Kinda stuck progression-wise

[Izzy]

Got some decent gear (mostly miracle tier & useful stats) for my current "level" (~15-20 lvl nefias), but I'm stuck with it for like 20 hours already - gear that suits my char barely drops, and when it does, its at most "good" quality, and obviously with ♥♥♥♥ stats that cannot surpass even my old gear, so I can't go and do ~25+ lvl nefias because the lack of damage or DV is noticeable.

Playing as a Juere Thief, so shorts swords or anything DV related almost never drops. Constantly seeing tons of PV and heavy two handed gear everywhere. Blacksmiths don't sell ♥♥♥♥ either, even when shops are level ~10.

Clearing current dungeons is not a problem, but getting better gear for future dungeons is a BIG problem. Any tips? Kinda don't know what to do ngl.

[Dying pancake]

Thats normal, there is a difficulty spike at lv25 dungeon, some really nasty foes will be added to the spawn list. That is no quick fix tho, Id suggest pick up a craft skill and eat/sleep for a year until you attributes build up

[Izzy]

Originally posted by Dying pancake:

Thats normal, there is a difficulty spike at lv25 dungeon, some really nasty foes will be added to the spawn list. That is no quick fix tho, Id suggest pick up a craft skill and eat/sleep for a year until you attributes build up

Can good-miracle-godly gear (weapons & armor) be crafted, or they are only obtainable as drops/from vendors, and if yes, how exactly?

[Dying pancake]

Cant craft them for now. I meant crafting/carpernt/cooking

[Akameka]

weakness spell might help, even for non mage character. It halves the DV/PV value of the affected ennemy, which migh allow you to damage them even when you should not be able to do it with your current stats and gear

In the opposite way, holy shield might give you enough PV to not get wrecked by ennemies stronger than you.

[Caius]

Originally posted by Izzy:

Can good-miracle-godly gear (weapons & armor) be crafted, or they are only obtainable as drops/from vendors, and if yes, how exactly?

Blackmarket vendors. They're available in a number of towns but it'd probably be better to et one for your own Home.
I'd recommend investing in shops with the top priority being Blackmarket, Gunsmith and Magic vendors.

Ranged weapons (Including canes if you could find a good one) could be quite potent since you could slap stuff like Vorpal, Rapid Fire, Critical and Bane on them all at once. Even if you can't/don't prefer to use them get an ally that could. (E.g. Mirage Beta)
Debuff and healing spells could come in handy in tough situations as well.

As mentioned, you'd want to build up your Attributes through food as well.

[Mahoroa]

Invest in party members. Recruit NPCs and pets from animal sellers, slave traders, or use your god's pet to help you clear higher level nefias to get better gear.

[meromex]

i have the same issue, im struggling on 25+ dungeons, i was wondering if there was a way to downgrade dungeons but im guessing there isnt.

[unripe mango]

if you're eating just the basic meat on the bone for every meal, you're eating only three corpses worth of stats a day. if you're eating whole roasted meat for every meal, you're eating six corpses, three seasonings, and three nuts worth of stats a day. (there are fruit/bread equivalents of these recipes for spellcasters)

a lot of these recipes will be locked away to you until you get gourmet 2 (allows use of seasoning in cooking). you'll need proper cooking facilities, and you'll need to figure out a source of ingredients.

or you can probably recruit a bunch of bakers/butchers/etc and invest a fortune into them so they'll produce these for you. idk, i put 100k into a butcher and he still kinda sucks.

you've hopefully learned faith and gotten the model follower feat by now. at this point you should think about worshipping the gods that have worthwhile rewards and start stockpiling items to rush them to 900 piety, then switch to your final ideal god once you've gotten all the good rewards from the others. your charisma is hopefully high enough to have two god pets, you can ride one and symbiosis the other.

look up what items they like and figure out a way to mass acquire them. if you can buy the items from a merchant, you can use influence to refresh the merchant (though i found this to be a massive goldsink for the gods that want equipment and not worthwhile unless you're tax evading)

you probably have enough small medals to trade for a weapon from miral, though these weapons are kinda lacking in effects (their damage is decent).

if you have a lot of platinum coins imo you should be using them at trainers to get your skill potentials up (just go as high as you can before the price goes from 1 to 2 coins) so your skills level faster. you'll consume a percent of potential when the skills level up, but since most skills level up pretty slowly (and platinum coins are easy to produce) this isn't that big of a deal, just means you need to periodically re-up your potential. later in the game you can use your platinum coins to buy lucky coins in palmia (+2 luck)

[Izzy]

Well, guess I was just really unlucky until now. Went on a world tour to collect tons of accumulated treasure maps and visited 2-3 dungeons between each treasure. Even though 90% of miracle loot was ♥♥♥♥, the 10% turned out to be really good, even managed to find a +50DV torso (a good upgrade from +15 lol) and a bit of other gear including a weapon. Stats from equipment skyrocketed, so there's that. Got lots of other stuff including money from this run, so it'll help increase some skills as a bonus.

But damn it takes some insane luck. The "barely any needed drops" problem will probably haunt me until the end.

[meromex]

i resorted to save scum before every floor by now since the dungeons are getting higher than i can

[Helios]

In this game you can also grow with getting the right food i started as executioner and get alot meat even from bosses and combine it with other good stuff and put it into the alchemist he will copy it and sell it to you back so far i got food with like 9+ atribute + potentials combined hill cave near vernis also got a free fridge for storing echess food .

[a2sauce2]

Originally posted by meromex:

i have the same issue, im struggling on 25+ dungeons, i was wondering if there was a way to downgrade dungeons but im guessing there isnt.

You can sell your fame at an information broker guy. There's one in most towns. Dungeon level is tied to your current fame, so with lower fame it will spawn lower level dungeons. Each time you sell seems to cut it in about half, so you'll have to do it multiple times. I'm too tough for town guards to hurt, but I stay mostly in level 2-10 dungeons because I like to train my followers.

[meromex]

Originally posted by a2sauce2:

Originally posted by meromex:

i have the same issue, im struggling on 25+ dungeons, i was wondering if there was a way to downgrade dungeons but im guessing there isnt.

You can sell your fame at an information broker guy. There's one in most towns. Dungeon level is tied to your current fame, so with lower fame it will spawn lower level dungeons. Each time you sell seems to cut it in about half, so you'll have to do it multiple times. I'm too tough for town guards to hurt, but I stay mostly in level 2-10 dungeons because I like to train my followers.

my man you deserve an award for explaining something so obtuse

[Ostrava of Boletaria]

some things to keep in mind:

1) The game will infinitely respawn nefia and they'll never be too difficult for you to clear because you can sell your fame at an information broker which decreases the level of nefia that spawn.

2) If you hit a combat roadblock do non-combat activities instead. You can make meals that boost your stats and stat potential and make a ton of money eventually.

3) Get your resistances up. Elemental attacks become more common at higher levels and they tend to be pretty dangerous. It's a common mistake to ignore resistances because you don't often need them outside of fire or soemthing else common. Get them from miracle/godly affixes; certain materials also boost resistances, such as scale which gives #### to fire resistance. You can sometimes find material kits which converts the material of an item you use it on to the item of the material kit which can help.

As you're playing a thief, (and I'm assuming you're dual wielding short blades), have you tried out talismans? You can use a caligraphy kit to consume a spellbook to make you automatically cast that spell when you hit with the weapon you apply it to for a set number of attacks, and as with dual wielding you'll be attacking more times per turn that also means more talisman casts per turn so you could end up having giga burst damage for those harder dungeons if you have money to blow through and the patience to a buy and lung around a bunch of spellbooks (much less of an issue if you've discovered how to make pouches and backpacks). Talisman usage also costs no MP at all so you're free to use it for buffs/debuffs/healing instead.

[Izzy]

Originally posted by Ostrava of Boletaria:

some things to keep in mind:

1) The game will infinitely respawn nefia and they'll never be too difficult for you to clear because you can sell your fame at an information broker which decreases the level of nefia that spawn.

2) If you hit a combat roadblock do non-combat activities instead. You can make meals that boost your stats and stat potential and make a ton of money eventually.

3) Get your resistances up. Elemental attacks become more common at higher levels and they tend to be pretty dangerous. It's a common mistake to ignore resistances because you don't often need them outside of fire or soemthing else common. Get them from miracle/godly affixes; certain materials also boost resistances, such as scale which gives #### to fire resistance. You can sometimes find material kits which converts the material of an item you use it on to the item of the material kit which can help.

As you're playing a thief, (and I'm assuming you're dual wielding short blades), have you tried out talismans? You can use a caligraphy kit to consume a spellbook to make you automatically cast that spell when you hit with the weapon you apply it to for a set number of attacks, and as with dual wielding you'll be attacking more times per turn that also means more talisman casts per turn so you could end up having giga burst damage for those harder dungeons if you have money to blow through and the patience to a buy and lung around a bunch of spellbooks (much less of an issue if you've discovered how to make pouches and backpacks). Talisman usage also costs no MP at all so you're free to use it for buffs/debuffs/healing instead.

Yeah, I know the basics and "basics+", but the talismans bit is certainly new, thanks a lot, I'll try it out. Weird that I haven't heard of it or seen it mentioned anywhere before (even on the wiki it doesn't have its own page), feels like I've discovered some secret knowledge lmao

Yeah, I've got three fireproof pouches (and soon backpacks) and I've gathered a box full of various spells "just in case", so they'll come in handy