HCCO/Guide: Difference between revisions

The {{ItemIcon|Staff of Air}} (obtained from {{MonsterIcon|Fairy}}) reduces the cost by 3, allowing you to cast all spells up to {{Icon|Fire Bolt|type=spell}} with the sole exception of {{Icon|Wind Bolt|type=spell}} for no {{ItemIcon|Air Rune}} cost. {{ItemIcon|Air Rune}} are by far the most valuable elemental rune on a CO, so you should use the other elements to level your magic early on as these runes have little use outside of very late game situations by which point you will have a huge stockpile. You should aim to use most of your {{ItemIcon|Mind Rune}} on {{Icon|Fire Strike|type=spell}} and your {{ItemIcon|Chaos Rune}} on {{Icon|Earth Bolt|type=spell}} to make the most use of your varied runes gathered, until you are {{Skill|Magic|30}}. At this point you can equip an {{ItemIcon|Air Battlestaff}} to save {{ItemIcon|Air Rune|qty=5}}/cast, so obtain one from {{MonsterIcon|Master Wizard}} and use that until {{Skill|Magic|40}}. You also have enough magic defence from levelling {{Skill|Magic}} that you can consider clearing {{ZoneIcon|Hall of Wizards}} for some {{Skill|Ranged}} exp and better robes. The {{ItemIcon|Red Wizard Robes}} can be worn at {{Skill|Magic|30}} (levelling from 1 to 30 cuts food usage against magic enemies roughly in half) and the dungeon will be important in the a following section anyway. You can alternatively wait until {{Skill|Magic|40}} for even higher magic defence. Lastly, now that you have some magic defence, gathering 200 {{ItemIcon|Amulet of Magic}} is on the table. You will obtain a lot of catalyst runes in the process which can be put towards levelling, so  it is worth making a dent in this decently long grind now. {{MonsterIcon|Master Wizard}} are the best overall source of catalyst runes, as they have the lowest HP while dropping one of three catalyst runes 85% of the time.

After {{Skill|Magic|40}}, you will now use a {{ItemIcon|Mystic Air Staff}} to conserve 7 elemental runes and primarily use {{Icon|Wind Blast|type=spell}} to level up, as this is the new highest no-elemental cost spell available. The relative damage increase between spells is lower as flat damage has diminishing returns, so there isn't much dps sacrificed by sticking to this one spell. However, the only way to obtain this staff is from {{ZoneIcon|Hall of Wizards}} at a relatively low drop rate (~1/191.67). On the plus side, you will get some nice runes (albeit at a slower rate than other options) along the way and a good pet, hopefully. You will also want to obtain a full set of {{ItemIcon|Red Wizard Hat|Red Robes|nolink=true}}. It is debatable whether staying here all the way until full {{ItemIcon|Ancient Wizard Hat|Ancient Robes|nolink=true}} is worthwhile. The robes have a very low drop rate and will likely take awhile to complete, but you will obtain some useful runes and almost certainly obtain the pet. It is also important to maximise rune efficiency by maximising magic damage bonus, as rune gathering is a slow process. If you are completionistic in nature then it may be a good idea, although strictly speaking it would be faster to focus on simply obtaining more {{ItemIcon|Death Rune}} from {{MonsterIcon|Master Wizard}} and {{MonsterIcon|Necromancer}} than worrying about min-maxing the rune efficiency.