Soloing Bio3 (Creator Edition)

[azurerogue]

Introduction

I originally wrote this guide in early 2011 for members of my guild who were interested in soloing Bio3. I leveled two creators there (only one of them extensively) and found it to be the most fun I've had in Ragnarok Online during my entire time playing (not just on heRO).

I'm releasing this guide more publicly because there's really no reason to keep it secret. I hope any Creators that attempt this get to discover the joy and excitement that is Bio3 soloing (or leeching for friends / profit). I don't think much else compares in terms of challenge / fun - and the experience per hour is ridiculously good for soloing (and still, in some cases, better than partying).

With a tag from your homunculus and demi-human experience shoes, you're looking at 687,500 experience per monster killed. And they're all over the place. And the ones you want to target die in 2-4 AD. That's (even with only 75 DEX) 3-6 seconds of chucking AD to rake in almost 700k experience. It also gives you MORE Job EXP than Base, meaning you'll easily hit Job 70 before you 99 if you level primarily in Bio3.

At one point I was making between 150,000,000-200,000,000 base experience per hour of (successful) soloing. Just so you can see how awesome this is, I went from level 98 trans @ 0% to 99 trans in one play session without going for too long.

I hope this introduction wasn't too long - if you're interested in having a lot of fun and raking in exp solo, read on.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Table of Contents
I. Prerequisites
II. Bio3 Monsters
III. Gear and Items
IV. Stats
V. Actually Doing It

NOTE: Much of this is based on my own experiences in Bio3 (getting from 90/55 to 99/70 soloing there). But I owe a major thanks to pictish for teaching me how to do it in the beginning.

I. Prerequisites

There are a few things you simply need to be able to solo Bio3 effectively as a Creator. I hope I don't forget any.

1. Frilladora-carded Garment - doesn't matter which garment (I used a Frill Wool Scarf so that I could use it with wool/tidal combo even after leveling, but it doesn't matter for the Bio3 process).

2. Smokie pet with accessory (so Eremes and Seyren don't own your face off while you try to cloak).

3. A homunculus with somewhat decent flee (not sure what level of flee is "Good" versus "Crap" exactly). My vanilmirth had almost literally the highest flee possible @ 242+ (might have been 245), and could flee several Bio mobs reliably. Having amazing flee certainly makes it easier, but it can be done by simply using your homunculus as a puller and not as a tank. If your homunculus cannot flee some mobs, this process (and exp/hour) will be slowed substantially.

4. Base level 90 (required to get into floor 3).

5. Demi-Human resist gear (really, just a cranial shield - preferably valk shield - but feather beret is a nice bonus if you don't need the INT from a headgear). Some might claim demon resist gear should be used. Myself, I prefer to keep everything I need on one skillbar for Bio3 so that BattleMode errors don't add to my death count, so I never bothered to bring demon resists (and you'll never want to kill Seyren anyways - explained later).

6. Enough INT to kill efficiently (get gear specifically for this - discussed later). Options include: Earring (no slot), Bazerald, Isilla Headgear (Drooping Lif, Crown[1] come to mind), Red Glasses, and maybe Evil Druid armor.

7. Marc carded armor (not strictly a necessity, I guess, but if a HWiz ever Frost Divers you out of nowhere, you'll be glad you're wearing it). Evil Druid works too, and gives INT.

8. Demi-Human EXP Shoes. Again, not strictly necessary - but the exp boost is welcome. You're looking to not get hit (and when you do, you'll most likely die with or without the extra 20% damage so you might as well get the exp). If you find you're dying too much at the beginning, consider taking the shoes off and using them once you have more experience/confidence down there.

9. Not a "prerequisite" but I wanted to note that you should ALWAYS be using Fly Wings in Bio3 - not a Teleport Clip. Teleport is simply too slow to reliably escape threats in Bio3, and it also opens up both slots for earrings which is nice.

On to the main part of this "guide"...

II. Bio3 Monsters

Howard Alt-Eisen (2 AD = 343,750 BExp / AD) - One of your primary targets. He has NO ranged attacks, which makes him easy as long as he's by himself (or with other Howards). 109 INT is enough to one-shot him. There are a number of ways to easily get that INT. Example: 2 Earrings, Red Glasses, Un-carded Crown[1] or Drooping Lif[1]. Use your homunculus to pull him within AD range and then either let it engage him (if it has the flee to life through one aftercast of AD) or have it then run past him and AD him again. If your homunculus dies, you can cloak and walk 9 cells away from him and AD him without resurrecting the homunculus since he'll die to the next AD (make sure he's not Assumptioed though, or you're in trouble as he'll be a four-shot instead of a two-shot).

Margaretha Sorin (2-3 AD = 229,166-343,750 BExp / AD) - Another primary target. You can 2 shot her with just 99 INT (maybe even lower) if she has no Assumptio up. You can 3 shot her with 113 INT even if she has Assumptio up from the beginning. She can be a minor threat because her Holy Light can one-shot your homunculus (and even you, if you're not stacking MDEF - which, if you are, you're doing something wrong). If you have Angeling and you want to be really safe you could toss it on, but I only died to Holy Light once or twice while down there. Other than that, use the same strategy as Howard and just keep her away and cloak if your homunculus dies.

Eremes Guile (3-4 AD = 156,250-208,333 BExp / AD) - I actually enjoyed Eremes as one of my three big targets. He is surprisingly easy to flee with a homunculus (though he may occasionally do a quick retarget-soul breaker on you for massive damage so be very careful if you're homunculus does not flee him at a high rate). Most Creators going down at low job levels will not be able to kill him in 3 AD. You need 117 INT to three-shot him. If he's Assumptioed you should avoid him entirely if possible - even if it means waiting out the buff. If you know he's nearby definitely get your homunculus out and then recloak, he can Soul Breaker from cloak (I believe) and do all of his other attacking WHILE coming out of cloak, so use your homunculus to lure him out. Once he's out, either let the homunc tank or AD and then recloak. I would not recommend staying out too long against this one unless you know your homunc can take a hit or two because of how quickly he retargets with ranged attacks.

Kathryne Keyron - No experience noted here because you really can't kill her (unless you're really bored and want to let your homunculus slowly wear her down). A better option, however, is to use your vanilmirth (it's the only one I ever had down there so I don't know if it works with the others) attack her while you stand in cloak around some wall or corner (to be safe). If you get lucky, the vanilmirth will either hit with an attack or (more reliably) a bolt right as it dies, and she will teleport. This is only really useful if you're trying to clear a spawn point so you can camp it. If not, just consider her a form of are denial, don't stick around if she's there. Her sight is too scary in high population areas (and I'm convinced she wears Maya Purple sunnies *shakes fist*).

Cecil Damon - No experience noted here because, while you can kill her it's generally not worth it. It takes 127 INT to one-shot her. That's like decent INT gear + Bless. If you're Blessed then you're probably not soloing, so you wouldn't need my advice anyways because she'd probably be Blade Stopped or already dead before you got to her. Consider her area denial. It's possible to teleport her with a homunculus (like the HWiz), but it's much harder since she will generally kill your homunculus before it gets to attack her. The only "good" way to deal with her might be to use the absurdly useless (otherwise) skill Summon Flora (which I never had). I've read that it can be used to teleport things by summoning a Parasite and then pulling the monster near it and cloaking. It thinks it's being rude attacked so it teleports - not that many Creators even get that skill - but I wish I had just to use it like this. You can't even really Suicide-AD into a Flywing to kill her because then she'll just respawn and ruin your spot again.

Seyren Windsor - No experience noted because he's simply not worth targeting. In fact, he bothers me more than Cecil because I don't even like to be on the same screen as him, no matter the conditions. He used to be okay before they gave him a ranged instant-cast Spiral Pierce (seriously? wtf?). If I recall correctly, he once used this insane attack to hit me for about 85,000 damage (I think it was 17k / hit) since I didn't carry demon resist gear. That means that, even with GR on it still would have one-shotted me. And it's instant cast. And it has either a 9 or 11 cell range (maybe even higher). He will often retarget even while your homunculus is still attacking as well. The ONLY reason to ever AD him is to do it right as your homunc dies and then cloak before the damage numbers stop (trying to teleport him) - but I'd still prefer my unreliable teleport method mentioned in Kathryn's section over this. He's WAY scary - which sucks because of his nice VIT.

The 99s - I wouldn't bother mentioning most since they're obviously not worth killing (90k exp? OBB drops?). But one of them ruined my experience for about 1 out of every 3 or 4 runs. Assassin Cross Eremes... if I could I would literally murder the game designer that created him. He spends 99% of his time in cloak, so you won't even know he's there until you're dead. He can Envenom, Sonic Blow, Grimtooth, Meteor Assault, Soul Breaker, Stun Attack, and a few other random ones - all while cloaked. Why? Because rather than giving him cloaking lvl 1 (like the regular Eremes has) the designers gave him an NPC ability called Invisible. He NEVER has to reveal himself except when the duration runs out. He has a 20% chance of using it when idle or attacking, and it lasts 30 seconds meaning you will almost never see him. If you manage to see a glowing SinX while teleporting around try to take note of where it was and NEVER GO THERE AGAIN! I kid you not, he will destroy you and there's nothing you can do about it.

Also, obviously, avoid the MVP (though I sent my vani at them once for fun... dear god the damage was huge).

III. Gear and Items

As long as you hit 113 (117 is better, though) INT and have demi-human resists you should be fine but here's what I used in terms of gear:

Headgear: +5 Feather Beret
Mid Headgear: Red Glasses
Armor: ToH Wings w/ Evil Druid Card (for 2 DEF/INT instead of one - it's how I hit 117 INT @ Job 60)
Weapon: +4 Bazerald
Shield: +4 Cranial Valkyrja's Shield
Garment: +7 Guard Wool Scarf
Shoes: +4 Assassinator's Shoes
Accessories: 2x Earring[0] (Spiritual Rings / Angelic Rings are also good, but they didn't exist when I did this)

As for items (I feel this is rather relevant) I would recommend bringing the following:

200+ Flywings (balance these out with fish/pots as these will usually be what determines when you go back to town - other than death).

As many Mutants as you can fit in your inventory / cart (I used mutant because I often made mistakes which required me to heal, and SP is constantly needed due to AD/Resurrect Homunculus/Cloaking). Really Mutants are the only viable options. Bass/Trout are too small in terms of healing. Salmons blind (which isn't the end of the world, but I'd still rather avoid it). And anything above this has a chance to freeze you or worse. Needless to say Freezing in Bio3 is essentially like asking for a trip back to town. You could alternatively bring White/Blue potions - but unless they're ranked they're less efficient than fish.

300-ish of each AD material. You usually won't need more than this due to running out of flywings or healing. If you have set up a respawn camping spot on a previous recent run, though, you can drop flywings (and maybe even fish) in favor of AD materials. Remember that if you set up a nice spot, you need to RUSH back or the map might reset if you take too long.

IV. Stats

I wasn't planning to put this in here because it's somewhat obvious, but just in case there are questions, here's what I did.

1. 99 INT (dur)
2. 50 Base DEX (I got this before anything else, after INT - maybe before Bio, I don't feel like calcing what level this is possible at).
3. Whatever your final level of VIT is (get this after 50 DEX to make you as survivable as possible in Bio3, maybe even before DEX if you feel like it?)
4. Whatever your final level of DEX is.
5. Why do you need anything else???

V. Actually Doing It

So now we know we want to shoot for a minimum of 113 INT (117 being the ideal - for Eremes Guile killing purposes). You've done the quest and you're in Bio3 - now what? Well, first remember that all you have to lose is the hours of time you spent farming AD and any experience you currently have (I jest, but really...). No, you'll be fine. Even if you die after every kill you'll still be profiting JExp-wise until you're well into your job levels. But, in all seriousness, you should be prepared to die - a lot. No matter how good you are at Creator, RO, or life in general, Bio3 is insanely hard (and also somewhat unpredictable). Dying is nothing to be ashamed of (unless you have gone from 99% to 0% - then you should probably just stick to Ice Titans).

The first step (which I often messed up) is to make sure you take off your Teleport clip (if you used one to get to Level 3) and put your other Earring on. I only note this because it was my most common mistake and made my 3-hit Eremes kill into a 4-hit, which was a waste of AD. The next step is to cloak (I never even brought another Garment down, I ONLY used Frilladora). Remember to check your homunc and smokey's hunger levels - just to be safe - then take a look around the entrance. The spawns here aren't great for camping but I found that I was often able to find a solo priest or priest/whitesmith combo that I could easily take out. If there's nothing good here, or you've killed the only good things already, rest your homunc (you don't usually want it out while FWinging through Bio3).

After you've checked the entrance you basically just fly wing around until you find something that's relatively isolated (and by "something" I mean Eremes, Howard, or Margaretha). Also, you need to land on a wall (near a wall is okay if Howard or Margaretha are the only monsters nearby - otherwise you need to be able to cloak right out of the wing). Once you find it, wait a few seconds after your immunity wears out (assuming you've already cloaked on a wall) to make sure there are no hidden Eremes (they will almost always Venom Dust the ground near you if they're around, even before immunity expires), then call out your homunculus and pull the monster toward you. AD it until your homunc is almost dead, then cloak and run along the wall to safe homunc res spot and then res it and rest it. Go back to the spot and call the homunc and AD again if need be. The nice thing about Call Homunculus is that somehow enemies around you register the homunculus as being there BEFORE they register you coming out of teleport immunity/cloak, so your homunc will get all the aggro. Send it away from you immediately and begin ADing.

Any time you land near the NW, SW, or NE corner rooms, check to see what they're like. If you're lucky you may sometimes find that a room is missing it's HW, LK, and Sniper. If not, sometimes you can pull the remaning members away carefully. If you can clear one of the rooms (or any other spawns, but I always found the rooms to be the easiest/safest) of all but Eremes, Howard, and Margaret you have yourself a nice spawn camp. If you find a spot with only one or two of the above monsters, it will be slower exp but it's also safer as you know for a fact you'll only ever have to deal with one monster at a time. I was once lucky enough to find the SW corner with only an HP and WS there, I gained all of 96-97 there without using more than 10 fish.

Dealing with multiple monsters is pretty tough - mostly because more than one monster on your homunculus will kill it almost instantly. And more than one monster on YOU is obviously worse. Your best bet is to cloak and hope they spread out (in case you aren't aware yet, like 80% of your time in Bio3 should be spent teleporting/cloaking, in my opinion). Another option is to get out of range and call your homunc and hope to grab just one on the edge of the screen and pull it. If all else fails, Fly Wing and hope for a better spot.

If you teleport a lot (your own definition) and can't find anything safe/good then feel free to take a break and check back after the server has had some time to move mobs around. Better to take a break than waste AD on crappy setups.

I'm sure there's a ton I'm forgetting because after section III. (or IV. I dunno) I was drinking and writing. So feel free to post any questions / comments so I can make this better (even if you don't play Creator, post, it will help me think critically).

-------------------------------------

If you've made it this far, I hope you decide to give Bio3 a try on Creator. As I mentioned in the introduction, I have found it to be the most fun experience in RO and I hope you do too.

Go forth and Acid Demonstrate!

[punisouffle]

Let the acid fly !!

[The Legendary Joe]

Question, now that the new SVN's removed the little pop-up window to confirm your teleport for lvl 1 tele, do you still recommend Fwings over Creamy clip?

[Story Teller]

Mhm~ creampuffs *homer drool sound*

[azurerogue]

Question, now that the new SVN's removed the little pop-up window to confirm your teleport for lvl 1 tele, do you still recommend Fwings over Creamy clip?

Good point. Tele clip is probably an option now. The only concern I'd have is if you'd need that accessory slot to get to a certain INT level. Oh, and also the SP use from creamy clip, though I suppose you compensate for that by being able to carry more consumables for SP.

[whitedraw]

I will be trying this once I have bombs.. 10 bombs left atm

[w@isAn]

my creator already 99 for age ago... prefer to level my homun, my homun like forever level 50

[Menace651]

Good guide. I tried doing this with my creo before he was 99/70 but got pwned pretty bad. Bio 3 is too mobby and you have might have to teleport around for a bit before you find a lone mob you can kill and the slightest mistake will make the mobs drop you in less than a second. I just ended up bombing unicorns to get to 90+. It's less exp but safer.