Naked Cat or Level 1? Or: which has the better grind? And a suggestion.

[Jonny Friggin Panic]

Getting ready for my final pass for Master gear, and I'm debating between these two. The issue comes down to grinding:

Level 1 requires grinding gold to level gear, and takes a lot of it because you can't control which gear gets upgraded. And no, WFC is not enough, although Willpower is great until various other weapons get heavily leveled.

Naked Cat requires grinding XP. LOTS of it. It'll take dozens of extra levels to make up for the stat loss from not having gear.

Does anyone have any input on which is the smoother grind? Late-game, I usually grind Forbidden Fields mimics for gold (using Harder Monsters), and use Final Rest to save... Exit to Title Screen... Continue... to respawn them, but that yields just over 9k gold per clear, so it still takes forever to get useable gear upgrades from Kit Cat due to the high cost and random nature of her gold chests. However, I haven't found a good, efficient xp grind past about 80 or so.

And suggestion: With the size increase, I feel like Purr-zerk should also have a Defense bonus.

[knolle]

I have no idea if there are more effective ways, but I've gained a lot of experience in two dungeons.

End of the road (level 99)
There are some slow "jelly-blobs" with helmets (don't know the name). These are really easy to kill with that pink thornfield you can cast.

Hidden Cave (level 99)
There are some trash mobs and 3 Dragons

I also had the modifier level 1 with the old master set and that was really easy.

[Jonny Friggin Panic]

I took a quick shot at Level 1, and then decided to go with Naked Cat. Thoughts so far:

Level 1 has somewhat erratic but significant stat jumps as you get gear upgrades. It becomes very helpful to get whatever chests you can ASAP... I ended up with a level 20 Furry Armored helmet from an easy-access late chest after the "Learned Flamepurr" fight. I also ended up farming gold for Kit's 50G chest, which I normally ignore, for easy gear upgrades of almost ANY sort to get going.

Naked Cat highlights something that could use addressing: some events in the game should have xp rewards attached. Specifically, opening chests other than Kit's (since chests in the world are limited, and there's no other reason to open them in this mode), re-finding Monuments (since they're only interesting the first time around), and first-time dungeon clears (as an initial accomplishment reward of sorts). Progress is slower, but consistent. Also, there's only one use for gold: upgrading spells. Once your bread-and-butter spells are maxed, gold does nothing.

If you're doing Harder Enemies, a purple dragon near Pawt City should be defeatable around level 40 (lower with gear, maybe 30-35) and gives great xp into the 50s, maybe even 60. Just kill, save, title screen, continue, to respawn it fast. After that, a white dragon over the ocean just below the Pawtato Farm in the north can be farmed similarly (use Windmew City) til around level 70-75.

I think I may need to push well past Level 100 for this run, though, so thanks, knolle... I'll give those a shot for my post-pawtato-dragon (heh that needs to be a thing) grind.

[Jonny Friggin Panic]

Follow-up: Blasted through Naked Cat with Harder Enemies and Nine Lives in less than four hours. Just gotta find decent grind spots and grind out your XP... once I was able to kill fish, Catpital Lake or the area below Pawt City got me to 40. Then I was able to grind the Pawt City dragon (should be their sports team name!) to 70, and the Pawtato farm dragon to 110. After that, the game was straightforward. With Naked Cat, you can pretty much ignore caves, and ignore sidequests unless you want a change of pace from the grind.

Is there anything special about New Game+? I started it, but it just feels like the same game. Using Master Gear, I just kill everything.

[Pharphis]

I'll put in my 2 cents as someone who wanted to get all achievements in as few runs as possible. I didn't doa normal playthrough at all (my GF did) and I did mewgame+.

I first did stronger enemies (1 mod), and then I naked + 9 lives (2 mods) and then I very quickly did furry armored + level 1 (no bonus but 2 achievements). Now, I'm doing my final play-through which is a bit slow (I suggest killing fish early on to get easy levels) doing naked + 9 lives + stronger enemies (3 mods, similar to my earlier run).

Make sure you overlevel a lot before some of the early bosses (even the first quest in a cave has a tough boss right afterwards). Again, this is where I suggest killing fish (just don't get hit by them until you're around level 20, or you will instantly die).

I'm currently lvl ~60 and haven't yet killed the water dragon. I did most of the quests up to that point but the purple dragon nearby gives really good exp and is easy-ish to kill from ~40-60. I will probably push to lvl 70 before killing the water dragon, and then farm the northern blue water dragon (naer pawtato island) for exp at 70+.

You want to max flame purr, the spike spell (these are both equally important) and then spare money goes into the ice spell or maybe even the berserk spell (I never really used this).

Flame purr + spikes (cast both as the same time) leads to insane dps since flame purr leads causes all attacks to do more dmg. Ice spell is used to slow enemies on spikes (like the dragons) and that's about it. By now you should be confident dodging almost anything anyway.

This playthrough should take me <4 hours (like my first one) because I know a lot more and because gear is unneeded.

[Jonny Friggin Panic]

I'd suggest doing Level 1 + Furry Armored last, honestly... you'll have the full Master Set and just annihilate everything. Last two achievements done, boom. Do the main quest, ignore the rest.

Purrserk is excellent... as long as it's active, everything you do gets the bonus damage. You can even 'zerk, do other things, 'zerk wears off, you'll see the other things (like flame dot or spikes) do less damage, then you re-cast 'zerk and their damage goes right back up mid-effect! Flamepurr also makes things take extra damage from your other attacks. Ice Paw slows enemies down... the higher its level, the slower they get, until level 10 almost freezes them solid. Lightnyan just dishes extra damage fast if you find yourself at max mana but don't need to refresh the other three.

I had no real use for the rest, but I always moved in with Purrzerk, immediately hit them with Flamepurr and Ice Paw, then I'd just lay into the target, refreshing 'zerk, flame or ice as needed, and casting Lightnyan when I thought of it. Since you can cast without interrupting attack, spamming Lightnyan on top of zerk and flame can REALLY destroy strong foes fast. Just make sure you have mana left to start the process over if you have to back up, but constant attacking should keep you in mana and Ice Paw should keep them locked down enough that backing up isn't needed often unless they're casting.