Beginner's Complete ToH Guide

[Jens]

Just a few things from a LK that has done a few ToHs.

First, as knight/LK you DO have enough carry weight to take all four main elemental weapons, a quad hallowed, pvp weapon and neutral high atk weapon, two or three armors and yet enough fish/aspd pots/other things to have leftovers at the end. I assume most WS can carry all of them as well, maybe sans the pvp weapon and quad hallowed as CT doesn't take card modifiers.??

Second, I use RJs instead of greens/panaceas, as it has panacea effect (not commonly known) and also restores a decent amount of HP/SP.

Third, some comments about the melee on monster trial section. Frenzy isn't the last resort option. Remember that you have a while to estimate an enemy. In all three ToHs (I admit, it's not much) I haven't encountered monster that'd change element. (I SO expect Panda to put one in the next one after reading this just for the heck of it)
I confess to a quite casual use of frenzy for offensive purposes in tier 3-4 just cause mobbing them with BB would be time- and possibly item-consuming, so I just zerk to "get on with it" but I always attack them first normal style to estimate their strangth and abilities. So I'd say kill one and then zerk or not.
Second, about melee vs high def. As LK, you can withstand pretty rough blows just by sheer HP, make use of it and Provoke if you dare to. Honestly don't know if I'd live through Bradium's BB or even provoked BB but I can 100% confirm you can easily live through provoked Ice Titan's BB, tested by yours truly.
Provoke doesn't work on undead but undead/high def..well, seems pretty rare to me. Also remember that undead take more from fire.
High ASPD chars can obviously take use of crits, most blatantly sinx.
If crit isn't your main attack style and you only need to counter high def, use vanberk and pray for the crits or banana hat to provoke. Works pretty well with frenzy too.

As for melee banes, I never really encountered garden keepers before. Good call, I'll surely visit them and find a way to effectively counter.

Golems..well, provoke on anything aside bradiums, I guess, Frenzy would be a suicide for sure. Maybe risk losing the shield/parry protection and spear boom with ahlspiess from afar, spiral is too risky as its range is VERY short, also not spammable. Assuming bradiums would appear in tier 4, you WILL have space to maneuver. If they appear in earlier rounds, it definitely means they're heavily nerfed unless GM host has gone insane.
I'll make further testing on their killability.

LK and Item Trial? Frenzy is the key. What worked excellent for me are Earth Deleter Zods, the doublewing effect gets you 20 SP per kill which is awesome as instant re-zerk with full prebuff is almost certain.
Pick a certain monster according to element of weapon you currently wield and swap them between zerks. Frenzy also gives you a mspd bonus which makes you the fastest thing in the field (no sane LK would go without a peco mount)
My tip would be use earth claymore (for bacsos) as general purpose weapon and then switch to ice for ifrit or eventually fire for drakes to finish the job. 90% of the cases with fire you kill them before they manage to cast agi down. Or if possible plan it so you don't have to kill them at all, unless drake drops are in more than one item needed it is doable to get your desired points without them.

Mass PVP? that's a joke. More like Mass Error Out. And sadly TKing appears at darkside too and the TKers have to be silenced (read killed)
I avoid participating, actually, it's a waste of time for me as I ALWAYS get errored out at the most inappropriate moments.

Bah, I'm sure I'll have further comments when I get more lucid.
But main point, don't be too scared of frenzying as this guide implies. You just have to appropriately assess whether to zerk or not.