Echoes of Aincrad Prologue Guide: Profile Setup and Difficulty Explained
Echoes of Aincrad Prologue doesn’t just drop you into combat—it asks you to set up your profile first. That means choosing a username and selecting a difficulty before you do anything else. It’s also not obvious at the start how to fine-tune your settings, so this guide walks you through those early decisions and what they affect.
Quick scan: what you’ll do next
- Jump to: Choose a Difficulty
- Jump to: Start the Prologue
- Jump to: Fighting Kobolds Beyond the Large Doors
- Jump to: How to Beat the Sentry Golem
- Jump to: How to Beat Illfang the Kobold Lord
- Jump to: Learn the Basics in the Town of Beginnings
Checklists
Before you can begin Echoes of Aincrad Prologue, you’ll need to create a username and choose your difficulty. If you want a deeper look at what each difficulty changes—especially what you should expect from the early quest—there’s a Prologue walkthrough that covers it. You’ll also learn how to adjust your settings right away, since the game doesn’t clearly point you to that option at first.
- Jump to each section:
- Choose a Difficulty
- Start the Prologue
- Fighting Kobolds Beyond the Large Doors
- How to Beat the Sentry Golem
- How to Beat Illfang the Kobold Lord
- Learn the Basics in the Town of Beginnings
- Choose a Difficulty
- Start the Prologue
- Fighting Kobolds Beyond the Large Doors
- How to Beat the Sentry Golem
- How to Beat Illfang the Kobold Lord
- Learn the Basics in the Town of Beginnings
Choose a Difficulty
Echoes of Aincrad offers four difficulty options, plus an additional alternate setting that unlocks later. Picking one comes down to your own comfort level and the kind of pacing you want—whether you want a story-forward run or a grindier combat challenge. On top of harder enemies, you’ll also see improved loot and more experience overall, though the experience gain from completing quests is described as relatively small.
Difficulty choices and their in-game descriptions:
- Story – “For those who just want to enjoy the story.”
- Normal – “For those who enjoy a balance between story and combat.”
- Hard – “For those who want a harder challenge.”
- Very Hard – “For those with the utmost confidence in their fighting prowess.”
The alternate difficulty-adjacent option layered on top of your chosen setting is Death Game mode. There are prerequisites before you can select it: you must either clear Echoes of Aincrad or purchase a special edition. Digital Edition and Ultimate Edition owners can choose Death Game mode shortly after finishing the Prologue, but doing so requires starting a new save—one benefit is that it lets you skip the tutorial to return to roughly where you left off.
Start the Prologue
Once you lock in your difficulty, you’ll get a short controls tutorial. Follow the on-screen prompts to learn how to move your camera and character. After that, open the inventory and settings menu—on PC, you’ll use the Tab key. From there, the gear icon takes you to settings and is also described as the route to quitting Echoes of Aincrad.
Next, your objective is to meet up with the party. As you move through the corridor, your friends will talk to you while you advance. Keep pushing forward to learn extra actions too, including how to jump and how to attack.
Your first real encounter is with a Kobold. Because they’re positioned as weak early enemies, you can take them down after a couple hits. You’ll keep running into Kobolds inside the dungeon, while your party continues chatting in the background. Along the way, you can loot materials like Emeralds and Sacred Bones for later use, though the guide notes you shouldn’t panic if you skip them—you’ll find more chances to gather supplies.
Fighting Kobolds Beyond the Large Doors
When you reach a pair of tall, large doors, interact with them to trigger a cutscene. Inside, your party fades away, leading directly into a Kobold fight. A new character named Iori appears soon after, and after a brief conversation you’ll learn practical details like how to heal and how to access the same menu options you were taught earlier.
Continue deeper through the dungeon with Iori. During the stretch ahead, he repeatedly recommends leaning on your heavy attack to deal with enemies.
Tip From Guide Writer Jeffrey
One of the most effective ways to dispatch Kobolds and other enemies, the guide says, is a sprinting heavy attack. The claim is that it can hit hard enough to often take foes out in a single blow, and even when it doesn’t finish the job immediately, it’s a strong way to kick off an encounter.
After cutting through a bunch of weaker Kobolds, you’ll reach a Kobold Trooper. The guide highlights that many enemy types in Echoes of Aincrad come with variants, and this Trooper introduces a shield mechanic. That’s the shift point where you start dealing with more than just basic health checks.
As you travel, you’ll spot treasure chests. They’re not hard to miss because you can see them on your minimap and hear Iori call them out. Treasure chests can reward you with money called Col, basic items, materials, weapons, and even crafting blueprints.
At some point, you’ll learn more about coordinating with your partner. The game presents a slightly confusing system where your partner can swap between two modes. Free Mode lets your partner focus on enemies you aren’t currently locked onto, while Switch Mode directs your partner to focus the enemy you have targeted.
Even if both partner modes can feel low-impact at first, Switch Mode is described as useful for pulling attention. The guide writer notes that putting the partner on Switch Mode helps redirect an enemy’s aggro toward them, and that a tooltip explains the key rule: when you dodge successfully in this mode, aggro transfers to your partner.
After that, the next Kobold variant you’ll face uses spears, making it tougher than the earlier weaker ones.
- Smooth Hide
- Lustrous Carapace
- Crude Weapon Fragment
- Shortsword
- Iron Chunk
- Col
Once you reach the designated Safe Area, look for a blue sphere you can interact with. Using it heals you, refills your Healing Crystals, and causes enemies other than bosses to respawn. After you rest, continue until you find a yellow wall you can interact with; that setup leads into the Sentry Golem boss fight.
How to Beat the Sentry Golem
The Sentry Golem is the first boss you’ll meet in Echoes of Aincrad. With Iori helping you, it can be less stressful than later fights, and if you want to play aggressively, the guide encourages using Healing Crystals rather than holding back. You’ll also get another rest opportunity before your next battle. Here are some quick tips, even if the fight ends before you can fully learn them:
- The Sentry Golem can perform a short-range stomp. It may do this once or twice and can even chain it into a punch.
- Because the boss has low health, Iori may stun it quickly. If you see the Sentry Golem drop to its knees, rush in and hit it repeatedly.
- While it has additional attacks, the guide notes it didn’t get to use them during their run.
After you defeat the boss, a cutscene plays where a girl runs in for help. You’ll also be able to pick up the Sentry Golem’s loot here. In one playthrough, the guide lists the rewards as:
- Iron Ingot
- Smooth Hide
- Lustrous Carapace
- Crude Weapon Fragment
- Iron Chunk, Shortsword
- Col
Grab your items and keep pushing deeper. Eventually, you’ll find someone else lying on the ground and needing help, which triggers another cutscene. That sequence sets up the next boss: Illfang the Kobold Lord.
How to Beat Illfang the Kobold Lord
After learning those two helpless girls were setting up an ambush, Illfang arrives as the boss. The guide describes Illfang as more challenging than the Sentry Golem, with multiple health bars and phases that each bring different attacks. Here’s what to expect during the fight:
- Illfang can roar to summon a swarm of Kobolds. The recommendation is to eliminate them so they can’t distract you, and this is said to work best when the boss is focused on Iori.
- Illfang can perform a large-area effect attack where a green circle appears before it lands. Make sure to avoid the marked area.
- If Illfang drags his axe along the ground, he’s charging up to strike you.
- He also has basic close-range moves like kicks and axe slashes. If you’re struggling to deal damage, the guide suggests leaning on Iori and using his Support Skills for both healing and damage.
- When you drain Illfang’s first health bar, you’ll need to execute a heavy attack to reach the next phase.
- In the second phase, Illfang becomes more aggressive while using a glowing green sword. The guide calls out leaping attacks, a kick with decent reach, and a new maneuver that sends wind walls out for you to dodge.
- His third phase has him crawling along the ground while continuing to fight. Since he has low health at that point, the guide says you won’t need to learn much more to finish him.
When you defeat Illfang in the Prologue, another cutscene begins. Iori guesses the two girls who ambushed you were likely behind your friends being wiped out. The story then leads to you receiving a unique relic called Sacred Tree Memory. After the cutscene ends, continue until you eventually exit the cave and reach a cliff where the Prologue concludes.
Learn the Basics in the Town of Beginnings
After completing most Echoes of Aincrad quests, you’ll reach an intermission with no quest attached. This guide covers that next segment. When you leave the cave using the Safe Area, you teleport to the Town of Beginnings. Your first goal is to head over to the inn, which you can find using your minimap.
Follow the waypoint to locate Iori inside and secure your own room. Go upstairs and enter the room with a green marker on its door. Inside, you’ll receive tooltips explaining how the Chest and Database systems work. The guide advises treating this room as a frequent stop, since you’ll use it whenever you spend Growth Points to level your character. What you invest in depends largely on your weapon choice and playstyle.
Hover over each attribute to see what it affects and how it changes your stats at the bottom left of the interface. Some attributes boost survivability, while others are better suited for increasing damage output. As you reach specific thresholds, you’ll also unlock passive bonuses such as faster attack speed.
The guide writer says they enjoy Daggers, so they heavily prioritized Agility because it benefits most from that attribute. They also mention following the strategy of Sung Jinwoo from Solo Leveling by putting most Growth Points into Agility, before eventually adding points into Vitality and Intelligence. The general advice given is to adjust based on what’s failing: if you’re dying often, increase Vitality; if you’re burning through Stamina constantly, invest in Endurance; and so forth.
Once you’re done using the Chest, head downstairs to meet up with Wyzeman and Saayu. After the cutscenes, you’ll have more to learn. Follow the newest waypoint to the Smithy, shown with a green hammer icon. At the Smithy, you can upgrade weapons, craft new weapons and armor, and merge weapons to gain new traits.
When you finish up there, follow the next waypoint to the Item Seller, marked with an orange icon. This vendor lets you purchase and craft consumables such as potions, explosive stones, and talismans with special abilities. If you need Col, you can also sell items here. The guide recommends picking up Healing Potions and SP potions during this stop.
After the Smithy and Item Seller, you’ll learn how to warp between locations within town. This is meant to save time throughout Echoes of Aincrad, since each town contains four teleport points. At this stage, you need to warp to the Main Terminal to take on a new quest.
As mentioned earlier, you’ll now have access to Death Game mode if you got it early. You still need to start a new save to enable it, but the tutorial can be skipped to return to this exact location. The guide repeats one major warning: dying in Death Game mode deletes your save. After you learn about that mode, you’ll also unlock any pre-order or special edition bonuses you may have earned.
When you’re ready to leave, interact with the Main Terminal and select Iori’s Request to begin the following quest.
Up Next: Iori’s Request Walkthrough
Top Guide Sections
- Tips & Tricks
- Walkthrough
- Partners
- When Character Customization Unlocks
