Coming back after getting to Warrior dimension shortly after launch, what now?

[Bronze5_Player]

Played the game a lot on my phone pre Steam release. Got to floor 4.5k.

Decided to check things out but I'm confused as to what I should do now.
There's a ton of new upgrades with ridiculous prices (way out of my league).
Farming gold at my level feels not very efficient.
All my relics are 125+ but I'm getting destroyed at 4.5k, as I have around 1.3k hp.

I've read some stuff online and got myself the Stein. What is supposed to be my next step? Just Stein farming for free relic level ups?
Should I bother with the Arena? I can't do Boss rush, and the other options give seemingly bad rewards.
Just lost as to what to do.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

Prioritize Gold Find Relic so you can get tons of Essences to increase your Relics even more. After Gold Find, Essence Find, HP, Attack, and Magic Attack Relics should be your top priorities.

Avoid Primal Lands first and stick to the castle as PL's enemy level scaling factor is higher than for Castle's.

After "X", you should know who he is by now, prioritize in unlocking the Tavern Owner and Wizard as they're going to be vital for your Endgame party setups as well as for attempting to unlock the new guy on the block eho is a direct replacement upgrade to "X".

[Bronze5_Player]

I've unlocked everyone except for the last guy. I'll focus on the gold relic. Been pushing floors with 4x carpenter setup atm.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

You should eventually aim to farm for the Endgame gear and party setup schnick has suggested on his "7k+ FPH" thread as well as his newer Endgame setup that he posted on the "ABSOLUTE BEST TEAM" thread as those're the most optimal way to play the game for now :)

[Handoiron]

Early WD you should have a thief ransack party. With tavern owner giving 2 essence carriers per level you can run 2 thieves to maximize your essence gains.

It takes a reasonably high level in your gold find relic to make pure gold drop out produce pure essence with ransack.

For using Stein, at least early on, you'll want to set up a mining group where you transmute an enemy every level and your only one actually damaging ores is doing it with default attack and the stein. You'll only want to run this party setup with battle credits because it's horrendously slow in real runs but speed doesn't matter in battle credit runs.

Initially, you won't get very far with boss rush, but it should still gather battle credits quite nicely. Battle credits are quite important because they let your stein mining quick runs boost both your ore gains and "free" relic levels.

Using the stein mining setup for battle credit runs lets you pretty much ignore ALL relics except for gold find when spending essence.

[Piggy]

I would start a mining team asap, I waited until level 200k until I started farming uranium...If I had to do it again I would start mining at level 5k. I would gold plate the RAD gear and then start farming gold and convert to essence and then I would start working on pushing levels.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

Mine with a Team of M, Chef, N, M, M and X. Then later on once you've unlocked "J" switch out "X".

Gear would be the best you can get, for now, plated in Gold. Whilst in Castle farm for Uranium so you can craft six sets of Radioactive Gear. Then once you've got yourself a fully gold plated Set of Radioactive gear, and high enough levels of your Relics, start farming Labradonite Ore in Primal Lands. Whilst there pump up your Item Find value to 200+ IF so you can then start farming for six Extinction Plates, currently the BEST armor as it gives 1 Battle Credit. You'll next need to farm for Mammoth Shields, BC shield that pairs with Extinction Plate. As for weapons and accessories you should go look at, schnick's post on those two threads I mentiined above.