SP farming guide at the bandit stronghold (Part II)

IV. Deleveling - losing experience

While you are farming with a nine level gap between your character level and your highest mastery level you get a lot of skill experience points and a bit of experience points. The trouble is that to go from level 16 to 17 you don’t need that much experience, so in an afternoon of farming you will level to 17. DON’T put your masteries to level 8 to keep the nine level gap. You need to lose enough experience to go back to level 16, preferably to 3% of level 16.

You lose 2% per death, so you need to die 50 times to lose a level. It’s pointless to say that having someone to resurrect you is a big advantage. There are many ways to do it, here is how I do it. You need a friend with the resurrection skill at level 1 (you get only a little HP and exp back) and preferably with the harmony skills to. TP do Downhang (don’t set the return point, leave it a Jangan and save 5000 gold) and go to the south gate. Party with your friend so you can easily find each other in case you get separated, “exp auto share” if you have a gold ticket (explained below.) Go and find some place where there aren’t too many people and let the earth ghosts kill you. On a calm day, your friend just has to stay in the harmony circle, you stand just outside, when the earth ghost kills you, your friend can immediately resurrect you. Repeat as many times as necessary, until you have 5% of experience left at level 16, then respawn yourself at Jangan. And go back to the stronghold.

You can farm at the bandit archers until level 19, but at level 19 there is a sudden drop in exp and SP that you get from archers. I recommend going up to level 19 at least once so that you can add HP or Int to your character. You keep the extra HP and mana, the mana will be a real help.

If you don't have a guild and don't have any friends that can resurect you you are not lost. As you are a farmer you could be very usefull to a low level guild - for every SP you farm your guild gets a guild point, guilds need many guild points to level up. Offer them your GPs for there resurecting services

Gold tickets and monkeys

They are items that you buy using silk, you buy silk with real money via paypal or credit card on the official SilkRoad Online website. I strongly recommend that you DO NOT try to buy silk for ingame gold for your own good. What these items do :

¤ a gold ticket, or "gt", is a scroll, once activated it gives you three hours of double sp and double exp during combat periods. So when you go killing archers, you get double sp and the ticket slowly runs out but if you stop killing things and go back to Jangan to stall then your "double sp time stops running out.) Time you don't use today will be transferred to tomorrow. Gold tickets last 24 hours or 28 days and cost 15 silk (1.5$ - 1.15€) and 130 silk (13$ - 10€) respectively.
-> There are a few tricks to know so that you don't waste your gold/silver ticket. Gold time counts down when you are fighting - but not in the same way depending on the mobs that you are attacking.
- Gold tickets activate when you attack something, once you stop attacking gold time runs for 20 seconds and then pauses.
- When mobs attack you, unless they are red, you gold time is activated. This is interesting because if ever you need to delevel during gold time, do not attack monsters and don't delevel on anything but aggressive red monsters and you will save your gold time for farming.
- In a party, set on experience auto-share, gold time stops. In a experience distribution party, [your gold ticket is active and it also doubles the party bonus your get.] (to be verified)

¤ a monkey, a squirrel or a rabbit is an immortal pet (mobs don't attack it) that picks up your drops and any other available items around you. It has it's own inventory, and you can transfer items from your inventory to your pet's inventory. Pets don't drop items when you die. Once activated it takes up 1 slot in your inventory and last 28 days - after that it expires. To buy a pet, it is 98 silk (10$ - 8€), to resurrect your pet it cost 48 silk (4.8$ - 3.7€)

A monkey is really a big help - you will see a lot of SP farmers chain killing bandit archers without grabbing their drops because it takes too long - your pet will not only grab your own money but also theirs - there is lots of gold to be made there. As for gold tickets, if you are planning on farming more than 50k and the bandit stronghold, if you can afford one don't hesitate.

If that is the case then here is some advice. While you are own "gold time" don't lose time picking up items, you really need to maximise those three hours a day by killing, killing, killing...

VI. Some numbers

First of all, the thing you want to know is how many SP will you be getting in how much time. This depends on a few parameters such as, pickup time, weapon, crowded areas. These figures are for an hour of solid farming, from your first kill until 60 minutes later. Farming 25 000 SP at 250 SP/hour will not take 100 hours, but a lot longer!! you have to delevel, repair equipment, connect to the game, get to the stronghold and so on.

No gt or monkey, 2 shot kills and grabbing drops : 180-200 SP/hour (+ 80 000~100 00 gold)
No gt (with or without monkey), 2 shot kills, no grabbing : 250 SP/hour
No gt, 1 shot kills, no grabbing : 320-360 SP/hour

gt + monkey, 2 shot kills : 500-600 SP/hour

With a gold ticket and a monkey, and I really do recommend this combo if you are going to farm seriously, I was getting 3 000 SP per day, and up to 500k gold. It is possible to make even more if you pickup and sell equipment, but your inventory will fill up very fast, meaning you have to go back to Jangan more often.

If you farm bandit archers for three hours a day, expect a SoX drop about every two or three days, so keep your eyes out for those special treasure boxes!

VII. A few tips

¤ If you plan to maximise your efficiency go for a gt and a monkey. Logical but ever so true.

¤ Don't bother about picking up equipment that the bandit archers drop except if you REALLY need the money. Instead go for the alchemy items and tablets as they are stackable, sell for a lot more to the NPC (the tablets you don't need that is) what more elements are worth a lot of money. Bandit archers drop Broken Arrows that contain Wind II (2k each on Alps) so consider each alchemy items as being worth at least 1k.

¤ Learn to deal with KS. Some people are retards, others bot - you have to learn to live with it, however frustrating it may be. If you want to p*ss them of you then here is a little trick. Let us presume that you have a Sos +X bow that does at least 200 damage with imbue. It normally takes you 2 shots to score the kill - try and hit the archers only once before moving on as fast as possible to the next one. The KSer will only finish them, thus getting a lot less SP/EXP, if your weapon is good enough, you will be getting only a little less SP.

¤ Party, party, party. Exp distribution, item distribution - use the party match window (by pressing "p", "party match", and try and join any party with x members out of 4. You get a serious SP bonus if you do this. Over time those extra point DO build up - trust me.

¤ Find something to do while you are farming - a radio show, music, whatever... anything to keep you going. But just keep one thing in mind : the more efficient you are the faster it will be over, you need to be able to keep your mind on targeting mobs as fast as possible.

¤ Tape down you ctrl key, you won't have to double click to attack. If you have a decent keyboard, create a macro that only sends the "key pressed" signal. Example : launch the record function, press Ctrl, hold down, stop the record function, release Ctrl. Better in the long run because while Ctrl is pressed you cannot use your inventory.
WARNING : while talking to an NPC left clicking on an object with Ctrl pushed down sells the item without confirmation. Don't get caught.

¤ If you are planning on building a hybrid, put as many points in Int as possible before level 16 and compensate afterwards. Int characters farm faster than strengh characters.

VIII. Lexicon

Experience points : points that you must accumulate to get to the next level. It is the green bar. (1)

Skill experience points : you need 400 skill experience points to get 1 SP. The yellow bar fills up every 400 points (2)

Skill points : or SP. When you develop masteries, you pay a price in SP. The higher the level, the more SP you have to spend a single mastery. (3)


Alchemy Items : they are medium grey bags that monsters drop. They can be disassembled in order to get elements.

SoX : Seal of Star, Seal of Moon and Seal of Sun. They are legendary weapons that are a lot stronger than normal ones. You can tell that the weapon is SoX from the pink aura around it when it is equipped. The best is Seal of Sun.

KS : kill steal or kill stealing. When a character deliberately shoots the monsters you are attacking or going to attack.

Mana and HP points : Mana is the blue bar, you use mana to use a spell or a skill. HP, or health points are your life points, when they run out you die.

Imbue : it is the basic magical skill. It covers your weapon with the magical skill you use and deals extra magical damage when you hit something.

NPC : Computer controlled character.
http://www.ogpal.com/news/silkload/2007/06/17/177.html