Jute
03-29-2006, 02:33 PM
The ‘Insane Level Your Melee Character From 1 To 20’ In Several Hours Guide
I’m writing this guide after an experiment in which I tried leveling as fast and as efficiently, time wise, as I could. I don’t pretend to know everything about this subject and this is just a collection of my opinions and advice.
There are many factors that affect leveling speed:
• Whether this is a newbie character or a second or successive one.
• What kind of equipment the character has.
• Whether or not you know the area.
• Whether or not you have access to a level 40 plus buffer (be it a two-boxed one or a friend willing to babysit you).
• Whether or not you have limited adena to spend on ‘shots’.
• Whether this character is a melee or caster.
• Whether you want to level as fast as possible or experience the lower levels so you learn the game.
• Whether or not you role play.
• Whether or not you do quests.
This guide assumes one particular set of answers to those questions:
• It’s not your first character and you have a fair amount of familiarity with the game mechanics
• You have some familiarity with the area
• You have Top Non-Grade equipment
• You have access to a level 40 plus Shillien Elder
• You don’t care how much ‘shots’ cost
• The character is a melee
• You don’t role play
• You aren’t doing quests
I’ll be writing other guides for other ways of leveling, but this is for the fastest way I know to get a melee character to level 20.
Once you have created your character have, your minimum, level 40 Shillien Elder nearby in the very first newbie area with the following:
• Top Non-Grade armor (for this Bronze)
• Some Jewelry (this is optional as I did it both with jewelry and without) but you may need it depending on mob types
• Top Non-Grade weapon (I’ve used each of these (Swordbreaker, Viper Fangs, and Falchion and found no real difference between any for the ultimate outcome. I leveled two characters with each weapon.)
• 8,000 NG Soulshots (if the character you are leveling has a higher carrying capacity you can start with 9,000).
Immediately when you log on your new character, get them dressed and give them 4,000 Soulshots (you can give them 5,000 if they have a higher carrying capacity). Have the SE buff with at a minimum Vampiric Rage 1, Windwalk 2, Shield, and Might. Focus, Death Whisper and Guidance are also useful but not really necessary at this level.
Begin killing the newbie area Gremlins. Do not use Soulshots yet, you will not need them. Kill Gremlins until two things happen, you are at least level 3, and you have received the Blue Gem drop for the newbie Soulshot Quest.
This is the ONLY quest you will be doing. Turn the Blue Gem into the quest giver, standing right there in the area. You will receive Soulshots from them and another quest item. Turn the quest item into the quest giver standing right next to the item giver to receive Soulshots. (For instance for Light Elves it’s Nerupa.) Once you have done this, run out of the first starting area to the newbie guide in the town of your chosen race. Talk to the newbie guide and receive more Soulshots. This should give you a total of 600 NG Soulshots for very little effort.
That’s 600 you don’t have to buy.
Now, move to the newbie area just outside of where you started and begin killing. I could give a list of the mobs I killed for each race, but since they change things around with every Chronicle it’s more productive to actually talk about how to choose what to kill. This, hopefully, will allow you to adapt to whatever changes are made in the next Chronicle and give you a philosophy you can take with you to higher levels.
Many people think killing the highest level mob they can kill will level them the fastest. This is not necessarily true. Although you may get a larger chunk of experience per kill, what really matters is your total amount of experience over time. There are several things that play into this.
• How many hits it takes to kill each mob?
• How far apart the mobs are?
• Whether or not they are agro?
• How much damage the mobs do to you. For instance do they have special attacks? (Poison, Windstrike, Stun, Life Drain, etc.)
Ideally you want mobs you can kill in the fewest number of hits, that are fairly close together, mostly non-aggressive (and non-social if you can find them), with no special attacks or ones that do little damage.
The logic behind this is that every moment a mob is not hitting the ground dead is a moment you are not getting XP. You need to balance how many hits it takes with how much XP you gain. I found that green con to low white con gave the best value of XP versus time.
The longer it takes you to run between mobs, the more time you lose on XP. Unfortunately one of the compromises they’ve made in the later Chronicles is a thinning out of mob density. Most of the newbie areas will not have mobs packed tightly and you will have to look around to find area with good density. Some good examples of the type of density I am referring to is the Spider’s Nest in the Dark Elf area, the area with Liriens and Spiders not far from the Neutral Zone in the Light Elf area, and Frozen Waterfall in the Orc Lands. These areas also all have a good mixture of the types of mobs you should be killing at around level 16 to 20.
If the mobs are agro, you may end up with too many on you at one time and although your healer should easily be able to keep you alive, even a level 40 can be killed by enough low level mobs. Learn what is agro in the area and what is not. If you have two mobs together, with one agro and the second non agro, attack the agro mob first. That way you fight one and not two. Fighting two at a time (unless you have a polearm) is much less effective since you will be taking damage from one without giving damage to it.
Mobs hitting you with a special attack can drain your life too quickly. No area is ideal and you will find that almost every area after a certain level has a mixture of mobs containing these special attacks. Pick your attacks carefully. If you character has antidotes, poison is rarely a problem. Good jewelry can negate most of Magical Damage, some characters are resistant to stun. Know your strengths and fight things that will cause you the least amount of damage.
You should also choose an area with a good spread of mob levels near each other. You want to be able to stay in one area as long as possible. This does not mean an area with level 10 to 20 mobs mixed together but rather an area with level 10 to 12 that flows to 13 to 15 which flows to 16 to 20. So you only have to move slightly to get to a new area once the mobs you are fighting turn light blue.
As I stated above, I found it most effective to fight green and white mobs. I moved to a harder area as soon as they turned light blue. One area that is a great example of what I am talking about is in the Light Elf area just off the Elven Forest teleport point. You can start there fighting Orcs, move to Dyrads, then Elder Dryads, then Crimson Spiders, to Hook Spiders, Liriens, etc. This kind of natural flow of levels is what you are looking for in any area.
Make sure you keep the buffs on you at all times. They make a huge difference and it’s not that much effort to keep them up.
After level 5 spam Soulshots. Keep the it on auto use. Use up your newbie shots first, then use the first batch you’ve purchased. The logic behind having half the shots on your babysitting Shillien Elder is to minimize the amount of downtime. It should take you only about 5,000 shots to reach level 15.
Once you have hit level 15, return to town and train only your weapon and armor skills. Don’t bother with any special attacks, or any other skills. I saw a huge difference in effective killing and damage taken when I trained these skills versus when I didn’t. At this time, purchase another round of as many shots as you can carry. In general I found that it took only about 12,000 to 14,000 Soulshots to level to 20.
Although you are able to do the class change quest at level 19, I chose to level to 20 before stopping, since at that level you can wear D grade which will make the questing all that much easier.
I leave you with one final bit. I didn’t do this on my first few characters. Although I did this on multiple characters, it is not my preferred way to level. Moving this quickly through the game, in my opinion, robs you of some of the richness you can find in exploring and learning all the game has to offer. I would not have been nearly as successful doing this if I had not spent a lot of time previously learning mobs, area locations and general strengths and weaknesses of the game.
The game has an incredible depth to offer if you let it. I hope you will.
Edit: I would like to thank my editor, The Court Jester for reviewing this guide. ;)
I’m writing this guide after an experiment in which I tried leveling as fast and as efficiently, time wise, as I could. I don’t pretend to know everything about this subject and this is just a collection of my opinions and advice.
There are many factors that affect leveling speed:
• Whether this is a newbie character or a second or successive one.
• What kind of equipment the character has.
• Whether or not you know the area.
• Whether or not you have access to a level 40 plus buffer (be it a two-boxed one or a friend willing to babysit you).
• Whether or not you have limited adena to spend on ‘shots’.
• Whether this character is a melee or caster.
• Whether you want to level as fast as possible or experience the lower levels so you learn the game.
• Whether or not you role play.
• Whether or not you do quests.
This guide assumes one particular set of answers to those questions:
• It’s not your first character and you have a fair amount of familiarity with the game mechanics
• You have some familiarity with the area
• You have Top Non-Grade equipment
• You have access to a level 40 plus Shillien Elder
• You don’t care how much ‘shots’ cost
• The character is a melee
• You don’t role play
• You aren’t doing quests
I’ll be writing other guides for other ways of leveling, but this is for the fastest way I know to get a melee character to level 20.
Once you have created your character have, your minimum, level 40 Shillien Elder nearby in the very first newbie area with the following:
• Top Non-Grade armor (for this Bronze)
• Some Jewelry (this is optional as I did it both with jewelry and without) but you may need it depending on mob types
• Top Non-Grade weapon (I’ve used each of these (Swordbreaker, Viper Fangs, and Falchion and found no real difference between any for the ultimate outcome. I leveled two characters with each weapon.)
• 8,000 NG Soulshots (if the character you are leveling has a higher carrying capacity you can start with 9,000).
Immediately when you log on your new character, get them dressed and give them 4,000 Soulshots (you can give them 5,000 if they have a higher carrying capacity). Have the SE buff with at a minimum Vampiric Rage 1, Windwalk 2, Shield, and Might. Focus, Death Whisper and Guidance are also useful but not really necessary at this level.
Begin killing the newbie area Gremlins. Do not use Soulshots yet, you will not need them. Kill Gremlins until two things happen, you are at least level 3, and you have received the Blue Gem drop for the newbie Soulshot Quest.
This is the ONLY quest you will be doing. Turn the Blue Gem into the quest giver, standing right there in the area. You will receive Soulshots from them and another quest item. Turn the quest item into the quest giver standing right next to the item giver to receive Soulshots. (For instance for Light Elves it’s Nerupa.) Once you have done this, run out of the first starting area to the newbie guide in the town of your chosen race. Talk to the newbie guide and receive more Soulshots. This should give you a total of 600 NG Soulshots for very little effort.
That’s 600 you don’t have to buy.
Now, move to the newbie area just outside of where you started and begin killing. I could give a list of the mobs I killed for each race, but since they change things around with every Chronicle it’s more productive to actually talk about how to choose what to kill. This, hopefully, will allow you to adapt to whatever changes are made in the next Chronicle and give you a philosophy you can take with you to higher levels.
Many people think killing the highest level mob they can kill will level them the fastest. This is not necessarily true. Although you may get a larger chunk of experience per kill, what really matters is your total amount of experience over time. There are several things that play into this.
• How many hits it takes to kill each mob?
• How far apart the mobs are?
• Whether or not they are agro?
• How much damage the mobs do to you. For instance do they have special attacks? (Poison, Windstrike, Stun, Life Drain, etc.)
Ideally you want mobs you can kill in the fewest number of hits, that are fairly close together, mostly non-aggressive (and non-social if you can find them), with no special attacks or ones that do little damage.
The logic behind this is that every moment a mob is not hitting the ground dead is a moment you are not getting XP. You need to balance how many hits it takes with how much XP you gain. I found that green con to low white con gave the best value of XP versus time.
The longer it takes you to run between mobs, the more time you lose on XP. Unfortunately one of the compromises they’ve made in the later Chronicles is a thinning out of mob density. Most of the newbie areas will not have mobs packed tightly and you will have to look around to find area with good density. Some good examples of the type of density I am referring to is the Spider’s Nest in the Dark Elf area, the area with Liriens and Spiders not far from the Neutral Zone in the Light Elf area, and Frozen Waterfall in the Orc Lands. These areas also all have a good mixture of the types of mobs you should be killing at around level 16 to 20.
If the mobs are agro, you may end up with too many on you at one time and although your healer should easily be able to keep you alive, even a level 40 can be killed by enough low level mobs. Learn what is agro in the area and what is not. If you have two mobs together, with one agro and the second non agro, attack the agro mob first. That way you fight one and not two. Fighting two at a time (unless you have a polearm) is much less effective since you will be taking damage from one without giving damage to it.
Mobs hitting you with a special attack can drain your life too quickly. No area is ideal and you will find that almost every area after a certain level has a mixture of mobs containing these special attacks. Pick your attacks carefully. If you character has antidotes, poison is rarely a problem. Good jewelry can negate most of Magical Damage, some characters are resistant to stun. Know your strengths and fight things that will cause you the least amount of damage.
You should also choose an area with a good spread of mob levels near each other. You want to be able to stay in one area as long as possible. This does not mean an area with level 10 to 20 mobs mixed together but rather an area with level 10 to 12 that flows to 13 to 15 which flows to 16 to 20. So you only have to move slightly to get to a new area once the mobs you are fighting turn light blue.
As I stated above, I found it most effective to fight green and white mobs. I moved to a harder area as soon as they turned light blue. One area that is a great example of what I am talking about is in the Light Elf area just off the Elven Forest teleport point. You can start there fighting Orcs, move to Dyrads, then Elder Dryads, then Crimson Spiders, to Hook Spiders, Liriens, etc. This kind of natural flow of levels is what you are looking for in any area.
Make sure you keep the buffs on you at all times. They make a huge difference and it’s not that much effort to keep them up.
After level 5 spam Soulshots. Keep the it on auto use. Use up your newbie shots first, then use the first batch you’ve purchased. The logic behind having half the shots on your babysitting Shillien Elder is to minimize the amount of downtime. It should take you only about 5,000 shots to reach level 15.
Once you have hit level 15, return to town and train only your weapon and armor skills. Don’t bother with any special attacks, or any other skills. I saw a huge difference in effective killing and damage taken when I trained these skills versus when I didn’t. At this time, purchase another round of as many shots as you can carry. In general I found that it took only about 12,000 to 14,000 Soulshots to level to 20.
Although you are able to do the class change quest at level 19, I chose to level to 20 before stopping, since at that level you can wear D grade which will make the questing all that much easier.
I leave you with one final bit. I didn’t do this on my first few characters. Although I did this on multiple characters, it is not my preferred way to level. Moving this quickly through the game, in my opinion, robs you of some of the richness you can find in exploring and learning all the game has to offer. I would not have been nearly as successful doing this if I had not spent a lot of time previously learning mobs, area locations and general strengths and weaknesses of the game.
The game has an incredible depth to offer if you let it. I hope you will.
Edit: I would like to thank my editor, The Court Jester for reviewing this guide. ;)