The Illuvium Overworld beta debuted on December 12th, 2022. Illuvium has captivated gamers with it’s monster collecting style of gameplay long before that date, and their GAM3 Awards Best RPG award is a testament to it. Thousands of gamers have begun traversing both Sanctum Mesa and Crimson Waste in search of those elusive Illuvials. The Private beta has been a complete success by all accounts, but not everyone has access quite yet. So let’s take a look at the different components of the Illuvium Overworld and what it takes to become an Illuvial Master.

The Controls

It’s always a good idea to start with the controls. The Illuvium Overworld is a PC based game and as such the main way to play is with a good old fashioned keyboard and mouse. Being a controller guy myself I had a difficult time with this gameplay method. However, gamers rejoice, after about 30 minutes of fumbling around the Overworld I decided to try out my Xbox controller. Low and behold, it does work for most things.

You still need to click items with the mouse and move Illuvials around the battle board with the mouse, but this was a massive breakthrough for me and has made gameplay much easier. PlayStation controllers work as well and as the team continues to build out this game the playability will only improve.

The Map

The map is an integral part of the game and a very useful tool. This shows the region in its entirety and can be accessed at any time. It also shows you which areas you have explored using a nice highlight feature. Moreover, you can click H to see a heat map. This will show you what Illuvials and resources may be nearby. Take a look:

As you start your journey, I hope this article gives you some insight into the Illuvium Overworld. This is a good start for any Illuvial hunter. Now that we are familiar with the controls and the world's map, it is time to dive right into everything you need to know before jumping into your first game, covering everything from extracting resources, capturing your first Illuvial, managing your inventory, among other elements.

Extracting Resources

Once you have the controls down, the first thing you should do is gather resources. Mining for resources is an integral component of the game. This is how you collect shards. Shards are essentially pokeballs. Once collected, they need to be cured in Sanctum Mesa’s Forge and then they are ready for use. I suggest doing this after each run. I would consider a run to be the full use of your energy bar as you traverse Crimson Waste.

The energy bar will start with 5000 energy and slowly work its way to zero as you gather resources and catch Illuvials. There’s nothing worse than encountering a rare Illuvial with your shards sitting in the storage locker. Here’s a quick video of scanning and extracting resources from deposits in the Overworld:

The resources you mine in the Illuvium Overworld will end up in The Forge. Ultimately, these will be used to upgrade various items such as shards or weapons.

Upgrading Items

In Illuvium, there are many different items that can be upgraded. Each one making your gameplay more efficient. Every time you finish a run the first place you’ll want to go to is The Forge. This is where all of your newly acquired items will be. There are many different aspects to The Forge. In this first image you can see weapons that are upgradeable, but currently we don’t have the resources to do the upgrade. Moving on we look at a shard that can be upgraded.

You’ll see the green check mark indicating that it’s upgradeable. In this case, we are taking an uncured shard and curing it. This makes it available for use. Once cured the shard will move over to our Locker Storage. Once the shards are cured, they can be moved into your active inventory to take with you on your next adventure in Crimson Waste to catch Illuvials and strengthen your team.

Catching Illuvials

Now that we have our shards, how does one actually catch these elusive creatures? The catch mechanics are pretty simple. First you will encounter a floating orb in the Overworld. Then you shoot the orb and press E on your keyboard to enter the battle. Before entering you will have the option to scan the orb by pressing E again to see what Illuvials are available in this battle. To jump right into the battle without scanning you would press R.

This is where Illuvium becomes an entirely different game! You now enter into the auto-battler portion. Here you will face off against Illuvials and upon beating them you will have the opportunity to catch them with the shards you mined earlier. Take a look:

As you can see it’s not always easy to catch Illuvials. The first Atlas I went for got out of my common shard pretty easily. Luckily I had an uncommon shard, which got the job done. The next question becomes, after an Illuvial is caught where does it go?

Where Do Illuvials Live?

Your Illuvials can be found in two places. Your inventory and the Locker Storage. The Inventory is what you bring into Crimson Waste. These are the Illuvials you want to battle with. The Locker Storage will hold the rest of your team. Once you have 3 of the same Illuvial you can evolve that Illuvial through a fusing process.

Fusing Illuvials

Fusing Illuvials will help strengthen your team and ultimately help you climb the leaderboard. To fuse Illuvials you will revisit the Forge. Once there you can navigate to the Illuvials page and see what is available to be fused. Here is a video showing the process of fusing 3 Atlas into Axon:

Competitive Leaderboard

All of these actions above give you points. Those points can be seen on the Leaderboard. Everytime you make a run in the Illuvium Overworld you get points. You can receive points for winning battles, catching Illuvials and extracting resources. Once back in Sanctum Mesa, you can check out how you stack up against other Rangers. Part of the strategy to climb the Leaderboard is being efficient in your Overworld play. The best way to be efficient is to utilize the Map tool early and often.

Illuvial Master in the Making

Now that you have reached this point, you are equipped with almost all the necessary knowledge to get into Illuvium Overworld with full confidence on the basics and essentials you need to master to become the most known Illuvial trainer in all of Sanctum Mesa and Crimson Waste. If you wish to become a better player in Illuvium Arena as well, make sure to check out our previous guide on how to rank consistently within the daily top 20 leaderboard by grasping the basics and nailing them down to put you above everyone else.

Make sure to check out Rhamphy for more Illuvium content, detailed guides, and tune in to Illuvium Rundown to know all what is happening in the Illuvium world.

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