Mango's guide to leveling and farming with SA

Introduction

Hello there! I've been playing Soul Ascetic for a while now, and I find it very fun and slighty overpowered as a farming character, so I'd like to share this guide with you all in the hopes of addressing some questions players have about when to farm what.

This won't be a comprehensive guide about the class, at least not for the time being, but let's hope you find the information in here useful.

Leveling 1 to 210

Most people think leveling from novice to Soul Ascetic is a pain in the rear unless you get carried.

Today I experimented with a fresh novice, without using any items from my account nor asking for help, and it only took me 4 hours to get to level 220 with 15m zeny farmed (no exp event active at the time). It's probably far from being any kind of record, but I'd say it's ok for your first day of playing! You'll probably take longer cause you know... you're reading this instead of mashing buttons, but let's hope you find it at least bearable. Let's jump into it.

The leveling section was written with people who want to start their MuhRO journey as Soul Ascetic in mind. If you have other characters and therefore have access to equipment and Eden Coins from the start, you might just want to skip the leveling section or just give it a quick read.

Note: I recommend reading the Taekwon section completely before getting to level 40, since after that it's kind of time sensitive and you shouldn't be stopping to read. If you need to stop and read, do it in a town (not Eden or Main Office) so your exp book doesn't run.

Novice: Starting is easy!

• After creating your character DO NOT skip the tutorial quest. Just tell the NPC you want to do the quest, follow the arrows, talk to the npc, hit the poring he summons, talk to the npc to get teleported, follow more arrows, heal yourself with a potion after getting hit, follow more arrows, talk to npc again to get some items you don't care about, follow NPC north, kill poring again, talk to NPC until deviling appears, get teleported out, talk to the NPC again and either choose to take the tour or tell him you're fine. Done! You used 2 minutes of your time to save an hour (assuming you didn't take the tour)! These few steps give you an exp book that lasts for 30 minutes and multiplies the exp you earn from killing enemies and completing quests by 3! It's a great deal, so please take it. Feel free to take the tour if it's your first time in the server. If it's not, or you don't care, just skip it. You already got the potions and the exp book anyway.
• If you didn't take the tour, you should be at Prontera, near the warper, and you should be level 8/10. Don't use the exp book yet, I'll let you know when. Equip your Beginner costume, get a blessing from our Healer NPC and use the warper to go to Dungeons > Anthell. Kill one ant egg and you'll be level 10/10. Type @go main and hit Enter. You'll be at our Main Office. Assign all of your skill points to Basic Skill, then click Apply. Talk to our Job Master NPC straight ahead and you'll be given the option to change job. Pick Taekwon and confirm.

Taekwon and Soul Linker: Fun little adventures.

• Go to Eden Group (@go eden) and talk to Secretary Lime Evenor to join Eden Group with the second option. She'll ask you to type your name twice, but you don't really need to. If you type anything she'll think you're a dummy and fill the forms for you. You should now have your eden badge, so say goodbye to the nice lady and walk a bit north and to the right, through the warp. In the corridor, go through the warp to your right, to the Paradise Equipment room. Talk to Lucy and get free shadow gear from her, then talk to Lothaire and get the physical armor set. Yes, the physical one. For weapon, grab both the dagger and the staff. Equip everything except the weapon, which you can't use yet.
• Put all your stat points in STR and go back to Anthell. Type @al to activate your autoloot at 100% and go kill a couple eggs to get some skill points. Max your Kihop and Flying Kick. Put Flying Kick in your hotbar and kick some ants until you're level 39. It should take just a couple minutes. Remember that exp book? Well, it can't be used after you level to 41 so that's why I'm stopping you now. After you consume it, you'll have 30 minutes to get as much exp as possible, so we'll prepare to do just that.
• There's alternative ways to do the following bit, but I'll just explain what I always do. Feel free to use other leveling guides or do your own thing if you don't like this method. All you need to know is that you should get as much exp as you can while the book is active.
• You should have Kihop, Mild Wind and Flying Kick at max. If you have extra points, dump them into Sprint and Leap. We're not gonna be using any other Taekwon skills.
• Sell all the stuff you looted from Anthell to a Tool Dealer. Don't sell your fly wings nor the Paradise weapons. Assign your 100 Novice Fly Wings that you got from the tutorial to your a hotkey.
• Put 20 points in DEX and the rest in STR and use the warper to go to Dungeons > Glast Heim > Monastery. Make sure you use *level 7* Mild Wind to turn your kicks into Holy Element. Now is the time to use your exp book! Pop it and start killing Evil Druids and Wraiths with your Flying Kick, teleporting around to find more when you're done. Try to only engage 1 or 2 enemies at a time, so you don't die. After killing around 15 or so of them, you'll be level 70/50. @go main and quickly open your skill window and max Leap, Sprint, Tumbling and put the remaining 4 points in Happy Break then save. Talk to Job Changer and become a Soul Linker then @go eden. Talk to the level 70-99 quest board and Take All. Equip the Paradise Dagger you got earlier but couldn't use and go back to GH Monastery. As a Soul Linker you can't use Flying Kick anymore, so just stab those undead. If you talked took the quests from the 70-99 board, every time you kill one you'll see the counter go up. When you killed 15 of each, @go eden to talk to the 70-99 board to complete the quest and just mash Enter to Take All again. You should be level 97 or so now, after just one quest. Go back to GH Monastery and do the quest again. This time, you'll level to 99 before finishing and that's OK. Just kill all 30 monsters, but DO NOT go deliver the quest. Once you finish killing all 30 enemies, @go malaya. Don't worry about the exp book running out, since the timer doesn't go down while you're in a city. It does go down inside Main Office and Eden, so try to spend as little time as possible in those places.
• Once in Malaya, with your precious exp book paused, go calmly do the Cautious Village Quest but DO NOT do step 9 (don't deliver it).

Soul Reaper start: Easy peasy!

• While in Malaya, take a minute to allocate your skills: max Kaahi, Kaizel, Kaite, Kaina and then whatever you want. The rest of the skills don't matter much. Once all 49 points are allocated, save and @go main to change your job to Soul Reaper. Now @go eden to deliver the stored quest at the lvl 70-99 board and then quickly @go malaya. Now do finish the Cautious Village quest by talking to the last NPC. This should bring you to level 116/28 (more if there's an active exp event). @go main and reset your stats (NPC next to Job Master) then go back to a town and allocate your stats to 110 INT, 100 DEX and 40 VIT. Open your skills and max Espa and Soul Collect. Activate Soul Collect and keep it active from now on, so it generates Soul Energy. At this point, there should still be more than 20 minutes left of your exp boosting book.
• Note: Now if this is not your first character, you can just grab some eden coins from your storage to get your advanced paradise gear, and continue at Soul Reaper 120 to 150.

• It's time to improve your gear! Sadly, this is going to consume quite a few minutes from our precious exp booster. If you're feeling bold, try to ask in #global (send a PM to #global) if someone can spare the following items: 15 Elastic Bands, 3 Blue Hair and 15 Old Picks. If not, then just assume you'll have to farm them as quickly as possible. You'll need the aforementioned items to get Advanced Paradise gear, which is a nice upgrade for now. Buy 150 fly wings and 5 blue potions just in case and let's get those upgrades.

1. Elastic Bands: Warper > Dungeons > Beach Dungeon > Beach dungeon 3. Exit the map through the lower right corner to Papuchicha Forest, and move to the nearby top exit. In this map, teleport around killing the monkeys with slingshots until you collect 15 elastic bands.
2. Blue Hair: @go light and then go up and up again. You'll be at a map filled with kobolds. Kill a few of the blue ones until you have 3 blue hair.
3. Old Picks: Warper > Dungeons > Einbech Dungeon. Port around killing Pitmans until you get 15 Old Picks.

• Go to the backroom of Eden Group and talk to Louis and then Labraham. Use the Take Special Offer option to exchange your items for the Advanced Paradise Magic set and the Advanced Paradise Soul Reaper Staff. Hopefully this didn't take you long! At the time of writing this, I tried and when I finished I still had 13 minutes of my exp boost. Now what to do with them?

Soul Reaper 120-150: Hey, this is not so bad!

• For this part, I chose to spam the Eden Board quests for Gefenia dungeon. The reason is that they're very quick to complete in Gefenia level 1, which is directly accessible from the warper and it's one of the fastest methods to get a good amount of Eden Coins while being this weak. I recommend having @go eden bound to a hotkey combination through ALT+M to go back fast. The idea is to teleport around killing Succubus, Incubus and Abysmal Knights with Espa. You'll have no trouble one shotting them with Espa if you use Holy Element (lvl 7 Mild Wind). The Abysmal Knight Quest is in the 100-110 board, and the Incubus/Succubus one is in the 120-140. When you start doing this, you might be a bit short of level 120, so you might be unable to grab the Incubus/Succubus quest. Don't worry about it. Get in there, kill a few mobs and they'll naturally get you to 120. After that, your objective is to deliver the AK and Inc/Suc quest as many times as possible before your exp book runs out. When mine finished at this point, I was level 155 and I had over 80 Eden Coins.
• Notably, Gefenia is also a great spot to grab some early Zeny. For now, just run around with @al 100, looting everything. Just sell everything to NPC, except Eluniums, Oridecons and Eden Coins.
• Up until this point, you should barely be at the 1h playtime mark, more or less. Of course, if this is your first time in the server not everything might have gone according to plan, but don't worry! Even if you're a bit lower than 150, the next leveling section could actually apply from a lower level, so it's not a big deal. Just make sure you farm at least 44 Eden Coins from Gefenia.

Soul Reaper 151-190: Ugh!

• At this point, if you're alone, leveling starts slowing down quite a bit. I recommend you prepare some good music :) It's Illusion Dungeon farming time! From 150 to 190, the easiest in my opinion is to farm Illusion of Vampire. The tactic is simple. Just grab the quest from the Daily Hunts NPC, buy consumables to be invincible and kill those 100 mobs repeatedly! How to be invincible in Illusion of Vampire? That's what those 44 Eden Coins are for. Just buy 2x Brilliant Protection Scroll, 2x Small Life Regen potion, 2x Small Mana Regen potion and 2x Almighty from the Eden Coin vending machine at Eden Group. Add one Battle Manual and that should be 44 coins. This is all going to last you for 1h.
• To kill effectively here, your stats should be 120INT, 110DEX, 100VIT and I put the rest in STR to not get overweight that quickly. As you progress towards 190, max INT to 130, put 120 on DEX and then do whatever feels best for you with the rest. I tend to get LUK to 90 just because I hate getting Curse status and LUK also provides a small MATK bonus that can help you 2 shot instead of 3 shot. Just use Mild Wind lv7 to apply Holy Element.
• At this point, you should have maxed Espa, Eswhoo, Soul Reaper, Soul Collect, Soul Energy Research, Golem Soul and Fairy Soul. You can only have one Soul (Golem or Fairy) active at the same time. Since we're weak at this point, I recommend using Golem Soul all the time, even on top of Brilliant Protection scroll. It will help with tankiness. If you're really close to a damage breakpoint (just need a tiny bit more to 2 shot instead of 3 shot, for instance) then feel free to try Fairy Soul.
• As for the playstyle here, what I do is teleporting around, hitting enemies with Espa once, and when there's a bunch of them close together I use Eswhoo to finish off all of them. Rinse repeat. Eswhoo consumes Soul Energy, so make sure you have your Soul Collect up at all times, and the Soul Reaper buff used on cooldown.
• As for loot, keep the Refinement Boxes if you get any, Carnium, Elunium, Oridecon and the Forgotten Heirlooms you get from completing the quest. The rest you can sell to Tool Dealer.

Soul Reaper 190-200: Almost there!

• At this point, you'll barely be getting 1 level every time you turn the quest in, and it's going to slow down even more towards the end. You can definitely keep going here, but I'll tell you what I did. Since I was so bored of Vampire at this point, I decided to see if I could do Illusion Underwater 2. Surprisingly, as long as you keep your buffs up, it's not that difficult.
• To get to Illusion Underwater 2, Warper > Illusion Dungeons > Illusion Underwater > Talk to Gein and say Sure > Talk to Jerry and say Yes let's go.
• The mobs here are pretty strong. To survive, you need to keep all the buffs up (you might need to go back to gefenia for a bit and farm up a few more eden coins). You will also need to use Golem Soul and Kaahi here. You should also not engage more than 1 enemy at a time, so walk slowly from the entrance. Don't teleport around cause you'll get swarmed.
• Killing here at this point will be extremely slow with your damage. Use Wind Element (Mild Wind lvl 2) for everything except the Abysmal Sedora, which is inmune to wind and weak to Earth. For those, use Mild Wind lv1. You'll need around 8 hits per enemy.
• Now, why do this if it's so hard and slow? Because when you deliver the 100 mob kill quest for Underwater 2, you'll straight up level to 200. So this is kind of a "Do I spend 20 minutes killing 100 tough mobs or am I just numb to the grind of Vampire?" kind of situation.
• Whatever you chose, you'll be level 200/60 now and it will finally be time to be a Soul Ascetic.
• Allocate your remaining skill points. You should finish leveling Kaute and Shadow Soul and put the rest wherever you want. Later on we'll reset skills anyway. Once done, go to the Job Master and change to Soul Ascetic.

Soul Ascetic: Finally! The long grind paid off!

• Now you're ready to farm at the speed of light... are you? Well... turns out you'll need to do a bit more leveling first. Without Job Levels, we can't use our shiny new skills! My recommendation here is to go Exo build first. Talisman requires a bunch of points and is not that strong with no gear. So, how to get there?
• At this point, you can easily do something like Illusion of Teddy Bear! It will be a welcome change of pace, and you only need to do it once with Espa/Eswhoo, so let's get in there. Grab the quest if you haven't, and by the time you finish and turn in, you'll have enough Job Levels to max Soul Gathering and Exorcism of Malicious Soul.
• The playstyle with this build is simple. First use Soul Gathering to max your Soul Energy and then use Exo to explode it in a big AoE that does very good damage.
• At this point, dump all your trait points into SPL and you'll see that you're easily doing more than 1 million damage, while still wearing Paradise gear. That's it for the levelling, folks!

What to farm, when and how

Earlygame

This is the stuff I recommend farming after you become a Soul Ascetic, while building up your gear towards the midgame in the first 1 or 2 days.

1. Get a Grace Set: You can get it by doing 17.1 Illusion, but my recommendation is to just use 2m to buy a 17.1 skip ticket from Temporal Tina and skip the whole thing, if you don't have fun doing long quests. If you skip it, you'll have to farm 80 Unknown Parts (25669) and 60 Cor Core (25723) in Dungeons > Rudus, going to the 2nd floor. The fastest way is to port around the map killing the pink Sanare enemies. Takes around 15 minutes without bubblegum. Once you have the materials, talk to Sentinel (sp_cor 119, 132) and buy the 4 gear pieces (doesn't really matter which robe you pick) and the 3 tickets to make the armors +9.
2. A comfy amount of Eden Coins: You'll need these to sustain your continued use bubblegum. They're very easy to get, and bubblegum should be used to farm almost anything. Once you're around level 210, you can easily do the Thanatos Tower quest to access floor 9. Just finish the quest, go back to the warper and now you should have direct access to floors 7 and 9. Grab all the quests from the 120 board in Eden, port to floor 9 and speak to the NPC by the entrance to be transported to old floor 9 (new floor 9 will hurt too much for you). Farm your way up the floors killing stuff until you finish all 5 quests. I wouldn't stay in floors where there's Thanatos Dolor, as it will cast agi down on you. Do this for half an hour and you'll have a lot of Eden coins and a lot of Zeny. Note: Don't throw the keys away, as they can be used with future characters to speed up the obtention of the Black Key.
3. Get yourself a Glacier Wand (550069) with Glacier Flower Spell (MATK) (311343) , Glacier Flower Spell (Magical - Element) (311353) , Glacier Flower Spell (Magical - Size) (311351) and Glacier Flower Spell (Magical - Race) (311349) : You won't be able to farm this yourself yet, but use the #trade channel to purchase one from players. Without upgrades, it's really cheap to make (should be around 3-4m). At +9 it will cost around 10m to 15m. This weapon will last you until the late midgame, so it's a great investment.