs in this game, Ang actually helps you with the quest he gives you, so that's a plus (just make sure to open the chests he's next to if you want his help). There are five chests, after which Ang gives you your reward and sends you off to talk to Master Togo. Map back to the Monastery and skip down to the Monastery section below.

Quests: Speak with Headmaster Lee (Assassin), Speak with Headmaster Vhang (Elementalist), Speak with Headmaster Kaa (Mesmer), Speak with Headmaster Amara (Monk), Speak with Headmaster Kuju (Necromancer), Speak with Headmaster Greico (Ranger), Speak with Headmaster (Ritualist), Speak with Headmaster Zhan (Warrior), Opening Strike (sin), Track Down Panaku (sin), Dual Strike (sin), Locate Ronsu (ele), Spark of Interest (ele), Track Down Kai Ying (ele), Sparring Elements (ele), Locate Mei Ling (mes), Cleansing the Shrine (mes), Track Down Lo Sha (mes), Lo Sha's Gift (mes), Locate Sister Tai (monk), Stale Mate (monk), Track Down Brother Pe Wan (monk), Seeking a Cure (monk), Locate Reng Ku (necro), Little Creatures (necro), Track Down Su (necro), Reaping the Naga (necro), Locate Sujun (ran), Free the Fur (ran), Track Down Zho (ran), The Yeti Hunt (ran), Locate Professor Gai (rit), Minions Gone Wild (rit), Track Down Ang the Ephemeral (rit), Shackled Spirits (rit), Locate Talon Silverwing (war), Talon's Duel (war), Track Down Weng Gha (war), The Crop Thieves (war), A Belt Pouch, Appearance of the Naga
Skills: Fox Fangs (sin), Death's Charge (sin), Shroud of Distress (sin), Twisting Fangs (sin), Aura of Restoration (ele), Lightning Orb (ele), Flare (ele), Armour of Earth (ele), Ice Spikes (ele), Conjure Phantasm (mes), Empathy (mes), Ether Feast (mes), Healing Touch (monk), Reversal of Fortune (monk), Resurrect (monk), Retribution (monk), Animate Bone Fiend (necro), Faintheartedness (necro), Soul Feast (necro), Barbed Signet (necro), Charm Animal (ran), Power Shot (ran), Comfort Animal (ran), Whirling Defense (ran), Read the Wind (ran), Flame Trap (ran), Painful Bond (rit), Pain (rit), Vengeful Weapon (rit), Union (rit), Brutal Weapon (rit), Generous Was Tsungrai (rit), Spirit Rift (rit), Healing Signet (war), Power Attack (war), Sever Artery (war), Cyclone Axe (war), "Watch Yourself!" (war), Mighty Blow (war), Frenzy (war)

Blinding Powder (sin), Throw Dirt (sin)

So now that we're all back at the Monastery, head up the giant flight of stairs on the east side of town and through the portal. Speak to Master Togo, who says that your Headmaster has nothing but good things to say about you, but that you need to choose a "second path" in order to reach your full potential. He's actually talking about choosing your secondary profession. Speak to him again to see a huge friggin list of quests. I highly suggest NOT taking them all at once because if you do it will just get confusing. Plus, you will need specific secondary skills for some of them, which will get overridden when you talk to the other headmasters. However, I DO suggest you do them all eventually because each of these secondary profession quest chains unlock new skills for you and your account. This might sound useless to you since you can only have two professions at a time, however you can change your secondary profession later on in the game as often as you'd like and it helps to have some skills already unlocked. The second benefit is that if you ever acquire heroes (only possible if you have the Nightfall campaign or the Eye of the North expansion) they only come with about four skills each, so the more skills you have unlocked for all of the professions, the more useful your heroes will be. ALSO ALSO, you'll get a chance to use skills from all the secondaries and thus have a better idea of which secondary you want to choose, and it's EXP and gold. Who doesn't like EXP and gold? Anyway, pick a quest, any quest! These are basically just the primary quests again, which I've already written above, so I'm only going to give you skill suggestions for the different combinations in this section. If you want details about the quests just go back to the paragraph that started with "Come back here during the secondary profession quests!" in red letters. Just remember that if you want to do all of the secondary profession quests you can't take the Choose Your Secondary Profession quest until you finish them all, otherwise you can't do the rest. Also, before we get to those, there are a couple of new quests in town that we should pick up while we're here. Head back into town and go towards storage, and you'll see a couple of green exclamation marks on your right. One is a dude named Neing the Tanner, which gives you that free belt pouch quest I mentioned earlier. The other is a guy named Captain Zinghu on your right. He wants some help investigating rumours about Naga in the area. Well, Mr. Guy, we've already seen naga in the area so I think you need to look up what "rumour" actually means, but whatevs... Let's just get these two quests out of the way real quick. Head to Tsumei Village and speak to Sister Chou Ji, who's by the Panjiang portal. She tells you that those falls are really important cause apparently Cantha doesn't really have many rivers so these naga need to stop swimming in peoples' drinking water. Well, off to save the environment, I guess!

Go back out into Sunqua Vale and head left like you were going to Kinya Province. When you reach the hills go left. Now, most of these naga aren't aggressive but kill all of the ones on the way anyway just incase some sort of AoE hits them cause nobody wants to be caught in the middle of a naga sandwich. Anything that isn't a Naga Whelp is a priority target, cause those are spellcasters and they hurt. >:( If you see a blue ball of energy rising near you, get awaaaaaaay. That's Spirit Rift activating and although it takes awhile to trigger it hurts when it goes off. The Sibyls and the Witches are the ones that cast Spirit Rift so you might want to kill those guys first. When you get to the last part, with the group across the bridge, be aware that almost all of them are lv 6 so a couple of your henchies might die but if you brought Taya and Aeson you should be fine (since henchies prioritise actual players). Head back to Tsumei Village and go out into Panjiang. There shouldn't be any enemies between you and Herder Tsiyingju so just go talk to her (she's to the east by a cowpen). Of course, she decides to use your, ah, unique talents to solve her problems with the local thugs before giving you the hides. Fiiiiiiine. Head north, beat up the Crimson Skull guys (take out the mender first, then the ritualist), go back to Lazy Herder Lady (seriously guys, she's lv 10 and she can't handle four lv 3's? Really?), grab the hides, and now... back to the Monastery to hand in both of those quests. And now, let's get on with those secondary profession quests.

At this point, Locate Jinzo and Jinzo's actual quest are super-easy to solo, but you will probably want henchies for the one after that (Track Down Panaku). If you're a rit, equip the starter daggers you got from Headmaster Lee, drop Pain and Union before talking to Jinzo to activate the quest (i.e., after accepting the quest, but before triggering it), then use Brutal Weapon on yourself once the quest starts and use your dagger attack skills, especially Unsuspecting Strike.

Now, for Track Down Panaku. If you're a rit, drop Union by Panaku, then move forward about half an aggro bubble (without aggroing Soar the tengu), drop Pain, regen some energy, then move into aggro range, cast Brutal Weapon, and just stab him to death.

If you're a spellcaster, ele or not, you'll want to equip Aura of Restoration, cause it heals you every time you cast a spell (even non-ele spells). Follow your quest arrow down to the docks and kill the guy between you and the rock thing (he's really pretty easy, just don't stand in his Fire Storm), grab the rock thing, and return to Ronsu. Map to Tsumei and go out into Panjiang for the next quest.

Follow your quest arrow to find Kai Ying. Before you talk to him, take note of all of the NPCs up the stairs to the south. You're gonna be fighting some of these guys as soon as you accept the quest so be ready to not stand in the middle of arena in all of the AoE. The four on the east side become hostile when you get close enough, and the three on the west side are your allies. You don't have to keep your allies alive, just kill the opponents to win.

You NEED Shatter Hex for this quest, so equip it. You need to get to that bridge we pass on the way to Kinya, so head on over there. Cross the bridge and use Shatter Hex on Brother Sitai, then return to Mei Ling.

Speaking of Kinya, head over there for your next quest. Follow your quest arrow to get your reward and next quest. Head to the Crimson Skull camp, murdering their gang members on the way. When you get to the camp, kill the mender first, then the others, and grab the gift out of the chest in the middle.

You can actually do both of these quests by yourself; the only issue is getting from Sunqua Vale to Kinya Province (specifically the tengu between the two places). After you find Sister Tai she gives you the Stale Mate quest. You have to keep your allied Warrior Student alive; trying to kill the enemy Warrior Student doesn't work. Even if he dies the quest keeps going so just concentrate on healing. Click on the student's name in your party list to target him. Just keep Healing Breeze on him the entire time and toss an occasional Orison of Healing at him when he gets to like 3/4 HP. If you're a rit, keep Weapon of Warding and Vengeful Weapon on him as well and he should be fine (remember, one target can't have two weapon spells on them at once so wait for one to run out before you cast the other). Piece of cake.

Brother Pe Wan's quest is super super easy, as long as you don't aggro the assassin mantid boss Tahkayun Tsi. Just follow your starburst and click on each successive plant, then return to Pe Wan. The End.

So...... you don't actually need to animate anything for this quest (Little Creatures), so just murder away (head into the cave nearby). If you're a rit, dropping Pain in the middle of the room makes everything super-easy, but this isn't hard no matter what profession you are. A slightly stronger mantid appears at one point but honestly it's not a big deal.

Su's quest can be difficult for any prof, even at lv 6, so take some henchies. You have to clear the cave that Su is outside of, killing all of the naga. If you're a rit, when you get into the big open part of the cave drop Pain in the middle.

Head up to Sujun, try not to aggro the boss that runs around west of him cause that thing can be annoying to kill cause it's a monk. Talk to him to trigger the quest, then just follow him around and open the cages. At the second cage, a Hungry Kappa (lv 6) shows up to try to eat the rabbit, but it shouldn't give you too much trouble, especially if you let Sujun take aggro. After three rabbits are freed he sends you off to your next quest.

When you see the yeti coming towards you down the path that Zho stops at the beginning of, drop Flame Trap about half an aggro bubble away from Zho, then run back to her and wait for the yeti to trigger the trap, then kill it. Whee?

Drop Pain in the middle of the cemetary thing before triggering the quest. You really shouldn't need Union at this point. Just murder the minions as they spawn one by one.

For Ang's quest, drop Pain in the middle of the area where the boxes are. Just don't open all the chests at once and you should be fine.

"Watch Yourself!" might come in handy, but you need to build up adrenaline first to use it (basically just hit things until you can activate it). He's really not that difficult at this point though.

Yeah... three lv 3 Crimson Skull. Meh meh. Also, Weng Gha is a douche. Moving on~

Well, now that that's over and done with you can go ahead and choose your secondary. Remember, you can change your secondary later in the game as often as you'd like, but that's still a long ways off from now so hopefully doing all of the secondary quests gave you a good idea of which one you'd like to choose. Now, Master Togo says you can either train for your insignia (not to be confused with the armour upgrade insignias) with your Headmaster or take a quest from him. I highly recommend doing the insignia thing cause not only is it more EXP and helps teach you some core combat mechanics, you also learn new skills doing it. In all cases I'm just gonna go in order from top to bottom in Instructor Ng's quest list.

Assassins, go talk to Headmaster Lee to start the quest chain. If you're A/R, the best skill bar at this point (provided you didn't buy any extra skills) is 7 Dagger Mastery, 6 Critical Strikes, Unsuspecting Strike, Fox Fangs, Twisting Fangs, Throw Dirt, Blinding Powder