Common advice is to restart your character if you haven't trained Windmill and ranked other skills, because it means you have to kill much harder monsters, especially at the beginning.
I chose not to follow that. Rank A in all elemental bolts and masteries felt like a lot of AP and levels that I didn't want to grind again. And even though I had Rank 8 Combat Mastery and Sword Mastery, that didn't really stop me from trying.
There are now enemies you can easily kill for your Boss requirements, even if your stats are higher than normal. Windmill's Skill CP will outweigh your stats near the end anyway.
I believe that this method of training works for anyone who's comfortably under total level 250, as the difficulty of Shadow Missions spikes when your total level is 300+.
Party Finish Method:
Create a party. In the Finish Rule, change it to Anyone in the Party. Killing a monster will leave their corpses on the ground, with a "Finish" mark over their heads. This will let you kill monsters however you want and finish them with Windmill for skill credit.
Using Windmill to defend yourself from normal-sized enemies is simple. Keep mashing the skill button until your target runs into range, and they'll be knocked back. Windmill will go off when ANY monster is within range, so it's best to run away from everything else before you do this.
Basic Don'ts: Melee combat is straightforward. Most other combat skills can be replaced with Windmill if used correctly.
Defense: You don't need this. In the time it takes you to load defense, you could also have Windmilled them away.
Don't rank Counterattack. You'll need to have Counterattack available, but rank F will suffice. Save your AP.
Smash: Save your AP. You'll have better things to do when your enemies use Defense anyway.
Basic Dos:
When you Rebirth, choose age 17. Choose the Close Combat Talent so you spend half the time completing ranking requirements. This guide’s kill counts will assume you’re getting that double EXP.
Over the course of ranking Windmill to 9, get Heal and rank Magic Mastery to A. Healing yourself or pets will count toward the Magic Mastery skill. It won't cost a lot of AP, and will give you Mana for Mana Shield. More about Mana Shield later.
All right. On to the actual guide.
Hold ALT when viewing enemies to check how their Combat Power (CP) is in relation to yours.
Find enemies that are your level (no marking), as well as some that are Strong and Awful. Try to kill them, just to see how their AI works and how hard they are to beat.
In ascending strength:
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White Spider(ling): The ones in the Tir Graveyard are kinda useful.
Young Goblin/Goblin Archer: Found in Ciar Beginner. Similar CP to Gray Wolves.
Gray Wolf: Easy to kill one-by-one.
Goblin/Goblin Archer: I would not recommend fighting these. They will swarm you. Unlike Young Goblins, they hurt quite a bit.
If you’ve got ranged skills that can kill them before they run at you, it’s very easy to stack them up – just stay as far away from them as you can, and shoot them into a pile.
Red Spider: More about these later. The ones in Tir Graveyard are the only ones that matter.
Kobold/Kobold Archer: A bit stronger, but similar to goblins. Only found in Math Dungeon.
White Wolf: Useful for training Awful requirement early on. Try to kill the ones near the outside of the field so they don't all notice you.
Skeleton: Found in Rabbie Dungeon. I love skeles. They only choose to attack you one at a time, so if you play it smart you won’t get overwhelmed.
Sickle Laghodessa: Found in Albey and Barri. They can swarm you, but they don't hurt as much as Skeles.
Spike Laghodessa: These are slightly stronger than Sickles.
Red Skeleton: Second floor of Rabbie Normal. A bit stronger than your normal Skele.
Metal Skeleton: Found on the third and last floor of Rabbie. A bit stronger than the red Skele.
Light Armor Skeleton: Found in Albey Red and Rabbie Basic in normal, Red, and Metal flavors. They have Passive Defense, which means they have a 10% chance to automatically defend your attacks, so try not to hit them with a normal combo.
Zombie: Found in Tir Na Nog (Another World). 2000 CP means that they'll be Boss or Awful for you.
Ranged/magic attacks deal 1 damage. They also like to spam Counterattack, so Windmill is pretty much the only thing you should use on them.
I advise AGAINST training on Zombies if they're Awful. At rank 4 and up, an Awful kill is worth just as much as a Strong Skeleton, which also offer the opportunity for multi-kill credit. Instead... go to Iria for your Boss-level killing.
Saga Demonic Enemies: Love these. Yeah, they multi-aggro, but they only have 250-300 health on Intermediate (total level 100-299). And they're still Boss for me, which means that their CP is probably above 3000.
Lion/Lioness: With a CP of 3k, these should be Boss the entire time too. The only advantage these have over Demonic Enemies is that they are fairly spread-out, so you can hunt them down without taking any damage. On the other hand, they hit HARD. Expect to take 100-150 damage from their combo.
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All right. Onto the actual training.
Set aside most of your AP for Windmill until Rank 9. You’ll be burning up AP faster than you level, and you want to hit rank 9 ASAP. You can then do other quests while effectively training Windmill, which makes it less boring.
Ignore the “Counterattack with Windmill†requirements. The way the game treats "counterattacking with Windmill" is pretty awkward, and you're better off spending that time training/questing.
I use EXP to refer to skill training progress. I rarely refer to actual character Experience Points, but will write it out.
This guide is assuming that you’re running dungeons solo for the purpose of Windmill training.
Rank F:
Just practice your monster-stacking skills. Make your party, set finish rules to “Any†and see if you can pile up dead bodies near each other. Then Windmill the entire pile.
You’ll complete the “Attack several enemies†and “Defeat several enemies†at the same time. If you can’t rank up Windmill yet, go Windmill some things nearby.
When it says “several enemies†it means four or more. You won’t get more credit for killing more at the same time. Finishable enemies disappear after a while, so don’t wait too long. If you keep moving, you can use 3-4abilities to kill each of four targets before the first one despawns.
Rank E:
You’ll have to find monsters of similar CP to fulfill the “Defeat several enemies†requirement of this rank. You can just grind through this level – depending on your race, killing Strong enemies can get you 50 or 100% of the experience you need to rank up.
Rank D:
You’ll need to defeat several normal enemies and hit several Strong enemies. Meh. Since you’ve got to hit the Strongs in a group, pile the dead bodies up instead, and get credit for individual kills as well. It’s easier and safer to knock dead bodies into a pile than to lure everything together.
If you want to run Ciar Normal for Goblins, feel free to bail at the boss. Six Metal Skeletons and a Golem are going to be difficult to kill for quite a while. Just change channels to get yourself back in the dungeon lobby.
This is as good a time as any to go over basic Windmill combat strategy, as well as piling.
Single exclamation mark means a monster’s noticed you. It won’t start attacking you immediately, but might start charging spells. Medium priority for killing.
Double exclamation mark means a monster’s attacking you, referred to as aggro. Doesn’t necessarily mean that they will run up and hit you, but they’re out to get you.
[Image: http://i.imgur.com/S593jBV.jpg]
Notice the Finish Rule set to Anyone in the Party.
Here I tried to knock two Goblins into something resembling a pile. I should have killed off all the Goblin Archers first, but a Goblin noticed me earlier so I had to run. One remaining Goblin’s aggro’d me.
However, I can stop him without using normal attacks with Windmill, loading it and just mashing the button.
[Image: http://i.imgur.com/vGPbAHn.jpg]
Enemies fly away from you pretty much the opposite way they came in. I’m expecting him to fly back to about the yellow box.
Rank C:
Again, defeating several Strong enemies is going to fulfill most of your requirements. This is the first time your Close Combat Talent comes in handy – killing one set of 4 Strongs will count as killing them twice.
Defeating Very Powerful Enemies = Awful enemies. You’re only getting a little bit more mileage out of these, as Strong gives 2.5 EXP while Awful gives 3, so you don’t have to do it here.
Continued...