Icarus Online Leveling Guide

Read This First: Relaunch Means a Fresh Start and an Unverified Cap

The leveling loop below is documented for the earlier service; VALOFE-era rates are unverified. Icarus Online relaunched as VALOFE's global official service on October 22, 2026, with new content and what VALOFE calls an improved progression structure. The legacy level cap was 70, set by the 2020 Call of the Wild update — no relaunch-era cap was verified at our check, and community discussion of a 70 cap with later increases to 80–85 is unconfirmed. Treat every rate below as a method to test, not a relaunch rate.

One more relaunch fact, as reported by the community: old progress did not transfer to the new service, which launched on VFUN rather than Steam initially. Everyone on the relaunch is leveling from scratch — which is why the documented loop below, not a shortcut, is the guide. There is no paid boost to buy your way past the early game, no legacy character to inherit, and no verified "fastest hours to cap" number for the new service. What this guide gives you instead is the shape of the climb as the game's own documentation describes it: quests first, dungeons second, Fellows and crafting running alongside the whole way, and a grind bridge where the quest chain runs dry.

The honest framing matters because a relaunched MMO is a moving target. VALOFE has already patched once (October 29, 2026) and published a known-issues notice (November 2, updated November 4). The systems below — quests, dungeons, taming, crafting — are the game's documented shape, and the relaunch's new progression systems (Potential, Quality Improvement, Blessing) sit on top of them. Where this guide quotes a number, it names the source and the era. Where it cannot verify a number, it says so in the open.

The Relaunch in Brief

Icarus Online is the return of Riders of Icarus, the flying-mount MMORPG that originally ran globally from 2016 until its sunset in February 2025. VALOFE — which had taken stewardship of the game from Nexon — brought it back as a global official service on October 22, 2026, at 08:45 UTC, on its VFUN platform. The relaunch is built on the later global build of the game, the version that ran in Japan from 2015 to 2022, with new content and what VALOFE describes as an improved progression structure.

Source: Inven Global launch report (October 22, 2026); ORVVIT official launch and maintenance notices; MMOHuts.

Pick your server by region — ASIA for Japan, Taiwan and other parts of Asia; NORTH AMERICA/EUROPE for North America and Europe; SOUTH AMERICA for South America. The South American server was not in the original plan and was added after a stream of requests from South American players during pre-registration, so it exists because players asked for it. There is no verified reason to pick a server outside your region: latency is the argument, and the relaunch's servers are regional by design.

The Eight Classes

The relaunch ships eight classes, and the official site describes each in a single line. There is no verified relaunch-era tier list or damage ranking — the service is three weeks old, and any ranking published now is a guess dressed as data. Pick by role and by whether you enjoy the playstyle, because the leveling loop in this guide is the same for every class: the same quests, the same dungeons, the same Fellows.

Source: official site (icarus.valofe.com). Roles are the plain reading of the official descriptions, not a measured ranking.

Two things worth knowing before you commit. First, the legacy Trickster class — added to the old service in 2017 — is not among the eight listed for the relaunch. If you played Trickster before, it is not a launch option now; whether it returns is unverified. Second, all quests in the game are shared by every class, aside from an introductory quest that demonstrates class-specific skills within the Dragon Knight station. Your class choice changes how you fight, not what you are asked to do — so the leveling route below works for all eight.

For party play, the shape is familiar: Guardian holds the front, Priest keeps the party alive, and the damage classes clear. But Icarus is not a game where you must have the perfect composition to level — dungeons scale by difficulty and stage, and the early ones are built to be cleared by ordinary parties. If you are leveling solo, a self-sufficient damage class with a combat pet will carry you further than a support class waiting for a group. If you are leveling with friends, take the Priest or Guardian and your group will always have a slot.

Quests: The Fastest EXP, by Design

Quests are the fastest leveling route by design: the official wiki says quests guide the player to areas that match their level range and pay large amounts of experience, so completing quests is expedient in leveling up as fast as possible. Story quests are marked yellow and drive the main story; standard quests are blue and usually offered alongside each story quest to assist the leveling process; blue markers with a spinning circle are repeatable quests, completable up to a set maximum, usually 99 times; green markers are daily quests, completable once a day; grey markers need a higher level first.

Source: Riders of Icarus Wiki, Quests.

Do all of them: one Steam forum thread's advice is to do all side, main and dungeon quests — one for each difficulty — and you will not stop leveling until level 24, where you will need to grind mobs or go to the Rainbow Reef. Almost every quest rewards experience points and money, usually a large amount, per the wiki, with some also offering items, titles or familiars. The quest tracker sits to the right of the screen, or open the quest menu with the J key. NPCs with available quests show an exclamation mark above their heads, and on the minimap available quests appear as a yellow circle with an exclamation mark in the center. When you talk to an NPC offering a quest, the dialogue shows the quest, its objective and its reward; click Accept or press F. Once accepted, a grey question mark appears over the NPC and the quest joins your tracker.

The practical rule is simple and it is the whole leveling strategy in one line: never walk past a blue marker. The story quest is the spine, but the standard quests alongside it are the meat — they pay the same large EXP, they are already in the area you are standing in, and skipping them is how you arrive at the level 24 wall with nothing left to run. Repeatables are the filler between story beats: a repeatable you can run 99 times is not a grind to do 99 times, it is a tap you turn on when you are two bars short of the next story quest's level requirement. Dailies are the same tap on a 24-hour timer — do them when they are up, do not plan your session around them.

The Leveling Route

This is the route as the documented systems describe it. It is organized by the level anchors the sources actually verify — not by invented XP-per-hour figures, because no relaunch-era EXP rate was verified. Read it as a sequence of "do this, then this", and check the quest tracker at each step rather than trusting a number.

The 67–70 and 70 rows are legacy anchors from the 2020 Call of the Wild update, not relaunch-verified steps — they describe where the old road ended, and the relaunch's road may end elsewhere. The 40+ rows are the same: documented for the earlier service, not re-verified for VALOFE. What is verified for the relaunch is the shape — quests to 24, a grind bridge, dungeons and raids from 40 — and the new progression systems (Potential, Quality Improvement, Blessing) layered on top. If a step in the table does not match what you see in game, trust the game: the relaunch changed progression, and the wiki is still catching up.

Dungeons: The Party EXP Spike

Dungeons are the party EXP spike, and Lavalight is the early example: one player report on the Steam forums puts Lavalight Heroic at around 555 XP per kill and roughly 15,000 XP for the whole run, with four other players recommended — though the same player notes it can be cleared solo. Use the party search tool; groups form fast. That XP figure is a single player report from the earlier service, not a relaunch measurement — treat it as the shape of a dungeon run's value, not a rate to budget around.

Run every difficulty: each dungeon difficulty carries its own quests, and the forum advice is to clear the quest for each one rather than repeating a single difficulty. Dungeons also feed the rest of the account — bosses drop gear, recipes and raw materials — so the leveling run doubles as the gear and gold run covered in our Icarus Online Gold Farming Guide.

Source: Riders of Icarus Wiki, Lavalight Cave. Entry limit 10/10 per difficulty; entry can be reset using elluns. You must clear the previous difficulty before the next unlocks.

The dungeon system has a few rules that change how you plan a session. Entry is limited — 10 entries per difficulty — and you can reset an entry using elluns, the game's secondary currency. One older guide lists re-entry timers of 15 minutes for Normal, 30 for Elite and 1 hour for Heroic, but that is a 2016-era figure and was not re-verified; the wiki's current statement is the entry limit and the ellun reset. The Emberstone set is Lavalight's dungeon-specific gear, and the quests outside the entrance — from Private Corrance and Van Owen Rabbini — are repeatable, so the dungeon pays quest EXP on top of kill EXP every time you run it with a quest active.

Beyond Lavalight, the dungeon ladder continues with Carleon Manor and the Ruins of Matren, and all three have Legendary versions for level 40+ players. The Legendary loop has its own daily economy: two Legendary Emblems (12-hour) per day from the daily quest "Eater of Flame and Shadow", offered by Seratia at Victory Plaza in Hakain's Crossing, and Legendary Coins from repeatable Legendary quests (Van Owen Rabbini outside each dungeon) that buy crafting recipes. At 40 the raids open too: Gustling Isle, a 10-player raid west of Rainbow Reef in the Sea of Hakanas, and Attaius Peak, a 10-player raid northwest of Fort Baellas. Both are level 40+ and both are party content — do not try to solo them on the way up.

Do not repeat one difficulty hoping for better EXP. The EXP is in the quests, and each difficulty's quests pay once per cycle. Clear Story, then Elite, then Heroic, collecting each difficulty's quest rewards as you go. Repeating Heroic after its quests are done is a gear run, not a leveling run — useful, but not the fastest way up.

Fellows: The Companion That Levels Beside You

A tamed Fellow levels beside you, and that is free power while you level: mounts gain EXP simply by being in use, and also from EXP potions or fostering in your Familiar Farm, per the official taming tutorial. Leveling a familiar refills its Endurance bar and increases its HP and Endurance — though it will not increase its speed. At minimum, ride a mount and sit it on the ground while idle for the free EXP.

Tame with the level in mind: the higher a monster's level is than yours, the more likely taming fails, and the higher your level, the more successes you get. Higher-grade familiars — Heroic and Legendary over Common and Elite — level more slowly, so a Common or Elite combat pet that levels fast can carry you further, sooner, than a rare tame that lags behind. Pets assist in battle mainly through passives and actives rather than raw attack damage, so pick a combat pet for its abilities, not its DPS.

Source: Riders of Icarus Wiki, Taming Tutorial. Speeds are the wiki's documented values for the earlier service.

The taming itself is a mini-game with a physical logic to it. Unlock the Taming skill (press K, switch to the Mount tab), put it on a hotkey, and find a monster you want. Hover over it — the game will tell you if you need to meet more requirements first or if it "cannot be tamed". Toggle the skill once (the icon turns red), approach the creature — from behind works best — and when the large space-bar icon appears near your character, press Space to land on it. Then it is luck: the game randomly assigns successes and fails to the bars. Successes fill the green bar, fails fill the red. Sometimes one of the four icons above the bar glows — press the matching WASD key for a success boost. Lowering the creature's health first improves success. After a failure you can go back into taming mode, but the mob turns hostile — teleport away with a class skill and try again once you are clear, or kill it and wait for another spawn with better RNG. Jumping on a monster's back before it aggros gives you a chance to press a WASD key right at the start, and flying beasts can be jumped on from a higher altitude — a technique worth practicing for Heroic and higher mounts, which are generally very difficult to tame.

Three systems make Fellows a leveling tool rather than a mount collection. First, the Familiar Farm: send Familiars kept at your farm on adventures across the continent, and foster them there for EXP while you do other things. Second, Seal Stones: seal a Familiar into a Seal Stone and fight alongside it in a form different from riding — your Fellow becomes a combat companion, not just transport. Third, Synthesis and Evolution: combine Familiars to obtain new ones, and some evolve into entirely different appearances. The Bestiary (B key) ties it together: its Collections tab rewards completing sets, so prioritize creatures that finish a collection over creatures that merely look good. And one practical note for leveling: a Familiar's level matters for where you can take it — several regions (Exharan Badlands, Parna's Coast, Tritael Rift and others) apply global status debuffs, and only Heroic and Legendary mounts have passive resistances to all of them. A Common mount will struggle in a debuff region that a Heroic mount ignores.

Crafting and Gathering: EXP While You Gather

Crafting pays experience as well as items: each successful craft gives experience toward the crafting skill level, with a triumphant craft granting double items and double experience, per the official wiki. Six categories open once you reach Hakain's Crossing — Weapon, Armor, Jewelry, Barder (familiar equipment and taming marks), Alchemy and Cooking — and each item has its own skill level from 1 to 5, mastered by crafting it repeatedly. Press N to open the crafting window; you need to be near a crafting table with the materials in hand.

Source: Riders of Icarus Wiki, Crafting Tutorial.

One player-reported route is fern farming with a bone sickle and crafting fern armor: a full inventory after about five minutes of farming was reported at over 4,000 XP, with more ingredients per recipe paying more XP. That is a single player report from the earlier service, not a measured relaunch rate — but the shape of it is the point: gather while you travel, craft what you gathered, and the EXP is free on top of the materials. The wiki's efficiency advice is the same shape: master the cheapest items first — Copper Ingot and a Copper weapon at stage 1, Iron at stage 2, Mithril at stage 3 — and raise the crafting stage at the instructor in Hakain's Crossing when enough items are mastered. There are four crafting stages per profession, each with at least ten recipes, and ranking up requires talking to a crafter after at least two master crafts. Gathering while you travel, rather than as a separate trip, keeps this EXP free.

Gathering itself is simple: walk up to a node, press F or right-click, press F again to collect. The map matters more than the method. Copper and Silver Ore and Poron Mushrooms are in Brakarr Forest, where an early quest asks you to collect 3 Poron Mushrooms. Gold Ore, Iron Ore, Poron Mushrooms and Sage Grass are in Hakanas Highlands — and Sage Grass can drop Giant Nettle (for a potion to tame the elite familiar Hoonbaba) and Glowing Sageweed (to tame Logash or Rogaton the White). Amethyst Ore, Mithril Ore and Cherpa Snow Flowers are in Parna's Coast; Cherpa Snow Flowers can drop Shining Cherpa Snow Flower for taming-item crafting, and Amethyst Ore can drop Shining Amethyst Ore for the item to tame Blue-shelled Turtles. Some gathered items feed taming-item crafting directly, so gathering and taming share an inventory — gather while you travel rather than as a separate trip. The full gathering map, including the Hunter's Cave loop, is in our Icarus Online Gold Farming Guide.

When Quests Run Out: Grinding Spots

Every Icarus player hits the same wall: the quest chain runs dry around level 24, and the next band of quests is not open yet. The forum advice is to grind mobs or go to Rainbow Reef. That is not a failure of the route — it is the route. The gap is where the game's other EXP sources carry you: open-world mob grinding in level-matched areas, dungeon repeats with their repeatable quests, and the crafting and gathering EXP from the previous section.

Rainbow Reef is the named destination at 24: the Sea of Hakanas area where the grind continues when the Hakanas Highlands quest chain is exhausted. It is also the neighborhood of the Gustling Isle raid entrance (west of Rainbow Reef, at 52m elevation) — not a level 24 destination, but a landmark that tells you the area is the game's mid-level water. Grind where the mobs match your level: the quest system's own logic is that you should be in areas that match your level range, and the same logic applies to grinding. A mob five levels above you is not efficient EXP, it is a death and a walk back.

Hunter's Cave deserves its own line here even though it is a gold spot first: it is a solo story instance in Hakanas Highlands that respawns quickly, and the wiki documents it as a good place to farm gold, iron and sage even after all quests are done and Jack the Hunter is defeated. Repeatable, solo and fast-respawning is the whole grinding checklist in one room. Run it between other activities — after a dungeon, before logging off — rather than as a destination. The gathering you do there feeds crafting EXP, the crafting feeds your gear, and the loop carries you over the wall.

The Road to 70 — and What the Relaunch Changes

The legacy cap was 70, set by the February 2020 Call of the Wild update: a new quest sending you into Brakarr Forest to continue the journey to level 70, a level 70 Awakening Skill from NPC Velzera at the Dragon Knight Station, and a new raid dungeon, Yatuman's Altar, for level 70 players — plus a new tameable Legendary mount, the Savage Baltrow, with a max level of 70. The legacy path to the cap ran through NPC Ani in Turimnan Valley's Grand Canyon Village (level 67) and then NPC Zion in Brakarr Forest. That is where the old road ended. Whether the relaunch's road ends at 70, or goes further, is unverified — community discussion mentions 70 at launch with later increases to 80–85, which is unconfirmed, and this guide does not present it as fact.

What the relaunch does change, verifiably, is the progression layered on top of levels. The official site lists three new character progression systems — equipment Potential, Quality Improvement and Blessing — and a consolidation of enhancement stones, which had been split into too many purpose-specific types. Mythical-grade equipment enhancement scaling was also adjusted, making weapons more powerful even while they are still being enhanced. The practical meaning for leveling is that gear progression is no longer a separate track you return to at the cap: Potential, Quality Improvement and Blessing are character progression systems you engage with as you level, and the materials for them come from the same dungeons, gathering and crafting this guide already covers. Level up, and feed the new systems with what you earn on the way — do not save all of it for a cap that may not be 70.

The content past the cap is also mapped, at least in outline: updates continuing the story beyond Magmafora — including the Black Market, Floating Island and Dimensional Temple — are planned for sequential release. The Tower of Challenges is the competitive endgame, and cooperative raids and team battles are the group endgame. None of those has a verified release date at our check. The leveling guide's job ends where the endgame begins; the farming guide picks up the economy that feeds it.

Common Mistakes

• Skipping side quests and hitting a level wall at 24 with no quests left to run. The blue markers alongside each story quest are the EXP. Do them as you go, not later.
• Repeating one dungeon difficulty instead of clearing each difficulty's quests. Each difficulty pays its own quest EXP. Clear Story, Elite, then Heroic, then Legendary at 40.
• Taming a Heroic or Legendary familiar early and watching it level far slower than a Common one. Higher grades level more slowly. A fast-leveling Common or Elite combat pet carries you further, sooner.
• Riding a familiar only for travel and never letting it earn EXP by being in use. Mounts gain EXP simply by being in use. Ride it, foster it in the Familiar Farm, or at least sit it on the ground while idle.
• Budgeting around a relaunch level cap or EXP rate nobody has verified for the VALOFE service. The legacy cap was 70; the relaunch cap is unconfirmed. Do not plan your grind around a number from a forum thread.
• Choosing a quest reward item without reading it. When a quest offers a choice, the item you click is the one you get and the other is lost.
• Ignoring the Bestiary Collections tab. Collections reward completing sets. Tame what finishes a collection, not what merely looks good.
• Forgetting that crafting EXP is free EXP. Gather while you travel, craft what you gathered, and master the cheapest items first — Copper, then Iron, then Mithril.

Patch State (as of November 10, 2026)

Newest live state: the October 22, 2026 global official service launch. VALOFE launched Icarus Online on October 22, 2026 at 08:45 UTC, with Asia, North America/Europe and South American servers, eight classes, and new content plus an improved progression structure. No versioned patch notes were published with the launch — the relaunch itself is the anchor, not a numbered patch.

October 29, 2026: scheduled maintenance 02:00–08:00 UTC added a limited-time dungeon and performed server hardware maintenance; all regional servers were inaccessible during the window. The limited-time dungeon's name and mechanics were not detailed in the notice.

November 2, 2026 (updated November 4): a known-issues notice listed incorrect item descriptions (with bonus GCoin compensation for VFUN players who bought affected items, expiring December 4, 2026; Pmang compensation prepared separately), an item eligible for exchange for a character name change if bought on or before October 30, 13:30 UTC, and a client crash while riding a Fellow that can prevent logging back in.

Coming up: launch events run until before maintenance on November 19, 2026. Post-Magmafora story updates — Black Market, Floating Island, Dimensional Temple — are planned for sequential release with no verified dates.

Related pages:

Leveling Time Planner Icarus Online Icarus Online Gold Farming Guide

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

Every fact in this guide carries its source. Relaunch facts come from VALOFE and its official channels; systems facts come from the official Riders of Icarus Wiki, which documents the earlier service — the guide flags where relaunch applicability is unverified rather than assuming it. Last checked November 10, 2026.

• Inven Global: VALOFE launches global official service for Icarus Online on October 22 (October 22, 2026)
• Icarus Online: Official Website (classes, new progression systems, content, post-Magmafora plans)
• ORVVIT: Official Service Launch & Event Announcements (launch time, servers, pre-registration)
• ORVVIT: Scheduled Maintenance Notice — October 29, 2026 (limited-time dungeon, hardware maintenance)
• ORVVIT: Notice of Currently Known Issues (November 2, 2026, updated November 4)
• MMOHuts: Icarus Online Launches Its Global Service October 22 With a South American Server (October 21, 2026)
• MMOHuts: Icarus Online Opens Pre-Registration for Its 2026 Global Relaunch (September 10, 2026)
• Inven Global: VALOFE Opens Global CBT Recruitment for Icarus Online (September 11, 2026)
• MassivelyOP: Riders of Icarus appears to be coming back online a year after its sunsetting (September 8, 2026)
• MassivelyOP: Riders of Icarus releases its newest patch, Call of the Wild (February 27, 2020 — level cap 70)
• Steam News: Riders of Icarus — Call of the Wild Update (level 70 Awakening Skill, Yatuman's Altar, Savage Baltrow)
• Riders of Icarus Wiki: Quests (quest types, EXP, repeatables)
• Riders of Icarus Wiki: Lavalight Cave (difficulties, entry limits, Emberstone set)
• Riders of Icarus Wiki: Taming Tutorial (familiar EXP, grades, taming odds)
• Riders of Icarus Wiki: Crafting Tutorial (categories, triumphant crafting, stages)
• Riders of Icarus Wiki: Gathering Tutorial (zones; Hunter's Cave)
• Riders of Icarus Wiki: New Dungeon Challenges (Legendary dungeons, Gustling Isle, Attaius Peak)
• Mmogah: Guide for Lavalight Cave Level 15 in Riders of Icarus (re-entry timers — legacy)
• MMODude: Icarus Online game page (relaunch facts, vendor status)