General

The thing about Maplestory is that it rewards players who stick to a single character and play continuously for years
I absolutely guarantee if I hadnt gotten banned, for a year and stuck to a single char, 2mi~2m would have been achievable spending <100$
Do yourself a favour, just do what you can in game. when you finally quit this game, you'll regret spending obscene amounts of money on this game.
obviously 100-200 is w/e for a year or two of a enjoyable game, but 2000$ is 100% wasted.

./end rant

My db only has 150k range but is still fun. Plus he can finish Lith harbor in commerci trades and kill gollux so its not all that bad with low funds.

[quote=fradddd]@iEvanMaster: but you didn't give me all your mesos, and I'm willing to spend a thousand dollars on the game.
So yes, there is no hope.[/quote]

You don't want to know how much I've spent over the years. </3

I regret spending money on this game.

However, the friends that I've met in my time playing, I would not trade them for anything else. I share very fond memories with them.

Even in the deepest darkness, light can be found.

@iEvanMaster: but you didn't give me all your mesos, and I'm willing to spend a thousand dollars on the game.
So yes, there is no hope.

I can vouch for this. I had to give up 2 legs and an arm to fund my dual blader to 2m2m. I play with 1 hand, like a champion.
On a more serious note, Dual bladers % dmg in mobbing is low, low enough you need 650k~700k to 1 hit SH mobs.
Our PB is fast, but realistically with green mpe potion and dSI you're capable of doing around 2PBs a second which ultimately converts to (7x1.7x2) lines / second
(23.8 lines / second)
Asura has a current cool down of 90 seconds and last for 10 seconds. It's a really great burst dmg skill. Doing 500% dmg in 3 lines + mirror image..
you're looking at 7650% dmg / second for 10 seconds. That's 76,500%.
With the up coming revamp for dual bladers, Asura's CD is reduced from 90 to 60.
PB and BF % dmg is increased.
All in all, the revamp will help, but with all classes funding is required. Dual bladers without funds can be fun, but extremely frustrating when you're doing half the damage of people especially when you don't have no cool down FC (50 % buff duration)

Additional things to consider:
1. Asura will always be stronger than PB 1 v 1 if you're doing less than 34,222,283m avg a line with epic hero (55m dmg cap) without epic hero 31,111,166m avg a line.
2. No CD FC can be achieved with inner ability 25%+, mech card S (15%), Merc (% cool down), dCO ( decent combat orders reducing FC CD from 90 to 88 seconds), and empathy (every 10 levels = 1%) DBs REQUIRE no CD FC to deal avg dmg.
3. Very small number of kataras in market so chances are it needs to be self scrolled and cubed.

[quote=fradddd]@iEvanMaster in other words, "give up hope all ye who enter"?[/quote]

No.

In the words of Kaname Madoka:

If someone tells me that it's wrong to hope, I'll tell them that they're wrong, every single time.

A year and a half ago I only had about 300k range buffed on kaiser.

Last June, I was able to solo CVellum, and finally accomplished the task of soloing "almost" (Damn you, Tower of Oz and your 1tril hp, Dorothy) every single boss in the game, and finally quit.

[quote=iEvanMaster]Unfortunately with the way this game has gone over the past few years, to make any sort of profit from bossing you're going to need over a 2mil range to kill Hard Magnus and Chaos Vellum, as well as the other three CRA bosses and Hell Gollux.

The amount of money you'll make from them isn't even close to what you'll need spend to fund a db to that point in order to do so.
(Unless, you spend months and months doing nothing but bossing and merching.)

What you need in order to be considered "godly/strong":

First off, have all the link skills, or as many of the good ones as possible.

**15% LUK MINIMUM on all equipments, from regular potential. 21%+LUK preferred.

At LEAST 2% LUK/ALL STAT nebulites on every non weapon, 3-4% PREFERRED. 20-25% bossing nebulites on dagger/katara

AT LEAST 10 atk on bonus potential on every non weapon, at the minimum. (Though people usually get into this step when their regular potentials are already pretty solid.)

Full thief RA set. Either primed scrolled, or scrolled with chaos scrolls of goodness.

Weapons at least scrolled with scrolls that give 8 attack each, at minimum. At least 8-10 stars, preferably 12-15.
A mix of %boss, %atk potentials on weapons, with at least one line of %Ignore Defense somewhere, preferably on emblem since emblems cannot get %boss.

A full tyrant set, with as many stars as possible. Usually 7-10 unless you're one of the lucky few that can afford better.

A full reinforced/superior gollux set, fully scrolled with advanced gollux scrolls. Consisting of:

Two pendants (Double pendant slot) and earrings.
Superior ring and reinforced ring, no matter which set you go for as these are among the two best rings in the game.
Solid Ring, and the last ring can either be a cracked gollux ring or any other filler ring that you have access to, preferably able to be potentialed as well.

Either a Raven horn chaser shoulder, meister, scarlet or tinkerer shoulder.

A Ghost ship exorcist badge, the only badge that can receive potential.

And lastly your android heart. Preferably a superior lidium heart but those are almost impossible to get now, I'm assuming. Any heart with at least 50 attack will do, perhaps a beryl heart scrolled with 9 atk spell traces.

And I think that covers everything.

All of these items add up to a ludicrous cost in mesos, your only shortcut would be to buy them off people who are selling their gear off for either NX or other means that cannot be discussed on this site.[/quote]

Perfect list.

The RA set is a bit tricky to find in the FM with good stats so trying to scroll them on my own might have to happen. Currently negotiating a katara with Boss damage hopefully he doesn't ask for my foot to buy it.

This is gonna take time to find all of that. But I'm willing to put in the effort if I fall short I might just drop back to a shad but that's last resort. Thanks this helped a whole lot.

For items, work on getting level 150 and at least clean fafnir gear, clean reinforced gollux gear, and if you could, clean tyrant gear.
Fafnir(Get the weapon first, then hat, top and bottom) takes priority as the full set gives 60% boss which will help you get gollux gear.
If you want, you can get gollux gear the slow way and work your way up by killing the xtimes boss daily, although it is hard with just fafnir.
If you really want, I guess you can get away with the empress cape, and boots until you get the tyrant. for gloves, the dimension gloves, scrolled, does fine until you get tyrant.
Start with the weapon and try to scroll it perfectly, which will take forever and a half. Proceed to enhance and cube it until it has a chance to be destroyed. Then do the same with Katara, tyrant gear if you got it(I reccomend using protection scrolls when enhancing to prevent boom) and enhance your gollux gear. Only scroll your gollux gear with gollux scrolls though.
Although funding a db will take at least as much mesos as I got fat on me, if you are patient enough, i guess you can do it slowly.

@iEvanMaster in other words, "give up hope all ye who enter"?

[quote=JayTokyo]That's the kind of advice im looking for. I'm willing to fund it I just need to know what to get and what I'm looking for what numbers i need to get. I figure if i can fund a DB I can potentially boss and make back the money for any other character I make. So Let's hear it everyone.

Add me in game if you wanna talk prices too IGN is AboveThem[/quote]

Unfortunately with the way this game has gone over the past few years, to make any sort of profit from bossing you're going to need over a 2mil range to kill Hard Magnus and Chaos Vellum, as well as the other three CRA bosses and Hell Gollux.

The amount of money you'll make from them isn't even close to what you'll need spend to fund a db to that point in order to do so.
(Unless, you spend months and months doing nothing but bossing and merching.)

What you need in order to be considered "godly/strong":

First off, have all the link skills, or as many of the good ones as possible.

**15% LUK MINIMUM on all equipments, from regular potential. 21%+LUK preferred.

At LEAST 2% LUK/ALL STAT nebulites on every non weapon, 3-4% PREFERRED. 20-25% bossing nebulites on dagger/katara

AT LEAST 10 atk on bonus potential on every non weapon, at the minimum. (Though people usually get into this step when their regular potentials are already pretty solid.)

Full thief RA set. Either primed scrolled, or scrolled with chaos scrolls of goodness.

Weapons at least scrolled with scrolls that give 8 attack each, at minimum. At least 8-10 stars, preferably 12-15.
A mix of %boss, %atk potentials on weapons, with at least one line of %Ignore Defense somewhere, preferably on emblem since emblems cannot get %boss.

A full tyrant set, with as many stars as possible. Usually 7-10 unless you're one of the lucky few that can afford better.

A full reinforced/superior gollux set, fully scrolled with advanced gollux scrolls. Consisting of:

Two pendants (Double pendant slot) and earrings.
Superior ring and reinforced ring, no matter which set you go for as these are among the two best rings in the game.
Solid Ring, and the last ring can either be a cracked gollux ring or any other filler ring that you have access to, preferably able to be potentialed as well.

Either a Raven horn chaser shoulder, meister, scarlet or tinkerer shoulder.

A Ghost ship exorcist badge, the only badge that can receive potential.

And lastly your android heart. Preferably a superior lidium heart but those are almost impossible to get now, I'm assuming. Any heart with at least 50 attack will do, perhaps a beryl heart scrolled with 9 atk spell traces.

And I think that covers everything.

All of these items add up to a ludicrous cost in mesos, your only shortcut would be to buy them off people who are selling their gear off for either NX or other means that cannot be discussed on this site.

[quote=fradddd]@JayTokyo what he means is that you'll literally need to obtain about 80 billion mesos worth of equips to even have a chance at defeating the bosses that everyone wants to defeat (Chaos Vellum, Hard Magnus, etc.)

But, I think Dual Blade is fun enough to play that it doesn't matter if you're a bit unfunded. I mean, do you really ever expect to hit cap?[/quote]

Hitting cap eh not too worried I was aiming for max 500k range but i'd love to max out my potential.

@JayTokyo what he means is that you'll literally need to obtain about 80 billion mesos worth of equips to even have a chance at defeating the bosses that everyone wants to defeat (Chaos Vellum, Hard Magnus, etc.)

But, I think Dual Blade is fun enough to play that it doesn't matter if you're a bit unfunded. I mean, do you really ever expect to hit cap?

You could try farming superior item crystals from the boxes in Star World or go to Evolution Lab/start doing Silent Crusade, farm coins, and buy spell traces.
Also, by farming tons of spell traces, you should be able to sell them at like 20-22k each in Bera. They add up really fast to a lot of potential meso.

That's the kind of advice im looking for. I'm willing to fund it I just need to know what to get and what I'm looking for what numbers i need to get. I figure if i can fund a DB I can potentially boss and make back the money for any other character I make. So Let's hear it everyone.

Add me in game if you wanna talk prices too IGN is AboveThem

Honestly, with Dual Blade you need to come in to the class knowing that you need to spend tons of meso, and you need it fast. There is no working up equip by equip with DB, it does such low damage that you need to do a lot at once, so there really isn't the option to just boss and get better things cause the bosses that you need to do to get better things are ones you can't even touch with anything under 1.2 mil range.

Phantom is the same, just as expensive, though the skills they normally steal received a nerf so they are a bit weaker than they were previously.

I'd tell a returning player to play a Night Lord if they are stuck on playing thief, all thief equips are expensive as hell right now, mostly claws but the cost for a DB is 2x the cost of a Night Lord, and for a Shadower to hit its cap(With MC), it's 2x that of a DB. So even though claws are stupid expensive, it's still better than trying to fund a DB.

For training, there are guides, I have my own guide I use but I have to leave soon and I don't have time to type it all up, basically R&J till 140 then DimPQ till165 then go to Strong hold in future hene till 200/250.

First thing first, you need a Weapon, secondary and emblem, they give you % attack and boss damage (Excluding boss damage on emblem) then you need to get your Root abyss equips, then tyrants(If you can afford, if not Novas are a decent alternative) and finally you can farm our own reinforced/Superior gollux equips over time.

Again, I do not believe you should play a DB with lack of funds or wanting to work up to funds, you need to play DB when you know you can actually fund it, I don't care if you like the gameplay, you won't like it when you can't kill simple mobs at higher levels and have to rely on others to do things for you. Either way, it's your choice, I'm just giving my two cents..