Revision 9

Welcome to Hethereau

Neverness to Everness is an open-world action RPG set in Hethereau, a neon-lit metropolis where supernatural Anomalies coexist with everyday city life. You play as an Appraiser assigned to Eibon, a struggling anomaly hunter crew operating out of an antique shop in Bridge Crossing. The game launches April 29, 2026 on PC, Mac, PS5, iOS, and Android with full cross-platform play and cross-save.

NTE is a big game with a lot of systems, from action combat and team building to vehicle driving, housing, and city management. This guide covers the basics to help you hit the ground running without feeling overwhelmed. Whether you are coming from Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves, or have never played a gacha RPG before, the fundamentals here will give you a solid foundation.

First Steps

After launching the game, you will create your character by choosing the gender for Esper Zero, the protagonist. Both versions play identically; the choice is purely cosmetic and affects dialogue and cutscene presentation. Once character creation is done, you enter the tutorial prologue.

The prologue introduces the basic combat system, the Esper Cycle system, and the city of Hethereau itself. Pay attention during these early sequences because they teach core mechanics you will use throughout the entire game. At the end of the prologue, you receive Esper Zero as your starter character and Haniel as a pre-registration milestone reward. Both characters are solid and will carry you through the early game without trouble.

Understanding Combat

Combat in NTE revolves around a team of 4 characters. You control one character at a time and can swap freely between all four during fights with no cooldown penalty. Each character has three combat tools at their disposal: Normal Attacks (basic combos executed by tapping the attack button), Skills (ability moves on cooldown timers), and an Ultimate (a powerful finishing move charged through combat).

Two mechanics set NTE's combat apart from competitors. The parry system rewards precise timing: a successful parry blocks incoming damage and instantly fills the Esper Cycle Meter, giving you a massive offensive advantage. The stagger system creates burst damage windows. Every enemy has a break bar; once you fill it through sustained attacks, the enemy enters a broken state where they take significantly increased damage for a short time. Learning to chain parries into break windows is the key to high-level play.

The Esper Cycle

The Esper Cycle is NTE's elemental system. Six elements are arranged in a wheel: Cosmos, Anima, Incantation, Chaos, Psyche, and Lakshana. Only adjacent pairs on the wheel react with each other. This means not every element combination produces a reaction; you need to be deliberate about which elements you pair together.

Building a team with 2 to 3 adjacent elements creates what is called a "reaction lane." Characters within the same reaction lane trigger powerful combo effects when their attacks interact. A Cosmos character followed by an Anima character (or vice versa) creates different reactions than a Chaos and Psyche pair. Understanding your reaction lane is the foundation of team building in NTE.

Team Building Basics

Start by picking characters that share adjacent elements on the Esper Cycle wheel. Two or three characters from the same reaction lane form the core of your team. The 4th slot is flexible and should fill whatever role your team lacks.

If your team deals plenty of damage but struggles to stay alive, slot in a healer like Fadia. If enemies are not breaking fast enough, add a break specialist like Daffodil. If you need a defensive anchor, a shielder like Adler provides consistent protection. Nanally is widely considered the strongest DPS at launch; if you pull her from the gacha, she fits into almost any team composition.

Gacha and Spending

NTE uses the Scarborough Fair gacha system. Unlike many competitors, there is no 50/50 mechanic on limited banners. Every S-class pull on a limited character banner is guaranteed to be the featured character. This is a significant advantage for players who want a specific character without worrying about losing a coin flip.

The base S-class rate is 1.88%, with a soft pity system that increases the rate starting around pull 70. Most players hit their S-class around pull 75 to 80. Pre-registration rewards and early game content provide an estimated 80 to 90 free pulls, so you will have a solid start even as a free-to-play player.

There are two pull currencies: Solid Dice (for limited banners) and Fabricated Dice (for the standard permanent banner). Save your Solid Dice for limited banners featuring characters you want. Use Fabricated Dice freely on the standard banner since they cannot be used elsewhere.

City Life

Beyond combat, Hethereau is a living city packed with things to do. The City Tycoon system lets you buy property, run businesses, and customize vehicles. Side activities include fishing, mahjong, racing, rhythm games, claw machines, part-time jobs, and more. These activities are not just fluff; they earn Fons (the city currency) and contribute to your City Tycoon level.

Be aware of the wanted system if you get too rowdy in the streets. Attacking NPCs, stealing vehicles, or causing property damage raises your wanted level, which can lead to a police chase and eventual arrest. Getting caught sends you to the prison system, which is its own gameplay experience with unique activities. It is worth experiencing at least once.

Progression Tips

What to Do Next

Once you have cleared the prologue, built a basic team, and gotten comfortable with combat, the game opens up significantly. Explore Hethereau on foot or by vehicle, pick up side quests, try out the City Tycoon features, and push through the main story to unlock more content. Check the reroll guide if you want to optimize your starting pulls, or jump straight into the action if you prefer to play with whatever characters you get.

NTE rewards curiosity. Wander off the beaten path, talk to NPCs, try every mini-game you find, and do not be afraid to experiment with different team compositions. The game is designed to be enjoyed at your own pace, whether you are a hardcore optimizer or a casual explorer.

Day One Priorities for New Players

The launch-window play loop in NTE rewards a few specific habits that are easy to miss without prior beta exposure. Working through the priorities below on the first day pushes a fresh account out of the early progression bottleneck and into the same daily and weekly rhythm that veterans run, without locking in mistakes that take patches to undo.

Push Hunter Level to 20 to Unlock Appraisal Level 2

Once your Hunter Level hits 20, an Ascension Quest unlocks that raises your account's Appraisal Level to 2. Appraisal Level is the gate that controls which difficulty tier you can run inside instanced domains. At Appraisal Level 1, every domain you enter offers Stage 1 of its reward tracks; once Appraisal Level 2 is active, the same domains expose Stage 2 with better drops for the same stamina cost.

Stage 1 through Stage 6 of any given domain charge the same character stamina and award the same character experience. The differences between stages are concentrated in the secondary loot tables, in particular Beetle Coins, upgrade material rarity, and the chance of bonus drops. Pushing Appraisal Level early therefore shifts the entire account onto a higher passive return per stamina point, which compounds for the rest of the patch.

Farm Hunter Guides at Houdini's Magic Stage

The Hunter Guide family of items is the universal experience material that works on every Esper in the roster. Unlike talent or ascension materials, Hunter Guides are not tied to a specific element or character, so any stockpile you build can be redirected to whichever character you decide to invest in next.

Houdini's Magic Stage is the early domain that drops the largest cluster of Hunter Guides on collection mode. Because the rewards are universal, this domain is the safe spend for the first few days of stamina even before you have settled on a main DPS or support to invest in. Drop into the collection tab, run the Hunter Guide reward track, and bank everything you earn until your team plan is clearer.

Do Not Burn Materials on Characters You Will Drop

Ascension and talent materials in NTE are not refundable. Spending Hunter Guides, talent books, or Beetle Coins on a character that ends up benched is the most common day-one mistake reported across launch-week guides. The cost is not just the materials themselves but the loss of upgrades on the character you actually keep using a week later, since material income is gated by stamina rather than time.

If you have not decided on a long-term carry, default to leveling Esper Zero, Haniel, and any Adler you receive from launch login rewards. All three are universally useful in early content and rarely become dead investments even after a stronger DPS appears in your roster.

Reach the Standard Banner Selector Carefully

The Standard Banner hands out a free S-Rank Selector after 50 pulls without a natural S-Rank drop. Triggering the selector before checking whether you already pulled one of the six standard S-Rank characters naturally is the second most common day-one mistake. If you pick a character on the selector and then pull the same character a few rolls later, the second copy turns into duplicate Awakening progression rather than a new roster slot.

The practical rule is to space your standard banner pulls across the full 50 budget, watch which characters drop along the way, and only commit the selector after you can see the gap in your roster. The selector itself does not expire once it appears, so there is no penalty for deferring the choice for a few hours of play.

Day One Priority Checklist