I entered the Moonlight Blade Online’s last Closed Beta near the end of May, but have not been posting about it mainly cos of the huge workload from school, and that the game is incredibly confusing for newer players like me. The amount of content to experience and learn is huge compared to many MMOs out there, and without proper reading up and research, it’s daunting.
The first information overload was the gear part, which is every MMO’s heart and soul. I will most likely touch on the specifics of the gear system on another follow-up post next time, but I’m trying to rush out this post to help new players realize one thing: start doing up your gear right from the start. This game isn’t like DN where you need to change out the whole set come a new level cap. The whole process of updating gear will become much easier and manageable if you work on it from a low level and this article explains just why it is so.
This article will mainly be a translation of a quality post on duowan forums. Note:
– All information about the game is extracted from the original article, and all credit goes to the original author of the post.
– As with all translations, info may be lost or changed to a certain extent. This is mainly due to the fact that as a player, I have a certain point of view regarding the matter as well, and I will try to make the info easier to understand for English-readers.
– Most of my own opinions will be put in brackets.
– The main article or source will be linked at the bottom of the post.
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Many new players think that the current gear present in the game (low level) are just for temporary use, and will be switched out come higher level caps, so there is no real need to invest time and effort into gear now. They think they can easily do up their gear when the higher level cap arrives. But I would like to say that if you only start doing up gear when you’re level 80 or 90, your character will be more or less obsolete by then, unless you spend real money to buy them off players. This post aims to clear the doubts of newbies. The essence of gear in MBOL is not the gear itself, but the ENCHANT LEVEL (gear pieces start with enchant level 0, and can be raised to a certain level depending on the item level and rarity).
First of all, let me share with you guys some basic information about gear in MBOL:
1. No matter the item level of a gear, the amount of experience required to raise a particular enchant level is the same. For example, if you need X EXP to level an item level 1 gear from enchant level 0 to 1, an item level 90 gear will also only need X EXP to level from 0 to 1 enchant level.
2. The amount of bound gold required to level up an item is always at the same rate, no matter what kind of materials you use. 1 EXP = 2.5 silver.
3. So enchanting gear seems fair up till now, but the main catch is that there is a level system to the materials used to enchant gear as well… Every type of enchanting mat will state that it will have full effect on gear under X item level, and cannot be used on gear of X+10 level. This way, it will have 50% effect on gear between levels X and X+10.
For example, say a mat is supposed to provide 40 EXP under full effect for item level 60 gear and below. It will cost 1 gold to use it and the under level 60 gear will receive the full 40 EXP. If it is used on a gear of item level 65, however, the gold required will be the same, but the gear will only receive 20 EXP at the end of it.
(IMO, this is also the reason why you start building your gear from a low level. Extra gear you obtain through dungeons of lower level can be extracted to give enchant materials, and these materials will therefore be of low level too. They will be best used to enchant gear of low level, to give the full EXP it contains.)
4. Now there is a transfer system in MBOL that makes all this possible. Enchant EXP, along with additional stats of a gear (I call it 3rd party stats) can all be transferred to another item (of the similar gear slot and of similar job/class) ONCE (3rd party stats can be replaced more than once, but enchant EXP and 匠心值 can only be obtained once by a gear). So all you need to do is, start enchanting a low level gear, probably max it out to say 5/5 enchant level, then transfer the EXP to a higher level gear with max enchant level 7, and you will instantly be at 5/7. From there, you will only need to get the 2 extra levels for your new high level gear! This system makes leveling your gear very progressive, instead of starting from 0/11 for purple level 51 gear.
So, based on the above points, we know that in order to effectively enchant item level 80 gear (at level 80 cap), we will need a mat that works well on gear below item level 90, and cannot be used on gear above item level 100. This type of mat will only be obtainable from a level 81 dungeon, which you do not have access to yet. You can very well use mats of lower level, but the efficiency is halved.
In conclusion, start enchanting your gear from a low level. At level 31, players can already farm the 31 dungeon easily and get their purple 31 gear, with max enchant levels 3/3 (which is easy to max too). You do not need crafted purple gear at this stage as they do not offer much additional stats, only higher enchant levels caps. Extra farmed gear can be extracted for the enchant mats, and if they are not enough, make use of free mats you obtain everyday to craft gear then extract. (While crafting, take note of any good 3rd party stats! They can be transferred to your main gear :))
Come level 41 the gear will have higher enchant level caps, but simply transfer the EXP over and you can save lots of time and gold! (Additionally, you will always stay relevant in this game, since you will be constantly equipped with high enchant level gear of your level range.)
Even if you are now stuck with high item level gear with 0 enchant level, it is still wiser to enchant a lower item level gear first, then transfer over the exp, since lower item level gear are dirt cheap.
An MMO needs a player to invest time and effort (or money) in order to progress well. If you are not willing to invest anything and still want to stay relevant with other players, you are more suited to be a screenshot guy.
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To end off, I would like to say that when I first started, I did not pay much attention to this gear progression thingy as it is pretty confusing, and I’m paying the price now. When most players are at 5k power points at level 60, and constantly only want to party with others with similar power points, I’m here stuck with only 4k power, and that is already after I tried my best to raise it from a meagre 3k last week.
As with most Chinese MMOs, stats is very important, in both dungeon play and socializing in game. And stats come from gear. The gear in this game can be very manageable with the system described above, so why not start early?
Source:
– Original forum post on duowan, dated 30th June 2015: link.
Brushy and Friends 