Tips on Mew Game runs for Master Set farming

[Jonny Friggin Panic]

This comes up enough that I wanted to post some of my observations.

Spells

I don't have much use for Cattrap or Astropaw.

Cattrap:
Monsters stumbling on Cattrap can have momentary immunity from weapon hits, which I find annoying. This also causes the trap, itself, to only hit the monsters at a limited rate; I'd rather speed-spam Lightnyan for faster hits of raw damage output.

Astropaw vs Lightnyan:
I find the diagonals irritating to target; if I want area damage, I'll use Flamepurr, with its handy circle and damage-improving properties. If I want raw damage, I'll spam Lightnyan, which will probably be boosted by Flamepurr and Purrzerk anyways. Most monsters don't really last long enough for me to worry about raw-damage spells, but for the rare big-bad, getting them on a horizontal axis (where you can avoid their Ice Paw easily, and their Lightnyan will be less common) is usually easy enough. Lightnyan also has the reach to kill the level 200 sheep without aggroing it... just load up on Magic gear, use Purrzerk, Ice Paw the nearest Gold Mimic, Lightnyan the sheep repeatedly, and use the Mimic to get mana back.

Healing:
Is of limited use, because it heals integer values that end up being smaller and smaller percentages of your life as you advance. I HAVE used it occasionally, so I keep it maxed, but it's more important in 9 Lives if you slip up and survive, then find a slow, tough creature (like a Fist or one of those self-healing buffalo types) to recover mana against.

The Big Three... Flamepurr, Ice Paw, and Purrzerk:
These are the ones that get the job done. Purrzerk when you're moving into a fight, immediately Flamepurr, and hit them with Ice Paw. IP will slow their melee attacks... the higher your IP level, the slower their attack fills. In the meantime, Flamepurr and Purrzerk stack, so Purrzerk is boosting Flamepurr's burning damage-over-time (dot), and both spells are causing the monster to take more damage from your melee attacks and Lightnyan. If you refresh these three about every 5 seconds, you should still be able to stay topped off on mana against a large foe (dragon) unless you go Lightnyan-crazy, and their melee attacks become a non-issue, leaving you to just watch out for their spells.

My usual line-up is Flamepurr, Ice Paw, Purrzerk, and Lightnyan, with Healing leveled but not normally loaded, just in case I need it. I ignore Cattrap and Astropaw.

The Master Set runs

I have no use for Level 1. It's EXTREMELY gear-focused, and gear upgrading in Cat Quest is a drag... there's a ton of useless gear, and no differentiation between weapons, armor, and helms, just between Normal and Gold quality gear (what chest it comes from). You'll spend a LOT of time just farming gold and praying the gear you like gets upgraded.

First run - Stronger Monsters (includes key tactics for the other runs)

On gear, gold, and XP. Okay, really, after the first couple of fights (your arrival and when you learn Flamepurr), "Stronger Monsters" is basically just "More XP". You'll always want Stronger Monsters when you can get it. For this run and the next one, once you can kill Gold Mimics, the Forbidden Zone becomes a GREAT source of money... just kill the Mimics (fully leveled Ice Paw and Flamepurr OR Purrzerk makes them easy, using all three makes them a snap), then save at Final Rest, pause and Return to Title, and Continue, and they'll respawn. Get those spells maxed and have fun farming Kit's for Gold Chest gear!

Find free leveled gear! Once you're free to roam about (after the fight to try out Flamepurr), you can enjoy some free leveled gear by exploring the various dungeons. This time around, you can even take some risks to see if you can reach chests, but it helps to go for easy ones first. For instance: the hidden chest in the level 200 Hidden Cave (with the super-sheep) is a normal chest and probably has a level-20-ish piece of gear. The first Ruin that Grandpa Spirry has you clear has two normal chests to the north, and you just have to walk by a Fist to reach them. Explore. Find gear.

... and remember that, if you can scrape together 300 gold, you can already run around and learn all the spells, so you can just go to any wizard and upgrade what you want when you want.

Go fishing. The other point is leveling; honestly, with Stronger Monsters, you can get all the levels you need to beat the game right after learning Flamepurr. Once you have some free gear and an okay weapon, hunt fish south of Pawt City... they respawn quickly, are easy to kill (Flamepurr will make them die faster), and are good xp. Aim for level 20-30, depending on what gear you get.

Go get the key and farm more gear, including Willpower! Around now, you SHOULD have enough spell levels and gear to go get the Gold Key, although it might take some work. Ice Paw really controlls the Mimics' attack speed, and Purrzerk and Flamepurr will let you crush them. If you can't handle them yet (get a feel for it now, while you have unlimited lives!), go do the next step a few times, get some levels and spell levels and try again. Once you have the key, go get Willpower, then do another pass at the dungeons for easily-accessed Gold Chests and a shot at other superior gear!

Go try to kill the dragon north of Pawt City. Willpower and The Big Three spells REALLY help here, BUT be sure to get his attention, then lure him away for a sec so you don't end up on his Cattrap. Ice Paw will make his attack very slow, so you just need to avoid his Astropaw and move him away from Cattraps he casts. Keep him on the horizontal and Astropaw will never hit you, while allowing you to Lightnyan him when you want. If you can comfortably kill him around level 30, he should be giving you two levels or more of XP! Save at Pawt City, Return to Title, and Continue to quick-respawn him. Remember to refresh Purrzerk, then Flamepurr and Icepaw regularly... if you're close enough to him on the horizontal, Ice Paw should land just fine. Farm him to level 50 or so.

I believe you can flyyy... Go do the main questline now until you learn to fly, just because flying gets you around faster. You can skip this, if you want... it's just a convenience step.

Mash the Pawtato Dragon. He's on the ocean just south of the Pawtato Farm. Treat him like the Pawt City dragon, BUT he casts Ice Paw and Lightnyan... stay on his horizontal so you can avoid Ice Paw and use Lightnyan at will. His Lightnyan happens less often, but watch out for it and dodge when it's coming. Your Ice Paw will make his melee attack not a problem. He's also worth a ton of xp, and should get you most of your remaining levels... probably to about level 70 or 75. Save at Windmew City, then Return to Title and Continue to respawn him

Another gear pass. Take another run at every dungeon you can handle, which should be most or all of them, at this point, and get as many remaining chests as you want for shots at useful gear. At this point, it's your call whether you want to sidequest for extra gear or just farm gold for Kit's Gold Chest. Faith is useful, but not necessary, for killing the level 200 super-sheep to get Courage (see my comments on Astropaw vs Lightnyan) but, really, I'm not crazy about Faith or Courage... I prefer Slashy or Champion gear: good distribution of stats and plenty of Defense, which is like HP that regenerates on its own when you're not in combat.

Wrap up the game. By now, you can probably finish the game. You should be around level 80, with Willpower or level 99 Dragonsbane (the life penalty isn't a big deal, and its combined magic and attack is close enough to Willpower to be competitive, less melee but stronger magic, depending on how spammy you get with Lightnyan mid-combat after casting The Big Three.)

Second Run - Stronger Monsters and 9 Lives

Exactly like last run, but you should take less risks. I suspect the game has a bonus to XP depending on how many penalty modifiers you take, so leveling should be easier. Don't try for chests early if the monsters in between are problematic. Don't fight dragons until you're comfortable trying. Expect to lose a couple lives trying something you shouldn't, but don't stress about it.

Third run - Stronger Monsters, 9 Lives, Naked Cat

Differences between Naked Cat and Level 1. Naked Cat is level-based, Level 1 is gear-based. Naked Cat is consistent, lets you ignore searching for chests, lets you skip the key, and only requires enough gold to max The Big Three, Lightnyan, and maybe Healing. Level 1, as mentioned before, requires a LOT of gear work and gold farming; in my experience, 250k gold is NOT likely to get you many improvements in the gear you actually want to use. For ease and simplicity, since you're looking to get through the main quest for your Master Gear, I suggest Naked Cat.

Get your spells. Run around the world map grabbing coins and getting your various level 1 spells. You only need 200g to get the ones I suggest (You get Flamepurr for free, so Lightnyan, Ice Paw, Purrzerk, and Healing. You can ignore the two wizards south of the Pawtato Dragon.)

Go forth and level, shall be the whole of the law. With Naked Cat, you need more levels to make up for the stats you're not getting from gear, but stats from levels are consistent, so no problem. Kill farmable trash monsters until you can kill fish. Then Pawt City Dragon. Then Pawtato Dragon. I say there seems to be an XP bonus for more game penalties because, in a Stronger Monsters run, I was only able to comfortably farm the Pawtato Dragon to about level 70-75, but in a SM/9L/NC run, I was able to farm it comfortably to about level 100.

Finish the main quest. That's it. Level 100-ish should give you enough of the stats you're missing from gear to comfortably finish the game with ease. You can ignore gear, chests, sidequests, dungeons not related to the main quest, just get your spell levels, get leveled up, go win the game. For reference, I finished SM/9L/NC in less than three hours.

Then just repeat these runs if you want to level up that piece of Master Gear!
I hope this helps!

[Cat's Meow]

I found level 1 fairly easy to be honest. Faith, Courage, and Willpower + Cattrap, Flamepurr, Purrserk and Ice Paw.

Grab the pirate treasure right off the bat (before i even fight the first town dragon). Grab my spells, get gold key. go grab Faith, Courage, and Willpower. Now as i'm an unstoppable killing machine, farm some gold from the furbidden field to max the spells. Knock out the story quest. Level 1, 9 Lives, Stronger Enemies and you're done in about an hour 30 mins. I don't use any other gear and it saves a lot of time.

But that's just how I like to do it :3

Levling strat for naked cat is spot on - I mixed in a few quests early on to bring myself up to "fish tier".

[Jonny Friggin Panic]

Originally posted by Cat's Meow:

I found level 1 fairly easy to be honest. Faith, Courage, and Willpower + Cattrap, Flamepurr, Purrserk and Ice Paw.

Grab the pirate treasure right off the bat (before i even fight the first town dragon). Grab my spells, get gold key. go grab Faith, Courage, and Willpower. Now as i'm an unstoppable killing machine, farm some gold from the furbidden field to max the spells. Knock out the story quest. Level 1, 9 Lives, Stronger Enemies and you're done in about an hour 30 mins. I don't use any other gear and it saves a lot of time.

But that's just how I like to do it :3

Levling strat for naked cat is spot on - I mixed in a few quests early on to bring myself up to "fish tier".

I find I'm just careless enough that I can't safely get by on 373 life with 9 Lives, which is why I went with Naked Cat; I also don't want to casually send people sneaking around trying to get past various level 99 monsters in junk gear when they just want a cruise guide to Master Gear, especially since Faith requires sneaking up on or fighting that Ice Dragon right next to the chest after dealing with several skulls and two other dragons, although Faith would then let you deal with the super-sheep for Courage.

Honestly, Naked Cat can probably be done in closer to two hours... I spent part of the early game in that run poking around and getting used to just how much I didn't have to do. Head straight to the XP and you can crush right through it.

[Jonny Friggin Panic]

Just did a run and beat Stronger Enemies, 9 Lives, and Naked Cat in 1h56m, and that's with me taking ten minutes to do laundry and about five minutes goofing about in-game trying to decide when I wanted to change farming spots in relation to the storyline.

However, it's worth noting that, in this run, I was able to comfortably farm the Pawt City dragon to about level 70, then farm the Pawtato dragon to level 90, then I wrapped up the game. I was rushing, and almost got myself killed by the three mages that stole the flight gem, and then almost by the three Masters outside the final tower, in my haste, but managed to wrap the end game pretty easily.

[Jep]

Started 2 hours ago for a nice little relaxed mew game(naked and strong enemies modifier). Read this guide, found out about purzerk, OOPS!

Just need to finish the last quest.

Also how do you use the master set? Does it just appear on your inventory and mew game?

[Jonny Friggin Panic]

You can use it in Mew Game if you take Furry Armored (so you don't get a bonus), BUT you can do level 1 and Furry Armored and just decimate the game, letting you get those last two achievements in one quick go, since Master Set destroys everything even with Level 1.

[heros326]

Hey, Ragnarok sword is stronger than willpower? I don't find the stats anywhere... :(
The rest of the armor give magic and armor or life and attack?

[essen]

Thanks for the tips. I've been doing mostly what Cat's Meow did except I'm still doing the Naked run now. I went to most places a little earlier though, Pawt City dragon at lv30 for example (took 3 kills to lv40 from there!) and for the other runs I was doing the dragon before lv20 even.

I also think raiding dungeons is completely unnecessary. For non-naked runs the most important is Faith along with Cat trap and Flamepurr. Ice is good to get the gold key, and Berzerk is good to speed up the grinding. But that's it.

For naked run the magic is not as strong though so it's mostly Flamepurr to burn enemies and Berzerk to increase damage. Burning enemies take more damage. Then once you and your magic is leveled the Cat trap is useful again, it's just not that great while grinding. And yeah I agree that the naked modifier gives a lot more exp.

For early naked run you can use the LV200 cave to get some exp as each orb gives +10. It can be used to get to lv8-10 without taking any risk. Don't worry about dying near the start, it's the most dangerous part of the run.

A few things to note: you need to save after killing a dragon. The game saves on level ups but not when you exit. I got bit by this at the start.

You can easily get Faith once you have a few hundred HP, just walk to the chest (the floor attack will do little damage to you). Once you get near the chest, move slowly until you can open it and the dragon should not see you.

[heros326]

I did the (naked+9life+strongermonster) in 2:26, lvl 86, cat trap + fire + giant lvl 10.
Helmet lvl 20 stats:
defense 242
attack 242
magic 242
Thanks to nobody for not sharing it earlier. -__-

[Jonny Friggin Panic]

That's silly. Stats on all Master set items are as follows:

Helm: Absolutely destroys.
Armor: Absolutely destroys.
Sword: Absolutely destroys.

When all the gear is game-breakingly powerful, the stats don't matter.

[heros326]

The stats always matter for people who care about number.

[eienshi09]

Not quite related, but are the stat increases at each level the same? Like, is the stat increase from 70 to 71 always the same amount? I've been debating if it's easier to do Lv1 or Naked Cat, and if the stat boosts are always the same, Naked Cat is probably easier since I can expect to be at a certain stat at any given level.

[nighthawknina]

any tips for the "no leveling up" mod?

[kaki_gamet]

I don't remember if you start out already with waterwalking but if it does, walk your way into some delve and look for hidden chests, some can drop higher level equipment. Then go for pirate treasure and at least a piece of Faith Courage Willpower set. I guess you may need to spend some on Freeze magic before to get the golden key. Sorry but it was long time ago ^^'