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Archer Ugly unorganized guide to Marksmanship

Discussion in 'Jobs' started by RegalStar, Jun 1, 2020.

  1. RegalStar
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    RegalStar Nightshadow

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    Sep 23, 2019
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    6:49 PM
    DMsRebirth
    Since I'm bored and the server is being DDoS'd, I decided to write up this as I've been seeing (a bit) more people considering/making crossbowman since they got buffed, and the other Marksman guide on the forum is from like five years ago. A lot of this is just my own opinion and experience so if there's something you feel like should be done differently, do whatever you feel is best.

    +Decently easy time training through 1st to 3rd job; archers are still not as good at grinding as mages but we are generally in a pretty good spot in these times
    +Uncontested king of single-target damage throughout the early-middish 4th job period (other ranged classes eventually catch up and some will overtake us)
    +Everyone loves Sharp Eyes
    +Can freeze stuff
    +Snipe doing fixed damage makes Marksman wash-friendly, and it also shines in some niche situations (some examples are KBing nameless, CWK mage boss, doing full damage to HT when def buff is up and bishop is RIP)

    -Forever in competition with Bowmasters because there is not enough to differentiate between the two classes
    -Grinding in 4th job is harder because of how useless Piercing Arrow is
    -Pinning stuff can be a pain
    -Weakest single-target damage out of all ranged classes in endgame situations
    -Dependent on SI
    -Endgame crossbows are probably one of the hardest endgame weapons to get (only DrKs have a worse time)
    -Crossbow is ugly as hell
    -Jump shooting is an integral part of Marksman gameplay, so players on Mac (who cannot jump shoot) will be at a good deal of disadvantage

    I'm gonna get the skill build out of the way first because it's easier and there's less room for deviation.

    Arrow Blow (1)
    Blessing of the Amazon (3)
    Eye of the Amazon (MAX)
    Critical Shot (MAX)
    Double Shot (MAX)
    Focus (9)

    The 1st point goes in Arrow Blow so you have something to blow MP on. Eye of the Amazon is absolutely critical so we can actually hit things at a distance. Critical Shot and Double Shot are next as they're essential for damage. Focus is last because the avoid is very helpful - much later in the game, that is. You won't have enough points to max it right now, but you'll be able to do so later on.

    You can choose to max Arrow Blow instead of Double Shot. Double Shot deals more damage because Critical Shot actually adds a flat 100% multiplier when it procs (rather than doubling damage as its tooltip suggests), which means more damage lines = more damage from criticals, but Arrow Blow costs less MP and can knockback monsters easier. You won't be using either after hitting 3rd job so it doesn't matter much in the long run.

    Iron Arrow (1)
    Crossbow Mastery (19)
    Crossbow Booster (6)
    Soul Arrow (2)
    Iron Arrow (MAX) (Optional: Put a point in Power Knockback when you reach level 45, if you plan to do EPQ)
    Power Knockback (MAX)
    Crossbow Booster (MAX)
    Soul Arrow (MAX)
    Focus (MAX)
    Crossbow Mastery (MAX)

    1st point goes to Iron Arrow so you can finally hit more than one enemy per attack. Mastery is the first skill to "max" because it raises your minimum range by an insane amount - but the last point should be held off because it only adds 1 point to accuracy which you don't need at all. Booster and Soul Arrow are useful buffs, but their effect don't scale with levels at all, only their duration, so just put a few points in them to have access to them (the 6/2 spread people will generally recommend means that they will both last a minute). After that, you max Iron Arrow to increase your mobbing ability (which is important in training), PKB so you can actually do something against enemies in melee range. (The optional point in PKB at level 45 is useful in EPQ, since you can slap the bugs in stage 2 and make them move to the center much quicker than waiting for them to crawl all the way.) After PKB you just max your buffs in any order you want, really - you'll also need to put that 20th point in Crossbow Mastery because it's a prerequisite for a skill in 4th job.

    DO NOT PUT ANY POINT IN FINAL ATTACK. It's an uncontrollable single-target follow-up that makes Iron Arrow impossible to use and your single target damage weaker.

    Strafe (1)
    Mortal Blow (5)
    Arrow Eruption (1)
    Blizzard (1)
    Arrow Eruption (MAX)
    Puppet (MAX)
    Strafe (MAX)
    Blizzard (to 21)
    Mortal Blow (MAX)
    Thrust (15)
    Golden Eagle (15)

    1st point goes to Strafe as it's much better than double shot (480% average damage instead of 360%), then you work on maxing Arrow Eruption first since it's your main mobbing move during 3rd job. After that, max Puppet and then Strafe so you can start doing Headless Horseman when you don't want to grind. (Puppet comes first because you need the durability and length against HH, while increasing Strafe damage is just "win more" in this case). Blizzard isn't something you'll actually use a lot in training but it can be useful when you're killing stuff for fun or quest or cards or something, but you'll only ever need it at level 21 because that's when it freezes for 3 seconds - it doesn't ever crit so it's useless for damage. Finally, max Mortal Blow to minimize the chance of bow whacking when something gets close (and you're not using Eruption), put 15 point in Eagle because it's prerequisite for 4th job (don't put in more because it's useless), and the last points goes in thrust because more speed is always helpful.

    While the final result of the build really has no room for deviation, the ordering can change a lot depending on what you want. A popular build in GMS a decade ago is to max Strafe before Eruption; I don't recommend this in Legends because the training spots we have here heavily favors Eruption but you can do it if you want. Also, you can max Strafe before Puppet if you don't think you want to HH too much, as Strafe actually sees use in grinding occasionally while Puppet doesn't. Lastly, you can hold off Eruption at 21 and get other skills quicker since its range maxes out at 21 and its damage multiplier suffers diminishing returns, though you definitely want to max it at some ponit.

    Sharp Eyes (3)
    Frostprey (1)
    Dragon's Breath (1)
    Marksman Boost (1)
    Sharp Eyes (to 6)
    Snipe (MAX)
    Sharp Eyes (MAX)
    Marksman Boost (MAX)
    Maple Warrior (MAX) - pause at 154 so you can have 5 point in Hero's Will at level 155. At the very least, you need 1 point in it by then
    Blind (MAX)
    Piercing Arrow (MAX)
    Frostprey (MAX)
    Dragon's Breath (21)
    Make sure you save 10 points here for MW30 eventually, then go wild with the remaining points

    The basic plan early 4th job is put 1 point in the 1 point wonder sills (Frostprey, Dragon's Breath and Marksman Boost), put some points in Sharp Eyes so you don't go crazy recasting it (the first point in it ramps up your damage by an insane degree, but the points afterwards are a lot milder), then max Snipe. Unfortunately Snipe really doesn't help with much of anything until you max it out, so you'll be suffering a little here. Once you max Snipe, go back and max SE so you can be more helpful to parties, then Marksman Boost to increase your damage more, then Maple Warrior to increase your damage even more. Note that Maple Warrior 20 is really expensive to buy so you might not be able to actually max it for a while, but save 10 points here so you can get 19/20 points in it when you can afford the book (and it passes). You'll also want 5 points in Hero's Will by level 155 because it's very helpful in Horntail. Blind comes afterwards as it's simutaneously a boon to grinding and a decent bit of support in boss fights.

    After those, you're basically done with your core skills and can max out what's left at your leisure. Piercing is occasionally useful to kill adds or questing in ToT, Frostprey increases your bossing damage by a little bit, and Dragon's Breath is kind of useful if you STILL haven't finished ToT at that point. After saving 10 points for Maple Warrior 30 (eventually), you'll have 7 points remaining - put them wherever you want; they'll barely make a difference at that point.

    The main deviation you can make here is to max Sharp Eyes before touching Snipe, as it can help out your party more when you start doing Zakum (and Scar) at level 135. I don't personally recommend this since Snipe is useless until you max it, and without Snipe you will be a lot worse than Bowmasters of the same level anyways, but if you know for sure people will take you for bosses then go for it (that and if you max Snipe and tries to go to Zakum at level 135 people might think you're scamming when you only have level 15 SE :F3:). Getting Blind before Maple Warrior is also feasible if you do group bossing with people who can cast MW for you a lot. You can also get Pierce earlier if you want; it's actually really useless and won't help in grinding at all but it might be fun to play with.

    The short version of AP distribution is basically like this:

    -Enough STR to wear your crossbow after equipment and optionally MW bonus (note that Bowman armors have no STR requirement, only weapons)
    -Enough INT to do HP washing. Eventually reset these back to DEX when you think you're done. I'll talk about this in another segment
    -4 LUK
    -Everything else in DEX

    For STR, I recommend aiming for 110 to wear Dragon Shiner Cross. While some other classes consider using level 100 weapons for endgame instead of their dragon weapons, it's not a very viable plan for Marksman because they're simply not available enough - unlike the other level 100 weapons, due to no commonly farmed mob dropping any of the Nescheres. Unfortunately Shiner Crosses are also difficult to obtain since White Neschere basically only drops from bosses (Dual Birks are horrible to farm), so it can take you a long while to find/buy a good one still.

    For the crossbows stronger than Shiner Cross, Speargrave/Flairgrave crossbow are not really worth it as they only offer 2 more base attack for 5 higher STR requirement while being prohibitively rare, Reverse Black Beauty is expensive and untradable upon being equipped (though it does offer much more attack than Shiner Cross when accounting for the levelling mechanic), and Timeless Black Beauty is a pure endgame option - by the time you think you're ready to obtain one, you should also have no problem using AP Resets to get a few more points in STR to wear it if you need to do so.

    Since bonus STR from your armor can also be used to meet your weapon's STR requirement, you generally don't want to raise your base STR too high early on only to find that you'll have to waste NX to reset them back into DEX later. For new players, I recommend adding STR to around 50-60 and stopping; This is generally enough to wear a Shiner Cross with omniboosts from common class equipment like Zakum Helm and stuff.

    Another major choice an archer has to make later in the game is to equip either the Mark of Naricain or Horntail Necklace. Someone already did an analysis on this and the conclusion is that HTP is better; you can read all about the sweaty details here if you want https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/htp-vs-mon-avoidability-analysis.27333/. If you somehow obtain a Timeless Pendant, it's basically a slightly stronger Horntail Necklace (on average) on all fronts, and can be treated similarly.

    The final thing I want to talk about is regarding shoes. You will want to avoid wearing snowshoes, as well as shoes with too much Jump on them. I will talk about the reason later but the main annoyance is that scrolling shoes for DEX will inevitably also slap a ton of Jump on them. Considering wearing attack shoes (Facestomper doesn't have the same traction as snowshoes despite being a pallete swap and is thus safe to wear) or scrolling avoid shoes instead.

    Going STRless means that you don't put any point in STR at all, but instead put every non-INT AP into DEX and wear one of the three maple weapons, none of which have STR requirement. This is unviable in the endgame since the best weapon you can wear this way is the Maple Nishada, which has way too low attack compared to the amount of STR you would save, but going STRless to start and adding points in STR later on will result in a better earlygame, while your endgame would remain the same.

    The problem with this plan is that the maple items are only obtainable during Anniversary events, and they can be difficult and expensive to obtain for newbies depending on the time of the year. If you're starting off with some wealth and can get these weapons right off the bat, then by all means go STRless until you're ready to wear your endgame equips, but for new players I do not recommend going through with this. You might do slightly less damage during 2nd and early 3rd job, true, but the difference is not very noticeable in practice and you'll have much more freedom in getting weapons (don't forget you CAN still use these maple items even if you do have STR).

    If you don't even know what HP washing is, then I recommend you read this guide first: https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/hp-washing-guide.3409/

    The basic gist of HP washing is to level up with INT so you can get more MP on level-up, and you can convert these extra MP into HP by using AP Resets. Doing HP washing means that you will be devoting a variable amount of stats into INT instead of DEX over a short term, and spend a lot of NX as well, but you'll end up with higher HP in the long run while not sacrificing any damage. These extra HP may be necessary to have against certain bosses depending on the damage they do and your current level, and are just generally nice to have in any case since it means potions that heal a % of your HP (which are what you will be using in the lategame) will heal more per use.

    Unfortunately, archers have the lowest base HP in the game (tied with thieves) and do not have any sort of damage reduction skills, meaning that these extra HP will generally end up being necessary more often than not. Akash's guide here shows that it's technically possible to fight most of the bosses in the game without washing at all, but you'll be completely dependent on someone in party having Hyper Body (which ironically are more difficult to find when the boss in question does higher damage, as Dark Knights want to deal with huge damage even less than you do), generally need to be at a higher level, and there are a few bosses in the game which you will never be able to fight anyways (including Pink Bean, the server's strongest and most rewarding boss).

    If you don't foresee yourself hitting 155 and start doing the endgame bosses (Horntail, Neo Tokyo and Pink Bean, basically), then you don't have to worry about any of this. Most of the bosses below Horntail either don't do enough damage to warrant washing, are easily doable without tanking of any of their high damage moves, or are too annoying to fight for other reasons anyways. However, if you do want to fight endgame bosses, then you will definitely want to HP Wash. You really don't want to be stuck with needing HB all the time, as this will really impact your ability to get into runs.

    My recommendation is that, at minimum, aim for 10000 clean base HP at level 190. This way you'll be able to reach 11800 HP easily with HP gears, which is enough to tank Pink Bean's fireball attack with Hyper Body, as well as tank all of Horntail's non-touch damage without Hyper Body. You'll also want to reach 8000 clean base HP at, if not level 155, then at least soon afterwards, to reach 9800 HP easily with HP gears which will allow you to tank any non-touch damage from Horntail without Hyper Body.

    If you're a new player and wants to play a Crossbowman as your first character but don't really want to come up with a plan for washing, then I recommend this path:

    *As soon as you can, time your SP so you'll have 25 DEX at level 10, and put every other AP in INT until you have 150 base INT (without equpiment boost).
    *Afterwards, distribute your AP normally, but HP wash as much as you can until level 120.
    *Starting from level 120, instead of HP washing, put all 5 AP in MP, and use 5 AP Resets to decrease MP and increase one of your stats (MP washing). Continue to do so until you're level 141.
    *Continue to HP wash as much as you can afterwards. Since you've spent 22 levels worth of AP not doing any HP washing, you will have quite a lot of excessive MP at this point, so you'll likely be spending all your AP on HP washing for a while.
    *Remove base INT at level 155.
    *When levelling up, try as hard as you can to have the Maple Warrior 20 buff cast on you. Ask your friends, guildmates and random people in FM to cast it for you.

    This process will ensure that, even with absolutely no INT gears whatsoever, you will hit the 10000 clean HP mark at level 190. In practice, you'll be obtaining quite a bit of INT from Zakum Helmet (or Scarlion Helmet) and your pendant, plus temporarily equipment from events anyways, and there are low to mid INT equip that are quite cheap to buy, so you'll definitely overshoot these minimum goals by at least several hundred, if not a thousand or so points of HP. 150 base INT will make early game quite difficult, but you can blow past most of it through quest experience, Coke Zero pills and party quests, and by the time you're level 50-60 or so your character should be not really cippled any more. By the time your DPM really starts to matter, you will have Snipe, which will do a boatload of damage regardless of how many base INT you have. If you're really having trouble with an early game, you can create another character on a different account (magician -> cleric is probably best, pirate -> brawler is also a decent option, since you can later make useful skill mules out of them), and have them assist your archer with quests and party quests.

    This process will cost about 1.7m NX, which is worth about 9-10 months of voting. While that seems intimidating, remember that you only actually use up all that NX by level 190, which will almost definitely take more than 9-10 month to reach unless you grind like a madman. 150 base INT is not really the most cost-effective path; it costs less NX to instead use 200 base INT and MP wash less. However, this will make your early game a good deal harder, and the NX difference is pretty marginal compared to the total NX you'll spend (about 70k worth).

    If you're not a new player, then you probably have your own goals, as well as pre-existing NX and INT gears. In which case, you can use a calculator or something to come up with your own path. As long as you have at least 10k clean HP at Pink Bean level, you should be all good.

    Jump attacking is really the only technique worthy of note for Marksman, but it's a very important one. Archers cannot use any of their attacking skills in midair, meaning that whenever they attack they're stuck rooted to where they are until the attack has finished. However, by pressing Jump and your attack button at the same time, it's possible for them to jump and attack at the same time (the attack is treated as if it came from the ground). While it doesn't seem useful, what's important is that you can jump attack while moving towards a direction. This means you can attack and move at the same time, and it improves your mobility by an insane degree - it's a must-know for any archer who's serious about fighting anything other than a dummy.

    How consistent you can jump attack seems to matter a lot depending on what keys your jump and attacking skill are assigned to, though. My keyboard setup is based on the default with jump on Alt, and I seem to have a lot of problem doing it consistently with attacking skills on Shift and Ctrl - but not if I use them on the right side of the keyboard, and I have a lot easier time doing it with skill assigned to one of the letter keys. You'll want to try and experiment with your keys to see which combinations work best.

    Akash has came up with assigning your jump to one of the sticky keys, which seems to help with pulling it off consistently a lot. Try it out if you like.

    It's also worth noting that you can do a "back" jump shot too - simply move towards a direction, then do a jump shot towards the other direction. The game seems to preserve your momentum to your movement direction to some degree, so you'll be able to attack backwards while still moving forwards. It seems to work very poorly if you have snowshoes equipped, though, which is why I do not suggest you wear snowshoes.

    You can find a video guide for jump shooting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilroKvG63Mo. (Don't be like him and have final attack, though F3)

    Puppet is a unique and very powerful tool in an archer's arsenal, but there seems to be a lot of confusion on how it works, so I'm going to talk about it a little here.

    When you conjure a puppet, any monsters that are currently aggro'd at you will immediately switch its attention to the puppet, and will remain so until either the puppet disappears (because it ran out of time, got killed, or you summoned a new one), or if another character attacks the monster, which will cause it to reassess aggro target again. Auto-aggro enemies will also reset aggro if someone gets in the boss's aggro range while you're not in it. Because of this, Puppet is completely useless unless you're the only character attacking a boss, but as long as you are you can easily redirect its attention to somewhere you're not in, but it's insanely helpful in solo boss fights.

    The best way to use puppet, if possible, is to simply throw it up at a place where a boss cannot reach. If it cannot reach the puppet with any of its attacks, it'll simply hover around its horizontal location uselessly while you wail on it with impunity. If that's not possible but the boss in question has shorter range than you, you can also stay out of its range while putting up puppets constantly in between you and them, so it'll be focused on attacking the puppet instead of you. Finally, it's also possible to "de-aggro" a boss or some other monsters (if it's not auto-aggro) by quickly casting puppet a few times in a row. Puppeting a boss is NOT considered aggro abuse in any form (as long as you haven't discovered some kind of secret method that permanently freezes a boss even after the puppet disappears), so you don't have to worry about that.

    Note that while puppet can stop a boss from being able to attacking, it won't be able to stop them from doing any support skills like healing, dispelling, summoning or whatever. Dispelling is particularly annoying since it will disable puppet as well, meaning that the boss can immediately start attacking you again.

    1-40: https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/exact-guide-for-1-35-in-under-6-hours.29751/ although you may want to pause to do some KPQs when you're at level 21-30 so you can pick up a pair of slime shoes, which can come with up to +2 INT for washing and is generally a good pair of boots to wear until much later. It's likely your character is full of INT and not very powerful at attacking things, so doing quests to get easy exp is really your best bet at clearing these levels.

    40-44: Either do LPQs (go for the glasses if you want, though it takes a looong time and isn't all that great), or do straw target dummies. You generally want to stay on maps that are mostly flat as those are the maps Iron Arrow is most useful in, and Straw Target Dummies fit that bill perfectly.

    45-54: Do the Ellin forest quests first (except for the last one; you might want to leave that until a bit later since Wild Kargos and Lazy Buffies can be very challenging to kill at this point). Afterwards, EPQ or continue to do Straw Target Dummies. EPQ is a lot faster experience than LPQ or grinding normally, but you don't really get much in the way of monetary rewards and there's no NX, and you really want to raise enough money to buy a Zakum Helm ASAP, preferably as soon as you hit level 50.

    55-71: Windraiders in Lower Ascent. They're very slow and congregated on flat platforms, making them very easy to kill with Iron Arrow even if you have to attack them many times. Don't bother going to Ghost Ship or MP3; Those maps are too crowded and Lower Ascent is better experience at any rate.

    72-95 or so: You can continue to do Windraiders or move on to Taipei 101. CDs are technically the best map you can train on (probably all the way up to 4th job), but they're also extremely crowded. Kid Mannequins and Cheap Amplifiers are generally pretty decent too. These things do a lot of damage so be careful of your health.

    95-119: You can continue to train in Taipei 101 or give Himes a try. The best way to do Himes, as I found, is to continuously jumpshoot AE towards one direction, then turn around and jumpshoot AE towards the other direction when you hit an endpoint, and repeat. You'll always be hitting the mob following behind you while jumping away from their magic attacks. If jump shooting is too hard you can do it the old fashioned way and just lure all the Himes to one end before killing them, but it'll be even more pot intensive.

    Alternatively, once you have puppet maxed you can go after Headless Horsemen. It spawns in 7 different maps (actually 8, but one of them is Evil Dead which you really don't want to be in), so even though they have a spawn time of 12 hours or so (depending on map) they shouldn't be too difficult to find. Check the bossing section to see tips on killing it.

    120-beyond: With Sharp eye boosting your critical damage by a large degree, at some point it'll be better to go after monks in Forest of Towers. The map is structured pretty much like himes and thus you can do the same strategy, except they're even easier to avoid since their attacking range is smaller. Try to have as little jump stat as possible; otherwise you'll constantly be jumping onto various terrains and have to get back down frequently.

    Once you have maxed out Sharp Eyes and maybe got a bunch of skill mules, duoing 7F is also an option - just try to stay on shelves as much as possible mow things down with Arrow Eruption. Archers are generally not very attractive duo partners though, but Buccs like to have SE (and you like to have SI) so make friends with them and duo with them.

    NTPQ also becomes an option at even higher levels, though from my experiences the EPH is generally worse than training in Shaolin.

    Once you have maxed snipe, hunting bosses for exp also becomes an option on the table. You can do Ravana, Papulatus, Bigfoot, Kacchuu Musha and Female Boss immediately, and other bosses become available as you level up (for non-solo bosses you need to be at least the boss's level minus 5). I will talk about it more in the next section.

    I'm gonna talk about some of the boss-specific strategy on dealing with them here. Low level bosses are not gonna be included here because you pretty much just shoot them until they die. Might throw up some screenshots later when the game goes back up.

    As long as you have about 3300 HP you can kill Headless Horseman safely; it gives really good experience for how little health it has and can be killed in the middle of 3rd job (as long as you have high level puppet). The difficulty of killing them depends on which map you're in.

    Sacred Grounds, Hidden Evil, Creeping Evil: HH has a very short KB recovery time so you can't pin it by shooting at it; it'll eventually close in and attack. Therefore, what you want to do is stay at a distance and throw up puppets in between you and them, renewing it when it gets killed. As long as you can keep it attacking the puppet, you shouldn't take many hits and can kill it pretty easily.

    Crossroads: Just throw up a puppet on one of the elevated platforms and wail on it with impunity.

    Forgotten Path: This is even simpler as HH's movement is confined in the middle of the map, so just go to one of the raised platforms and shoot it from outside of its range. For the matter, this does not count as Aggro abuse as it's still trying to attack you by trying to move towards you, it just can't ever get in range. If you're skittish you can just walk into its range and throw a puppet behind you.

    If your strafe lines can't do more than 10k damage, then it's basically just shooting at it and trading blows. However, if you can do more than 10k damage per line, you'll be able to pin it towards one corner. Once you have done that, run to the opposite end and throw a puppet in that corner, then come back and hit it - Papulatus's attack can't reach one corner from the other, so you won't have to deal with any of its attacking skills this way. This means he won't be able to use his 1/1 attack, which means he can't retreat into his shell (as it always follows up after an 1/1). However, it can stun and dispel you if you're too close, so simply stand some distance away.

    The 2nd form can fly and touch you for 5k damage, but it has no magic attack. If you cannot survive a touch, what you want to do is puppet behind you, crouch to let it fly over you harmlessly (it can't hit you at all if you're crouching), move back a bit and shoot at it a few times until it has killed your puppet, then throw another puppet in the other side and repeat.

    Bigfoot only has a short range magic attack that does very tiny damage (less than 100 if not outright 1), but its touch damage is 11k. It also has a lot of frames where it simply has no hitbox and your attacks cannot hit it at all. Nevertheless, it's possible for Marksman to kill it fairly easily.

    The first thing you need to learn about Bigfoot is that while it looks like a big thing, it actually has a very small hitbox (around where its toe is), and you can consistently jump over it if it's currently moving towards you (and not attacking). Also, it's possible for Marksman to "pseudo" pin him on the right side corner, as it tends to try to move towards the wall for a second or so before turning back there. (Left corner also works but the pin seems a lot harder to achieve and keep than the right corner.)

    To achieve this pseudo pin, I found the best method is to get on its right side - if you're not already there, then hit it once and puppet behind you, then jump over it as it try to run and attack your puppet. Once you're on the right side, hit it to aggro it (you need to wait for your puppet to die if you put up one to jump over it), then move all the way to the right corner and put a puppet there. Jump over it again as it moves to the right corner puppet. From here, keep hitting him and throwing up puppet in the right corner until it moves into the corner, then step back a bit and throw up a puppet a bit away from its attacking range. Then you just shoot at him until the psuedo-pin breaks for any reason, at which point you continue to throw up puppet on the right side corner until it goes there again.

    Because of its iframes, it's better to fit in 7 strafes in between your snipes instead of 6, which can help your snipes hit all the time instead of missing half the time. Only 3 out of 7 strafes tend to connect if you just use one after Snipe immediately; waiting just a little bit after each snipe seems to help you hit a lot more strafes as well (but if you wait too long you may very well end up breaking your pin). You'll be able to get a rhythm down more easily as you fight it more; it's pretty difficult to put down in words.

    On Forgotten Path it's also possible to fight it by using one of the two sets of elevated platforms on either side - just throw a puppet on the highest platform and 99% of the time it'll just jump below it instead of jumping up from the side to reach it. Using this strategy you can actually fight it at hilariously low levels; I managed to kill one at level 95. I cannot recommend it however as it will take way too long to be worth it.

    Kacchuu Musha (or samurai as people tend to call it) is a really easy fight for an archer solo. Lure it to the right side, put up a puppet on the platform just below the topmost one on the right side, and you'll be able to shoot him safely. He has a long range sword beam attack that only does 2.6k or so, and a short range lightning attack that can hit more than 9k. The lightning attack has a long charge-up time, though, so as long as you're paying attention you shouldn't have any problem getting out of the way before it connects. If you have any mules, hanging them on the second rope from the right side will let them stay safe.

    Female Boss (or Anego as people tend to call it) can touch you for 11k damage like Bigfoot, but she also has a mid-range gun attack that can hit for 5.1k or so, and a short range slap that can hit like 18k. Needless to say you'll want to avoid receiving the latter (though it's difficult to outrange the gun from time to time, so it's best if you fight her with at least 5.5k HP or so). Anego cannot reach you with any of its attacks if you're on top of the shelves on the right side, or on top of the telephone on the very right end, so what I tend to do is puppet on the shelves to keep her busy for a while, then go down to her left side and pin her to the right. Once you have achieved the pin, keeping her there is easy as she will not put up any kind of resistance if you're standing far away enough - until you have to rebuff, anyways. For short buffs like Soul Arrow and Booster, you can simply throw a puppet in front of you and rebuff while she's busy killing the puppet, but for long ones like Maple Warrior it's best if you back on top of the shelves to rebuff, and then pin her again.

    Trying to change channel in her map will send you all the way out to the entrance of the building. However, you can go to Free Market from the map to the right side (Armory), and change channel there. This will also allow you to start on her right side so you can easily have access to the safespots, instead of being forced to jump over her somehow from the left.

    Zakum isn't really that interesting of a fight mechanically; you just hit it and heal from its attacks really. The only things I can say on the fight is that during the arm stage you'll want to be hitting the top right arms first (as melee characters can't reach them), and during the body stage you'll want to dodge the fire pillars the best you can, as wasting a second to move away from them is much better than wasting 4-5 seconds from being stunned.

    As a Marksman, you should generally have a very easy time soloing archer room even at level 140, so you'll have a pretty easy time getting in runs, especially if you have some sign up mules. Unfortunately, it's also the archer's job to distract the pirate boss with puppet while the rest of the ranged attackers kill the mage boss, and Marksmen have a far harder time at it than Bowmasters. You see, the normal tactic for Bowmasters to keep the pirate pinned is something like this - Pin pirate boss to one side, use the teleporter to quickly head down, immediately throw up a puppet, then teleport back up and keep pinning pirate boss until puppet runs out. However, Strafe + Snipe have a far slower speed than Hurricane, meaning that with just booster it's almost impossible for them to knock the pirate boss to a corner. The obvious solution is to have your SI mule - with SI, your attack speed will be fast enough to pin, and you can use your SI mule to corkscrew punch and separate the bosses much better than your Marksman can, not to mention how much having SI does for your damage output in general. If you don't have SI, or you can't consistently output 15k lines to actually knockback pirate boss, though, then the rest of the ranged party will need to leave the "table" where the mage and pirate bosses are on whenever you recast puppet - as long as no one is in the pirate boss's aggro range, he will not reset aggro and you can cast puppet behind the pirate boss's corner on ground level, so you don't have to worry about not being able to pin him. If you go with the SI method, you probably want to walk towards the mage boss a bit before resuming shooting at the pirate boss, as you need to stay outside of his dispel range much more than you need to not take damage from the mage boss.

    If there's a Bowmaster in the party, it's usually best for the Bowmaster to be on the pirate duty while you help with mage boss. Not only do bowmasters have an easier time pinning Pirate boss, but as the mage boss doesn't have a true weapon cancel (its self buff only reduces damage it takes by a great deal), you'll be able to pierce through that damage reduction with Snipe, meaning you will lose a lot less damage against her than any other class (except maybe Shadowers).

    Marksman generally have a fairly easy time getting in runs since SE is almost essential as a buff, though they have to compete with Bowmasters for that slot as well (that being said, most Bowmasters will need attack pots to outpace Marksmen of equivalent gears). Unlike just about any other boss in the game, Horntail has quite a number of complicated mechanics and there are a lot of techniques you can use to deal more (effective) damage, so prepare for an even longer piece of rambling than the other pieces of ramblings here.

    Prehead 1 - You'll be on the left side of Horntail's head here, and it will knock you back to the left. Stay to the right of the rope so Frostprey will always be hitting it, and use forward jump shots to reposition yourself if it knocks you out of range.

    Prehead 2 - You'll be on the right side of Horntail's head here, but it still knocks you towards the left. As with the first prehead, you'll want to try to stay just a bit left of the rope so Frostprey will hit the head, but you can get knocked forward and backward this time. If you have confidence that you can back jump shoot perfectly, then use that to get out of range when it knocks you too much to the left. Otherwise, I suggest you try to move as little as possible, and only move when the head does its super knockback or is about to knock you left off the platform.

    Legs - When the main fight starts, you'll be starting on the legs (unless you don't have enough HP). This is a pretty simple part; just stay on the far left and spam your attacks. Don't bother moving (unless you need to SE someone standing in the middle of legs); you take far less damage from the falling rocks and they won't stun you nor do super knockback on you. Don't bother summoning Frostprey for this part unless a Shadower has prepared smokescreen for you; it won't hit anything from that far back.

    Tail - Once legs is dead, the tail's super knockback becomes a lot more annoying because you have to move all the way back to where HT's dead legs are to shoot at the tail. However, its super knockback won't hit you if you're in mid-air, so whenever you see it swings that glowing tail up (make sure it's glowing; when it casts poison mist it'll also swing up but it won't glow), do a couple of jump attacks to avoid getting knockback. However, if you have max jump (or has haste cast on you), you'll end up jumping into arm or head and get knocked right all the way into tail, forcing you to waste time moving back out. Therefore, try to have less than max jump at this point and right-click that haste icon to disable it for the time being. (You could also try asking the thieves in your party to not haste you, but they might need it for themselves or something so I always just disabled haste when I receive it.)

    Heads - Once tail is dead, most of the attackers will likely be moving to the right. However, Marksmen doesn't do very well on the right side because unlike all the other ranged classes, they don't have a good way to focus on the middle head when right head is weapon cancelled. You could opt to hit wings, but that's a terrible thing to do in most runs because wings will die to cleave damage from the melee attackers anyways, meaning that any damage you deal to wings are effectively wasted. Instead, I prefer staying hitting the heads from the left side instead. When left head cancels, you can simply jump up the small platform to your right to hit midhead from there - you'll waste a few shots firing Mortal Blows instead depending on where you're standing, but overall it's better than hitting wings. Remember to move over to SE your party members every few minutes, too! (A great time to go over is when one or both heads are in cancel.) If you must hit wings for some reason (like all three heads cancelling), you should use Pierce (or Iron Arrow if you don't have 21+ Pierce yet) so you can at least do some damage to the arm behind the wings.

    Something to note at this point is that, when the wings heal Horntail's pats, it will flap upward right after the heal number pops up, and if you're standing on the very far right side of the big platform it'll crash straight into you and you'll take touch damage. With attack buff the touch damage is quite a lot (just shy of 9000), and in any case will knock you to the right off the platform. Therefore, you'll want to stay a little bit back until the wings have just used its healing move, at which point you have about 30 seconds where you can move to the edge of the platform. When you feel like the 30 seconds is about to be up, move back again to avoid the next wings slap. If you trust in your reaction speed enough you can also just move left whenever you see the healing number pop up, though that requires a lot more concentration on the fight.

    When wings are dead, it's likely that the right arm is in mass seduce range, and you'll probably want to move right to to focus on it so your team doesn't get as many mass sed cast on them (not to mention that you could end up walking into head and dying if you stay far away from the rest of the party). Once the right arm is dead, move back to the left and resume hitting the heads. The fight is a lot more straight forward from this point on; just move down to hit the left arm when it starts using mass seduce.

    If you don't have 9.8k HP (with or without HB), then instead of fighting legs at the start of the fight, you'll be on the upper platforms hitting left head instead (since legs can't reach you all the way up there with its attacks). You'll want to be even more careful of wing slap at this point since if it knocks you right, it'll knock you straight onto legs and you'll be killed in one hit. Otherwise things aren't too different. You can consider going down to help with tail when legs is dead if you have 9k HP or so (in case you jump into attack buffed arm or wings), but it really doesn't matter much.

    The first of the NT boss you fight, and the one that can also do highest damage to you. Isn't life funny that way? If you want to just get a pass, just crouch for the entire fight and you won't get hit, but if you want to fight with a group you'll need 13.1k HP to be sure you can tank everything. If you're fighting solo, however, then you only need about 8.6k HP as you can avoid most of the attacks that can hit higher.

    Body 1 - Only its "touch" rockets and minigun attacks do more than 8.1k or so damage, and you can outrange them both. I use the windows of the ship in the background as an indicator; as long as your entire character isn't to the right of the window you won't get hit by the 10k attacks. You can still get hit with non-touch rockets (there are two kind of rocket attacks; one is a magic attack that hits a bit farther and applies slow, and the other actually extends Vergamot's hitbox to hit you with touch damage instead) and lasers, so be sure to dodge the latter to not be dispelled.

    Body 2 - Unfortunately you can't avoid things here (except by crouching) so you'll just need to have the HP to tank stuff. Touch rockets here can do up to 85xx damage so this is where you'll need the 8.6k HP for. Again, dodge lasers so you don't get dispelled.

    Body 3 - All of Vergamot's attacks can hit almost 13k, but without the laser it no logner has any attack that can reach the far left side. So, just throw a puppet there, dodge whatever first attack Vergamot sent you, then hit it with impunity for 60 seconds. When puppet runs out, put one up again and dodge the one attack sent you way, and repeat. You won't take any damage here.

    Pretty easy solo fight; just throw up puppet to the bottom and Dunas won't attack you at all. He can still put up damage reflect, however, so make sure you watch his animation carefully (the animation for damage reflect is a purple circle growing from his feet to envelop him, though it's also used for one of his buffs) and stop attacking when you see 1s. You don't really need to worry about getting attacked when puppet runs out as his attack animations are god awful slow and you'll have no problem getting out of the way in time.

    There's always the "safespot" on the bottom right (as long as someone else is there to ensure that it will attack), but fighting on the bottom right is terrible because you'll be bow whacking/mortal blowing 70% of the time and doing very little damage. For the first two bodies I recommend you just fight from its left; its lasers are 1/1 attacks and its actual attacks only deal 4.5k damage or so on first body, while second body adds in a missile attack that can hit 7.5k or so. Third body can hit up to 12k or something (or so I hear), so if you don't have HB and aren't fighting alone you're forced to hide in the safespot. If you're soloing, none of its attacks can hit the far left so you can just puppet there to avoid any attacks (keep in mind that it can still summon Mavericks).

    Nameless Monster has one magic attack (the claw attack) that can hit up to 18.5k damage or so, but none of its other attacks (including touch damage) breaks 8k, and none of its magic attacks can match your range. It does, however, cast Confuse very frequently. Unfortunately, the previous strategy of puppeting in its face no longer works very well as Nameless has a nasty tendency to disregard the puppet and walk towards you, so you're forced to puppet on the top. This makes things pretty risky as there is a good chance that when puppet wears off, Confuse will wear off at the worst time and you'll end up walking straight into a claw attack. I do not recommend trying to solo this boss without having enough HP to tank its claw attack (you can bring a HB mule to faciliate it), or at least a couple of Resurrections for when things go wrong.

    Pink Bean is mostly a pretty straight forward fight that Marksman can handle like any other ranged class, but there are a few things that Marksmen in particular needs to be wary of. First of all, during phase 4 and 5, some groups will have a melee party or two on the left side while ranged deal with the right side. If you are in one of the melee parties (there is a pretty good chance since those are likely where your run's SIs are at as well), you will want to stay on the left with them, not just so you can receive SI and give out SE, but also keep Blind on the left wiseman statue so its lightning attacks are less likely to knock everyone around. Second, during the Pink Bean stage, marksmen must choose between staying on the right side or using Snipe - if you use Snipe on the left side, there is a chance that you'll grab Pink Bean's aggro, causing it to face left and raise holy hell on your entire run. This means the "staying on the left to avoid fireball because you don't have 18.7k HP" thing that some NLs and Bowmasters will deploy are not viable for Marksmen, as the damage loss without Snipe is too much. If you do end up on the left side (possibly because you ate a stray sed attack), you can try to walk across by staying close to it on the left side, take an 1/1 attack, and walk through Pink Bean while you're on iframe. If you choose to do so, be sure to not use Snipe while you're on the left side, de-summon your bird (it also seemingly has a tendency to grab aggro), and inform the rest of your run that you're going to attempt to do this so a warrior doesn't rush Pink Bean in your face.
     
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  2. RADWIMPS
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    RADWIMPS Orange Mushroom

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    Nice guide! (I'm also making an archer for a BM, but after my Night Lord, its level 11 for now) heres a video I found that helps archers, they're a BM but can still work with Strafe? Might be kinda slow.. but heres the video

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhzMUD0Drjw&feature=youtu.be
     
  3. xNivx
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    xNivx Headless Horseman

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    xNivx
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    You made me give up on making a MM before even reading till the end of the guide
     
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  4. RADWIMPS
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    RADWIMPS Orange Mushroom

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    Sorry, but MMs are more fun than BMs.
    but if you want single key press then go with BM, but I like single key press lol XD
     
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  5. Diziple
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    Diziple Pac Pinky

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    Wrt to training spots from lvl 95, spirit vikings is an alternative training spot where it is super less hp pot intensive as you can just AE in a safe spot.
     
  6. Aeom
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    Aeom Slime

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    I've played both BMs and MMs and i'd have to say I love and hate being a MM. BMs are definitely hold one key jobs. As an MM, you lose this luxury since we're always readjusting when and where to snipe when training/bossing. Ive placed my snipe on a hotkey to see when the cool down is up because its a significant factor in our DPS. The ending result is an uncomfortable set up that breaks my fingers after a few hours of bossing. The games current setup for MM/BMs at cwkpq and HT is a bummer but ive accepted it as part of just being an SE class. I've had the best time playing my MM bossing and training at lvl 145ish and under. Out of all the classes ive played, playing a MM has left the biggest impression and its definitely been a journey x)

    Other MMs might think differently on certain aspects but thats my 2 cents on MMs
     
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  7. lilwitch316
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    lilwitch316 Blue Snail

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    Thank you for making this, I recently started one :D
     
  8. Selquin
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    Selquin Headless Horseman

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    Try using a 1 skill macro for snipe, you can put that macro on any button you want and still have your snipe cd bar on the hotkey window.
    This is of course only the case for archers who lack levels/gear or are not very good at DPM optimization. I'm curious why you lump cwkpq with HT here as well, archers are the most important class in cwkpq, even aside from the archer room, a strong archer can use puppet to solo the pirate before any of the other bosses die so that no one has to deal with the pirate boss's saids dispel/attack spam.
     
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  9. MtDowns
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    MtDowns Mano

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    I'm leeaching up my sniper right now, and i'm wondering about buffering macros with skills with cooldowns (never really came up as shadower). Could you macro strafe into snipe and hold down the key to continually strafe until snipe comes off cooldown? or does snipe CD break the macro string and ruin things?
     
  10. Selquin
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    Selquin Headless Horseman

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    I do not believe that works, if you hold down the macro it will spam the first skill in the macro.
     
  11. MtDowns
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    MtDowns Mano

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    soooo.... it sounds like it will work then?

    you hold down macro key and it will execute (1) strafe + (1) Snipe, then it will spam strafe while snipe is on CD, then when snipe comes off CD it may perform (1) strafe + (1) Snipe again? so u get to hold down just the macro key the whole time and snipe as it becomes available with strafe in between.

    Thats how shads use assassinate at least. we macro darksight + assassinate and we just hold down the macro button the whole time. the big difference for us is just how it acts when a skill is on a CD timer, if that messes up the macro somehow.
     
  12. Selquin
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    Selquin Headless Horseman

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  13. OP
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    RegalStar
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    RegalStar Nightshadow

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    This used to work at an earlier version of maple (though you needed to use Strafe + Snipe + Strafe), but it was changed to no longer work and v62 seems like it's after that change. So it doesn't work on ML.
     
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  14. theKatia
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    theKatia Capt. Latanica

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    This is the second time I've seen jump attacking mentioned but no amount of anything I've tried have gotten me to be able to do this on Legends. If this really isn't a myth, is there any footage of you or someone doing this on LEGENDS? The video is from 2008 so it's not all that convincing to me.
    Or could it be that using a mac has once again condemned me to being the underdog in this as well?
     
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  15. OP
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    RegalStar
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    RegalStar Nightshadow

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    I wouldn't be surprised if being on a mac has to do with it. For me jump attacking is pretty finicky too depending on what keys I assign the relevant keys to, and I believe it's kinda based on how the computer interprets simultaneous key inputs.

    If you got some time, try reassigning jump and attacking keys around and see if there's a combination that your computer will accept for you.
     
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  16. Miscah
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    Miscah Red Snail

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    Does Final Attack proc on 3rd and 4th job skills? I made a mistake of adding points to it and now I'm unable to reset it out :(
     
  17. OP
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    RegalStar
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    RegalStar Nightshadow

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    They don't.
     
  18. Floris
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    Floris Capt. Latanica

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    RegalStarRegalStar this guide rocks! Thanks for making it.
    I had a question about 3rd job SP build though, it seems you've written the guide before strafe got changed to 5 lines and less damage % (not sure though). Would you still recommend going puppet first in order to kill headless horsemen?
    Since HH has 1500 knockback it might be hard to consistently KB him with level 1 strafe being 46% damage.
    Also, is it possible to pin HH with a fast 5 crossbow and booster? Or is that never possible and do you always resort to using puppet?
     
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  19. k0pi
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    k0pi Snail

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    Can I ask if this means that minimally 10K HP for MM is enough for me to participate in all bossing content? Thanks in advance!
     
  20. kalash
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    kalash Headless Horseman

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    You kinda want 11.5k hp for pb
    13.5 for verga without hb, but no one does that anymore.
    I hear auf haven also requires more hp, but idk how much and when it’ll be added
     

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