Lord of Novels beginner's guide - 6 tips in navigating isekai insanity
Get the lowdown on how to get started with our The Lord of Novels beginner's guide, and manage the isekai insanity that it offers up.
- The Lord of Novels sees obscure isekai heroes team up in this spinoff of Lord of Roads
- But how do you get started, especially with a sometimes-patchwork translation?
- Well, don't worry because we've got you covered with our Lord of Novels beginner's guide!
I have a guilty secret to share with you. I'm actually quite fond of crossover, multiverse shenanigans. I mean, who doesn't want to see their favourite characters, or hugely disparate archetypes, colliding in new and refreshing ways? Of course, in practice, it usually ends up being a bit of a mess in both a good and bad way.
Fortunately, The Lord of Novels, from the developer of Lord of Roads, circumvents that with a more 'lite' take on the format. As you're dumped into a bog-fantasy isekai world, you have to recruit a party of different, similarly isekai'd characters to join your party.
Lord of Novels beginner's guide
Perhaps some of these are recognisable characters to die-hard isekai novel fans, but for the rest of us, they'll be quite indistinguishable. Don't expect Ainz Ooal Gown or Subaru Natsuki to show up, but you'll have plenty of familiar archetypes to encounter along the way.Sound fun? Well, in that case, let's dive in and get you started with a basic overview and tips to help you along!
The Basics
As always, let's go over what Lord of Novels is. While I can't nail down the exact genre, it's a mix of endless runner and bullet hell-slash heaven. Picking three primary members of your party, you'll head into a level from a 2D top-down perspective, blasting enemies as you go and dodging their attacks. You move by sliding your finger along the bottom quarter of the screen, and dash forward using the upper two-thirds, depending on where you put your thumb.Upgrades usually take the form of enhancements for existing heroes and attacks. This isn't a true Survivors-like, so you won't be accruing any major weapons or flashy attacks - just additional heroes or stat boosts that'll help you ward off the approaching enemies as you go. Party size is certainly one to shoot for, especially early on, to help overwhelm enemies with more powerful heroes.
At the end of each level is a boss - defeat that to complete it, and along the way gather upgrades, gold and other treasures to help you out. Pretty simple and straightforward, surprisingly so if I'm being honest. But that doesn't mean there aren't some wrinkles here, and some tips to keep in mind as you play, which is where our Lord of Novels beginner's guide comes in!
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Tip #1 - Skip the intro
Being that it's originally a Korean title, Lord of Novels has naturally been translated into English. Unfortunately, translation can be a bit patchwork, and it seems that extends to the intro, which is entirely voice-acted and written in Korean. So, feel free to skip it because you won't really need any of the details here; Lord of Novels is not exactly focused on narrative, after all - well, aside from the latter segments, but we'll get into that shortly.
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Tip #2 - Don't chase down bosses
One thing you'll probably notice rather quickly is that the movement system can be pretty finicky at times. Not least because it always moves you relative to your thumb's position rather than your character's position. Early on, at least, you'll also want to ignore the dash. Bosses that approach your character will usually jump back onto the field once they've passed your position, so don't feel the need to chase them down to get a kill.
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Tip #3 - Merge your heroes
Early on, you'll probably only have a few basic one-star heroes, but if you're lucky enough to get duplicates, you can jump into the merge system early. Basically, if you go to your inventory, you can combine up to three duplicates of a single hero to get them at a higher tier, boosting them by a star. They also have a separate overall level, which you upgrade via scrolls. If you're lucky, you'll have enough to get at least one two-star hero in the first hour or so of play.
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Tip #4 - Check your offline rewards
Let's talk about the AFK rewards system. There's nothing wrong with it, and in fact, it can give you some pretty neat goodies. But unless you use the options tab on the left side to check, you'd never know you had any rewards since the system doesn't flag this up directly. The fact that you only learn about daily quests after opening it for the first time indicates to me that this may be a bit of an 'are you paying attention?' moment. But other than that, it functions just as you would expect.
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Tip #5 - Have at least one melee character in your lineup
As you might expect, Lord of Novels is all about fast-paced action as you make your way through hordes of enemies. And be it those enemies themselves or flying projectiles, dealing with anything that could smack into your adventuring party and send them flying is key. So be sure to take at least one melee-focused character to hold the line when your mages or archers are on cooldown; my personal recommendation is the Berserker.
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Tip #6 - DON'T ignore the story
I know, I know. I started this Lord of Novels beginner's guide with exactly this.
'But you just said to skip the intro!' Yes, but that was just the intro. Fortunately, it seems elsewhere Lord of Novels has a bit more of a proper, extensive translation. In particular, the Library of Space Time that sees you jumping into different original stories featuring various characters from this whole adventure. Not only is it a good way to grab rewards, but it's genuinely interesting for anybody with even a cursory knowledge of isekai as a genre, as we get to see characters that are likely well-known overseas, whom they assume the players have some knowledge of. It can be confusing, but also quite fun in a sort of cultural touchstone way!
