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Hi I'm really new to this. Is there a guide for a 1h build? Like stat distribution and what skills to use? Currently lvl 50 but I've yet to find a shield.

Stat distribution isn't super important, I suggest keeping them all equal for now. At around level 200 or so, keep everything level, but ignore INT, since all INT for a 1H build is increase your total spirit points and you'll have plenty by then. You can tweak them further later on, when your build is decent enough that you can optimize for damage.

For gear, at your level basically anything will work. I would recommend using a Shortsword/Rapier, but for now Axe/Club/Wakizashi will work fine.
Any shield is better than no shield. Force shields are the best, Kites are okay for your level. Look for an average kite shield in the equip shop (don't buy anything higher than average, since it will likely be much higher level than you, and you won't be able to use it)
Heavy armor works better for 1H, so getting a full set of plate/power would be ideal.

Set up your abilities for a 1H heavy build. You want everything under the General, One-Handed, Heavy Armor, as well as the abilities for the spells that you will use in the Supportive and Deprecating categories.

Supportive spells help you survive. If you want to play on higher difficulties, you will want to keep the following spells active: Regen, Protection, Haste, Shadowveil, Spark of Life, Spirit Shield, and Heartseeker gives extra damage.
Spirit Stance increases your damage output and makes spells cheaper to cast. Once you reach a higher level, you will be able to remain in spirit stance indefinitely.

Deprecating spells can help you survive higher difficulties, but I wouldn't play on IWBTH or higher until level 100, when you can cast spark of life. A full set of superior plate, superior shield, and superior waki/rapier/shortsword at level 100 might be enough to survive the first few arenas on IWBTH, but you may need to cast deprecating spells like Sleep, Weaken, Silence, Slow, Blind to survive.

There are some userscripts that make the game a lot better: Monsterbation (hover to attack instead of click every time), HVutils (lots of out-of-battle enhancements)

Stat distribution isn't super important, I suggest keeping them all equal for now. At around level 200 or so, keep everything level, but ignore INT, since all INT for a 1H build is increase your total spirit points and you'll have plenty by then. You can tweak them further later on, when your build is decent enough that you can optimize for damage.

For gear, at your level basically anything will work. I would recommend using a Shortsword/Rapier, but for now Axe/Club/Wakizashi will work fine.
Any shield is better than no shield. Force shields are the best, Kites are okay for your level. Look for an average kite shield in the equip shop (don't buy anything higher than average, since it will likely be much higher level than you, and you won't be able to use it)
Heavy armor works better for 1H, so getting a full set of plate/power would be ideal.

Set up your abilities for a 1H heavy build. You want everything under the General, One-Handed, Heavy Armor, as well as the abilities for the spells that you will use in the Supportive and Deprecating categories.

Supportive spells help you survive. If you want to play on higher difficulties, you will want to keep the following spells active: Regen, Protection, Haste, Shadowveil, Spark of Life, Spirit Shield, and Heartseeker gives extra damage.
Spirit Stance increases your damage output and makes spells cheaper to cast. Once you reach a higher level, you will be able to remain in spirit stance indefinitely.

Deprecating spells can help you survive higher difficulties, but I wouldn't play on IWBTH or higher until level 100, when you can cast spark of life. A full set of superior plate, superior shield, and superior waki/rapier/shortsword at level 100 might be enough to survive the first few arenas on IWBTH, but you may need to cast deprecating spells like Sleep, Weaken, Silence, Slow, Blind to survive.

There are some userscripts that make the game a lot better: Monsterbation (hover to attack instead of click every time), HVutils (lots of out-of-battle enhancements)

Thanks for the detailed answer! Very helpful.

It's a decent enough build for the level. If you want to keep playing as 1H heavy, then I would suggest replacing all of the armor pieces with some Power * Slaughter pieces eventually.
Daemon Duality 1 would be a good investment if you don't already have it, and it's roughly 5m credits worth of hath right now.
Adept Learner is good if you want to level up as fast as possible, and is one of the cheapest things to train (total cost: 5.1m)
Drop trainings are a credit sink for the rich, they're not really worth training fully.

If you want to switch to mage soon, then I would suggest saving up for that transition, since it costs quite a bit for a decent set (maybe like 25m to buy a half decent set of gear, then IW the staff and armor, and forge the staff and prof cottons, and get the prof perks)

Ah, now I remember why I quit. Power * Slaughter is prohibitively expensive and I lost sense of progression. Even aiming on sub-optimal ADB piece of equipment is nigh impossible.

Ah, now I remember why I quit. Power * Slaughter is prohibitively expensive and I lost sense of progression. Even aiming on sub-optimal ADB piece of equipment is nigh impossible.

they are dead-cheap now though

I know I asked what Legendary Cores were for and was told nothing's been implemented yet, but I see a market for them on Isekai. What's that about? Won't they disappear at season's end?

I know I asked what Legendary Cores were for and was told nothing's been implemented yet, but I see a market for them on Isekai. What's that about? Won't they disappear at season's end?

They get transferred to persistent

they are dead-cheap now though

So is the income. Looking at prices, I actually don't even think it got much cheaper at all, so in a way it's even more expensive given how much less you earn nowadays.

I need some advice on transitioning to mage so I can do arenas faster.

I got this bad boy ready to soulfuse:
[289595607] Peerless Ethereal Redwood Staff of Niflheim (Lv.429)

From Nezu's guide I figured that redwood works well for fire/cold mages, and the Suffix is Niflheim for extra cold damage so I figure next I need Niflheim phase gear and 1-2 Elementalist Cloths pieces for proficiency. I need total elemental prof to be around twice my level, right?
Does it need to be Charged for survivability? Testing the build with some random off-element mag phase pieces I end up having to heal after every 2-3 turns and frequently have to use spirit elixirs. So I'm guessing not just any mag/leg equips will cut it, I also probably need to forge the evade a bit but fuck are those phazons expensive (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)
Should I use more Cloth instead of Phase until I can afford to forge the Phase gear?
I guess I can also play on IWTBH until I get the survivability up a bit...

My next question is related to spell rotation. Is it called Fire/Cold because I should use both elements' spells or I should just spam the strongest Ice spell available and nothing else (after imperil ofc)? If it's both can I mix and match Surtr and Niflheim phase gear?

Finally how do you guys bind your rotations to monsterbation's hover/click/right click/middle click actions? Any shift/alt key modifiers?

Any advice is welcome!

I need some advice on transitioning to mage so I can do arenas faster.

I got this bad boy ready to soulfuse:
[289595607] Peerless Ethereal Redwood Staff of Niflheim (Lv.429)

I wouldn't recommend using an ethereal staff, even if it is peerless - the EDB will be much lower than a staff with a matching elemental prefix. If you're going to do ice mage, you'd want an arctic staff.

I need some advice on transitioning to mage so I can do arenas faster.

I got this bad boy ready to soulfuse:
[289595607] Peerless Ethereal Redwood Staff of Niflheim (Lv.429)

From Nezu's guide I figured that redwood works well for fire/cold mages, and the Suffix is Niflheim for extra cold damage so I figure next I need Niflheim phase gear and 1-2 Elementalist Cloths pieces for proficiency. I need total elemental prof to be around twice my level, right?
Does it need to be Charged for survivability? Testing the build with some random off-element mag phase pieces I end up having to heal after every 2-3 turns and frequently have to use spirit elixirs. So I'm guessing not just any mag/leg equips will cut it, I also probably need to forge the evade a bit but fuck are those phazons expensive (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)
Should I use more Cloth instead of Phase until I can afford to forge the Phase gear?
I guess I can also play on IWTBH until I get the survivability up a bit...

My next question is related to spell rotation. Is it called Fire/Cold because I should use both elements' spells or I should just spam the strongest Ice spell available and nothing else (after imperil ofc)? If it's both can I mix and match Surtr and Niflheim phase gear?

Finally how do you guys bind your rotations to monsterbation's hover/click/right click/middle click actions? Any shift/alt key modifiers?

Any advice is welcome!

1. that staff is crap, sell it and buy a matching staff. Prefix must match suffix. Redwood is fine, but I prefer willow. Both work.
2. you don't need charged to play mage, but it helps to survive and less healing means it's faster.
3. you can use a bit more proficiency cottons at first. But phases will speed things up. Mind your prof factor, that's important.
4. It's not callled fire/cold. It's called: Fire style, or Cold style (in short: fire/cold). You choose 1. And only that type of magic should be in your spell rotation
5. I use hovershift for imperil (see monsterbation code for example).
6. and the regular spell rotation should be on your hover action

I don't understand the point of Spirit Shield. It seems to get me killed more often than it actually helps; once there's enough monsters in the fight at the same time, you'll be getting hit by multiple major attacks per turn, and when that's happening the inevitable result is that eventually, unlucky timing will have the spirit damage drop me below the Spark of Life threshold, and another attack in the same turn will kill me before I have the chance to pop a potion. Meanwhile if the first attack had triggered Spark of Life, the second attack would have made no difference because of Cloak of the Fallen.
It's pretty annoying to constantly die during Round 30/30 every time I try to do anything on PFUDOR.

It seems better to just take health damage, since then you have heals and potions instead of just potions, and heals have a way shorter cooldown.

I don't understand the point of Spirit Shield. It seems to get me killed more often than it actually helps; once there's enough monsters in the fight at the same time, you'll be getting hit by multiple major attacks per turn, and when that's happening the inevitable result is that eventually, unlucky timing will have the spirit damage drop me below the Spark of Life threshold, and another attack in the same turn will kill me before I have the chance to pop a potion. Meanwhile if the first attack had triggered Spark of Life, the second attack would have made no difference because of Cloak of the Fallen.
It's pretty annoying to constantly die during Round 30/30 every time I try to do anything on PFUDOR.

It seems better to just take health damage, since then you have heals and potions instead of just potions, and heals have a way shorter cooldown.

I have read some people suggesting not to use Spirit Shield right away, but using it after a couple ability upgrades. You have enough levels to be able to fully upgrade Spirit Shield, so do that if you haven't already. Otherwise, definitely increase the monsterbation spirit threshold. It's automatically set at 0.5-0.5*spboost/(spboost+100), which is exactly how much sp Spark of Life consumes. Based on your level, you should have 70% spboost from the sp tank ability, so that would be 0.5-0.5*70/170 = .294. Try setting your spirit threshold to 0.4, or higher if you still keep dying.

Without spirit shield, you spark more frequently, which ends up being a bigger sp expenditure so you're more likely to die due to insufficient spirit to activate spark.

In training, which one should I focus? Equipment drop? Or XP to level up faster up to 500? Is leveling up to 500 important?

In training, which one should I focus? Equipment drop? Or XP to level up faster up to 500? Is leveling up to 500 important?

Training is nice at first, but becomes a credit sink at high training levels. So first of all, don't train unless you can easily afford the training.

- Equipment drop is nice. It's a good source of credits if you auto-sell low quality stuff. Or salvage for materials, whatever you prefer. I like quartermaster, together with scavenger.
- EXP is nice, because high level gives you access to new arena's with more schoolgirls to fight. But it's not important to reach lv 500 - what is important in HV anyway? If you want access to a lot of cheap good gear, then LV 500 is the place to be. Or if your goal is to reach lv 500. If you want your drops to be valuable because of low level, you're already past that level... well maybe for some gear it still works, but not worth the struggle of preventing level up. Imho leveling up is still beneficial at your level.
If you have to choose... I'd go for quartermaster first, and then EXP second.

Woo! I just beat Floor 40 of Isekai.
So the next level says PFUDOR +5%. What can I expect going to Level 50? Will each level get an incremental 5%, or does it stay +5% for awhile like how there were 5-10 floors per difficulty getting to this point?

edit : Also, is Exp bonus tied to Floor advancement or something else?

This post has been edited by Valdragon: Jul 25 2023, 02:41

Woo! I just beat Floor 40 of Isekai.
So the next level says PFUDOR +5%. What can I expect going to Level 50? Will each level get an incremental 5%, or does it stay +5% for awhile like how there were 5-10 floors per difficulty getting to this point?

edit : Also, is Exp bonus tied to Floor advancement or something else?

It goes up by 5% every floor (monster HP and damage). Monster level also makes a difference, since that scales their stats too.

EXP bonus increases by 20% each floor, so at floor 40 you have 40*20 = +800% EXP

edit:
I dug out an old spreadsheet I used for planning my tower runs, and if my math is right, then Floor 50 monsters have 184% HP and damage compared to Floor 40 monsters, and at floor 100 it's 945% HP and 892% damage.

This post has been edited by LogJammin: Jul 25 2023, 04:38

Is having an attack speed bonus detrimental to 1H builds? I understand that the STR DEX and END contribute to both attack power and parries/survival for 1H, but don't really understand how attack factors into that.

For reference, my stats (not counting equipment and artifact bonuses) look like this:

Strength 386
Dexterity 459
Agility 246
Endurance 458
Intelligence 0
Wisdom 386

My agility right now is 1 point away from granting attack speed bonuses, but I'm unsure of if it provides a benefit to this play style since you'd want to counterattack.

Is having an attack speed bonus detrimental to 1H builds?

Yes, a bit. For maximum damage, you can try to minimize attack speed and evade so that you reach the counter cap as often as possible. You obviously sacrifice defense by doing this, but if you're tanky enough it helps a little bit in theory.

I don't think it makes a huge difference though, but I don't have any data to back that up.

Is there any working script that can track drops? All the script I found are dead now. I use Chrome.

Is there any working script that can track drops? All the script I found are dead now. I use Chrome.

Monsterbation has this feature
Battle Stats automatically saves battle results (requires monsterbation)