Big Time: How to play

Beginner's guide to playing and mastering the basics of this free-to-play multiplayer action RPG

Big Time’s gameplay mechanics are straightforward and simple. As a beginning player, you can choose a class from one of the four available starter classes that will determine your combat style—Chronomancer, Time Warrior, Quantum Fixer, and Shadowblade.

Pocket Watches and Character Classes in Big Time. Players can change their Character's Class anytime during the game by simply choosing a Pocket Watch.

The four starter Classes and their Pocket Watches

Aside from the four starter classes mentioned above, there are two additional classes that you can unlock when your character reaches higher levels. Here is an overview of all six classes and what they do:

Time Warrior: A fierce melee fighter.
Chronomancer: Deals powerful ranged damage with magic.
Shadowblade: Agile and stealthy melee attacker.
Quantum Fixer: Expert support, healing allies and hindering enemies.
Techblade: Agile support or destructive force.
Battlemancer: Masters melee and elemental abilities for enemy defeat.

By equipping your character with a pocket watch, you get the abilities of the chosen class (e.g. Chronomancer Pocket Watch vs. Time Warrior Pocket Watch). At any point in the game, you can choose to change your class as long as you have the corresponding pocket watch.

Player approaches a portal showing the type of enemies within and the recommended player levels for the party. Portals are scattered across Time's End.

A player navigates Time's End and tries to enter a dungeon portal

In the game, you navigate the world of Time’s End, join a party with other classes, and conquer dungeons filled with mobs and loot. You accomplish quests and interact with in-game characters to improve your abilities. As you gain more XP during combat, you can increase your rank, and improve your stats, skills, and gear, among others.

Follow the steps#Copy URL to this article section

Ready to start your adventure and dive into the dungeons in Big Time? Before you do so, every beginner has to go through a tutorial where they’ll learn about controls, character classes, items, and other important things.

Tutorial#Copy URL to this article section

In the tutorial, you will be introduced to the different classes As a player, you need to equip yourself with a pocket watch for your chosen class (e.g. a Chrononomancer Pocket Watch). If you choose to play as a different class, you can simply change your equipped pocket watch.

When you start playing Big Time, you need to choose a starting class from four options: Time Warrior, Quantum Fixer, Chronomancer, and Shadowblade.

The four Starting Classes

You only need to go through the tutorial once. Afterwards, you can play the game as you please. To do so, you’ll need to choose a server, customize and learn controls, explore Time’s End, join a party, and choose a dungeon. We’ll talk more about each of these.

1 - Choose your server#Copy URL to this article section

Upon starting the game screen, you will be shown several server options. Each gateway will show the corresponding ping depending on which region you are playing from, and within each gateway are servers with their corresponding populations at the time.

Big Time lobby shows the gateway servers that players need to pick before starting the game.

Choose your gateway at the game lobby before you start playing

It is important to choose a gateway with a lower ping, and this will depend heavily on where you are in the world. Once you’ve chosen that, pick a server depending on your needs.

Ideally, if you are looking for other players to join your party, you can go to servers with Medium or High population. However, keep in mind that servers with High populations tend to have more lag in the game, and this might affect how you play in dungeons.

If you wish to play with your friends, you need to be in the same gateway and server so that you can join a party together.

2 - Customize your controls #Copy URL to this article section

During the tutorial, you will be able to practice using your mouse and keyboard to control your character. However, if you are uncomfortable with these, you can choose to customize controls in the game settings such as key bindings, mouse sensitivity, and other control settings.

To customize your controls, you need to go to the game lobby and click Settings. Here you can also adjust Audio, Video, and Gameplay settings.

Big Time lets you adjust your controls, video, audio, and gameplay settings in the lobby. This lets you apply your preferences.

Video, Audio, Controls, and Gameplay settings can be adjusted

3 - Explore Time's End#Copy URL to this article section

Time’s End is a vast and mysterious realm spanning different eras and historical periods. Here is where players experience adventures and challenges such as Daily and Weekly challenges and Dungeons.

Time’s End is further divided into several areas, each containing dungeons with varying levels of difficulty. Most players converge in Water Town where you can interact with Vendroids (merchant bots) to buy items, Trainers to improve your skills, and quest boards to log your daily and weekly achievements. This is also where most players look for parties to join before entering dungeons.

The landscape of Time's End where people sought refuge when Time started dying and planets were getting destroyed. A town is shown where creatures interact.

Time's End is the setting of the game

4 - Join a party#Copy URL to this article section

Big Time has a multiplayer feature where you can join a party or form your own. Parties are ideally comprised of different classes of players, as each class has its own special skills that can be useful in surviving dungeons. This kind of group formation allows for better strategy and a higher chance of being able to fend off enemies.

The more players there are in a party, the more mobs they’ll face in the dungeons. Also, they get to have more loot drops and more XP. Team up with your friends or make new ones to get the most of your playing experience.

In Big Time, you can join a party with your friends in order to enter and conquer dungeons.

Joining a party

5 - Choose a dungeon#Copy URL to this article section

There are many different kinds of dungeons available in Big Time depending on what kind of mobs are inside them. Dungeons like Each dungeon’s portal will indicate the kind of dungeon and the recommended player levels in order to fight the mobs.

Dungeons like Insectoid Nests have insect-like robots, while Binosaur Lairs have huge dinosaur-like creatures.

Inside each dungeon, your party will be given three quests, the last of which is to fight in the Boss Area. Aside from quests, you can get chests containing items with varying rarities such as armor, weapons, and potions.

In Big Time, dungeon portals indicate the type of enemies, recommended player levels, and average time it would take to finish the dungeon.

A dungeon portal in Time's End

Tips & Tricks#Copy URL to this article section

Here are some beginner-friendly tips that can help you as you journey through Time’s End.

1 - Tutorial Tips#Copy URL to this article section

As a beginner in the game, you might find yourself overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done in the tutorial. For the levels with disappearing floors, you can simply stand still when the floors disappear and wait for them to come back.

When you get to Time’s End (you are approximately level 8 by this time), you will be given a more decent pocket watch which you should definitely change to immediately. Make sure you finish all of the quests in the tutorial as these give you a good amount of XP.

2 - Class and Stats Tips#Copy URL to this article section

The game mechanics of Big Time are similar to your typical MMORPGs. The Time Warrior focuses on brute strength and beefiness. The Shadowblade focuses on agility and swift blows. The Quantum Fixer focuses on healing and survivability. Lastly, the Chronomancer focuses on elemental magic.

There are 6 stats:

Strength for non-magic damage
Agility for evasion and movement speed
Dexterity for accuracy
Wisdom for energy which is used for casting spells
Intelligence for magic damage
Vitality for health and resistance

Choosing which stats to buff can greatly enhance your character’s abilities.

Big Time Characters have six stats—agility, dexterity, wisdom, intelligence, strength, and vitality. A character's most important stat will depend on its class.

The 6 stats for characters in the game

Ideally, you want a pocket watch that has the greatest stats where your skills scale. For example, if you’re a Time Warrior, your skills generally scale with Strength and Vitality. You also want to have these stats as these give you damage and beefiness respectively. If you are a Chronomancer, Vitality might not be the stat you are looking for in your pocket watches.

Gears are items in Big Time that augment your character’s capabilities by giving them stat boosts or unlocked skills. These are attached to Pocket Watches.

A Quantum Fixer Pocket Watch with gears

Stats and Requirements of a Pocket Watch

3 - Pocket Watch Tips#Copy URL to this article section

Within dungeons, you can pick up pocket watches with different attributes. Choose a pocket watch with a higher tier (T1, T2, T3) and with your preferred buffs and skill sets. Some pocket watches will even unlock skill trees that you might find useful in battle.

Pocket watches in Big Time come in different Tiers. Some can only be equipped upon reaching a certain character rank.

Pocket Watch tiers

4 - Time’s End Exploration Tips#Copy URL to this article section

Every time you go into Time’s End, make sure to check in with the quest board to see the daily and weekly bounties. You can achieve these easily as you go through the dungeons and earn the bonus rewards that come with completing them.

Daily and weekly bounties are available in Big Time. Players can gain rewards by achieving these.

Daily and Weekly Bounties in Water Town

Sell the loot that you don’t need to the Vendroids in order to earn more money. You can also trade or give away good items that you don’t intend to use to your friends or other people in your party by dropping them so that the other player can pick them up.

Vendroids are machines that allow you to buy and sell items in Big Time. There are different kinds of Vendroids selling all sorts of stuff in Time's End.

A player interacting with a Vendroid

Waypoints are specific areas spread throughout Time’s End that allow you to teleport quickly if you are willing to spend some money. By exploring all the areas of the map, you’ll stumble across these waypoints and activate them so you can use them anytime you need to teleport from one waypoint to another.

Path Trainers and Journeymen can be found all over Time's End, and you can train your character based on its level and class, depending on the skill path that you want.

Trainers can be found all over Time's End

To explore the game world better, it is recommended to procure some Ninja Pants as this gives you access to the Shadowblade ability Ninja Leap. While they usually come as a T2 equipment and with low stats, the mobility it gives is really good for any class. Updated as of 19th September 2024