[X] My Assistant

1. Go and take a look at WTS. Many people are selling equipments/items/whatever they can sell there.
As I've said, elementalist helps you against normal monsters/konata. You may use your destruction staff against konata, but that's an exception case. Use focus staff till lv.130.
Your heimdall/phase pant of priestess look okay and you can keep that. Others you can just throw away and find replacements in WTS.
Against legendaries, you also need heaven-sent clothes.

2. Leave 5 AP to mana tank and put the rest into hp tank then.
You can keep those APs in EXP tank if you really want to fast-leveling.

3. You can do your trainings when you have credits to share. That's just a point where you should stop.

4. I can't be sure which difficulty you should be playing in. I would suggest the difficulty where you can clear mobs in at most 3-4 rounds, so monsters can't use their skills against you.
Mobs gives you less damage in IW (depending on equipment's quality), but you don't receive any credits from IW.
And if you don't care about equipments and credits, crysfest is even a better choice compared to grindfest.
You only get crystals/artifacts (no equipment, no credits), but it consumes less stamina than grindfest.
So you can grind more experience in crysfest per stamina.

Quick reference:
Arenas:
Good : credits, equipments (esp. in high level).
Bad: less drops on average, can be difficult.

Grindfest:
Good: Balance between credits and EXP. Can also grind items in high level.
Bad: consumes tons of stamina (2 times arenas)

Crtsfest:
Good: EXP per stamina (1/2 time arenas). Can also grind crystals in high level.
Bad: you only get crystals and artifacts. No equipments, no items, no credits.

IW:
Good: Drops. You can raise your equipment's level in high level.
Bad: No credits, less EXP (depending on item's quality).

only 5 aps in mana tank? oh I thought I needed whole lot more. lol
So now, I have 12aps into exp tank, 15aps into hp tank, and 6aps into mp tank, which brings me up to 1093 hp and 212mp. I have 7aps to spare right now, but I'm not sure if I should dump them in hp tank or put more into exp tank or save them for lv80 abilities.

Now I'm still confused on why I should put exp into dex if I am a mage.
the wiki says
"Every point raises your Physical Base Damage by 0.75
Every 10 points raises your Attack Accuracy by 1% ‡
Every 25 points raises your Attack Crit Rate by 1% and your base Parry chance by 1% ‡
"
Which are all irrelevant to magic or am I getting dex high so I can have more spirit points?

Thanks again for your advices.

Every point of to hit increases your ET (final Et chance is derived from your staff ET and chance to hit with it), and that is pretty much crucial at later stages. To get ET, you must land a physical blow, sometimes on agitated monsters, sometimes on those with more than 50% MP. Missing several times in row is not amusing. Missing so much CM fades even with haste on is even less so, and that still happens to me even with 104 total dex (83,9 to hit) depressingly often.

But yes, dex gives mages the least. Just not zero.

This post has been edited by Valheran: Jan 13 2012, 23:52

Every point of to hit increases your ET (final Et chance is derived from your staff ET and chance to hit with it), and that is pretty much crucial at later stages. To get ET, you must land a physical blow, sometimes on agitated monsters, sometimes on those with more than 50% MP. Missing several times in row is not amusing. Missing so much CM fades even with haste on is even less so, and that still happens to me even with 104 total dex (83,9 to hit) depressingly often.

But yes, dex gives mages the least. Just not zero.

Oh I see. I didn't know ether theft was important.

What exactly does it do?
Steal mp per turn?

If so, what if I kill the mob right after I steal ether?

This post has been edited by king zeal: Jan 14 2012, 00:07

What exactly does it do?

http://ehwiki.org/wiki/Fighting_Styles#Staff

Dexterity contributes to Parry, which is almost as important as Evade.

Dexterity contributes to Parry, which is almost as important as Evade.

Ah that's useful.

When you upgrade a staffs damage or any upgrade. Then later scale it down to base stats, does it show its base stats before or after upgrades? ie base stats + upgrades

Current calculators will show base+upgrades so "after upgrades"

Current calculators will show base+upgrades so "after upgrades"

so whats a good way to compare upgraded vs unupgraded equipment? Will an upgrade add +1 to a base stat

I haven't seen any upgraded equips that I was interested in, so I haven't bothered with it but its easy enough to factor out the upgrade provided a formula.

Oh I see. I didn't know ether theft was important.

It's not just important, it's what makes high lvl mages what they are, Ability to hit 10 monsters with one spell, and large crits are just one reason why people say mage is better. The ability to make mana out of couple wasted turns is why mages can tackle challenges that make melees run out of potions,

so whats a good way to compare upgraded vs unupgraded equipment? Will an upgrade add +1 to a base stat

From what I've seen:

CODE

UpgradedBaseStat = OriginalBaseStat * (1 + 0.01 * NumberOfUpgrades)
UpgradedStat = UpgradedBaseStat * (1 + EquipLevel / StatFactor)

This post has been edited by (Cheater) Tiap: Jan 14 2012, 00:56

It's not just important, it's what makes high lvl mages what they are, Ability to hit 10 monsters with one spell, and large crits are just one reason why people say mage is better. The ability to make mana out of couple wasted turns is why mages can tackle challenges that make melees run out of potions,

lol how ironic...

I was planning to convert to melee to save some potion.

I guess I'll start doing more ether thefts.

That would explain Redwood staffs being great for ET due to their rate (max ET from a Redwood is around 50%). Still, mages get killed quickly unless they kill the enemies fast and protect themselves with buffs like Haste, Regen, Shadow Veil, etc..

This post has been edited by rpgman1: Jan 14 2012, 01:07

I've only upgraded 1 staff a few times and I wanted to compare it to a new staff that looked good but wasn't sure.

Only doing half your arenas isn't going to be a lot of rounds. Doing all mine is 1600 rounds and that isn't very many if looking for a lot of artifacts. When you start clearing 5000 rounds a day with high scavenger/archeologist you can get 10-20 artifacts a day

5000 rounds a day?
playing on 80+ stamina means you can only do 800 rounds of crysfest, more than that and it will drop you below 80.
And even doing crysfests, the cheapest in stamina costs, at normal stamina and do 5000 of those would cost 25 stamina.

Meaning, it's impossible to do 5000 rounds a day, since you will go negative on stamina.
Providing you don't use a energy drink every 4 day just to stay on normal stamina and not drop into poor status.

And even so, I did a little thread on time to finish a trio and a tree at hard difficulty. And the result was that one melee with an ethereal mace reported a time of 5:40 and a mage of 4:30.
So taking an average, 5 minutes, for doing 100 rounds, that means 5000 rounds would take 250 minutes.
Or more than 4 hours straight of playing.



So are you really serious about claiming 5000 rounds a day?


For your info, if playing on great stamina, it takes 400 rounds of arena to eat up 20 stamina, which is what you regen daily.
Your 1600 rounds of arena would cost 16 stamina on normal status, giving you 800 rounds of crysfest (or a mere 200 rounds of grindfest).
Of course, it is possible, with that many claimed artifact drops, there should be a lot of energy drinks to go with them.

But the time aspect still doesn't go away.

This post has been edited by Randommember: Jan 14 2012, 01:23

Doing Grind/Crysfest on great status is simply a waste.
On normal status you can do up to 3000 Grindfest rounds (12000 for Crysfest) without stop before going under 20 Stamina (and it's pretty hard to go past 1500 rounds per run anyway).
Once you get a decent level in Scavenger and Archaeologist, Energy Drinks will hardly be a problem anymore; I get 1-5 Artifacts per ~600 Grindfest rounds and I always end up with more Energy Drinks than I started with (even after factoring in the ones I need to get my Stamina back to what it was at the beginning).
With a decent browser and a good set you can reach ~20-25 rounds per minute, or ~1200-1500 rounds per hour.

That would explain Redwood staffs being great for ET due to their rate (max ET from a Redwood is around 50%). Still, mages get killed quickly unless they kill the enemies fast and protect themselves with buffs like Haste, Regen, Shadow Veil, etc..

That's why I said high level mages. Low lvl mages shouldn't bother. In short challenges or fests where you get raped after max 100 rounds it's not worth to fish for ET except at the beginning, when monsters are few and weak. Usually I tend to ET only if there's CM on reasonably healthy one, and no more than 1 other or at most 2 one-shottable ones. If CM is on 1 weakened enough staff hit will agitate him, I just kill.

Or with no CM if there is one almost healthy, and only 1 other weak. Then I kill weak one first and try to force CM with magic missle.

But once you get to really long challenges on highest difficulties, ET is only hope (save for Goddess Snowflake burying you under mana gems).

Can anyone recommend a fast browser? I've been rotating between Chrome / different Firefox versions.

Chrome reigns supreme in speed, IMO.
It's about as fast as Firefox without extensions (which is not really fun to use).