Maple Story Bandit FAQ
Biospark8000 BioBandit at hotmail.co.uk
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1) Intro
Copyright [BBCOP]
Introduction [BBINT]
Contact info [BBCONT]
Update history [BBUPD]
2) Before you start:
Basics of the rogue class [BBBASR]
Bandit or banditsin [BBBAN]
Strength or pure luck [BBSTR]
Funding (or lack thereof) [BBFUN]
The low-dex option [BBLOW]
The NO dex option [BBNOD]
Stats and skills for a dagger rogue [BBSTAD]
Early double stab or nimble body [BBEAR]
Disorder or dark sight [BBDIS]
Speculation [BBSPEC]
3) Becoming a bandit
Basics of the bandit class [BBBASB]
Dagger mastery or savage blow [BBDAG]
Booster or haste [BBBOO]
Stats and skills for a bandit [BBSTAB]
Concerning the shinkita [BBCONSHIN]
Concerning steal [BBCONSTE]
4) Beyond the bandit
The 3rd job advance fight [BB3RDJOB]
3rd job skills and their uses [BB3RDSKI] [WORK IN PROGRESS]
Assaulter or thieves? [BBASSAUL]
5) Appendix/outro
Training locations [BBTRA]
Specific financing [BBSPE]
Attack styles [BBATT]
Help me to help you [BBPLZ]
Acknowledgements [BBACK]
Banditsin supplement [BBJYO]
1] Intro
---
Copyright
BBCOP
---
I'll be honest here, I don't care who distributes this, where you post it,
whether or not you make changes to the original, just so long as it's not
too altered. I'd appreciate it if you left my name on here in some form
too, though it's not like I'm likely to find out if this file's been
posted elsewhere under a different name, can't say I ever go surfing the
internet with search engines these days and I'm not annoyed enough by the
idea to look. I find it fun to google my screen names every few months,
but I don't ever get particularly annoyed at this being hosted. Heck,
it's flattering.
Basically, knock yourselves out, but don't actually rip me off.
For those that have actually asked for my permission, thanks a bunch, I
appreciate it, but it's really not necessary or anything.
On a side note, if anyone does find this guide elsewhere, posted under my
name or anyone else's, let me know if you need something to do for 5
minutes. I could use a laugh.
---
Introduction
BBINT
---
Well, if you're reading this, it's to be assumed that you want to become a
bandit in Maple Story. I've been a bandit for over a year now, my weakest
one being level 64 and my strongest around 98, so I've run into most of the
problems that a rogue or bandit can expect to encounter. I guess this
isn't an FAQ so much as a collection of useful information I've come
across that you might find helpful throughout your time in maple.
Anyways, you'll have a few choices to make before you start, they're
covered in the appropriate sections. Please take a little time to plan
your character ahead though, there's nothing more infuriating than getting
to level 25 or so and realising you've made a huge mistake (this is coming
from a guy with a luck bandit in beta with 3 keen eyes and 10 int).
Most of this guide has been formed by my personal experience, heavily
influenced by popular opinion. In other words, I'm pretty sure that
everything in here is accurate, as much as it can be in an MMORPG, but if
you find that something doesn't work as you'd have hoped then try
something else, experiment a bit, that's half the fun of the game, after
all. If you're looking for an FAQ listing detailed descriptions of the
individual thief skills and their power, etc, check Firestorm88's guide at
http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/maple_story_thief.txt
Or there's a bunch of useful topics over at www.sleepywood.net/forums,
though you will need an account there to see anything.
PLEASE NOTE: I'm a bit absent minded, so any time I refer to a gephart,
you can usually assume that I also mean a Korean fan. They're basically
the same, anyway, just the fan has a couple of nice, but mostly decorative
bonuses. Not that they're useless, but weapon attack is the main thing.
---
Contact info
BBCONT
---
First, PLEASE read the guide before you contact me in any way. Think I
should probably say that, not trying to insult anyone's intelligence.
Email address is up at the top there, I should be checking that like every
couple days. I'll respond as much as possible, just don't go sending
mails full of 1337speak (I can read it, but don't expect me to type it,
never learned how to do that) or anything or I'll most likely dump them,
and I'm not opening anything with an attachment since I'm delightfully
paranoid. A relevant subject line wouldn't hurt, either but it's not
vitally important. Alternatively, post on the MS forums. The guys on
there have way more collective experience than me in pretty much all
matters. If there's anything that's not been covered in here that really
should be, let me know, and if I feel it's needed I'll slap it in at some
point.
And do me a favour, don't invite me to friend networks. I have a myspace,
but it's only for people I know and I don't plan on joining any others.
If you want to contact me, it'll have to be via mail if you don't already know
me, I've fled Maple for brighter shores, but I'm always up for skill
discussions and material for FAQ revisions. Or just bandit banter. I'm a
little out of touch on the most recently released material, so don't expect me
to know about, say, Leafre.
As a heads up, it's recently come to my attention that hotmail tends to
take anything from an @yahoo.com and @gmail.com as spam, so throws it
right into my trash. I don't quite know why this happens, and as far as I
know I haven't actually lost any mail, yet, but if yours gets seemingly
lost in the aether, please don't assume I'm being obnoxious and ignoring
you. Unless you're spamming me or something, in which case I am ignoring
you (and probably blocking you, too).
Seems that btinternet.com addresses get junked, too.
---
Update history
BBUPD
---
Initial:
Added the basics, pretty much all the content related to pre-3rd jobs
really, since the third job wasn't out at the time.
1st update:
Fixed use of commas and the problem I had with converting this to a Word
document, which changed many apostrophes into question marks. Bit of 3rd
job stuff added, contacts bit has an addition, added this update section
and put in the navigation shortcuts. Huzzah!
2nd update:
Possibly the last update, but I think this is pretty decent now,
especially since you need very little guidance beyond level 70. Added to
the third job skills, added the funding and low-dex bits.
3rd update:
I quit about 3 months ago, so there won't be too much in the way of skill
updates any more. I guess that works, really, it's now more a bandit
guide than a chief bandit guide than ever. I planned it like that.
Really.
*cough*
I've revised my view on dark sight a tad, but not by much, and the skill
build for chief bandits has been changed somewhat.
4th update:
Back again, after an equipment upgrade. I'm aware that the skills for the
first job have changed a little, but there's not too much I can do about
that, outside of making a new bandit and levelling him to about 15, just
to test the outcome of like 1 number. Don't mean to seem rude, but I hope
you'll excuse me if I don't bother with that, being without haste for any
length of time makes me edgy.
I've been playing with a little math, too. Nothing too complicated, but
it's a little backing for the assaulter VS thieves issue, though again,
got to say it, a lot of this guide is mostly partially informed opinion,
so you're not doing yourself much good if you don't play around with
things for yourself and follow this blindly.
By the way, just run a wordcount on this, came to 10k and 20 pages of
Word.
Yikes.
5th update:
ASCII art/text formatting with only MS Word. Tool of the devil.
Added a bit more skill info, now that I've gotten some guard, updated a
bit on the skills and training areas. Nothin' drastic. If the layout is
a little messed up, I'm sorry, Word has been doing some downright
STRANGE things on every last version of this guide. Not much I can do
about it, to be frank.
Additional:
I made a huge mistake in meso guard, I thought that it didn't block magic,
but it does. Fixed that now. Also cleaned things up a bit and added a
bit more on dark sight/disorder.
6th update:
Fixed an error on my part in choice of basic weapon. Updated the contacts
part a bit.
7th update:
With some luck, eventually I'll submit one of these without horrible,
horrible formatting problems. Updated a couple things, reached 1337
paragraphs (exactly 1337) added the financing section.
(I'm talkin' 'bout money, money...)
Mostly added things as a result of feedback, so thanks y'all!
8th update:
Hey, my lucky number. Added a bit about guard, particularly the terrain
features bit, which I've played with a little, now. Added a bit to the
training areas section for level 80 non-thieves bandits (though nothing
too great, admittedly), and played with the formatting again.
Eventually, I swear, this guide shall be hosted on the Internets without
random and meaningless line breaks. Then I shall rejoice. My own fault
for trying to format the whole thing in MS Word, I guess.
9th update:
Hey sports fans, did you miss me? Took a 3 month hiatus, came
back and they'd broken my poor guide with spiteful patches. I'll try and
put some repairs up.
Added some more acknowledgements, too, a couple new sections and a high
tech two way help system! Um... yeah!
10th update:
Yeah, this is about it. If you've been reading this semi regularly, you'll know
I haven't updated for over a year, 'cause I haven't been playing for over a
year. After 98 levels, with only the first 80 or so having anything really
interesting to do, I've disabled my account for all intents and purposes. I've
fixed one of two major things, now that we're getting the last job advance.
Adios guy, and thanks for everything. It's been fun.
2] Before you start
---
Basics of the rogue class
BBASR
---
It's been said before, I'll say it again, try to roll a 4/4 int and str on
your stat dice, though a 5/5 or a combination of 4/5 will work just fine
if it's your first character. If you're planning on being a bandit for
the long haul, get a 4/4. People spend millions on a few points of dex or
luck at level 80+, try not to do anything you'll regret later, especially when
updating your raw stats actually costs real world money. Those two points
could cost you a couple of dollars.
If you're becoming a bandit you're going to have to become a rogue through
the dark lord in Kerning city. If you want to exceed the dex requirement
needed to make this advance in order to get a little more damage on maple
island, then go ahead, but bear in mind that dex barely adds anything to
your damage compared to strength, which you don't want much (if any) of
unless you're going to be a strength bandit, and levelling on maple island
is about as easy as it gets, so that dex or str used instead of luck will
start to hurt when luck begins to matter. Like the instant you make the
advance.
If you're going to be a strength bandit (read ahead for info on that) and
you're certain you won't want to go pure luck EVER, then you can add a
little strength up there, too. It certainly helps in getting a razor or a
fruit knife, both of which will give you a little more power than a sword
or hammer. By the way, even if the two handed wooden mallet has more
weapon attack, don't use it, we generate our damage from luck, those
things damage using strength, and our daggers are quite a bit faster. I
mean, you can try it, but if your stats are set up vaguely right, and you
didn't plan on being a strength bandit so jacked your strength up far too
high on maple island, then you might get more out of it, but it'll most
likely be a waste of cash, which tends to be kind of hard to come by as a
newbie.
So yeah, just a note once again, rogue weapons use your luck as the main
damage stat. Every other kind of weapon (well, unless you get a bow or
something) uses strength, so don't assume that your big ol' mace will hurt
as much as that little zamadar. Imagine you're stabbing their vitals or
something like that.
When you start, if you're going pure bandit, you're pretty much a
substandard warrior, you should learn to deal with that real quickly.
This means that while you have more accuracy and evasion, you're not going
to be too popular in things like the party quest and levelling may take
quite a while compared to the other classes. If you're going banditsin,
especially if you're a funded banditsin, then go mad with the stars,
you'll advance in no time.
As I said before, you'll have good accuracy and evasion, which will last
for your entire maple life as well as the ever-popular haste skill.
Bandits also benefit from some of the most reliable damage in the game,
since their damage range (not amount!) is decreased by mastery and the 80%
hit strength of savage blow. This means that once you start killing an
enemy in a given number of hits, you'll probably be doing that semi-
consistently in a level or two, at least until level 70. However, to add
a little balance all this is countered as a bandit by a few things:
Lack of knockback - even with savage blow and dagger mastery maxed you
won't be able to make those large monsters flinch in the way that a
warrior, mage or archer can, not until the third advance. While your
attacks aren't weak, they do work in a different way to the attack skills
of the other classes.
Lack of a critical hit skill means lower damage too (though to be fair,
only the shooting classes get that as an actual purchasable skill).
The problem with savage blow - when it's maxed, this skill will deal 80%
of your damage range * 6 hits. 480%, sounds nice, but you have to bear in
mind that it works out as 6 individual hits, not one large one. That
means that enemies with high defence may give you a few problems. Savage
blow also has a fairly long animation until you get dagger booster, which
can leave you open to attack, and is rather expensive, 27 mp per use when
it gets to level 21, so you'll need to keep the mana potions flowing.
Even when you do get booster it takes about half a second or so to pull a
savage, that's why people jump attack so much as bandits, you can keep
moving as you stab since you have the momentum to propel yourself
forwards. You lose a bit of control when you're pinging around like that,
since you can't choose which direction to move in once the animation starts,
you're stuck until you land.
Ranged magical attackers - while you can run rings around most opponents
on Victoria island with haste, when you move to Ossyria many enemies will
have a ranged magical attack that you can't dodge, though your evasion may
well kick in against. There's nothing you, or anyone else, can do about this
(they'll even shoot you through dark sight), but it's something you'll have to
prepare for. Haste helps against these kinds of enemies, but only in that it
allows you to make up the distance that you were knocked away by so they
won't get quite as many shots off while you recover. Tauromacis/spear are an
exception to the whole out outmanoeuvring on Victoria thing, they'll just fry
you as soon as you stab them from any distance. And jr balrogs, but you
shouldn't expect bosses to conform to the attack patterns of standard enemies.
---
Bandit or banditsin
BBBAN
---
If you didn't already know, banditsin is the nickname given to a rogue
that starts out by following an assassin's skill build but become a bandit
at the job advance. This means that you get the benefit of ranged
attacks, high attack throwing stars and the lucky 7 skill (which is just
as strong with mastery as without), but you get all the bandit benefits at
level 30. Considering how long getting a pure bandit to level 30 can seem
to take, this is an attractive option and it also makes getting savage
blow a little quicker, but if you take lucky 7 and the keen eyes needed to
support it you'll miss out 2 things: several points to disorder/dark
sight and the double stab skill.
The disorder/dark sight thing isn't so bad, as bandits get a few spare
points at the end of their jobs anyway so you can fill out your old skill
book if you feel you want to, but double stab can be quite useful. As an
example, if a dark stone golem takes 2 savage blows and 2 regular attacks
to kill, you'll save yourself either 13 mp or a few seconds by using
double stab instead of that 3rd savage or those 2 regular hits. Might not
sound like a lot, but when you need 1 million or more experience to level
up it adds up quite quickly, and we do use a lot of MP, after all. It's
also handy when you go to places like the deeper parts of the dungeon when
you're a fairly high level and quite powerful, but it's infested with weak
enemies. No sense in wasting all that mp on savaging them, right? Kinda
handy if you're the kind of person who kills anything that moves and gets
in their way on instinct, even while travelling. That might just be me,
though... It's also nice if you decide to do old quests.
All that considered, all it's doing is saving you the trouble of switching from
claw to dagger. No big deal if you can find a safe platform (and there's
almost ALWAYS one).
The other thing to consider is that once you hit level 45, possibly 40,
you won't ever use lucky 7 again. Never. Not having access to critical
shot makes it much weaker than an assassin's lucky 7, making savage blow
the better option and besides.
Basically, banditsins are a time saver, though ever so slightly flawed
compared to a full bandit. It's not a huge flaw, not really anything to consider
but it's something to think about. Being a regular bandit saves a little money,
but it's not like you can't sell those stars again. The day folk stop needing
tobis will probably be the day that something below level 40 drops ilbis...
If you're into the whole perfect character thing, then the L7 points may
irk you a bit come level 50+. Y'know, if you're really particularly anal about
that kind of thing.
---
Strength or pure luck
BBSTR
---
This gets asked quite a lot. A strength bandit is a bandit that adds to
their strength stat in order to equip, to use the formal names, daggers,
while a luck bandit uses cutters instead, which don't require strength
(I'll refer to both as daggers from this section on, it just saves
confusion). Daggers attack faster than cutters most of the time, they
normally have one extra speed rank (they'll be faster where a cutter will
be fast), so you can get your attacks off a little faster, but by adding
strength instead of luck you'll be losing some attack power. When you get
to the later levels 40 luck or more is a lot to lose, especially as your
weapons get stronger (it'd mean -120 from my upper attack range at the
time of writing with 83 weapon attack).
The weapons themselves have some important differences. Since strength
bandits are a little weaker you'll get extra speed as compensation, as
mentioned above, but at higher levels the attack speeds of daggers and
cutters become the same. It's kind of like becoming a banditsin, you make
one small sacrifice to aid levelling speed but lose a little power along
the way.
If you made a strength banditsin, I suppose you'd have a really easy time
from level 10-60, but the combination of the two weaknesses would be
unpleasant later on, to say the least. However, daggers tend to have
different stats to cutters, cutters have a lower potential attack stat, if
I recall, so it's a little bit of a gamble for you weapon hunting types,
and by levelling faster from 50-60 (shink bug, more later), it's like a
constant steady acceleration vs crawling along then a huge boost, you'll
most likely be a higher level than your luck counterparts when they hit 60
at last. Cutters are awfully expensive too (daggers aren't,
comparatively), and we're generally not a wealthy class, so considering
that, strength bandits can have a much easier time with scrolling a weapon
that would make strong men weep. I've scrolled over 20 dragon tails,
there's been times when I've wished I was a strength bandit.
---
Funding (or lack thereof)
BBFUN
---
Funding isn't a huge problem for bandits at first. We do use a lot of
potions, no denying that, and we're one of the 2 classes that need a pan
lid to have the best gear possible at first, which is initially very
expensive. Since you can hunt green mushrooms from an early level,
though, you can try and get a lid, and they drop mana potions so there's a
bit of a saving there, too.
Funding will start to pinch a bit at level 35-40. First things first, you
pure luck types will need a good fan, gephart or dragon's toenail. If
you're not too fussy about weapon attack, then you can get a nice cheap
geph from El Nath, but considering how long you'll have the thing, you
really want to get the best that money can buy, something in the 52-53
attack range, or higher if you can pull it off. A little optimistic
ligator hunting can help there, to some extent. As for strength bandits,
you'll need a bazlud eventually. Lupins aren't friendly to the melee
classes (or anyone, really, 'cept maybe archers), so unless you can take a
cleric or have a ton of potion money, you might want to consider buying
one. They're not too expensive, to my knowledge, so don't worry.
If you're a luck bandit buying an above average geph/fan, I'd go for the
fan. It doesn't look as serious as the gephart, for sure, but it's got a
couple of stat bonuses (don't knock +5 evasion) and besides, nobody really
sells gepharts, but fans are something that anyone can wear and are always
popular.
Luck bandits at level 50 start to get a major disadvantage, as our level
50 weapon tends to be expensive and has a flaw in it (mentioned elsewhere
in the FAQ), but strength bandits should be able to get a sai without too
much trouble. Generally, I really wouldn't bother with a shinkita, but
that's just me, the issue is covered in an appropriate section for you to
make your own decisions.
At level 60, luck daggers become really horribly expensive since there's a
reasonable demand but a short supply, they only drop from yeti and pepe
(possibly balrog). If you can get someone to heal you while fighting
those guys, taking 16 hits to split them, then go ahead and try, but it's
an expensive place to fight in. The strength dagger is cheaper and
actually affordable, I'm certain of that.
Kandines seem to be better than fins to buy, which may be a relief.
Dragon tail markets are beyond me completely. They used to be cheap, but
now they seeming to be inflating again, looks like bandits might have been
fashionable 6 months ago.
So yeah, you'll probably want to be funded, if you plan to reach level 35-
40 and beyond. To save yourself a bit more money, you might want to buy
into prescrolled weapons, they tend to be cheaper than buying 60% dagger
scrolls (which have a HARSH price tag).
As for making money, bandits aren't great at it, I'll be honest. We use a
lot of potions of both types, we fight up close, we have no healing skills
and our attacks drain MP quickly. Once you start fighting in drake's meal
table (if you do), you should start seeing a profit if you're not there at
a low level, same with the hot sands, or you can try to rely on really
lucky drops, but that's a dangerous gamble.
---
The low-dex option
BBLOW
---
Low-dex is the idea that's come around that you can increase your
character's power by adding points into luck, rather than dex, but though
you still need dex, you can get it from elsewhere. Elsewhere can mean a
couple of things, either through dex equipment (which, by the way, tends
to be much cheaper than luck gear) or through equipment scrolling,
specifically shoes and overalls. Basically, the dex stays as low as it's
physically possible to keep it.
Female rogues have a bit of a better time here, as you guys get the
fruits/avenger overall at level 35, where males get knucklevest sets.
This means that for a male to scroll an overall, they have to use a sauna
robe, but females can scroll their overalls which already add 4-5 stat
points, giving them a level's stat boost over males. The overalls are
also easier to mass scroll, you don't get issued with one single avenger,
you can buy a ton of them and they don't drop too uncommonly. There's a
overall for both genders after the avenger, but only if you plan on
getting to level 100.
If you're going to go low-dex, you'll have a couple of disadvantages. For
one thing, you'll take a little more damage, as sauna robes/level 35 suits
were not intended to have high defence, though that's not really a huge
problem if you're an assassin with drain, and bandits will just have to
use another potion or two. For another, you'll never get a new suit of
clothing unless you drop the low-dex path. You'll never meet the dex
requirements of anything you wear, apart from shoes, weapons, hats,
earrings and gloves, so unless you like the look of that robe, you might
want to invest in some cash shop clothing, I guess. The flipside is
increased damage, since scrolling your equipment for dex allows you to put
all those points you would have spent into luck, you end up with more stat
points overall, too.
If you do want to go low dex, then ideally you want to get a sauna robe or
the female overall, since they're the only torso items you can scroll for
dex, then scroll them with 60% overall dex scrolls, or try to get a
working 10% on the first slot or something. For more stats, get a pair of
snowshoes from El Nath (2 more slots than your average shoe) and use
either 60 or 10% shoe for jump scrolls. Not shoe dex, they add
avoidability for some reason, or 1 dex if you get a 10% to work. There's
apparently a snowshoe we can wear that has a nice amount of dex on it, all
7 slots and drops from a monster (so the dex is slightly variable), but
unless we get the Gunfather areas, and unless you can kill the final boss
of that area, I wouldn't count on getting one. The prices will be disgusting,
anyway.
---
The NO-dex option
BBNOD
---
The release of maple weapons introduced a curious mechanic, a dagger
without a dex requirement. So here's the thing, you can use one of those
without too much trouble, IF you can get to level 40 without adding any
dex outside of the class advance requirement (beginner gear for defence, I
suppose, and some very basic weapons until you can get a +dex sauna robe).
You'll have nothing but raw power, but leveling it up will be like grinding a
permabeginner, I guess. Just worse.
I don't really know anything about this option, and I don't have the time
or the stones to try it. I mean, I guess it's theoretically possible to
do it, and you'd have a ball through your 40s, the problem is that even
with some crazy scrolling luck, you won't outdamage some of the better
weapons. You'll need a reasonable amount of luck to equip any dagger
worth having, and with the damage formula, I'm not sure that even 80 points
of luck will outdo the ultimate weapons.
---
Stats and skills for a dagger rogue
BBSTAD
---
5/5 MAX int and strength, unless you plan on being a strength bandit, then
you can have a little more of that str to help you through Maple island.
It's not hard to roll a 4/4, 4/5, 5/4 or 5/5, so don't shoot yourself in
the foot at this early stage. From then on, your dex should be your
current level doubled, your strength should be only what you need to equip
your weapons (if they require it) and every other stat point should be
added to luck.
AT LEVEL 40, A SLIGHT CHANGE IS NEEDED.
From level 40, your dex should be your level +40, so at 59 it should be 99
and so on, unless you'd prefer to add +10 at every new equipment level to
maximise damage. If you want to play safe with dex just add as much as
you need for your equipment but make sure to research the item
requirements nice and early. Bear in mind that to meet the requirements
to equip an item, you need to imagine you're not wearing your old one. If
you need 100 dex to wear a hat, you have 98 base dex and your existing hat
adds 3, you can't wear the new one until you add two more, regardless of
how much dex it adds. Be aware of changing any other clothing items, too. I
think at the end of my character's life, removing my cape caused my pants to
fall off.
As for the skills, this will only cover dagger rouges. If you want to
make a banditsin, Firestorm88 has a good thief FAQ on this site over here:
http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/maple_story_thief.txt
you should have a look at that and follow the appropriate section to make
your first advance.
For me, personally I went with the following:
Max double stab
Max nimble body
3 to disorder
1 to dark sight
Max disorder
I wouldn't personally recommend disorder now, though.
---
Early double stab or nimble body
BBEAR
---
It doesn't matter too much since the period at which this is an issue is
the time in which you'll level very quickly, even if it doesn't seem that
way at the time. If you take nimble body first you'll dodge a little more
and save yourself a little cash in hp potions, but if you max out double
stab you'll be doing decent damage much earlier on, so you can level quite
a bit faster.
I went max nimble on beta, max double on official, they've both got their
individual charms, but faster levelling lets you get to stronger monsters
and better drops that much faster while more evasion and accuracy just...
helps you hit neckis, really. That's a pretty big thing in itself,
though.
---
Disorder or dark sight
BBDIS
---
It used to be, if you've followed my writing on the matter, that I openly
preferred disorder to dark sight. I gather I was about the only person who
did. This was due to how I never, ever used dark sight, I never often let my
potions get low enough that I needed to be invincible like that, and I did
disorder squids in my 90s, but also that the 4th job was never confirmed and I
wasn't about to prepare for what we may or may not ever get.
As I write this, the final advancement HAS been confirmed. There's a skill
in there, assassinate I believe it's called, that has damage based on how long
you can remain in dark sight. This means that you're really going to want to
max it. I really apologise if this has messed anyone up, honestly, but there
wasn't really a great deal I could do, and I did mention that in a footnote, but
screenshots from a different version that had been obtained through their beta
testing didn't fill me with hope. I'd still take disorder over steal, though,
since steal is just... y'know, I'm not even sure why it's a skill.
3] Becoming a bandit
---
Basics of the bandit class
BBBASB
---
You've cast off your semi-beginner appearance, you've gained a nifty hp/mp
boost and your skill book is now filled with all kinds of shiny things.
This is where it gets interesting.
First up, things won't get really fun until at least level 45 but
thankfully the exp requirements are still sort of low. It's a chore
getting to that level but it's worth it. There's also slightly less to
think about here, especially if you're a strength bandit, as your skills
are almost all useful and you get a great many more points to add to them,
although you do still have a couple of things to think about.
Also, prepare for people to ask you to do that move with the
symbols/letters or some other description and ask to be hasted. That'll
happen a lot, especially if you walk around towns and other crowded areas.
If it bugs you, you could try buying a level 15 outfit or disabling your
trades, I guess.
---
Dagger mastery or savage blow
BBDAG
---
Daggery mastery is a wonderful thing. It increases the lower damage range
on every single attack you do, stabilizing your damage and making your
attacks much more reliable. It also adds a little more accuracy, which is
always nice, although by the time you hit 60, even 50, you'll be genuinely
shocked to see a 'miss' unless you fight really, really silly things.
Savage blow is the single reason that some people make bandits. It looks
flashy, the damage looks incredible the first few times you see it and it
lets you rain burning metal death upon all who would oppose you. It's the
single strongest attack you'll have as a bandit, and it's the one you'll
use the most. Heck, you'll probably use it nigh-on exclusively towards
the end of the job. It's also the thing that caused me to convert from being a
magician and spend two years dedicated to stabbing.
The problem you'll have to think about here is that you can do one of two
things, you can increase mastery (to level 19 is best), upping the
strength of every attack you'll EVER do but postpone savage for a few
levels, or you can get savage and risk that nasty 80% modifier kicking in
on your poor lower attack range. Either way, you're working towards the
same goal so it comes down to whether you like reliable attacks or a bit
of a gamble (if your lower range comes into play without mastery
you'll have spent 27 mp on a fairly useless attack. It's very possible to do
less than 60 damage).
As a side note, the lowest level you should ever be using savage at is
37. If the skill doesn't have 21 points or more, double stab is more
powerful. Harsh but true, though level 1-10 savage blowing snails can be
a pleasant pastime for maybe 5 minutes.
---
Booster or haste
BBBOO
---
Tricky one, this. Booster is a pretty great skill, it makes your attacks
faster and if you're in a mob of enemies most of the time you'll level
faster too, but haste allows for faster travelling, allowing you to reach
enemies faster and clear a map while making you more popular for parties.
It's much cheaper to get friendly with a small party that brings along a
cleric than it is to train normally, especially when all they ask is for
an occasional haste, and more levelling friends is a great thing. I've found
booster to be faster for general training though, since enemies do usually
come in groups.
If you plan to party a lot you might want to consider haste, though
booster is pretty much the better option in my view. If you plan to get a
shinkita, I mean if you're absolutely CERTAIN you're getting one, then get
haste, booster won't be worth it.
If you want to add a little booster then max haste, that'd work out well
since booster doesn't improve with every level like haste, it always adds
one speed rank (pretty much), but adding levels lowers the casting cost
and increases the duration. Just up it to a level that doesn't cause you
any particular grief from recasting it then add a little haste if you go
for booster first. Just don't try to use a level 1 booster or something
unless you really like dealing significant damage to yourself on a
constant basis.
---
Stats and skills for a bandit
BBSTAB
---
As mentioned above, dex is twice your level until 40, then your level +40,
strength enough to meet your weapon requirements, all the rest to luck.
Avoid int at all costs, int is the tool of interfering magicians and you
want to be fast, not smart, unless you're trying some radical new
experimental build. Good luck, if you are, send me some pictures.
As for skills, I went for the following. Switch them around as you feel
appropriate:
19 mastery
30 savage
6 booster
20 haste
20 booster
20 endure
20 mastery
11 steal (mostly to play with it. More on this later)
A few points to make clear, here. First, get 19 mastery whenever you
decide to get it and leave it at 19 until you get your better skills.
Level 20 mastery adds 1 accuracy and a nice little flare on the end of
your attacks, it's not much for a whole skill point, accuracy points are a dime
a dozen for us so it's more than acceptable to leave mastery at 19 and really,
it's probably better to get one more point of steal or a 1st job skill, truth be
told. I just did that because I like the little flare and I'm not that much of a
rabid optimiser.
No point in saving any points then maxing savage in one go. At level 20
it's worse than double stab, at 21 it's better, not much to think about
there, just bump it up every level while you're raising its ranks.
6 booster. Odd choice, but I wanted to get at least 1 minute of booster
available before I added haste. Now, I'm biased here from beta, because
once you have a usable haste (one that noticeably alters your speed, maybe
about level 10), it becomes rather addictive. Basically you'll probably
never let it turn off under normal circumstances, but after a few days
you'll come to accept the faster speed as normal, making regular movement
rather uncomfortable (jump quests become fun with a capital F). I got 6
booster so I could at least use it for a fair period of time, and 1 minute
is exactly 2 levels of points, it's a nice even figure, but you might want
to max one then the other.
Endure is nice. I like it at least, though some people don't. It means
that any regeneration you do on a bench will usually take less than 3
minutes with a sauna robe, which saves all kinds of time, and it buys you
a few more attacks per mp potion. It's also better than the other
alternatives so you might as well jack it up.
Steal has its own section, but is honestly not worth it, if you want the
summary.
---
Concerning the shinkita
BBSHIN
---
After 15 levels of the gephart (or korean fan, or 10 levels of nail,
replace where appropriate) you're probably a little anxious for something
with a little more stopping power (I wore my geph for 41 levels, I can
wholly understand) and you might turn your attention to the level 50 luck
dagger, the shinkita. That is if you're rich for your level, since the
things drop from tauromacis, have fun hunting those at level 50, or can be
made at Ludibrium, but require some fairly expensive minerals. Cheaper
than buying one, though, I should think. The shinkita is a good weapon,
but it does have one rather nasty flaw, there's a bug in it that almost
negates dagger booster. If you do boost while wearing a shinkita you'll
go faster but just barely, it's hardly a noticeable improvement.
This means you've got another choice, sacrifice attack power or attack
speed. Not such a big choice as becoming a str or luck bandit and this
one has no real consequences at the end, you won't become any worse
overall for using a shink. One thing though, if you intend to use a
gephart from level 35-60+ just make sure it's scrolled fairly well, it'll
save a lot of grief later on (talking a +4 at least with 60% scrolls,
though if you can get a 10% to work then by all means, go nuts).
If you use a shinkita:
Increased attack power, more chance of enemies flinching from said attack
power (just don't rely on it, that's not what savage blow is for), less
money spent on warrior potions/stronger enemies can be fought with warrior
potions. They're rather expensive though and if you used booster before,
they may annoy you. With the addition of item crafting in Ludibrium, you
can make them a lot cheaper than you could buy them before, so you might
want to try your luck there, just bear in mind the risks involved.
If you don't:
Increased speed, faster levelling on weaker monsters meaning more monsters
die, so a greater chance of equipment drops and potentially more cash/exp.
The weapon is also cheaper and can be realistically hunted for at the
level you can equip it at (doesn't apply to korean fans).
I got a shink in beta, skipped it in official. The attack power is nice
to have but increased speed is a definite plus, kind of emphasises what a
thief is all about. If you want to go hunting mushmoms and balrogs, a
gephart or fan is recommended, you can throw out quite a lot more damage
if you stab faster rather than harder. Besides, if you get lucky with
scrolls or get a +attack glove you can make a mock shinkita, it worked for
me.
You'll want to scroll the shink if you plan to get one, so might as well
ignore scrolling the geph since the scrolls are so pricey now. If you go
for the geph route, you'll have easier levelling from 35-50 since you'll
have it scrolled at some point before 50, hopefully, unless you have an
obscene amount of cash to scroll both.
---
Concerning steal
BBCONSTE
---
First up, steal is not a good skill, most anyone would agree with that,
though people occasionally ask about how it works as the description isn't
as clear as it could be, so here goes:
Steal shoots a shadow of yourself from your body, though does not count as
a ranged attack and has no additional reach. An enemy hit by steal may
drop something or may not. If they don't drop anything, you may continue
to try stealing until they do drop something.
When the enemy drops an item, it will be one of the items that the enemy
can normally drop, etc items, mesos, equipment, useables, event items. If
they can't naturally drop it, you won't steal it.
STEALING IN NO WAY INCREASES YOUR CHANCE TO FIND RARE
OR UNUSUAL ITEMS,
that's an important thing, steal acts just like you killed the monster but
they only dropped one item, for want of a better phrase. This means that
when you steal, you're most likely going to get some mesos or an etc item
such as a snail shell, solid horn or werewolf toenail since they're the
most common things you'll find from a normal kill. Once an item has been
stolen, you cannot steal any more from that enemy, you need to try looting
a different enemy (and preferably bump off the one you stole from, which
will now be trying to kill you with some considerable effort for having
stabbed it).
When an item is stolen, it looks like when you choose to drop an item out
of your inventory or when an enemy drops one. Nothing special happens,
the item just jumps out and spins around until it lands, then hovers as
normal.
Any item that is stolen will not be subject to the usual 10 second drop
rule that keeps people from looting you all the time, anyone will be able
to get the item from the moment it touches the ground. Also, mesos that
are stolen will be less than the monster is physically capable of dropping
(if a drake drops 200-300 mesos, he'll drop perhaps 100-175 with steal,
I'm not clear on the modifier). I'm assuming this is a constant reduction
amount, it certainly seems to be, but it's certainly a percentage reduction, not
a flat value.
When the monster stolen from dies, they can still drop any of their normal
items including equipment, apart from the item that was stolen, though I'm
not certain on that point. If you stole cash, they won't drop cash, if
you stole an ore, they won't drop that particular ore, possibly (it's REAL hard
to test that). If you somehow did manage to steal an ore or an equipment
drop (by the way, congratulations on that, seriously) they will still be capable
of dropping other ores and equips I should think, since monsters are fully
capable of giving more than one piece of equipment or more than one ore
from one kill, I've seen it done.
One thing about steal, though. If you want to have a laugh, try the
following:
Steal from a yeti and pepe (prepare to lose a LOT of MP before you figure
out why this doesn't work very well)
Steal from any enemy that drops an important body part as an etc drop (you
can tear a drake's skull out and he'll keep walking, rip out a cargo's
eye, dismember clangs...)
Steal with a polearm (you don't need a dagger to use the skill, you can
use anything you can equip) or pretend you're casting terrible dark magic
with a wooden wand
The only reason I added any points to steal is that I'm not fond of dark
sight. Approaching my later levels, it also became apparent that I could
use steal to try and hunt for werewolf nails without actually killing the
wolves and should Zakum ever be implemented but my party at him failed
miserably, I could at least try to steal something under the cover of a
cleric.
I have stolen no nails to date. Any attempts at stealing were met with
harsh, fast and indiscriminate resistance. I am beyond the level at which
I can kill wolves. I will never steal their nails.
Also, using steal on bosses is iffy. I have had it pointed out that only
the final forms of bosses drop their items (Zak's body, Papulatus'...
whatever the hell you'd call it, body? Spectral form? Presence?), so if
you try to steal an item early on in a fight, you're not going to be
getting your consolation prize. It MIGHT work with Pianus, since he
actually does drop things, but I can't test it very easily, so don't have
any concrete evidence. All signs point to not being able to steal,
though.
For added fun, people may mistake steal for shadow partner, for some
bizarre reason. Even though the third job may be out, even
though you're clearly not an assassin, even though the shadow disappears,
some may call it shadow partner. This is kind of amusing, though once
people actually start USING shadow partner nearby, this may not work. No
harm in trying though, if it's all in harmless fun.
4] Beyond the bandit
---
The 3rd job advance fight
BB3RDJOB
---
Just a small passage on the advance fight. The stats for the tutors are
available at http://sauna.gibbed.us, this part just covers the strategy
you might want to take up.
After going to El Nath and talking to Arec, you'll be told to visit the
dark lord, who'll tell you to fight his other self in the swamps. The
entrance starts in dangerous croko II, climb all the vines to the very top
and you'll hit the monkey swamp maps at the top of one of them. The door
of dimension should be in plain view at the top of the second monkey swamp
map (enter the huts to change maps). Not the third map, the second, which
I find strange.
You'll pass through a crystal-lined cave with gargoyles everywhere and
emerge in a small arena, containing the dark lord's other self who doesn't
look too intimidating, even though he has a gold identity, something that
doesn't even exist. First thing you should know is that he only ever
attacks directly using avenger, a move that conjures a huge throwing star
which he'll then whip at you, though he does the usual touch damage that
all enemies inflict. He has a physical attack and defence booster which
you should watch out for, it makes his avenger do just a little over 1000
damage so keep an eye on him, and if things are too rough use the
tauromacis/balrog fighting method of standing on him all the time so that
you only get the weaker touch damage inflicted. You can't keep him from
jacking up his stats, he'll do it as and when he feels like it. He also
knows how to weaken you, negating your jump which throws a spanner in
haste. If you feel vulnerable without haste then by all means put some
perfect medicine/tonics on a hotkey, it's not a bad idea (thought not as
essential as it is for you guys who have to fight Grendel/Hines). After
he takes a little damage he'll start summoning tauromacis to help him out.
Probably best not to ask where those come from. At level 70 they
shouldn't be too much of a threat, but watch your HP and remember that
their thunder will leisurely deal 800 or so damage to you and the taurospear's
thrusts will do more, though you should be keeping at least 1100 at all times
to make sure that avenger doesn't ruin your day.
Besides his stat boosters, weakening and summons though, it's a pretty
basic fight, shouldn't take more than 5 minutes. I didn't try stealing
from him to see if he dropped the item you're supposed to retrieve, though
I imagine that'd work, but where would the fun be in it? If anyone's
interested, it took me about 3 minutes from entering the cave to taking a
few pictures and leaving, if you're careful it's not that hard at all and
that was with a 62 attack gephart and 5 dex glove (yeah, dex).
I have heard that if you let the proof thing he drops dissolve on the
ground you can go back in there and fight him, but I'm not going to test
that.
Even if I could any more, I wouldn't.
---
3rd job skills and their uses
BB3RDSKI
---
I'm writing this as and when I get the skills, so don't expect this to be
fantastic. It's here since much of this guide is influenced personal opinion,
anyway.
Everything is listed in the order I got it.
|Band of thieves|
-50 mp at max
Your first mob skill and it's a very welcome one. At max level
it'll summon 5 people who will attack enemies around you at a moderate
range. Characters summoned are chosen at random from a very large man
with a metal plated headband who claps at enemies, a stereotypical ninja
who slashes enemies, a guy in blue who punches them, a pink/purple haired
woman who casts some version of m.claw on herself that hits them
and a guy in a helmet with a trident who seems to stand there and do very
little. The guy with the trident and the woman don't resemble legendary
thieves particularly, but heigh-ho, maybe they got lost on the way to a
mage or warrior's skill, unless it's a cultural thing from Wizet's
country.
Thieves only works if you hit an enemy, so if you stand between two
monsters but YOUR hit doesn't connect with anything the other guys won't
show, but you'll lose the MP. You should also know that when you use
thieves the attack is centred on you, not the enemy you hit, which is
deceptive at times. Also, you only summon as many thieves as there are
things to hit, up to 6. If you thieves one enemy, you'll hit them, if you
thieves with two in range, you'll summon one and hit one yourself.
Try to focus on your position before you strike or assume that thieves has
a better range to your rear than ahead of you, that helped me a lot at
first. Band of thieves WILL hit enemies that are higher or lower than you
are, but not if they have too much of an altitude difference. It's hard
to explain the range of it, so try it for yourself. It's a little like
savage, your range slightly extends your normal stabbing reach.
Due to MP costs, thieves should not ever be used on single enemies, it's
not good for that, anyway, just doublestab them unless you're a banditsin.
What you really want is a group of 3 or more enemies to make the most of
each attack, as we're not swimming in MP or recovery skills. Very few
enemies appear without a mob, so that's not normally an issue, unless
they're absolute TANKS for the level that most people hunt them at (tauros
not withstanding, but they have mobbable cold eyes).
Then again, considering you can only be hit by one thing at once, and
using thieves on 3/4 enemies does more damage than one savage, go ahead
and band of thieves that spirit viking mob, they'll die faster and it's fairly
satisfying. You don't get as much manoeuvring room, but if they sling magic
around, it doesn't matter.
|Pickpocket|
-50 mp at max
When you turn this on, it's active, so it behaves like haste in that you
need to keep refreshing it, but it starts with a very reasonable time
limit so it's easy to experiment with. With this active, any enemy you
hit with any attack will have a slight chance of dropping a small amount
of money (when you first get this skill, you be getting less than 10 mesos
per drop with some skills), though this does not appear to subtract from
the enemy's normal meso drop. These stolen mesos can not be collected by
your pet and I don't think other people can pick them up until the pickup
timer that most things are subject to runs out, so you'll have to grab
them manually, which is a bit of a waste considering how much comes out.
The main use for pickpocket, however, is to set up meso explosions, it
gives you a lot of ammo to work with, and since meso explosion's damage
starts out quite high for small amounts of cash but gradually raises at a
slower rate with larger amounts, a few short sharp shocks are a good
thing.
Pickpocket works well with savage blow. Even though the hits of savage
don't do much damage, each one can potentially generate some cash, so you
have a good chance with every savage of a couple of coins popping at
least. It's probably better to just fight like you normally would, since
if you use thieves in mobs with this on, you'll get a nice spread of
higher amounts, but it'd be pointless to do that to single targets. If
you want to savage to set up piles for enemies to hit, though, then go for
it, do whatever seems best at the time.
It's not immensely practical without explosion, and when you
first use it, it's not advisable to hunt anything too powerful for a few
minutes, as you're likely to either be distracted by the fountain of cash
or to think you've gotten a rare from everything for 5 minutes after
having gone so long without seeing bronze mesos in your regular training
days.
If you fight something that takes a lot of punishment, though, and you get
a little lucky AND you don't mind hitting pickup for half a minute, you
can squeeze another 100-200 mesos per monster. If you're that desperate
for cash, though, either remember that killing things makes money faster,
or think about whether the thing you're fighting is really too strong for
you.
---
Meso explosion
-30 mp at max
---
I've got mixed feelings about this one. To be honest, I plugged a point
into it since it'd been pretty much over a year since I put up a skill
just because it looked fun to try. Not because of that now infamous
screenshot at El Nath, but because I just fancied making a few explosions.
It takes a number of mesos that have been dropped for whatever reason
(you dropped them, an opponent dropped them, pickpocket dropped them),
and basically blows them up, though there's a limit on the amount that can
be blown up. Not sure how metal explodes like that, but it's never
adequately explained. These explosions damage monsters, the higher the
skill level is, the higher mastery it is and the more cash you can pop, up
to a very respectable 20 wads, coins or sacks. Just ought to point out,
the mesos you can blow up HAVE to have been made by yourself, either by
your kill or your drop in one way or another, if you're at a high mob area
and someone bursts in, dragon roars, killing everything and runs, you won't
be able to blow the death drops up, although you can grab it in a while, then
drop and pop.
Even if the pickup timer allows you to grab the cash, you still can't
explode it, you can keep spamming explosion until the cash vanishes, it'll
never blow.
The more cash you blow up, the more damage you do, either by sheer mass
of meso drops or sheer value of drops. I gather that the maximum drop of
50k does healthy damage to most anything you'd care to mention, but I'm not
a fan of destroying that much money, personally, except for in emergencies.
I reckon 50k mesos are equal to maybe 20-40k damage, from my tests.
Far as I can tell, you start out doing a fair amount of potential damage,
even from small drops (I think I'm doing around 200 at least with
explosion on a 10 drop), and it slowly increases with the value of the
drop (grim phantom watch drops do about 2k, I think). Just don't expect
it to shoot up exponentially or anything.
It's not too practical until you get a good level of pickpocket to back it
up and you max it, same as most things, but it's better than some
alternatives. Still, thieves does do a lot of damage to mobs, you can hit
a ton of things with it if you blanket the floor with shinies, so yeah, if
you take the time to set things up properly, it pays off. Also, it makes
us fairly attractive for boss fighting, we can get a freakishly strong hit
in before everyone else has moved from their starting positions, then once
you get the hang of hitting dark sight, dropping cash and blowing it, you can
do some very good, very expensive damage.
Meso explosion is a surprisingly good mob skill. Even when you don't do
much damage, you can hit more with it than band of thieves and a large
amount of cash can provide 2 or 3 shots. It doesn't seem to be affected
by weapon attack, either.
I wouldn't max both skills out until you've cleared meso guard, and your
chosen attack skill (maybe both skills), it's way better to have something
practical, especially when 1 level of experimentation can cost you around
3 day's work. Well, unless your friends want you to go to boss fights
with them, then a little explosion is almost vital to make you anything more
than, honestly, dead weight when the party slot could have been taken by a
warrior.
A quick note, I believe that each enemy hit with explosion can only be hit 6
times, or thereabouts, I'm not certain on the figure. If you pop a pile of 20
units of cash, you'll only see 6 damage numbers, I don't know whether all 20
hits apply, but I don't think they do. Bear that in mind before you decide to
completely decimate a boss with 40*50k drops, please.
---
Chakra
-27 mp at max
---
This is odd. Really odd. You have to stand still when you use this,
though don't need to have your guard/breath down like dropping something
or
talking to your pet, you fire chakra off and all manner of havoc breaks
out around you as you're encased in a ring full of blue circles which
gradually fill up to become red. When they turn red, chakra finishes and
you're healed.
The description's a little misleading, seems that you don't take
additional damage for the entire skill, just while the circles are still
at all blue, when the gauge starts filling you go back to taking normal
damage, and if you're hit for double damage, your charka is interrupted,
seems fair. If you're hit AFTER the initial vulnerable stage, you'll be
healed anyway and the animation continues.
Chakra is to us a less efficient heal. It takes rather a long time to
bust one out (roughly a second) and it's not the kind of thing you want to
use in a mob or in front of something large, so ideally you'll want to
clear your ledge or jump to a safe spot before using it. It also only
works below 50% health, so that double damage pinches all the more when it
can put you to critical health/kill you. Chakra doesn't work on ladders.
I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of this. For the amount of time it takes to
use it, and for what it does, it's a bit slow and you need to get too
specific a set of circumstances before you can use it (50% health, stood in a
safe place, on the floor, not a ladder). It's all well and good thinking you'll
clear the enemies off this ledge, then use it, but something else might spawn,
you might get hit more than usual and have to use a potion, putting you over
50%, it's... not unreliable, you just need to be careful to the point of slowing
down your training, which isn't a good thing.
Chakra is nice for hunting low level mobs, though, as it makes training pretty
much completely free (and that's at level 3), so if you fight cold eyes or
grupins or something, or you're doing a quest then you'll save a lot of unagi
room and cash. It's basically, at first, for when you're desperate for cash,
having blown it all up or spent it on things, but every little helps when
income's involved.
---
Meso guard
-35 mp at max
---
Turn it on and a little ring covers your character. From now on, you'll
only take 50% damage from ANYTHING, though if you look at your skill's
level, you'll see that a certain amount is being deducted from your cash
reserves. This money is taken from the half damage you just took, I
think, so if you took say 1000 damage and guard took 90% from your mesos,
the 1000 would be halved to 500, the guard would take away 450 mesos from
your inventory, if I'm right.
Not too shabby, really, since it effectively doubles your hitpoints,
making us a lot more durable than assassins.
Guard does not work in the way the skill describes, you don't charge up
mesos in any way, though I do believe you used to, but they patched that
out. What happens now is that it just runs on a timer and sucks cash from
you until that timer runs out or you run out of cash, making things pound
on you again. Keep an eye on your money, for heaven's sake, it's an awful
thing when you die because you didn't have the protection money.
Guard has a bit of a bug in it, purely a visual thing, but if you get hit
with magic, you'll be shown the full damage, but you won't TAKE the full
damage, you'll still take half and be charged for it. I've tested this
out a bit on grim phantom watch, and the fact that they couldn't lay me
out in 2 hits indicated that the magic was being deflected. That might
have been patched out, it's hard to tell with what I fight that can cast
magic, as I'm generally scrambling for my life.
Probably the best feature of guard though is the way it reduces half of
anything that hits you. You can now hunt crimson balrogs, but for the
love of Mike, make sure you have at LEAST 2000 hp, their lightning is
something else, I swear...
Though this subtracts money from you, I believe it's cheaper in the long
run. As you level it, it takes less and less money from you, and even if
it took 100%, you take, for example, 500 damage and meso loss from a 1k
hit, so it works out evenly. If you use it, you'll probably notice you're
drawing less raw cash from your runs, but your runs will become much
longer and if you work out how much you'd have spent on buying more
unagi,
travelling/getting hit while travelling and the time gained, it's not a
bad tradeoff.
A side note, I've done a little testing, and meso guard does NOT do
anything to damage taken from hazardous terrain. Turn it on and jump into
lava, it won't make you take any less damage and it won't subtract cash.
I can only assume that the same applies to things like thorns and jump
quest obstacles. Meso guard definitely does not do anything about El
Nath's cold damage, either, or drowning, and I'm pretty certain that if
you fall from a high distance, you'll still have 30 damage (or whatever
amount) blown through your shins, as normal. Same with poison damage,
too. Having said that, those things don't hurt too badly, with the
possible exception of poison and cold damage over extended periods, so
this is still fantastically useful.
---
Assaulter
-26 mp at max
---
Otherwise known as "Why don't bandits learn teleport? Oh wait, we do".
You throw yourself forward, about the width of a death teddy, and emerge
on the other side of your target. Or in the middle of your target, that
happens quite often, too. You do a nice chunk of solid damage, giving us
flinch capabilities, and will sometimes inflict the same stun as arrow bomb
or the El Nath steam geysers. Nice.
Problem is that if you fight large things, which is what this is for,
basically, then they're... physically large, too. Chances are you're
going to smack into an enraged monster torso and take damage anyway,
'specially if you did stunning damage, knocking them back a bit.
That being said, get at least 1 point in this (although you really ought
to max it), as it'll allow you to teleport between platforms, up and down
through platforms, anywhere that has a reachable enemy, and it'll allow
you to recover from being knocked back by an enemy with a really wicked
ranged attack. On some maps, it'll mean that you don't have to use
ladders, which saves TONS of time, and it's really fun in Sanctuary
Entrance 2. It's a fairly functional alternative to double stab, too, and
it's cheaper until you hit the higher levels. Also, if you're careful, you can
reach certain platforms that you shouldn't be able to stand on, like the
platform that holds the magician's second job portal. Careful if you do that,
though, malady rarely misses.
Finally, teleport, haste, flash jump, they don't work in jump quests.
Assaulter does (or did, I don't know now). You can dive into the lava in the
Zakum jump quest, then hit the bomb halfway along the first section and hop
to the next platform. Hurts, but it's really easy, and if you fell in from the
right hand side,
you can recover MUCH faster by doing this.
---
Assaulter or thieves?
BBASSAUL
---
My current view is pretty much as follows:
If you want a skill that will allow you to hunt really large things, if
you want a chance of getting the rarer, more expensive and useful items,
you might want to go with assaulter, if only for the stun aspect of it.
If you want to finally be able to handle mobs, to spend less money in
training and to generally have a more relaxed time, go for band of
thieves.
There's a few things you can fight with it later on that drop decent
items, and it seems like less of a risk, if you're fighting things that
will drop to a few hits of thieves as opposed to a couple of assaulters,
they're not going to do much damage in return but you'll be making a
constant, albeit slightly reduced profit.
I've yet to actually get a maxed assaulter, so it's hard to give a really
good opinion on it, that's just how I think logically it would work out.
Experimentation, that's the thing.
Having run a little math on the subject, I'd like to state the following.
It isn't nearly as long winded as the original calculation, which had a
lot more numbers, HP and weapon attack factored in, but was largely...
well, irrelevant in the end:
Say a zombie dies to 1 hit of assaulter. That's 450% damage, which you'll
have to do to every zombie you fight. Thieves does 210, so you'll
probably either kill a zombie in 2 hits with it, or kill them in 2 with a
follow up, getting them to follow you to the next mob (or waiting until a mob
forms around them) and finishing them off. They'll eventually die is what
I'm getting at.
Assaulter costs 26mp, thieves costs 50.Working with that, then, every time
you hit 2 or more zombies with thieves, it's like n-1 hits of thieves were
free (n being the zombies hit total), or that all your clones were hitting
for free. If you do roughly half the damage of assaulter, hitting 2
enemies is like doing a spread assaulter over those zombies, moreso if
you're hitting larger mobs.
So assume you're hitting at least 2 things, otherwise you're doing
something more worthwhile like savages. Anything hit will go down in 2,
OR, will follow you after those two, allowing you to draw them around the
map, hitting other mobs and conveniently getting your follow up hits for
free as part of a separate thieves attack. Factor in that many high level
maps ('specially in the deep clock tower) now have platforms with
reasonable spawns, so the enemies that have nowhere to go will often walk
towards you as you attack their mobs of friends, and it works out nicely.
As I said, you won't be able to hunt huge things with this, and while you
can hunt fairly strong(ish) things, you'd better be prepared to pay
through the nose on some runs, so if you're into fighting yeti and pepe,
werewolves or whatever, might as well go for assaulter. I just find
thieves more reliable, following the 70-level-old 'less hits to kill =
more cash and exp' philosophy. Yeah, I do realise the stronger guys are
somewhat profitable and fine to train on, now.
If you go thieves first, you should really think about getting 1
assaulter, for A) the teleportation (which helps more than you'd maybe
think, seriously) and B) the fact that really, the first few hours when
you get it are pretty fun. One assaulter, as well as helping the mobility
in regular areas, helps with finding quest items immeasurably, too (even
if nependeath's honey still took 3 straight days with it, as did getting a
seclusion wristguard).
Also, if you're into hunting death teddies, you should consider master death
teddies. There's a few places on their maps where you can mob them up then
stand on a platform JUST out of their reach, but that you can still hit them
from. You can be killing up to 8 enemies, high levelled with a lot of exp and
good drops, without them being able to touch you.
5] Appendix/outro
---
Training locations
BBTRA
---
Before I start, just bear in mind that what worked for me may not work as
well for other people. I tended to train in areas that provided items I
needed and back when I was level 30-40 the game was much less crowded.
Fewer areas, too If the enemies in the level brackets provided don't work for
you, consider the group above on the list (physically, not in levels), or go
exploring and hit on anything that gets in your way until something seems
to work, that's always entertaining. I used a lot of warrior potions,
remember that, and you probably should too, especially at level 50+ when
you luck stat starts getting healthier. Just bear in mind that warrior
potions are best used when they give you enough power to
CONSISTANTLY kill monsters in one less hit, y'know, with a reasonable
success rate. If you're just doing more damage but you're not actually killing
any faster, you're throwing your cash down the drain.
I really wouldn't recommend spending much time in Ossyria until at least
level 50. I didn't train there properly until level 60, it was never
really worth it, though the Jr. Grupin, Celion and Lioner maps are alright
if you can hold your own against them. They're a little less populated
than they were when I was there, too.
Also, I had a gephart until level 76. If you get a deadly fin at 60 then
for one thing you're lucky and for another you'll probably be able to
tackle the next tier of monsters above your level for my recommendations.
I didn't get an attack glove until 70, either, it didn't seem worth the
expense (I was WAY off on that one).
If you can't find any of these maps, check on:
http://www.hidden-street.net
They've got all the maps listed as well as a bunch of other useful stuff.
If you still can't find the map you're looking for, mail me, I've probably
taken the map name down incorrectly.
|1-10|
Maple Island
Green snails, blue snails, orange mushrooms
Try to avoid the mushrooms unless you're doing the collection of items
quest, they're not worth the hassle, and red snails have way too much hp
for their exp return, so avoid those, too. Greens and blues will take a
while, but levelling up takes a while in anything (except possibly Final
Fantasy 8), so hang in there, it's not going to get much faster. Red shells
might be handy with the introduction of that snail shell hurling skill, since
you probably shouldn't get the speed increase skill. You're getting haste,
right?
|10-15|
The green slime tree
The official name of the map is Tree Dungeon 2, I think, not entirely sure
on that one. You'll know when you're there, though, the only thing that
will spawn in there is green slimes, which are great at the moment for
you.
|15-20|
Pig beach/Kerning city construction site/Green mushroom tree
Pig beach is quite nice, though it's a good place for everyone to level,
so it's nearly always occupied by classes that do more damage than you.
If you can handle people trying to take over, then go ahead, though this
may be a little ambitious for now, those pigs hurt. Never try to take on
the iron hog, he'll simply laugh at your miss/miss or 1/1 before trampling
you into the floor without remorse. This place seems to be calming down a
little, now, certainly better than it was back in the day, but it's still
a hostile little map if you get the right kinds of people on it.
I've had it pointed out that you CAN hold your own against the iron hog.
You just need to get a ton of red shells, a lot of MP, then three snails
it to oblivion. If you want to do that, it might help a lot, really,
since dodging that thing in your 20s is a real pain, but remember that it won't
stay dead forever.
The construction site is great, orange mushrooms everywhere (which you can
handle, now), and a reasonable amount of octopi, which are nice if you
keep your distance a little. If they start swarming, just run, you're not
going to walk away from that kind of fight.
The 'shroom tree is... tree dungeon number 4, I think, again I'm not sure.
Nothing spawns but green mushrooms who all have a chance of holding a
pan
lid, which you'll most likely be wanting. Given the drop rate on those
lids, you may well be here until level 30 or more, so good luck with that.
You'll hear some real horror stories about the amount of green shrooms
people have killed if you ask around.
Or you could just buy one if you're not patient about hunting for drops,
they're relatively cheap, now.
|20-30|
Party quest/Damp forest/Horny mushroom tree/Ant tunnel 4/Garden of
green/red/yellow 1
Assuming you have your lid (if you want one), you can try the party quest.
Good luck getting in.
The damp forest is a hidden street at the very top of the dense forest
that surrounds Sleepywood. Absolutely insane octopus spawn, as well as
the occasional rogue slime and a few Jr. Neckis, so if you can't handle
those, steer clear or learn how to jump something that moves quite
randomly.
The Horny mushroom tree is somewhere along the really tall map that the
magician's second job helper waits on. Mostly horned mushrooms and green
mushrooms, it's a nice place to go for exp.
Ant tunnel 4 is great if you're approaching the advance and need a little
change of pace, plus the exp is quite good. It's pretty much a copy of
Ant tunnel 1, but without the mass overcrowding that that map has always
experienced. Undead and horned 'shrooms everywhere. For some reason,
people seem a little unwilling to venture that far down. Go figure.
If you take to the gardens in Orbis, you can fight one particular coloured
monster if you need items, or you can stick to the garden of 3 colours
below, which I tend to find to be less crowded. It's not a bad place to
fight, and you can get some nice stuff out there, mainly flaming feathers,
the lower-levelled person's glass shoe (beta testers may laugh at that).
There's a few quests that require the horns now, too, you might want to
look into that.
|30-35|
Land of the wild boar 2
You can stay in the ant tunnel for a while, or you can try the boars.
Good exp, nice drops, you can almost support yourself entirely on weight
earrings and they drop warrior potions. I'd choose land 2, there's no Jr.
Boogie spawn (a VERY good thing), and it's a little easier to get a spot.
|35-40|
The burnt land 1-5
If you're getting adventurous, you can try this place, and you should be
maxing mastery or getting a useful savage by now, so have a shot at it.
They have really great drops, really great cash, too, and they drop one of
the +luck thief sets for your level, couldn't ask for more. They also
drop glass shoes on odd occasions, which you'll want later on if you're
interested in quest completion. Numbers 4 and 5 have lupins in them, so
watch it, but that usually means they're less occupied. If you want to
fight the monkeys, be my guest, it's not like you can't, but they pack a
wallop.
|40-50|
The burnt land 1-5/The curse eye tree/Kerning city subway (furthest area
of either line)
The curse eye tree is great once you've done levelling at the boars.
If you've got a well-scrolled weapon, you can probably 1-ht these guys
with a warrior potion, and the spawn is one of the best anywhere. Couple
that with Blackbull's deed and you're away, but get ready for a few +dex
knucklevests in there. It's located on the tallest Ellinia map, and the
entrance is partway up on the far right, only spawns a couple of fierries
and curse eye, though there's a second one that spawns the odd cold eye.
Don't go there purely for the chance of getting icicles, it probably won't
happen.
Kerning city's subway system isn't the best choice, but I went there on an
optimistic hunt for black crystal, and ended up finding my level 50 armour
too, on both beta and official. They don't go down easy, that's for sure,
but at least your armour isn't... impossible to get from these guys. Just
be careful, and get a cleric if you can.
Since the subway revamp, I wouldn't try going to the end of the subway,
you'll get your entrails handed to you on a platter, but the earlier ones
might work. So long as there's Jr. Wraiths around, that's s good
indication that you're somewhat safe.
|50-60|
Lorang lorang lorang, Monkey forest dungeon 2, Watch out for icy path,
Drake's meal table
Getting into the fun maps, now. Lorang*3 is great if you can 2-hit them,
and it's wonderful when you can 1-hit them, as the spawn there is like no
other. Lots of lit mages, though, so you'll have to compete with them.
They also drop the slightly unpopular oaker scorpio set, which I'm rather
fond of, having worn it throughout both versions, and having scrolled it
in official.
Zombie lupins don't seem ideal, but you should be 1-hitting them about
now. They give a high amount of experience, drop quite frequently, and
hold a few mid-level weapons, which are good for a quick 100k. Nice
spawn, too, but watch out for the clerics, you'll beat them 1 on 1, but
they'll chisel your exp if you let them barge in, and it's their main training
spot, so you'll meet a few of them. The dolls are always good for a little
cash, too, just don't expect the dolls to make you rich.
Watch out for icy path is a total Jr. Yeti map, and the chances of them
morphing into a full yeti are greatly reduced, I've only seen it happen
maybe twice. It's worth fighting here for glove attack scrolls, dex ores
and red anakarunes (180k, right there), but it's a little crowded,
especially as it's right next to El Nath.
Once you can take cold eyes in 1 savage and 1 hit (or even better, just 1
savage), camp out at the meal table until you're level 60. The entire
population of the map drops gold (apart from the infamous snail), which
you'll need if you intend to make pows, drakes drop a lot of kumbis, cold
eyes icicles and cargos drop all manner of fun things, plus the spawn and
the experience are great. It's a really quiet map, too, compared to many
of the others for this level range, your only threat will usually be
people travelling to wild cargo's area, though you'll see quite a few
thieves with dark sight and mages with m.guard coming to explore. Might
as well give them directions if they ask.
Drake's meal table used to have a tendency to be hacked out pretty badly.
Bear that in mind.
|60-70|
Really, train wherever you like, you're not exactly restricted very much,
now.
Personally, I'd recommend:
Wild cargo's area
Sleepy dungeon 5
Garden of green 2 (luck ores and tobi stars ahoy! The tails trade in for
screws, too)
Stairway to the sky (if the garden of green is occupied)
Sanctuary entrance 2 (Nice if you can handle tauros, entrance 1 if you're
not so hot with them)
The crown-flyer (dex ores, two identities, glove attacks from yetis)
As you approach the end of your bandit career, if you have a
geta/apallingly well scrolled gephart/decent shinkita and a good glove,
you may well be able to one-hit adult wraiths for 120 exp per attack. Go
nuts.
|70-80|
First up, I got to 80 without taking my 3rd job advance, so keep that in
mind.
Again, you're level 70, you can train almost anywhere, now. If enemies
are doing over 1k damage to you, though, you MAY want to reconsider if
you're not rich.
For silly exp, take one of the zombie maps, forest of dead trees 1-4.
They're nearly always full, but they're terribly good for exp and cash,
'specially if you can party a cleric.
If you want cheap, reasonably fast training, Drake's meal table has become
great for you again, as you'll be one hitting all but one enemy in there.
For more expensive fun, icy cold field holds a few laughs and the yetis
drop nicely expensive things like dark golden circlets and dark slains.
Tauromacis, you should be able to take them now. You also shouldn't need
to ask me where they spawn, either.
Luster pixies. 1 hit, fair drops, fair cash, nice spawn.
Dark stone gollems. You'll probably one hit these, with a good weapon,
and they drop some nice gear. I wouldn't bother with mixed gollems, they
have way too much HP to justify the +10 exp or whatever it is.
Finally, the hot sands. You'll one hit everything, there's glove attack
scrolls, all the enemies drop great cash and none of them do much damage.
Plus, everything that does drop is generally sellable, since most people
don't tend to item hunt there.
|80+|
Well, I'm sorry, I can only offer help really if you've followed a similar
skill build to me (max thieves). If you have, though, then you should be
alright, but if not, to be honest, you've gotten this far, you shouldn't
need that much in the way of information, but if you're desperate, I've
been having some success with lycanthropes, lately (better once you can
one-hit the pangs), or if you can get a cleric/priest, death
teddies/master death teddies are pretty fun, and they're 1600 exp a pop,
or spirit Vikings/gigantic spirit vikings.
I'd get an assassin to come with at either kind of Viking, though, since
those guys just own all over their maps.
Warped path of time 1
Buffies. LOTS of buffies. Thieves will fairly tear these guys up, they
won't offer a lot of resistance and they drop olympusses. Olympii?
They're a lot better since Wizet fixed aurora marbles, too.
Sanctuary entrance 2
Got a good weapon? With any luck, your thieves will be able to kill cold
eyes in one hit (possibly with a warrior pill). In about half an hour,
you can get maybe 200 tails, I think, you can actually kill faster than
they spawn (and that's with stinkin' cold eyes), plus, there's the tauro
drops. You shouldn't get very hurt here any more, either, since cold eyes
will either miss you or do very little damage, and the ground here is,
like, made of cold eyes.
It's where I go when I need to make more cash for vikings/master death
teddies.
Stairway to the sky
Thieves + adult dogs = low cost, high payoff.
The garden of darkness
While you might cut it here at level 70-80, I got pretty torn up, but you
should be able to make a dent, now, without much trouble. They drop a few
desirable things, mainly the entire dark set for both genders of our
class, as well as luck ores. Just kill them quickly, they don't take
kindly to being bothered.
On top of that, you could also try pepes, cerebes, dark stone gollems
(shame their spawn is normally appalling, but they're actually decent with
thieves), or you could clean up any remaining quests to make a quick buck.
Just bear in mind that when you mob enemies that are surrounded by much
weaker companions, like DSGs, you'll get a lot of random equip drops from
their wingmen. That really does add up.
Once you're getting to this point in your character's career, though, you
really do want to consider getting friendly with a couple of priests.
Holy symbol just makes everything better, unless you REALLY prefer to
fight alone (which I can understand completely, but it's a pain is all).
---
Specific financing
BBSPE
---
It's like the funding section, but with a long, bulky list of examples.
Huzzah!
Right, to start with, we're not a profitable class. Not for a long time.
Think "until my mid 50s" and you're on about the right lines, at least,
for the vast majority. Well, I say profitable, that's a bit vague, I mean
having a couple of million to throw around. Not saying that you can't
amass a decent amount in your 40s, it's just that you'll need a dagger
that'll last, unless you go strength, but even then you might consider
scrolling your bazlud.
Enough of that. What follows are the methods I've found that have given
me a reasonable amount of funding. If you've got any of your own that are
effective, let me know. This is mostly combat stuff, too, if you want to
play the market for cash, do so at your own risk, I'm not great at that
kind of thing.
As absolute basic rules, pick up everything that drops, excluding regular
arrows and crossbow bolts (bronze ones are great), or get a pet with a magnet
and item pouch, use any potions you find, try to get the most out of your
potions, use scrolls instead of the cab, do as many low-levelled quests as you
feel you can (it's a good source of equips and potions) and don't fight enemies
that require you to chug a potion every time you get hit (or at least not too
frequently).
Item hunting
Obvious enough, but there's a few things you can hunt for at reasonable
levels that, if you don't mind waiting a long time, will get you a decent
amount. Seclusion wristguards, in particular, will take an age to get,
sure, but it's cheap training, since trixters should never hit you, in
theory. I gather that they made it so that enemies no longer drop those,
though. Uncommon things that aren't hard to find, but come form unpopular
monsters can be decent, too, like saps of the ancient tree. If you really
want to hunt for that one item that comes from something 10 levels higher
than you, which kills you in 3 hits, but would make you rich if you found
it, bear in mind that you usually need to kill a few hundred of ANYTHING
of a reasonable level to get any drop, even a bad one. This doesn't
necessarily apply to pink conehats, which you could quite easily coat the
floor of a small town with after 3 days of fighting cold eyes.
The free market
People will, I find, usually buy most anything if it's fairly priced and
you give them long enough. Even things you think might be useless.
Alright, if you go selling wooden bucklers, prepare for disappointment,
but if you can't get it in an NPC store, chances are someone might want
it. Doesn't work so well if you can't get any nexon cash to buy a store permit,
though, or if you're not especially patient.
Equip skipping
If you need a little more cash in your 10-20s, don't bother getting any
armour that doesn't increase your stats, all you'll gain is weapon
defence, which isn't terribly useful. Might even want to skip from 15 to
30, considering the general opinion on sneak sets.
Event items
It's a strange thing. Seasonal items have been released with the major
holidays since OMS began (alright, it's been 1 year as I write this, but
heigh ho), they're usually common, coming from commonly hunted things,
and
their effects are often more tilted towards the "interesting and flashy"
side of things than anything else, with the possible exception of
emergency rescue tubes for clerics, colourful tubes for fighters and the
anniversary set. Anyway, as common as these things are, you can more than
likely net a small fortune if you gather up a nice amount of them and wait
for 4-6 months or so. You might have to be prepared for a long wait,
though, the items aren't forced to appreciate in value and they'll
probably crash if they're recycled for each holiday, unless they're
actually useful.
I find that things that have only been released once before tend to have a
higher cost. My old gold snowboards from last year aren't doing too well,
but my black tubes went for a bomb.
Mana potions
If you panlid hunt in your 20s, you might want to consider using only the
blue potions you find and quest reward potions. Yeah, blue potions make
you level faster, but they're a little expensive at first. At any rate,
when you do use them, you can get away with letting your mana drop much
further than you health, so it's easier to get more out of those.
Keep moving
If you can get the hang of jumping over an enemy as you attack,
particularly with haste and savage, you'll get hit less in most cases.
Just outmanoeuvre things a bit, it helps a surprising amount.
Fire boars
They drop a lot of decent equipment, NPC price-wise, they drop a lot of
cash for their level and there's a large amount of them. Leather's
usually a decent cash bonus, too.
Cold eyes
Icicles still sell, to some extent, and these things drop 30k NPC equip
drops quite often, if you sift through the conehats. Gold, too, which has
always fetched a nice price and makes good free market fodder, if you have
a store. The main attraction, though, is that they spawn like stink,
they're not too strong and you can usually find a map with a heavy spawn
of them that's deserted.
Drake's meal table
Like fighting cold eyes, but with more experience, more stars (worse, but
more), and drake's blood, which fetches a nice price. A fair chunk of
gold, some diamond, the occasional black crystal.
Sanctuary entrance 2
If you're in your 70-80s, you won't get hit by cold eyes much. This map
is pretty much pure cold eyes, with the occasional tauromacis, so they
make a nice hit shield while you take out their armoured attendants.
Fantastic if you have thieves, especially, you'll rake in tails at a
frightening rate.
Thieves
Particularly in Ludibrium. If you go to the bottom of the toy factory,
hang a left at the fork and start thieves spamming the jester-like things
down there, you'll get a fair amount of cash, they won't hurt you too much
and they drop quite a lot of black crystal, which at the time of writing
still fetches 20k per ore without too much trouble.
Still, thieves is pretty decent for money overall. It makes you fight
weaker enemies, so you use less HP potions, you kill faster and more and
you don't take as much of a beating.
Meso guard
I'm still kind of testing this, but as I see it, HP potions (working on
unagis, here, which I've used for 30 levels or so) are usually worth a
little more than 1 meso per hp. Guard halves your damage, then subtracts
a portion of that from your cash. The way I see it, you take 1000 damage,
you get 500 hp and cash subtracted (working on a very weak guard), so
that's 500 cash gone
instead of the 1100 or needed for an unagi. That wouldn't help if guard
started out at 100%, fair enough, but that's not even guard's main use,
and the amount subtracted decreases as you level it up (and the first
level timer is awful, anyway.
Chakra
If you're that strapped for cash, go somewhere where you won't get hurt
much and start using this instead of healing, if you have it. Honestly,
it's a bit desperate in my opinion, but you can try it, I find it useful
for grupins and nependeaths.
---
Attack styles
BBATT
---
Just a note on the approaches you can take for attacking things. There's
normally more than one way to skin a cat, that applies to most anything
else you'll run into.
Savage blow spamming
Standing stock still, holding down the savage blow key and waiting for
them to die. Probably what you'll do for a little while until you're used
to the skill, too, though I still do this against bigger enemies
(especially vikings, which can easily be avoided while still). This is
useful if you have a large amount of enemies on one level that you haven't
mobbed yet, and have meso explosion and pickpocket, as you can hit one
enemy with savage, get a ton of cash to pop out, herd the mob, then blow
up the neat pile of cash as they pass over it.
Jump stabbing
If you stand and stab, you're going to get hit in most cases. If you jump
and stab, you can avoid shots, but also, running, jumping and stabbing
will allow you to move around while attacking without losing much speed.
If you one-hit KO things, this'll get you around rather quickly. Not so
attractive once you have a good level of assaulter, but still helps with
band of thieves.
Reverse jump stab
I like to call this backstabbing, but that's me. The trick is to run in
one direction, then in quick succession jump, tap the opposite direction
(don't hold it, you'll lose your momentum) and stab, so you're, for
example, flying left while stabbing right. If you stab early enough,
you'll hit them, be flung out of harm's way and land without losing any
speed. Great for things without special attacks, but tends to fall flat
if you don't have max haste, booster and a tall enemy, it doesn't work so
well on the short guys.
Fun with assaulter
Using this, you can:
Climb platforms without using ladders
Annoy kill stealers
Jump off a platform, spin in mid air and return to the platform you
started on
Cheat at jump quests
Shoot through a boss if you find yourself on the side of him that doesn't
have a cleric (so if you get hit, knocked into the centre of the boss and really
quickly need to get close to your cleric)
---
Help me to help you
BBPLZ
---
This section covers the topics that I perhaps don't have much personal
experience with. Things that I ain't too clear on, but you might be. If
you can shed any light, please do, I'll give credit where it's due.
Currently needing:
Opinions and thoughts from low/no dex bandits
More opinions and thoughts from str bandits
Training area suggestions, especially from 70+
Boss fighting tips
---
Acknowledgements
BBACK
---
My buddy list
Should have added this earlier, but I owe you guys a lot. A fair chunk of
the information on here's a result of otherwise mindless hours of fighting
that were broken up with skill discussions, class discussions and all
manner of other things. Not naming any names in case anyone tries to be
clever and whisper spam, but you know who you are, so thanks.
If you're interested, I'm still prejudiced against assassins.
Firestorm88's FAQ
(http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/maple_story_thief.txt)
For starting this whole thing off, and for setting me in the right
direction in the first place.
Hidden street (http://www.hidden-street.net)
For enemy drops, stats, locations and job skills
Khoi Tran (If you have a site, I'll plug it here)
All manner of emails, which led me to rethink the assaulter-thieves thing.
Might be heavily responsible for a revamp of the training locations
section, should I ever redo that, too.
|D1v1D3 bY Z3r0| (again, if you've got a site, I'll plug it)
For pointing out that single tipped zamadars are NOT the first dagger you
get. Still don't know how I missed that one, having written it like a
minute after the words 'knife' and 'razor'...
Jonny L (same as above)
Inspiring another cash section.
Isukincs (same as above)
Also inspiring the cash section, as well as giving me some fodder for
updating a couple of sections.
Nick V
For some notes on str weapons
BloodAdept (if you want your real name here, let me know)
For shells at pig beach. Never woulda thought of that.
And finally, a highly honourable mention to Jason Y, for way more stuff
than I could list here. Also, chocolate math.
The MS game board
(http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/gentopic.php?board=924697)
For waaay too much advice over the past months
Sauna.gibbed (http://sauna.gibbed.us)
Enemy stats, mainly, especially the other dimension's job instructor's
Bio out.
---
Banditsin supplement
BBJYO
---
As I'm a terrible procrastinator, I meant to issue an update to this guide some
time ago. Anyway, I was sent a banditsin guide quite a while back that I
intended to include in the next revision. All opinions and views expressed
are that of the original author, and I think he'd be rather more bothered about
reposting his work than I am, so my own copyright section doesn't apply.
I've never been a banditsin, he has, so he's most likely more of an authority,
here.
-
*NOTE* THE FOLLOWING ASSUMES YOU ARE ALL SOMEWHAT
FUNDED FOR THE MAXIMUM BENEFIT.
As you all know a BanditSin or sometimes called a SinDit is character in
Maple Story who starts off (lvl 1-30) as an Assassin (throwing stars etc...)
but ends up taking the Bandit as a 2nd Job. BioBandit explained most of
pro's and con's of a BanditSin but for you lazy people, a chart is of the
essence.
~Pro's
*Extremely Fast Training
*You get to backstab and KS those DAMN Sins >.O
*Pretty much it...
~Con's
*Loss of Double Stab; a vital skill for warding off small, tikes
*Loss of Nimble Body if you choose to replace that to get Double Stab and
believe me; An extra 20 Accuracy and Avoidability will help in the long
run...
Now if you're a BanditSin, you'll probably need some other training spots
because we're hybrid and cool ^_~.
*Training*
Level 10-15: Most of it, you'll just spam your stars at HHG1 (Henesys
Hunting Ground 1) but if you're UberRich and have got a 1337claw, then you
might as well start the tree that grew 1. An alternative to HHG1 is the Hill
East of Henesys which has a quieter atmosphere compared to HHG1 although
hackers might've taken over it...
Level 15-20: Haha, now take my advice and buy or borrow some stars
preferably Kumbi but you can also settle for Wooden Tops/ Mokbis or just
Subis if you're the conservative type. Once you've got new stars head on
over to the Rainforest East of Henesys and you can start training on the Pigs
and Ribbon Pigs there. You'll loose POTS like mad but the same goes for
EXP except you'll gain like mad ;). Another choice is HHG1 again but the
orange mushrooms level. The lag might ward off some impatient Maplers
though...
Level 20-25: *Whistles* This far already? Well then take to the Green
Mushroom tree for massive EXP gainage and some of the sweetest drops I
have ever seen! You should be two-hitting those fungi now and if not scoot
back to the Rainforest or Pig Beach to rape those pigs. Now, though, you'll
have to have Mokbis/ Tops or Kumbis to gain the most EXP.
Level 25-30: Okay here goes: Ant Tunnel .... ONE!!!! That's right, not four
because presuming that you have your Meba +7 100%'s you'll OHKO those
*Hornies* and THKO and sometimes OHKO the Zombie Mushrooms. I'm
even trying out the Evil Eyes and they prove to be somewhat *juicier* than
anything. That is only if you can Two-Hit KO them atleast 50% of the time.
If anyone wants some more information on training/making a BanditSin
whisper 8PackAbs (Yeah I know; so corny) online in MS server: Bera. If I'm
not talking it means I'm either taking a dump, eating, out, or just really
snobby at the time. Just remember BioBandit and I are Humans. Yes H-U-M-
A-N-S. We eat, sleep, and do whatever you do. We cannot ensure the 100%
accuracy of every question you care to aim at us. But we shall try that it is as
close to correct as possible.
Email's [email protected] though spamming is not necessary nor
is it wanted. Ask BioBandit first then me because he, FOR SURE, has more
experience than me by a longshot.
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