I'm still fairly new to Royal Road, so I'm not sure where the best stuff is at! So what, in your opinion, is the cream of the crop, the rank S authors, the god-tier fiction here at Royal Road? I'm not too picky about genre, but I care deeply about good grammar/spelling, great characters, an interesting story, etc. Basically, stuff that's so good you have to wonder why they're giving it away for free because you'd be happy to pay for it. Here's what brought me to the site in the first place:

• Threadbare: I actually bought the ebooks, which lead me eventually to Royal Road. Got a little dark, but this is undeniably excellent fiction


• The Wandering Inn: I've binged it (practically killed me; what a ludicrous amount of content!), I've bought the first volume as an ebook, and I'm in awe of pirateaba for consistently putting out both quality and quantity.


• Mother of Learning: so so so good (spent the first three or so chapters wondering why I should care, and then it hooked me and that was that).
  

What am I missing out on? I've been exploring the various listings but there's...mmm...how to say this...a lot of sub-par stuff that's received pretty enthusiastically, so I'm having trouble finding the real gems. Help me out, longer-term users!

Big fan of Metaworld Chronicles - It's both long and high quality. 

Anything from Andur. My personal favorite is Coeus. He has a lot of completed works which is a nice difference from the usual go until they get tired of it style that most authors use.

Arcane Emperor by Aternus is also quite good (and long) and popular.

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Thanks for the recommendations, everyone! I'm still working my way through them, but Skyclad in particular so far has been fantastic. What a hilarious approach to the standard LitRPG/isekai setup.

God tier? Uuuh, there's a lot of good ones. Can't list them all since I've only read some of them, but a good chunk of the ones listed in my recs thread could be candidates (see signature or pinned threads in Rec's section). Been a while since I've updated that list though but a few that I recommend off the top of my head:

Grave of the Goddess by CrystalSquirrel/CrystalDemon and his other works (Dance of Poison & Curses, Cracked Earth. Still waiting on Volume 3 of that last one. They're still up on Japtem if you now where to look, though that section of the site is officially dead.).
Andur's stuff (mentioned in post #3 of this thread) but keep in mind that it tends to get repetitive after a while.
FrustratedEgo's stuff (Continue Online, Liars Called, Fridays Online, The Fiasco, Royal Scales).
Mother of Learning (recently added a couple months ago and he's been porting regularly until he runs out of backlog to post).
Flight of Icarus, even if it is a bit old now it's completed and can give you something to read if you're a binge reader.
The Demon Lord is Bored
Dragon Gnawing at its own Tail
Arch Inc. - Secret Origins
Warhawx's stuff such as Insania Online, (Re)Install, and Spiritsmith. Not sure if he still updates on RR anymore, but he's still writing and hosting on his blog. 
A Hero's War
Zombie Knight (was fan-posted for a while, but stopped. Ongoing on author's blog site)
Tidal Lock
A Hermit's Life for Me
Don't Fear the Reaper is an old one and used to be top fic for ages, at least until the site got revamped and the rankings have a sort of decay for the live ranks.
Same with NPC, No Longer a Game, and Universe Online
The Wandering Inn. I haven't caught up in over a year now, but every few months I get the urge to go back and see if a certain character's side chapters have updated. If you're wondering which, here's a hint: he's insane, his shoes are a few sizes too large, and nose just a bit too red.

These are my picks; please note they are the stranger, more unusual stories here on RRL.
Hero City- https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21966/hero-city
Supervillainy and Other Poor Career Choices- https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/22653/supervillainy-and-other-poor-career-choices
The Dungeon Hive- https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/7040/the-dungeon-hive
The Slime Dungeon Chronicles (prequel)- https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/3978/the-slime-dungeon-chronicles-prequel
The Suit-Maker- https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/20487/the-suit-maker

Iron teeth is one of the best, it was one of the first books I started reading on royal road when it first started and it’s still one of my top 5’s

I also recommend anything from andur. 

I don't think there are any 'God-tier' in my opinion, but Bloom, Exterminator dungeon, and a few others are good reads.

j0nn0 Wrote: The Wandering Inn. I haven't caught up in over a year now, but every few months I get the urge to go back and see if a certain character's side chapters have updated. If you're wondering which, here's a hint: he's insane, his shoes are a few sizes too large, and nose just a bit too red.

The last we heard from everybody's favorite little killer jokester was back in May 2018, about 2/3 through Volume 4. Volume 5 has been pretty laser focused on two things:

• Goblins doing goblin things


• Happenings in Liscor (a few side character stories, but they're almost all people in Liscor)
  

It's all building up to a show-down that's just finally starting to really get rolling, and admittedly the show-down promises to be pretty epic but it has been a little disappointing how long it's taking pirateaba to work up to it.

My advice? Wait for Volume 5 to conclude (I imagine this will happen within the next month), and then play catch-up.

Seing as you looked for god tier novels rather than most viewed novels. Well, here's one:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/2954/from-winters-ashes

Not many views, but you'd normally expect to shell out your ten bucks for the paperback pocket
version of this one -- and then you'd wonder why you didn't pop the full twenty a year earlier to
get the hard cover.

It isn't on here but A Practical Guide to Evil ( https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/ ) is up there with Savage Divinity, The Wandering Inn, and There is no epic loot here, only puns. I personally liked Dungeon Games, even though it got dropped. The concept was fun and unique

There isn't one here at all. But if we're talking god tier stories you'll find maybe 2 of them on the entire internet, one is his mentioned practical guide to evil, the other is worm.

Trust me when I say that I've looked far and wide and can't find any webnovel that can hold a candle to these two.

If you're looking for contenders for second place though, Worth The Candle is one (not on this site though)

Contenders on this site would be mother of learning (I think most of that story is off site too though, but it's here now) and how to avoid death on a daily basis (got tired of that one after a certain point but it was consistently good for a long time)

Well written novels are extremely rare here, and I mean extremely. Like 80% of the stories here even have serious grammar issues; and even without that, most of it isn't written 'well' they usually don't hook you in with good writing, not even with good stories.

Honestly if I could afford it I'd go back to professional novels instead of wading through the pile of shit that is the internet. But I can't, so wah.

Definitely check out Forge of Destiny. High quality cultivation story, a street kid is picked from an alleyway and brought to a cultivator school! But of course she has to catch up and deal with

Code:

nobles

who have a lot of advantages over her. Interesting combat system, she mainly uses stealth and her flute to fight. 

Though if you want to catch up completely you'll have to go to a separate website where it's set up like a forum, it's a little confusing but you'll get the hang of it. Actually really interesting because the author leaves a lot of the character choices to poll results from readers or random dice rolls! 

*Edit, no clue what I did with "code/nobles" but I'm not sure how to undo it.

The simulacrum
Brimstone fantasy 
Dungeon heart 
The gam3 
Everybody loves large chests  - (mimic)

Emliss Wrote: Definitely check out Forge of Destiny. High quality cultivation story

Thanks, I'll give it a look! I've kind of been avoiding xianxia/wuxia for the most part because it just doesn't seem like any of it will be able to live up to Will Wight's Cradle series, but that's silly, I suppose.

I've been looking through the other suggestions, too, as time permits. Worm was a great suggestion (though I had to take a break; caused too many late nights, and it's a really dark series so far), albeit one that's not "around here". Iron Teeth I'd actually discovered as an ebook on Kindle prior to joining this site, and although I made it through 2-3 volumes, something about it just failed to click with me after a while and I haven't returned. I can't handle Everybody Loves Large Chests because while I enjoy a good "evil" character, the literally tearing someone apart == sexual happy-times got to be a bit too much for me, and I dropped it soon after the chest made it to the surface world. Not really my variety of dark humor, I guess.

Re: Trailer Trash has been fantastic, but all too short. I need more!

Several of the suggestions here I've tried but couldn't get past the first chapter because either the narrative was so stilted or the grammatical errors and/or comma usage drove me up the wall. Might have to force myself through some of them to try and see if the later chapters redeem the earlier ones, though. Metaworld Chronicles in particular has an intriguing premise and a lot of people like it, but I just couldn't get past the first chapter.

When I think god tier, I think stuff like Daedalus. The grammar is top notch and the story is a sci fi mech theme. The story has unique characters with personalities that makes you able to clearly tell what character is which. 

A Practical Guide to Evil is also what I can confidently say is a god tier story as it's a story that goes deep into itself with it's own history and traditions that make it seem as if it's a world that could exist in an alternate universe.

Paladin is also what I consider God tier at least in the beginning. As it drags on I feel as if it loses some of it's flair but ultimately, it was a pleasure to read the story as all in all, the novel is still pretty good.

Tidal Lock can also be considered god tier as it has a personality of its own. It has events that subverts the reader's expectation which as a result, makes the story more life-like.

A Hermit's Life for Me is a cool story. Not exactly God Tier, but it's very close.

Those Who Aspired to Become Gods is also awesome. Unfortunately, he stopped posting for one reason or another. Though with 2k pages that doesn't matter as much.

The Deathworlders is also pretty fantastic though not of this site. It has in depth story and monster sized chapters which takes you an hour+ to read each. Of course, its free to read. It is also made by an author who is actually good in English.

Age of Gods is pretty Top-Tier as far as crafting/exploring abilities goes.