The Art of Optimization: Liberating the Gloves Slot

The Art of Optimization: Liberating the Gloves Slot

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+1 DEX

Spoiler: Gold Emerald Earrings

+2 DEX, -2 LUK

Spoiler: Green Pirate Skirt

+1 DEX, -1 STR

Spoiler: Spectrum Goggles

Eventually sold for 53 Prestigious Coin after getting 2/4 goggles.

+1 DEX, -2 LUK

Spoiler: Green Pirate Skirt

+1 DEX

Spoiler: Spectrum Goggles

Overview

Having read journals on gears improvement, I'm tempted to create one myself, even though mine appears to be mostly completed. Nonetheless, there are still upgrades that can be made.



Here are my Shadower's current stats: with a base of 4 STR and 25 DEX, I can equip everything without depending on any event items.



Moreover, I've successfully freed up the cape slot without it having to contribute any secondary stats, allowing me the flexibility to upgrade to any cape whenever I choose.

​

Goals

(Achieved!)
To free up the gloves slot so that it doesn't need to contribute any secondary stats. To achieve this goal, I'll need to find 5 DEX upgrades from the current gears other than cape and gloves.

In addition, I'd like to upgrade every gear possible in my possession.​

Gears

Here are my current gears, along with information on how I obtained them to the best of my recollection, and if any potential improvements that can be made for each equipment slot. It has been over 6 months since late year 2022 I acquired these items, spanning a period of more than 2 years from late year 2020 when I created my Shadower.

Spoiler: Untradeable Equipment

Spoiler: Hat (Ravana Helmet)

I was impatient to wait for a better stats helmet, so I decided to use 1× 30% scroll and 6× 70% scrolls on it. Fortunately, all of them successfully passed with the initial 17 DEX and an upgrade over my previous 17/31/x/15 Scarlion Hat.

Spoiler: Potential Improvement

I'm looking into scrolling another Ravana Helmet or a Scarlion/Targa Hat for more than 32 DEX that still has 19 STR or more.

Spoiler: Pendant (Horntail Necklace)

I can't recall the exact amount I paid for this pendant, but it was likely around 40 to 50 million mesos.

Spoiler: Potential Improvement

Chaos Scroll??? Nah. Not gonna touch this. Also very unlikely I'll be in any Pink Bean run as a casual player.

Spoiler: Ring 1 (Ellin Savior's Ring)

​

Spoiler: Ring 2 (Monster Book Ring <Tier 10>

It took me a little over 1 month to collect 300 card sets for this ring, and I managed to earn over 700 million mesos from Gachas during that time.​

Spoiler: Weapon & Secondary

Spoiler: Dagger (Dragon Kanzir)

I purchased this dagger with 364 Prestigious Coins in the late year 2022. The c/o at that time was 1.1 billion and I a/w-ed it at 1.2 billion mesos with Prestigious Coins at the rate of 3.3 million meso each.

I had actually spent slightly less than 1 billion mesos for it by opening coin pouches that were priced below the average rate, as it was during an event and the market was flooded with pouches. Specifically, P1 (1-3 coins) were going for as low as 6 million, P2 (4-8 coins) at 18 million, P3 (10-20 coins) at 45 million, P4 (20-30 coins) at 78 million, and P5 (80-100 coins) at 280 million. Furthermore, I also acquired coins below the rate of 3.2 million each.

I earned those meso within a month by capitalizing on the market inefficiency in the late year 2022. This was achieved through scrolling 22 TMA earrings, 15 TMA gloves, and 170 TMA wands. The calculated expected production cost for each item was lower than their perceived market value, allowing me to make an average profit of 40-80 million mesos for each production.

Spoiler: Potential Improvement

I'll maybe attempt to scroll a +6 Gold Double Knife, for 18 LUK, 130 weapon attack. I could set a limit for the attempt, like 300 to 500 million meso. A perfect weapon is gonna be a project by itself.

Spoiler: Shield (Dragon Khanjar)

Someone smega-ed this shield with the c/o of 300 million mesos. I offered 350 million mesos, and they immediately accepted after the previous offerer backed out. After my successful purchase, the previous offerer regretted their decision and offered to buy it from me for 360 million mesos.

I declined and instead persuaded them to trade my existing weapon attack 28 Dragon Khanjar for 160 million mesos worth of Onyx Apples and Prestigious Coins. (...which they later regretted their decision and wanted to trade back. However, by that time, I had already quick-sold the apples and coins for around 150 million mesos, so I declined the trade.)

Spoiler: Potential Improvement

I'll probably just purchase a scrolled one with 3 LUK, 32 weapon attack.

Spoiler: Accessories

Spoiler: Eye (Spectrum Goggles)

Bought this at 300 million meso.

Spoiler: Potential Improvement

I scrolled this goggles by purchasing a couple of them with 2 STR, 1 DEX, 2 slots (failed 1 slot), for 5 million mesos each. Managed to pass 2× Eye Accessory for Accuracy 30% scrolls on one of them.

I could scroll another goggles for 4 to 5 DEX. Or purchase one with 3+ STR 4+ DEX.

Spoiler: Face (Angry Mask)

Think I purchased this mask at 180 million mesos from a store.

Spoiler: Potential Improvement

I could scroll another mask with 5× 70% scrolls, then 2× 30% scrolls for 9 DEX.

Spoiler: Ear (Gold Emerald Earrings)

Traded with 12 DEX Single Earring + 150 million meso.

Spoiler: Potential Improvement

Upgraded from 12 DEX to 13 DEX, which is pretty decent now.

I'm looking to make or purchase a 12 DEX Fallen Leaf Earrings or Sword Earrings for the extra HP. Or purchase a scrolled Element Pierce with at least 12 DEX and some extra STR/LUK.

Spoiler: Cape (Pink Gaia Cape)

Traded with 2-slots, 8 weapon attack Pink Adventurer, which I bought at 700mil meso.

Spoiler: Potential Improvement

My previous 7 weapon attack cape. Initially, I saw this item listed at 500 million mesos in a store, but unfortunately, I didn't have enough mesos to make the purchase, and it was sold to someone else. Later, I came across it being resold at 550 million mesos, so I decided to purchase it at that price.



Bought a 4 weapon attack 4 slots Pink Gaia Cape in the late year 2022, at 35 million meso. Scrolled it to 2 STR, 2 DEX and considering using a Chaos Scroll on it... 5+ STR, 5+ DEX, 8+ weapon attack dream.

Otherwise, I'll purchase a 8+ weapon attack cape.

Spoiler: Clothing

Spoiler: Top (Blue Mystique)

Think I purchased this female thief top at 70 million mesos from a store.

Spoiler: Potential Improvement

23 stats is actually quite impressive for now. I'll see if I can make a less STR, more LUK piece if other equipment gets +STR upgrade.

Spoiler: Bottom (Green Pirate Skirt)

Will be using 18 DEX skirt once I've manage to get another +1 DEX.



Currently using this 19 DEX skirt to maintain 150 DEX without gloves.

Had to scroll these myself because nobody was selling scrolled skirts.

Spoiler: Potential Improvement

Previous skirt.

Think I purchased this female thief bottom at 180 million mesos from a store.

I'll maybe make or purchase one with 17 to 20 DEX.

Spoiler: Gloves (Blue Anelin)

I wanted to purchase an 11 weapon attack Blue Anelin, as I relied on its 5 DEX. Unfortunately, the market had none available, prompting me to consider scrolling one myself. Initially, I thought of using 10% scrolls on the first slot and 60% scrolls on the remaining 4 slots. However, due to the limited supply of Blue Anelins with perfect stats, this approach wasn't practically viable.

Then, a brilliant idea struck me - I could scroll the first 4 slots with 60% scrolls at a much higher rate, and finish the last slot with a 30% scroll. I successfully implemented this strategy within 14 gloves.

This experience motivated me to explore the market further for arbitrage opportunities. As a result, I realized that I could reliably profit by scrolling 22 TMA earrings, 15 TMA gloves, and 170 TMA wands, at a mathematical advantage.

Spoiler: Potential Improvement

I'm looking into scrolling a 12 weapon attack Blue Anelin. If I can get a 5 DEX upgrade from other equipment, I'll be able to free the gloves slot for any gloves upgrade.

Spoiler: Shoes (Green Osfa Boots)

Think I purchased this thief shoes at 220 million mesos from a store.

Spoiler: Potential Improvement

I'll maybe make or purchase one with 11 to 12 DEX.

Expectation

Currently, this character only possess 200k mesos. It will likely take at least another 2 years for most of the upgrades.
​

 

After revisiting my sweet child, I realised I have a surplus of 1 STR. That gives me a slightly less strict STR requirement for hat to 18 instead of 19. My options are:

Ravana Helmet with up to 20 STR, but only 7 slots to scroll. If I get lucky with a high roll of 19-20 DEX and and passes all with 70% scrolls, I could get up to 33-34 DEX.

Or, Scarlion Hat (STR) with up to 19 STR and 10 slots to scroll. The highest roll for DEX is 17, so passing 8/10 slots of 70% scrolls would give me 33 DEX.​

A theoretical possible reallocation:



Here, I’m looking at an improvement of +1 DEX on hat, with a possible downgrade of -1 STR and some -LUK.

An improvement of +1 DEX on eye,
and an improvement of +1 DEX on face.

An improvement of +2 DEX on bottom but possibly at the cost of -2 LUK if I’m looking at Green Pirate Skirt.

And -5 DEX, -4 LUK on gloves, the targetted slot to be freed. In return, I’ll probably need at least a 13 weapon attack gloves to replace the 11 weapon attack Blue Anelin.

 

After checking some current and past sales on ML Discord, I made some rough estimates on how much I’m expecting to spend for each upgrade if I were to purchase from other players. I also came out with some expected cost for scrolling certain items.

Hat (scroll)
7/7 Helm DEX 70% passes: ~185 million meso
expected amount of Ravana Helmet (18-20 STR, 19-20 DEX) to use: 12-13

Hat (scroll)
8/10 Helm DEX 70% passes, no boom, price of scrolls only: ~280 million meso (I didn’t do a precise calculation for this, just a very rough estimate)
expected amount of Scarlion Hat (STR) (18-19 STR, 17 DEX) to use: 2-3

Face (buy)
9 DEX: ~550-700 million meso

Eye (buy)
9-11 stats: ~1.2-1.8 billion meso

Eye (scroll)
2/3 Eye Acc 30% passes, no boom: ~250 million meso
expected amount of Spectrum Goggles (1-2 STR, 2 DEX) to use: 6-7

Bottom (buy)
18 DEX: ~250 million meso
​

I might need to find an alternative to hat upgrade due to it being seemingly time-gated. It has high RNG to get specific helm/hat to drop with high rolls before even attempting to scroll. But who knows, I might get lucky.

The calculated expected cost of scrolling a 9 DEX face turns out to be around 1 billion meso. While there might be 5-8 DEX faces produced along the way, I feel the investment and risks are a little too high for me.

I’ll assess again when I have access to the game to check on FM’s availability.

 

This is how I like to play.

 

Everyone has their own fun. Multi-mage, DK farming, Osslock, OddJobs, 1,500mil bwg, scroll monopolising, you name it.

I’m not against any of those. I think it’s fair play if the game allows. For my case it’s Shadower str/dex 4/25.

 

Hmm, my intent is to find the cheapest entry point for the next DEX upgrade. So I’m laying out my options to see what is my next possible short-term goal.

After seeing my options, I’ll probably not care about hat first. 18 DEX bottom seems to be best choice for a +2 DEX, so I’ll need to get some meso for that.

EDIT:
I understand I could prioritise my resources into weapons, and attack cape for damage instead of minor stats increase. However my main goal is to free the gloves slot first.

 

The FM has nothing. Screw these upgrades.

Thank you for following along this long journey. Much appreciated.

 

I’ve never tried Nightghosts farming and seeing some positive results in another journal, I decided to give it a go.



I started hunting with Assaulter as I’ve read that single target skills are suppose to provide the best un-nerfed drop rate in ML.

0:00 - Started Assaulting Nightghosts and Dark Cloud Foxes
0:05 - 1× Common Gacha Tix dropped
0:30 - Stopped Assaulter and used Boomerang Step instead

At this point, I had 307× tails, 312× bandanas, and felt it was slow so I changed to Boomerang Step. Also looted around 200k meso.

0:43 - 1× Dagger for Att 30% scoll dropped
1:00 - Decided to stop once another scroll, gacha drops or when I’ve looted 1mil meso
1:11 - 1× Common Gacha Tix dropped, stopped


Result

1017x Tails
1043× Bandanas
2× Common Gacha Tix
1× Dagger for Att 30% scroll
~950k meso


Gacha & Exchange

Gachas:


Bandanas:


Tails:

note: I later realised I’ve forgotten to exchange another stack of tails hidden at the bottom of my inventory.

I wasn’t killing at the optimal rate, and it was a short period of time. Either way, the map wasn’t too fun to maneuver around.

 

Was talking about making cheap accuracy Fish Spear in another journal, which motivated me to make one myself. On the first Fish Spear, managed to pass 1×30% and 6×60% Spear for Acc scrolls, feeling pretty good.



Was contemplating between playing my lv39 Assassin or a little farming with Shadower, and decided to try my luck on hunting for Shadow Stars 20 at Brexton.



0:00 - Brexton hunt started
0:03 - Common Gacha Tix dropped
0:10 - Black Neos Pants dropped
0:23 - Green Ades dropped
0:31 - Common Gacha Tix dropped
0:37 - Dark Rivers Boots dropped
0:55 - Green Neos dropped
1:02 - Rare Gacha Tix dropped
1:11 - Blue Arcina dropped
1:23 - 802 Strange Eggs, ~1.2mil meso, stopped


Result

2× Common Gacha
1× Rare Gacha
5× equipment
38× Power Elixir
802× Strange Eggs
~1.2mil meso


Equipment:



Gachas:


No SS20, but still okay with the gacha I suppose. Should be roughly 6.5mil meso total for this session, and a cool Fish Spear added to my collection.

 

Sliced Kid Mannequins on the menu today.



0:00 - Started slicing some kids
0:02 - Common Gacha Tix
0:07 - [EQ] Doombringer
0:09 - Common Gacha Tix
0:11 - [EQ] Light Mantis (Female)
0:15 - [EQ] Green Patriot
0:20 - Common Gacha Tix
0:21 - [EQ] Doombringer
0:25 - [EQ] Dark Infinium Circlet
0:31 - Common Gacha Tix
0:35 - [EQ] Dark Lorin
0:37 - [EQ] Dark Infinium Circlet
0:42 - [EQ] Bent Judgement
0:43 - [EQ] Blue Dragon Babuta
0:47 - Common Gacha Tix
0:48 - [EQ] Green Pirate Skirt
0:50 - [EQ] Pink Mystique (Female)
0:51 - Rare Gacha Tix
0:56 - [EQ] Brown Requiem (Male)
0:58 - [EQ] Bent Judgement
1:00 - !!! Earring for INT 10%, stopped




Result

5× Common Gacha
1× Rare Gacha
1× Earring for INT 10%
35× Power Crystal Ore
1,389× Kid Manne Etc
13× equipment sold 2,135,000 meso
~1.8mil meso



About 7mil worth of loots and meso.
And some decent gacha pulls as well, gfma 60 + oa int 30.


Gacha:


Delicious

 

Today's just Skele farming with Bishop, for 3 hours total.



Too lazy to record the loots and timings.
Estimated about 12mil raw meso, plus 10mil from NPC-ing drops.
EDIT: Forgot to add that there's also 38 Dragon Scales and 45 Dragon Spirits.



And a 79wa King Cent, maybe 6-7mil?



Gacha's not too bad from 8× common, 1× rare.
Got a Shoes Jump 60, Spear Att 30 and Earring INT 30.

Totaling to about 45-48mil for 3 hours of farming.



And I've got an earring upgrade today!
Traded my 12 DEX Single Earring + 150mil for 13 Dex Gold Emerald.
But had to loan meso from Coorie.



Pretty happy with the trade. Seller accepting my 12 DEX earring as trade-in saves me the trouble from having to sell it and possibly incurring tax as well.

4 more DEX to free up gloves slot.

 

Although I've already passed Shadow Shifter 20, wanted to try farming Dark Wyverns for 1 hour see how it goes. It drops from Pianus as well but I don't really feel like hunting it. I think they go for about 5mil each.



After 1 hour, no SS20 drop. Only this piece of crap.



However the other drops were actually pretty decent. Got 6 equip drops, 1 being a 78wa King Cent that sells for 2-3mil maybe? Managed to sell the previous wa79 for 6.5mil.

817 of Dark Wyvern's Toenails (etc), just in case anyone wants to use it as reference on the kill rate.

Surprisingly, got 32 Dragon Scales from the session which is more than what I drop per hour for Bishop Skele farming. Also looted about 1.5mil of raw meso.

Gacha result from Dark Wyvern - 2 common, 1 rare:



Decided to try Brexton once again for Shadow Stars 20 and 35 minutes in...



WOOT!



Used it to pay back my "debt" to Coorie. In case you didn't know, Coorie is my character as well and all the meso are MINE! But for story's sake I'm paying back so that I can complete the challenge.

And lastly, gacha result from Brexton hunt - 2 common:


I typed in a rush so it’s all over the place, but stylish I know.

 

Tried farming at Rashes for Topwear LUK 70% and Bottomwear DEX 70% scrolls.



The layout is pretty okay with high mob density, fun and feels good for Shadower to slice through a bunch of them quickly. Drops good amount of meso too from Pickpocket, about 2mil raw meso for 50min of farm.



Drops decent amount of equipment which sold for almost 1.8mil. Also gotten 24 Power Crystal Ores and 18 DEX Crystal Ores, perhaps about 700-800k for those. The ETC were probably about 1.2k each, can’t exactly remember how many but I know they sold for about another 600-700k in total.

Didn’t get any LUK/DEX scrolls however, other than a Shoes Jump 10% scroll that goes for around 500k. But overall still pretty decent I’d say, about 5.7mil for 50min, which is like 6.84mil/hr.

Gacha from 2 common:


Think I’m gona try Master Chronos next.

 

Yeah, you are right. I think I had considered doing that in the past but selling the ETC seems to be the better choice especially if I’m just gona use TP Rocks most of the time.

 

Ahh yes. I think doing quests in Leafre reduces the price as well, for Tatamo’s seeds…