***Cheats Below***
Alright, so Arcuz is a pretty rad game. The story is cool and a nice mix of cute and intriguing. The graphics are awesome and so is the item system. The leveling system is straight forward, easy, and at the same time manages to offer hours and hours of entertainment. It's basically a full blooded, "old school", retail RPG.
My only suggestions would be that the drop rate for rare chests is too low, when you +X a weapon it doesn't properly add the corresponding composition slots, the 'weapon' damage modification process could be better, the 'Big Bang' skill is bugged and doesn't do any damage sometimes, Stones of blessing, soul, and holy are 200% too expensive from the npc, and a few random quirks with disappearing items and item dupes are what I encountered plus others. +Poison bug.
~Rare Chest Drop rates: Simple, the game could probably be beaten in 30 hours but I've spent a couple hundred farming for max gear with +150 drop rate, 70 luck, and luck potions with only 11 gold chests under my belt and 1 green chest. It makes for longer play but I prefer about 1:2 ratio with beating an RPG and gaining max gear as far as time is concerned. I'd rather replay it with a different 'spec' than play it through once and be burnt out.
~+X enchanting and composition slots: I mean... come on, give us a **** reason to +x our gear besides 5 defense a pop and 10 damage. (excluding shields) Natural +x items have proper 'comp' slots, why doesn't it add it correctly when we do it manually.
~Weapon Damage: Weapon damage is added directly to attack with no modification. That means I can use a lvl 1 weapon and only have the loss of 80~ damage of my total damage. I'm just not use to this because most RPGs mod the weapons damage as apposed to just adding it on the top of the heap.
~Bought Big Bang: Did 30k damage to mobs around me, pretty sweet, but it only did damage 2-3 times out of the 5-6 times I used it. An unreliable skill is a skill I can't use when bladestorm does like 3-5 times as much damage total and can only be interrupted by thunder centaurs and lucky thunder mobs that hit right after activation.
~Stones of Blessing, etc.: Not only have I spent hundreds of hours farming but I've also spent 2,000,000~ in gold and the high price of the stones makes early game enchanting almost impossible. For a flash game in my experience, it's, get em in, get em what they want, and get em out. I've spent too long farming to complete the enchanting and gear half of the game imo.
~Disappearing and duping items: Only happened a couple times and I haven't been unable to recreate either. Had a sword disappear when I swapped another sword for it in an inventory slot. And then had a piece of armor black out and then when I moved it to inventory it duped but haven't figured out how I managed it. Also, some of the ghosts in Final Rest Valley, will not die no matter how much you damage them. And there is a spot in the top-most lump of stone in the final area of the mystery cave that if you use the finality of sword you'll get stuck. It's on the bottom side.
~If you die in town due to poison the Portal will become bugged and send you into an undefined zone from which there is no escape... except reload.
Just suggestions, also I saw a youtube vid with some guy playing the game at like 200-300% speed which looked f-ing awesome, maybe speeding up the game play wouldn't be a bad idea?
Ok.... Brief walkthrough... (With two major cheats)
Early Game:
SAVE OFTEN.
If it's your first time playing the game I suggest picking a single weapon type and sticking with it because you want to save every one of your skill points possible.
Attribute Points:
Place 5 points in strength, 5 points in defense and then raise Strength to 50 for your first levels. Get comfortable predicting enemy movements and move to avoid unnecessary damage so you can focus on being a brutal killing machine. If it's your 2nd or 3rd time playing the game through only go strength early game.
Skill Points:
Put a single point into the Finality attack of your weapon choice, as the finality attacks tend to slow your attack speed down in exchange for damage. The animation is cool and the attack renders you temporarily invulnerable (only for the duration of the animation). I avoid the Specialty weapon moves as they are a bit redundant compared with the effectiveness of the whirlwind attack skills. Put your spare points in the Proficiency skill of your weapon choice until you can buy hurricane and Berserk. Max both of these skills. *Note* Some people argue for counterattack and potions instead of the Berserk skill, this is ludicrous. It takes 10! Skill points to max counterattack to get 1 in 2 chance of activating which from my point of view seems counter intuitive... I'm going to run into a group of enemies and hope to get hit til I can womp on them? Berserk pots take a potion slot better used for hps, mana, and tp scrolls for quick escapes. It takes 3 points to max Berserk skill and you don't plan on getting hit anywayz. *End Note* Berserk skill and hurricane are too costly to use early game regularly because skill points are low because your not wasting your time putting points in constitution. So... you will be using a few berserk pots here and there... like for the wolf fight in the teddy bear quest. Hardest boss in the game imo for the characters lvl and skills. When Available put 1 skill point in SP/HP recovery speed, it really helps.
Tactics:
Jumping and then pressing the attack button at the beginning of your fall and slamming your enemies is a good form of crowd control and offers a reasonable (if too many mobs doesn't work) system of killing early on by keeping enemies at a distance because it has a form of knock back. Try to isolate the mobs one at a time early on. Every time you get hit from the side or from behind you'll experience a brief stun which can turn into a chain gang situation quickly in your monster prison if your surrounded.
Specialty Fight:
The teddy bear wolf boss. For your level and damage this guy has a ton of hps and hits hard enough to drain an inventory full of pots. He doesn't stun easily when attacked, although sometimes he'll just stand there and take the abuse for 4-5 attacks. If you want to play it safe and just beat him, wait until your like 8/9+ and then go in there with some hp pots, mana, and berserk pots and get ready to chip away at this concrete god of man. A good strat, even though it's slow, is running circles around him, waiting for him to leap, then taking a couple steps to close distance, jumping and hammering him with your slam attack at the beginning of your fall. It will rocket him all around the stage and you will beat him in time.
Gear:
Sell everything you don't need and save every piece of gold, enchanting is expensive and necessary if you want to be a walking God of this trembling world of darkness. After the first or second chapter buy +2 weapons from the smith by walking in and out of town until he is selling your flavor. If you have the gold to burn early on buy a few items from the magic item vendor. He'll always do the service of enchanting your items and never taking any of the composition slots, what a sweet greedy man he is. This is especially important for rings, bracelets, belts, and necklaces.
Enchanting early:
Find reasonable gear with the highest amount of slots possible.
Only spend your dough on increasing your drop rate and your attack %. Don't make the mistake of putting points into just attack enchantment make sure it's the "%", it's never worth it. If your short stones and you have the money you can always run in and out of town until the potion merchant is selling your flavor. After you buy one stone, close her inventory and then reopen it and it will refresh the stone there. This can take up to 10-20 tries to find what your looking for but it's always worth it when you don't want to give your enemies anything short of pure savagery. For enchanting combinations just click the little '?' button next to compose.
Mid/Late Game:
Attribute points:
After Strength is at 50 you'll want to put a significant portion of your points in Defense. Don't put any points in Con or Luck we'll take care of those with skill points. Every 10 points you spend defense increasing your block 1%. Even if you don't spend 1 point in Con you'll have a godly amount of hps mid-late game if your patient.
Skill Points:
Max Berserk, Hurricane, Hurricane 2, BLADESTORM!, and HOLY LIGHT!. Put no more then 10 points in your weapon proficiency skill. Like I said, 1 point in HP/SP recovery, and then max 'increase all attributes' skill. Whenever your hunting pop your max Holy light off the bat for double your health/mana and a free instant revive. After using the skill pop an hp pot and mana pot because the Bars will be bugged and make you think your still at max even though your not. Magic wave is loads of fun but Big bang is bugged and energy wave sucks. Feel free to experiment but there is only 1 rule to skill points. If you put a single point into Improved loading your an idiot.
Tactics:
Find Quest areas with large groups of monsters. Run around while jumping in a large circle drawing the spread out monsters into a single focal point of death. Holy light should already be active. After your satisfied with the density of the mobs, continue to jump, Pop a luck potion to add 30 drop rate, pop your berserk skill and while mid air pop your highest hurricane skill in the center of these poor creatures. You'll start the skill mid air and then execute when you land, this significantly reduces stun interruption which is very important for centaurs and lightning enchanted mobs. In the final rest valley you'll want to ensure that your a distance from lightning mobs and centuars when popping bladestorm as they can make your **** hard spiral of endless death reaping soft with an interrupt very quickly. Important note. Right around the time of the Mystery cave mobs start becoming poison enchanted. This is an insane problem because poison is savage mid game against you. These mobs seem to be rare and in small groups when poison will hurt you the worst so buy 5-7 Alexipharmics from the potion vendor when you see these mobs and put them on your hot bar and pay attention. To see how poison enchant works for you, see my 1st cheat.
Specialty Fight:
Without giving anything away lets just say that if you take the time to enchant your gear as I suggest below and use the cheat I'm going to tell you the last boss will bow before you.
Gear:
+X gear with enchants are rare and beautiful finds. If your short on cash and find a nice blue or gold item put it in your stash that the knight gives you for safe keeping until you the the dolla-s. The more composition slots on an item, the better, but if you use my 2nd cheat, that won't matter at all.
Enchanting:
ATTACK %, DEFENSE %, DROP RATE, CRITICAL, MAGIC RESIST on armor, and BLOCK RATE on shield are the only things that you'll /need/. Get all of these to Lvl 3, as lvl 4 tends to be an expensive pain in the ***. Get all your gear to +3 and no higher as it's just too expensive. It's 48-60k Gold to get '1' item to +3. You can't +x rings, bracelets, belts, and necklaces. Watch your composition slots left on the item (the number on the bottom of the item) and prioritize your enchantments, your the master of your destiny. Find a Gold or, 2nd best, blue shield of any class. Gold shields have 25% block rate standard and Blues have 15%, you can't beat that block rate with any amount of defense from a higher class shield. +3 your shield and get Block rate enchant to 3 on your shield first chance you get. To get the stones your lacking run in and out of town until the potion merchant has the stones your looking for. Close her inventory and then reopen it and it will have refreshed. The one piece of information that I won't give you is what to enchant your weapon with elementally. 3 of them are good, 1 is bad, and 2 of the good ones pawns with bladestorm. I'll let you guys figure out that one.
Farming for Gold:
If you need supplies/gold farm dense quest areas including the first 6 areas of final rest valley for gold and random items. Return to town, sell the vendor trash and only keep what you need. If you have high drop rate then full inventory will be a problem. Avoid snatching all potions except the ones that your replacing and the yellow potions of archangel because they are good money. Also, do not pick up non-blue/gold bracelets, necklaces, rings, and belts because all of them are only worth 10 gold. Everything else should be picked up including town portal scrolls because they are worth 40 gold. Early game it can help to compose smaller potions into larger ones if selling them because it increases the total per unit price of the potions. Basically, you just get more gold for doing a couple combines. You can't compose archangel potions.
1st Cheat:
The first blue quest weapon you get is from the magic item merchant. He offers you a deal for a magical Assassin Dagger for 3,000 gold. DO IT. I don't care what weapon you choose to use through most of the game, equip that dagger. It has Lvl 3 poison on it for less than the cost of buying the stuff to enchant it. Go to any place where it takes more than one hit for you to kill stuff but where the mobs aren't so hard that they are difficult to beat. Walk up to a mob, hit it enough times to both lower it's health to half or less and also to ensure it's inflicted with poison. That mob is literally already dead and doesn't know it, go to the next mob and do the same thing, and then the next mob. If mobs are bunched together, jump and do your falling slam attack to hit the most mobs. LET THE POISON KILL THEM. When a mob dies from poison the coding doesn't do a lvl check on your level vs the mob. What that means is that you get full xp every time you kill any mob with poison and it still calculates drop rate. In this game, as you level and mobs become lower level then you, they give less and less xp til they give 0. With this trick you'll be pulling xp from them as if they were 4-5 levels above you no matter what level they are as long as the poison kills them. So you'll be gaining tons and tons of extra xp. It's a very fast way to level.
THE MONEY SHOT! THE EPIC!
I've found no cheats or glitchs for this game online besides game engine hacks which are bull**** for the most part. But here it is....discovered by yours truly.
2nd Cheat:
Endless Composition Slots. Ok, ok. I know your thinking this is BS right? Wrong. It doesn't matter which item you have if it has less than full slots on it, including adding slots to items with +x-ing, place it in your stash in one of the top two rows.... Save the game.... Click Reload... Open your game back up.... BEHOLD! Full composition slots.
Courtesy of Me.
Enjoy.
