Post by Pylat on Aug 4, 2008 6:57:17 GMT -8
You've probably got a good idea on what to do now and a general direction you're heading in. You also have a few more options on what to do.
Quests: Farming a Dragonskin Wrap at lvl 11 is a very good idea, as you gain more levels the chance of the boss dropping one will get lower and lower until lvl 17 where it's impossible to get one. This is probably the first big boss you'll fight in the game but lucky for you chances are a lvl 50 will be around to help you out. The Dragonskin is farmed in Kaede at the Orchi Bathhouse, just a short walk from the Kaede C HL. Getting there is the first challenge cause it's all the way over to International. Someone might be kind enough to show you around but it's not that hard to get there yourself. Go to the Camon Height N HL and jump over the railing in front of you and go down the nearest subway station. Double click the train, click on the circle at the far right of the blue line, then click on the Sai Kung station to go there. Once you've arrived leave the station and turn right and you'll see a small gap in the wall. Run down there and turn right again following the wall of the building to your right. The Sai Kung C HL should be right in front of you, at Coordinates X: 428 Y: -10 Z: -55. The Sai Kung Canton near the hardline has a series of vendors who should also sell the abilities you need for the next couple of levels. After you've tagged a hardline in International it's much easier for a lvl 50 to get you to the Orchid Bathhouse. It's best to have Martial Arts or Gunman for farming the boss down there, known as Ethereal1. Load up on as much Ballistic Resistance as you can and make sure you have Hyper Dodge loaded and fully levelled for the fight. At lvl 11 you have around a 24% chance of getting a Dragonskin (He drops both genders, so only a 12% chance of getting the right gender), and the respawn timer is 10 minutes, so make sure you have some time set aside for this. The lvl 50 escorting you will fill in any other details.
The Dragonskin is a very valuable coat, Melee, Ballistic and Thrown Resistance +10pts, Max Inner Strength +15pts and +15% IS regen, Minimum lvl 16. This coat will last you all the way to lvl 50 and many lvl 50's even wear it in PvP. The IS regen is very valuable and when combined with the headless glasses you farmed earlier you get +25% IS regen, which means over double what it would normally be in combat.
Other items to look out for are Huangs Shirt farmed in Ikebukuro is also a nice one to look out for, +10% IS regen, Melee, Ballistic and Thrown Resistance +7pts, Minimum lvl 11. The Ghost Shirt in Dannah Heights is also nice with Melee, Ballistic and Thrown Resistance +9pts, 25% chance to heal 75-100 every time you are hit, Minimum lvl 14. The % chance to heal doesn't quite work as intended. When you are hit it first it calculated what item of clothing is hit (And then calculates if that item loses any stability) and after that it calculated the % chance on it to heal or give other bonuses. So it's more accurately a 3.6% chance to heal for males and 3.125% chance to heal for females (Females have an extra clothing slot). The Pugilists Gloves in Gracy Heights are also worth taking a look at. Melee, Ballistic and Thrown Resistance +9pts, +2% Melee Damage Bonus, 50% chance (7.14% for men and 6.25% for females in reality) to increase ballistic Damage by 9 points and Minimum level 18.
At lvl 15 you should visit the Archivist Construct, Yuki. Go to the archivist near Moriah E and buy the relevant Archivist book off him (Yuki 15-25). Make sure you equip it and then stand near the Archive Proxy. He ports people into the archive every 3 minutes. Once inside you can run around killing the low level NPC's (lvl 15) or the higher level guards nearer to the center (lvl 20). The lvl 15 NPC's drop Yuki Ninja Gloves. Melee resistance +15, Viral and Thrown Resistance +5 and melee damage +2%, min lvl 15. The lvl 20 NPC's drop Yuki Ninja boots. Stealth +20, Evade Combat +2%, min lvl 20 (Not very useful really). The boss in the middle, Tengu, is lvl 30 and best tackled at lvl 25, so I'll save it for the next guide.
The other construct you should consider is Datamine, buy the book to access there. At this level you should just farm the SSR security guards. To find them when you get into the construct go to the building in the North East corner, on the bottom floor will be lvl 10 guards. You want to kill guards 1 level above you for a good chance for them to drop the SSR gum. Go inside the building and get to the elevator, go up until you find the floor with enemies one level above you. If you find that the enemies are at your level and then the next floor up they are two levels above you, go to the floor where they are the same level. In the rooms further inside that floor you will find the enemies for you. The only problem is that you won't be able to get back to the elevator easily to recover. So it might be worth waiting until you can fight NPC's one level above you next to the elevator. When you kill the NPC's they get progressively stronger with each respawn. The single Chevron (Little gold marks next to their name in the top left of the screen when you target them) have a 25% chance of dropping the gum, 2 chevrons have a 50% chance and 3 chevrons always drop. When you get 40 pieces take it to the collector Dr. Martin, near Lemone Central. You can trade in for some shoes (Not really worth it I think) or Mobius Code (Each time you use it it heals 10% of your max health) or HJ Beta (Adds a small bonus to HJ, good for lower levels before your HJ maxes out at lvl 25, and at lvl 50 it can be useful if you are trying to squeeze the maximum effectiveness out of your PvP build).
Loadout Use: The gap between the effectiveness of certain loadouts is starting to narrow now, though overall Guns, MA and Proxies are better for missioning and other quests than Hacker or Spy.
If you use MA go for Kung Fu, the increased accuracy and defense is definitely worth it compared to Aikido or Karate, you also set yourself up to get Dim Mak Strike at lvl 20 which does double the damage of Guard breaker and requires Dazed to use, which can be easy to achieve by shooting your target a few times on speed tactics before you interlock them.
Guns I would advise using handguns, the defense is very useful and you set yourself up to get Pistol Slide at lvl 20, the first state special for guns.
Proxies is pretty simple, just keeping moving down whichever tree you like (Both have ups and downs). If you are using Proxy Coder/Proxy Master put more points into Reason for viral accuracy, the tree gets some more useful hacks at the later levels. If you are going for Utility Coder/Utility Technician go for Belief and Focus as the tree gets some very martials arts focused moves later. You might think the Charge Simulacra is bugged at first as it lacks an animation when you finish it and has no message in the system box but I've tested it and it seems to make a good difference in regards to the amount of hack attacks your sim uses.
Spy starts to catch up to the other trees around now, Drop Kick and Leg Throw deal quite impresive damage, and I highly advise spending 2 memory points on Disguise as it makes it a LOT easier to sneak attack opponents. Knife Thrower is the way to go at lvl 17 and 20. Wicked Aim adds some impressive passive bonuses to your accuracy, damage and defense and Deadly Throw gives you even more flexibility in interlock.
Hackers should keep struggling down the Selective Phage/Arbalest trees, it's still quite difficult at this level and you're still very restricited in your options. It's a very good idea to load up Resist Contagion in the Network Hacker tree, 2 memory points for a large increase to Viral Accuracy (+14% at lvl 50).
Clothes: Depending on the loadout you use dictates on what clothes you want. IS reliant classes like Spy, Proxy users and especially hacker will probably want to get at least 2 IS regen items of clothing. A Dragonskin and one other would be ideal, but if you couldn't farm one it's ok to let it slide. Martial Artists and Gunmen could make do with just 1 IS regen item, Again a Dragonskin would be ideal, especially at lvl 20 when you get your state specials which can almost, if not, 1 hit kill single chevron enemies with them, and they only cost 20 IS. Apart from the collector items I advise again to just max out Melee, Ballistic and Viral resistance.
Missions and Other Stuff: Around lvl 16-18 you'll notice your missions are being set outside of Richland and in Westview, and around this time you will also notice that Westview is a hell hole. The NPC gangs there are very much worse and will hammer you into oblivion in no time at all. It's a much better idea to mission in International if possible, gang levels are lower and they aren't swarming all over the rooves like in Westview. You should hopefully already have a few hardlines there from farming the Dragonskin.
Leaving Richland also introduces you to another problem, Agents. There are two types of agents that Zionists have to deal with. The lvl 255 agents from being in restricted areas, and the lvl 100 agents that spawn as a result of the war. The lvl 255's can be dealt with by tagging access nodes. Most people can fill you in on where to get the keys and where the nodes are. It's a simple case of going to where the gang boss/key holder is and murdering them and looting the key off them (Though it might take a few tries before the key drops). If the boss isn't there kill all the NPC's in the general area and wait for them to respawn. Take the key to the access node which should be easy to find cause it has a giant green lightning bolt shooting out it. Tagging it will give you a nice boost to xp aswell. The lvl 100 Agents can't be dealt with, the best method is avoidance. They don't spawn indoors so don't go afk outside, if they do spawn a simple Hyperjump up and down will deal with them (Ctrl + Space). If you're a spy you can also put on a disguise if you run outside to move between mission areas, this also keeps the high level gang members off you.
Around lvl 15 is also a good idea to take a look at Archive missions (As they can be quite a bit harder than normal missions, especially chapter 5 and 6). These are the old critical missions from chapters already done. You can do the archive missions for any organisation, they don't affect your reputation. To get access to them just go to any of the Archive Vendors and buy the mission tokens off them. Each token, when used, allows you to do the critical missions from that chapter (Generally 5 missions, except chapter 1.2 which is 17 missions or so). The Zion Vendor is near the Moriah East Hardline and is marked by a Book symbol on your minimap. Machine Vendor is near Midian East and the Merv vendor is near Apollyon Northwest. When you have finished the missions for that chapter/token you get a completion token. Collect enough completion tokens and you can trade them in for items of clothing (The buffs aren't that good, but they generally look cool) or 2 minute long reusable special effect for your character (5 minute reuse timer).
The items of clothing require you to complete several chapters for the same org, and can only be traded in at the org affiliated collector. Where the special effects are gained by completing all orgs archives for just one chapter. The Zion Collector can be found near the Camon Heights C Hardline (Called "Zion Researcher"). The Machine Collector is near the Mara C Hardline (Called "Machine Investigator") and the Merv Collector is near the Sai Kung C Hardline (Ironically enough he is also called "Merovingian Inverstigator"). Visit each of the collectors to see what you can get. Remember that the resistance bonuses from the clothes, if they grant one, will increase as you gain levels.
The only problem with Archives is that most of them don't work outside of Richland/Westview, so you will have to brave the hell hole of Westview to do them. Doing regular missions in International is also an option, as they are the only way to increase your reputation in Zion, and as your reputation increases you get access to more critical missions. Until you can do all 5 each 6 week update (1 each Thursday, with 1 week without one before the next update). Every time you complete a critical mission you will also get an IS Booster, which is a 1 use consumable which increases your IS regen by 20% for 20 minutes.
Quests: Farming a Dragonskin Wrap at lvl 11 is a very good idea, as you gain more levels the chance of the boss dropping one will get lower and lower until lvl 17 where it's impossible to get one. This is probably the first big boss you'll fight in the game but lucky for you chances are a lvl 50 will be around to help you out. The Dragonskin is farmed in Kaede at the Orchi Bathhouse, just a short walk from the Kaede C HL. Getting there is the first challenge cause it's all the way over to International. Someone might be kind enough to show you around but it's not that hard to get there yourself. Go to the Camon Height N HL and jump over the railing in front of you and go down the nearest subway station. Double click the train, click on the circle at the far right of the blue line, then click on the Sai Kung station to go there. Once you've arrived leave the station and turn right and you'll see a small gap in the wall. Run down there and turn right again following the wall of the building to your right. The Sai Kung C HL should be right in front of you, at Coordinates X: 428 Y: -10 Z: -55. The Sai Kung Canton near the hardline has a series of vendors who should also sell the abilities you need for the next couple of levels. After you've tagged a hardline in International it's much easier for a lvl 50 to get you to the Orchid Bathhouse. It's best to have Martial Arts or Gunman for farming the boss down there, known as Ethereal1. Load up on as much Ballistic Resistance as you can and make sure you have Hyper Dodge loaded and fully levelled for the fight. At lvl 11 you have around a 24% chance of getting a Dragonskin (He drops both genders, so only a 12% chance of getting the right gender), and the respawn timer is 10 minutes, so make sure you have some time set aside for this. The lvl 50 escorting you will fill in any other details.
The Dragonskin is a very valuable coat, Melee, Ballistic and Thrown Resistance +10pts, Max Inner Strength +15pts and +15% IS regen, Minimum lvl 16. This coat will last you all the way to lvl 50 and many lvl 50's even wear it in PvP. The IS regen is very valuable and when combined with the headless glasses you farmed earlier you get +25% IS regen, which means over double what it would normally be in combat.
Other items to look out for are Huangs Shirt farmed in Ikebukuro is also a nice one to look out for, +10% IS regen, Melee, Ballistic and Thrown Resistance +7pts, Minimum lvl 11. The Ghost Shirt in Dannah Heights is also nice with Melee, Ballistic and Thrown Resistance +9pts, 25% chance to heal 75-100 every time you are hit, Minimum lvl 14. The % chance to heal doesn't quite work as intended. When you are hit it first it calculated what item of clothing is hit (And then calculates if that item loses any stability) and after that it calculated the % chance on it to heal or give other bonuses. So it's more accurately a 3.6% chance to heal for males and 3.125% chance to heal for females (Females have an extra clothing slot). The Pugilists Gloves in Gracy Heights are also worth taking a look at. Melee, Ballistic and Thrown Resistance +9pts, +2% Melee Damage Bonus, 50% chance (7.14% for men and 6.25% for females in reality) to increase ballistic Damage by 9 points and Minimum level 18.
At lvl 15 you should visit the Archivist Construct, Yuki. Go to the archivist near Moriah E and buy the relevant Archivist book off him (Yuki 15-25). Make sure you equip it and then stand near the Archive Proxy. He ports people into the archive every 3 minutes. Once inside you can run around killing the low level NPC's (lvl 15) or the higher level guards nearer to the center (lvl 20). The lvl 15 NPC's drop Yuki Ninja Gloves. Melee resistance +15, Viral and Thrown Resistance +5 and melee damage +2%, min lvl 15. The lvl 20 NPC's drop Yuki Ninja boots. Stealth +20, Evade Combat +2%, min lvl 20 (Not very useful really). The boss in the middle, Tengu, is lvl 30 and best tackled at lvl 25, so I'll save it for the next guide.
The other construct you should consider is Datamine, buy the book to access there. At this level you should just farm the SSR security guards. To find them when you get into the construct go to the building in the North East corner, on the bottom floor will be lvl 10 guards. You want to kill guards 1 level above you for a good chance for them to drop the SSR gum. Go inside the building and get to the elevator, go up until you find the floor with enemies one level above you. If you find that the enemies are at your level and then the next floor up they are two levels above you, go to the floor where they are the same level. In the rooms further inside that floor you will find the enemies for you. The only problem is that you won't be able to get back to the elevator easily to recover. So it might be worth waiting until you can fight NPC's one level above you next to the elevator. When you kill the NPC's they get progressively stronger with each respawn. The single Chevron (Little gold marks next to their name in the top left of the screen when you target them) have a 25% chance of dropping the gum, 2 chevrons have a 50% chance and 3 chevrons always drop. When you get 40 pieces take it to the collector Dr. Martin, near Lemone Central. You can trade in for some shoes (Not really worth it I think) or Mobius Code (Each time you use it it heals 10% of your max health) or HJ Beta (Adds a small bonus to HJ, good for lower levels before your HJ maxes out at lvl 25, and at lvl 50 it can be useful if you are trying to squeeze the maximum effectiveness out of your PvP build).
Loadout Use: The gap between the effectiveness of certain loadouts is starting to narrow now, though overall Guns, MA and Proxies are better for missioning and other quests than Hacker or Spy.
If you use MA go for Kung Fu, the increased accuracy and defense is definitely worth it compared to Aikido or Karate, you also set yourself up to get Dim Mak Strike at lvl 20 which does double the damage of Guard breaker and requires Dazed to use, which can be easy to achieve by shooting your target a few times on speed tactics before you interlock them.
Guns I would advise using handguns, the defense is very useful and you set yourself up to get Pistol Slide at lvl 20, the first state special for guns.
Proxies is pretty simple, just keeping moving down whichever tree you like (Both have ups and downs). If you are using Proxy Coder/Proxy Master put more points into Reason for viral accuracy, the tree gets some more useful hacks at the later levels. If you are going for Utility Coder/Utility Technician go for Belief and Focus as the tree gets some very martials arts focused moves later. You might think the Charge Simulacra is bugged at first as it lacks an animation when you finish it and has no message in the system box but I've tested it and it seems to make a good difference in regards to the amount of hack attacks your sim uses.
Spy starts to catch up to the other trees around now, Drop Kick and Leg Throw deal quite impresive damage, and I highly advise spending 2 memory points on Disguise as it makes it a LOT easier to sneak attack opponents. Knife Thrower is the way to go at lvl 17 and 20. Wicked Aim adds some impressive passive bonuses to your accuracy, damage and defense and Deadly Throw gives you even more flexibility in interlock.
Hackers should keep struggling down the Selective Phage/Arbalest trees, it's still quite difficult at this level and you're still very restricited in your options. It's a very good idea to load up Resist Contagion in the Network Hacker tree, 2 memory points for a large increase to Viral Accuracy (+14% at lvl 50).
Clothes: Depending on the loadout you use dictates on what clothes you want. IS reliant classes like Spy, Proxy users and especially hacker will probably want to get at least 2 IS regen items of clothing. A Dragonskin and one other would be ideal, but if you couldn't farm one it's ok to let it slide. Martial Artists and Gunmen could make do with just 1 IS regen item, Again a Dragonskin would be ideal, especially at lvl 20 when you get your state specials which can almost, if not, 1 hit kill single chevron enemies with them, and they only cost 20 IS. Apart from the collector items I advise again to just max out Melee, Ballistic and Viral resistance.
Missions and Other Stuff: Around lvl 16-18 you'll notice your missions are being set outside of Richland and in Westview, and around this time you will also notice that Westview is a hell hole. The NPC gangs there are very much worse and will hammer you into oblivion in no time at all. It's a much better idea to mission in International if possible, gang levels are lower and they aren't swarming all over the rooves like in Westview. You should hopefully already have a few hardlines there from farming the Dragonskin.
Leaving Richland also introduces you to another problem, Agents. There are two types of agents that Zionists have to deal with. The lvl 255 agents from being in restricted areas, and the lvl 100 agents that spawn as a result of the war. The lvl 255's can be dealt with by tagging access nodes. Most people can fill you in on where to get the keys and where the nodes are. It's a simple case of going to where the gang boss/key holder is and murdering them and looting the key off them (Though it might take a few tries before the key drops). If the boss isn't there kill all the NPC's in the general area and wait for them to respawn. Take the key to the access node which should be easy to find cause it has a giant green lightning bolt shooting out it. Tagging it will give you a nice boost to xp aswell. The lvl 100 Agents can't be dealt with, the best method is avoidance. They don't spawn indoors so don't go afk outside, if they do spawn a simple Hyperjump up and down will deal with them (Ctrl + Space). If you're a spy you can also put on a disguise if you run outside to move between mission areas, this also keeps the high level gang members off you.
Around lvl 15 is also a good idea to take a look at Archive missions (As they can be quite a bit harder than normal missions, especially chapter 5 and 6). These are the old critical missions from chapters already done. You can do the archive missions for any organisation, they don't affect your reputation. To get access to them just go to any of the Archive Vendors and buy the mission tokens off them. Each token, when used, allows you to do the critical missions from that chapter (Generally 5 missions, except chapter 1.2 which is 17 missions or so). The Zion Vendor is near the Moriah East Hardline and is marked by a Book symbol on your minimap. Machine Vendor is near Midian East and the Merv vendor is near Apollyon Northwest. When you have finished the missions for that chapter/token you get a completion token. Collect enough completion tokens and you can trade them in for items of clothing (The buffs aren't that good, but they generally look cool) or 2 minute long reusable special effect for your character (5 minute reuse timer).
The items of clothing require you to complete several chapters for the same org, and can only be traded in at the org affiliated collector. Where the special effects are gained by completing all orgs archives for just one chapter. The Zion Collector can be found near the Camon Heights C Hardline (Called "Zion Researcher"). The Machine Collector is near the Mara C Hardline (Called "Machine Investigator") and the Merv Collector is near the Sai Kung C Hardline (Ironically enough he is also called "Merovingian Inverstigator"). Visit each of the collectors to see what you can get. Remember that the resistance bonuses from the clothes, if they grant one, will increase as you gain levels.
The only problem with Archives is that most of them don't work outside of Richland/Westview, so you will have to brave the hell hole of Westview to do them. Doing regular missions in International is also an option, as they are the only way to increase your reputation in Zion, and as your reputation increases you get access to more critical missions. Until you can do all 5 each 6 week update (1 each Thursday, with 1 week without one before the next update). Every time you complete a critical mission you will also get an IS Booster, which is a 1 use consumable which increases your IS regen by 20% for 20 minutes.