[Guide] Krythan's Leech Buying Guide

When selling by ratio, sellers should always charge the same ratio regardless of how many buyers are in the party. Each buyer is still getting the same amount of exp per meso spent. But you're right in saying that ratio leech gets more profitable for the seller the more buyers they can coordinate.

Let's do an example.

1. At ulu2, with two buyers, each buyer should get at least 12m exp/hr. At 1:2.2, each buyer is paying ~5.45m/hr. So the seller is making ~10.9m/hour.
2. At ulu2, with four buyers, each buyer should get at least 8.6m exp/hr. At 1:2.2, each buyer is paying ~3.9m/hour. So the seller is making ~15.6m/hour.

Summary: Ratio leech is more profitable for sellers as the number of buyers in your party increases. In each scenario, the buyer is getting the exact same amount of exp per-meso paid, but the seller is making ~43% more.

This is one of the reasons that Petri leech is so good, because sellers can often coordinate a larger party.

Are you buying leech for multiple of your own characters at the same time? In this case, is often advantageous to negotiate the seller to do hourly pricing, so that you (as the buyer) can benefit from the exp bonus from an increased party size.

 

Really good points!

Yeah, selling to a single buyer via ratio is likely the #1 mistake I see new leech sellers doing. Either that, or using HP+MP Pots like Elixirs, etc.

I'll likely expand on the "types of leech" section, to explain more about the pros & cons of each pricing model. You're touching on some very good points here.

Low level leech is tricky. It's hard to find consistent buyers to maintain a full party, and it's hard to find efficient sellers that'll maintain a good epm.

For the most part these issues are solved by going to a "ratio" pricing model, but you're very right... there's still the edge cases where a buyer has multiple characters, and they want to negotiate a fair price, but also don't want to pay solo hourly pricing.

Personally, when I'm leeching multiple characters, I'll offer to buy "hourly leech" at a premium, ex: 15m/hour+ just to ensure it's worth the seller's time, and to ensure that I don't spend too much of my own time searching for a seller... but each pricing model does have it's own pros and cons.

 

Thank you! Great additions.

The site leechcalculator.com and it's mirror leech-calculator-mirror.vercel.app are the tools I recommend for calculating the price (estimated, or actual) of hourly and ratio leech!

I want to emphasize part of Subterlabor's post. "Why isn't leechcalculator.com showing my most recent exp?"

The site is only able to load your most recent exp value, when one of the following actions has happened to "refresh" the data:

• The character levels up
• The character enters/leaves the map (ex: FM, Cash Shop, Channels, Portal, etc)
• A character is added/removed from the party

The most common method you'll see sellers doing is to add/remove one of their own characters from the party, allowing them to then load the most recent exp values for each of their buyers on the site.

 

Nice! I've also found it easier to find buyers and sellers for red slimes, as it's a more common leech map. (And I personally enjoy it more than gs1 due to the slightly different aesthetic and rotation).

 

EDIT: For more instructions on using leechcalculator.com, see Beads Leeching Guide

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That's a good idea. I'll add a section to the original post. It's important information to highlight. Thanks Sweatz as well!

Since some people also like .gifs, click the spoilers below for step-by-step instructions. Thanks to Tate for the idea. There's a lot going on here, so these .gifs may or may not be useful... so I recommend just playing around with the website to get the feel of it.

Spoiler: Step #1: Load your character

Enter your name into the search window. This will load your character into the list.

Fun fact! If you're just trying to estimate costs, you can skip this step, and enter Before and After values directly into the calculator.

Spoiler: Step #2: Load your character into the calculator

Click on the icon to the right of your character, to load your exp values into the calculator.

If you've gained exp since you first added this character, it will update the "Start" and "Finish" exp!

Please note: the website will only load your most recent exp value if one of the following conditions has occurred:

• A character is added/removed from the party
  
• The character levels up
• The character enters/leaves the map.

You can also manually type in a "Finish" exp value if you want to estimate the cost of exp you haven't yet gained. Make sure the percentage boxes are checked.

In this image, we haven't gained any exp yet so the start/finish values are the same.

Spoiler: Step #3.A: Calculate hourly leech

Now we want to calculate cost!

In this image, we're seeing how much it will cost to leech this character from 67.64% to level 186 via HOURLY leech:

Select "Hours"

Enter the estimated exp/hr. value from the chart in the original post.

We're buying split leech, so it's 6m/hr.

Click the "calculate" button, and this tells us that:

Leeching from 185 and 67.64% to level 186, at an avg. of 22m exp/hr. and a cost of 6m mesos /hr is going to cost 84,097,389 mesos, and ~14 hours:

Spoiler: Step #3.B: Calculate ratio leech

Same as above! But this time we're doing ratio leech.

Using the 1:3.2 ratio from the original post, we can calculate that leeching from 185 and 67.64% to level 186, at 1:3.2 ratio will cost 96,361,591 mesos.

 

May 23rd, 2025 - Updated the "Split Leech" and "Hourly Leech" sections to address one of the most common mistakes I see from new leech sellers: If buying hourly leech, split leech is better than solo leech. If selling ratio leech, multiple buyers is better than a single buyer. Here's the quote from the post:

 

May 23rd, 2025 - Added a section called "How does leechcalculator.com work?" to the original post, thanks to Tate for the idea. It introduces the website, and the basic concepts. For more information, Subterlabor's above comment covers what you need to know.

 

How to make the most of your meso when buying leech?

ILOVEPOMU recently created an interesting thread called Leech time to Zakum, aka level 135. In this thread, they created a chart showing an approximation of how many hours each level would take if done by the meta leech option for that level.

I like how this chart shoes that some leech maps are better than others. Maps like CDs (71), and Viks (82) provide an extraordinary value for the mesos spent. Especially once you consider that leveling up via grinding and/or party quests usually slows down as you get into higher levels.

The chart also shows how the first few levels at each leech map is always the most efficient. For example: Let's say you are level 82. The amount of "progress" you'll get from 1 hour at Viks at level 82, is much greater than the amount of progress you'll get from 1 hour at Viks at ~88. So, if you don't have the mesos to leech and entire level range, it's always better to buy at the beginning of that range, than at the end of that range. This same principle applies for ratio leech - if you're only able to buy ~10m of leech, it's still better to buy at the lower side of each bracket... since you'll be more powerful when you go back to grinding.

One of the tips I'll give new players, is save up to buy an hour or two of leech at each "new threshold". For example, consider buying 2 hours of leech once you hit each of these levels: 71, 82, 90, and 105. Since you might not want to leech the entire range, using your mesos on the most efficient levels possible goes a very long way to speed up leveling, and give a well deserved break from grinding.

 

Cool! That's a really good way to look at it!