Additional Tips & Info
While everything above should cover basic usage, this section talks about unusual situations and other possibilities.
Healing
Eventually you may run low on HP. Since we're not using Sap, Health Potions are your only healing option. Go buy yourself a couple of regular Health Potions (the orange kind) if you don't already have some. The Mire drops them at a fairly constant rate, so you probably won't need to buy any more after you've got a couple in your inventory.
The ideal place to use a health potion is when you're up against a group of two mages, but you may find other spots to wedge one in. But unless you're on death's door, it's generally better to take your chances with low health than try to heal up.
Getting Contused
I mentioned healers (Salve Kamaitachi and Wetland Unicorn) in the basic usage guide. These enemies have a chance of using Contuse. If this hits your monk, it applies a status that slightly reduces physical damage.
Because of this debuff, you'll need to do a smidge of damage to enemies before you can take them out with Eliminate. Obviously your monk can't use Scratch, so if you have enough breath, use Shred instead. This is part of why I recommend using Shred over Sap, the other reason being bosses.
If you're low on breath and you get contused, it's best to just reset. Ideally, you won't get contused at all; it can only happen if you miss an Eliminate AND get unlucky with how the enemies behave, so it's a rather infrequent occurrence.
You can also buy a Cleansing Tonic in the Battle section of the marketplace and use that instead if you really, really hate resetting.
Bosses
Most two-fodder trainers can't take out bosses, and for a while I thought this one was the same way. After some testing, it turned out I was wrong! Behold:
However, it's still difficult. You can only win if:
- your monk isn't weak to the element of the wartoad in question
- you're at 85+ breath
- you're at full health or nearly full health
- your trainees are level 5 or higher, and also preferably at full health
- you're feeling lucky
If all those conditions are satisfied, then you may be able to take it out. I do:
- rally, shred, eliminate, eliminate;
- then, meditate twice, haste, rally, defend;
- then, shred, eliminate, eliminate.
If possible or necessary, you can sprinkle in some health potions. Ideally, you'll finish with 35 breath remaining and be able to continue grinding.
You can also watch a video demonstration of the process
here. (I did mess up the turn order a bit, but it still worked, so whatever!)
I'd like to reiterate that bosses are not easy to defeat. A single missed Eliminate from your monk or a critical hit from the boss can spell doom for you. They also take quite a while to defeat for the amount of EXP they give. And even if you win, you'll be at low health. It's probably more efficient to just reset.
But at the end of the day, nothing beats the satisfaction of giving one of those wretched amphibians the business.
Starting Against Mages
I mentioned during the guide on basic usage to prioritize mages that
haven't attacked yet. You might be tempted to fire back at the ones that attacked you first as vengeance, but it's a bit safer to leave them alone. Let's look at a typical setup against a starting group of 3 mages.
A Hypothetical Battle Begins wrote:
you meditate
you meditate
you use haste
enemy 1 meditates
enemy 2 meditates
enemy 3 meditates
you use rally
you use defend
enemy 1 attacks!
enemy 2 meditates
enemy 3 meditates
Enemies are bound by the same constraints as dragons - they need breath in order to attack. Enemy 1, after using an elemental attack (which uses 20 breath), literally does not have enough breath remaining to attack again. It will meditate on the next turn - it cannot do anything else.
Enemy 2 and 3, meanwhile, have 60 breath each, and could attack 3 times in a row if they wanted to. That's why you should take them out first.
A Hypothetical Battle Ends wrote:
you use eliminate on enemy 2!
you use eliminate on enemy 3!
enemy 1 meditates (because it ran out of breath and can't do anything else)
you use eliminate on enemy 1!
battle end
Nice and clean.
Other Venues
If you get sick of the Mire and need to take a vacation, you can take this build to the Ghostlight Ruins without too many issues. Of course, it'll be a bit less effective than a dedicated Ruins monk (
updated Ruins build), due to different elemental weaknesses and the extra STR investment, but that same bit of extra strength means bosses are a little easier to defeat.
I personally prefer the Mire. It has smaller groups of enemies, so it tends to be a bit easier and more consistent. But, the Ruins gives almost as much EXP so it can be nice as a change of scenery.
Both the Mire and Ghostlight Ruins are considerably more efficient for leveling than any of the level 25 venues.
Caveats
Finally, while I personally find this build way less frustrating than a more typical two-dragon trainer, due to the excess of breath, there are some caveats:
- the Monk build can be weirder to use as a regular grinder because it lacks scratch (though you can just swap out scratch for meditate if you really need it to pull double duty, it's not that expensive)
- the setup punishes mistakes heavily - if you zone out and Eliminate early, or forget to Rally after a captcha, you may have to start all over
- if you get Contused you can lose a fair bit of breath to using Shred
...but if you're willing to try the Mire Monk, I can't recommend it enough.
Thanks for reading, and happy levelling! I hope you enjoy this build. Please feel free to post any questions or comments.