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Town of Beginnings
April 23, 2026 at 11:59 AM
Expanded with hub facilities, Main Terminal details, early story beats, partner selection, and difficulty switching
The Town of Beginnings is the hub city of Floor 1 in Aincrad. It is the spawn point for every player when the death game begins, and it remains the first city the player returns to during the opening hours of Echoes of Aincrad.
As the hub for Floor 1, the Town of Beginnings is where the player will usually pick up starter quests, meet companions, and prepare before heading into the wilds to farm materials and level up. Other first-floor settlements like Tolbana, Horunka Village, and Medai Village sit around it on the same floor.
The Town of Beginnings is the floor one hub where the player's journey in Echoes of Aincrad truly begins. After the opening events of the death game, this is the first town the protagonist enters, and it is where the party prepares for every expedition into the wider world of Aincrad. Returning here between missions is not optional. Every serious change to the party's loadout or power level has to happen inside the town walls before heading back out to the field.
Inside the town, the player can talk to NPCs, accept quests, and use a full set of city facilities such as the blacksmith for weapon reforging and gear enhancement. Equipment changes and character leveling can only be done here, not out in the field. That restriction makes the town a mandatory prep stage before every quest, since any new gear, stat allocation, or skill adjustment has to be sorted in town before the player redeploys.
NPC conversations: local townsfolk offer flavor, quest hooks, and occasional hints that feed into side content.
Quest acceptance: new and repeatable jobs can be picked up from questgivers around the plaza and from the central interface described below.
Smithy services: weapon upgrades, EX Mod Slot work, and material sinks for Tempered Steel are handled at the smithy. See the smithy article for the full breakdown of costs and tiers.
Loadout changes: swapping weapons, armor, consumable slots, and support skill setups is a town only action. Field play locks the current loadout.
Character leveling: spending Growth Points and reallocating stats happens at a dedicated terminal in town, not in the middle of a dungeon.
The Main Terminal is the access point to the rest of the world. Interacting with it lets the player fast travel to any previously visited town and also lets them pick which quest to focus on next. Quest entries are split into new quests that have not been cleared yet and quests that have already been completed, so material farming runs and enemy hunting reattempts are supported rather than locked out after a first clear.
Quests listed at the Main Terminal are tagged as either field quests or dungeon quests. The tag signals what kind of experience sits behind the entry, which helps the player plan around whether they are heading into open wilderness zones or into a structured dungeon layout on the way to an objective.
Fast travel: every town the player has visited appears as a warp option, so the Town of Beginnings effectively acts as a shortcut board to every other settled area across floors one and two.
Quest list: separate tabs for unfinished and completed quests let the player replay content for drops, materials, or extra experience.
Field vs dungeon tags: each quest entry is labeled so the player can choose the kind of encounter they want before committing to a trip out.
Difficulty selection: the current difficulty can be switched in town between quests, so players can push a harder setting for a specific job and dial it back afterward. See difficulty modes for the four settings available.
The party's early roughly month long stretch at the inn takes place inside the Town of Beginnings. The protagonist, Iori, Wyzeman, Argo, and Sou debate whether to remain in the safe town or to push forward and start climbing toward the upper floors. These conversations frame the opening of the campaign. Wyzeman's line about leveraging the group's beta tester advantage is delivered during one of these discussions, and it sets the tone for why the party eventually decides to move on instead of settling in.
The stretch of story set in the town leads directly into the first floor labyrinth push and the confrontation with Illfang the Kobold Lord, so the town is not just a shopping hub. It is also the staging ground for the first major boss arc.
Once a quest is selected from the Main Terminal, the player chooses which partner to bring along on that run. By default only one partner at a time accompanies the player in the field, which keeps the moment to moment combat a tight two character dynamic. Guest characters can raise the effective party size to three or more during large scale scripted battles, but those are the exception rather than the norm. The full roster of companions and their individual kits are covered in the NPC Companions article.
Difficulty can be freely switched in the Town of Beginnings whenever a quest is not active. The four settings available are Story, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard, and the choice only applies once the next quest begins. That means players can experiment with a harder setting for a specific enemy hunt or material farm, then come back to town, drop the difficulty, and proceed with the main story at a comfortable pace. The town is the only reliable place to make that swap, since the option is locked while the player is deployed on a quest.
Put together, all of these systems converge on the same idea: the Town of Beginnings is the mandatory gateway between expeditions. Leveling, gear changes, smithy work, partner selection, quest choice, fast travel, and difficulty switching all route through this one hub. Every time the player closes out a quest and respawns in town, the expectation is that they will stop, regear, rebuild, and plan the next run before stepping back out into the floors above.
