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MapleStory – Bandit Guide
Bandit Guide by BioSpark8000
Version: Final | Updated: 01/04/08
Maple Story Bandit FAQ Biospark8000 BioBandit at hotmail.co.uk For faster navigation, use ctrl-f (or your browser's equivalent shortcut) and type the letters in the brackets. Don't include the brackets, though. 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@example.com 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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Mini workshops save my life.
Diana and I are going through very difficult times. Family members have been spitting hateful venom, attacking us since Diana's father died over a year ago. Our darling Ava has moved out. Then on Saturday I had a terrible morning that involved a car crash and some very painful strife with someone I love. With everything weighing on me, I broke down in tears.
A half hour later I was to drive to the city to lead a Mini workshop. A voice in my head said, "If you call and cancel, people will understand." The idea of retreating to my bedroom was seductive. But I realized that putting myself in the room of love for two hours was where I'd rather be to contrast the hatred and judgement we're receiving daily, compounded by the present emergency.
The workshop is about being intimate, and how could I be, sitting with this lump of pain in my heart? When people ask me, "How are you?" I often don't answer, because "Fine" is not an answer for me and if I express my pain they'll usually want to hear more, which is not good for me. Or they'll look upon me with pity, or need to suggest fixes for the situation, or any number of responses that don't serve me.
But to be authentic this afternoon I knew I needed to express the pain in my heart. So I decided I would also tell people I didn't want to be fixed and didn't need them to hear the story. Then I remembered we're taught in HAI simply to ask, "Is there anything you need?" So I decided to share that little tool with the group, and let them now I needed hugs, caring and love… and that's exactly what I got.
A HAI Mini workshop is a two-hour blossoming of compassion among people, many of whom have never met before. We create a room of love where people can let go of issues, guilt and judgement, and just notice who they are as human beings. The workshop ends with a very touching exercise where folks stroke each other's face and share the connection of being human without agenda, where the event simply equals the event, and all there is is love.
As I led the exercise, surrounded by that compassion and intimacy, it was as if warm waves of love were washing over the icy pain in my heart, melting it away. I was left with a sadness that the folks who strike out in fear and hatred don't get connected to the love I do. And I felt gratitude to HAI for offering the opportunity to do the work I do to witness the beauty of people's humanity.
Do HAI Mini workshops save my life? Yes that's an exaggeration. But it is certainly one of the many ways I hold myself in love in this world.

subset: commoncrawl