Achieving "Max" Weapon/Magic Defense.

if you can get a +invincibility frames nebulite or potential, that cuts into your pot costs a lot (of course, the nebulite is expensive and takes HB spot on overalls)

other than that and what has been said, familiars help cut the cost a little bit, but the more hp you have, the more they help. upgrading your equips so you get more avoid from the extra stats and decent HB seem like the way to go.

Went through the FM and had no luck finding any invincibility nebulites although did come across a couple decent HB, so think that will be my next target. Thanks Shinku, sent you a message on Skype btw.

Link

As far as I know, they haven't been changed since. Each point in DEX only gets you 0.4 Weapon DEF.

In the first post in the same thread, Fiel explains how to calculate damage reduction from your DEF stat, but that could possibly be outdated, if not, the damage you take is reduced by a percentage equal to the square root of a fourth of your defense, which means with max DEF, you'd take sqrt(9999/4)% less damage, or around ~50%, and as far as I know, you get -15% damage from Whaler's Potion, which would be multiplicative with the DEF damage reduction, I'm pretty sure. They do like 18k physical damage before any reduction, so even if you had max DEF, you'd still get killed in like 2 or 3 hits, and that's just touch damage.

Their rock dropping skill is magical, I'm positive, and is also around 18k~19k damage depending on which golem, which is in turn reduced by your magic DEF in the same way as their touch damage is reduced by weapon DEF above, and then also by the 30% elemental resistance from Jolly Roger. When I was getting my Demon Slayer to 210, I noticed that, despite having max DEF already, casting Black-Hearted Strength significantly reduced the damage I was taking from the falling rocks attack, so I'm pretty sure Elemental Resistance could help you there, in which case, you can get 15% more elemental resistance from having the 3 revamped level 120 Cygnus Knights.

Pretty much your only options for lowering the cost of training are maxing out your defense and getting more HP, invincibility could potentially help, though I would think it depends on what you'd be sacrificing to get it.

Thank you for that thread, it's helped (and thank you to Fiel as well).

Surprisingly, the rocks seem to do less damage to me then touch damage so it makes me curious whether or not I'm getting a decent amount of elemental resistance from another source (or from Jolly Rogers). Currently leveling the revamped Cygnus, so it will make it a nice addition as well. Wasn't aware that elemental resistance helped with that, honestly never really understood it's purpose all these years.. (or at least when they added it at some point).

With all link skills and the cards mentioned in response to the post below, I seem to barely hit about two thousand DEX, so I can see where my defense falls short. With added stat%, or attempting to get better equipment like Tyrant, this will likely improve tenfold.

Appreciate the statistics, bookmarked and +1.

If you don't mind sacrificing a little damage for more survivability, you could consider changing your character cards a bit:
- The Hero, Mihile and Dawn Warrior cards all give %DEF,
- The Dual Blade card gives %avoid,
- The Dark Knight card gives %HP,
- The Aran card gives you a chance to recover HP when attacking, although it come with an annoying cooldown, and
- Any three S or higher/SS combination of cards gives +700/1000 HP;

Also, since the materials aren't too expensive, you could consider making or buying some alchemy potions (e.g. The Superior/Exceptional/Legendary Fortitude Potion that gives +5/6/7k Max HP for 2 hours).

And if you haven't done so already, you could get another small boost in HP from the Kaiser and Cannon Shooter link skills, as well as minor stat boosts (i.e. minor DEF and avoid boosts) from the link skills of Jett, Xenon and Hayato (preferably level 2 for all skills since it shouldn't take too much work to get there).

I have a S rank Dual Blade, although as my current avoid isn't that high, I've chosen against it (as well as other reasons mentioned below).

I currently use the following sets:

Pirate Deck:
[S] Angelic Buster - +40 Dex
[S] Buccaneer - 4 additional damage per level.
[SS] Corsair (main) - Summon creature's duration +10% (useless, although worth it for it's bonus as you mentioned)

Mage Deck:
[S] Bishop
[S] Evan (the MP equivalent to Aran)
[S] Luminous (only other S mage for the bonus)

Warrior Deck:
[S] Kaiser
[S] Mihile (nice 4% weapon defense)
[S] Demon Slayer (abnormal status resistance)

In total it adds:
+ 2100 HP, +2100 MP, +9 ATT/M.ATK
+ Weapon DEF 4%
+ Abnormal Status Resistance 3%
+ 9% damage to bosses
+ 8% of Max HP and MP added as additional damage.
+ Ignore 6% of enemy's DEF
+ 40 STR/INT/DEX
+ 4 additional damage per character level.
+ Summon creature's duration +10%
+ MP Potion item's effect +15%
+ -insert mp equivalent of aran card-

The cards which help with survival / this issue are marked in bold.

When the RED update comes, I will likely make a Dark Knight so I can switch out the Demon Slayer for it. The current Corsair card is also very useless, so will see if there's a better option for that.

In terms of the Dawn Warrior and Mihile, if I already have 4% Weapon Defense from my Mihile, will it stack with the Dawn Warrior? Last I recall, not the case.

Will look into making potions for Max HP, thanks for the suggestion.

Also, currently set on link skills (as much as possibly likely). I have Level 2 Kaiser + Level 2 Cannon Shooter, along with a mixture of other link skills.
So will focus on improving my card sets with your suggestions, thanks!

Also the BaM card gives %damage reduction (I don't think it works with 1/1 attacks though), so you could look into that as well as the cards that have been posted above^

Hmm, I've had a BaM in the past although deleted it. I'm already pretty set on character cards so may consider it in the future as I do have a Magician set.

Go kill Ani over and over again. You get Reindeer pots that are untradable like nobody's business (and sunrise dew too, untradable). But of course, the total pot per stack is pretty crap, so the next alternative is either Alchemy pots/(pills), or Monster Life pots.

Hadriel

That's exactly what I've been doing haha! It helps a lot, and spending an hour there can product thousands of Reindeer Milk (but again, usually will go through it quickly). +1

Thank you for all the responses so far, I understand how the multipliers and system works better, as well as having more of a target / goal of what I need to accomplish to make this ordeal easier.