/vg/ Windmill Guide 1.01

== How to painlessly get through the advanced ranks of Windmill (r9-r1) in ~24 hours of grind or less (so maybe a week of playing for the average player; results may vary). After that, you're all set to go for whatever CP skills you want (just remember to avoid dex for refine)!==*

If you're unfamiliar with the overall concepts of CP, why training WM is so highly recommended, and are still a bit foggy, go do some more homework or ask questions in the general before coming back so you have a general idea of what you're doing here and why you're doing this. Google is your friend.

You will need:
- A fresh character with no funny business like rank 1 combat mastery or rank 1 arrow revolver (the guide assumes extremely fresh, but as long as your cp is around maybe 300 cp or so before beginning you're fine.)
- Total level of 1-99 on said character so saga missions are set to Basic difficulty. Int might work (untested) but you'll need better damage output and possibly need to spam more potions.
- Plenty of potions and holy waters. Comgan's church PTJ can be spammed for HW without needing any mats at all in less than three in-game hours; you have no excuse.
- 177 AP (Human/Giant) or 169 AP (Elf) (/tg/ pls)
- A flying mount to unlock Mana Tunnels for Saga Episode 4. Use the beginner Eagle.
- You might want to consider actually finishing saga 4 and then doing it again for training windmill because you'll be able to skip the cutscene every time you want to get back into the SM. It isn't that long, however: Do it at least once and then judge for yourself.
- The trickiest bit: -500 cp or more. I wrote this guide oriented towards beginners on their free-card Humans with a piece of -500 CP gear in mind, which works perfectly.

	- Humans need only grab a Marble Brigandine; in Mari as of right now, 5/1/2014, they're roughly 200-300k, perfectly within the reach of a beginner who manages to take advantage of an event/spends some time farming mats. Alternatively, ask to borrow from someone in /vg/ who's on your server.

	- Giants won't need the -CP gear. Why are you reading this guide? Just train it casually alongside doing things like daily SMs and be happy you don't have to grind.

	- If you're training an elf, you're fucked like you're in a doujin. A maximum range of 2 mil (usually much less, femchars will need to shell out more than males) will get you a Jackal suit, which will then substitute in for the Brigandine. If this isn't your main (like it generally is), hopefully you're more well-established than a beginner and can afford this. Otherwise, get Difficult on your light armor (-100) + a Broken Arrow crossbow (-350 total at this point), which should almost barely cut it with very careful CP management (skills, etc). These are just a few of many options which sprang to my mind as relatively easy.

There may be more flexibility and equipment options to cover than what I've stated here.

== Skill Management ==

As a beginner you can abuse your resets. Reset all combat-oriented skills except Windmill ofc to rank F if you haven't already, perhaps being mindful of skills that are almost next-rank completed so you don't lose their preexisting training.

You will be ranking the following along with Windmill:
- [X Mastery], where X is your weapon choice. Although I am an extremely poor character optimiser and have little knowledge on what would be most efficient, Humans should definitely go for dual-wielded swords, preferably beginner choices such as Gladii. Elves might go with a blunt+shield setup
- Combat Mastery, only until rank 9 or possibly 8 (this will be experimented with to see if more is possible)

Again, there may be more flexibility than what I've stated here.


== Beginning ==
	- Rush through all of Saga episode 4 however you want *up until the last shadow mission*, Proceed with the Ritual. This is the one where you defend Millia as you wait for a percentage to rise. Look up the wiki page for a general guide on the saga; a repost of that information here would be a waste of time.
	- Go to Lelach at the Dragon Mark if you aren't there already.
	- Take off all unnecessary equipment that isn't -CP, your weapon, or anything else that's important to your build (this if you're already gud and know what you're doing) to avoid holy water loss (anticipate many deaths).
	- Enter the mission.

== The Workout ==
	- Clusterfucks of enemies with ~900 cp on Basic will constantly spawn under Bhafel (the big dragon).
	- Three mobs will prove difficult: Unknown Men will try to fuck you up with their final hit, Korsek Raptors will ruin your damage output with their Stomp, and the Demonic Poets use Dischord to get around your Windmill (they can be countered out of this).
	- The former two are usually handled by your allies, but if they're proving to be difficult, take them out first or wait for your allies to kill them while abandoning the battle. The Raptors and Unknown Men are more dangerous and cannot respawn.
	- Ignore the objective of protecting Millia and just focus on windmilling everything.
	- Windmill everything.
	- Windmill the rest of the fucking everything.
	- Your allies will generally soak up aggro and damage for you, but don't be surprised if you do end up taking hits and dying.
	- As you windmill and leave mobs alive, you'll pick up more and more multiaggro. Manage everything carefully; this requires gamesense, and just know that deaths are inevitable.
	- If you have powerful pets with on-summon attacks, they'll leave behind nice groups of dead mobs that require FINISHes.
	- ^ Consider finishing Saga for the above reason of having the Perseus (~400 damage onsummon) if you can; it does help a bit, but is not necessary.
	- If you can't two/three-shot everything here, try to get better gear/stats until you can. Use "crutch" weapons if you have to. Try to hold off on ranking CM if you can help it.
	- With your CP gear, everything should be BOSS to you. Don't worry about dying; just re-bless your stuff and go back in.
	- Take your CP gear off and on as required by whatever you have left to do for that rank. -500 CP will make everything strong or awful from boss.
	- Repeat the mission again and again as necessary. Don't complete the quest, of course, or you'll have to do it all again.
	- Tendering pots a shit.
	- Black Scar and Red Scar a shit.


*Guide is still in progress. I am not extremely experienced myself and better players could likely find better solutions to the situations herein than the ones I have come up with. Please share.