 Who is this for? This is going to be an in depth guide for people that want to gain as much XP as possible in the shortest amount of time. If you want to be in the top 100 list one day or just want to get to a specific level quickly you will find this guide extremely helpful. I have divided this into sections so it can be easier to read and reference. Moreover I am not going to include any rares since most people do not have them, instead this is going to be a Howto for the general population and not a select few that were lucky enough to win things in contests or have been playing the game since the beginning. However I have included in the character development section in parenthesis all the equipment that are rare but are better than what is offered in Yulgar's shop. In conclusion always remember that this post is my personal opinion. I could be wrong or actually not be aware of something. I will update this as regularly as I can with new information I discover or other people's advice. Nevertheless do not take everything I say as correct. Use your head and decide for yourself. Acronyms used: (full list)
BTH or B2H = Bonus to Hit, a bonus to your percentage of successful
attacks To be or not to be? (a guardian) First of all if you are planning on playing this game like an addict or already are, you might as well support the game. If that is not good enough or all the extra freebies offered to you by being a guardian look at it this way.
- You will be able to play during guardian swims in effect increasing
your XPph If for financial reasons you cannot afford being a guardian, keep reading this guide it will still help you. Also read Icewraith's guide which is geared towards Adventurers. Getting XP quickly - Rules of Thumb (Rules mostly for newbies or people that lack common sense) Playing AQ ten hours a day will certainly allow you to level up quickly however the secret is maximizing your XPph. Its better to play two hours and makes 50k XPph, than play ten hours and make 10k XPph. Same amount of XP, however its a lot more efficient. Then if you actually do play 10 hours a day you can make 500k in XP. This is just an example, however you should understand that the key to leveling up quickly is not based solely on how many hours you spend playing the game but in how efficiently you gain XP. When you play AQ try not to multi-task too much. People tend to have the tendency to do fifty things at once, as a side effect they do not do anything exceptionally well. From personal experience you can play AQ and check out the forums or chat, but doing things that are involved like watching TV will side track you, causing mistakes such as not noticing when your character has low health, attacking with the wrong weapon equipped etc. Dieing is also something that should be avoided. Its not death itself that is bad, but the consequences, all that time you spent trying to defeat a monster that killed you was wasted. In other words dieing decreases your XPph. Of course there is no way to never die, it will happen, but being smart about it helps. If you fight a monster and it kills you each time you encounter it just cancel the fight. Its better to waste a couple of second clicking on the cancel button than attempting to defeat a monster by using potions etc and then end up dieing. Also a monster having really high XP does not necessarily mean that will help your XPph. For example, Trigoras the Dragon offers 2800XP, which sounds awesome, if it takes you 10 minutes to defeat him, and on the other hand by killing 1000XP monsters you can kill three of them in five minutes, its better to cancel the fight. Remember time is of the essence, wasting time on monsters, healing repeatedly and barely making it does not help you. Its better to get done with someone quickly and move on. Of course going the opposite way is also bad, that is killing things with really low XP. Sure you might be able to kill one zard every 30 seconds, but is it really worth it? You end up spending more time waiting for things to load than actually getting XP. Another good rule is offense before defense. If a monster is dead you get the XP, by playing around with it, healing once, attacking and then healing again slows you down. Its better to take it out and gain the XP than waste your time try to barely kill it. This is tied in with the above paragraph. Keep track of the monsters you can kill and the ones you have difficulty with. Cancel your fights with the monsters that give you trouble. Do not worry, if you level up a couple of times you will be able to defeat them then. This rule also applies when deciding what to buy, be it equipment weapon vs armor/shield or spells, healing vs offensive spells. The only "exception" is when trying to buy a double hit armor. Obviously its better to get a double hit armor (increasing your offensive capability) than buying a weapon. Moreover try to maximize your damage potential with each monster you fight. Hit them were they are weak, the higher their Defense Modifier % the better. However try to keep in mind their defenses as well. If the monster is weak to Light and Energy, and you have a good energy melee weapon, and a good light magic weapon and its magic is higher than its melee defense its better to attack it with a melee attack. Stats (formulas) (calculator) A topic of great debate, ask the question of how you should spend your stat points and you will receive five different answers and ten different theories behind them. The problem stems from having a limited amount of points you can use. This is how the system works, 5 points are awarded per level until reaching level 100. Which means that a total of 500 stat points is rewarded. There are six different stats, STR, DEX, INT, END, CHA, LUK. The maximum points allocated for each stat is 150. Usually players that want to be a warrior put their points in STR, mages in INT etc. If you wish to maximize your damage potential however, playing a specific type of character will hurt you in the long run.
Short version
Long version Following below I will give the advantages of the hybrid build. Feel free to tweak your stats a bit as you see fit. If you come up with a good combination please let me know. STR and INT The two most important stats for the ultimate leveling machine are STR and INT, both of them determine your damage modifier and BTH. This can be determined as follows
Melee Damage: STR/8 This added damage bonus due to stats gets amplified even more when attacking against high defense modifiers. Lets say you are fighting a Vorpalzard with Earth 200% by using the BoA. STR 0 will allow you to do 200% * 17.5 = 35, STR 150, 200% * 26.88 = 53.75. The numbers speak for themselves. Note: In case you are wondering what the [(4+31)/2] means. When calculating how much damage a weapon can potentially do we need to take the average per hit. In this specific example you might get lucky and do 31 points of damage twice in a row, but then you might be unlucky and do 4 points of damage twice in a row. Nevertheless if we want to get a valid idea of how much damage a weapon will do in 100 hits, or maybe 1000 hits the luck factor is eliminated and it just becomes a statistical problem. (4+31)/2 is the average damage done by BoA. To make another example lets say we have a magic weapon, Big 100K that does 7 to 27 points of damage, the average hit would be (7+27)/2 = 17. This is why its important for weapons to have high basic damage (the first number) Lets compare the UIK vs the Big 100K. The UIK has a 5 to 29 points of damage potential, making it (5+29)/2 = 17. Even though it seems that a max of 29 points is better than a max of 27, in reality on average they do the same amount of damage per hit (both of them 17). So whenever you are thinking about buying a new weapon just take the average of each weapon and see which gives you the highest average. That makes it better, of course specials and frequency should also be taken into account when deciding what to buy. Bonus to Hit and DEX If doubling your damage is not enough BTH just adds the cherry on top.
BTH for Melee: STR/16 + DEX/16 + LUK/20 BTH = 100 + (150/16) + (150/16) + (0/20) - 25 = 100 + 9.375 + 9.375 + 0 - 25 = 118.75 - 25 = 93.75% Attacking Djinni 100 times, 93.75 times you will actually hit, compared to 75 that it was before. This is yet another thing that will help raise you XPph. Lets say you are attacking Fire Gloop with the BoA, Melee def. 30, Earth 100%. With STR 0, DEX 0 attacking the Fire Gloop you will do 17.5 dmg per hit and hit 7 out of 10 times. Attacking it 10 times on average will give you 17.5 * 7 = 122.5. On the other hand with STR 150, DEX 150, you will do 26.88 dmg, and hit 9.375 (+5% bth from BoA) times out of 10. Attacking it 10 times on average will give you 26.88 * 9.375 = 251.95. That is more than twice as much damage as you would normally do! END On to another important stat END. It determines you HP, which is your life basically. Obviously the more HP you have the harder it is to die. HP = 100 + [5 * Lvl * (1 + END/100)] + END (hp calculator) Based on this formula the following things should be noted, two things determine your HP, your Lvl and your END.
Lvl 100, with END 0 vs END 150 CHA Most people like having pets, be it the role playing aspect of it or because they just look cool (light vampdragon anyone?). For controlling pets a CHA 20 will do the trick for most of them, with some exceptions like Nimbo, Ice Cat and some others. Keeping XPph maximizing in mind pets are not as useful as they might appear. There is the inherent problem with them, time wasters! Here is the breakdown, when a battle is being loaded it takes more time because the pet must be loaded. Even if I pretend that its a negligible difference its still there. Moreover pets usually do one type of elemental damage, there is always the chance that your pet will be attacking an monster defense modifier that is low or even negative (which heals the monster). That makes its attack even weaker than they already are or useless (except if you like healing monsters Also a pet takes about the same amount of time doing an attack as your char, if not more. The problem is that a pet almost always does a lot less damage than your character. Basically in a round you attack, your pet attacks, the monster attacks. That makes it three moves in a round. Lets say a fight lasts 10 rounds, which makes it 30 moves. On the other hand if you did not have a pet a round would take two moves. Which means for the same amount of time that it takes to complete 10 rounds (30 moves), without a pet you will have completed 15 rounds. You might say "But the pet damages the monster!". That is true, but looking at it damage point wise its better to attack 15 times, than attack 10 and your pet to attack another 10. Continuing to use the Fire Gloop as an example: Pet used: vampdragon is a popular choice and does damage of 4 to 16, for simplicity lets pretend that Fire Gloop has Fire 100%...which it does not, one more way to prove my point, nevertheless for giving pets a fair chance lets pretend that it has Fire 100%. Average vampdragon damage would be (4+16)/2 = 10, attacking its BTH would be 70%. 10 round damage would be, 10 * 7 = 70
STR 150, DEX 150, no pet, 15 rounds, attacking with BoA
STR 150, DEX 150, vampdragon, 10 rounds, attacking with BoA Statistically speaking you do 50HP less damage every 10 rounds, how much is that in an hour? Ten hours? A month? You get the point. CHA is also used for pixie. Summon Pixie is a spell that summons a pixie (kind of obvious). What's unique about this pixie is that she can either attack or heal you. The healing amount is 10% of damage taken, max healing is CHA + 10 for a maximum of 75HP. Which means CHA 65 is the maximum stat points that should be allocated. There is a big pixie fixation right now and almost everyone is using it. That makes you want to use it as well right? Do not waste your points on her. Even if having a pet was worth it time wise spending 65 out of your 500 points on her is not a good choice. It is generally agreed that the pixie will heal 1 out of 3 times. 75HP healed sounds kind of nice right? Well since pixie heals up to 10% of damage taken that means you have already lost 750HP from damage. Do you really think that after losing 750HP, 75HP heal will help you much? For easy monsters she will just slow you down like any other pet. For hard to beat monsters she will help you out and maybe even help you win the battle. However by the time you beat the monster you could have beat two monsters with lower XP, but both of them combined giving you a hight XPph gain. Also keep in mind that spending stat points is limited. It basically comes down to this, CHA or END? END wins, because its always there, you do not have to depend on the pixie hoping that she heals you. Having more HP is like having a heal only its always there from the beginning of the battle. LUK The black sheep of stats. LUK helps in BTH, Blocking, Treasure Chests. That sounds like its a lot, unfortunately its always LUK/20, for LUK 150 we get 150/20 = 7.5. Attacking a Fire Gloop with a BoA we get the following
STR 150, DEX 150, LUK 150 In other words you hit 10 for 10, damage done in 10 rounds Dmg = 26.88 * 10 = 268.8 STR 150, DEX 150 we got Dmg = 251.91 Its a small difference, LUK helps a bit more with monsters that have 40+ defense because then you utilize the +7.5%, instead of only 3.75% as in the above example. LUK also helps in blocking % Block = DEX/10 + LUK /20
DEX 150
DEX 150, LUK 150 Blocking directly deals with how much damage you take from a monster. Lets assume that a monster does 40 damage per round. In 10 rounds we will get
DEX 150, no armor (for simplification purposes)
DEX 150, LUK 150 Spending stat points Choices, choices, choices. 500 points, 5 different stats worth spending points in, 100 points in each sounds appealing. However this guide is all about maximizing we have to use the stats as appropriately as we can. In order of significance we get STR/INT, DEX, END, LUK. Going from attack to defense. Out of the list of 5, LUK has to be taken out since its not as useful as the other four. Its nice to deal more damage and block a bit more, but I believe its more important to spend the points in Endurance instead. STR, INT have to be maximized, leaving us only with 200 points. The best way to spend the remaining points is to have both DEX and END 100. You sacrifice some of your BTH however your high END will help you live longer in places that require you to face multiple monster in the row.
STR 150
Character Evolution
Short version
Weapons
Armors
Shields
Spells
Stats
Pets
Long version Gold is important so make sure you use it wisely. Hopefully this will serve as a good guide for things to not buy. If something new comes out and you wonder if its better than what you have do the following. Check out the forums and get its stats, dmg special. Compare the average dmg done by the new weapon/spell/whatever with what you have. If you still think its better look ahead, if in a few levels you are going to substitute your weapon anyway with something more powerful than either of your two options then do not buy it. Its not going to be the end of the world if you buy a weapon only to find out that its not as good as you thought, but do not be impulsive, buying anything that's new because its new. The same thing should apply with rares. If its going to be rare but its something you are going to use buy it. If its useless who cares. Not all rares are amazing, but there are definitely a lot of rares that are worth having (Dragonhand, UIK to name a few). The best way to get XP is by doing Random Adventures. The reasoning behind this is simple, all the monster you face are pretty much monsters you can defeat. You can go all out with them and barely survive the fight, however right when you are done you can get healed and replenish your potions by going to the tower. Quests tend to have issues for the most part. First of all in order to survive a series of battles you will either have to be a higher levels than the monsters you are facing (giving you less XP than you could be making with RAs). Second of all if they are giving good XP it usually means that you will be close to dieing, having to hunt for extra potions or fights that take really long. In other words quests end up wasting your time more than anything. (check out Final Words of Wisdom section for a bit more info) Level 0 to 30 - Kindergarden These are the easy levels to go through, you might as well enjoy them because leveling up gets harder and harder. Do not try doing the quests, you will keep dieing, especially really early on. Random Adventures are your friend. Keep on clicking on RA and defeating monster. Your Guardian Blade, Guardian Armor, and Guardian shield (You need to go in the tower to get this it does get equipped automatically) is all you need. Having two potions as a guardian also helps, usually a potion will almost put you back to your original health. A thing to keep in mind is that your Guardian Blade is Element X which means it does different kinds of elemental damage, sometimes it might even heal the monster you are fighting. Thankfully at this point the monster do not have negative big negative element weakness (ex. Fire -100%) Since you do not need to buy any weapons spend all your gold raising your STR, DEX, END. You will not able to raise your stats too much however that small little difference will help you be a lot more lethal in your encounters.
Gold Hunt
Weapons
Armor
Shields
Spells Level 31 to 49 - Elementary Now is when we start getting in business. You understand the mechanics of the game (hopefully started reading the forums/this guide as well). This is the point that you start buying weapons. Ideally you want a weapon of every type in your arsenal, allowing you to hit monsters were they are weakest (highest %). Do not overdo it though because you will end up wasting gold that you could use later on for buying something more powerful. Keep raising your STR, DEX and END, they will be a bit more expensive but they are money well spent. Do not sweat it if it seems like a lot of gold to raise to the next level (to calculate costs its (current STR * current STR) gold, substitute STR with whatever stat you are trying to raise). Make sureyou save enough money for buying equipment though. At this point your equipment will help you more than raising your stats so concentrate on buying.
Gold hunt
Weapons
Lvl 35 - Angelic Scepter - 5k gold - 6 to 21 dmg +1% BTH - magic
Lvl 40 - Storm Sword - 8K gold - 3 to 22 dmg +2% BTH - melee
Lvl 48 - Flame Hatchet - 3K gold - 6 to 18 dmg +4% BTH - melee
Armors
Shields
Spells Level 50 to 69 - Middle school The buying spree does not end here, its just starting. Buy, buy, buy. Most of the things you buy will stay with you for the rest of the game. As always concentrate in buying the weapons first and then everything else. You will also acquire some pretty useful spells. This period will go a bit slowly because there are so many things to buy and the Lvl gaining starts to slow down significantly. The good news is that you are no longer a newbie. Continue trying to raise your STR, DEX, and END. Start raising your INT, because it will become one of the most important stats. Since INT is going to be easier to raise (cheaper), try raising your INT twice, then your STR and DEX once.
Gold Hunt
Weapons
Lvl 53 - Seaslayer - 6K gold - 6 to 22 dmg +2% BTH - melee Lvl 55 - Ionic Slasher - 5K gold - 7 to 24 dmg +10% BTH - melee The best Energy weapon in the game. Amazing damage potential and very cheaply priced. To top everything off really good BTH as well. What more can you ask for? Buy it now! (You might want to buy this before you buy Seaslayer)
Armors
Lvl 45 - Invisibility Cloak - 2k gold - Melee 40/Range 40/ Magic 10
Lvl 50 - Vampire Form - 8K - Melee 40/Range 20/Magic 40
Shields
Spells
Lvl 50 - Earth Rage - 2.8K gold - 20 to 120 +5/+15% BTH
Lvl 50 - Algostorm - 2.8k - 30 to 105 dmg + 10% BTH
Lvl 68 - Darkness Dragon Ambush - 3.2k - 24 to 99 dmg + 13% BTH Level 70+ - College Congratulations, you are now considered a hardcore AQ player. Hopefully by now this guide makes a lot more sense. Leveling takes even longer, however the higher the level the more godlike you seem. You have probably even managed to acquire some rares that are helpful. If you find yourself needing gold, which you will, since buying the Golden set alone costs 2M gold check out the Gold Hunt section. If its not obvious try to start saving money for the Golden set after you have bought everything else and maximized all of your stats. After acquiring the Golden Set you will be ready to tackle The Pit. Your XPph will increase the more longer you fight in The Pit. If you find yourself playing AQ in small bursts of time then it will be better to keep doing RAs since The Pit requires some building up until you can start fighting harder monsters. Another good source for XP and gold is the Wrath of Carnax. The monsters there are guaranteed to be at least 1000XP/450 gold. Fighting the Entromorph should also be an easy fight. Carnax will probably be hard in the begining but on the higher levels you will be able to take him down. Use IK to freeze him, then DS ability, Fire Dragon. Hopefully that will bring him down to 1500HP and help you take him down. For RAs you should primarily rely on spells. If you have not noticed yet spells do the most damage in the game. Their limiting factor is your MP, so keep raising your INT until you hit 150. In an RA you will almost never run out, if you do after a couple of hits no matter what monster you are fighting it will go down. (exceptions do exist, like Trigoras the Dragon about 4000HP) To get a good idea of which spell is more powerful and what to use for what situation check out this guide.
Gold Hunt
Weapons
Lvl 70 - Big 100K - 100K gold - 7 to 27 dmg +10% BTH - magic
Lvl 75 - Golden Axe - 700K - 8 to 30 dmg - melee
Armors
Shield
Spells
Lvl 70 - Purity Portal - 3K gold - 40 to 130 dmg + 20% BTH
Lvl 70 - Sunburst - 3K gold - 40 to 110 dmg + 5% BTH
Lvl 75 - Invisible Blast - 3K gold - 30 to 120 dmg + 25% BTH Classes Dragon Slayer Try to master this class at a low level, before hitting level 25. Your STR, DEX and END will be high enough that you will be able to go through it pretty easy. Some of the dragons might be a bit hard for you, do not despair just try again and hope for a younger, weaker dragon. Lvl 1 DS is the hardest, after that the dragons are a lot easier to deal with. Do not get frustrated with the Stat rolls. Think of it as RAing only with a nice bonus added at the end. Imagine the DS armor as an airstrike button. Do not go around RAing with it, instead use it whenever you need the big guns to help you out. Whenever you end up meeting a dragon in RA you should use Poison Dragon, then alternate between Freeze Dragonkind and SI or whatever good fire weapon you have available at your level. Call Forth the Fire Dragon gets charged after 90 attacks with the DS armor. Whenever it gets charged up it should be used. It does 33% damage so the best time to use it is in your first attack against a dragon, allowing you to do maximum damage. You can also use Call Forth the Fire Dragon on normal monsters by using the IK first to freeze them, allowing you do 200% Fire damage to them. Vampire Slayer Try to master this class at around level 60. This class is a bit harder to master than the DS class, if you find yourself unable to complete it try leveling up a bit and try again. Even though this class is harder to attain than the DS class I believe that its not as usefull since you tend to encounter a lot more dragons than Undead related things. However since there are extra armor slots you might as well take advantage of it. A passive usefull ability is Hunter's Eye, you automatically receive a +10% BTH in any attack done against Undead, Werewolves or Vampires. Use this armor when doing spells allowing you to hit more effectively. Think of this, in order to get a +10% BTH by raising your DEX you will have to raise it 80 points. The second really good ability is Turn Undead when your INT is high, even though the damage per hit might not seem that impressive if you add the random stat damage to it for six hits it becomes more potent than SB. Final Words of Wisdom Try to remember that AQ is a game! That means you should try having fun. If you get bored doing the same thing over and over again mix it up a bit. Try out a quest, do something silly for a change. Its alright, you might make a bit less XP but its better to have fun a raise in levels a bit slower than burn out by Lvl 60. Also AQ is addictive (if you have not noticed already) do not make it your primary thing in life. Making it to Level 100 in a month might give you some bragging rights, but is it really worth putting aside your life for a game? That's it, I hope you had fun reading it. I certainly had fun writing it. Comment, suggestions, hate is welcomed. Battle On!
Reccomended Reading
Changelog
To Do: | ||
