This is an experience that can be particularly brutal for any new player. On top of fighting mobs, you now must contend with the elements as well. It will only get worse in Gazluk Mountains, too, so it is important that you get a good grip on surviving the cold in Kur. Eventually, you'll be running through this zone like it's nothing special when you get to the point of doing a Work Order Run, but for now it'll be rough.

Before we get started, there is something I really must stress: do not worry about dying to the mobs or the cold. The experience you get from navigating here is worth dying over and over to learn how to route the zone. You are not actually on a timer unless you are playing hardcore mode.

Plus, even with this information I am giving you here, you will most likely die a few times, but it's really not a big deal aside from the reset to the entrance to the zone after each respawn. If you get the ability “Recall Beginnings” (you'll find it on an NPC in this zone, actually) you can immediately warp back to the place that teleported you to Kur to begin with, which might be closer to the NPC or mobs you want to be fighting than where you are reset to when you die. Aside from returning you to the start of a dungeon, teleporting back to known locations in Kur and Gazluk is the skill's main benefits.

Later, as you get better at navigating, you'll know you died because you didn't get that extra buff you probably should have added, or you'll know you tried to run somewhere new without your winter gear when you really did need it. Death is only a temporary setback and in some cases you'll even want to die to reach the Eltibule portal again quickly from wherever you are at. As we've stated before, you'll want to ignore the notion that dying is of any major significance while playing PG, because it simply isn't a big deal.

That doesn't mean I don't intentionally hide my gravestones in Kur, though, I've become paranoid about other people seeing them for some reason and embarrassing me. Thus, I try to die from the cold in places players don't normally travel so that it doesn't look like I am dying on purpose!

The best way to experience Kur for the first time is to just grab a piece of wood and head in from Hogan's Keep in Eltibule!

You Will Need:

• 1 Oak/Maple/Cedar wood

When you first enter Kur Mountains, usually from the portal north of Hogan's Keep in northern Eltibule, you're going to start losing Body Heat right away. Body Heat is a bar near your health and mana. When you reach zero, you get a Frostbite debuff. This is minor, but it will quickly turn into Hypothermia which will slowly but surely drop your health by increasing amounts till you expire. Early on, surviving in Kur is very hard, but in the late game you will have both the knowledge of the area and the resources to deal with the harsh environment most of the time. You'll still die, it'll just be less of a setback.

If you look around, you'll see a sign and a campfire. Read the sign to learn a recipe on how to make simple fires using Fuel Oil and the various woods in your inventory. Then click the campfire that is here and add a log of any wood to it if it is unlit. You'll see it adds time in “hours” to the length of the campfire.

There are several “always available” campfires in Kur like this one on the official wiki. Eventually you'll want to learn where they are at in order to be able to run from one to another safely. Sometimes they will not be lit, but if you keep Oak, Maple, or Cedar on your character you can relight them for a significant time period for very little cost. Right now you don't have to spend your precious wood if you do not want to, but later on, you'll be one of the players who primarily keeps these lit for newbies to the region.

The second big thing to mention here is that there are Alchemy recipes that will be essential if you want to fight in Kur instead of just run from campfire to campfire. The best one in my experience for survival was the Cold Resistance potion that only requires Green Glass, Bottle of Water, and a Nightmare Flesh that can be farmed mostly in the Goblin Keep in Eltibule. The other one worth mentioning is Orcish Thickskin Potion which works very well with gear (mentioned below), but this requires Muntok Peppercorns which are an extremely rare item.

Meditation provides a few other solutions, one is a level 15 Meditation you can get farmed up to pretty easily with minimal resources assuming you can find the scroll that teaches it. A decent amount of Salt, Parasol Mushrooms, Potatoes, and Crabs can be used to grind Meditation up to level 15 where you can use a Mint at a Meditation Pillar to add Indirect Cold Mitigation. At level 17 with a Mycena Mushroom you can get 10% Cold Resistance, which I'm not sure will help with the cold ticks, but should help against some of the Yetis and Ice Elementals here. Combined with a good Meditation Stool, you could have this buff last for several hours worth of gameplay.

Another honorable mention is Fire Magic, which provides a very good Wall of Fire spell that will restore a good amount of Body Heat early on. In fact, Fire Magic is relatively easy to level up in Kur if you know what you are doing.

I wrote an entire section on teleportation tricks you can also do to make surviving and farming in Kur easier.

Later in the game, you'll find the “Rage to Heat” potions are affordable for you to use or farm in Gazluk. They keep your Body Heat from dropping while you are in combat, encouraging you to fight stuff along the way in both Kur and Gazluk. These are especially helpful during Gazluk farming runs.

If you are a Fire Mage or can use Fire Magic, you can survive very easily here. In fact, this can be a great place to farm for nearly 40-80 as you can pretty much stay outside without dying as long as you are in combat and using your spells that generate heat.

Lastly, this section requires mention of the Winter Gear that can be created by Mid-to-High level Leatherworking. These items not only have increases to Max Body Heat, but also reduce Indirect Cold Damage, which is what you are taking when your Body Heat drops in Kur. These items require “Tuft of Fur” which can be farmed from many of the mobs inside Kur itself.

With both buffs and better gear, you can nearly mitigate all major Cold damage you would otherwise take, requiring you to seek out heat sources significantly less often than you otherwise would need to.

Storage Crates are learned by Lamashu in the Kur Mountains. She's kind of on her own in an area with a campsite and tons of wolves, deer, and wood lying around. What's nice about Storage Crates is that you can store items in them nearly anywhere in the game. At first, with lower level Carpentry, you cannot store much (Shoddy versions only hold 4 items), but later on you'll get to the point where you can access much, much more.

If you've ever seen the movie Inception, you'll know there are dream worlds inside dream worlds shown there as part of the story. This is true with Storage Crates as well, sort of. They all use the same storage space, but the first four slots should be accessible from any type of crate, meaning you can store Storage Crates inside Storage Crates. The crates will last for five minutes only, which should be enough time for most use cases.

I would also recommend that – for quality of life reasons – you use one Council Storage or Saddle slot to store at least one storage crate. Some players also use crates or their Saddlebag for things like Winter Fae Bloods and Glowy Yellow Crystals; items that are too dangerous to hold onto or can't store in large numbers. Some people may use them for other buffs like food, flowers, and Alchemy potions and just walk around with the mats needed to make the crates on demand (three items is less space required oftentimes).

One trick that new players should know is that there is an Orc NPC named Ratuk the Thinker on the ice floes in Western Kur that teaches Teleportation skills. He is difficult to get to safely without any sort of campfires, heat, or cold mitigation. By leveling up Teleportation skills a bit and gaining Favor with him, you can get the spell “Recall Last Recall”. This requires only Salt and Aquamarines. Aquamarines are a unique gem that you can actually get by Bartering with Flia in Serbule a Tuft of Fur and a Beak (which you can buy from Way the Mushroom in the Mushroom Cave), making them very cheap and easy to obtain for players willing to do a bit of traveling. Tufts of Fur are already going to be pretty plentiful if you are killing Wolves, which you can do safely from Lamashu's campfire. Or just killing Bears near the beginning of the zone.

Once you have a stack or so of Aquamarines and a lot of Salt, you can bind to the Kur Outpost teleportation circle and cast Recall Circle followed by Recall Last Recall over and over to make it your “Hearth's Home” target. Each time you cast, you will gain experience in Teleportation. Once you hit level 20 you will get the spell Recall Beginnings, which lets you go the the exit point of the last teleport you used in a zone without consuming your Amethysts. It's primarily used to go back to the beginning of a dungeon, but there's another trick you can use with it to farm in the more hostile environments.

If you then go into Kur Tower and then exit, you will be able to fight Panthers just to the West of it for Quality Skins over and over. If you die to the Panthers or other mobs in the area, or just to exposure to cold, you can simply use the Recall Beginnings spell to immediately head right back to the exit you were dropped at from Kur Tower. This lets you farm Panthers with ease. You could do a similar tactic with the Yeti Cave (aka Ice Cave) to fight Yetis or the Wolf Cave if you want to fight the wolves and pick up wood and other items on the northern shoreline. It costs ZERO materials to use Recall Beginnings, so abuse the heck out of it here in Kur.

Later on, in Gazluk Mountains, you can use a similar tactic to farm mobs or the Glowy Yellow Crystals in areas that you feel comfortable. You'll die a lot, but death is only an inconvenience in Project Gorgon.

In this location are several Orcs and some Orc Camps. These NPCs will sometimes drop books or notes or other items that will help you learn the Orc language. There is actually an NPC you will find later on in Gazluk Keep that is significantly better at helping you learn Orcish, but for this earlier zone, the books and notes are your best bet to start learning it now.

We don't yet really know what all being versed in the Orcish language will be needed for in future zones, but right now there are two Orcs in New Prestonbule in Gazluk that won't really converse with you till you have higher Orcish, and one of them has some high level Barters that you might want to get.