Post by Pylat on Dec 8, 2008 8:43:35 GMT -8
By lvl 31 you should be able to confidently move around most of Megacity, even the most hostile areas of Westview won't be as threatening.
Quests: At lvl 31 farm some Caution boots from from Vauxtion, the collector is near the central hardline, the speed bonuses and IS regen bonus will make running between mission areas a lot faster and more bearable. You can also start doing the story based quests once you're above lvl 30, these are rather straightforward and involve running the same mission over and over to collect items. Once you find out who drops the items you need (Often ambush spawns are the only way to get some items so take your time to find out), simply abort the mission after killing and looting them, so far there is only 1 set of collectors for these quests, near the Hampton NW hardline (Though the NPC's around the district might encourage you to wait to a higher level before doing those quests). The items gained from those missions aren't all too good in terms of buffs, but might be worth it if you are after looks. Because the content spans over multiple levels, I'll write a separate guide later.
At level 35 you might want to farm some Cowards pants from Hampton, the ballistic defense bonus is useful for killing the next Archive Construct Boss.
Level 35 is where you want to start farming the next Archive Construct, One Zero. This is a different quest from the previous ones. You need to collect 10 Taskmaster Digits from killing the taskmaster there (1 for each time you kill him, sometimes a lucky double drop). Then you need to get a Meson Rifle, this is done by killing the lvl 30 soldiers around there, the drop rate is very low and it can take a long time to get the item. The Meson Rifle is probably the harder part of the quest as the Taskmaster is a pushover compared to previous bosses.
As a Spy you will now have access to the Knife Thrower title buff (Lots of accuracy means often you hit him), it's a simple case of Suplexing him, Deadly Throw, Leg Sweep, roll out, root him, repeat. MA's and Gunmen should just focus on stating him then smashing him with state specials. You won't have access to any new moves from when you fought Gargoyle, so the same tactics apply. You will have more memory to spend to try fill any gaps or weaknesses with more passive abilities or more attacks. The same goes for hacker. Taskmaster will stay out of IL, but his gun does stun rather often making it frustrating as a hacker. Once you have the items you need take them to the collector "Binary Boy" in Creston Heights (Near the SW or SC hardlines). The gloves give you +100 Max health, +2% to Melee Damage and Accuracy and +23 Resistance to Melee, Ballistic and Thrown.
Level 36 has a few more items to farm. The Winners Coat from Baldwin Heights is worth farming for the resistance alone, +28 to Melee and Ballistic resistance, +15 to Viral Resistance, Max Buffer +25 points and Powerless duraction +2%. The Victory rifle from Center Park is brilliant for MA's and Gunmen, with a 15% chance to Stagger with each shot it's great for setting up state specials when you interlock your target. Peck's Shirt from Pillsen gives +10% to Health and IS regen, which increases to 50% if you sit down, it also grants 24 points of Thrown resistance. Pillsen is a rather hostile area, even at lvl 36, better to farm it at lvl 40, as it's best use is when you kill Tengu again in Sakura. Reactive gloves are pretty useful too, +24 Ballistic and Thrown resistance, +4% Ballistic defense and +25 Max IS, farm them in Union Hill, the ballistic defense helps when you are getting shot at by swarms of people in mission areas.
At level 40 you will be ready to farm Tengu a 2nd time in Sakura. I've written a guide for MA's here. The same sort of logic applies to gunmen as with previous bosses. Focus on state specials, at lvl 40 you'll have access to Pistol Whip, a nice damage dealing attack. Or you can go down the SMG tree for Full Auto, which does more damage, but leaves you more vulnerable in IL with less abilities to use compared to Duelist. By now knife throwers will be able to load Suplex and Punt (Use the Knife Thrower title buff for more accuracy), alternate between Punting and Suplexing Tengu over and over, use Leg Sweep and Deadly Throw (If he's off balance) in IL after your sneak attacks then roll out and start again. Hackers should use the Arbalest tree and load up Vector if possible for the defense debuff and DOT's. Tengu is just as deadly in Interlock as out of interlock. In interlock he uses Aikido and can be hard to hit, if he gets you off balance he might Tomo Nage you, which can 1 hit kill you if you aren't careful (Especially cause it can reduce your melee resistance a huge amount). Out of interlock he uses knives that do 400 damage each, if he nails you with Sever Artery it can take almost half your health over time, if you're hurt just jump onto the roof of the building he is in (If Sever Artery is slowing you down then you can't, pack from antibiotics if you need them). Tengu drops Sakura Bandanas/Ninja Masks, +25 to Melee and Ballistic Resistance, +4% Viral Defense and +15% IS regen.
Around lvl 40 some of the loot from the Sleepwalkers boxes in Sati's playground becomes useful (The sleepwalker pants specifically). The NPC's only drop the marbles if the average level of people who attacked them is at their level or below (Note that if someone heals anyone who has attacked the spawns then that will also count to the average level). This means you can work around the system to farm them, just get a low level to attack each of the NPC's and a lvl 50 to nuke them all (The NPC's from the lvl 40 boxes only go up to lvl 49). It will probably take a few boxes to get all the marbles you need but the Health regen is very useful on the pants. I'll probably include more details in a guide later, but since this tactic requires the help of a lvl 50 they can fill you in on any details on the spot.
It is also possible to start on your Pandora's Box quest, there is an in game email that is a guide that should help, someone should be able to forward it to you if you ask. Again, because this content spans multiple levels, I'll write a separate guide for it later.
Loadout Use: Every level gained after lvl 30 gives you 2 more points of memory to use, so you can start to spread your loadout more. At lvl 33 all trees only gain access to more passive bonuses, for MA's they are pretty sweet, for gunmen they are reasonable, for spies they are pretty much useless and for hackers they can be pretty irrelevant (At least for now, at lvl 50 you can do some pretty cool stuff with your defenses and debuffs). Unfortunately the lvl 36 abilities for gunmen aren't all that useful (Better to spread out into other Gunman trees). At level 39 gunmen get more state specials, Full Auto for SMG's and Pistol Whip for Duelists, both add more flexibility to their trees, and you should have a state special loaded for every different state now (Easy to fill any gaps with low level abilities in other gunman trees). At level 36 Kung Fu gets Suicidal Butterfly, nice damage but consumes a lot of IS and Karate gets Machinegun Kick, worth loading for the animation alone. Level 39 gets you Triple Front kick in the Kung Fu tree, you can use it in combination with Guard Breaker, now Kung Fu has a state special for all occasions, Karate gets Berserker Attack, which has to be used in IL as an "Attack" move, it stacks with Martial Arts prowess if you really want to pump your damage up. Hopefully around lvl 40 you can load up all the lvl 17 passive abilities in Kung Fu, Karate and Aikido, their net effect is quite useful, same goes for the Gunman passive abilities (Leave out sniper though). Spies should keep moving towards Master Knife Thrower, Sever Artery and Subduing Throw both help out of interlock, though the long cast timer on Sever makes it less useful in missions when you want to kill NPC's quickly. If you're looking for a little difference in your fighting style, when you have enough memory you can load Punt and Suplex at lvl 40 (Though you can't load many side abilities) and alternate Punting and/or Suplexing all the NPC's in the mission area. Hackers should keep moving down the Ballista tree and spend spare memory on Vector abilities, the DOT's allow you to fill the gaps when waiting for the reuse timers on your other attacks in interlock and the vector debuff is very useful for reducing your opponents defense.
Clothes: Keep using the IS regen gear you have. Farm a Peck's Shirt if you still need more IS (Though that's unlikely if you have a Dragonskin). The health regen will help put off the lack of resistances. There aren't that many new clothes worth mentioning (Except Collectors items above) until level 40 when you can farm Sakura Bandanas/Masks. If you're lucky you might be able to get a pair of Widows Moor Lenses (Though farmed at level 45, the minimum level is 40), combine those with a Sakura Bandana and a Dragonskin and all your IS problems will be solved. By now you should probably be experienced enough to choose on your own, your circumstances should dictate what clothes you wear.
Missions and Other Stuff: At level 30 and above you can do the story related missions, currently there are collectors in Hampton Green that offer the tokens to start these missions. They aren't any good if you want to grind XP, the buffs on the items aren't that good either, only worth farming for looks right now. At level 33 you can also start missions in Richland again, after being forced to leave around lvl 15-17. Makes it much easier to grind missions quickly when the mission area isn't the maze like interior of most Westview buildings.
Quests: At lvl 31 farm some Caution boots from from Vauxtion, the collector is near the central hardline, the speed bonuses and IS regen bonus will make running between mission areas a lot faster and more bearable. You can also start doing the story based quests once you're above lvl 30, these are rather straightforward and involve running the same mission over and over to collect items. Once you find out who drops the items you need (Often ambush spawns are the only way to get some items so take your time to find out), simply abort the mission after killing and looting them, so far there is only 1 set of collectors for these quests, near the Hampton NW hardline (Though the NPC's around the district might encourage you to wait to a higher level before doing those quests). The items gained from those missions aren't all too good in terms of buffs, but might be worth it if you are after looks. Because the content spans over multiple levels, I'll write a separate guide later.
At level 35 you might want to farm some Cowards pants from Hampton, the ballistic defense bonus is useful for killing the next Archive Construct Boss.
Level 35 is where you want to start farming the next Archive Construct, One Zero. This is a different quest from the previous ones. You need to collect 10 Taskmaster Digits from killing the taskmaster there (1 for each time you kill him, sometimes a lucky double drop). Then you need to get a Meson Rifle, this is done by killing the lvl 30 soldiers around there, the drop rate is very low and it can take a long time to get the item. The Meson Rifle is probably the harder part of the quest as the Taskmaster is a pushover compared to previous bosses.
As a Spy you will now have access to the Knife Thrower title buff (Lots of accuracy means often you hit him), it's a simple case of Suplexing him, Deadly Throw, Leg Sweep, roll out, root him, repeat. MA's and Gunmen should just focus on stating him then smashing him with state specials. You won't have access to any new moves from when you fought Gargoyle, so the same tactics apply. You will have more memory to spend to try fill any gaps or weaknesses with more passive abilities or more attacks. The same goes for hacker. Taskmaster will stay out of IL, but his gun does stun rather often making it frustrating as a hacker. Once you have the items you need take them to the collector "Binary Boy" in Creston Heights (Near the SW or SC hardlines). The gloves give you +100 Max health, +2% to Melee Damage and Accuracy and +23 Resistance to Melee, Ballistic and Thrown.
Level 36 has a few more items to farm. The Winners Coat from Baldwin Heights is worth farming for the resistance alone, +28 to Melee and Ballistic resistance, +15 to Viral Resistance, Max Buffer +25 points and Powerless duraction +2%. The Victory rifle from Center Park is brilliant for MA's and Gunmen, with a 15% chance to Stagger with each shot it's great for setting up state specials when you interlock your target. Peck's Shirt from Pillsen gives +10% to Health and IS regen, which increases to 50% if you sit down, it also grants 24 points of Thrown resistance. Pillsen is a rather hostile area, even at lvl 36, better to farm it at lvl 40, as it's best use is when you kill Tengu again in Sakura. Reactive gloves are pretty useful too, +24 Ballistic and Thrown resistance, +4% Ballistic defense and +25 Max IS, farm them in Union Hill, the ballistic defense helps when you are getting shot at by swarms of people in mission areas.
At level 40 you will be ready to farm Tengu a 2nd time in Sakura. I've written a guide for MA's here. The same sort of logic applies to gunmen as with previous bosses. Focus on state specials, at lvl 40 you'll have access to Pistol Whip, a nice damage dealing attack. Or you can go down the SMG tree for Full Auto, which does more damage, but leaves you more vulnerable in IL with less abilities to use compared to Duelist. By now knife throwers will be able to load Suplex and Punt (Use the Knife Thrower title buff for more accuracy), alternate between Punting and Suplexing Tengu over and over, use Leg Sweep and Deadly Throw (If he's off balance) in IL after your sneak attacks then roll out and start again. Hackers should use the Arbalest tree and load up Vector if possible for the defense debuff and DOT's. Tengu is just as deadly in Interlock as out of interlock. In interlock he uses Aikido and can be hard to hit, if he gets you off balance he might Tomo Nage you, which can 1 hit kill you if you aren't careful (Especially cause it can reduce your melee resistance a huge amount). Out of interlock he uses knives that do 400 damage each, if he nails you with Sever Artery it can take almost half your health over time, if you're hurt just jump onto the roof of the building he is in (If Sever Artery is slowing you down then you can't, pack from antibiotics if you need them). Tengu drops Sakura Bandanas/Ninja Masks, +25 to Melee and Ballistic Resistance, +4% Viral Defense and +15% IS regen.
Around lvl 40 some of the loot from the Sleepwalkers boxes in Sati's playground becomes useful (The sleepwalker pants specifically). The NPC's only drop the marbles if the average level of people who attacked them is at their level or below (Note that if someone heals anyone who has attacked the spawns then that will also count to the average level). This means you can work around the system to farm them, just get a low level to attack each of the NPC's and a lvl 50 to nuke them all (The NPC's from the lvl 40 boxes only go up to lvl 49). It will probably take a few boxes to get all the marbles you need but the Health regen is very useful on the pants. I'll probably include more details in a guide later, but since this tactic requires the help of a lvl 50 they can fill you in on any details on the spot.
It is also possible to start on your Pandora's Box quest, there is an in game email that is a guide that should help, someone should be able to forward it to you if you ask. Again, because this content spans multiple levels, I'll write a separate guide for it later.
Loadout Use: Every level gained after lvl 30 gives you 2 more points of memory to use, so you can start to spread your loadout more. At lvl 33 all trees only gain access to more passive bonuses, for MA's they are pretty sweet, for gunmen they are reasonable, for spies they are pretty much useless and for hackers they can be pretty irrelevant (At least for now, at lvl 50 you can do some pretty cool stuff with your defenses and debuffs). Unfortunately the lvl 36 abilities for gunmen aren't all that useful (Better to spread out into other Gunman trees). At level 39 gunmen get more state specials, Full Auto for SMG's and Pistol Whip for Duelists, both add more flexibility to their trees, and you should have a state special loaded for every different state now (Easy to fill any gaps with low level abilities in other gunman trees). At level 36 Kung Fu gets Suicidal Butterfly, nice damage but consumes a lot of IS and Karate gets Machinegun Kick, worth loading for the animation alone. Level 39 gets you Triple Front kick in the Kung Fu tree, you can use it in combination with Guard Breaker, now Kung Fu has a state special for all occasions, Karate gets Berserker Attack, which has to be used in IL as an "Attack" move, it stacks with Martial Arts prowess if you really want to pump your damage up. Hopefully around lvl 40 you can load up all the lvl 17 passive abilities in Kung Fu, Karate and Aikido, their net effect is quite useful, same goes for the Gunman passive abilities (Leave out sniper though). Spies should keep moving towards Master Knife Thrower, Sever Artery and Subduing Throw both help out of interlock, though the long cast timer on Sever makes it less useful in missions when you want to kill NPC's quickly. If you're looking for a little difference in your fighting style, when you have enough memory you can load Punt and Suplex at lvl 40 (Though you can't load many side abilities) and alternate Punting and/or Suplexing all the NPC's in the mission area. Hackers should keep moving down the Ballista tree and spend spare memory on Vector abilities, the DOT's allow you to fill the gaps when waiting for the reuse timers on your other attacks in interlock and the vector debuff is very useful for reducing your opponents defense.
Clothes: Keep using the IS regen gear you have. Farm a Peck's Shirt if you still need more IS (Though that's unlikely if you have a Dragonskin). The health regen will help put off the lack of resistances. There aren't that many new clothes worth mentioning (Except Collectors items above) until level 40 when you can farm Sakura Bandanas/Masks. If you're lucky you might be able to get a pair of Widows Moor Lenses (Though farmed at level 45, the minimum level is 40), combine those with a Sakura Bandana and a Dragonskin and all your IS problems will be solved. By now you should probably be experienced enough to choose on your own, your circumstances should dictate what clothes you wear.
Missions and Other Stuff: At level 30 and above you can do the story related missions, currently there are collectors in Hampton Green that offer the tokens to start these missions. They aren't any good if you want to grind XP, the buffs on the items aren't that good either, only worth farming for looks right now. At level 33 you can also start missions in Richland again, after being forced to leave around lvl 15-17. Makes it much easier to grind missions quickly when the mission area isn't the maze like interior of most Westview buildings.