Serbule Hills

Serbule Hills is an area similar to Serbule itself with a few higher level mobs and skills/trades. In the northeast at the top of the map is the Serbule Hills Inn where most NPCs are located. There are also a few farms here, both with NPCs and a few that are abandoned. The Ranalon have taken over the main body of water in the center of the map and goblins have set up camp in most of the eastern portion of the map.

Surveying can be picked up in Serbule Hills. The vendor that trains this, Jaime Fatholm, likes magical bows so save magic bows to gift to them. As a new player, I would do two “large” runs of ~20-30 surveys of Rubywall Crystal maps in Serbule Hills to get Surveying up and then worked my way to Serbule itself to do runs there. If you see references in the game to “Redwall”, that is simply referring to what Rubywall Crystals used to be called. Rubywall is an actual wall that was created by the Council in the story to keep demons out.

The best strategy for Surveying seems to be to make a large number of maps, sort the maps into “quadrants”, and then organize a run from there. You will want to organize the maps in your inventory first due to the speed bonuses you get for doing surveys within a limited timeframe. The more you do at once and quickly, the more extra items you'll find as a bonus. There's also a tool (see below) that comes in handy if you know how to use it.

If you do not have “folders” in your inventory, you can use items in your inventory to sort maps. For example, if you've been picking up Apples and Grapes and Mycena and Parasol Mushrooms, use Apples as the start of the NE quadrant, Grapes as the start of the SE, Mycena as the start of the SW, and Parasol Mushrooms as the start of the NW. I use a clockwise-based organization and either start my run in the NW running counter-clockwise or NE and run clockwise down my list of organized maps.

Bleeding Speed potions, Agonizing Speed potions, and any Sprint gear or abilities will provide immense utility here. Clownfish and Fire Dust are cheap enough or easy enough to find for making these potions considering what your rewards are going to be. Those two are used with the Alchemy recipes learned from the “Ignite the Fire in your legs” book from Yetta in Eltibule. Eventually, if you buy the game, Fire Dust will be much more plentiful so don't fret spending some of your hoard here.

Players will sometimes pay anywhere from good (fair value) to exceptional (double fair value) money on the player work orders for Rubwall Crystals. I would not recommend selling Rubywall Crystals for anything less than their fair purchase value on a “Buy Used” tab (100 councils per), however.

Also remember you can use Rubywall Crystals as crystals for creating your higher level gear in Tailoring or Leatherworking later on after you've bought the game, too. It will give increases to attributes like Max Health and Inventory space and more that are not attuned to specific combat skills. High level players will use Rubywall Crystals to create high level gear with these types of buffs for newbies sometimes as puttying a Rubywall crystal in the primary slot makes the gear not combat-skill specific and provides health and power buffs. Tailors in particular will often make this gear and put pockets on it to sell on Consignment or player vendors. You will be able to purchase most of these items once you have paid for the game.

There's a tool that was created by a few players to help you out if you don't want to sort or organize your maps as you run. Keep in mind that you may need to have two windows or monitors open to use this tool effectively and when you are taking logs of where the crystals are you need to stay in the same area as you test/click each one for it to be accurate.

If you want to give it shot, click this link: http://www.defenestration.co/pg/surveying/

This skill really only comes up once you get to Yasinda in Eltibule, meaning it is not accessible to demo players, but since it is similar to Surveying I wanted to introduce a section about it here. In order to both get this skill and understand how it works, you'll want to become familiar with Surveying early on. The wiki also has much more info.

While the Serbule section could have had Meditation, I figured I would list it here as Calligraphy really only comes from Sammie Grimspine who lives in Serbule Hills (well, except during the Full Moon, when she's suspiciously absent from the entire game).

Meditation is a skill necessary to Unarmed as Calligraphy is to Sword and Knife Fighting. Regardless of your skills, however, you will likely find some Meditation buffs and some Calligraphy buffs useful in making your character do more damage. For example, a few Meditation buffs also help you survive the cold in Kur or buff your health. Many of the Calligraphy buffs focus on Slashing damage for Sword and Knife Fighting, but even Archers can get benefits from the piercing buffs or Hammer and Unarmed from the crushing buffs. With the addition of a Meditation Stool or Calligraphy bench from Carpentry, these buffs can last for hours upon hours in game.

I would highly recommend most players get to at least Meditation level 17 for the buff against cold damage and level 20 (possibly level 30 if Knife or Sword user) as soon as possible for Calligraphy so you can get to Sigil Scripting. These are two of the easiest skills to level and only require items that should be relatively easy to craft or harvest. You may want to make use of the Player Work Orders to get the items for a reasonable cost.

Sigil Scripting isn't required for most players, but it's a nice and easy way to provide a bit of extra damage or healing when engaging in combat.

Higher level players will often use Explosions from Sigil Scripting to augment damage of secondary combat skills they are grinding as it is very easy to use these in Kur Tower to do AoE damage to zombies while bashing them with whatever combat skill you are leveling. Ranged characters may also really enjoy the Repulsion Barrier Sigil as it flings away enemies that would otherwise want to close in and do damage.

Crafters will also want to get Sigil Scripting to level 25 and then get Favor up with Preta, who teaches them how to inscribe Malachite runes with specific animal-related buffs for the gear they are crafting. In fact, once you get Sigil Scripting to level 25, you can go back to being an animal most of the time if you wanted to level the skill up further.

Some of the monsters in the game speak their own language and you will be required to speak that same language in order to trade or otherwise interact with them. The first race of creatures that you encounter that speak a different language are the Goblins and there are lots of them in Serbule Hills.

Goblins in PG are opportunists that form together in companies and work contracts such as kidnapping, murder-for-hire, and the like. In order to learn their language, you will often need to kill these Goblins and collect their business cards. Not all Goblins are hostile, but the ones you meet in Serbule Hills will be. Try to lure them out from their paths if you want to safely kill them, otherwise they will call their friends over when damaged and you'll get swarmed very quickly.

If you pay for the game you will get to meet the non-hostile ones later on. Ragabir in the Casino should become an important friend by mid game and if you are a Necromancer you will want to become friends with Jumjab in Eltibule once you learn how to talk to him. Jumjab also will teach a great skill for leveling up random skills called Corpse Talking, though that's outside the scope of the demo. There are also rumors of a mostly-friendly group of Goblins hiding underground that will be necessary for training Brewing, Shield, and Sword.

Many of the NPCs in the Serbule Hills are concerned about Ranalons in this area. There is one Ranalon here named Gershok who teaches Shamanic Infusion, which is a buffing ability for some of your items, similar to Blacksmithing which you may have learned from Tadion.

Shamanic Infusion is a bit different from the buffs you get from other skills. In a lot of cases, many of the skills and buffs you get from Tailoring or Blacksmithing are going to be using items you create from either Surveying or Crafting. Shamanic Infusion tends to use other-wise junk resources solely obtained from killing. There is a little bit of crossover in that some of the resources in Alchemy cross over, but a good number of them don't, too. Many of the early skills in Shamanic Infusion provide only small to moderate buffs and require one unique item and maybe three not as unique items. Oftentimes, you can find the items to get Shamanic Infusion leveled up on vendors.

Gershok is not the only Ranlon here, either. There are Ranlon Gardeners, Ranlon Stoneshapers, and Scray Guards here. The Ranlon Tongues and Scray Stingers and Lures are decent for gaining Favor with NPCs that like or love Trophy Items. NPCs like Way, Velkort, and Kelim, for example, that you'll want to have a decent level of Favor with for eventually selling to (Way and Velkort) or training from (Kelim).

Three attributes that you'll want to be aware of that might come into play during the demo (especially by the time you get to Serbule Hills) are Community, Civic Pride, and Combat Wisdom. They have little to do with each other, but they start to matter as you get to the point where you expand into new regions and areas where players are sparse.

Community is more like an attribute than a skill. The more you play by yourself with no other players around, the more likely you are to start seeing your Community attribute suffer, which, in turn, very slightly lowers the amount of experience you get. You don't have to interact with other players, but you may want to head to town on occasion to reset this. As a human player, you can get some earrings that increase your Community. I do not know if there is a tail ring (Rakasha) or navel ring (Elf) equivalent. Later on you won't need Community as much as you might need free Max Health or the ability to carry more Yellow Crystals, but for now it is a nice racial buff to have on earrings that you otherwise might not use.

Civic Pride is a very small part of the game, but is worth mentioning as it can reduce NPC costs and increase the gold they have available as well as give you other passive buffs to Favor and Hangout Experience. This makes it a relatively important skill to level early on if you are planning on putting hundreds of hours into this game.

You can add Wood Chips or Fuel Oil to torches in towns and turn them on after 7pm or off after 5am for a bit of experience in this. While the rewards aren't extremely high for leveling this skill, it's still worthwhile to do during downtimes between grinding when you are in town. I would recommend that when you are at a point where you have 5k gold regularly on you that you take the time to buy like 70 fuel oil from Fainor in Serbule and add the oil and light the lamps in Serbule, then head to Hogan's Keep and use Cedar Chips (or Maple if you aren't using them for your Mushroom Farming) to refill the torches here.

Often you'll find you are competing with other players to do this same thing, so if so, consider the 7 lamps at the Serbule Hills inn, too, as those are often overlooked or ignored.

I actually ignored this skill and survived just fine, but given how much I spent playing this game, I shouldn't have ignored it. I would recommend most players try to get this to at least level 15 if they have their first two combat skills at or around 40ish, as you'll want at least the level 15 benefits. That said, getting the skill to level 25 is VERY handy as it will give you an extra inventory folder which is helpful in organizing your inventory (folders don't give extra space, just extra organizational capabilities). It is worth mentioning however that getting this skill to level 25 will require at least a few nights of focusing on nothing but leveling this skill, so you might want to do this on a gaming session when you are semi-distracted (watching Youtube on another monitor or something). It also pairs well with Gardening if there's a particular gardening session you are doing in Serbule anyway during these times.

Combat Wisdom is a different type of experience point that you might start getting into either in Serbule or Serbule Hills. At the time of this guide's creation, this is not in full implementation. It is possible it will be used as a way to further specialize your character and their skills. Right now the main way you get Combat Wisdom is by killing named mobs/enemies.

In Serbule Hills, there are a significant number of these special mobs, many of which have Favor quests associated with them or the nearby areas where you are likely to run into them. Serbule has a few of these named mobs as well. They are typically a bit harder to kill than similar enemies of the same type. There is usually a quest with one of the NPCs associated with them, too, but you don't need to have the quest to kill them.

In some cases, you may not want to tussle with them till you can easily handle multiple mobs of the same type. Also, many of these named enemies will “summon” other mobs around them to attack you that have the same or similar names. Later on in Eltibule, as a paid player, you will run into some particularly-dangerous named bears that give Combat Wisdom, for example.

Another skill that can be leveled is Vocabulary. This is needed for skills like Bard. A word game can be used to level this skill using the command “/wordgame” (without quotes) in chat, I believe.

While I don't recommend that players learn Brewing early on due to how expensive it gets, you can find the NPC for it here, named Brianna Willer. Later on, if you purchase the game, this is definitely one of those late game crafting skills to learn. Your first experience with alcohol in the game may be at a Poetry Jam which usually take place Saturdays at Noon Eastern Time (US). You can drink at these events to get more dance buffs. Brewing also gives other useful buffs like Melee Accuracy, XP buffs, Health/Stam/Mana, and extra damage vs certain kinds of mobs.

In 2023 we were introduced to a new magic skill called Weather Witching. Similar to Ice and Fire Magic, this skill seems to focus on abilities that deal Shock damage and uses specific rare items for leveling the skill on your own rather than learning them from NPCs directly. This means the cost to level this particular combat skill are not very cheap and might be considerably tougher to level than other combat skills.

Also, the quests for Favor here are quite difficult for a new player and might be something more easily done as a paid player of the game. As far as I know, however, demo players can chose to play as Weather Witches.

If you've been clicking through this guide chronologically, you're near the end! I'd recommend heading to the Serbule Hills Dungeons section of this guide or going back to the Serbule section to learn about other early-game skills. Or, if you want to learn about non-demo skills, head to Eltibule.