Source-checked framework: skill unlock levels, point totals, drop gates and UI labels come from the game code. Route ordering and stat priorities are recommendations, not measured clear rates.
Drummer — Iron Parade Starter (Level 1 → 70)
Close-range shockwave combat with a very large Soul pool. You melee to build Fusion charges, spend Groove on Stagebreaker Wave, and use Cyclone Solo to hold a pack still. Heavy Hands supplies the damage scaling and Pocket Control supplies the survivability.
The core idea
Two passives carry the whole run: Heavy Hands (+6% Power per rank, and Power feeds both skill damage and Defense) and Pocket Control (+10% Defense, +10% Max Soul and +8% Groove generation per rank). Max Heavy Hands first so you can kill, then max Pocket Control so you stop dying, then pour the rest into Stagebreaker Wave. Everything else takes exactly one point.
Where the 69 points end up
| Branch | Allocation | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Metal | Heavy Hands 20; Encore Slam 1; Stagebreaker Wave 17; Thunder Fill 1; Arena Breaker 1 | 40 |
| Fusion | Pocket Control 20; Triplet Rush 1; Cyclone Solo 1; Polyrhythm 1; Groove Cascade 1 | 24 |
| Punk | Fast & Loose 1; Ricochet Stick 1; Stick Storm 1; Crowd Ignite 1; No Tomorrow 1 | 5 |
You earn one class point per level (points = level − 1), so level 70 gives exactly 69 points and this plan spends all 69. Non-ultimate nodes cap at 20 hard ranks; ultimates cap at 1. This is the same 69-point layout the endgame Iron Parade Drummer uses, so nothing you spend here is wasted later — and a branch reset or full reset refunds points if you want to experiment.
Levelling path, 1 → 70
Each row shows your cumulative point total at the end of that block, so you can check yourself at any level. Spend points as you earn them — nothing here rewards banking.
Level 1 → 5
4 points spent
Heavy Hands 2 · Encore Slam 1 (level 3) · Pocket Control 1
Heavy Hands is live damage from the first point. Encore Slam is cheap and is the prerequisite gate toward Stagebreaker Wave, so take exactly one rank the moment it unlocks.
Level 6 → 8
7 points spent
Stagebreaker Wave 1 (level 6) · Triplet Rush 1 (level 4) · Cyclone Solo 1 (level 8)
Stagebreaker Wave becomes your Groove spender and the reason packs die in one cast. Triplet Rush is a one-point prerequisite; Cyclone Solo is the control tool that makes the rest of the campaign safe.
Level 9 → 13
12 points spent
Pocket Control to 4 · Heavy Hands to 4
Backyard Party is the first place the damage actually hurts. Pocket Control ranks are Defense, Max Soul and Groove generation at the same time — three problems solved per point.
Level 14 → 18
17 points spent
Thunder Fill 1 (level 12) · Fast & Loose 1 · Heavy Hands to 6 · Arena Breaker 1 (level 18)
Thunder Fill is a one-point prerequisite for your ultimate. Arena Breaker unlocks at level 18 and is the one ultimate you take. Fast & Loose 1 is move speed you will feel in every room.
Level 19 → 35
34 points spent
Heavy Hands to 20 · Polyrhythm 1 · Ricochet Stick 1 · Pocket Control to 5
Finish Heavy Hands before anything else. This is the block where City Streets and Midnight Rave stop being a fair fight and your kill speed has to keep up. Ricochet Stick gives you a ranged option for rooms you do not want to walk into.
Level 36 → 55
54 points spent
Pocket Control to 20 · Stagebreaker Wave to 6
Twenty ranks of Pocket Control is a large multiple of your base Defense and Max Soul plus much faster Groove. This is the survivability wall that lets you farm Midnight Rave and step into the Woodshed.
Level 56 → 70
69 points spent
Stagebreaker Wave to 17 · Stick Storm 1 · Crowd Ignite 1 · (after Skull Collector) Groove Cascade 1 · No Tomorrow 1
Dump the remainder into your spender. Hold the last two points for Groove Cascade and No Tomorrow until you actually own Death Metal Skull Collector — see the ultimate rule below.
The one-ultimate rule
All three Drummer ultimates (Arena Breaker, Groove Cascade, No Tomorrow) unlock at level 18, but you may only learn one of them unless Death Metal Skull Collector is equipped. Learn Arena Breaker only. Its freeze and percent-HP crater are the most useful single ultimate for a melee character, and every point spent on a second ultimate before you own the Skull Collector is a point not spent on Heavy Hands.
Skill bindings
While levelling
Stagebreaker Wave, Cyclone Solo, Arena Breaker. Keep basic melee and Groove Slam in constant use — melee builds Fusion charges for Cyclone and triggers the Metal package.
At level 70
Stagebreaker Wave, Cyclone Solo and Ricochet Stick on your non-ultimate binds, Arena Breaker as your ultimate. You have six skill slots with no level gating, so the spare slots are free the moment Skull Collector lets you add the second and third ultimate.
Venue run order
Venue order is fixed by Sir Don's briefings, not by your level. Clearing a venue is only half of an unlock — you must report back to Sir Don to actually receive the next one.
The Drummer is the safer first-pass class. You can usually push straight through The Rusty Nail → Backyard Party → City Streets on Amp 1 without stopping to farm, because Pocket Control is already carrying your Defense.
| Venue | Unlocks | How to run it |
|---|---|---|
| The Rusty Nail | Report to Sir Don → Backyard Party | Your opening venue. Clear it once on Amp 1 and move on. There is nothing here worth a second run. |
| Backyard Party | Report to Sir Don → City Streets, the Workbench and your crew (follower) selection | The most important report in the game — it hands you the Workbench and your follower in one step. Clear it once, report immediately, then come back later. Backyard Party has three bosses, which makes it the best venue boss loop in the game, but most of that value is locked behind level 70. |
| City Streets | Report to Sir Don → Midnight Rave, poker and pinball | A 3×3 grid of rooms. This is usually where a Guitarist starts dying; drop Amp rather than out-levelling it. Report as soon as it is cleared to open both minigames. |
| Midnight Rave | Post-clear briefing → the Woodshed | Its boss guarantees two distinct rare material types and drops guaranteed rare-or-better gear, so this is the one venue genuinely worth repeating before 70 — for materials, not for sets. |
| The Woodshed | Endless waves; the endgame farm | Open it, look at it, and leave. The Woodshed is not a levelling venue for an unfinished build — it is where you go after 70 with working defences. |
Should you repeat a venue before moving on?
Do not repeat venues for set items or Albums before level 70.
Set-item rolls and the Platinum Album are both hard-gated: the drop chance returns 0% until your level (or your Fame-equivalent level) reaches 70. Non-boss set drops are gated the same way. Grinding a boss loop at level 40 for a set piece is time spent on a drop that cannot happen.
- Ordinary relics. Boss relic rolls are not level-gated — venue bosses can hand you Death Metal Skull Collector, Royal Albert's Hall or Marching Harness at any level. If you are short on the relics listed in your class guide, boss loops are legitimate.
- Rare materials. The Midnight Rave boss guarantees two distinct rare material types; the final Backyard Party boss yields one to two. This is how you fund follower gear and early crafting.
- Fame, only when you are genuinely under-levelled for the next venue. If you can clear the next venue, clear the next venue — new content pays better than repeated content.
Amp runs from 1 to 11 and scales enemy Soul, damage, aggression and drop fortune. Non-boss special-drop chance starts at 0.20% on Amp 1 and rises by 0.05 points per Amp to a 0.50% cap at Amp 7 — above Amp 7 it does not improve at all. Before level 70 that cap is close to irrelevant, so run the highest Amp where your kills per minute stay high, and never an Amp that makes you stop to recover between packs.
Early chase relics
Boss relic rolls are not level-gated, so every one of these can drop while you level. Do not wait for a perfect item — equip the best real thing you own and keep moving.
Death Metal Skull Collector
The single most valuable early relic for this plan. It removes the one-ultimate restriction, which is what unlocks the last two points of the 69-point layout. Chase it from venue bosses.
Marching Harness of the Endless Parade
Defense plus a large move-speed bonus and rhythm lanes as you move — it improves both halves of a melee character's problem at once.
Double Kick Legs of the Machine God
Large move speed with shock pulses while moving. Free damage for a class that is already running between packs.
Pendant of Royal Albert's Hall
Two phantom clones plus a large Drop Fortune bonus. The Fortune line compounds across the entire rest of your progression, so equip it early rather than saving it.
Iron Parish War Snare
Warbeat-stack melee support — a natural instrument for the melee-heavy loop this plan runs.
Hollow Hall Tambour
Song-aura orbitals that hit while you are busy meleeing. Good offhand value long before you have a crafted one.
Comet Splinter Sticks
Impact splinters that add ranged pressure between Stagebreaker casts, and the instrument the endgame Ricochet build eventually wants.
Split-Time Shaker
Timed cast echoes. Cheap effective damage while your skill ranks are still low.
Which follower to pick, and how to equip it cheaply
Pick: Manager
You get a free choice of Bouncer, Roadie or Manager when the crew unlocks after Backyard Party. Take Manager. Its Free Promotion aura adds Ability Damage and its Fame and Fortune bonuses apply to the whole remaining climb to 70, which is exactly the phase where compounding reward bonuses matter most. Bouncer's frontline tanking answers a problem Pocket Control already solves for you.
- Craft ordinary Manager gear at the Workbench before you craft anything fancy. Each slot recipe costs roughly 30–36 Parts plus 8–18 of two other basic materials, so a full six-slot kit is affordable from salvage alone.
- Fill all six slots (Credentials, Headgear, Stagewear, Signal Charm, Road Case, Spotlight Rig) with ordinary gear first. Six mediocre items beat two good ones, because the fixed per-slot bonuses are what drive the aura.
- Ordinary follower crafting has only a ~3% chance to produce a relic. Do not try to force it. Bank Vials of Adoration instead — every relic you break down returns one — and spend them on the Vial of Adoration Relic Forge (2 Vials + 40 Parts) for a guaranteed random-slot relic.
- Each follower relic rolls one native ability from an eight-ability pool. You cannot pick it. Craft replacements to change it, and do not spend Acclivity Shards trying — Acclivity explicitly rejects follower gear.
- Prioritize the Stagewear slot early. Follower Soul and Defense keep the follower alive, and a dead follower supplies no aura at all.
If you intend to push a high Amp before 70 and your follower keeps dying in Midnight Rave, Bouncer is a legitimate temporary swap for its far larger Soul pool. Swap back to Manager for farming once you are stable.
When to play the side activities
Poker and pinball both unlock from the same City Streets briefing. Neither is a substitute for combat levelling — Fame comes from kills — but both convert spare materials into things combat does not drop.
Workbench (unlocked after Backyard Party)
Immediately, and then every time your Parts pile gets large.
The highest-value side activity before 70, because it is where your follower kit comes from. Craft the six ordinary follower slot items first, then use the Vial of Adoration Relic Forge (2 Vials + 40 Parts) whenever you have banked two Vials.
Poker (unlocked after City Streets)
Play your full daily payout allowance, then stop.
A run is 10 rounds with an 8-card hand, 3 plays and 2 discards per round. The daily full-payout limit is three runs on Encore or two on One-Take; later runs pay 60% or 50%. Entry is 260 Parts + 60 Fabric + 50 Wood per chip, affordable from breakdown income alone. Acclivity Shards are max(1, floor(tickets / 45)).
Pinball (unlocked after City Streets)
When you have Amp Components to spare, and whenever you want branch stones.
A token costs 200 Parts + 50 Metal + 10 Amp Components and buys three balls. Tickets are floor(score / 1,000), bounded 1–25, with bank/jackpot/sweep bonuses up to a 35-ticket base cap. Shards are max(1, floor(tickets / 20)) — a better shard conversion at the same ticket count than poker, though run length and entry costs differ.
Gear Raffle (at the Workbench)
Only to fix a specifically weak slot.
Standard is 10 tickets; premium is 25 tickets plus 2 Pure Rhythm Essence for a 5% normal-pool relic roll. Premium cannot roll the Album and has zero set weighting, so it is not a route to either. Do not treat it as a jackpot.
Neither minigame gives Fame, and Amp has no direct Fame multiplier. If your goal this session is level 70, the minigames are a detour — play them when you are materials-rich and Vial-poor, or when your daily payout window is about to reset.
Clearing your stash and banking materials
Press U to open the advanced inventory panel. The point of the workflow below is that you should never salvage items one at a time — you tag the handful you care about, then break down everything else in one click.
1 — Know your four view tabs
The inventory has four view tabs: Items, Materials, Song Stones and Followers. Break Down All only operates on the tab you are looking at, and only Items and Followers have a Break Down All button at all.
2 — Tag keepers into the two Preferred tabs
Only the first two manual tabs are Preferred tabs, and only items sitting in those two tabs are protected from Break Down All. Assign with the 1 / 2 keys, with F1 / F2 (or View + A/B on a controller), or by dragging the item onto the tab. Items in any other manual tab are not protected.
3 — Decide what a keeper actually is
Preferred tab 1: your current and next-tier gear, plus every relic from your class guide's chase list. Preferred tab 2: upgrade candidates you have not compared yet. Anything else is material. Equipped gear, locked items and quest items are already excluded from Break Down All, so you do not need to tag those.
4 — Use Sort to keep the Preferred tabs readable
While you are on a Preferred tab a Sort button appears next to Break Down All. Toggling it (Sort / Unsort) applies an automatic ordering to that tab so both stay scannable as they fill. It is per-tab, so you can sort tab 1 and leave tab 2 in manual order.
5 — Break Down All
On the Items tab press Break Down All (bottom-right); it has a multi-step confirmation so a misclick cannot empty your stash. On the Followers tab the same button reads “Breakdown all Follower gear”. Run this at the end of every venue clear.
6 — Use the search filter before you break down
Press / to toggle the search bar. Search for a relic or set name before a mass breakdown if you are unsure you tagged everything — the grid filters live, so a two-second check costs far less than losing a relic.
Breakdown yields are driven by item slot, rarity and tier, so you can aim your breakdowns at whichever material you are short of:
| Break down | Yields | Spend it on |
|---|---|---|
| Any relic | 1 Vial of Adoration (and nothing else) | Follower relic forging: 2 Vials + 40 Parts. |
| Everything non-relic | Parts (1 + rarity bonus + tier bonus) | The universal currency — follower crafts, poker chips and pinball tokens all run on Parts. |
| Instruments | Wood Scrap | Poker chip entry cost. |
| Head / Body / Legs / Gloves / Belt / Boots | Fabric | Poker chip entry cost and general crafting. |
| Accessories and necklaces | Metal Scrap (scales with rarity, not tier) | Pinball token entry cost. Break down rare accessories rather than rare armour when you need Metal. |
| CDs | Signal Wire | General crafting. |
| Class-flavoured items | Drum Heads, Strings, Amp Tubes, Mic Capsules or Synth Chips | Class-specific recipes — keep breaking down off-class drops, they are not useless. |
The rarity bonus rises from Magic (+1) to Epic (+5) and the tier bonus from Studio (+1) to Arena (+3), so a high-rarity Arena item you will never wear is worth far more as materials than as stash clutter. The habit to build before 70 is simple: clear a venue, tag the two or three genuine keepers into Preferred tab 1, and Break Down All the rest before you leave the hub.
What happens at level 70
At level 70 the Legacy tree opens (Legacy points = level − 70) and set items and the Platinum Album become eligible drops for the first time. Your 69 class points are already in their final endgame arrangement, so from here follow the Level 2000 Woodshed guide: start Legacy in Aura and Resonance, prioritize Thick Skin, and begin the Backyard Party boss loop for sets and your first Album.
Continue with the Level 2000 Woodshed guide, or review the full class page and equipment sets.