ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THE OFFICIAL SHEEP FORUMS~
Guide created by me, Jando/Satsumori of the Mari Server
Pictures and information from mab wiki
Version 1 - Written everything out (18/8)
Version 2 - Added alot of stuff (29/9)
Version 2.1 - Added couple more sections (30/9)
Version 2.2 - Added in EXP values 31/9
Version 2.21 - Edited EXP values 31/9
Version 2.3 - Added The Satsumori Test 1/10
Version 2.4 - Added '4.6 Walls' and spelled checked (17/11)
Version 2.5 - Added Video into 9. Other uses of Their Method. Changed text to black(7/01)
[SIZE="6"]Their Method of doing Windmill[/SIZE]
Contents
1. Introduction.
2. Summary of Their Method.
3. Information on Soldier Zombies and Windmill.
4. Advanced Techniques.
4.1 Smart Windmill
4.2 Herding
4.3 HPW + WPZ
4.4 The Double Tap
4.5 Solutions to Dying
4.6 Walls
5. Rewards
5.1 Exp
5.2 Gold and items
6. Pots and Profit
7. Recommended Equips and Skills
8. MPS [Minutes Per Shadow Mission.]
9. Other uses of Their Method.
10. The Satsumori Test
11. Video's
12. Afterthoughts.
13. Credits
14. Coming Soon
1. Introduction
Welcome fellow Mabinogians. Ever imagined a place where windmill would absolutely own and not get you killed or waste thousands upon thousands of pots from spamming it? A place that is so great that it rewards you both physically and financially? A place where you don't have to press that darn H key to pot? A place to abuse low crit? Well that place is:
[SIZE="5"]Their Method[/SIZE]
2. Summary of Their Method
If you don't know what Their Method is then don't be shocked, surprised or frightened since with your pal Windmill you can turn this Shadow Mission into a gold mind of money and exp. Their method is a Taraian Shadow Mission which already sounds good since the Quest board and the alter are like 10 seconds away from each other. No wasting pet times to get those missions.
Their Method is comprised of 44 Soldier Zombies, which depending on your chosen difficulty have different stats and give out different items/gold. There are 8 groups of 4 and 1 group of 12 Soldier zombies, the group of 12 serve as the boss. Female Soldier zombies give out a tad more exp then the male counterparts.
The objective for Their Method is to eliminate all Zombies in the city, you have to first kill the 8 groups scattered in a somewhat linear pattern in Tara.
[Image: http://i39.servimg.com/u/f39/12/89/02/50/theirm10.png]
The Zombies spawn randomly in 8 of those blue dots. The best way to go about this is follow the main path down to the Town Square while holding down the alt key to see if any of the zombies have spawned elsewhere.
3. Information on Soldier Zombies and Windmill
The best way to kill them of course is with windmill. Since zombies walk slow and only ever use counterattack, super resistance to magic and archery and have super high protection rates they are pretty much tank to anything other than windmill. They also sport r2 Heavy Stander have 31 defence. Windmill is and will be your best skill for this Shadow Mission and is absolutely required to do this mission. You may think 'but windmill is gay' and etc but don't understand the true mechanics of how it works with Zombies. For those who have trained at TNN for windmill will already know.
Not only is Windmill a beast of a mob skill but it also ignores protection, now these Soldier Zombies protection rates range from 40% - 59% which means that to crit them normally you would need over 81% - 119% to have a 1% crit chance against them. Which sucks balls, amirite? But thanks to the awesomeness of windmill you don't have to worry about extremely high crit rates since all you need is 30% critical hit and hey pesto you will be hitting the Crit cap and owning those zombies.
So now you know the gist of this awesome Shadow Mission, go in with 10 stacks of 30 stam pots and spam spam spam Windmill. You may also find this, after doing it 2 times, boring as hell, since its solo and it’s so linear. It’s just spamming windmill, what’s the fun in that? Nothing. So to cure that boredom I recommend watching Youtube, Anime, TV shows, something else that you can to do but still keep a 20% concentration on mab. 10% for looking at your stam bar and 10% for looking where you’re going (This includes finding the zombies and not getting to close to them when wming that they kill you).
4. Advanced Techniques
4.1 Smart Windmill
Now for some advance techniques for this Shadow Mission. The main one is pretty obvious and its called Smart Windmill. With Smart Windmill all you have to do is group your zombie companions together so you don’t waste crits and pots and also make the SM go faster. To do this just group them up nicely and start wming them towards the next mob of Zombies. So this way you can include other zombies in your attack making you have to use less windmills and get to use crits more effectively.
4.2 Herding
The next advance technique if for the boss room, which has 12 soldier zombies. This technique is called Herding. Now instead of just spamming windmill and trying to kill all of them its best to group the whole bunch up which is done by walking/running around in circles and grouping them up hence the name of the technique, herding. This way you can utilize your windmill's infinite mob limit, its -ignores all protection- and get to abuse crit 12 times in 1 attack. Keep doing this till all are dead.
4.3 HPW + HPZ
There are 2 terms that I would you to be familiar with. HPW (hits per windmill) and HPCW (hits per critical windmill), which is basically how many targets you hit with each windmill. The higher your HPW the better, as it will make your experience with Their Method faster and more efficient. a 3-4 HPW is what you want to aim for with dealing with the 8 groups of 4 and anything over a 6-7 is great when dealing with the boss.
Ok I lied, there is another term I would like you to familiarise with, and that is WPZ (Windmill’s per zombie) which is basically how many windmills it takes you to kill 1 zombie. I would try to aim for a 3-4 non crit and a 1-2 with one crit. Combining a high amount of HPW and a low amount of WPZ is the key to successfully doing Their Method properly.
4.4 The Double Tap
Hoping I don’t get sued for stealing a line from the awesome movie ‘ZombieLand’ the same principles apply to Their Method. Basically what you want to do is always double check if the zombie/zombie group is dead and always double checking if you have enough stamina for the next group/zombie. You can get owned quite badly when you have to walk all the way back when you get to the boss room (Town Square) and the boss hasn’t showed up or walk into a group of zombies with 0 stam and getting lolpwned.
4.5 Solutions to dying
Now as Their Method is a Shadow Mission there is no statue to rez from and due to it being timed relying on friends with adv feathers can make your exp/money gain ineffective. So there are 3 solutions.
Solution 1: Don't die
Solution 2: Nao stones
Solution 3: Pet rez kits
Solution 1
Its pretty obvious and its fairly easy to do since there zombies. But sometimes you get those situations where you don't pay attention and just get lolpwned by them. Effective if you’re paying 100% attention.
Solution 2
Nao stones cure any problem when you’re not in another world but require nx which requires real money which, well you worked hard for to get (or your parents worked hard for). There great for fast and effectiveness since you don't have to bless anything and allows for little exp loss. If you love your nx and have a bottom-less pit of it then these are a great solution to your dying problem...but if you’re using more than 1 during a single Their Methods then I think it’s time to rethink how you go about this mission.
Solution 3
Pet rez kits are probably the best way to negate dying in this mission. The downside? Well you lose your pet summoned time which isn't as bad as solutions 1 and 2. This basically requires you to put how many pet rez kits it can fit in its inventory, summon it at the start of the mission, tell it to stay and do the mission. Then whenever if you die, you simply pop the rez sign up and say revive! Your pet will spawn next to you and revive you. (You may have to say the revive! command again to get it to use the action).
4.6 Walls
As we progress through our levels and new difficulties of SM's become available to us, it dawns on us that we are to weak to take on these stronger Zombies. Especially if we are fighting them in wide open spaces, the last thing we want to do is separating them and if your doing this on HM it will take a buttload of WM's to kill them off. So the solution, Walls. WM's natural ability to knockback anything it hits splits up the zombies so that we will have to use more WM's to kill the groups. However, Walls prevent the knockback and enables us to camp the zombies with wm will they are dead.
So basically, knockback the group of zombies into the wall and camp them till they are all dead. However, what do we do when a wall is no where to be found in those darn open spaces that Tara has. Well how about we make a wall? [video=youtube;YC10sp3d5jY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC10sp3d5jY&feature=player_embedded[/video]
Barrier Spikes are your answer and can reduce your Their Method time in half if done right.
5. Rewards
Thats all for advance techniques, now lets move on to how this mission is physically and financially healthy. Physically referring to exp gained and financially referring to gold gained.
5.1 Exp
Reward Exp
- 14000 EXP (Beginner)
- 25199 EXP (Intermediate)
- 42000 EXP (Advanced)
- 70000 EXP (Hard)
Listed above is the reward for a standard SM of Their Method, now lets add in the exp from the 44 zombies taking into account that 22 of them are females and the other 22 are males. [Tested, there are 22 female and 22 male zombies in Their Method]
21920 EXP (Beginner)
41039 EXP (Intermediate)
72250 EXP (Advanced)
125440 EXP (Hard)
Thats the exp you get for each Their Method you do, not including the 10% extra exp you get from Premium Services. As you can tell it is a very exp rewarding mission for only around 15 minutes work (average). Using x2 exp pots is very rewarding in this SM.
Total Exp from Zombies alone
7260 EXP (Beginner)
14520 EXP (Intermediate)
27940 EXP (Advanced)
50820 EXP (Hard)
Total Exp from Battle participation
660 EXP (Beginner)
1320 EXP (Intermediate)
2310 EXP (Advanced)
4620 EXP (Hard)
So to get Exp rates when doing this on x2 exp or x4 exp. Use the exp multiplier on the Total Exp from Zombies then add in Battle participation and Reward EXP.
5.2 Gold and items
Reward gold
- 2500g (Beginner)
- 3499g (Intermediate)
- 5000g (Advanced)
- 7500g (Hard)
Now for the financially gain from this mission, although the reward gives little gold zombies do have an awesome gold drop rate ranging from 0 - 1.7k depending on what difficulty your doing. Now that maybe nice getting maybe 2 - 10k more gold per mission but isn't the why this mission is so darn good. It's the chest rewards! Just look at the table below
[Image: http://i39.servimg.com/u/f39/12/89/02/50/tablef10.jpg]
LOOK AT THE MASSIVE LIST OF ENCHANTS!!!!!!!! FUGDE YES! Burgundy Bear is probably the most reward both to your stats and whenever you sell it. In Mari server I’ve obtained 3 of them and have sold one of them at 1.2m which I enchanted to a 2handed sword with 100 prof and also had a raven enchant and sold 2 others, one enchanted to a bastard sword sold by Edern’s special store and another enchanted on a mace. I’ve gotten 2 2cm diamonds from advanced Their method which I have fed to my ego and gotten a nice boost. Giant ES are probably the most beneficially to helping you with becoming stronger for this mission when you are enchantless. I’m running a enchantless set so Giant ES is a nice boost. So far I’ve gotten 5 of them which I’ve put onto my hat, clothes, 1 of my broadswords and both of my gladius.
6. Pots and Profits
Their Method requires little in the pot department. With the only requirements being Stamina potions (I use 30's), it doesn't take long to make the money back. Now I can only come from Advance Their Method since I didn't do it on Basic and Intermediate so the situation maybe different for you. Especially since Advance Their Method gives out the Burgundy Bear Enchant Scroll.
Estimation when running it on Advance:
10 stacks of stamina 30's cost 14k which you will make back in 3 Their methods, now lets say on average you use a stack per Their Method which allows you to run 10 Their Methods before having to go repot. In that 10 Their Methods you will also make 50k from the reward gold. Which bring your total profit to 36k/10 stacks or 3.6k/1 stack, or in more understandable sense, your making 3.6k gold every run. Now this is not including the gold dropped from the zombies which can net you up to another 5k every Their Method. Not to mention the rewards from chest at the end, I've sold 3 weapons with the Burgundy Bear Enchant scroll on them that I have gotten from Their Method, the first one sold for 1.2m and the other 2 sold for 800k. Pretty sure that turns all pot profit loss insignificant.
7. Recommended Equips and Skills
Their Method relies on a high ranked wm. The higher difficulty the SM the stronger your WM needs to be, r1 wm however is recommended no matter what. WM at r1 gives you the range and 250% which makes r1 wm a necessity. Rank 1 Critical hit and Rank 1 Combat Mastery also improves damage output, r1 combat mastery also gives +15 balance increase which helps a lot when using 222 broadswords. Other skills that give str such as Final Hit and Carpentry are recommend to have as more str = more damage = less wm’s to kill zombies = clearing Their Method faster = More efficient exp/gold per minute.
Dual wielding is the recommend choice for this SM due to its higher damage output then 2handed swords. The extra stun time from 2handed swords is really ineffective against the slow moving zombies of Their Method. The only way a 2handed sword beats dual wielding is when you’re using a 2handed ego and overpowers a dual wield set.
As for Dual wields there are 2 options, 230 Gladius for low/no dex uses and 222 broadswords for high/200+ dex. As for personal reference I have and used both and when you reach 80% balance 222 broadsword become superior. The broadswords changed my 4hko zombie kills to a 3hko zombie kill not including critical hits.
290 Gladius' will serve you best until you have enough dex to support Broadswords and with 222 broadsword are able to kill Zombies with less windmills. (For example, if you can kill zombies in 4 hits 100% of the time with Gladius' but 5 hit zombies with broadswords then keep using the Gladius' how ever if you are 3hkoing zombies with Gladius with a crit and 2hkoing them with broadswords then use the broadswords).
As for enchants, +damage and +str enchants are your friends. Make sure already have that 30% crit rate which is pretty easy if your using r1 made broadswords which when 222 upgraded should come with 33% crit. So things like spike, goddess, obsidian, Caliburn, Raven, darkness, imp, defensive, awesome enchants like those. If you have them, use them to your advantage
Some nice calculations that others have kindly posted.
Average dmg in a closed system.
For example, we'll compare Gladius (with upgrade path 280) with Broadsword (with upgrade path 222).
Gladius: 35-67
Broadsword: 0-73
In an 80% Balance situation, let's consider the formula for Mabinogi's average damage, which is...
Average damage=max*balance+min*(1-balance)
For 280 Gladius, that would be...
67*.8+35*(1-.8) = 60.6
For 222 Broadsword, that would be...
73*.8+0*(1-.8) = 58.4
So 280 Gladius will, on average, produce a higher cumulative damage than 222 Broadsword. Granted, you can say 222 Broadsword has a much higher Critical rate than 280 Gladius (30% vs. 5%), but does that really matter if all you're aiming for is 30% Critical (which is pretty easy)? I guess it would if you're trying to save enchant slots for +dmg enchants instead of +Critical enchants, but your guide doesn't mention specifically that the player *has* to enchant equipments.
In either case, know that this doesn't necessarily mean 280 Gladius is better than 222 Broadsword (just like Bastard Sword ego isn't better than Gladius ego). But since you're posting a guide on grinding "Their Method", it implies a long-term usage. So average damage would count more in that case.
Source of average damage: Understanding the Mabinogi Damage System (Article Courtesy of Kakashi7)
Because WM ignores protection average damage due to crit is as simple as: Average damage added from crit = Max dmg * (1 + crit multipier) * crit rate
Assuming 30% crit rate and r1 crit we find:
Gladius: 67 * 2.5 * .3 = 50.25
Broadsword: 73 * 2.5 * .3 = 54.75
Add these to the average damage listed above and we have:
Gladius: 50.25 + 60.6 = 110.85
Broadsword: 54.74 + 58.4 = 113.15
Broadsword wins damage over time. And that was assuming you have a 30% crit rate with the 5% base gladii.
So as you can see from the data above, broadswords when usable clearly outperform Gladius'
So overview: Use Gladius’ till broadswords improve WPZ.
Now due to Their Method being awesome because of Zombies being so slow and you always using windmill, getting hit is like a 20% chance and if you do you will most likely be dead, cause like your deadly and whatnot. This makes expensive armours such as Dunstin and Valencia’s pointless unless you have enchants such as imp and defensive then use them to your advantage to kill those zombies faster. Apart from that you can wear what you like but you do want to aim for +damage dealing enchants such as raven on shoes and etc. I personal use a Giant set as I get the enchant scroll from their method and not bothering with epic increase in damage enchants till I hit 1000 total and start doing Their Method on Hard.
Transformation is also important in this mission. Being able to 1hko zombies with crits when trans’d is vital to turn Their Method from 10 – 15 minutes into 5 – 10 minutes. And as a reference a strong trans boosted by my skills of r1 wm, r1 crit and r1 cm I could effective 1hko them with crits when using gladius on str rolls (I’m a dark knight), but with broads I am able to 75% of time ohko them with crits on 100% rolls and 100% 2hko them on 60% str rolls which doesn’t change my 2hko untrans’d with crits.
8. MPS [Minutes Per Shadow Mission]
What makes Their Method really effective is how short it can take, rivalling defeat the shadow warrior it can provide a valiant source of exp, gold and downright awesomeness. No matter what difficulty you should try and clear a single Their Method in 10 – 15 minutes. My personal best on advance is 8 minutes when I used a trans and got a lot of crits along my way to the boss (ohko crits make Their Method go really fast)
If you can do more Advance Their Methods in the time it takes to Hard Their Methods then its most obvious to keep doing advance. Same goes for basic > int and Int > basic.
Eample: If I can clear out 2 Hard Their Methods in 40mins (225000 exp) but can clear out 4 Advance Their Methods (252000) in the same time Advance Their Method is clearly better.
9. Other uses for Their Method
Unknown to most but Their Method has plenty of other uses for people who are doing range, alchemy, magic and other melee skills such as stomp which as most of you know Zombies are immune to due to their PD’s. However due to their being 4 levels of difficulties and soon to be 5 (Elite coming out with g13) you have access to a smorgos board of CP levels. I personally have trained Magnum, Range and Arrow revolver on them by creating a party and setting the kill setting to ‘Anyone in party’ allowing me to kill them with WM with ease and finishing them off with my skill choice. This has made getting awful and boss kills much easier. Sadly getting crits it’s close to impossible without the absurd amount of critical needing to actually land one when not using WM and other skills that ignore protection rate.
Heres a video of me training Crash Shot, abusing Zombies high cp in HM aswell as my ego.
[video=youtube;1guse-7XbF8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1guse-7XbF8[/video]
10. The Satsumori Test
So in this area I will show you how efficient I am with my Their Methods. There is going to be 1 Master Table with data from 10 runs and then each run will have there own table. Master Table will be updated when more runs are done.
Master Table
[Image: http://i29.servimg.com/u/f29/12/89/02/50/master10.jpg]
Shadow Mission 1 Data
[Image: http://i29.servimg.com/u/f29/12/89/02/50/result10.jpg]
11. Video's
[video=youtube;u1cLxp1fBJU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1cLxp1fBJU[/video]
12. Afterthoughts
Whenever I found about Their Method it has been a personal favourite shadow mission ever since, out classing Defeat the Shadow Warrior easily since I did spend so long at TNN ranking WM (Over 10,000 zombies from r4 – r1 WM). Although shadow warrior does give out defensive cylinders Their method does give out better gold in general (Drops from zombies and reward at the end), exp at the end and total exp. Don’t forget how close the Tara Shadow Mission board is to the Alter (I don’t even have to move to access it when I exit the Shadow World.
Ever since I came back to Mabinogi when I was Total level 233 I have spammed Their Method ever since, I do around 40 of them a week to get like (70k from each Their method since I use premium services) is 2.8m exp in total which gets me to level 49 with like 2 more to get to level 50. With each taking on average 15min each and doing around 4 of them an hour it takes me like (42/4) 10.5 hours. Divide that by 7 and that’s 1.5 hours of mab ‘grinding’ a day which is respectfully 6 Their Methods a day. Not bad right?
13. Credits
Special thanks to:
- Mabinogi Wiki: For the data on the zombies, critical hit, windmill and the rewards from their method
- Nexon: For releasing such a wonderful Shadow Mission
- You guys: For taking the time read this wordy guide
14. Coming Soon
- 10 minute v-guide with commentary by me.
- Banners
- Total Edit to look eye catching beautiful/Less wall of text like
- Exp/efficiency of my skills in Inter and Adv Difficulty. The Which One Is Better Debate.