Clay Alchemy Skills

• Crimmy wrote on 2011-02-19 18:02
  I'm bored and would like some opinions.
  
  Currently, I'm almost done with Fire Mastery. This will complete my set goals rank-wise. Now I'm not sure what to go into next. I have r7 Ice Spear and r7 Ice Bolt with rE Ice Mastery but with the Int magic nerf, Ice Spear feels incredibly weak. I only use it for evg now.
  
  So I've been thinking of ways of improving my almighty Fireball's awesomeness instead and I've thought about going into Alchemy. Specifically, Earth alchemy and Mana Crystallization.
  
  Alchemy Mastery and Mana Crystallization would increase my MP pool and with MC, if I run out of MP, I can throw out some fireball crystals instead. Fireball crystals would also help me a lot with rafting.
  
  Barrier Spikes would help in some situations although I've done fairly well without them.
  
  Everyone loves Golem, we all know that's awesome.
  
  I don't know about Sand burst.
  
  All of my alchemy skills are E or F or Novice. I really don't know much about alchemy so I guess my questions would be: Is this a good idea and how would one go about becoming great at using only clay alchemy coupled with fire magic? What skills should be ranked and in what order?
  
  Thanks in advance.
• Yogurticecream wrote on 2011-02-19 19:31
  To be honest...I would think that mana crystallisation is pretty useless in most situations. In all my time running hard mode dungeons or shadow missions with random parties NOBODY uses fireball crystals to good effect. I would think it has something to do with the monster defence/protection and hp being too high. Rafting with the crystals is fine though.
  
  Don't bother with sand burst, it's not worth the AP unless you are always doing Spirit of Partholon runs and going after the Blinkers, for which I think Frozen Blast is a better alternative.
  
  Barrier Spikes are useless in Avon and in external world (only effective in dungeons and shadow missions). Still useful but my opinion is that they are slowly making this skill obsolete to newer content. Only rank it if you can see yourself running shadow missions more than the Avon missions. It's good for parties with magic users, water/clay alchemists and archers in those areas.
  
  Clay Alchemy and Alchemy Mastery is what you should be going for, along with Summon Golem since you too agree that it is awesome. Barrier Spikes is good too, but consider its limitation carefully.
• Sunureu13 wrote on 2011-02-19 20:02
  Master BS for the title. Most useful dueling title.
• Cryosite wrote on 2011-02-20 03:24
  Golem is pretty awesome, and potentially good enough a reason to dip into alchemy for this skill alone. Making the most awesome golem involves rk1 golem, alchemy mastery, and clay mastery.
  
  Mana crystalization plays a fairly significant role in ranking alchemy mastery; the two go hand in hand pretty well. Transmutation will help out with making crystals early on of all kinds, and will boost the rank of mana crystals you make, so should be considered as well.
  
  You're going to want rank N (higher is fine) flame burst and some ranks of water cannon for training alchemy master with. Rk5 WC for the load time decrease is decent, though if you have good -cp gear and can train on weak things like foxes and mongeese then you can get away with much lower rank WC and still train fairly efficiently.
  
  Between barrier spikes, golem, and mana crystalization you should have all of the crystal production needs for alchemy mastery covered. Synthesis and fragment training methods can be met with rank F in those two skills; synth random junk like large nails, small gems, arrows, and stuff; fragment paper cranes.
  
  That is already a lot on your plate, but to fully round out your clay alchemy you could also grab life drain. It's a pretty nice skill in the situations it shines in.
• Crimmy wrote on 2011-02-20 17:48
  Cool, cool. I'll keep all this in mind, thanks.