Post by arcondeath on Feb 23, 2007 0:36:36 GMT -5
This is a Remade Guide for today's players. I realized that this is the best guide, but most of the armors, weapons, spells, ect. were outdated and rare. For the old items, the old guide is around Ultimate AQ so you older "veterans" can use it for your Rare Items.
I have a feeling Im going to get Burned For This. If you Mods/Admins Dont Like it take it off, i just thought this guide was goo but needed some updates.
Niko Made the Original Guide and made the Stat Formulas
ComputaFreak's ~ The Definitive Guide to the Best Spells of AQ ~ Basically Did the Spells I think This guide should be the only spell guide really.
And I Added in The new Items
******************************** IMPORTANT IMPORTANT ********************************************
I realized that this guide is pretty long, this is actually as short as I could get it. For my repetitive readers I suggest that you start using the Find function to go to the section you want without having to scroll around. This will prove especially useful for my Current Events section, that I am planning on keeping up to date with information for the best place to XP or get Gold. In order to use the Find option just press Ctrl-F and type in the text you want to locate. For example typing "Current Events" and then pressing enter will take you to the appropriate section.
Who is this for?
This is going to be an in depth guide for people that want to gain as much XP as possible in the shortest amount of time. If you want to be in the top 100 list one day or just want to get to a specific level quickly you will find this guide extremely helpful. If you are more into the roleplaying aspect of RPGs I reccomend you check out my three other guides. (links above)
I have divided this into sections so it can be easier to read and reference. Moreover I am not going to include any rares since most people do not have them, instead this is going to be a Howto for the general population and not a select few that were lucky enough to win things in contests or have been playing the game since the beginning. However I have included in the character development section in parenthesis all the equipment that are rare but are better than what is offered in Yulgar's shop.
In conclusion always remember that this post is my personal opinion. I could be wrong or actually not be aware of something. I will update this as regularly as I can with new information I discover or other people's advice. Nevertheless do not take everything I say as correct. Use your head and decide for yourself.
Acronyms (full list)
BTH or B2H = Bonus to Hit, a bonus to your percentage of successful attacks
CHA = Charisma, the stat attribute
WP = WerePyre Form
DEX = Dexterity, the stat attribute
DS = Dragon Slayer class
END = Endurance, the stat attribute
Gph = Gold income per hour
HP = Hit points, some people refer to it as Health points
IK = Ice Katana
INT = Intellect, the stat attribute
LUK = Luck, the stat attribute
Lvl = Level
MP = Mana points, some people refer to it as Mana points
RA = Random adventure, the button by Twilly on the tree
STR = Strength, the stat attribute
UGA = Standard Gaurdian Armor, Not Classic
WWF = Werewolf form, armor
XP = Experience
XPph = XP gain per hour
To be or not to be? (a guardian)
First of all if you are planning on playing this game like an addict or already are, you might as well support the game. If that is not good enough or all the extra freebies offered to you by being a guardian look at it this way.
- You will be able to play during guardian swims in effect increasing
your XPph
- Ability to travel helping you with Gph
- Two potions per type, not dieing and actually defeating a monster
increases you XPph as well
- Guardian Blade, a good weapon early on, increasing your dmg per hit. BoA will also help you in this
- UGA, a good armor for newbie characters
- Lvl 10 for classes, higher level in a class makes you stronger, faster, smarter...
If for financial reasons you cannot afford being a guardian, keep reading this guide it will still help you. Also read Icewraith's guide which is geared towards Adventurers.
Getting XP quickly - Rules of Thumb (Rules mostly for newbies or people that lack common sense)
Playing AQ ten hours a day will certainly allow you to level up quickly however the secret is maximizing your XPph. Its better to play two hours and makes 50k XPph, than play ten hours and make 10k XPph. Same amount of XP, however its a lot more efficient. Then if you actually do play 10 hours a day you can make 500k in XP. This is just an example, however you should understand that the key to leveling up quickly is not based solely on how many hours you spend playing the game but in how efficiently you gain XP.
When you play AQ try not to multi-task too much. People tend to have the tendency to do fifty things at once, as a side effect they do not do anything exceptionally well. From personal experience you can play AQ and check out the forums or chat, but doing things that are involved like watching TV will side track you, causing mistakes such as not noticing when your character has low health, attacking with the wrong weapon equipped etc.
Dieing is also something that should be avoided. Its not death itself that is bad, but the consequences, all that time you spent trying to defeat a monster that killed you was wasted. In other words dieing decreases your XPph. Of course there is no way to never die, it will happen, but being smart about it helps. If you fight a monster and it kills you each time you encounter it just cancel the fight. Its better to waste a couple of second clicking on the cancel button than attempting to defeat a monster by using potions etc and then end up dieing.
Also a monster having really high XP does not necessarily mean that will help your XPph. For example, Trigoras the Dragon offers 2800XP, which sounds awesome, if it takes you 10 minutes to defeat him, and on the other hand by killing 1000XP monsters you can kill three of them in five minutes, its better to cancel the fight. Remember time is of the essence, wasting time on monsters, healing repeatedly and barely making it does not help you. Its better to get done with someone quickly and move on. Of course going the opposite way is also bad, that is killing things with really low XP. Sure you might be able to kill one zard every 30 seconds, but is it really worth it? You end up spending more time waiting for things to load than actually getting XP.
Another good rule is offense before defense. If a monster is dead you get the XP, by playing around with it, healing once, attacking and then healing again slows you down. Its better to take it out and gain the XP than waste your time try to barely kill it. This is tied in with the above paragraph. Keep track of the monsters you can kill and the ones you have difficulty with. Cancel your fights with the monsters that give you trouble. Do not worry, if you level up a couple of times you will be able to defeat them then. This rule also applies when deciding what to buy, be it equipment weapon vs armor/shield or spells, healing vs offensive spells. The only "exception" is when trying to buy a double hit armor. Obviously its better to get a double hit armor (increasing your offensive capability) than buying a weapon.
Moreover try to maximize your damage potential with each monster you fight. Hit them were they are weak, the higher their Defense Modifier % the better. However try to keep in mind their defenses as well. If the monster is weak to Light and Energy, and you have a good energy melee weapon, and a good light magic weapon and its magic is higher than its melee defense its better to attack it with a melee attack.
Stats (formulas) (calculator)
A topic of great debate, ask the question of how you should spend your stat points and you will receive five different answers and ten different theories behind them. The problem stems from having a limited amount of points you can use.
This is how the system works, 5 points are awarded per level until reaching level 130. Which means that a total of 650 stat points is rewarded. There are six different stats, STR, DEX, INT, END, CHA, LUK. The maximum points allocated for each stat is 200.
Usually players that want to be a warrior put their points in STR, mages in INT etc. If you wish to maximize your damage potential however, playing a specific type of character will hurt you in the long run.
Short version
STR 175, DEX 150, INT 175, END 150, CHA 0, LUK 0
Long version
The problem with being a hybrid is that some stats will have to suffer in order to be able to use both magic and melee weapons. My original build was STR/DEX/INT 175, END 125. However I realized that its more advantageous to have a bit more END so you can survive multiple battles. In order to raise END something had to be lowered, since STR and INT both contribute in the BTH and the damage DEX has to be lowered. Your blocking rate will be a bit lower however higher END will more than cover that.
Following below I will give the advantages of the hybrid build. Feel free to tweak your stats a bit as you see fit. If you come up with a good combination please let me know. Also for convenience I do not take into account the monster's stats while doing my calculations. This will cause a overcomplication that will make my calculations seem even more complicated to the reader. In effect the monster's stat bonuses will affect the cases I am comparing against each other equally. Cancelling each other when it comes down to the difference of lets say STR 150 vs STR 0.
STR and INT
The two most important stats for the ultimate leveling machine are STR and INT, both of them determine your damage modifier and BTH. This can be determined as follows
Melee Damage: STR/8
Magic Damage: INT/8
In other words for STR 175, INT 175 we get a damage bonus of (175 / 8) = 21.875. For example lets say you attack using the BoA (dmg 4-31), its a melee weapon which means the STR bonus is taken into account. On average with BoA and STR 0, damage done per hit will be [(4+31)/2] + (0/8) = 17.5 + 0 = 17.5. With STR 150, then the formula is as follows [(4+31)/2] + (175/8)/2 = 17.5 + 10.938 = 28.438. That is more 1.75 your damage potential. Which means that your XPph becomes 1.75 quicker by raising your STR. The same thing applies for magic weapon/spell attacks with INT 170.
This added damage bonus due to stats gets amplified even more when attacking against high defense modifiers. Lets say you are fighting a Vorpalzard with Earth 200% by using the BoA. STR 0 will allow you to do 200% * 17.5 = 35, STR 175, 200% * 26.88 = 56.876. The numbers speak for themselves.
Note: In case you are wondering what the [(4+31)/2] means. When calculating how much damage a weapon can potentially do we need to take the average per hit. In this specific example you might get lucky and do 31 points of damage twice in a row, but then you might be unlucky and do 4 points of damage twice in a row. Nevertheless if we want to get a valid idea of how much damage a weapon will do in 100 hits, or maybe 1000 hits the luck factor is eliminated and it just becomes a statistical problem. (4+31)/2 is the average damage done by BoA.
To make another example lets say we have a magic weapon, Big 100K that does 7 to 27 points of damage, the average hit would be (7+27)/2 = 17. This is why its important for weapons to have high basic damage (the first number) Lets compare the UIK vs the Big 100K. The UIK has a 5 to 29 points of damage potential, making it (5+29)/2 = 17. Even though it seems that a max of 29 points is better than a max of 27, in reality on average they do the same amount of damage per hit (both of them 17). So whenever you are thinking about buying a new weapon just take the average of each weapon and see which gives you the highest average. That makes it better, of course specials and frequency should also be taken into account when deciding what to buy.
Bonus to Hit and DEX
If doubling your damage is not enough BTH just adds the cherry on top.
BTH for Melee: STR/16 + DEX/16 + LUK/20
BTH for Magic: INT/16 + DEX/16 + LUK/20
BTH basically deals with raising your chances of hitting a monster with each attack. This is yet another important thing to keep in mind. Lets pretend that you are attacking the Djinni with a Melee defense of 25. What that basically means that your chances of hitting Djinni is BTH = (100 - 25) % = 75% (note: his defense stat actually changes things but I will rather keep this simple) So if you attack Djinni 100 times, 75 of those time you will actually hit, and 25 times you will be blocked. However if you have STR 175, DEX 150, then
BTH = 100 + (175/16) + (150/16) + (0/20) - 25 = 100 + 10.938 + 9.375 + 0 - 25 = 118.75 - 25 = 95.31%
Attacking Djinni 100 times, 95.31 times you will actually hit, compared to 75 that it was before. This is yet another thing that will help raise you XPph. Lets say you are attacking Fire Gloop with the BoA, Melee def. 30, Earth 100%. With STR 0, DEX 0 attacking the Fire Gloop you will do 17.5 dmg per hit and hit 7 out of 10 times. Attacking it 10 times on average will give you 17.5 * 7 = 122.5. On the other hand with STR 175, DEX 150, you will do 28.438 dmg, and hit 10.938 (+5% bth from BoA) times out of 10. Attacking it 10 times on average will give you 28.438 * 10.938 = 311.05. That is more than twice as much damage as you would normally do!
END
On to another important stat END. It determines you HP, which is your life basically. Obviously the more HP you have the harder it is to die.
HP = 100 + [5 * Lvl * (1 + END/100)] + END (hp calculator)
Based on this formula the following things should be noted, two things determine your HP, your Lvl and your END.
Lvl 100, with END 0 vs END 150
HP = 100 + [5 * 100 * (1 + 0/100) + 0 = 100 + 500 = 600
HP = 100 + [5 * 100 * (1 + 150/100) + 150 = 100 + 1250 + 150 = 1500
I doubt I need to elaborate further if END points are worth it or not.
CHA
Most people like having pets, be it the role playing aspect of it or because they just look cool (light vampdragon anyone?). For controlling pets a CHA 20 will do the trick for most of them, with some exceptions like Nimbo, Ice Cat and some others.
Keeping XPph maximizing in mind pets are not as useful as they might appear. There is the inherent problem with them, time wasters! Here is the breakdown, when a battle is being loaded it takes more time because the pet must be loaded. Even if I pretend that its a negligible difference its still there. Moreover pets usually do one type of elemental damage, there is always the chance that your pet will be attacking an monster defense modifier that is low or even negative (which heals the monster). That makes its attack even weaker than they already are or useless (except if you like healing monsters Also a pet takes about the same amount of time doing an attack as your char, if not more. The problem is that a pet almost always does a lot less damage than your character.
Basically in a round you attack, your pet attacks, the monster attacks. That makes it three moves in a round. Lets say a fight lasts 10 rounds, which makes it 30 moves. On the other hand if you did not have a pet a round would take two moves. Which means for the same amount of time that it takes to complete 10 rounds (30 moves), without a pet you will have completed 15 rounds.
You might say "But the pet damages the monster!". That is true, but looking at it damage point wise its better to attack 15 times, than attack 10 and your pet to attack another 10. Continuing to use the Fire Gloop as an example:
Pet used: vampdragon is a popular choice and does damage of 4 to 16, for simplicity lets pretend that Fire Gloop has Fire 100%...which it does not, one more way to prove my point, nevertheless for giving pets a fair chance lets pretend that it has Fire 100%. Average vampdragon damage would be (4+16)/2 = 10, attacking its BTH would be 70%. 10 round damage would be, 10 * 7 = 70
STR 150, DEX 150, no pet, 15 rounds, attacking with BoA
(10 rounds is 251.95 dmg as calculated in BTH section)
15 rounds = 251.95 * 1.5 = 377.93
STR 150, DEX 150, vampdragon, 10 rounds, attacking with BoA
10 rounds with BoA = 251.95
10 rounds with vampdragon = 70
10 rounds = 251.95 + 70 = 321.95
Statistically speaking you do 50HP less damage every 10 rounds, how much is that in an hour? Ten hours? A month? You get the point.
CHA is also used for pixie. Summon Pixie is a spell that summons a pixie (kind of obvious). What's unique about this pixie is that she can either attack or heal you. The healing amount is 10% of damage taken, max healing is CHA + 10 for a maximum of 75HP. Which means CHA 65 is the maximum stat points that should be allocated.
There is a big pixie fixation right now and almost everyone is using it. That makes you want to use it as well right? Do not waste your points on her. Even if having a pet was worth it time wise spending 65 out of your 500 points on her is not a good choice. It is generally agreed that the pixie will heal 1 out of 3 times. 75HP healed sounds kind of nice right? Well since pixie heals up to 10% of damage taken that means you have already lost 750HP from damage. Do you really think that after losing 750HP, 75HP heal will help you much? For easy monsters she will just slow you down like any other pet. For hard to beat monsters she will help you out and maybe even help you win the battle. However by the time you beat the monster you could have beat two monsters with lower XP, but both of them combined giving you a hight XPph gain. Also keep in mind that spending stat points is limited. It basically comes down to this, CHA or END? END wins, because its always there, you do not have to depend on the pixie hoping that she heals you. Having more HP is like having a heal only its always there from the beginning of the battle.
LUK
The black sheep of stats. LUK helps in BTH, Blocking, Treasure Chests. That sounds like its a lot, unfortunately its always LUK/20, for LUK 150 we get 150/20 = 7.5.
Attacking a Fire Gloop with a BoA we get the following
STR 150, DEX 150, LUK 150
BTH = 100 + 150/16 + 150/16 + 150/20 - 30 = 96.25 (add +5% from BoA, BTH 100%, since you can't go higher than that)
In other words you hit 10 for 10, damage done in 10 rounds
Dmg = 26.88 * 10 = 268.8
STR 150, DEX 150 we got Dmg = 251.91
Its a small difference, LUK helps a bit more with monsters that have 40+ defense because then you utilize the +7.5%, instead of only 3.75% as in the above example.
LUK also helps in blocking % Block = DEX/10 + LUK /20
DEX 150
% Block = 150/10 = 15%
DEX 150, LUK 150
% Block = 150/10 + 150/20 = 22.5%
Blocking directly deals with how much damage you take from a monster. Lets assume that a monster does 40 damage per round. In 10 rounds we will get
DEX 150, no armor (for simplification purposes)
total dmg = 40 * 8.5 = 340
DEX 150, LUK 150
total dmg = 40 * 7.75 = 310
Spending stat points
Choices, choices, choices. 650 points, 5 different stats worth spending points in, 100 points in each sounds appealing. However this guide is all about maximizing we have to use the stats as appropriately as we can. In order of significance we get STR/INT, DEX, END, LUK. Going from attack to defense.
Out of the list of 5, LUK has to be taken out since its not as useful as the other four. Its nice to deal more damage and block a bit more, but I believe its more important to spend the points in Endurance instead. STR, INT have to be near maximized, leaving us only with 300 points.
The best way to spend the remaining points is to have DEX 150 and END 150. You sacrifice some of your BTH however your high END will help you live longer in places that require you to face multiple monster in the row.
STR 175
DEX 175
INT 150
END 150
CHA 0
LUK 0
End of part 1
I have a feeling Im going to get Burned For This. If you Mods/Admins Dont Like it take it off, i just thought this guide was goo but needed some updates.
Niko Made the Original Guide and made the Stat Formulas
ComputaFreak's ~ The Definitive Guide to the Best Spells of AQ ~ Basically Did the Spells I think This guide should be the only spell guide really.
And I Added in The new Items
******************************** IMPORTANT IMPORTANT ********************************************
I realized that this guide is pretty long, this is actually as short as I could get it. For my repetitive readers I suggest that you start using the Find function to go to the section you want without having to scroll around. This will prove especially useful for my Current Events section, that I am planning on keeping up to date with information for the best place to XP or get Gold. In order to use the Find option just press Ctrl-F and type in the text you want to locate. For example typing "Current Events" and then pressing enter will take you to the appropriate section.
Who is this for?
This is going to be an in depth guide for people that want to gain as much XP as possible in the shortest amount of time. If you want to be in the top 100 list one day or just want to get to a specific level quickly you will find this guide extremely helpful. If you are more into the roleplaying aspect of RPGs I reccomend you check out my three other guides. (links above)
I have divided this into sections so it can be easier to read and reference. Moreover I am not going to include any rares since most people do not have them, instead this is going to be a Howto for the general population and not a select few that were lucky enough to win things in contests or have been playing the game since the beginning. However I have included in the character development section in parenthesis all the equipment that are rare but are better than what is offered in Yulgar's shop.
In conclusion always remember that this post is my personal opinion. I could be wrong or actually not be aware of something. I will update this as regularly as I can with new information I discover or other people's advice. Nevertheless do not take everything I say as correct. Use your head and decide for yourself.
Acronyms (full list)
BTH or B2H = Bonus to Hit, a bonus to your percentage of successful attacks
CHA = Charisma, the stat attribute
WP = WerePyre Form
DEX = Dexterity, the stat attribute
DS = Dragon Slayer class
END = Endurance, the stat attribute
Gph = Gold income per hour
HP = Hit points, some people refer to it as Health points
IK = Ice Katana
INT = Intellect, the stat attribute
LUK = Luck, the stat attribute
Lvl = Level
MP = Mana points, some people refer to it as Mana points
RA = Random adventure, the button by Twilly on the tree
STR = Strength, the stat attribute
UGA = Standard Gaurdian Armor, Not Classic
WWF = Werewolf form, armor
XP = Experience
XPph = XP gain per hour
To be or not to be? (a guardian)
First of all if you are planning on playing this game like an addict or already are, you might as well support the game. If that is not good enough or all the extra freebies offered to you by being a guardian look at it this way.
- You will be able to play during guardian swims in effect increasing
your XPph
- Ability to travel helping you with Gph
- Two potions per type, not dieing and actually defeating a monster
increases you XPph as well
- Guardian Blade, a good weapon early on, increasing your dmg per hit. BoA will also help you in this
- UGA, a good armor for newbie characters
- Lvl 10 for classes, higher level in a class makes you stronger, faster, smarter...
If for financial reasons you cannot afford being a guardian, keep reading this guide it will still help you. Also read Icewraith's guide which is geared towards Adventurers.
Getting XP quickly - Rules of Thumb (Rules mostly for newbies or people that lack common sense)
Playing AQ ten hours a day will certainly allow you to level up quickly however the secret is maximizing your XPph. Its better to play two hours and makes 50k XPph, than play ten hours and make 10k XPph. Same amount of XP, however its a lot more efficient. Then if you actually do play 10 hours a day you can make 500k in XP. This is just an example, however you should understand that the key to leveling up quickly is not based solely on how many hours you spend playing the game but in how efficiently you gain XP.
When you play AQ try not to multi-task too much. People tend to have the tendency to do fifty things at once, as a side effect they do not do anything exceptionally well. From personal experience you can play AQ and check out the forums or chat, but doing things that are involved like watching TV will side track you, causing mistakes such as not noticing when your character has low health, attacking with the wrong weapon equipped etc.
Dieing is also something that should be avoided. Its not death itself that is bad, but the consequences, all that time you spent trying to defeat a monster that killed you was wasted. In other words dieing decreases your XPph. Of course there is no way to never die, it will happen, but being smart about it helps. If you fight a monster and it kills you each time you encounter it just cancel the fight. Its better to waste a couple of second clicking on the cancel button than attempting to defeat a monster by using potions etc and then end up dieing.
Also a monster having really high XP does not necessarily mean that will help your XPph. For example, Trigoras the Dragon offers 2800XP, which sounds awesome, if it takes you 10 minutes to defeat him, and on the other hand by killing 1000XP monsters you can kill three of them in five minutes, its better to cancel the fight. Remember time is of the essence, wasting time on monsters, healing repeatedly and barely making it does not help you. Its better to get done with someone quickly and move on. Of course going the opposite way is also bad, that is killing things with really low XP. Sure you might be able to kill one zard every 30 seconds, but is it really worth it? You end up spending more time waiting for things to load than actually getting XP.
Another good rule is offense before defense. If a monster is dead you get the XP, by playing around with it, healing once, attacking and then healing again slows you down. Its better to take it out and gain the XP than waste your time try to barely kill it. This is tied in with the above paragraph. Keep track of the monsters you can kill and the ones you have difficulty with. Cancel your fights with the monsters that give you trouble. Do not worry, if you level up a couple of times you will be able to defeat them then. This rule also applies when deciding what to buy, be it equipment weapon vs armor/shield or spells, healing vs offensive spells. The only "exception" is when trying to buy a double hit armor. Obviously its better to get a double hit armor (increasing your offensive capability) than buying a weapon.
Moreover try to maximize your damage potential with each monster you fight. Hit them were they are weak, the higher their Defense Modifier % the better. However try to keep in mind their defenses as well. If the monster is weak to Light and Energy, and you have a good energy melee weapon, and a good light magic weapon and its magic is higher than its melee defense its better to attack it with a melee attack.
Stats (formulas) (calculator)
A topic of great debate, ask the question of how you should spend your stat points and you will receive five different answers and ten different theories behind them. The problem stems from having a limited amount of points you can use.
This is how the system works, 5 points are awarded per level until reaching level 130. Which means that a total of 650 stat points is rewarded. There are six different stats, STR, DEX, INT, END, CHA, LUK. The maximum points allocated for each stat is 200.
Usually players that want to be a warrior put their points in STR, mages in INT etc. If you wish to maximize your damage potential however, playing a specific type of character will hurt you in the long run.
Short version
STR 175, DEX 150, INT 175, END 150, CHA 0, LUK 0
Long version
The problem with being a hybrid is that some stats will have to suffer in order to be able to use both magic and melee weapons. My original build was STR/DEX/INT 175, END 125. However I realized that its more advantageous to have a bit more END so you can survive multiple battles. In order to raise END something had to be lowered, since STR and INT both contribute in the BTH and the damage DEX has to be lowered. Your blocking rate will be a bit lower however higher END will more than cover that.
Following below I will give the advantages of the hybrid build. Feel free to tweak your stats a bit as you see fit. If you come up with a good combination please let me know. Also for convenience I do not take into account the monster's stats while doing my calculations. This will cause a overcomplication that will make my calculations seem even more complicated to the reader. In effect the monster's stat bonuses will affect the cases I am comparing against each other equally. Cancelling each other when it comes down to the difference of lets say STR 150 vs STR 0.
STR and INT
The two most important stats for the ultimate leveling machine are STR and INT, both of them determine your damage modifier and BTH. This can be determined as follows
Melee Damage: STR/8
Magic Damage: INT/8
In other words for STR 175, INT 175 we get a damage bonus of (175 / 8) = 21.875. For example lets say you attack using the BoA (dmg 4-31), its a melee weapon which means the STR bonus is taken into account. On average with BoA and STR 0, damage done per hit will be [(4+31)/2] + (0/8) = 17.5 + 0 = 17.5. With STR 150, then the formula is as follows [(4+31)/2] + (175/8)/2 = 17.5 + 10.938 = 28.438. That is more 1.75 your damage potential. Which means that your XPph becomes 1.75 quicker by raising your STR. The same thing applies for magic weapon/spell attacks with INT 170.
This added damage bonus due to stats gets amplified even more when attacking against high defense modifiers. Lets say you are fighting a Vorpalzard with Earth 200% by using the BoA. STR 0 will allow you to do 200% * 17.5 = 35, STR 175, 200% * 26.88 = 56.876. The numbers speak for themselves.
Note: In case you are wondering what the [(4+31)/2] means. When calculating how much damage a weapon can potentially do we need to take the average per hit. In this specific example you might get lucky and do 31 points of damage twice in a row, but then you might be unlucky and do 4 points of damage twice in a row. Nevertheless if we want to get a valid idea of how much damage a weapon will do in 100 hits, or maybe 1000 hits the luck factor is eliminated and it just becomes a statistical problem. (4+31)/2 is the average damage done by BoA.
To make another example lets say we have a magic weapon, Big 100K that does 7 to 27 points of damage, the average hit would be (7+27)/2 = 17. This is why its important for weapons to have high basic damage (the first number) Lets compare the UIK vs the Big 100K. The UIK has a 5 to 29 points of damage potential, making it (5+29)/2 = 17. Even though it seems that a max of 29 points is better than a max of 27, in reality on average they do the same amount of damage per hit (both of them 17). So whenever you are thinking about buying a new weapon just take the average of each weapon and see which gives you the highest average. That makes it better, of course specials and frequency should also be taken into account when deciding what to buy.
Bonus to Hit and DEX
If doubling your damage is not enough BTH just adds the cherry on top.
BTH for Melee: STR/16 + DEX/16 + LUK/20
BTH for Magic: INT/16 + DEX/16 + LUK/20
BTH basically deals with raising your chances of hitting a monster with each attack. This is yet another important thing to keep in mind. Lets pretend that you are attacking the Djinni with a Melee defense of 25. What that basically means that your chances of hitting Djinni is BTH = (100 - 25) % = 75% (note: his defense stat actually changes things but I will rather keep this simple) So if you attack Djinni 100 times, 75 of those time you will actually hit, and 25 times you will be blocked. However if you have STR 175, DEX 150, then
BTH = 100 + (175/16) + (150/16) + (0/20) - 25 = 100 + 10.938 + 9.375 + 0 - 25 = 118.75 - 25 = 95.31%
Attacking Djinni 100 times, 95.31 times you will actually hit, compared to 75 that it was before. This is yet another thing that will help raise you XPph. Lets say you are attacking Fire Gloop with the BoA, Melee def. 30, Earth 100%. With STR 0, DEX 0 attacking the Fire Gloop you will do 17.5 dmg per hit and hit 7 out of 10 times. Attacking it 10 times on average will give you 17.5 * 7 = 122.5. On the other hand with STR 175, DEX 150, you will do 28.438 dmg, and hit 10.938 (+5% bth from BoA) times out of 10. Attacking it 10 times on average will give you 28.438 * 10.938 = 311.05. That is more than twice as much damage as you would normally do!
END
On to another important stat END. It determines you HP, which is your life basically. Obviously the more HP you have the harder it is to die.
HP = 100 + [5 * Lvl * (1 + END/100)] + END (hp calculator)
Based on this formula the following things should be noted, two things determine your HP, your Lvl and your END.
Lvl 100, with END 0 vs END 150
HP = 100 + [5 * 100 * (1 + 0/100) + 0 = 100 + 500 = 600
HP = 100 + [5 * 100 * (1 + 150/100) + 150 = 100 + 1250 + 150 = 1500
I doubt I need to elaborate further if END points are worth it or not.
CHA
Most people like having pets, be it the role playing aspect of it or because they just look cool (light vampdragon anyone?). For controlling pets a CHA 20 will do the trick for most of them, with some exceptions like Nimbo, Ice Cat and some others.
Keeping XPph maximizing in mind pets are not as useful as they might appear. There is the inherent problem with them, time wasters! Here is the breakdown, when a battle is being loaded it takes more time because the pet must be loaded. Even if I pretend that its a negligible difference its still there. Moreover pets usually do one type of elemental damage, there is always the chance that your pet will be attacking an monster defense modifier that is low or even negative (which heals the monster). That makes its attack even weaker than they already are or useless (except if you like healing monsters Also a pet takes about the same amount of time doing an attack as your char, if not more. The problem is that a pet almost always does a lot less damage than your character.
Basically in a round you attack, your pet attacks, the monster attacks. That makes it three moves in a round. Lets say a fight lasts 10 rounds, which makes it 30 moves. On the other hand if you did not have a pet a round would take two moves. Which means for the same amount of time that it takes to complete 10 rounds (30 moves), without a pet you will have completed 15 rounds.
You might say "But the pet damages the monster!". That is true, but looking at it damage point wise its better to attack 15 times, than attack 10 and your pet to attack another 10. Continuing to use the Fire Gloop as an example:
Pet used: vampdragon is a popular choice and does damage of 4 to 16, for simplicity lets pretend that Fire Gloop has Fire 100%...which it does not, one more way to prove my point, nevertheless for giving pets a fair chance lets pretend that it has Fire 100%. Average vampdragon damage would be (4+16)/2 = 10, attacking its BTH would be 70%. 10 round damage would be, 10 * 7 = 70
STR 150, DEX 150, no pet, 15 rounds, attacking with BoA
(10 rounds is 251.95 dmg as calculated in BTH section)
15 rounds = 251.95 * 1.5 = 377.93
STR 150, DEX 150, vampdragon, 10 rounds, attacking with BoA
10 rounds with BoA = 251.95
10 rounds with vampdragon = 70
10 rounds = 251.95 + 70 = 321.95
Statistically speaking you do 50HP less damage every 10 rounds, how much is that in an hour? Ten hours? A month? You get the point.
CHA is also used for pixie. Summon Pixie is a spell that summons a pixie (kind of obvious). What's unique about this pixie is that she can either attack or heal you. The healing amount is 10% of damage taken, max healing is CHA + 10 for a maximum of 75HP. Which means CHA 65 is the maximum stat points that should be allocated.
There is a big pixie fixation right now and almost everyone is using it. That makes you want to use it as well right? Do not waste your points on her. Even if having a pet was worth it time wise spending 65 out of your 500 points on her is not a good choice. It is generally agreed that the pixie will heal 1 out of 3 times. 75HP healed sounds kind of nice right? Well since pixie heals up to 10% of damage taken that means you have already lost 750HP from damage. Do you really think that after losing 750HP, 75HP heal will help you much? For easy monsters she will just slow you down like any other pet. For hard to beat monsters she will help you out and maybe even help you win the battle. However by the time you beat the monster you could have beat two monsters with lower XP, but both of them combined giving you a hight XPph gain. Also keep in mind that spending stat points is limited. It basically comes down to this, CHA or END? END wins, because its always there, you do not have to depend on the pixie hoping that she heals you. Having more HP is like having a heal only its always there from the beginning of the battle.
LUK
The black sheep of stats. LUK helps in BTH, Blocking, Treasure Chests. That sounds like its a lot, unfortunately its always LUK/20, for LUK 150 we get 150/20 = 7.5.
Attacking a Fire Gloop with a BoA we get the following
STR 150, DEX 150, LUK 150
BTH = 100 + 150/16 + 150/16 + 150/20 - 30 = 96.25 (add +5% from BoA, BTH 100%, since you can't go higher than that)
In other words you hit 10 for 10, damage done in 10 rounds
Dmg = 26.88 * 10 = 268.8
STR 150, DEX 150 we got Dmg = 251.91
Its a small difference, LUK helps a bit more with monsters that have 40+ defense because then you utilize the +7.5%, instead of only 3.75% as in the above example.
LUK also helps in blocking % Block = DEX/10 + LUK /20
DEX 150
% Block = 150/10 = 15%
DEX 150, LUK 150
% Block = 150/10 + 150/20 = 22.5%
Blocking directly deals with how much damage you take from a monster. Lets assume that a monster does 40 damage per round. In 10 rounds we will get
DEX 150, no armor (for simplification purposes)
total dmg = 40 * 8.5 = 340
DEX 150, LUK 150
total dmg = 40 * 7.75 = 310
Spending stat points
Choices, choices, choices. 650 points, 5 different stats worth spending points in, 100 points in each sounds appealing. However this guide is all about maximizing we have to use the stats as appropriately as we can. In order of significance we get STR/INT, DEX, END, LUK. Going from attack to defense.
Out of the list of 5, LUK has to be taken out since its not as useful as the other four. Its nice to deal more damage and block a bit more, but I believe its more important to spend the points in Endurance instead. STR, INT have to be near maximized, leaving us only with 300 points.
The best way to spend the remaining points is to have DEX 150 and END 150. You sacrifice some of your BTH however your high END will help you live longer in places that require you to face multiple monster in the row.
STR 175
DEX 175
INT 150
END 150
CHA 0
LUK 0
End of part 1
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