It's only after you start playing some other MMO for a breathe of fresh air do you remember that every other MMO out there got tons of guides to help new players adapt in every aspect of the game, and somehow heRO got none, even for its selling point monthly attraction: the Trial of Heroes.
This guide will give pointers and advice on how to prepare for the monthly Trial of Heroes (known as ToH in heRO) and know what to expect to the best extent possible.
1. Questions to Ask Before the Trials
A) Read the Rules
Read
THIS THREAD HERE on the basic to the rules and what it is first. This guide will expand on the details, but you should at least know what the giant event is.
Know your rules now, as penalty for rule violation is often harsh in ToH and the entire server will glare at you afterward. Every rule violation wastes a lot of time making the event unnecessarily long. Rule violation often result in disqualification, point reduction and/or mute/jail time. Be very familiar with the rules.
If there's any confusion with ToH rules, best to ask about them in forums before the event. Asking during the event is not a good idea (and it's a sign that you are not prepared enough.)
B) Can You Attend?
There's 2 requirements to joining: having enough Light/Dark points, and having enough time on the day of ToH.
First thing about points is very easy. The required number of points are not very high at all. Refer to the
heRO wiki here and scroll down to the allegiance quest section to see details about allegiance related quests. Doll's Quest and Find the Explorer should be the easiest to handle, and completing both of these quests should give you enough points to join ToH already.
Second thing is also what most players ask the GMs about: when is it, and how long is it?
Expect 6 hours long starting from said time.
Though GMs are getting faster and faster with technical improvements, usually the moment someone is found cheating, the event comes to a sad stall for at least half an hour undoing the damage and unearthing the whole organization of rulebreakers. Smooth run without cheating can be as short as under 4 hours, but in 2 years I think that heRO only got that twice.
As for when is ToH, usually it is server time Saturday, though that is not a guarantee. GMs, mods or players DO NOT KNOW IN ADVANCE when ToH will be because GMs need a full 2 days at least to setup the event, and it'll depend on their RL schedule if it's allowed. When they know of the date, they will post it immediately so do not ask about when is ToH this month. Doing so will only annoy the GMs/players, and if repeated, will make you look horrible.
C) What level/class are you?
I do not recommend anyone to join at least until lv 85, especially if this is your first ToH. While gears and previous experience easily allow non-trans before lv 85 to win (novice have won before, babies also won before, but those are rare), if you are new to the server, I recommend minimum level of 85. Higher level the better.
The unspoken truth, even though GMs desperately try to change this, is that
Archer classes *are* the easiest class to win. GMs throw some curve-balls dedicated to kill off archers, but generally speaking, archer family can do reasonably well with the least amount of gears. That doesn't mean that only archer family can get the highest point (blacksmith and knight are also very good), but archer just needs the least amount of preparation/gears compare to everyone else.
Casters do have it the worse, not that they absolutely cannot win, but they need the most gears to do well. Since ToH is mainly a solo event, that means casters need something to overcome their low defenses as they cannot hide behind tanks like a party. To do this, they need exceptionally better gears to other classes in order to survive.
Note that priests do have handicap bonus points, but usually they still struggle as a class due to the lack of offensive abilities to do well. As much as they do very well at breaking draws/ties due to high defensive ability, usually they are at the mercy of the bonus rounds to get the 70 points required.
Adjust your expectations accordingly using these as guidance.
D) How skilled are you?
ToH is *mainly* pvm oriented (you can select pvp, but there is 1 unavoidable pvm event: the Monster Trials). If you haven't even been to nameless islands to see the beginnings of the higher tier monsters, don't even bother about ToH. You should at least be able to handle nameless islands in a party with ease to live ToH.
It's best if you've at least set a foot into the New World and Thors Volcano in party setting. Thors Volcano represent some of the higher end monsters to get you settled down and prepared for the trial. New World contains customized monsters unique to heRO (even though their sprites are official, they are heavily customized here), and ToH may involve custom monsters. If you have a very hard time surviving in New World Manuk/Splendide fields even in a party setting, then most likely you aren't prepared enough for the trials.
Another good testing of skill especially for ToH monster trial 5th round is to try to solo, without outside help or buff: kill maya purple without help, and kill eddga/phreeoni without help. These are good gauges of where you stand specifically for the monster trials. Don't worry about time limit as phreeoni/eddga do have quite a bit of HP, but in terms of offense/defense difficulty rating, these are reasonable standards to set upon yourself. Say if Maya Purple runs you over like nothing, then you know that you got work to do.
2. Misc Things Before the Trials
A) Choose Your Events
The first trial is mandatory: Monster Trial. You cannot avoid it.
The main choice is the PvP Trial or the Item Trial. PvP Trial is 5 rounds of 1vs1 against random opponents who are also in PvP Trial. It should be stressed again that you do not get any handicap if you are baby/nontrans/extended and the opponent is higher level or trans-ed. It's up to you to decide if you are prepared to do PvP trials, as this is greatly dependent on your gears, item resources and your class.
Item Trial is essentially another PvM based trial, only this time it's about killing *lots* and doing it as fast as possible under competition. Item trials favor burst damage (not dps), fast speed, and all sense of defenses are tossed to the wind.
Generally speaking in terms of trends in the last year of attendance, the priests, creators, sinx and champions are all at PvP. LK/Whitesmith can fit into either one depending on personal preferences, and everyone else goes to item. Wizards/Profs occasionally show up in PvP as well.
More details for each specific trial and hints will be given later, but you should decide on which trial to attend as it affects your preparations.
B) Your Expectations
If it's your first ToH, getting below 70 points is totally COMMON. You don't fail at life for losing at your first ToH.
Your expectation should be: 35-40 points in monster trial, 25-30 points in your 2nd trial, then hopefully trivia nets you 5 more to land right on 70. Mass PvP is just icing and not something to rely on every time.
Use your first ToH's focus as earning experience for the event, especially if you are joining item trial as item trial is significantly harder the first time (as you don't know where everything is, where to hunt them, etc.)
It should be noted that sometimes in monster trials, your particular build for your class just *can't* win. It happens. The trial is NOT setup so that no matter what you do with your class, you got a chance to win. It is balanced so that every class got an *ACCESS* to win. Rather you have that access or not, is not the GM's concerns.
Some rounds are simply designed to really test you if you can even escape from it, let alone beating it for full 10 points. GMs are under no oblingation that a round is designed such that everyone can get 10 points. Getting 5 point may be all the GMs expect out of you in monster trial.
Likewise, item trial may not be designed so that getting 50 point is the goal. In fact, usually the GMs balance it for a much lower average.
All in all, never "expect" to attend ToH with getting full points as the final goal.
3. Knowing the Monster Trials
A) What Monsters Are in the Monster Trials?
Nobody knows, but you can make educated guesses.
Every month is different, and *anything* is possible choice, including things that are made solely for the purpose of the trial. Sometimes it's an official monster, sometimes a modified official monster, sometimes a custom, sometimes a brand-new custom, and even MvPs are game (again, modified or unmodified.)
Boss flag monsters may appear in any round, not just the last round (example: WoE soldier guardians). Last round is almost always boss flagged, but rare exceptions exist (such as Draco.)
It should be noted that telling anyone or even hinting about monster trials' monsters is the most often violated rules of ToH. Don't even hint about it, don't talk about its drops, don't go "yay I got <monster name's> card" out of joy. The moment GMs pick up anything resembling the monster choices during the trial, it'll be the end of ToH for you. At the same time, if you see anyone telling you about these things, report to the GMs immediately.
B) Educated Guesses Regarding Monster Trial Options
There are patterns or "most likely" guesses about the monster choices. Remember that this is all speculation, and GMs have pulled stunts to purposely violate these trends for shocks and surprises. Don't take anything for absolute rule here.
-Monsters are often *NOT* repeated for 3 months
If you find out Monster-A appeared in the last month, then *usually* they will not appear again for a few months. Only 3 exceptions have been made before: ice titans, maya purples, and necromancers.
-There is always a dark/undead elemental monster
Probability dictates this. A lot of RO monsters are dark or undead, so naturally you are very likely to run into one of these.
-There is usually a demon/undead race monster
For same reason as above, since most monsters in the game are demons/undeads, the chance of GMs picking a demon/undead are also high.
-Elements are usually varying
Almost always the 5 rounds all got different element. Exception is rarely 2 dark or 2 earth within the same ToH, which still happens (2 of any other element are possible too but that's even more unlikely). If there's 3 or more of the same element, especially if it's dark, you know it's a statistical abnormality, and more than likely a whine thread will be made in forums about it regarding ToH balance issues (since dark element is a bane to casters in balance, except the happy happy SL laughing at the wizards.)
-There is always that one monster with MDEF over 40
Bad news for casters, but it's almost always true (and not just recently too.) It's a matter of when they show up, and how many, but it's almost guaranteed that something of this nature show up. You'll need to think of counters for this in advance.
-Expect possibility of slave summoning monsters
ToH does not specify or guarantee that the monsters you have to fight will not summon more monsters. Things in the guild dungeons are excellent example of this: they will summon more helpers. Example of a round like this in the past is Creamy Fear or Kobold Leader.
-Guessing round 5 monsters
Round 5 is the solo round of only 1 monster. You can expect lower end mvps (Phreeoni, Eddga, GTB, etc) with potentially modified HP. Non-MVPs usually got boss monsters with 60k hp to 90k hp, such as maya purple, necromancer, bio3 monsters and so on. Things from new world such as bradium golem, Eralia or anything from Nidhoggur's Dungeon are the more likely existing customs to be chosen.
-Warning against fully custom monsters
ToH monster names are often disguised from the real thing, so you need to recognize a monster by its looks. Custom monsters made specifically for ToH often share sprite of existing monster, but you won't know if it's the real thing or a custom until you start fighting it. Usually, the custom monsters share the same element/race as the original as hint, but sometimes this is purposely violated for balance purposes (but this is a very rare case.)
-Assume official until otherwise
Even though custom monsters are possible, it's still easier on the nerves to assume that the monster is official and unmodified until you start noticing something odd about it, such as using moves it shouldn't be using. Statistically speaking, GMs in the past use more official than customs, so go along with statistics so you can be prepared once you see the sprite of the monster.
C) SP Conservation
Remember that monster trials is the first trial and you need to save items for the Item/PvP Trial. You should always be using your skill, but don't be too click-happy with your SP items. Use SP items when you see your SP bar in red only and keep it in that range. This is because the beginning of each round does give you a full heal, so don't heal more SP than you need to. This is also advantageous against monsters with soul destruction, an ability that often sap all of your SP (used by incubus, succubus, nightmare terror and some others.) Keeping your SP bar nearly empty but enough to keep using your skills will save you from using too many SP items.
D) Bring 8-12 Panacea for Monster Trial
Green Potion are decent but not ideal. The difference is that Panacea heals curse status. This may be a make-or-break difference because curse slows down your movement speed dramatically, sometimes monsters curse you on death and you cannot run to the end fast enough in time. Therefore, don't cheap out on few k of zeny and bring panacea. Handling silence and curse are the main uses of panacea in monster trial.
Bringing green potion and holy water separately is not advised as that's inefficient handling of weight. Royal Jelly got the same effect and heals HP/SP as well, but they are bit more costly to obtain.
Note: Panacea does NOT heal every status. Critical wounds, bleeding, stop, deadly poison, spider web, quagmire effect within quagmire, dec agi and broken joints cannot be healed by panacea. You can do nothing about these status.
D-1) Lv 5/Lv 6 Critical Wound
Ultra-unlikely but written just in case: critical wound is a technique that reduces the effectiveness of your heal. Percent based heal are the only items unaffected by critical wound, and the only item of this nature allowed in ToH is the songpyun (which nobody brings for good reason.) Custom monsters *may* have the ability to cast lv 5 critical wound which fully negates all heal item. So if your HP isn't rising at all even if you are spamming like crazy, the critical wound lv may be lv 5 then (0% heal, so no heal allowed.) Frenzy is also the only way to restore HP next to songpyun.
If critical wound is more than lv 5 on custom monsters, then in fact you lose HP the more you heal yourself (lv 6: 20% of what should be healed will become damage, lv 7 is 40% and so on.) Nothing, not even custom monsters, got lv 6 or higher critical wound, but that doesn't mean GMs won't use it on a very difficult ToH-custom monster.
E) Abusing the Trial Map
The monster trial's path is a very narrow U shaped path only 3-4 cell wide at best. Ruwach/Sight usually covers the entire path: this applies both ways (especially if for Eye of Surtur, Gajomart and Bio3 wizzy) if you are cloaking/hiding. This also means that using sharpshoot or brandish spear is almost guarantee to cover the entire lane without fail. Demonstration/fire pillar on the ground is almost unavoidable for the same reason, so just bare with it and walk through it tanking the damage. Remember to take width of the lane into account. Eye of Surtur and Skogul both use hide to spam grimtooth, in which case you may have to wait for the rare chance of them to unhide, or be forced to run from the round.
Nothing in ToH can teleport: neither you or monsters. This also means that you cannot high jump too. This aspect is a *great* advantage for players especially wizard. Rude attack as much as possible abusing the U-shaped bend near half way of the turn. You can precast a SG near the bend, lure monsters to walk into SG, then move back out of sight using the wall in the middle. Usually this is rude attack but monsters cannot teleport away here. This is often your last resort weapon, or even the only way to kill some of the monsters in trial 4 or 5. Likewise, hunter class can ankle snare like no tomorrow and keep shooting from maximum range without fear of teleport. Web-spam works in the exact same way for profs.
F) Bring Horong Clip/Satellite hat
On those rare, rare occasions, GMs use cloaking monsters. Usually the cloaking monsters come to you so that's no problem, but the one to really be careful about is minerals. They are passive, and they go invisible. Every time mineral appear in round 1, there's someone out there who didn't earn 10 easy points because there's 1 mineral in hiding. Bring some method to uncloak those minerals.
F) Try First, Run After
Regardless of how intimidating things look, always try first. It's possible that the monsters actually got modified, weakened stats especially if it's a MVP in round 5, or some intimidating looking monster at round 3 or lower. Don't trust monster names as they can always be lies.
The classic example is "Sword Guardian" 5 of them in round 3. Half the people ran off without trying getting only 5 points. In the end, it was only a camouflage trick on naming that it's a super easy 10 point round with a weak monster (sharing Sword Guardian name+sprite, but nowhere close in stats) if you got the bravery to try. Another example is Pandora using a "Bow Guardian" in round 5, but its ASPD is drastically modified to be way slower than the real thing. Again, it's an easy round if you actually stayed to fight it.
You can always pot spam and run after you start fighting it and you find your HP to drop too quickly.
G) Last Resort: Frilldora Garment
Run from what you can't fight, and cloak from what you can't run. With walls being that close to you due to its narrowness, Frilldora may give you 5 points from an otherwise pointless battle because you can cloak all the way to the exit. This is especially true against bio3 whitesmith round 5 and things of that caliber. It's strongly advised that if you got one, bring it. You can live without it for sure, but there's no reason not to bring it if you have it.
Again be careful that boss flagged monsters, insects and demons can detect cloak. Try to run from those, and if you cannot, you will be forced to battle them as cloak is pointless here. (EXCEPTION: Centipede is custom insect that CANNOT detect cloak. Yes they are insect, but they cannot detect cloak. This is not a coding error either. There may be special custom monsters with this specialty too, so don't immediately whine to GMs if you see a non-insect, non-demon, non-boss yet they can detect cloak. GMs have the right to do this.)
4. Monster Trials- Class Specific Hints
General note is that due to time restriction, it's all about burst damage. With very few exceptions, you shouldn't be normal attacking at all just like WoE. Spam the skills.
A) General Gear Suggestions
-just like woe, pack items up until 80% weight or more. Going overweight is usually fine because you have no time to wait for regen.
-Status resistant armor shouldn't be necessary, except marduk for casters (but even then, there's panacea.) The only reason you may consider marduk is if silence breaks your cast, or if you got low vit and is doing item trial (more on this later in item trial section.) Though some monsters may use stone curse/frost diver, they are hardly common enough to worth using marc.
-Status causing armor on the other hand are advantageous especially pest for casters. The random petrify can be lifesaver to reduce mobbing and slow things down to reduce damage received. For casters, petrify is bonus to change potential dark/holy element monsters (which are highly spell resistant) to earth 1, so at least they have a weakness now. Freeze applies in the same way, but pest activates more (but freeze works better for wizard who uses JT and not firebolt.)
-Due to ToH favoring burst damage, damage boosting gears are usually used instead such as isilla/vanberk in headgear over defensive gears. If you are confident in defensive ability, porcelio (especially in zodiac wings) are brought along as well with a 2nd armor for cases when the defense drop is too much to handle. Either way, if you got porcelio armor somewhere, it's strong advised to bring it along (porcelio's usage is even greater in item trial, more on that later.)
-If you really want to bring a defensive armor like elemental armor, angeling is obviously the most useful in general (no duh.) For many of us common folks who don't have it, bathory/ED is the most likely best candidate elemental armor, since dark elemental attacks are the most common from official monsters (there's no drawback to using ED since there's no priest to heal/buff you anyway, unless you play priest yourself. As a small bonus, ED can resist stone curse, but that's not common in ToH except for demon pungus and medusa round, and maybe Phreeoni mvp round. That's only 3 monsters out of all the possibilities?)
-For those who are new and can't afford fancy stuff, flower wing is your best default armor due to good defense sporting 11.6 defense and 20 mdef at safe refine level of +4, making it THE best unslotted armor (excluding god armor Brynhild) and it's not too hard to quest for it. This is *the* armor to turn to if you are not sure what you are doing. Nothing can go wrong with raw def stats of this caliber.
-If you got backpacks, then obviously that's something to use since more weight is more potions/gears to swap. Older players can be reminded that blessed/cursed helm combos also provide weight.
-Nothing in mid headgear slot? Don't forget that vote 4 points gear are easy access to put "something" in there. Even 1 def is better than nothing.
-For shields, valk shield is the obvious choice due to elemental bonus and it's accessible to many classes. Hodremlin is decent safe shield for all to bring as it works for everything. Race specific shields for monster trial should not be necessary. Hodremlin suffice.
-Because of the high likelihood of facing dark/undead monsters, you should always bring 1 holy weapon or santa poring carded weapon. Santa Poring is only hatter card and for ToH, GMs expecting you to have this by you is by no means unfair to new players. ToH is a high end event. Carded weapons are expected.
-At least have 1 weapon that's not neutral, because ghosts are possible. Wasting limited converters on those round 1 ghost is bad news in case you need that converter for the last round.
-You may not be able to afford weight to bring weapon of all 4 main element for some classes especially archer classes and their carded/elemental bows, so you need to pick and choose. Remember that you can use converters, so you can plan to bring neutral weapon and then apply converter on round 4/5 as you see fit. I'll just recommend maybe 3 weapons in total: 1 holy/santa poring weapon, 1 non-neutral whatever element, and 1 general neutral weapon for applying converters to. Str based classes got the weight limit to bring all 4 elemental, the santa poring/holy weapon and a neutral, with few armors to boot (thanks for reminder Jens), but if you want to carry more healing items, you'll probably need to drop one elemental weapon then...
-Aloe leaflet is low in weight at only 2 and heal for a very good amount. They are generally cheaper than (condensed) white potions, and you may have saved a few from the training days in moscovia too. Remember the strongest fish allowed is mutant only, and that may weigh too much for some people. If SP fuel is a problem, consider drooping deleter hat (it's a custom) which actually got a decent base def.
A) Melee Combatants
-LK: don't frenzy. Just don't... If the monster turns out to be customized hiding under official sprite, and they can elemental change, then you are immediately doomed. Frenzy got no flexibility, and no way for you to cure status like curse too. Save frenzy as last resort for a full heal and the extra speed boost to run to the end (such as against trial 5: if things are not looking up and you can't heal as fast or you are starting to panic, hit frenzy and run to the end.) NEVER use frenzy for offensive purposes unless you know for sure that bowling bash and pierce are going to be inferior options, somehow.
-Blacksmith: unless you see it's banshee or banshee master, or something with 1 vit, don't bother wasting time to hammerfall. Usually it's faster to use mammonite/cart termination and kill it instead of stunning it. Dont' forget the existence of cart revolution to handle mob spawners if the mobbing is starting to stunlock you too much or doing too much damage.
-Ice pick isn't the only def piercing weapon for LK, as luckily brocca and ahlspiess also got def piercing abilities which are strongly recommended if you have them with you to handle the high def monsters. In addition, these are spears, and golem type monsters are usually large too, perfect for pierce spam.
-For TKs, flying side kick is almost a given as method to travel to reduce walking time towards the monsters. Time is essential.
-Rogues: remember that you are allowed to ask GMs to give you your skills to plagiarize again. If you lost it, at the end of the round be sure to go to the middle to ask the GMs for it again.
-Sin: no brainer but as always bring status arrows for your grimtooth. One holy arrow for additional 5% bonus damage to demons (yes that effect does carry to your grimtooth too, though the holy attribute doesn't).
-Careful not to use spear stab/great axe mammonite too much for knockback such that the monster is behind the exit warp, and if you try to move up to chase it, you may accidentally walk in to the exit. Likewise, don't use your back to face the exit warp against a monster that can use knockback attacks, or else the monster may knock you into the exit warp prematurely.
-Again, converters shouldn't be necessary until round 4 and 5. Everything earlier should be manageable without converters. As for what converters to bring, then in light of only the monster trials: fire, wind and cursed water are the 3 that's necessary. This is because these 3 elements handle the high def/high end monsters like ice titan, bradium golem, skeggiolds, thanatos angels, necromancer and maya purple.
-Shield-based Crusaders will probably need to rely on low level holy cross or bash 10 to get through ghosts. Low level round 1 ghosts if you are devotion build, remember that you do have an awkward level of grand cross. This is especially true against kraben who got ridiculous high flee and it's ghost so it's strong against your forced-neutral shields and whatnot. You might as well try GC in situations like this. Another option is to use status armor and hopefully the ghost will be frozen/petrified then you can shield chain for the win. Always keep an eye out for time, and just abandon them for 5 points to always escape on time.
-Monks: asura is not be-all-end-all. TSS/PPS (for champs) are your main way to get through the lower level rounds. Just like casters, rounds get easier as it go by for you because you do so much better if it's not tons of mobs of monsters.
-For monks, you can try to freeze a high level non-boss ghost to change their element for asura, just like pvp. Be careful that in heRO, a miss with asura doesn't always signify ghost element. Special modified mvps based on tendrilrion, hardrock mammoth, kublin or the non-mvp garden watcher got special ability to avoid melee attacks completely, including asura, while not being a ghost itself using illusionary shadow. If asura missed on first hit, charge up asura again, then normal attack a few times before you use asura in hopes of breaking the shadow.
-Round 5 monsters usually got an elemental bash attack that's a 500% multiplier of their regular attack (or more.) Keep your HP above what their regular attacks can do, multiplied by 7 or 8. If your max HP is lower than this value, start running as you are in OHKO range of elemental attribute attack.
A-1) Melee Bane: Garden Keepers
These are the plant-def creatures customized in heRO to take 1 dmg from all. They are small so you can't pierce them, and melee units got no access to multi-hit. They got quagmire, and they are all about stalling with a weak earth spike only. Crusaders got it easy with shield reflect which is the only way to bypass their plant defense. Reflect can kill them immediately on their melee counter. Knights and smiths who are paranoid will need to bring high orc guard. If you don't have it, then your only hope is to mob all of them, then bowling bash/cart revo them and hope to kill them all. Killing them one by one is silly. They quagmire to dispel quickens and slow your DPS, so mobbing is your last option. Careful that if you mob them, their earth spike can stack up, so watch your HP/time, and just abandon them for a safe 5 points if you need to. Sins mob with grim as usual, but careful that earth spike can unhide you. Once you get the grim start then it's pretty easy, but the problem is mobbing them together and hiding without being revealed by earth spike. Silence arrow helps in silencing them to stop the spikes.
A-2) Melee Bane: Golem Class Monsters
For the sake of utterly destroying archers, golem classes are often chosen by the GMs. Sadly, you get caught in the crossfire. You have it easier than archer a bit since whitesmith can easily brute-force their way through, and knights got access to pierce. Provoke helps too for non-boss golem to really lower their defense, and for non-swordsman, you can try aloevera to use provoke. Golems are often large size monsters, and ahlspiess also help. If it's bradium golem though, you may want to consider just running from it because eating a bowling bash in the face is probably a OHKO (since you are unlikely to have the right shield card for it, and you'll need quite a bit of def to survive bowling bash from bradium with only hodremlin and no assumptio.) Sadly, I don't know how sin (not sinx) really got a chance against them except brute force grimtooth and hope for the best... crit builds work in theory and can take down the weaker golems, but I'm really not a big fan of crit build at all cause it's just so slow in damage output for other occasions.
B) Archer Class
I have no experience with ninja in ToH, so sorry if I got no advice for ranged non-caster ninja... no idea how fast is throw kunai if you can pretend that you are a hunter with better survivability but lower damage output.
Having it easiest doesn't mean that there's no precautions.
-Bring arrows: for the love of god, there's *always* someone begging and crying to the GMs just when the trial is about to start that they totally forgot arrows. Pleaseeeeee bring arrows.
-Careful of weight: monsters in the trial may drop things to put you overboard, and then you cannot craft arrows on the spot. You cannot drop items while waiting or trade (that's a rule violation), so you may be forced to sell stuff to make room. Don't be overly dangerous with 89% weight. Try 85% to give yourself a bit of room. Since you are going overweight, you can't bring raw material to craft then.
-Quivers not always the key: sometimes you only need like 50 arrow of some element like ghost. Quivers may be overkill sometimes for weight. Consider what element do you really need if you are bringing arrows or quivers.
-Converters still apply: that way you can use more oridecon/steel arrow and just use converter to save weight, instead of bringing too many elemental arrow which eats up weight. This isn't only true for Orc Archer bow user.
-Bring traps: while other classes glare at you because spamming DS get you through most rounds alone, you still need other skills. Bring traps to use ankle snare which is usually very helpful against the last round's single monster. (Round 4-5 area you may need to consider trapping then)
-Sharpshoot is often forgotten because DS suffice. There's some rounds where sharpshoot are highly advantageous, such as rounds that summon slaves or an unusual high hp round 1 where you may not have time to DS one by one. Mob then sharpshoot may be faster in some cases.
-Hotkey detect: really it's a given but it's your key to win against minerals that are hiding while being passive.
-with high flee on your side, it's even more likely that monsters can't touch you, making it very ideal to use porcelio for maximum damage.
B-1) Archer Bane: Nepenthes
Customized New World plants that spam pneuma like no tomorrow. They are probably under pneuma 80% of the time, and their spells can actually outrange you by 1 cell so there's no safe spot while you wait for pneuma to go down. You can try to hope for luck that pneuma goes down and they don't recast it that quickly, but you can bring myst case hat (custom equip) that only weigh like 30. It gives you mammonite, so you can actually do something to them while pneuma is up. Your dmg is not too high since mammonite is str based, but with your ASPD it racks up. It beats standing still being attacked by energy drain. Sometimes you may be able to weaken it enough so the second pneuma goes down, one DS is enough to kill it already.
If you are using myst case hat, remember that it runs off your atk power, so just use the bow with the strongest base attack (if you got no elemental bonus or carded weapon, that is.)
B-2) Archer Bane: Golems
GM's primary weapon to beat you, and these things take turn showing up soooo much.
This is a good reason to bring neutral all purpose bow, and make sure you got converters/elemental bow that handle fire, water and earth. These 3 elements are what the golem classes are made of: ice titan, logi (custom fire monster with 70 def and 85 vit like a golem), bradium golem and lava golem. Tatacho isn't a golem, but it's made of that same stuff due to shield reflect, stone skin but fortunately it's earth too. You can try to brute force DS them if you got the decent gear. If not, then you still got falcon assault for sniper. Try a few DS first, then if you find that DS damage output is slower than falcon assault, then switch to falcon. Hunter may need to try mobbing up then spam blitz beat (manual casted blitz beat does not split damage, however, chances are your brute force DS will do more damage than blitz beat.) Stalatic golem should be low enough HP to force your way through without much problem.
If desperate, you can try to use aloevera to lower their defense, but remember provoke only works on non-boss, non-undead, and aloevera is only lv 1 provoke.
Sniper with zeny should definitely consider using sniping suit purely for faster falcon in case of golem type monsters.
B-3) Archer Bane: Eralia and Phylla
Water elemental female looking monsters both share 1 skill in common: wall of fog. They will hide in there forever as a counter to range skills. Dmg is reduced, but that doesn't mean they will never connect. Arrow Shower and arrow repel both work to push them out especially for Phylla who doesn't recast fog as quickly (Eralia has no cooldown on fog, so she's ALWAYS in fog.) Arrow Shower works better against Eralia as a mean to kill off all her icicle summons with 10 hp, her main method to damage you spawning 6-8 of them around you when she is close to you. Trapping Eralia does NOT work cause she will immediately counter with pneuma, so that's just wasting time. Eralia you'll have to brute force DS her even with the fog, arrow shower if icicles appear (shower got lower cooldown than sharpshoot). Phylla you can consider shoving them out of fog before you continue your attacks. Phylla got access to lv 40 lex divina, so if you are out of green potions, you are silenced for a good 3 minute duration. Normal attack Phylla to pray real hard that she'll use lex divina again (lex divina is a counter attack, she won't use it unless she get range attacked or selected as a target of a spell), thus curing your silence (hope you don't need to be this desperate.)
If all things go bad, myst case hat spammonite as last resort or run.
C) Casters Combatant
It really sucks to be you. Freezing/Pest armor is almost required as sometimes throwing yourself in a bunch of dark element monsters, spamming the pot button while casting stone curse/frost diver is your only way to get rid of the annoying dark element (which resist your fire/water/wind spells.) While SL do have holy esma, they will need that extra defense mechanism from pest/freeze.
Sage has it worse than SL/Wiz, though a prof can change that around cause web is that much of a boost. This is because sage got no way to abuse rude attack, and got no self-heal/holy like SL does.
Phen is also a given. Use the phen clip switching tactics so you being casting with a dex bonus gear, then switch to phen after cast so you gain spell-cancel immunity when you get attacked.
Only certain skillsets work. You got to have ice wall/fire wall/safety wall, one of the 3 at least, or else you got nothing on defense to help you (or you got the gears to the point that you shouldn't need to read this guide for beginners.) Remember to bring blue gems then if you are using safety wall. SL should have kaizel for ToH.
-General: it's kinda reverse for casters, but round 1 may just be the hardest round. Sheer quantity is bad for casters cause your def is too weak, safety wall wears down too quickly and you may get mobbed. For SL, Kaahi got cooldown in how often/fast it activates (it doesn't really activate on every single hit), or Kaahi may drain your SP too quickly because mobs keep wasting your SP with forced kaahi activation. Don't be surprised if round 1 kills you while you see string of 10s from all other classes.
-General: against dark/holy monsters, if it's not boss flagged, you got no choice but to rely on FD/SC to change its element so it's no longer holy/dark, giving it an elemental weakness so you can do something against them.
-As mentioned before, you need to know how to abuse the map's U-turn area to rude attack safely as a potential last resort.
-Wizard: Don't be tempted to SG-JT, as if the monster unfreeze from wind spell, you may find it hard to recover. It may be more advantageous to use SG, then precast 2nd SG so that the moment the monsters unfreeze, they are hit by SG again to remain frozen. This is just general solo wizard tactics really.
-Wizard: Remember how rude attack is allowed. Abuse this with ice wall. Use ice wall to separate yourself from the monsters, then cast your aoe spells behind the wall. You aren't in line of sight behind ice wall from monsters, so sometimes you can slowly move up with ice wall a bit at a time to slowly push the monster back near the warp for round 5. This is specially useful for things like bio3 LK where the moment you are in line of sight, LK's first attack is a very deadly spear boomerang. Using ice wall and pushing onward with it may be one of the few safer ways for wizard to beat and actually win against LK (once you get the first freeze off on him, the rest should be a lot easier.)
-Wiz/Sage: firewall like solo play works, as narrow street helps you so even horizontal firewall is almost a complete blockage of the entire lane. This property is helpful against tons of mobs especially round 1.
-SL: kaupe lasts too little so for purpose of ToH, you may want to learn maximum kaahi/kaizel for the higher rounds. However, careful not to cast highest level kaahi every single time because lower rounds may drain your SP far too quickly and you burn too much SP items. If necessary, if you want to get rid of kaahi, try going to the middle and ask for a nuke from GMs.
-SL: eswoo is your best friend in round 4/5. Spam eswoo to keep your mspd low as you get in estun (to push it 1 cell) then esma. Eswoo again and repeat. By far eswoo, estun, kaizel are your buffs for ToH purposes.
-SL: high jump is disabled but not running. If you are against a detector so you can't frilldora and you got no chance of winning, wait in a safe spot for that round 5 boss to move closer to the end warp, then charge up running for a mad dash right to the warp for 5 points instead of 0. (applies to TK as well of course) More than likely, the monster may not get the attack on you fast enough due to position lag that works in your favor, or you end up dead on the OTHER side of the warp (which you got your points already so yay. You only need to exit the warp, but there's no restriction on exiting the warp being alive or dead.)
-Sages: if there aren't too many of them, dispel can be used to reliably get rid of pesky magic mirror or anti-magic which otherwise completely cripples you. Thus remember to bring the required gems to do so. This is especially true against Eralia who activates magic mirror after every lightning bolt. Lightning bolt, dispel, bolt again, dispel, and repeat, and you'll successfully bypass eralia's anti-wind magic defenses.
-Sages: Land Protector is also a good way to work in your favor dispelling wall of fogs by phylla and Eralia, and you can set it up so that the monster is in a LP but you are in your own SW/Fall of Fog giving you great advantage. Again remember to bring the gems though. This extends to using the correct land boosting skills like whirlwind and volcano to boost your bolt to speed up processes against high mdef foes or challenging high endurance targets.
-Prof: web is your way to rude attack. Webbed monster goes to "idle" state and completely shut off its AI most of the time (exception: bio3 LK. LK on idle will spam spear boomerang on 1 second cooldown.) Even if you can't web-firebolt it, you can web spam to immobilize the monster and run away.
-Prof web abuse: only got rare use if the slaves of a mob are that strong but it's worth mentioning just in case. Use web on the main monster that can mob. If the slave hasn't moved yet, then keep webbing the main monster and since the main monster's AI shutted down, the mobs will be treated on idle as well. You can safely walk past all of them then. If the slaves are moving to chase you as you web the main monster, run away from the main monster as the slaves chase. Keep running until you+the slaves are out of sight from the main monster. Web all of the slaves. Now when the slaves are freed from web, you will notice that the slaves will NOT go back to the main mob until they are in line of sight from the main monster again. This is because they cannot teleport back to the main monster. Use this to your advantage in round 5 against slave summoning monster. You can effectively de-mob the monster this way reducing round 5 down to a 1vs1 solo (in which case, you can spam EVEN MORE WEBS to put it on permanent idle state.) This works for ankle snare on hunters too, but ankle snare duration is so short and hunter's damage output is so high that you probably don't need to use this at all. Hunter got flee to withstand slaves, but profs may not have the luxury to tank the slaves.
C-1) MDef Pierce Options
It's bound to have a high mdef round.
If you are trans, staff of piercing is given, but what about SL and nontrans? A rod/staff with necro cards serve as a mini-staff of piercing. Requiem Hat custom also got magic piercing ability. The hat shouldn't be too expensive and it goes very, very well with a high refined Principle of Magic for sages.
C-2) Battling Anti-Magic, Magic Mirror or Spell Immunity Elements
Even FD/SC doesn't work so what now? Just like archer, your last resort is dagger of counter (shouldn't cost much), and then myst case hat and start pounding at 700 dmg per hit to hope for the best. If it's Anti-Magic, then luckily they receive bonus damage to melee so your mammonite isn't as pitiful as you may think. This sounds like a horrible option, but sadly this is really all you can do. If you want to go extreme, bring a poison status casting armor, so *maybe* you can get poison off of the monsters, reducing their def by 25% then (but if that's the case you probably should just run and get 5 points and not risk dying)
This isn't too helpful in monster trial, but this is much better in item trial. So if you are doing item trial, bring it just in case.
D) Plagiarism: Last Chance!
Make sure you have your plagiarized skill before the end of monster trial, as GMs will stop giving them out after monster trial, especially if you pvp. If you pvp, and you lose your copied skills, GMs WILL NOT give it back to you, so this is your last chance to get your skill back.
5. The Item Trials
A) Ask An Older Player for a Map
In Item trials some NPCs are scattered which are used to synthesize items for the hunt. Before you attend, ask an older player to please show you where the item trial npcs are. The map is going to be a clone of Alberta at this point of writing, so if you ask nicely without being a bother, an older player can tell you where the NPCs are. Memorize this or at least write it down and have it on alt-tab during the trial for easy reference.
B) Write Down the Synthesis Recipes
As noted in the ToH general info post, some items are synthesized from other items. Find that same person who helped you with NPC location for the recipe, write this down, and put it in a internet tab or word document for easy reference during the trial, so you instantly know what to hunt to make a required item, and where to synthesize it.
C) Don't Button Spam during NPC Conversation
Item Trial npcs are purposely made to be a pain. They got a lot of convo boxes, and the moment you get impatient, you will be tricked by the GMs to click on the first option, which is for the NPC to REPEAT EVERY POINTLESS THING THEY JUST SAID. Be patient, wait for the NPC to give you the option to either repeat their "story," other irrelevant options, or synthesize the items.
D) What are the Item Requirements?
It changes every month but it's always the same few items that are only found within the item trial map. You can't store them for next trial either. You hunt them on the spot every time.
The format is usually this though:
-2 items that are dropped directly from a toh item trial monster at very high rate, and the GMs will ask for a lot of this
-1 item that drops at moderate or low rate, and the GMs will ask for moderate amount of this
-2 synthesized item, and the GMs will only ask for 4-6 of these
In the rare scenario that GMs only ask for 1 synthesized items, then GMs will probably ask for another moderate/low drop rate item, and then GMs shoot all item quantity requirement through the roof.
These items again come from ToH item trial exclusive monsters. Sometimes you need items from all monsters. Sometimes only a few. It changes every time.
E) What are the Item Trial Monsters?
They are all intimidating looking mvp sprited monsters with extremely pansy stats and are always passive, so they only counterattack. They always share the same size, race and attribute as the real thing, with occassional rare changes (such as only dark lv 1 or 2 instead of 3) for balance purposes. None of them are boss flagged so you can use status on them, or coma them.
Note that most ToH monsters are not out to kill. You can OHKO or 2HKO them extremely easily in most circumstances. Strategy of the ToH monsters are actually to stall you out with a super-weak version of what the real mvp do, with only Baphomet and Ifrit who are actual (somewhat) of a damage dealer. Killing you is the best way to waste your time after all.
If you died, DO NOT RESPAWN. Wait for the automatic full HP/SP resurrection.
ToH Baphomet: uses dark soul strike and snap as counter to ranged attack, nothing threatening at all only doing low damage.
ToH Thanatos: can use hammerfall to stun to waste time. Ghost elemental, so this is another reason to bring some random non-neutral weapons with you.
ToH Garm: uses frost diver to freeze you then walk away to waste your time, but more often than not, you OHKOed it before it can pull it off.
ToH Ifrit: fireball to stunlock a bit, and uses a low level meteor storm. Its INT is actually decent so if all meteors connect, it does do 1000 damage and meteors got a chance to stun.
ToH Bacsojin: uses lex divina when attacked, and chance of using it increases significantly if it's a ranged attack (be it bow or spell.) This is the only justification to use marduk, because you probably can't carry that many green potion if your vit is too low and thus prone to easy lex divina.
ToH Turtle General: uses stone skin to reduce damage from physical attacks, and shield reflect to reduce arrow damage even further. Brute force melee usually gets through. For archers who got archer card combo, you can actually coma them to death. Rarely uses sonic blow in melee but that's minor damage. Hunter classes got birds to bypass their defenses, and sniper's falcon assault is definite OHKO.
ToH Drake: uses dec agi which is extremely detrimental as it's the worse time waster in item trial. Movement speed is crucial in this trial. Try to OHKO so you don't give it a chance to use it. Drake has a lot of elemental weakness so this shouldn't be hard to do.
ToH Tao Gunka: uses anti-magic and spirit destruction against melee. Anti-Magic is a giant pain for the casters, and this is the reason to use dagger of counter/some other strong dagger with myst case hat for casters. If anti-magic is up, even a prof with double bolt is capped at maybe 100 damage only, but mammonite is going to do 900+ to tao gunka (because tao gunka's lv 3 anti-magic is going to take bonus 60% from melee!) By far caster's worse nightmare is to hunt 40 items from this thing.
E) Strategic Hunting Order
Everyone else is going to do this: hunt the first item on the list, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. The first 3 non-synthesis items are always the easiest to do, and the main source of your points. Most people only hunt these 3 in the time limit, and only if there's remaining time, try to do the synthesis items. This posts a problem though: everyone is hunting for the same item at the same time.
Be smart, and hunt the 3rd or 2nd item first as your focus, then do the first item on the list a bit later. This removes some competition fo fighting for the same monster.
If you know your item list well enough off by heart, you can hunt any and all monsters that you need to hunt the moment you see any of them.
As for the last 2 synthesis items, do NOT try to completely do 1 synthesis items, then move on to the next one. You earn 2 points just for having 1 synthesis item. Usually it's easier to get 1 of each synthesis items, getting you 4 points total, and if there's still time, get one of them to the half way point to get you 2+5=7 points. This is especially true if time is already running out and you got no way to get half of the required amount of synthesis items.
Abuse the point distribution table in your favor. Focusing on completing only 1 item at a time is not very wise. Starting the hunt on the first item listed isn't smart either.
F) Gearing for Item Trial
Burst damage, all out offensive is your focus. The monsters got such a low HP, and if you OHKO them, then they cannot trigger their stalling counterattacks. Dying is hardly a problem due to timed resurrection. Use whatever gives you the most offensive power possible, such as porcelio wings and what not.
The only special type of gear you need on top of all out offense is movement speed boosting items. Since this is all about finding the right monsters (before other people get to it), movement speed becomes important, especially for synthesis items going from one npc to another. Movement speed boosting items in heRO include avian wings (not recommended since it sacrifice porcelio armor), peco peco wing, bloody axe, adventurer hat. If you got increase agi, then none of those equipment stack so you don't need those. Out of those equip, bloody axe and peco peco wing give the most mspd boost so take those along with you if you have it (you can gear swap to your offensive gear when you are attacking via hotkey, then back to your hat/axe when you move.) Those equip do not stack with each other either, so only use one of those.
Peco peco wing isn't a drawback with ASPD decrease, cause you OHKO anyway (or you should try to OHKO, 2HKO at worse.)
G) Battle Tactics
Knights who are mobbing a bunch fo monsters for BB, are usually not getting the most out of it. As much as that's SP conservative, that's not wise in speed. Monsters all respawn immediately on the map, and if you mob them, you are giving the monsters chance to counter attack: worse ones being frost diver and dec agi being the absolute worse. You are also tempting people to KS you, rather intentional or not. Same is true for grimtooth and wizard AoE.
Wizard should just stick with double siroma which is enough to kill everything, and low lvl JT for garm and potentially firebolt against Bacsojin depending on how strong your cold bolt is (double siroma using minimum required level of cold bolt should suffice. It should be noted that again, fast bolt to kill 1 at a time is your protection against KS, as much as KS is illegal in this event. GMs just can't be everywhere at once.) Sin get the short end of the stick having to rely on sonic blow which got an annoying cooldown. Gypsy/Clown should refrain from the slow arrow vulcan, and stick with DS. Use whatever skill that has the least amount of charge time and least amount of cooldown so you can fight the next monster ASAP.
Smith's just spamming money as it's their only solution for all problems.
6. PVP Trials
Nothing much to say since it's not that different from regular pvp, except that the map is actually pretty small, being perfectly square figure with puddles of water (so if you need to, waterball is there.) It's just like any other pvp. WoE rules are NOT in effect, so all damage calculations are not reduced. Remember that it's also timed, so expect to pot-spam for a draw from yourself and your opponent. This is probably why pvp trial attracts classes that usually got access to OHKO their targets.
Since there's sadly only 5 converters for the entire trial combined, and you probably used some in monster trials already, this may be something you need to plan in advance that somewhere along the way, your pvp trials will have to go with no converters, so whatever your weapon's element is, that's it. This will affect your weapon choices potentially bringing more elemental weapons than usual depending on your converter usage in monster trials.
Default pvp suggestions: careful of valk shield reductions so use elementals appropriately, but it works in reverse too. Since you can predict that the opponent will use something like wind or earth to get around raydric+valk shield, you can use earth/wind garments instead to try to out-predict your opponent. This is really just standard pvp/woe again...
Priest-stall: you need to be in the dead corner (remember, woe rules not in effect so there's knockback) if you are spamming safety wall, to avoid pushing palm strike knockback chained with asura to get you out. If you are at a corner, you will be immune to knockback. Next thing to be careful of is that the opponent will use range to try to freeze/stun/status on you so you cannot refresh SW on time. Wear marc/evil druid in advance in the corner, and with good SW spam/pot spam, you will have a much higher likelihood of surviving. If you plan to be in the corner against sinx/champ and you strongly believe in your own SW skills, you can just use range reduction on garment/shield to reduce the grimtooth/TSS damage which you should be able to pot spam off. If it's creators and we're talking about no GR, then it's reverse that you need pneuma, but now you have vanil to take care of. Status armor is probably best chance to stall vanil out. Hopefully you got good vit to stop blacksmith spammerfall to stun you from using SW. If you got basilica, once you enter the last 30 seconds, basilica, and you got your tie game. (Likewise, you can run to the corner and start off with basilica to burn off another 30 seconds, this way you only need to battle for 1 minute.)
Interesting note: creators cannot resummon homuns as a rule, and that's usually THE rule creators violate the most due to reflex/instinct. You can be evil as a ruleshark, and if you got no hope to even win/stall out the creator's inevitable AD onslaught, you might as well try to kill vanil, and hope that the creator acts on reflex and respawn the homun, and you'll luck out winning by default.
Can't stress enough to have some way to un-hide chars. Weaker opponents probably rely on hide/cloak to stall you out completely.
Same thing applies for special skill restriction.
With all of the above stated,
this is why I strongly advise against new players doing PvP: you don't have the gears to win. Do it later when you are established in the server.
7. Trivia Trials
This is a bonus round, not something to rely on, and usually you get 5-10 points only. Trivia is not made for you to try to get full points at all. Most of your points should be earned already.
Be careful to listen to questions carefully, kick off your siblings from youtube upload and torrents for maximum internet speed if it's in your power. If anything, the common excuse for wrong answer is "my computer was lagging I totally know the answer." It happens, and GMs are not going to give you your points if you fail to get it on time for whatever reason.
Rules are the most important aspect of trivia. Be sure that you spell things right (spelling counts), and everything is in small letters. Before start of trivia, if you are confused about any aspect of the rules, be annoying and ask, especially about punctuations or any other special format for a particular question.
Though other players probably do this, but if you do find a mistake in the GM's questions (which happens from time to time, no one is perfect), be sure to verify and ask about it. If the GMs do see a mistake, they will be kind and give a bonus question to make up for it.
If the question only got 5 second time limit, it's almost always a number. If you don't know it off the bat, randomly guess numbers. *Usually* 5 second questions are number question AND the answer is pretty short too, so it's a number withing guessing range.
Do not be alarmed that questions may involve custom content of heRO. Anything that can be found in heRO are all fair game questions.
If you believe in your alt-tab speed, you can open whatever RO database, google, heRO wiki and heRO forums in the background for searches, though you probably got no time for this except for 20+ second questions.
The only realistic type of questions where you can search for it on the spot are questions that you can find out about with a quick @mi. Those are the monster related questions, usually asking about element or race. Now usually if the GMs are asking something like this, then there's a trick to it. The monster probably doesn't look like it belongs to that race/element, or it defies common sense (eg. Marina is a plant not a fish).
The other super famous example of "this is too obvious something got to be wrong" is Pandora's question of asking for the weapon element of burning bow. It's actually neutral, and everyone is spamming "fire" as the answer. Out of the entire server, maybe 3-5 people got it even though there's at least 25 archers in the event.
That's the type of questions you should expect. It is difficult, but that's why this is a bonus round.
7. Mass PVP Trials
Nothing you can do but pray for the best during the event, since it all comes down to who attended and how things work out on the spot. The only thing to really avoid is to please for the love of all things good, don't kill your teammates on the same allegiance. It always ALWAYS happens (and somehow, it's always Light that does it. It's almost a trend of Dark winning because it all depends on how badly will Light kill themselves off.)??
Refrain from doing such, and for the rest you'll have to work it out during the short strategy time given. The map is brutally small and somewhere along the line, there's a gravity error to kick out some people... so just do your best to your ability.
Again, this isn't something to rely on for your points.
Credit:
Jens- not sure why I forgot provoke but thanks for reminder!
Ayantis- he's being all technical with me so *pifs and go fix guide on details*
Panda- fixed more typos for me XD
Aaronock- dispel can get rid of magic mirror and anti-magic
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Any questions or additions, please feel free to post it~
Beginner's Complete ToH Guide
