Melee Abyss Chaser Guide by Satsujinhan
Introduction
Hi, I'm Satsujinhan and I've been playing melee chaser ever since I first started out in renewal servers. I've received questions in game regarding my build, gears and so forth, and now I'm finally making this guide for everyone. This whole guide is based on what I've done and tested so far, so there are still some spots I will fill in once I get there in game. If you spot any mistakes, have additional questions etc, you can find me on the server's Discord as Karuna or you can ROdex me in game on my abyss chaser Satsujinhan.
Stats
Basic stats
STR 120
AGI 120
VIT 100 total or more
INT ~50
DEX ~80
LUK ~90
STR is the main source of your damage, and 120 base is enough – any more costs too many stat points to be efficient. After getting your AGI to match STR and around 80 base DEX, 100 total VIT is a necessity due to it granting you stun immunity. The rest of the points are up to your personal taste. I went with higher LUK because it grants me a bit more attack power, and curse resistance. Whatever is left after your stat distribution by now can be put into INT – your leveling relies mainly on skill spamming so having the SP is useful.
Traits
POW 100
CON 100
STA 35
The trait system introduced along 4th jobs is quite simple. As a melee build, your skill damage is based 95% on POW trait, and maxing that is the very first thing you should do. CON is a trait that mixes accuracy, flee, power attack (P. ATK) and spell magic attack (S. MATK). It’s the trait you should work on after you have maxed out POW. After these two, it’s a matter of taste where you wish to spend the last trait points. I went with STA due to it increasing physical resistance, so it helps me out slightly when I have to deal with a bigger mob.
Skill point distribution
Rogue & Stalker
The next important thing in building your character is the skill tree. Early on as a rogue before trans, you can feel free to skill the build however you like. However, these are some notable skills that can make your leveling faster.
- Back Stab
- As a melee build, this is your bread and butter skill. Using dagger makes this skill hit twice instead of just once, and it will oneshot most of the things you’re going after in the early leveling stages.
- Haggle
- Melee rogues / stalkers don’t get a whole lot of skills they are required to max out, so once the basic damage dealing skills are set, you should look into this nifty skill. It allows you to buy things even cheaper than merchants with Discount. Keep in mind though that there are some NPC sold items that have fixed prices, which aren’t affected by either of these skills. With basic NPCs like Tool Dealers, this is a handy skill.
- Preserve
- The number one skill to get as soon as you hit stalker. I suggest getting it first since it has a pretty long list of prerequisites compared to other necessary skills. It opens up a whole new serving of skills you can use to level.
- Chase Walk
- While you can move around in Hide due to Tunnel Drive, this skill offers faster movement speed. Keep in mind that you can still be seen by demons, insects and boss protocol monsters. You also get a small boost to your STR after 10 seconds, but it doesn’t last long enough unless you’re linked. With link, you get a speed boost with this skill as well as immunity to Dispell.
Shadow Chaser
As shadow chaser, planning out your skill tree is quite straight forward. As we all know, this class was meant to be a pain in the ass in PvP settings – when you opt to go melee, you have less than 5 mandatory skills you need to get.
- Reproduce
- This is your third job version of Preserve, but with an upgrade. Unlike Preserve, which you have to recast every 10 minutes to keep the copied skill, Reproduce needs to be used only when you copy a skill. After copying you use it again and that’s it. It also allows you to copy a skill at max level, regardless of what level of the skill was used on you. Here are some of my favorite skills to copy.
- Duple Light
- This is a fun skill to have as a freshly changed chaser. You can still get away with autoattacking things for leveling, and this skill deals extra damage when you play as melee.
- Ignition Break
- For leveling with this skill, it’s okay to ditch a dagger in favor of a one-handed sword because of damage penalties. However, you don’t have to rely on this skill alone on your way to lvl 200.
- This is your third job version of Preserve, but with an upgrade. Unlike Preserve, which you have to recast every 10 minutes to keep the copied skill, Reproduce needs to be used only when you copy a skill. After copying you use it again and that’s it. It also allows you to copy a skill at max level, regardless of what level of the skill was used on you. Here are some of my favorite skills to copy.
- Fatal Menace
- Thanks to rebalancing of third job skills, this is now a great leveling skill with dagger melee. It hits twice when used with a dagger and AGI increases the damage of this skill. This skill was the thing for me when I was leveling my chaser – it’s very spammable and there are plenty of gears to boost its damage.
The rest of the skills are very much up to what you want to pursue with your chaser. I admit I’ve been putting leftover third job skill points into second job skills, simply because with this build the whole Masquerade tree portion is basically pointless.
Abyss Chaser
Very much like the shadow chaser skill tree, abyss chaser skills are very simple to pick. Simply put, it branches off into three different builds - bow, melee and magic. We will be looking at the melee skills of course.
- Dagger & Bow Mastery
- This is the starting point of your skills. It boosts damage based on the size of your enemies, when you wear a dagger. However, you don't need to worry about maxing it as your very first thing. I'll tell you further down why.
- Abyss Dagger
- This is your secondary skill to spam between Deft Stab's cooldown. It's a small AoE that doesn't require you to target a monster, and it can be spammed very easily. It also creates a short window after use where your Fatal Menace damage is increased, in case you want to try wiggle that into your hotkey combos.
- Deft Stab
- This is your holy grail, the damage skill you will live and breathe as melee build. It wasn't originally this great back when 4th jobs were quite new, but skill rebalancing happened and made it a very usable damaging skill. Deft Stab is your priority number one to get as an abyss chaser. Once it's maxed, you can work on the prerequisite skills.
- Abyss Slayer
- Every 4th job came with an "ultimate" skill of sorts, that costs AP to use. For us, it's this buff. It increases your P. ATK and S. MATK +30 for the duration of the buff and also gives you an incredible +300 HIT bonus, which I found incredibly useful in maps where monsters use agi up. The skill cost is 120 AP and has a 1 minute cooldown. Due to Deft Stab being your main skill, you should be easily able to keep up this buff constantly, as Deft Stab recovers 3 AP per use.
- Unlucky Rush
- This is completely optional, but I've found it very useful. It helps you to dash to your target and deals damage according to your base level and POW. It came very handy in Bio 5 whenever I was targeted by multiple ranged mobs - it allowed me to move right next to them and then just Deft Stab all that was left.
Gears
Starter gears
- Eden gears
- The Eden gears you can pick up for free right off the bat as a fresh thief are enough to carry you over to 99 as rogue. You can pick up a new dagger after you change your job to rogue. When you reach 99 as a stalker, make sure to get
Elastic Bands (from Wootan Shooters), 
Blue Hairs (from any Kobold) and 
Old Picks (from Pitmen) so you can get yourself advanced gear set once you hit lvl 100.
- The Eden gears you can pick up for free right off the bat as a fresh thief are enough to carry you over to 99 as rogue. You can pick up a new dagger after you change your job to rogue. When you reach 99 as a stalker, make sure to get
- Grace set
- This set is sold by an NPC in Cor, which requires you to complete episode 17.1 main story questline to access the town. The set you want is the one that boosts the damage of Fatal Menace. All the set parts can be bought for
20 Unknown Parts each. The same NPC also sells +9 refine tickets for these gears, and they cost 
20 Cor Cores each. Easy and cheap boost to your Fatal Menace, since from this point on the mobs in higher leveling spots do sport formidable HP. More detailed info about gears can be found here.
- This set is sold by an NPC in Cor, which requires you to complete episode 17.1 main story questline to access the town. The set you want is the one that boosts the damage of Fatal Menace. All the set parts can be bought for
- Automatic gears
- This armor set is obtainable once you finish episode 17.2 main story questline and gain access to Varmundt’s Mansion. However, this requires a bit more work than any of the previous gears, because of the refinement requirements. First you need to buy the proper Illusion gear parts, get those to +9, and then you can transform them into their Automatic gear counterparts with a certain amount of
Varmeal tickets. If this is your first character, don’t feel guilty if you choose to skip this set. It’s not a necessity, just a good boost in Fatal Menace damage if you want it. More detailed info about gears can be found here.
- This armor set is obtainable once you finish episode 17.2 main story questline and gain access to Varmundt’s Mansion. However, this requires a bit more work than any of the previous gears, because of the refinement requirements. First you need to buy the proper Illusion gear parts, get those to +9, and then you can transform them into their Automatic gear counterparts with a certain amount of
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Later game gears
- Gray Wolf gears
- As soon as you’re able to, start doing the episode 18 main quest. This rewards you with Amethyst fragments that you can use to purchase Grey Wolf gears with. These gears – in case you decided to skip the Automatic ones – are the first ones you can look into enchanting. The enchants offer better bonuses with higher refines, namely at +11. As these are still lvl 1 armors, you can craft refine tickets to up them in case your reputation isn’t high enough for buying the Grey Wolf refinement boxes. More detailed info about gears can be found here.
- Snow Flower gears
- These gears are great when you’re just starting to level your abyss chaser. Doing all episode 19 main quests is highly recommended by yours truly, because they yield a good amount of Snow Flower Petals, the items you use to buy these gears with. They are also the currency you use to buy Ice Flower Magic Stones, which enchant the gears. You don’t get to pick the enchant stones, they’re completely random – but the market offers a decent source for them in case you can afford to buy the ones you want. More detailed info about gears can be found here.
- Dim Glacier weapons
- Issgard also is the source of a first proper weapon for your brand new abyss chaser. You can opt to get a normal Glacier weapon at first, which are cheaper, easier and faster to enchant compared to their Dim counterparts. Later on, I highly recommend getting a Dim Glacier Rogue Knife [1], so you can boost your Deft Stab damage. You can start farming for the enchanting materials in Snake’s Nest (you can unlock a direct warp here on the warper by unlocking all the daily quests in Issgard region). I farmed the materials required myself, and this allowed me to save zeny from selling all the extra loot dropped by the mobs. Once you’re confident enough you can deal with Abandoned Pit floor 1, you can move your farming there instead. Here is a very useful info page about farming, enchanting and refining your Dim weapon.
- Varmundt gears
- These gears are your next big thing to work on. Reforming them and enchanting them is a time consuming task, but the finished products are well worth it. The gear set you benefit the most on your melee build is the Fire Rune set. Unlike the previous Snow Flower gears which enhanced your Deft Stab damage with their enchants, these gears boost your traits and melee physical damage. Fully enchanted, refined and graded, you will do more damage with these gears rather then the Snow Flower ones, as they only boosted your singular skill damage. Detailed information about reforming, grading and enchanting can be found here. Varmundt gears also introduce new accessories for you as well, namely the Venom rings. The base item in crafting them drops from Temple / Soul / Venom biosphere dungeon only. Their enchanting process after reforming is the most time consuming one, unless you roll around in zeny and can afford to just buy all the
Varmundt Venom Waters needed.
- These gears are your next big thing to work on. Reforming them and enchanting them is a time consuming task, but the finished products are well worth it. The gear set you benefit the most on your melee build is the Fire Rune set. Unlike the previous Snow Flower gears which enhanced your Deft Stab damage with their enchants, these gears boost your traits and melee physical damage. Fully enchanted, refined and graded, you will do more damage with these gears rather then the Snow Flower ones, as they only boosted your singular skill damage. Detailed information about reforming, grading and enchanting can be found here. Varmundt gears also introduce new accessories for you as well, namely the Venom rings. The base item in crafting them drops from Temple / Soul / Venom biosphere dungeon only. Their enchanting process after reforming is the most time consuming one, unless you roll around in zeny and can afford to just buy all the
- Depth 1 armor
- Once you’re all set with your Fire Rune gears, you can start looking into getting yourself your Depth 1 armor. Early on, Depth 1 can seem daunting due to mobs having high HP and damage reduction buffs, which means finding a party to do a 30 minute run is a good idea. You will need to rake up reputation here as well, in order to to craft your armor, engrave it and enchant it. Be aware that engraving makes your armor master account bound, and you need 3 500 reputation to be able to revert the engraving to make it tradeable again. Engraving the armor gives it better stats.
- Depth 2 Dimensional gear set
- The Dimensional gear set from Depth 2 is quite new on our server and seems very potent for Deft Stab builds. This is currently what I’m working towards getting and will update this guide as soon as I get my hands on these items.
Costume enchant stones
You can start looking into getting costume enchant stones once you hit shadow chaser. There’s a set that boosts Fatal Menace damage and provides even the nifty bonus of absorbing a 1% of your dealt damage as SP. This has a tendency to proc quite often when you kill off mobs, essentially ensuring you don’t run out of SP and don’t need a whole lot of SP recovery items. The shadow chaser set is more about boosting your overall physical damage against everything, and I recommend switching over to it as soon as you change jobs into abyss chaser.
Shadow Chaser Stone II (Garment)
Shadow gears
You can get your first shadow gear set as a rental for free in the Eden Group. This is plenty enough to carry you to abyss chaser. The first ”real” shadow gear set you can look into farming for yourself is the Master Shadow set. This set can be enchanted to boost Deft Stab damage as well as POW trait, making it a good basic set for you chaser. You can read more about this set from this page.
There are other shadow gears as well that you can benefit from, and I’ll update this portion of the guide as I get around to trying them out.
Useful cards
Picking a pet
Abysmal Knight
Incubus
Kiel D-01
Little Isis
Orc Hero
Leveling
These spots are only to be taken as a guideline, not an absolute. Remember to check if either Eden and/or Main Office have any quests for mobs in the area you level in.
1 ~ 25 Spores
25 ~ 40 Thara Frogs, Megalodons
40 ~ 60 Groves, Floras
60 ~ 75 Grand Pecos
75 ~ 80 Wood Goblin, Les
80 ~ 90 Stapos
90 ~ 95 Siromas, Desert Wolves
95 ~ 110 Magmarings
110 ~ 150 Manuk/Splendide fields, Bifrost fields, Eclage field & dungeon
150 ~ 180 Lasagna dungeon 3, various Varmundt Mansion maps
180 ~ 190 Einbech dungeon 3
190 ~ 200 Odin’s Past
200 ~ 210 Abyss Lake 4, Rudus 4, Niflheim dungeon 1
210 ~ 230 Episode 19 fields and Snake’s Nest 1 & 2, Amicitia 1
230 ~ 240 Amicitia 2
240 ~ 260 Niflheim dungeon 2, Power Twisted Plains, Mjolnir Underground Cave, Clock Tower Unknown Basement, Varmundt Biospheres, Depth 1