Guide Details
Guide Likes: 34
Recent Updates
Last: May 31 2012, 00:39 BT
May 30 2012
updated common abbreviations
May 30 2012
edited polearm vs spears
May 30 2012
updatd jobs
May 30 2012
edited training spots, still got to add links to the new places.
May 31 2012
fixed a derp on the skills
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PROTIP Sacrifice ignores boss defense
The journey towards darkness has begun
and i'm here to guide you through it, with the help provided by several other members of the forums, which are listed at the end of the guide.
a special mention however, goes to daniel3b, former owner and caretaker of this very guide since before i can remember. he's guided as many dark knights to success as the number of tentacles that i possess when writing this, and he did so when getting to level 69 and beyond was something to be admired.
If there's something you want to contribute or you want to contact me, post a comment whilst quoting me ( "@ darkspawn980:" ) without the space.
let's go straight to what those interested in the darkness want, what makes dark knights different from other classes? are they good?
in short, dark knights are nice, that'd be the best way to describe it. they have a bit of all the other warriors, but they don't really excel above the others. A paladin has better defense, a Hero has better attack, and arans hit big numbers with much less funding, while demon slayers are pretty much invulnerable to status effects.
there's 2 things that differentiate dark knights from all the other warriors though, one being our attacking range, which with fury and roar in 3rd job and dark impale in 4th job, allows us to hit pretty far for a warrior. The second being our great healing skills which in my own opinion surpasses that of the arans due to our higher base HP, as long as you're attacking you shouldn't die.
we have two pretty big problems though, first being our damage, which is only higher than paladins while falling short of all the other warriors; second being that even with our great healing skills, our survivability is considered the worst of all the warriors due to the lack of an "achilles" skill that all the other warriors have one way or another. which means we're at the mercy of attacks that lower our HP and MP straight to 1, this combo'd with seduce or potion lock proves fatal almost every time.
putting it into a list:
-great attacking distance for a warrior
-amazing healing system, which pretty much makes you not use HP pots.
-very stable damage
-lots of critical hits, for those that like big, red numbers
-highest warrior HP when using hyper body
-hyperbody being a party skill, which helps some classes survive better
-strong damage during 3rd job and beginning of 4th job.
-very fast training
-sacrifice ignores all the monster defense, allowing good damage on tough bosses. with regular funding
-bad damage compared to other classes once past 160
-lack of achilles-like effect, making surviving certain bosses almost impossible
-no shields means the loss of one equip to scroll and potential (currently fixed in KMS!)
-Polearms being expensive and spears being not as good as polearms for the most part
-terrible training experience until level 70
so even if the list of con's is small, it provides the highest problems, to be a DrK that stands out amongst the warriors, you're going to have to go the extra mile for better equips and weapons, which means more money spent trying to get this class on par with others.
in conclusion, if you're looking for raw damage this is not the class for you. however if you're looking for an interesting easy-to-play class, you might enjoy it.
in short, there's barely any difference, ultimate adventurers have one slight advantage over regular DrK's and that's the "soul" summon; but in exchange they lose some equip and use slots. the 2 attack medal is nice too i guess, but replaceable. Those are the only differences between UA's and regular adventurers. soul driver is for the most part useless, yes, even in third job, our natural attacks are just that good. Only good points for it are its slightly longer vertical and downwards range and the fact it hits both sides.
don't forget that having a level 120 cygnus knight or Mihile can give you up to 30 weapon attack on all your characters on that account though, so if you don't have one, it's probably a good idea to train one and use that to make a spearman UA.
long before, back when big bang had not happened (maplestory's one, not the other one) spears did more damage when stabbing while polearms did more damage while swinging. this was a very important part of our class.
this is no longer the case, a polearm and a spear that have the same stats will do exactly the same things and exactly the same damage
endgame polearms tend to lack a bit in power, but are faster (fast 5 speed) while most endgame spears are one speed slower(normal 6 speed) while having greater attack, of course this is not the norm, there's also a few strong high-leveled polearms that are VERY slow.
there's a lot of skills that dark knight use, some are not even ours; therefore here's a small list of terms that i'll use through this guide and that you'll see when playing or using the forums:
DK - Dragon Knight
DrK - Dark Knight
PA - Polearm
CD - Cooldown, some skills need time to recharge.
"D" prefix - means decent, several skills have a D version to them obtainable on equips.
HB - hyper body, grants 60% hp and mp to the whole party
SE - bowman skill "Sharp Eyes", grants critical hit chance and damage, real good for dark knights
SI - buccaneer skill "Speed Infusion", increases your attack speed
FA - Final Attack, does a free extra hit at a 40% chance
ER - elemental resistance, third job skill
Crash - Magic Crash, very useful bossing move learned in third job
Sac - Sacrifice, third job attack that ignores all monster defense, good for bossing
Wisdom - Dragon Wisdom, our main healing skill, grants you up to 50% hp at a chance
Roar - Dragon Roar, allows you to hit everything in the screen with a 10 second CD
Impale - Dark Impale, our main training move in 4th job, and later on bossing move
Hex/Heal - Beholder's skills, "hex of the beholder" and "Beholder's healing"
Zak/Czak - (Chaos) Zakum, two bosses, but also used to represent the helms they give
HTP/CHTP - horntail and chaos horntail's pendant, they give lots of all stats.
MoN - Mark of Naricain, an easy-to-obtain pendant that gives nice amounts of attack.
Partisan - the level 140 empress polearm, considered the best DrK weapon available
Fuscina - the level 140 empress spear, more attack than the partisan, but slower
so you decided to walk the path of the dark knight huh? then the first thing you need to know is how to set your AP.
ACC is strictly determined by level now, not DEX. Just dump all your AP into STR, keep DEX, LUK, and INT at 4
If you made a char with DEX before the Big Bang, it just matters whether you want to spend the money to get a little more damage, or you're fine with that basically wasted AP. Remember that you never HAVE to reset and you can ALWAYS improve gears a bit more; it's impossible to have low damage after BB, and I'm still going strong with 224 wasted AP.
for reference to those that didn't play before big bang, killing one of the guard dogs that stand before zakum would take over 20 hits, and the exp we needed to level was over twice as much as what's required now, with barely any 2x experience events.
i'd put a detailed SP build with explanations and numbers here...
...if there wasn't a guide that had already done so, which can be found here:
Sp Guide Level by Level
therefore, i'm just going to post here how should your skills look at the end of each job, great if you get a Full SP reset (which are being handed like candy lately) and i may add a little note or two if it's something really important.
Max Power Strike
Max Slash Blast
Max HP Boost
14 Iron Body
you can choose to max groundsmash and sacrifice iron will if it's a new character, but if you're using an SP reset, what's below is the way to go as ground smash is useless past second job.
Max Mastery
Max Booster
Max Hyper Body
Max Iron Will
Max Final Attack
Max Physical Training
Max Slipstream
4 Ground Smash
Max Dragon Fury
Max Dragon Strength
Max Dragon Wisdom
Max Sacrifice
Max Magic Crash
Max Roar
Max Endure
4 Elemental Resistance
0 Dragon Buster
Dragon buster is absolutely outclassed by everything, elemental resistance is pretty meh, if you're 4th job already you can sacrifice points from fury to max resistance, since you'll be using impale. fury still has uses though, due to its bigger upper and downwards range, and slightly faster speed.
Max Beholder (10)
Max Berserk (30)
Max Dark Impale (30)
Max Monster Magnet (30)
Max Power Stance (30)
Max Maple Warrior (30)
Max Hex of the Beholder/Beholder's Revenge (10)
Max Hex of the Beholder (20)
Max Aura of the Beholder (20)
Max Hero's Will (5)
1 Rush
you'll have this done by level 172 or so, afterwards you can start adding points to whatever you want, you'll have enough to max every skill in every book by level 193. i recommend doing rush for the extra damage, or elemental resistance just in case you feel like taking a little less damage from some boss attacks, honestly doesn't matter, anything worth maxing is maxed now.
DK's are naturally mobbers, so your training spots will generally be limited to high spawn areas. Note that, thanks to the big bang, you can train just about anywhere. HP:EXP ratio isn't as important now since monsters can be killed so fast and just about all of them have sucky ratios anyway. Just find somewhere that isn't crowded, that you like, and that has a high spawn and an easily maneuverable map. These are just suggestions.
A couple things to note: first of all, I linked most if not all training spots to a hidden street map of that area so you can tell exactly which map is best. Also, I try giving a broad level range to include all options, but note that for many of these spots, even if I say for example 50-60, you may not be able to 100% there until around 53 or 54, and even if I say 60-70, that spot may stop being good EXP at 68, and past 80, you have wisdom maxed which gives great healing so you might want to go earlier to the recommended areas, so you may want to do a little of your own research, and most of all, use common sense.
And lastly, just as a disclaimer, some of the hidden street pages may be broken links or outdated. Basilmarket has info on all monsters post-big bang if you need information on the monsters.
[h2=000801]1st Job[h2]
1-10 Quests (You shouldn't need a guide for this, just do what the NPCs say)
10-20 Blue Ribbon Pigs
20-25 Ligators
20-25 Stone Golems
20-30 Rotting Skeletons
25-30 Mixed Stone Golems
25-30 Muddy Swamp Monsters/Dyle
25-35 Zombie Lupins
25-35 Zombie Lupins
30-40 Mushroom Castle (just work your way through; move on when you can hit the next monsters, and the quests are great exp)
30-50 CPQ
35-55 Kerning Square (same thing as mushroom castle; work your way through)
35-55 Scarecrows
45-60 Truckers
50-60 Drakes
55-65 Toy Trojans
55-70 PPQ
60-70 Robos
65-75 Zeta Greys
65-90 Twisted Jesters
65-75 Zeta Greys
65-90 Twisted Jesters
75-90 Sand Rats
75-90 cube slime/triple rumo
80-90 roids
80-100 vikerolas
90-100 MP3
90-120 Aliens
115-130 Kents (which map doesn't matter, I just linked to the blue one randomly)
103-120 Pirates
112-130 Dual Ghost Pirates
110-200 LionHeart Castle
[h2] [h2]
112-130 Dual Ghost Pirates
115-130 Kents
130-150 Wyverns (I linked to the red ones, but you can just keep moving up when you can handle the next hardest color. Reds are weaker than blues, and blues are weaker than darks)
142-200 Time Temple (just work your way through fighting the toughest monsters you can handle)
150-200 Skeles
110-200 LionHeart Castle
160-200 Cygnus Fortress
PQ as much as you can. Daily PQs maxed should be MPQ (magatiaPQ) and PPQ (Pirate PQ), EPQ (Ellin forest PQ) is also decent exp. All others are dependent on availability of players(try forming a small group that does daily PQs or something) Dragonoir PQ is great exp at later levels, Monster Park is good for low and high levels solo or group.
Nowadays, there's so many ways of getting potions at low levels, that this section isn't really needed. you'll be leveling fast, and you'll be gifted a lot of potions.
From personal experience, ice cream pops (heal 2k hp) and unagis (heal 1k hp) are the potions you'll be using before reaching third job. after reaching third job and maxing dragon wisdom, you should be using NLC's honsters. a single stack of 100-200 should last you a really long time when mixed with our healing abilities.
For MP, sorcerer elixirs are good, healing 1.5k mp per
You could also try your hand at making your own potions by using herbalism and alchemy, which would end up being cheaper, but would involve more time spent leveling these skills, not to mention that not everyone wants to be an alchemist.
For attacking pots, i wouldn't really recommend using any, since the improvement they give is minimal in these times where everything dies in a hit or two. so i'd only recommend some if you plan to tackle a boss or something of the sort. there's plenty of other ways to increase your strength permanently.
Since there are so many threads about this, even though it's for all warriors in general, I decided to put it in here.
Very simply, to find the rough att:str ratio, divide your attack with equips/skills by your str with equips/skills (remember to count a cape/glove and such if you have those with att). If you have a 90 atk weapon, 8 att wg, and 2 attack cape, and with all your equips you have 400 str, divide 100 into 400 and your att:str ratio is 1:4
This changes by level because at lower levels you'll be gaining attack very fast, because weaps already start off at 20 or so atk, and rise very fast every 5 or so levels, and you only gain 5 str per level. At very low levels, like 1st job and very early 2nd, your att:str ratio is probably somewhere between 1:2-1:3. As you get near 3rd job it starts rising to around 1:3-1:3.5, at around 100 it's usually at around 1:4, once you hit 4th job it's usually around 1:5, and from there it keeps rising or lowering depending on what equips you go for (preferring attack or str)
This is why Taru's cape/empress equips are often recommended at higher levels. At Level 50 a 2/6 PAC would only give you about 10-12 str worth, while at level 150 a 2/6 PAC would probably be worth about 18-20 str, almost double the amount.
Alright, DEX/ACC equips are useless now. Just get everything scrolled for STR/ATK (remember that ATK is worth much more than STR)
one thing that i'd recommend would be the empress set since getting 4 pieces grants you the nice set bonus of +15 weapon attack, however it requires around 130 dex to be able to equip the 4 cheapest pieces together (overall, helmet, shoe and glove) and the last two parts of the set (weapon and cape) are pretty expensive, weapons being worth hundreds of millions, and capes on the billion range (note the prices vary by world though*)
also, it's recommended you get equips of level 80 or more, since the potentials are a lot better then, honestly, besides the weapon you should aim for good potential depending on your funding, a bunch of 3% str equips are a better use of money than a single earring with 9% str that costs the same amount. There's also plenty of events that give scrolls nowadays so you can use those to scroll your gears.
the most important thing you can get is a good weapon, it's from where the bulk of your power comes from and what determines how fast you strike. Try to always shoot for a "fast" speed weapon, the extra speed when attacking provides a lot more damage than a few extra points in attack would.
Of course, what weapon you get depends on your funding, lionheart partisans are the top-end weapon at the moment, there's also the PVP and aswan polearms too, which require work rather than money and are very good polearms too, and there's the super purple surfboard if you'd rather get something fast and cheap
normal speed weapons aren't really recommended, but there's a few nice ones, the lionheart fuscina is a lot cheaper than the polearm, and there's the PVP/aswan spears too.
Mastery books are used to upgrade existing skills in 4th job. These are not to be confused with skill books which are used to obtain a skill. Both will only work for the class(es) listed in the description.
4th job skills are obtained the following ways:
1. They are available as soon as the advancement is completed. Three skills are usually available right away with 1-2 being class specific and the other being job specific. Maple Warrior is common for all classes and is available as soon as you advance, but you have to use a skill book which is given to you right away.
2. They require a skill book to be used. Skill books have a 100% chance of working, unlike mastery books. Skill books are monster drops and are untradeable unless a Scissors of Karma is used to enable one trade. They are obtained from Zakum (Advanced Combo Attack, Advanced Charge, etc.)
Now, the use of mastery books is different. These are used on skills that were obtained in one of the three ways listed above. There are two different mastery books per skill: 20 and 30. When you get a skill in 4th job, the max level by default is 10. Some skills are maxed at level 10 such as Resurrection. Most skills, however, can be upgraded to a max level of 30. To upgrade a skill, mastery books can be used once the skill you're trying to use it on has at least 5 points (for the level 20 book) or 15 points (for the level 30 book). These are not always successful like skill books are. Level 20 mastery books have a 70% success rate while level 30 books are 50% successful. Mastery books are dropped by specific monsters. Some drop from regular mobs while other books are dropped by boss monsters. Some can be obtained from easier bosses like Battleship Cannon 20 from Griffey. Others are dropped by the harder bosses, like Genesis 20 from Zakum or Genesis 30 from Horntail. These are tradeable and are typically sold in FM. Some mastery books are next to worthless (like Dragons Breath 20/30 for Archers) but some are worth tons (like Genesis 30 which sells for about 600 mil in Broa). Mastery books are also available through Gachapon box events or from the bonus in Crimsonwood Keep PQ.
Basically, mastery books can only be used on a skill you already have, assuming you have enough points in the skill for whichever book you're using.
Bossing, what interests most people, here i'll give tips to tackling most bosses in the game, unfortunately some bosses require either luck or insane funding to finish, but that's what happens when you don't have achilles
[h2] [h2]
a boss so easy i don't even know why i'm mentioning it, you can fight him at 120, and that's enough to down him easily. recommended to rush him towards the left, and striking from afar with impale, since sac will miss under him sometimes. beware of his 1/1's though, keep your potion button close. if you have stance you can stand on the top platform to avoid the 1/1 attacks
[h2] [h2]
a shade of his former self, zakum is a very easy boss but still shouldn't be underestimated, as soon as the fight starts, you'll want to kill the second arm from the bottom, on the left side, since it casts a lot of annoying status effects (don't forget your allcures!) once you kill it the fight should become very easy. The same arm on the right side casts buffs on zakum, so you can crash it to prevent it from decreasing your damage dealt.
it's recommended heavily that you have stance though, otherwise the top right arm will keep knocking you down and make you waste lots of time.
once you reach the body, i suggest you stand on it and use sacrifice, this should help you avoid the 1/1 attacks he spams, if you feel uncomfortable using sac, then impale away. if you think the screen is getting too cluttered, use roar to get rid of the summons. keep at it until he's rubble.
this is like zakum, but on steroids, very deadly steroids, the "deadly" part doesn't mean that it's him that dies easily.
the strategy against the arms is the same, only difference is that the problem arm now seduces on top of everything else, and each arm has a lot more HP now so your defenses must be good to take all the punishment. the top two arms now dispel too, so be careful with that and keep stance first in your macros
the body... oh dear, for starters it can seduce now, on top of spamming 1/1, so i recommend you stand on the left side spamming impale or sac, so that when seduce sends you walking to the right, you tank the body and protect yourself from 1/1's for a few seconds, leaving the summons alive is also a good idea.
use crash to prevent the defense ups, will make your run a lot faster if you do it effectively.
a very easy boss... and a very annoying one too, start by whacking him a few times and luring him to the left corner. once he's there...
...you hold the sac button, and never let go, keep whacking him, if you die rebuff and go back in and keep at it. he'll summon pigs and golems, he'll eat the golems, and eventually will have so many pigs summoned that he won't be able to call more golems, at that point he's unable to heal and should go down fast.
the myriad of status effects he uses are very annoying though, but just remember, forget about everything and keep hitting VL only, use crash if you see him using damage reflect, he takes so long casting it that you should be able to stop it on its tracks.
a very annoying boss, you'll have to fight the preheads, and then the whole thing, the preheads use summons, seduce and 1/1.
yep, you'll be under sed+1/1 danger for most of the fight, i recommend getting a good enough range so that you can down the parts fast, and just keep hitting at it, attempting to prevent the defense ups with crash.
you have to attack the preheads from as far as possible with impale since attacking up close makes you lag and hit much slower, try saving your hero's will for when you know the 1/1's coming, summons may help you here but be careful with the black ones since they dispel
the body... stand on the bottom right and whack the tail and the legs with impale until they're both dead, they deal some heavy damage you don't want to take when you get seduced in the next part.
after the legs and tail are dead go up and start hitting the right arm+wings, the arm will start seducing you while the wings will start summoning cornians, leave these alive to survive the seduces and use hero's will to destroy the arm as fast as possible, once the arm is gone you won't be seduced on that whole side so you're free to kill the middle and right head. they use defense up so be sure to crash when you see the magic defense go down.
after everything but the left arm and head are dead, take it personally with the head and kill it, don't hit the arm though or it will start seducing you and you'd be dying after the worst part has ended. once the head is gone, congratulations, you've beaten horntail! just kill the arm, which is incapable of dealing enough damage to kill you on it's own and can only annoy you with seduce.
oh boy, now you're taking a big bite, just like HT, you can be sed+1/1 anytime, so dealing with everything fast and taking good care of your hero's will and crashes is a necessity, the same strategy for horntail applies though. there's only one difference, the top right head will use magic damage reflect, which doesn't affect you at all, but the left one does physical damage reflect for 5k-ish damage, which can get you into a lot of trouble if you're not careful, so remember to time it (lasts 7 seconds, and has a CD of a minute since the time it's casted)
Post champions, sacrifice and dark impale are pretty equal in the damage they deal however sacrifice has the nifty ability of ignoring all defense of the enemy, which means that against bosses (most of which have ignore 40% of your damage or more) it will become better damage than impale
after the math was calculated (props to SilentXynh), as long as an enemy has over 3% PDR, you should be using sacrifice.
an important thing to note though, is that it depends on how comfortable you feel actually using sacrifice or if all the strikes of it will hit. Pink Bean statues for example, you'll miss all the jabs sacrifice performs against the wisemen statues, zakum hands move a lot too and get in and out of range. If you're able to mob impale should also be the wisest choice.
so when using sac, be aware of all the things that may affect it.
NOTE: I don't recommend HP washing anymore. The only reason before for DrKs to wash was so staying under 40%/50% for zerk was easier. Now that zerk works differently, more HP is still helpful, but definitely not required. Spend your money on more important things. I'll keep this section up though in-case, for some reason, you still want to HP wash, or want to wash on another class.
Basically, all HP Washing is, is when you use AP resets from the cash shop to take points out of MP and put them into HP.
First off, I want to state a few things. If you are thinking about HP washing, know that it will be expensive, and make sure there aren't other things more important for you to do with the money before you hp wash. Also, HP washing is in no way necessary, and should simply be considered a luxury to those that have nx (Yes, another luxury for those that have nx)
the way to do it requires the following:
2 full AP reset
one heckuva lot of money
the best int equips you can get
the highest level you can get.
Something else to take note of is your minimum MP. A DrK's mp cannot go below a set amount. The formula for finding this is 4*your level + 156. So if you are level 100, multiply that by 4 to get 400, and add 156, so a level 100 DK would not be able to hp wash below 556 mp (not that you would want to HP wash before 4th job anyway).
method:
-buy the first full AP reset from the CS.
-determine how many points you plan to put on MP
-use the full AP reset, and dump all the other points in int
-equip all your +int and %int gear to get your int as high as possible
-dump the remaining AP into MP
you'll get approximately 1 mp per every 10 int you have, so having 2k int means getting 200 MP per ap used.
-afterwards, use the second full AP reset.
-dump as many points as you can wash into HP (accounting for the points into mp!)
-dump the rest in STR
-use individual AP resets to get all the AP from your MP out, and into STR
-you'll now have your normal str, a lot of MP, and a lot of extra HP.
you can keep repeating this as long as you have AP in your hp/mp pool, and have enough MP to wash (every reset takes 4 mp)
Thanks to zgtaf, poopymann, sedvyse, renma1234, khianiwest, djp2313, cookie4mesos, quietus, wenboduo, chickenpoodl, plusle4eva, SylentXynh, IVege, Celyfaye and all the other DK sub-forum regulars that helped me gather info to put this together.
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