While the delay of GTA 6 is frustrating, there's a well-crafted alternative to dive into as you wait: Neverness to Everness. From fishing and playing Tetris to carjacking and pushing the boundaries of the law, there's plenty to do.

As an anime-style open-world game, NTE shares some DNA with GTA series, but its wealth of activities can leave you unsure where to begin. What follows will help you hit the ground running.

Hunter Level

Upon entering the game, you'll find yourself in Hethereau City. You can wander around, but you may quickly realize you can barely do anything. That's because you need to immediately focus on the game's two core progression systems: Hunter Level and Appraisal Level.

If you've played other gacha games, think of Hunter Level as your account level, and Appraisal Level as the world level. Hunter Level determines your overall game progress and what content is unlocked. Without a high enough level, you'll be seriously restricted.

The most direct and enjoyable way to raise your Hunter Level is by progressing through the main story quests and a large number of side quests. When quests are locked behind level requirements, open Exploration Guide and complete its various challenges. This not only provides a hefty amount of Hunter XP, but also rewards you with currency, materials for character growth, and all sorts of useful items.

While working through Exploration Guide, you can also tackle Anomaly Commissions along the way. These are essentially mini-boss encounters scattered across the map. The higher the difficulty, the better the rewards and XP.

Your Appraisal Level is directly tied to your Hunter Level. Every time you reach Hunter Level 10, 20, 30, and 40, your Appraisal Level increases by one. As your Appraisal Level rises, the world becomes more difficult, but once you reach Appraisal Level 3, you can freely switch the world difficulty, letting you effortlessly one-shot those biker gangs that once pushed you around.

Exploration & Movement

What makes exploration in Neverness to Everness unique is that it's a city you can freely drive through. So, once you've earned your first chunk of cash, it's highly recommended that you obtain a car immediately - it dramatically boosts your exploration efficiency.

After you get a vehicle, your top priority should be unlocking all Wertheimer Towers on the map. Much like viewpoints in traditional open-world games, approaching these towers clears the fog of war and reveals more points of interest.

At the same time, make sure you unlock every Phone Booth along the way. They serve as fast travel points, letting you move around the city quickly and efficiently.

City Tycoon

What truly sets NTE apart from other gacha games is its City Tycoon system. This part of the game has its own City Stamina, which is used to experience the game's core casual activities.

You can deliver food, play mahjong, or drive a flashy sports car you stole from some poor soul who just finished paying off their auto loan. Completing these activities earns you Fons, which are mainly used for non-character development purposes.

Cafe Management System lets you own your own café. Your café runs automatically in the background around the clock, generating passive income for you. Those funds can be used to obtain important items later on, or reinvested to upgrade your café and rake in even more profit.

You don't need to rush to stock up for a full 24 hours all at once. Since new menu items unlock quickly, it's a more efficient strategy to only restock materials for 4 hours at a time early on, and come back to adjust things once you've unlocked higher-level dishes.

Additionally, City Tycoon panel allows you to acquire property and cars. Real estate doesn't just fulfill your dream of being a business tycoon; more importantly, you can place furniture in your properties, and some of these furniture provides powerful buffs.

Crime & Punishment

Just like in GTA series, you can do whatever you want in the city - attacking innocent civilians - but you'll also have to face pursuit from the caps. When your wanted level gets too high, you'll be hunted across the city. Ways to clear your wanted level include evading the police for a long time, or using the effect of a special piece of furniture to instantly wipe your record clean. If both methods fail and you get caught, you'll be sent to prison.

Going to prison is actually quite an amusing part of the game. You can choose to serve your sentence, settle the fine, or attempt a jailbreak. The punishment for a failed jailbreak is being forced to watch a 15-minute unskippable boat ride cutscene. But if you successfully break out, the rewards include a magazine, some currency, and a unique prison uniform.

Gacha System (Scarboro Fair)

The game's gacha system is called Scarboro Fair, and its interface is designed like a Monopoly-style board. Each pull is like rolling the dice; your piece moves and you get the item on the space where it lands. It's a rather charming presentation, and you can exchange Neverness to Everness Riftcrystal for dice.

When it comes to pulling, Neverness to Everness's system is more reliable than other gacha games, because once you hit the grand prize, S-rank character or weapon you get is 100% the designated rate-up target - no off-banner surprises.

What's more, the pity progress on the character banner carries over to the next one. Hard pity is at 90 pulls, with soft pity kicking in around 70 pulls. Pity for skins does not carry over to other characters, but it is retained for that character's rerun banner.

Also, Gold Warp Pieces and Silver Lost Pieces you earn from pulling can be exchanged at Mall each month for 5 limited gacha tickets and 20 Arc gacha tickets.

Character Building

As a gacha game, character building is naturally a core part of the experience. Combat uses a four-person squad, with each character having a normal attack, a skill, and an ultimate. The core gameplay revolves around watching for Quick Time Event (QTE) light prompts around character portraits. You can then swap characters and unleash combo attacks.

The next layer of combat complexity comes from elemental attributes and Cycle Reactions (if you've played Genshin Impact, this will be easy to understand). Simply put, you need to build your team around elements that can trigger Cycle Reactions with each other. In the character details page, you can check how each skill interacts with elements.

Character building is divided into the following systems:

Console

Console is the gear system in NTE. You slot various Tetris-shaped modules into it, and by arranging them cleverly, you can activate set bonuses.

Arc

Arc serves as a character's weapon. It comes in rarities like B, A, and S, and is divided into the following attributes:

• Gas
• Liquid
• Plasma
• Solid
• Synthesis

Each character can only equip a weapon that matches their own attribute - you can't just use any weapon you pick up.

Esper Cycle and Awakening

Esper Cycle is used to upgrade a character's combat skills. Awakening system is a major highlight: when you pull a duplicate character, you can freely choose which talent enhancement to unlock, and you can switch between your choices at any time.

NTE launched not too long ago, so if you join now, you're barely missing out on anything. Whether you're a combat-driven meta player or a casual player who loves cruising around a sprawling city and running businesses, you'll find your own slice of fun in this beautiful and crazy city.