New Player's Guide to Ragnarok

[Adrillf]

Class Overview
Your class changes how you play this game. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses and its own style of play. Be aware that an assassin doesn?t play anything like a priest and they play nothing like a wizard. For the sake of this guide, I?m going to go over these classes in a brief overview first, and then go further into them each in their own section.

One thing to notice is that you have 12 character slots when creating your character. As a new player you?re going to have 2-3 characters first. (Yes, you?re going to need 2-3 characters to play this game if you want it to work out the best for you) When creating your first character, find one that matches what you play like. No matter what other people might say, play what you find to be the best fit to you. This is where the strong majority of your play is going to be put. Any time that you?re online, log onto your main character.

Your second character is going to be your OC/DC character. Even if you hate merchant classes, don?t like how they work, or what they do, get one up to job level 30-ish so that you can get max level overcharge and discount. Once you throw things in storage, sell them on your merchant, and if you need to buy f-wings or anything else like that in bulk, put them on here. It might be only a few hundred zenny you?re saving by doing this, but it?ll make a difference in the long run.

Your third optional character is your farmer. As stated earlier this game has a lot of quests and they?re all fetch quests which means you get sent out by an NPC to gather up a certain amount of items. There are some classes which are naturally not the best farmers, and others which are great farmers. If your main character is not a great farmer, your third character is going to be a farmer so that when you run into these quests you can swap over to a better farmer, get the items quickly, and move on. Until you?ve finished your main character (transcended and are 89+) these three characters are all that you need, and really you only need to focus on the first one. Do not split your time between multiple characters, only bad things will happen. It?s a long trip to max level, so do the trip on one character first just so you know what you?re in for the rest of them.

Now for the quick covering of classes. These are generic understandings of each class, and of course there?s always going to be that person who can prove you wrong by saying that they took a support class and turned them into a great damage class, but those are the exception to the rule. Your basic classes are; knight, crusader, wizard, sage, blacksmith, alchemist, priest, monk, assassin, rogue, hunter, bard/dancer.

Knights are your basic hack and slash tanks. Their focus is to take one weapon and smash it into the monster as hard as possible. They do have a bit of tanking and luring abilities, but the majority of their skills point them to being melee damage dealers.

Crusaders are the tanky brothers of knights. They can still use the weapons and hit things, but their skills lean them much towards standing and laughing while people try to kill them. Crusaders can?t do much damage but they can dodge, deflect, and tank more damage than any other class in the game.

Wizards specialize in area of effect (AoE) elemental damage. They have some of the most damaging spells in the game and for a lot of parties are the main source of damage because they can sit back and nuke a large group of monsters all at once with one spell.

Sages are the support mage and anti-mage. They are able to cancel spells, negate AoE spells, negate single target spells, strengthen AoE spells, and shine in late game as the only class that can supply SP to allies without wasting serious amounts of consumables.

Blacksmiths are strong single target hitters that can hit like a truck for the cost of zenny or they can even forge weapons to fight with or sell.

Alchemists are able to summon plants, trees, and even their homunculus to fight for them while providing some strong damage as well, or they can brew potions for use or sell.

Priests are the healers of the game. They are able to buff, heal, and protect their friends and even curse their enemies with taking double damage. They can?t do much damage themselves, but there isn?t a single party in existence that does not have a priest as part of it.

Monks are the glass cannons of the game. They are able to solo some of the boss monsters in the game, and can deal massive spikes of damage.

Assassins do exactly what their name implies, the lurk around and kill things from the shadows. They have the ability to strike an opponent with a furry of blows or even hit them long distance while hidden.

Where assassins fail at thievery, rogues shine. They are able to steal zenny, items, and even skills. Their most devastating skill is able to remove the gear that their opponent is wearing. It?s a lot easier to kill a crusader if you can force him not to wear his armor, shield, boots, or helmet.

Hunters are your long distance bow users. They take down single targets from a distance with little to no risk to themselves. They are able to use traps and their pet bird to help them out, but the majority of their skill comes with staying out of the reach of monsters and killing the monster before they get hurt.

Bards and dancers are the only class that depends on which gender you are. If you are a male sprite you can only become a bard, and if you?re a female sprite you can only become a dancer. These are support characters that use music to affect the fight and can even team up together and do duets that create even stronger effects. Bards and dancers are strong supporters in any party setting.

There are other specialty classes like Ninja, Gunslinger, Super Novices, and Taekwons, but I?ll go over those in the last section.

Now it?s time to go into more depth about each class and what they are able to do and how you should use them.

Knight-

As I said in the short description of the classes, these are the hack and slash heroes of the game. They are tanky to a point, but they really spend most of their time killing monsters. If not your first character knights can work as farming character, but they do take a bit more gear and items to be as productive as other farmers. Their strongest attack is bowling bash. An important part to remember with bowling bash is that it affects an area, so you are able to grab a group of monsters into a stack, and then bowling bash all of them with one skill. This will allow you to solo for quite a few levels and even until you need to transcend, but you can also run parties if you would like

Be prepared as a knight in a party, to act as the tank/lure. If a crusader is not around, you can double as a mob creator. When doing this bring armor and reduction gears so that you don?t take as much damage, hop on your peco, and run around grabbing the attention of as many monsters as possible to drag back to the party. If you are doing this bring f-wings in case the mobs get too big and you need to get out of the way. It?s much better for you to f-wing away and bring in a manageable mob, than it is to die away from your party, leaving them without a tank.

Crusader-

Your strength resides in tanking and being as fat as possible. Your goal is to be tankier and harder to damage than some boss monsters. After you get your first few levels into crusader, start organizing parties. When mobbing for parties, be aware of what your party is able to handle. You have the very possible strength of being able to create mobs that can wipe out parties. What might hardly tickle you, can wipe out those people you?re with in a heartbeat if you are not careful. There is a time and a place to pull the entire map onto your party, but you have to know if your party can handle it.

You won?t be bringing out the most damage or kills, but your goal is to stay alive long enough while everything else is trying to kill you. There are builds in which you can deal significant damage, but as stated before, these are the exception to the rule, and not the typical build.

Wizard-

You are the nuke of the game. You can dish out damage, freeze opponents, and slow everything to a crawl, but it comes at the cost of being squishy. You might be able to catch a monster in your spell and kill it, but if you cast too slow, are out of position, or if anything goes wrong, that monster will tear your face apart in half a second.

There are two builds with wizards, dex heavy or int heavy. Dex heavy wizards are more for people who like to solo, while int heavy wizards need more support so they?re typically in parties. The major skills that you need as a wizard, no matter what your build are storm gust and quagmire. Personally I would suggest avoiding LoV because the damage output is poor compared to SG, but there seems to be a recent trend in organizing ice dungeon parties, so it?s your call.

Sage-

Your non-trans life is going to be a suffer. You are one of those characters that are decent before you transcend, but once you transcend and gain the ability to swap SP and health convert, every party will want you. Finding a party before you are transcended is going to be hard, and transcending is difficult, but from a person who mains a professor and has two of them, it?s worth it. A support sage and ultimately a support professor is a nightmare to deal with against all classes. They can?t burst an enemy down but they sure can dispel, cancel, and make your life a horrible place.
There is one, and only one hope for your sage life, and that is being a dispel slave in dimensional gorge. Stock up on yellow gems, and pray that a professor doesn?t steal your spot. All you need to do is occasionally dispel monsters that are strong, and not die, and you?ll gain exp.
If you?re not patient, and especially if this is your first grind heavy role playing game, do not pick this class as your starting character. You will hate it.

Blacksmith-

This class as well as alchemist are part of your OC/DC sub characters. Either one can be used as your character that will reduce prices, as well as make more money. These classes can (and should) also be used as your fisher and miner (custom quests on heRO) slaves because they can carry an excessive amount of weight thanks to their cart (which can be accessed with alt+W) which adds a few thousand extra weight that you can carry with no worries.

As a blacksmith you?re going to be a solo player. There aren?t many parties that need a blacksmith. You?re also going to need a lot of zenny. Blacksmiths eat through zenny, and their transcended versions of them use up even more. It is very, very possible for a white smith to use a million zenny in under an hour if they are actively using their strongest skills. From this, you?re going to have to make sure to keep a good pulse on the market. If you?re going to be a good blacksmith, you need to know what is selling for a good amount of money, and when to sell it because you?re going to need the money.

The good news is that your power comes in buffing yourself and being able to dish out single target melee hurt to a lot of opponents. You don?t have much to offer to a team, but you should have no problem farming single monster kills and surviving it all.

Alchemist-

As blacksmiths, you have a cart and can be the OC/DC slave as well.

A warning about alchemists, and even creators the transcended versions- you will farm a ridiculous amount of materials. The majority of your skills, and especially your powerful skills that you?re going to want to use often, require materials to use. Ragnarok has balanced your power and strength by putting in a strong item and time restriction into your gameplay. You can deal a lot of damage, and you can really put the hurt out, but if you don?t have the time to grind for the items, or the zenny to buy them off of the market, you can?t play this class the way it was intended to.

With that said, you have as an alchemist a great strength in your hands. You are able to create and bring monsters with you to battle. You never fight alone, and if your monsters or your homunculus dies, you just bring them back. As an alchemist you don?t have the super damage spell called Acid Demonstration, but you still have heavy hitting skills, and as long as you spend at least some time with your homunculus as an alchemist it will make leveling as a creator a million times easier. When you trans and restart at level 1, your homunculus stays at the same level. That means that although you might be level 50, your homunc is still level 90 and ready to kick butt.

Priest-

You are the loved and cherished support class. You can?t do much damage (again, there are some exceptions to this rule, but in general, it?s the rule) but you can keep people alive, heal them, protect them, and even bring them back from the dead. For the most part you need to find parties to level, especially at the higher levels. If you can not find a party, you can always heal the undead. An undead monster, when healed gets hurt, so can heal them to kill them. A cheap way to level is to get turn undead, go to Anubis and teleport while one shot killing them with that skill.

A major bonus to priest and monks is that you have teleport as a skill. You don?t need (but still should) carry fly wings or butterfly wings because you can teleport around the map, or home if needed.

Monk-

Monks have one build, asura. There are some that will try to build into combo, or even steel body monks, but when compared against an asura monk, there is no competition. There has never been a combo monk that has made an impact worth mentioning, and steel body monks seem more of a joke than a tanky presence.

Just like the alchemist, be warned that while playing a monk you?re going to need to farm. Asura eats up all of your SP, yes all of it. But in return deals a massive spike of damage. To do it right you need to have a lot of SP recovery items (fish work the best on this server) as well as some very specific (and therefore expensive because all monks want them) gears. You?re either going to need to farm them yourself or buy them, either way expect time or zenny to be spent on your monk if you want to be the threat they can be.

Monks in parties really depend on what you are killing. In the majority of parties monks are not welcome. You can get more per hour on your own, and kill stronger things than the party, so don?t slow them down. High end boss parties will use you, but generic leveling parties, for the most part, won?t. As part of this, make friends with a professor. They will be able to fill your SP bar to full whenever you asura. It?s a nightmare for the professor to try to keep up, but it allows you to run around and spam asura wherever you want, so it?s worth it.

Assassin-

When I talked about farmer characters before, this is one of the easier farmable characters in the game. To make an assassin all you need is a katar, cloak, hide and grimtooth. From this you?re able to stack your own mobs and kill them with little to no risk to yourself. You can farm up a strom on these guys and it goes faster than partying and you get more money from it. The power of an assassin farming is a scary thing, and they can mob entire maps worth of monsters without taking a point of damage, and then grimtooth them to death. The only thing you need to learn is how to stack a mob, which is easy. Run in a straight line while visible and then cloak. Once cloaked move five or six cells away from where you were and quickly uncloak and cloak back. All of the mob will run towards you and SHOULD stack onto one cell making it look like one monster instead of 20+. If it doesn?t work the first time, do it again, and it will work that time. Just remember that you can equip a status arrow when you grimtooth mob. It won?t use up the arrow so you only need one, and I suggest a stun arrow for low vit mobs and a curse arrow for others. That way when you grimtooth they?ll stay in one place if you?re not able to stun lock them into submission.
Partying as an assassin is a stupid thing. You can get faster levels and more money through soloing, so don?t worry about partying.
Builds for assassins, especially new players is exactly what I just told you. Once you transcend, get gears, and really like playing an assassin you can try different builds, but please, for the love of everything, never play a crit based assassin. They don?t work on this server, they?re not deadly, and really they?re sort of a joke.

Rogue-

These guys shine in player versus player combat. If you want to be one of the most annoying classes, without having to farm that hard for items or gears to be that annoying, this is the class for you. The ability to strip equipment off of other players is ridiculously strong, and frustrating without end. The best part about it? The only way to counter it is to make alchemists farm even more items to protect themselves and their allies. That?s right, the one class that has to farm for everything that they do, you make them farm even more, just to counter you.

A great way for leveling is to act like a hunter and a knight rolled together. You?re able to use a bow and copy bowling bash from a knight, so your bow skills start to get really dangerous. They might not be up on par with the double strafe spamming of a hunter, but it?s a nasty combo.

The hardest part about a rogue is that for as awesome as they are, and as annoying as they can be, they?re a pain in the neck to level. Where other classes are either great in parties, or great solo, rogues sort of hit a middle ground with everything. They?re not horrible in parties, but they don?t really serve the best role in a party, and solo they?re not the most efficient, but they?re not the worst. They can be your farming alternate thanks to autosteal in their auto attacks, but it?s not as good as some of the other farming characters.

Rogues, and especially stalkers, can do great things, it?s just difficult to get them to the point where they can do them, because leveling up is a bit slower for them.

Hunter-

This is easy mode in my book. Hunters stack two stats, dex and agi, and use one skill for everything- double strafe. The bird, the traps, and all of the other skills don?t really hold a light to a hunter who is at full SP, using the right element of arrow against a monster and just spamming DS over and over again. They farm ridiculously fast because they are able to take out high level monsters from a distance through properly gearing and using common sense (don?t use fire arrows against fire monsters, don?t let the big fire birds get close enough to breath fire on you, etc).

These are another great class as an alternate for your main character if your main is not a farming class. They are relatively easy to gear, their lower tier items are cheap but increase their damage output by a lot, and they?re even useful in some parties where there are occasional monsters immune to magic.

The biggest problem with hunters is their SP pool, and the boring factor. While spamming DS you eat up your manna quite fast, so be prepared to b-wing home often for a heal, or to bring lots of SP regen with you so you aren?t stuck with your measily auto attack. And be warned now, unlike the rest of the characters that have to use battlemode because they?re going to have more than 9 things they?re going to want to do, you have maybe four skills as a hunter that you?re going to use, and then your other five hotkeys can be for different arrow types and sp regeneration. It?s simple, and that gets boring fast when you?re trying to grind out levels and gears.

Bard-

When you play bard every wizard will be happy to see you. Good wizards will be even happier that you read this and you know the secret to amazing bard play. The first thing is weapon swapping out of songs. If you want to flash a song quickly put on your instrument, and then use your hotkeys to swap to a weapon (a simple light weight dagger is usually the go to because you don?t actually fight with it). This allows you to flash songs, and keep moving, or even flash multiple songs at once.

When leveling your bard don?t worry too much about your dex. Between your innate archer abilities like attention concentrate, the music lesson skill, bless from priests (because you?re usually going to be in a party with them) and your job bonus, you?ll have enough dex for bragi to reduce cast times a noticeable amount. The one that spell casters will be shocked at is if you put a few dozen points into int. Where dex reduces the cast time in bragi, int reduces the cool down, and that means more spells, which means more fun for spell casters.

As a bard, you?re always going to have a party. Find any level wizard that is in range, and ask them if they want a party, and they will say yes. It doesn?t matter where they want to go, or what their plans were earlier, if you are willing to play bragi anywhere near them, a wizard will follow you to the end of the world. The only down side is that you are a bragi slave. While leveling, you?ll get to see dungeons and fun monsters will be dragged to you, but your job is to hit the bragi hotkey, and if the party moves, drop bragi and once they stop, put bragi back up again. It follows the hunter?s motto that if it?s good enough once, you better do it more, but instead of damage, it?s a support skill.

Dancers-

Dancers are a weird class in my mind. They have some things that they can be great as, but I don?t see them as that great of a support class, or that great of an active role class. Their SP regeneration song is good enough to make new wizards happy that they won?t run out of manna, but for the aggressive SP users like hunters and monks, dancers really can?t SP battery effectively for them. Their other songs have uses, but I?ve never been convinced that a dancer is the solution that I want for a party.
The only time that dancers really shine is when they are paired up with a bard and they play duets. Loki?s veil is a powerful tool in player versus player, and even when leveling a duet like Mr. Kim?s can bring a leveling party to tears with the extra exp it brings in. This is my one weak point in this guide because the other classes I try to give you a pros and cons to each class, but with dancer I can only think of cons because I?ve never met a dancer that was just amazing at partying or soloing, and it always feels like I?m leeching dancers just so someone can use them in a pvp setting later on.

The other classes

There are other classes than these on the server. We have gunslingers, ninjas, taekwons, star gladiators, soul linkers, super novices, and baby versions of everything. As a new player, do not play any of them. Get it out of your head that a gun slinger must be better than a person who uses a bow, because they?re not, a hunter can stomp a gunslinger, and especially the fact that as a hunter you can transcend and become even more powerful as a sniper, while a slinger is stuck with only one leveling path. These other options have their moments and their places within the game, however, as a new player you do not need to worry about them, play them, or even think about touching them because you need to have your main character finished before working on them. Even with the significant buffs that heRO has given these classes through items and customization to the classes themselves, do not play these as they are all niche characters that fill very specific, very limited, roles within the game.