Elona Martial Arts Guide by Kai

Martial Arts Guide by Kai

Table of Contents
[1] Introduction
[2] Attributes
[3] Races
[4] Classes
[5] Skills
[6] Feats
[7] Gear
[8] Special Actions
[9] Gods

Introduction: On Martial Artists and Why Role One [1]

Martial artists in Elona are pretty much what you expect. They attack things with their fists or martial arts related weapons such as Tonfas or Claws. They are extremely powerful once you have high levels of the martial arts skill, tactics skill, and eye of mind skill. They excel in one on one fights and have some very powerful special actions exclusive to them. It should be noted however, that playing a martial artist character requires a lot of time invested to make them shine. Martial artist characters lag behind their weapon using and spell casting peers for quite awhile but if you have the patience and tenacity to build up your martial artist character and skills, you'll find that a martial artist's damage can match or, in some cases, even exceed the damage of your peers.

Attributes [2]

There are nine basic attributes to consider when making a character in Elona. Out of the nine, four are probably the most important to the martial artist. They are strength, constitution, perception, and speed. Strength is very important to a martial artist since it affects damage multiplier for melee characters and affects max HP calculations. Constitution is very important because it's the main attribute that affects HP calculations and also plays a role in calculating total stamina. Since martial artists will be in the thick of combat and will be making use of special actions constitution is important. Perception is important to a martial artist because that attribute influences your chance to land critical hits. Speed is important because the more speed you have over your opponent the more turns you get over them. The other attributes are useful and should be raised, especially if you're playing a hybrid martial artist such as Martial Artist/Wizard, but aren't as important to the martial artist concept.

Races [3]

There are 11 races in Elona. While you can make a martial artist of any race and be successful as a martial artist, there are probably some races that are more of a fit for a martial artist character.

Yerles: Decent attribute bonus spread with learning being what they excel in. Their 110 life is better than normal, 100, so they can take the hits better than others. Life plays a role in the calculation of HP. Their racial feat allows them to get one extra bonus point each level. Might not sound amazing however keep in mind that at level 2000 for instance, a Yerles will have had 2000 extra bonus skill points compared to a non Yerles. Bonus skill points can be used to quickly level the skills important to a martial artist so their racial feat is decent. Overall, a solid choice for a martial artist character.

Eulderna: Decent attribute bonus spread for physical related attributes with somewhat higher than normal bonuses in perception, magic, and will. Their life and mana attributes are normal being 100 in both. Their racial feat is useful but isn't particularly amazing. It's pretty much a bit of magic resistance. Despite this, the race itself is known to be good at making hybrid characters of the mage kind due to its starting mage related skills. I personally play a Martial Artist/Wizard hybrid and my race is Eulderna. Overall, a solid choice for the martial artist that wants to use spells right out of the gates.

Fairy: Attribute bonus spread is kinda bad for the physical related attributes but pretty good for mage characters. Life attribute is pretty bad. On the plus side, the race boasts some impressive resists due to its class feat. It also has nice starting speed and a decent amount of evasion. I can't really recommend this race as being a good choice for a martial artist character. Race is more built towards being a caster of some sort and due to its low life will have difficulty engaging enemies in melee. Its low strength also hurts its melee damage.

Dwarf: They excel in strength and constitution with their attribute bonus spread making them good physical combatants. Their racial feat gives them some resists to poison and darkness. Life and Mana attributes are both normal with 100 in both. Another solid choice for martial artist.

Juere: The Juere excel in dexterity, perception, learning, and charisma and are decent in everything else. They have normal life and mana attributes. Racial feats allow you to collect more materials from resource points and their digestion system is slow allowing them to not have to eat as often. Juere seem more geared towards range characters such as the archer. Might make for an interesting martial arts/archer or gunner hybrid character.

Elea: Decent melee attribute bonus spread but has higher than normal points in will magic and charisma. Racial traits slow ether disease and allows you to take less damage from mana reactions. They have slightly less life than normal with 90 in life while their mana is 110. Elea are more geared towards casters but may make for an interesting martial arts/wizard hybrid.

Snail: They have normal life at least. I can't recommend them though.

Lich: Racial feats give them resists to poison, cold, and darkness. They're not known for their physical strength and only have 80 life. Can't recommend them as a race for martial artists since they're meant for a pure caster.

Goblin: While they have above average life at 110 their attribute bonus spread is lackluster. If you're not rolling one for roleplaying reasons you might want to go with another race to have an easier start in the game. Attribute deficiencies can be remedied later in the game though.

Golem: They excel in strength like Dwarves but their constitution is slightly higher. They also start out with an impressive 150 in life. These guys can take the hits and start out really strong. Their racial feat grants them dim immunity which is useful as well. They are kinda slow however. Still, one of the best choices for a martial artist character.

Mutant: A race for veteran Elona players. RNG plays a big role in what body parts/slots you get every three level ups. Depending on your luck, you may get extras of slots that you may or may not want. Having more than two hands may allow for more frequent multiple attacks in one action but keep in mind the speed penalty of 5% to a max of 50% for going over the default 13 slots. A mutant starts with 4 slots, chest, hand, shoot and ammo, and will end up with 16 slots in the end.

Classes [4]

Predator is the traditional martial arts class however Warrior works well too. The Predator class feat increases your chance to land a critical hit by 10%, starts you off with +10 speed, and starts you off with the Eye of Mind skill which normally can only be trained by the Fighter's guild trainer if you don't start with it. The Warrior class feat gives you a 5% increased chance of another attack. This stacks with other things such as equipment enchants that increase the chance of another attack. The warrior class also starts off with with more points into medium armor, heavy armor, and evasion than a class that doesn't begin with those skills.

Skills [5]

The three main skills of a martial artist are martial arts, tactics, and eye of mind. The martial arts skill is responsible for how accurate you are with your attacks i.e if you land your blows or not. It is also responsible for increasing your damage dice, bonus damage, and also pierce(chance to ignore PV or part of it). For every 8 levels in Martial Arts, the damage die is upgraded by 1 and the damage bonus is increased by another +1. Pierce percent is (Martial Arts) / 5, with a minimum cap of 5% and a maximum cap of 50%. You will cap pierce at 250 martial arts and it's around that level you should start to feel martial arts getting pretty strong. Martial arts is raised by attacking enemies with your bare fists or martial arts related weaponry. While you can keep the same monsters for a decent amount of time, to raise martial arts efficiently one must eventually find and attack stronger and stronger enemies. Specifically, enemies with lots of evasion. If you fail to seek out stronger and stronger enemies and become complacent you run the risk of your martial arts skill stalling when you go to increase it. Tactics is the primary skill for increasing damage multiplier. You get 0.1 damage multiplier for every 1.5 levels in tactics. Tactics is generally leveled by doing more raw damage than 5% of an enemies max health, doing more raw damage than the enemies healing skill, or you have a static 20% chance of raising the skill when you go to hit the enemy. This stays true until around tactics skill level 800. From there you need to rely on leveling it with bonus points or gauge attacks. Eye of Mind is responsible for your chance of landing a critical hit. Critical Hits are the bread and butter for martial arts damage and they always hit unless your enemy has greater evasion and at a decent level. Eye of Mind is leveled by landing a critical hit.

In order of importance in raising, I would say raising your martial arts skill is first and then tactics. When your character levels all bonus points should go into martial arts until it gets to a significant level. Ditto for bonus points gained from AP exchange. For instance, I dumped all my bonus points into martial arts until it reached 500 and then switched to raising tactics. Once tactics got to 500 I switched back to martial arts to raise it to 1000 before switching to tactics again. I alternated like this in capping both skills. I trained Eye of Mind in the field and didn't raise it using bonus points. Despite doing this I still get a nice number of critical hits.

Feats [6]

You can get all the feats in the game eventually if you meet level requirements and wish for miromi. However, there's probably some feats you might want to take sooner than later. Anyhow, here's a list of feats which I think are useful to have as a martial artist. I'll star the ones which I think are more important to take sooner than later.

*Apprentice Ascetic
*Journeyman Ascetic
*Expert Ascetic
*Master Ascetic
*Legendary Ascetic
Vampiric Ability
*Agile
*Very Agile
Stone Defense
Iron Defense
Steel Defense
Dodge
Improved Dodge
Greater Dodge
Evade
Improved Evade
Greater Evade
Conquer Darkness
Conquer Deep Darkness
Poison Tolerance
More Poison Tolerance
*Short Distance Runner
*Medium Distance Runner
*Long Distance Runner
Vindalian Jiu-Jitsu

Optional/Situational
Kokou
Exorcist

The ascetic line of feats are responsible for increasing the life attribute which plays a major role in total HP calculations and how much your HP will increase when you level up. Since HP is very important to your survival definitely pick up this line. Vampiric ability allows you to suck the blood from your opponent which replenishes a bit of HP but more importantly it can restore stamina. A useful feat to restore stamina however if you plan on worshiping Kumiromi you can pass on this feat. Since you will be using special actions as a martial artist it might be useful to have a way to restore stamina. The Agile feat line is responsible for increasing speed. Speed is very important for how many actions you can take in one turn compared to your opponent. The defense line of feats raise PV. Since you will be putting yourself in harms way by going melee, reducing the amount of damage you take through increasing your PV, protection value, is always a good thing. If you're feeling rather fragile you might want to look into this line but if you're doing ok you can skip or put off taking it until later. The dodge line increases DV, dodge value, and the reasons why you may want to take it are similar to the defense line of feats. The evasion line helps increase your evasion skill and can help with mitigating damage. Again, take if you're feeling fragile. The conquer darkness line and poison tolerance line increase their respective resists. Resists are always good to have. The runner line increases stamina and again, due to the fact that you'll be using special actions you want to have enough stamina to do stuff and not run out as running out of stamina is very dangerous. If you have low stamina your speed can get cut and if you're very slow compared to your enemies you run the risk of enemies ganging up on you and taking lots of actions on you possibly killing you. Vindalian Jiu-Jitsu is an interesting feat that martial arts can toggle. By turning on Vindalian Jiu-Jitsu the flavor text is supposed to indicate that instead of punching opponents you're actually throwing them but I think this is only in the Japanese version of Elona+. Also, enemy defense uses DV and light armor skill instead of the normal PV and preferred armor type of the opponent. As such, this feat is excellent to toggle on if you know an enemy has a horrible DV. Kokou is a feat that increases speed however you need to be traveling by yourself to take advantage of the feat. If you run with pets the feat will turn off. The exorcist feat is helpful in the beginning of the game because it helps prevents your stuff from being cursed. If you don't really worry about this you can skip this feat but I personally found it annoying to have my gear cursed while I slept.

Gear [7]

Ideally, you want equipment/armor that gives a decent amount of PV, DV, resistances to various spell elements, and immunities to various status effects. However, to add onto this tall list of things you want you really want gear that come with the enchant that increases your chance of an extra melee attack. These enchants stack and will allow you to throw up to 8 punches in one round if you have nothing equipped in your hand slots. Thanks again to the anon that discovered this. There are some static artifacts that exist that come with this enchant so a martial artist should seek them out. Here's a list of them: Mighty Arms, Smash Tonfa, Gur Bagh Nakh, Cestus of Meteors, Five Horned Helm, and the Twin Edge. More information on these static artifacts as well as how you can find them can be found on the Elona+ wiki.

There are a two types of martial art weapons that you can use and your martial arts skill will still increase if you have them equipped in your hands. They are claws and tonfas. Players that are just beginning or have low martial arts skill should equip claws and tonfas. The claws and tonfas can help increase damage and your chance to hit the target. You can use all the help you can get to increase your damage since martial arts at the low levels isn't amazing yet. Consider them training weapons as you master your particular martial arts form and harden your fists. When you get to around 250 in martial arts skill you can probably go without tonfas and claws because your unarmed damage should be good to go at that skill level. It should be noted that while using claws and tonfas with enchants that increase your chance of an extra melee attack that your number of attacks will be capped at 4. So to do the maximum amount of damage, eventually you're going to want to ditch tonfas and claws so you can get all 8 of your attacks.

Beginning the game, try aiming for getting the Shield Tonfa. Miral and Garrok's workshop sells the tonfa for 50 gold medals. You can collect gold medals from some dungeon boss drops or find hidden ones in select maps. For finding these hidden medals follow this guide:

http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Small_medal

Once you're in South Tyris try aiming for the Smash Tonfa. It is carried by the tour guide, code for martial artist in Elona+, Arma in the town Arcbelc. You will have to prove your martial arts skill by defeating her in mortal kombat to get the tonfa from her. Once you've reached Lost Irva try aiming for the Saber Tonfa. It is carried by the flight attendant, code for grand master martial artist in Elona+, Aile. She's located in the Eulderna Blimp. You'll have to defeat her in mortal kombat too if you want her tonfa. Swap out the Shield Tonfa for the Saber Tonfa if you want to do more damage. There's a hidden boss who goes by the name of Fron. She's a tour planner which is code for...well you get the idea. Anyhow, she carries the Sonic Tonfa. Not exactly a tonfa I would equip but a tonfa to add to the collection you know. Besides, it's fun beating other rival martial artists. Be careful of Fron's special lightning kick though. Fron only spawns when you've reached Lost Irva and have completed a few of the Ch3 quests. After that there is a chance she'll appear in any town you visit so keep your eyes open.

Special Actions [8]

As a martial artist there are a couple of special actions you'll be taking advantage of.

Body Blow: This special action is learned once you have 20 martial arts and level up. It costs 10 SP to use. Using this special action makes it so you punch the monster right in the stomach as hard as you can. The enemy will take extra damage, vomit, and be dimmed. A pretty amusing and theatrical special action.

BakuretuKen: This special action is learned once you have 30 martial arts and level up. It costs 15 SP to use. Using this special action makes it so that when you punch something it creates a small 3x3 explosion centered on the target. It's a decent AOE special action that can be used to kill multiple enemies. Not nearly as good as an AOE spell cast by a wizard but it's still something.

Shadow Step: This special action is learned once you have 30 in stealth and level up. It costs 5 SP to use. While not gotten through martial arts you will want this special action and you will probably be using it quite a bit. Shadow Step warps you to your opponent and makes a single attack. This special action is excellent for closing the distance between you and the enemy. It is also one of the best ways of dealing with an enemy that likes to kite or run away as the special action is rather cheap to use and allows you to stick to your opponent.

Shining Wave: This special action is learned once you have 60 tactics and level up. It costs 20 SP to use. When you learn this special action it will probably be the strongest thing in your arsenal. It's a line attack that does magic damage. Scales off of tactics and strength. The special action is good to use against tough monsters and can save you early on the game since it does a lot of damage. Do not abuse this special action though. Too many martial artists have hot keyed this special action and spam this on everything like it was their normal attack. Unfortunately, since you're not punching anything, it doesn't train martial arts and due to this, you're not getting stronger as a martial artist. While a seemingly strong special action at first glance, its scaling isn't so good later in the game. As an example. When my character was at around 1000 tactics and 1000 martial arts with 800 or so strength my shining wave did 30k damage. My regular punch from martial arts did 40k and on a critical 90k. A shining wave spammer also might be in trouble if he/she meets an enemy that is very resistant to magic. Too many former martial artists have run into a wall where their shining wave fails them and when they go back to their martial arts they find it's not up to par to handle the monsters they're currently fighting. Please don't end up like them my student. Use shining wave only when you really need it and focus on your martial arts.

Attribute: This special action is learned once you have 40 martial arts and level up. It costs 50 SP and lasts 100 turns. This is the special action that should turn heads when activated because it can effectively double the martial artist's damage most of the time or do a bit more than double or a bit less depending on enemy resists. While attribute is active you enchant your fists with whatever element you have the highest resist towards. For instance if your highest resist on your character is fire your fists become fire elemental for 100 turns. Depending on the element, you may have special enemy death flavor text which is pretty cool. If you want better control over what element your fists take on you can get the item called Elements Eyes from Miral and Garok's workshop for 35 medal. This item lets you choose from a list what element you want for your fists. When you go to strike an enemy with your fists of a particular element your initial martial arts damage is calculated and then after that another damage calculation is made. You will see two damage numbers appear. One for your fist and one for the elemental damage. Often, the elemental damage echoes the damage of your initial fist attack. So the higher the initial fist damage the higher the elemental damage. So if you did 12k fist damage you will also see around 12k fire damage or whatever element you had on your fists. The damage can get pretty crazy if you start making critical hits and manage to get off multiple punches in one round. Like if you did 8 punches that's also 8 elemental damage numbers that follow. If you want to see the damage formula and an explanation of how the damage is calculated you can check the comment section of the special action page on the Elona+ wiki. A good special action to crush your opponents but keep in mind that you get more exp for martial arts if you can beat on them for awhile. You don't get so much if you blow them away in one turn.

Clear Mind: This special action is learned once you have 100 martial arts and level up. It costs 50 SP to use. This special action is a buff that lasts for quite awhile and temporarily increases perception and will attributes. It also provides bonuses to evasion, greater evasion, and martial arts. Since it provides bonuses to martial arts clear mind usually increases the unarmed damage you do. Using Clear Mind and Attribute together is a favorite combo of mine.

Rampage: This special action is learned once you have 30 in marksman and level up. It costs 50 SP to use. This special action is a buff that doubles the damage you do to your enemies but in exchange you take double damage. If you stack this with clear mind and attribute the amount of theoretical damage you do is scary.

Uncontroll/Uncontrollable: This special action is learned once you pick up the uncontrollable power feat. This special action is like rampage but is stronger because it boosts strength and speed considerably. The catch is that you're confused for a couple of turns upon activating the special action. You can most of the times ignore this initial confusion by spamming shadow step to attack until confusion wears off.

Gods [9]

Of the gods in Elona Jure and Kumiromi come to mind for martial artists. If you're a martial artist hybrid that casts spells you can add Itzpalt into the mix. Since martial artists go into melee range where they're prone to getting injured having a powerful heal can be very handy. Jure's prayer special action you get through her worship is a very powerful heal that uses up stamina instead of MP. You can use this prayer while silenced and not only is it a powerful heal but it can cure dim, casts holy veil which protects you from hexes, and it can sometimes cure silence from what I've seen. Kumiromi is another good choice because he helps passively increase stamina regeneration. If you're having stamina problems from all the special actions you're using Kumiromi can help you out. Opatos is an honorable mention however it will take a lot of faith and favor to get a decent return on strength and constitution bonuses. The Opatos shell passive reduces damage by 10%. That might be useful but in light of what Kumiromi or Jure offers may or may not appeal to you.