An Introduction to the world of battling

Hello, I’m Echo, and in this guide, I shall do my best to try and explain anything and everything you might have a question about when it comes to anything battling. Have a quick look through this if you’re curious, and definitely feel free to post any questions you might have or things you think I should add. I really like when people post on here, because it bumps it up and I don't have to go digging near the bottom of the topic heap to find it.

This, by the way, is the Battle Coliseum. It can be found in Sacred Lands. Click for bigger image

What you'll find in this guide: [/color]Section 1: The Basics Training your pet Figuring out Tiers What Stats Do Weapon Basics A Step by Step Guide to Battling Section 2: Advanced Battling Spells Potions Section 3: Troubleshooting Why Can’t My Pet Battle?! Why your weapon stopped healing 101 Finding the Healer Section 4: Misc General guide to Opponent Difficulties Unlocking Hidden Opponents Popular Abbreviations Links and Stuff

Training your pet is probably the most important thing you can do. Even a little bit of training can go a long way, especially in plots, and while it may seem like getting a good pet is an impossible task, if you’re faithful, it’s possible to get a Tier 4 or 5 in a few months, and a Tier 8 or 9 in less then a year! Even if you don’t plan on being a full time battler, it doesn’t hurt to just invest a little time. An untrained pet may struggle where a pet with 50 in every stat will be able to sip tea with one hand while killing the opponent with the other.

There are several ways to train your stats, but the best and most reliable way is Jim. You can do so at The Training Center in Riverside, as seen here...

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There lives Jim, a hunky beefcake. Seriously. Look at this dude.

He probably has a sexy accent as well.

Anywho, he can train you in Level, Strength, Defense, Health, and Speed, though he can only train the last four stats to 2.5 times your level. Only the stats you can train at your current level appear in the drop down list, so more then likely, if you’re just starting with an untrained pet, you’re probably not going to see anything except level at first.

It’s recommended to train your stats evenly, except for level. Level really doesn't do anything. It’s only there to make your other stats nice and orderly and doesn’t really affect your battles, so don’t train it unless necessary, because then your training time and costs go up.

If you’re willing to pay 25 CSC’s extra, you can enroll your pet into autotraining, which will automatically put your pet back into training for 24 hours. It only trains one stat at a time, so, once again, be careful when autotraining level, as it could easily put you over to the next training time. It's best to just hand train level at first. Anywho, Autotraining is more expensive, but very worth it, and is by far the fastest way to level up your pet on this site.

Training costs 45sP x level. So if you're level 10, for example, it'll cost 450sP.

Other ways you can get stats:

Battle Quests

I’m not going to touch on this too much, as it’s going to get totally revamped soon, and this will change. But pretty much, there’s a dude named Reischen who makes you battle an opponent of his choice. If you beat it in less then 30 minutes, he’ll give you sP, experience, and a junk item. Higher tier battlers thrive off the experience he gives like they’re bees and it’s honey. Lower tiers don’t get as much of a benefit from him, as they won’t be able to beat as many of the opponents as the high tiers.

It can be found here.

[url=http://i726.photobucket.com/albums/ww261/raquizravel/battlequests1_zpsf7f0fef9.png] Click for bigger image

Stat Boosters

There are certain items you can buy/earn that will give your pets stats. These are usually expensive, and not recommended for smaller pets. You can see a full list here.

A good, usually cheap way to earn them is to do Shinwa’s Quests. Aka, the Sea Cow.

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You can do her quest once every 24 hours (not once per day. You actually have to wait 24 hours between quests). She asks you to do quests in search of her bracelet pieces, and once you’ve done so, she’ll give you a prize. Sometimes it’s a junk item, but she also gives out quite a variety of stat boosters.

Rather recently, staff added the concept of Tiers. Before this, any pet could use any weapon, so what we saw were a ton of undertrained pets running around with overpowered weapons and poking people’s eyes out. No, seriously, the battle system was broken, the staff was having a heck of a time balancing opponents, and unless you had billions of sP worth of weapons, you weren’t going to get far. Fortunately, they figured out a fix. Unfortunately, many people all of a sudden found out their undertrained pet could no longer run around with overpowered weapons and poke people’s eyes out anymore. They actually had to use weapons that matched their pet’s powers, and many were left with weapons they could no longer use. Needless to say, the change wasn’t an easy one.

So that's a quick explanation on the tier system overhaul in a nutshell and why it was implemented. It made great leaps in balancing the system, but left many people with really expensive pixels they could no longer use. Thankfully, though, the staff are much better able to plan things now that they know where and what people can do, and promise weapons and opponents everywhere.

So what is the Tier system, and how do you figure out how to advance in it?

The tier your pet is in depends on the total of your pet’s stats, so all you need to do is add your stats up. Health, Strength, Defense, and Speed are the only stats that count towards your tier placement, Level and Intelligence don’t count. To raise your tier, train your stats. Here’s how it lays out.

The Examples in parenthesis are only valid examples if you train your stats evenly.

Tier 1: 40-299 Total Stats (so, around Levels 1-30 and 10-74 in each stat) Tier 2: 300-599 Total Stats (around Levels 30-60 and 75-149 in each stat) Tier 3: 600-1199 Total Stats (around Levels 60-120 and 150-299 in each stat) Tier 4: 1200-1799 Total Stats (around Levels 120-180 and 300-449 in each stat) Tier 5: 1800-2599 Total Stats (around Levels 180-260 and 450-649 in each stat) Tier 6: 2600-3399 Total Stats (around Levels 260-340 and 650-849 in each stat) Tier 7: 3400-4399 Total Stats (around Levels 340-440 and 850-1099 in each stat) Tier 8: 4400-5399 Total Stats (around Levels 440-540 and 1100-1349 in each stat) Tier 9: 5400-6399 Total Stats (around Levels 540-640 and 1350-1599 in each stat) Tier 10: 6400-7999 Total Stats (around Levels 640-800 and 1600-1999 in each stat) Tier 11: 8000-11999 Total Stats (around Levels 800-1200 and 2000-2999 in each stat) Tier 12: 12000+ Total Stats (around Levels 1200 and up and 3000+ in each stat)

Keep in mind that the examples in parentheses are only examples if you train your stats evenly and only meant as a quick guide. If you train one stat, and ignore others, it's going to fall a little differently.

There is a stat cap of 22,000 stats total. Once again, only Strength, Defense, Speed and Health are counted. Level and Intelligence Points do not put you any closer to the cap.

If you’ll notice, there are several stats on your pet. Here’s what they do.

Level- Does nothing in terms of battling. It just determines how high you can train your other stats, how much your training will cost, and how long. You can train all other stats to 2.5 times your level, so if you’re starting with a fresh, level 1 pet, all you’re going to be able to train is level until level 5 or so. If you decide to autotrain, hand train level first!. Once you hit level 50 and every 100 levels after that (150, 250, 350, etc), your training time goes up. Your training cost is 45 sP times your level per session. (So if you’re level 5, your training cost will be 225 sP per session).

Health/HP- Pretty basic. How much damage you can take before you die. One of the more important stats, to be sure.

Strength- Strength determines how much damage per icon you do, or, in geek slang, your dpi. Let’s say you’re fighting with a Slots Spork, a mighty weapon that does 1 icon. At 10 strength, you’ll knock the opponent back 1 whole health point. At 1700 strength, you’ll do 10 damage points. That may not sound like a lot, but it really adds up. When you get a weapon that does 40 icons, for example, that's the difference between doing 40 damage and 400. The higher your strength, the more damage you’ll do.

Defense- Defense determines how well you defend. Obviously. It’s similar to Strength in that it determines how much you defend per icon. Just because your weapon says it blocks 5 icons of damage, that doesn't mean that it's actually blocking 5 icons of that element. Only full blockers are that absolute. If the opposing pet has high enough strength, some damage can get through. Let’s say you have an opponent that has a weapon that does 5 icons of Fire, and you have a weapon that defends 5 icons of Fire. But he has around 500 strength, so he does about 5 damage per icon, and you only have 200 defense, so you only defend 4 damage per icon. Even though you’re blocking the same amount of icons, you’re still going to get hit with 5 damage. The only exception to this is full blockers, they defend all damage from that icon, no matter what your defense. It also has an effect on criticals, the higher your defense, the less likely you are to get hit with one.

Speed- Ah yes. Speed. So far, the oddball stat, and often debated in it’s usefulness. Nobody is entirely sure what it exactly does, but it seems to act more like Luck then Speed. It determines critical hits, that much is known. If you have low speed, expect to get a lot of critical hits against you. If you have high speed, expect to do a lo

Good job! :D

This guide is both amusing and informative. Awesome! :D I've seen so many people ask where the healer is it's not even funny, lmfao.

Thank you for writing this, it's very well written and informative ^.^ The training times by level especially are something I never really knew about. I also actually had no idea where the healer was either, didn't even think she was on a map xD

beautiful post! I love the detail you give. The ONLY thing I noticed is it might be useful to mention the 16th int needs to be from a book to generate the AP. Also mention the retroactiveness in case an AP is missed. Again, phenomenal post! Love it :)

Thanks for doing this! I'd been thinking about writing a guide and FAQ for a while, now, but this covers everything that I'd thought of in far more detail than I would have thought about.

Thanks for the guide. I wasn't aware that any AP you "missed" by using stat boosters instead of books would be retroactively awarded. I've been so worried that I'm going to permanently miss an AP.

I actually had that info down in the scrolls section, when I covered AP a little more thoughly, but it doesn't hurt to add it elsewhere, so I added it to the intel section under stats. Thanks!

I kept seeing people asking for one, and finally figured, fudge it, I'll do one myself. Unlike the weapons guide, once I finish this one, I can sit back and forget about it. Until the BC changes again.

I am NOT doing the opponent guide, though. I've had my fill of guide making.

And, as a note, somehow I COMPLETELY forgot to add anything about tiers, so I just added that under training.

I think you should also mention that defense is sort of like a shield against critical hits as well. When you have higher defense, you are less likely to get critical hit. Likewise, if you have a certain amount of defense, your opponent may not be able to critical hit you at all unless they do a certain amount of damage (determined by the amount of damage they would do if the attack were completely unblocked as opposed to the amount of damage the attack actually does).

I love you LOL 'thanks so much this is great without having to jump pages you answered 2 questions for me does happy dance now if i could somehow bet the gelatin golem for the 7th time groan...

You never cease to amaze me!

Great guide! Battling would be so much more complicated without you!

I think you misplaced an s in the Sword of the Seven Seas abbreviation.

Pft, if I didn't do it, somebody else would have.

And I did! That should be fixed now.

Really excellent guide! It held my attention, which is great :D.

If Subeta ever needs to hire another battle admin, I'm nominating you Fantastic and funny guide! But I seriously had a link to the healer on my notepad because I could not find her

Great guide :D

Thank you for the guide! XD I hope I can get better at battling...its sad right now XD

Really? Sorry, I just went off of Keith's post in the revamp thread, and he said that level and intel didn't count towards the cap, so I just assumed. I'll change that.

Hopefully they'll get the intel boosters working soon.

Yeah, kinda sucky to find out the hard way, but I wanted my pet to get to the stat cap asfastaspossible. Keith said that once we are able to re-stat our pets he might do something for pets that are past the cap, and I was worried about missing out on something. At least if we do restat I could just keep her below the cap in order to boost intel for awhile (like certain people are doing :P ) I was just thinking it would suck for anyone else to think they were still good to train level and boost intel post-cap only to find out otherwise after the fact. At least I have other pets I can work on in the meantime. ;)