[X] My Assistant

You can do both at the same time. Creating monsters uses tokens while upgrading PL uses crystals.

It is understood (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Hmm, i have read about whether it is better to have many PL 25 monster or few PL 1100.
What would you recommend?

Well, that depends on how many M can you spend to create PL1100 monster. I dont even own a single monster above PL1000, i have Crystarium IV, have spend every single crystal into my monsters, and did buy for around 4~5M into crystal packs over the years. Does this answer your question about PL1100?

This post has been edited by Uncle Stu: Sep 10 2017, 06:55

(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) Congrats!

Congratulations ALL_MIGHT on achieving a near perfection ethereal rapier! So even if the trick is not real, Snowflake heard your prayer lol. Trick might still be worth trying anyway, the credits cost is minimal. Maybe lololo is posting fake information (he didn't post his item world screenshot) so that Tenboro won't fix it haha.

Thanks
(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Hmm, i have read about whether it is better to have many PL 25 monster or few PL 1100.
What would you recommend?

My recommendation is to keep all monsters at PL25. Those few PL1100 monsters are for when you get bored with the game after your final equip set is complete. Until that time, just sell all chrystals and use the cash on gear.

This is by the way the consensus, that PL25 only is the best for getting income.

So I happened to buy a staff in auction:
Legendary Demonic Katalox Staff of Destruction

I thought it might be fun to diversify a bit. Maybe play another element, and exploiting the 'good day of the week' a bit more. But this staff isn't it yet, this one is just for getting to know Dark. I'm not souldfusing it, so it will be resold or go into rent-service later.

Couple of questions:

1. Am I correct in thinking that Katalox is good against SG, because of the sheer damage?
2. Katalox + imperil, does that even work? Willow is probably much better.
3. Pen5, spel4? Or do we go for Pen5 Arch4 for katalox? (for this staff, I'll settle for Pen5 + 2 of the required pot)
4. I was hoping to pick the staff up for under 0.5m - paid 0.9m. A bit too expensive for this one, isn't it?

My recommendation is to keep all monsters at PL25. Those few PL1100 monsters are for when you get bored with the game after your final equip set is complete. Until that time, just sell all chrystals and use the cash on gear.

This is by the way the consensus, that PL25 only is the best for getting income.

What about using minor upgrades for morale? It's very manageable at the start, and I know it can't last forever, but that has to be cheaper than using happy pills for a while, right?

TBH i never did buy happy pills and i have never understand how someone could care about how much they are woth. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

Well, that depends on how many M can you spend to create PL1100 monster. I dont even own a single monster above PL1000, i have Crystarium IV, have spend every single crystal into my monsters, and did buy for around 4~5M into crystal packs over the years. Does this answer your question about PL1100?

I bought a few crystal packs (under 50) and my flagship is approaching 1k2 already. Crys 3.

Should I upgrade SoL if I'm using 1 IA slot for it? SoL upgrades only improve the effect duration and increase base mana cost

I think it's still beneficial to keep Spark slotted even if you have it on autocast

Manacost with Better Spark: 2.11 MP/round

without: 3.61 MP/round

An that's with SS, SV and SoL on autocast and 30% reduction, the difference is significant enough to warrant the use of the ability imho

So I happened to buy a staff in auction:
Legendary Demonic Katalox Staff of Destruction

I thought it might be fun to diversify a bit. Maybe play another element, and exploiting the 'good day of the week' a bit more. But this staff isn't it yet, this one is just for getting to know Dark. I'm not souldfusing it, so it will be resold or go into rent-service later.

Couple of questions:

1. Am I correct in thinking that Katalox is good against SG, because of the sheer damage?
2. Katalox + imperil, does that even work? Willow is probably much better.
3. Pen5, spel4? Or do we go for Pen5 Arch4 for katalox? (for this staff, I'll settle for Pen5 + 2 of the required pot)
4. I was hoping to pick the staff up for under 0.5m - paid 0.9m. A bit too expensive for this one, isn't it?

1. Yes at least it'll be better than cold
2. It works but Willow outclasses it (GF,IW, not sure about Arena)
3. If you're only to use it for SG then pen5 arch 4 I guess
4. It would've been a steal years ago but willow is too op now. It's an okay price

I think it's still beneficial to keep Spark slotted even if you have it on autocast

Manacost with Better Spark: 2.11 MP/round

without: 3.61 MP/round

An that's with SS, SV and SoL on autocast and 30% reduction, the difference is significant enough to warrant the use of the ability imho

Oh thanks. Everything is better with numbers

How do you keep all monsters at power level 25? Don't you need to feed them crystals for morale? Do sad monsters give gifts with only food?

Today I thought to try a new playstyle with 1H. Instead of killing each monster one at a time, I spread the damage around and keep each monster alive. This is similar to how I used to play 2H as a beginner. This method is risky but it does more damage by increasing the number of counter attacks. Also you always attack a stunned enemy this way, so all hits are guaranteed.

In Research for 1H he attacked a stunned enemy 62% of the time, resulting in Overpower 5 having a 1.3% damage boost. If you use the spread playstyle with 1H, Overpower becomes worthless, Butcher gets better in comparison to Fatality, and Swift Strike becomes more hurtful (it can still disappear with burden).

Also for 1H elemental strikes, if you consider the slowing effect of Cold Shield and Wind Shield, then Wind Strike and Electric Strike are not good, for the same reason Swift Strike is not good. So for 1H maybe the only good elemental strikes are Dark Strike, Holy Strike, and Cold Strike.

Hmm, i have read about whether it is better to have many PL 25 monster or few PL 1100.
What would you recommend?

I suggest you do like I do: raise the PL of a few monsters to get some high grade, maybe raise their chaos level a bit too, and have an army of low PL besides them. That wy you can have a wealth quantity and still get a bit of quality.

How do you keep all monsters at power level 25? Don't you need to feed them crystals for morale? Do sad monsters give gifts with only food?

Today I thought to try a new playstyle with 1H. Instead of killing each monster one at a time, I spread the damage around and keep each monster alive. This is similar to how I used to play 2H as a beginner. This method is risky but it does more damage by increasing the number of counter attacks. Also you always attack a stunned enemy this way, so all hits are guaranteed.

In Research for 1H he attacked a stunned enemy 62% of the time, resulting in Overpower 5 having a 1.3% damage boost. If you use the spread playstyle with 1H, Overpower becomes worthless, Butcher gets better in comparison to Fatality, and Swift Strike becomes more hurtful (it can still disappear with burden).

Also for 1H elemental strikes, if you consider the slowing effect of Cold Shield and Wind Shield, then Wind Strike and Electric Strike are not good, for the same reason Swift Strike is not good. So for 1H maybe the only good elemental strikes are Dark Strike, Holy Strike, and Cold Strike.

Keeping monsters at PL25 is complete idiocy. If you want to spend the least amount of money possible on the monsters, you should raise their morale with crystals until doing so is more expensive than using happy pills. I read some players saying that it occurs around PL200 or so.

I'm askng myself something: why does everyone keep associating elemental strikes with the spike shield? Isn't the spike shield's debuff supposed to amplify the damage of elemental spells cast on the monsters? Afaik my elemental strikes never, ever removed the debuff on the monsters, so i'm assuming that they don't get amplified by the debuff, right?

Mostly agreed with the monster lab part, except for using chaos tokens for anything other than unlocking new slots. But if you have one or two special monsters that you like to pamper, go for it (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Also, regarding this:

I'm askng myself something: why does everyone keep associating elemental strikes with the spike shield? Isn't the spike shield's debuff supposed to amplify the damage of elemental spells cast on the monsters? Afaik my elemental strikes never, ever removed the debuff on the monsters, so i'm assuming that they don't get amplified by the debuff, right?

It's because of the resistance-lowering effect of debuffs. It honestly doesn't matter that much, but if you REALLY want to optimize your build, I guess you might pay attention to it.

For example, the debuff from Flame Spike Shield reduces cold resistance, so if you're using Flame Spike Shield, the ideal elemental strike for your weapon would be Cold, etc.

Which Spike shield would complement dark strike?
(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

Which Spike shield would complement dark strike?
(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

this is true to a certain extent, of course. if element cannot be applied, then you'll go with generic guidelines for playstyles: for example, Fire for 1H. probably Cold or Wind for DW. etc etc

Thanks, I agree with slowly feeding low level monsters crystals. That's what I'm planning to do as well when I have enough funds to start a second generation of weaker monsters. Also I have had another idea since the beginning, by feeding my low level monsters only unbalanced primary attribute stats, they are more costly, but they also become stronger for killing newbies, thus improving your gains. When I created my first monster, it killed someone on the second day and gave me a Crystallized Phazon. In the half year since, none of my monsters have ever killed anyone, just won a couple battles. It may also be helpful to keep a few monsters at PL 400 because that's another turning point at which they are strong relative to players.

At medium levels, elemental stats help monsters more though because players will start to have elemental strike weapons.

I'm not a mage but I think the elemental shields don't work like they are supposed to. They blow up as mentioned, so the one attack spell will do more damage plus the explosion, but after that the shield is gone. As a level 40 naked mage I wasn't that impressed with the effect. When paired with elemental strike they are more effective because the elemental shield hangs around.

According to Research for 1H "Cold/Elec/Wind Strike with proper Spike Shields are better than Holy/Dark Strike, except for School Girl arena. This is the reason why I had not changed my Arctic Rapier for Hallowed/Demonic one."

I don't fully believe him, but do agree with most of his analysis. What he says is more true at higher levels. When I was level 100 I had lots of Superior Demonic weapons and the damage was wonderful, because Dark is the best element to damage most monsters (25% resistance to Fire/Cold/Wind/Elec, 0% resistance to Dark). At level 250 and playing on Pfudor, all the monsters are Power Level 2250 (with 75% resistance to Fire/Cold/Wind/Elec and 62% resistance to Dark). That's how the crystal stat scaling works.

At Power Level 2250, subtracting 25% resistance due to the elemental spike shield has a greater effect. Fire/Cold/Wind/Elec becomes 50% resistance, which is better than Dark/Holy, as there is no spike shield to complement Dark/Holy Strike.

However it is debatable how often you can hit an enemy with the Spike Shield on, so in my opinion I still prefer Dark/Holy Strike even for regular monsters. Also Wind/Elec Strike have the Swift Strike problem which Research for 1H did not consider. Fire Strike is the worst because the most enemies are resistant to Fire and also the Electric Shield is useless to 1H.

1. Am I correct in thinking that Katalox is good against SG, because of the sheer damage?

What sheer damage?
It has 0.7 MDB advantage but 4.9 EDB disadvantage over a Willow.
Since prof does not really matter against SG (since only Konata has dark mitigation) I would say that you're either wrong or I'm missing something.

2. Katalox + imperil, does that even work? Willow is probably much better.

Everything works, but Redwood Cold > Katalox Dark, so I don't think you would have any reason to play imperil (SGs not included)

3. Pen5, spel4? Or do we go for Pen5 Arch4 for katalox? (for this staff, I'll settle for Pen5 + 2 of the required pot)

If you just want to do SGs arch of annihilator would probably work best.

4. I was hoping to pick the staff up for under 0.5m - paid 0.9m. A bit too expensive for this one, isn't it?

If you knww it why did you offer so much? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)

Also you always attack a stunned enemy this way, so all hits are guaranteed.

If you attack one time every second I guess you can see which monster is not stunned, if you just hover at 3+t/s I really doubt that you can cherry-pick the stunned monsters.

Also your "new playstyle" is how I think most 1H users play.
Maximizing counter-attacks and OC is not anything new.

Also I have had another idea since the beginning, by feeding my low level monsters only unbalanced primary attribute stats, they are more costly, but they also become stronger for killing newbies, thus improving your gains. When I created my first monster, it killed someone on the second day and gave me a Crystallized Phazon. In the half year since, none of my monsters have ever killed anyone, just won a couple battles. It may also be helpful to keep a few monsters at PL 400 because that's another turning point at which they are strong relative to players.

Can we please stop with the monster lab theorycrafting?
Countless users have reported 0 wins or next to 0 wins for each PL apart from 1100+ no matter what they do with the monsters.

Unless there is some hard proof that some strategies increase the win rate I would suggest not to post theories that will just mislead other users.

This post has been edited by Sapo84: Sep 10 2017, 15:41

Can we please stop with the monster lab theorycrafting?
Countless users have reported 0 wins or next to 0 wins for each PL apart from 1100+ no matter what they do with the monsters.

Unless there is some hard proof that some strategies increase the win rate I would suggest not to post theories that will just mislead other users.

Agreed, basically just do whatever you want with your monsters, eventually they'll start winning (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

It really does feel random. I don't pay much attention to wins/kills, so I took a look at my first 50 monsters, the oldest being 5 months. Some are sitting at 0 wins, but most have at least 4-5 wins and 1 killing blow. Power level range is 68-195.

So yeah, if you want more wins, get your monsters to PL1100+ and if you're content with the free gift every 3 days, having a bunch of low-level ones is just fine (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Can we please stop with the monster lab theorycrafting?
Countless users have reported 0 wins or next to 0 wins for each PL apart from 1100+ no matter what they do with the monsters.

Unless there is some hard proof that some strategies increase the win rate I would suggest not to post theories that will just mislead other users.

Double that.
And just one more from me. In the end, we ALL lose when people start training their monsters.
1) The main income in the game are drops from monsters in the battle, not gifts from them. Just how many BoS/RA/Cp you got from monsters? But 350 level player can easily make 350.000 income solely from arena and if he will be lucky to get some nice legendary, he can sell it for 1m or more.
2) The main idea of the game, then, to clean arena/GF as far as one can. It is wise in both real-life time and in-game income
3) The more people train their monsters - the more HP they will have and more powerful they will be. This two mess with player time and make him clear arena/GF longer, because monsters take more hits to kill them, and player spends more time to heal and buff himself.
4) So, instead of helping each other to make monsters as weak as possibly to make everyone able to clean arena/GF faster we intentionally prevent us to do this and make our own gameplay harder. As been said many times, monster wins mostly, accidentally, because player was distracted and forgot to heal himself or lose his sense of safe.
In my honest opinion, we all should stop upgrading our monsters. This will both help us to save our resources and invest them in better way and help us to clean arena/GF faster.


...oh, and I just "LOVE" that idea - "let's create monsters that would kill newbies more effectively". Yes, let's create monsters that would prevent people from gaining enjoyment from the game, put them in the state of subsense, depress them, and will help them lose any interest to the game. This will help us to lose potential buyers/sellers/and just-good-people-and-new-face-at-forum. Of course, why not? And in the end this is would be a forum for 400+ level players who created monsters that kill newbies in one blow and we will discuss how we can kill them even faster. Nice xD

This post has been edited by f4tal: Sep 10 2017, 21:26