Training Day

I found a good training place in the desert caves for those high level characters (I'm 68) who can handle a couple of mountain snakes, but not 5 or 6 a time. In addition to mountain snakes this area is filled with yellow slimes, which means more iron ore drops, spiders (keys and infantry helmets), and of course skins, tongues and eggs from the mountain snakes. Spiders usually give around 300xp, mountain snakes over 400xp, and red slimes (which also frequent the area) drop some nice stuff that's worth 500+ gold. You won't level fast, but if you're on that last 20% it's a nice place if you can spend the time. So far it isn't filled with other players.

Dramatic improvement - steel shield and protection spell

I'm not sure what the protection spell does other than raise evade by a couple of points, but I had it cast on me and I seemed to be almost impervious to snake attacks (not mountain snakes, but regular snakes). I was taking on 3 or 4 at a time with barely a scratch. The steel shield has made it possible for me to reasonably attack regular snakes and suffer in the range of 5-10 hits. So hit and run is much easier. This plus a protection spell left me fighting snakes alone and doing well. I picked up about 8 snake eggs and 1 tongue completing the amount of tongues I need from regular snakes in the Auldsbel quest. I still need 2 mountain snake tongues and I'm not yet powerful enough to do snakes plus mountain snakes on my own without the protection spell. Funny enough the protection spell only seemed to raise my evade from 96 to 98... there must be something else at work. Does this mean if I put more in agility or luck that I'm going to dramatically improve my odds? I can't imagine so.

I still need about 11 ore for the best helmet I can get... the only thing left then would be the Setzer (in terms of things to acquire for power). Then it's all fun, buying dyes and changing clothes, completing other quests, and eventually going after the skulls again. I also noticed that the steel shield is good against black scorpions, they seem easier to battle even 2 at a time.

After steel shield stats...

Annukka sold me a snake skin for 5k, it was the last component I needed to get the Indian to make the leather patch. With the leather patch made I was able to finally get the steel shield made. Armed with the steel shield my defense went from 85 to 98, a big jump! Now I'm going to concentrate on getting the proper helmet, which means 12 more iron ores. I think I'll attempt to fight for these. I still haven't forgotten the Auldsbel snake tongue quest. I'm actually only 2 mountain snake and 5 regular snake tongues away from completing this task. The Setzer short sword seems a long way away. I can't imagine how I ever thought I would get it so many levels ago.

Have thought about creating a magic character, but so far just having fun figuring out the fighter.

Level 57 - new stat strategy

After a romp in the 'bat cave' aka the 'cave snake cave,' I leveled up to level 57. It took some hard work to get that last 5%. At this point leveling is very difficult. My dexterity is now 51. According to the Mana World wiki the 50 to 60 range should be enough to hit even the highest level monsters. My problem now is that certain monsters, like the mountain snakes, take quite a bite out of me (20 points a shot). I noticed other characters only take 1 or 2, much like what happens with me and cave snakes. Not sure if this is a combination of their dexterity and luck or if they simply have a higher defense. The steel shield is a possibility now, but only likely if I either buy a snake skin for the strap or if I keep leveling up so I can kill the mountain snakes easier. I've developed a new attack strategy for certain scenarios. I don't want to say too much at this point, but I'll reveal it in the near future - it seems to help a great deal in certain scenarios, but it's not very helpful against the mountain snakes ... at this point.

My stat strategy will be to concentrate on Luck, Agility and Vitality. Vitality seems to be promoted pretty heavily on the wiki, but if monsters are doing large damage on you it seems more sensible to put stat points into something that will take critical hits away (luck).