Beginner Guide - Your First 10 Hours
A walkthrough of the first ten hours of Task Bar Hero: which heroes the catalog confirms as free starters, what Alchemy and the Rune Tree unlock, and the early stages that teach the core combat loop.
Task Bar Hero has a short tutorial and a long mid-game. This guide focuses on the first ten hours of play, where the decisions you make set the trajectory of your save for the next month. None of the choices below are irreversible — you can always change teams and re-evaluate routes later — but starting in the right direction saves dozens of hours of grinding.
Every recommendation in this guide is anchored to the current public hero, stage, rune, and Cube catalogs. Where the catalog does not yet record a number (exact unlock gold costs, per-stage drop rates), this guide explicitly says so instead of inventing one.
Start With a Verified Free Hero
The hero catalog confirms three free starters in patch 1.00.26:
- Knight — the durable tank. Highest recorded base HP and armor, Sword + Shield equipment path, and a +25% boss stagger bonus. Unlocks at Stage 1-1.
- Ranger — the physical ranged attacker. Bow + Arrow equipment, fastest listed base attack speed among the free starters.
- Sorcerer — the area-of-effect caster. Staff + Orb equipment, the lowest listed base HP and armor of the three.
The first hour of play is the Knight tutorial. Run it, equip the Long Sword and Buckler recorded in the item catalog, and then decide whether to grow the team around Knight or branch into ranged or caster roles.
Pick the Second Hero From the Same Three
The catalog does not record a Mage or Paladin unlock cost at any stage, and there is no "Mage at Stage 2-1 for 500 gold" path in the current data. Treat the verified roster — Knight, Ranger, Sorcerer, plus the Free DLC Priest — as your planning set.
A pragmatic second hero, after Knight has stabilized Stage 1-3, is:
- Sorcerer if you want faster wave clears and do not mind low defensive margin.
- Ranger if you prefer a stable physical backline with high attack cadence.
- Priest (Free DLC, 500 coins per the hero catalog) if you want sustain before adding another damage dealer.
The catalog does not record when each of these unlocks relative to Knight, so the only safe plan is to keep clearing campaign stages and pick whichever hero unlocks next.
Unlock the Cube and the Rune Tree Early
Two account-wide systems are unlocked at fixed hero levels and they pay back faster than any per-stage farming grind:
- Cube - Alchemy unlocks at Hero Level 4. Alchemy converts unwanted items into gold (and Cube XP) and is the catalog's recorded early-game gold source. The first batch of unwanted Common drops should go straight into Alchemy, not the vendor.
- Rune Tree unlocks at Hero Level 3 and is fully resettable. The eight branches (Formation, Wealth, Growth, Storage, Chests, Repose, Combat, Cube) apply account-wide; there are no per-hero rune slots in the current catalog.
The Rune Tree's own recommended order is recorded in the rune catalog: 1 Formation, 2 Wealth, 3 Growth, 4 Storage, 5 Chests, 6 Repose, 7 Combat, 8 Cube. The Formation branch unlocks the 2nd and 3rd hero slots, which is why it is first.
Use the First Three Normal Stages as Your Test Loop
The stage catalog records these three Act 1 Normal stages at the start of the campaign:
| Stage | Recommended Level | Mini-boss |
|---|---|---|
| 1-1 Pasture | Lv 1 | Goblin Thief |
| 1-2 Shadow Meadow | Lv 2 | Goblin Shaman |
| 1-3 Wasteland | Lv 3 | Orc |
These three stages are short, low-pressure, and well documented in the database. Use them as your measurement loop: run each stage for the same amount of time, record the results, and only widen the shortlist once the loop is reproducible.
The campaign contains 120 stages in total across four difficulties (Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Torment) and three acts each. Difficulty-specific Soul Stones (Soulstone - Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Torment) are recorded as the act-boss entry items, consumed only on a successful clear.
How the Tools Fit In
Two client-side tools turn the catalog into a farming shortlist:
- Drop Finder maps a material's rarity to a target Recommended Level band and returns the campaign stages closest to that band. It does not claim that a material is confirmed to drop from the listed stage.
- Farming Optimizer applies the same level model, prefers a Normal-difficulty stage when a close match exists, and suggests a current hero for the test.
A reasonable first session with these tools is to type a Common Decoration material — Minor Ruby is the easiest first example because Common materials produce the broadest candidate band — and look at the closest Normal candidates.
What This Guide Does Not Promise
The current item catalog records base equipment families (Long Sword, Buckler, Short Bow, Wooden Arrow, Wooden Staff, Magic Orb, Novice Scepter, Prayer Tome, Short Crossbow, Short Bolt, Wooden Axe, Short Hatchet, plus the shared Wooden and Copper armor and accessory tiers) and notes that each has 10 rarity variants. It does not yet record per-stage drop tables, so this guide does not name a "best farm" stage for any material.
Where a more confident recommendation requires a number the database does not yet contain, this guide says so and points you to the live game for verification. That boundary keeps the guide useful as the catalog grows.
Wrap-up
The first ten hours of Task Bar Hero are about building habits that compound and that match the current public data:
- Start with Knight, then pick Ranger, Sorcerer, or the Free DLC Priest as the second hero.
- Unlock Alchemy (Hero Lv 4) and the Rune Tree (Hero Lv 3) before chasing per-stage grind.
- Use the first three Normal stages as your measurement loop.
- Treat the Drop Finder and Farming Optimizer as shortlist generators, not drop tables.
From there, the next guides in this series cover the Rune Tree branch order, the Cube daily rotation, and how to read a patch thread.