:)
so heres the skinny, we have "some levelling suggestions 1-40" but i thought we should have some leveling suggestions for both dwarven classes because they have no overhit skills (extra exp obtained using certain skills at the end of a kill) and have no pvp ability, nor really any attack power or defence. in truth, dwarves suck at all but training and spoiling and the inate ability to craft.
so i shall try to help my fellow shorties though the perilous world of aden, piggybacking on the wild adena currents to come.
now this guide will assume you are a new player with the previous equivalent knowledge of a golfbag.
STEP 1. making your dwarf.
dwarves are wither old and fat and short, or young and female and short. take your pick.
STEP 2. The land of Elmore.
as a dwarf you will begin your days in Elmore. a snow covered countryside that experiences 0 inches (no pun intended) every day. so make sure you kill the little foxes that dont run away, until the blue gem drops, and you collect your 200 soulshots. grats on that.
head to the city, dont worry, the blue arrow over your head doesnt really hurt you, in fact it will point your way in darkness. the city inst that far anyway. talk to the newbie helper (the guy with the big yellow exclamation mark on his head) and he will immediately give you more soulshots. o.0 egads you now have lots of soulshots no? 400. bah, onwards! ask him what quests you can do (if youre into that sort of thing) and dow aht you can at that level (you should be 3-4).
if you have acquired nigh unto 1000 adenas go buy ... NOTHING! not worht it, waste of a good grand.
instead, go out the South exit of the village (please ignore the people hitting the guards, they wont bite, and they rarely speak, just leave them alone) until you come to some more big bad wolves. hunt here until level 5.
now return to the village (go north please.) and rendez-vous with the little red riding hood girl at the end of the village. shes got a yellow exclamation mark on her head too. i still havent managed to quite get one of those yellow marks, and i suspect i wont get one. but no matter, talk to her and begin the quest she will assign to you.
she asks you to hunt wolves for 50 wolf fangs.
so do that. she gives one item on completion of the quest ranging in value from 50 to 5000 adenas. and no, you cant just keep the item she gives you. it is truly useless as a dwarf. err i mean light elf >.> <.<
now when youve nearly hung yourself from doing the quest so many million times and are now level 10, you should have some things in your inventory: a weapon that will likely have dropped form the wolves, and some materials and some money (at level 10 you should be rounding the 15k adena mark if you havent bought any items.)
i can tell you now not to bother keeping the materials you have gotten form the wolves. sell them either to the store or pay attention to the orange text in your chat area for people who "WTB" some materials. they Want To Buy them. sell the materials to those folks who are lookin for them and youll get more from them than from the store. better yet, if you can find a cute lil dork (err, i mean Dorf) with some yellow text above him/her that says "<Private Store- Buy>" and lists some gibberish underneath, then they are likely to buy the materials from you automatically.
click on one and he will open a text box asking you if you have any of the listed items. the ones you do have are clearly visible, the ones you do not have are ones that are greyed out. sell what you can and click OK.
OK?
ok.
now. if youve amassed money in the neighborhood of 20k adenas youre lucky. if you havent, keep hunting until you do. no need to keep hunting the same wolves, but hunt what you can without hurting yourself. when youve got the money go to the armor sho and buy Wooden armor. accept no substitute, and dont ever buy something from the store again until notified to do so. is that clear corporal?
you are now level 9-11 and know your way around the town hopefully. go to the guild hall which is near the newbie helper you met earlier on. you will notice a group of grumpy old farts just behind him in a round building. some of them have exclamation marks, others dont. speak with the ones that do have the marks and when youve gotten the quest to hunt orcs for the ore they carry AND the quest for the goblin necklaces, go back outside and fulfil the quest until you carry at least 30 of each quest item and then return to the village and cash in your drops again.
you will pull about 3000 bucks a run and some nifty papers called recipes. this part of the guide is very important please read the following very carefully....
... are you listening? good. KEEP THE FOLLOWING RECIPES: steel, coarse bone powder, leather, compound braid, cokes.
there is for you a great little helper thats free. FREE I TELLS YA!! WOOT! they are called buffs. you get them fromt he newbie helper by asking "get help from the support magic". after every level, buffs get better and better until finally at lvl 16 you get a surprise! more later.
when you have made one run you should be level 11 or 12 and again have nearly 5k adena and almost 2400 SP.
go to the blacksmith shop to learn skills. use as much SP as you can wil making sure to get 2 skills in particular. Spoil skill, and Sweeper skill.
make some keyboard shortcuts by opening your skills menu and dragging the skills onto the shortcut bar located on the right of the screen.
use the spoil skill on any creature before making a hit, and watch the upper dialogue box carefully. it should read "Spoil condition has activated". if it doesnt say this, you wont be able to use the sweep skill.
if it does then there are 2 outcomes: 1) when you kill the mob nothing happens. 2) when you kill the mob you will notice your fallen mob flash blue. when you see this blue flashing, you must IMMEDIATELY use the sweeper skill.
now if you have killed the mob but have changed targets, hod the shift key and click again on the dead mob to re-target it. please use the sweeper skill now.
ok, now that the spoilers have been revealed you know everything you need to know in order to level in the 10-20 range except for the big money quest. im talkin about a quest for a weapon. in order to get theis quest you must have a few things: the Wood armor, wood gaiters, and wood helmet as mentioned before; a weapon that dropped (hopefully a broadsword dropped for you) and around ... well... ALL of the 400 soulshots you obtained earlier. i really hope you saved them.
to get the quest talk to the guy with the yellow mark that lives in the building north of the blacksmith shop. he will send you to someone else, and youll be running around for a bit. eventually you will be sent out to hunt some goblins. hunt them with care becasue they like to gang up on you and they can pack a punch if youre not careful. when youve got what you need, head back for the quest rewards (might be a second hunting part i have missed cos its been so long and im too lazy). VOILA! 10 thousand soulshots are yours along with a new hammer and some junk crystals. toss em aside. do the following if you can afford it: at the armor shop, ask about "equipment exchange" making sure that your weapon is unequipped first. you will be asked for money and your old weapon and you get a new one instead. if youve got 40 thousand bucks i suggest you upgrade. if you dont, well keep hunting.
make sure you upgrade your weapon first, not your armor. dont hunt with a shield, you got poor dexterity so it will only hurt you to use it.
go now out to the northern regions of elmore and find yourself a neat little place to huntwhere the mobs are spread out and the names of the mobs (above their hp bar) is white and green. make sure you still have those 2 quests mentionedearlier, as well as a new one (the floating stone quest) where you hunt the big lazy floating turds that shoot wind at you. hunt these also with care, they kill fast if you dont have good jewellery on. and the stuff that dropped from the goblins is pisspoor. (jewellery gives you M.def which is an abbrev for Magic Defence. can you figure out P.Atk, M.atk, P.def?)
load up and head out, hunt for a level, then log out take a break and come back fresh. the grind of levelling is never easy to sid down and take without a good sandwich.
at level 15 or 16 come back to village, get potions if you need them, sell whatever dropped, and claim your quest rewards. spend your next round of SP at the blacksmith guild and make sure you get all the weapon and armor masteries.
did i say i would say more on buffs? i did! now for more: you can do a few things now that you are lvl 16. one of them is at the newbie helper: you get this little ball of light that floats above and behind you. this is called a cubic. summoner classes get cubics and different types of cubics. yours is a life cubic (it heals you at random times). after level 16 there are no more new buffs for you only the same old ones again and again, but they are still useful to you at lvl 25 so dont dismay.
go on out again, repeat the quests as you have been doing and for some extra cash (this is purely optional) you can do 2 things: 1) stop playing the first dwarf, and make a second dwarf and level to 11 to do the weapon quest again. you wont get the 10 thousand soulshots but you will get the weapon (which you can sell to store for cash) and the 100 health potions. or 2) (PLEASE NOTE THIS IS PURELY OPTIONAL IF YOU REALLY REALLY WANT TO DO THIS) you can begin your DEleveling process once your equipment is stored in your warehouse and your adenas are all tucked away. take yourself down to 10 and re-hunt everything from scratch for bonus cash. in order to do this you must die. dieing takes exp away. the town guards are good targets. they hit hard and they never move form their spots. you can die perty dang ol fast from them.
now when you have around 90k adena you can do another equipment exchange for the second best non-graded equipment in the game. again after thats dont get 150k more for the Top non graded equipment in the game.
after that the upgrades are only done if and when you sell your stuff. (top non grade gear runs for 250k to sell to players, yes it will sell.) but and If youhave decided not to DE-level yourself after all that work, you will find you are facing tougher and tougher monsters at every level because your gear isnt as good as it can be.
no matter tho, youve got buffs and soulshots up the yingyang, time to finish leveling to 20 and begin the next part of the guide:
CLASS SELECTIONS!
dwarves can either choose to continue a life of spoil and sweeping for cash and materials, or a life of creation where you make junk for greedy bastiges.
whatever life you choose, the next guide will greatly help you do either of these things very well, stay tuned to the forum for the next posting. but BE SURE you are level 20 and you can see in your passive skill tab that you have the skill: "Expertise D"
ttyl