Espers

[pukachu]

What are espers ?

They are both stat giving items with a reserved slot on you character, and an automated grinding system(Invirogation). There are zero reasons not to have an esper, and since youre going to have one, why not use its full potential.

How can I get one ?

You can trade espers. Buying from other players is one way. However if you do, and the previous owner has equipped the esper, you need to null the owner with a Cleanse stone. Available in GJ shop and marketplace

Cleanse stone in marketplace


You can acquire a starter esper from treasure chest, item that every new character receives - which can be opened for useful rewards every 5 levels. (1-5-10-15-20-so on)
You can also buy or acquire esper from several sources;

Esper mystics


Trade Welkin Green Jade at sunstream for an esperate mystery


Then trade that at Tree of Wealth in Sunstream for a variety of espers (lvl 75-135)


You can also buy espers from the marketplace, but I do not recommend this at all since both espers are rubbish and cost donator jaden


Cheapest way to acquire endgame espers is to grind for esper parts in moontophollow (NOT THE INSTANCE) in Jadeon, but currently droprate is 0,08% so it will take an eternity to get 12 pieces, which you need to make 1 Faction esper (THESE ARE FACTION LOCKED). Will make a separate topic on Jadeon MTH.




You can also win endgame espers from lottos you can buy from marketplace, but I wouldnt recommend since the chances are so low ( something like 1:25000 or worse)

"Best" way to get an endgame esper on this server currently, is by opening Jaden books for golden letters and trading them for either a Soul Scepter or a Firmus at sunstream esper mystic.

Step 1: Gather celestial decrees from fealty quests daily

Step 2: Trade your celestial decrees at jade girl in sunstream to jaden books

Step 3: Open your Jaden books. This will cost 1 Tanis Ka charm per book, but its worth it, even for the esper alone.
You can buy these from greenjade shop on website
Step 4: With some luck, receive golden letters. Once you have 10 of these you can trade them for Soul scepter or Firmus - there are other rewards BUT DO NOT WASTE THESE ON THEM



Congratulations, now you know how to acquire espers!


What esper should I use ?

I personally classify espers into 4 tiers;
1. Endgame espers are Soul Scepter, Firmus and Heartrending Flower (last one currently not available on this server)

2. Cheaper endgame espers include Sinister Orb, Death Wand, Gem Aquatica, Spiritrap Banner and other non factional 135 esper not yet mentioned. These I do not recommend for permanent use, or to use any resources on - since the cost of upgrading your esper to the full potential is nothing compared to the cost of the esper itself. You are going to spend multiple times more on upgrading your esper than on getting it

3. Faction 135 espers - many of these have really good skills, but since the stats cannot reach the same levels as tier 1, do not use these as main espers.

4. Ruby Pagoda, available from Tree of Wealth for an esperate mystery, this esper has the unique ability to reset certain skill cooldowns, do not use this as main esper. You can have the effect on your main esper, will explain later, dont worry.

5. Rest of the rubbish - faction 15-105, neutral 15-105 / Do not use these permanently.

With the exception of factions that use spirit drain in combination with skills ( Celan basically but you can have both SS and Firmus if you got da monii), Firmus is the best esper. Firmus and Soul Scepter have same potential stats, but Firmus also gives passive to every faction on one tier 5 skill when you have tome, accessory and lvl 3 firmus skill. Will go through Firmus later, just understand that its the best esper until Heartrending Flower is released on this server.

Now that you've chosen Firmus, what to do?

First order of business is to equip it so its temporarily bound to you, and you can upgrade it. When it is, it will say your character name as its "Owner". After that, I strongly recommend you level up your esper to gain more stat bonuses from it. There are two ways to upgrade esper lvl, one by using the esper skill - every usage increases esper profiency by 1
Or you can use catalyze items which give either 500 or 5500 profiency per item RECOMMENDED

Catalyze window at esper mystic:

Tiamat blood ( 550 profiency item, you should have these from opening Jaden books to acquite golden letters for Firmus )

Wyvern Blood ( 5500 profiency item, currently only available from marketplace or green jaden shop )


Important Levels
30 - Minimum lvl required to ascend the esper (esper ascension later)
35 - Minimum lvl required to add bonus resistances (green resistance numbers on esper)
36 and 37 - 37 is maximum level of an esper, where it will have the highest stats. Note that for lvl 36 your character has to be 155 and for 37, 160.

Other levels also have character lvl requirements but on this server ascended lvl 150 isnt an issue.

Next important step is to polish your esper
Not literally, you need to use an item called Esper Polish ( available in green jaden shop, market place, and will be given free in induction pack or treasure chest
What this does, is it reveals the current hidden faction skill level bonuses esper has. Yes, espers can increase your skill level and make it better than for example maxed muscle control (skysong speedbuff) and certain skill are almost a requirement for certain factions to have in their esper. Think of it as a charm tome.

Esper Polish on marketplace


Now that you can see what skills bonuses your esper gives, you can change them. If the skills dont seem familiar to you, its possible that they are for another faction, in which case you will need to buy a faction gem from GJ shop, marketplace, or trade a Green Welkin Jade for a Cipher crystal at sunstream lil jade girl, and trade that crystal to a faction gem at Tree of Wealth in Sunstream.

Example of a faction gem (Hydran)


However focus on the Esper skill lvl first, since youre using a Firmus. Firmus explained later, just obey. Esper skill lvl can be 1-3 on most espers, and you want the maximum level obviously.

You can "roll" esper skill lvl and amount of faction skills with either Tawen gems (old items, dont use) and Perfect Tawen gems, latter of which lets you choose to either keep the roll you had before, or accept the new one and replace the old one.

Perfect Tawen in marketplace


Once youve gotten a lvl 3 Esper skill roll, keep it. After this you can change the other skills (without rerolling the esper skill level) with a Platinum Jade. Available in GJ shop and marketplace. This resets the AMOUNT of faction skills, and the skills themselves. You get to choose whether to accept or reject the new result.

Platinum Jade in marketplace


Somewhere during this process I recommend also getting(buying) the esper accessory, and esper tome. You need 750 Arcane Bullions and 750 Arcane coins to get both - you exchange bullions and coins at Elder of Arcaness in Jadeon (the tower where you donate chroma and affinity beads)

Firmus Accessory and Tome


Congratulations! Now you have a lvl 3 Firmus with faction skills and X level.

So what why did I have to do that?

Firmus, when its skill lvl is 5 ( Esper skill lvl 3, Tome and Accessory both give +1 esper skill level ) gives bonuses to one of every factions tier 5 skill. List below, source: http://jd-wiki.perfectworld.com/index.php/Aeolian_Firmus

Jadeon - Thunderblade: When the Esper reaches level 5, damage increases by 10% of Attack Power. When Thunderblade reaches max rank, the first and last strike have a 40% chance to make the caster immune to damage and negative effects for 5 seconds, protecting up to 10 times.
Modo - Skyseeker: When the Esper reaches level 5, damage increases by 12% of Attack Power. Increases the chance to inflict debuffs by 10%
Vim - Nameless Technique: When the Esper reaches Level 5, damage will be increased by 20% of Attack Power. Grants 15% Damage Reduction and has an attack range 3 yards longer.
Lupin - Frozen Memories: When the Esper reaches Level 5, damage will be increased by 15% of Attack Power. Has a 5% chance to Silence the target, and doubles the strength of the effects.
Skysong - Immeasurable Truth: When the Esper reaches Level 5, damage increases by 20% of Attack Power. Increases the resistance debuff's duration by 3 seconds, and increases Resistances by 10% for another 6 seconds.
Incense Mage - Dragonfire: When the Esper reaches Level 5, the duration is increased by 10 seconds. Some of the buffs that Bahun the Crimson gets will be applied to the array's participants as well.
Arden - Incarnation Switch: When the Esper reaches Level 5, damage is increased by 10% Attack Power. Has a 25% chance to reduce the target's health by another 10%.
Balo - Ancient Soul: When the Esper reaches Level 5, this buff grants another 6% bonus to Max Health and AP.
Celan - Petal Drops: When the Esper reaches level 5, damage increases by 25% of Attack Power. For 10 seconds, the caster's Max SP increases by 6%
Rayan - Celestial Slay: When the Esper reaches Level 5, damage increases by 6% of Attack Power. Celestial Slay affects 5 more targets
Forta - Universe Quake: When the Esper reaches Level 5, CritStrike Bonus is increased by an additional 25%. The Reality Termination skill triggered by this has a 10% chance to Paralyze the target, and is 5% more likely to trigger Reality Termination.
Voida - Last Judgment: When the Esper reaches Level 5, the cooldown to the skill Last Judgment will be reduced by 20 seconds.
Kytos - Death Volition: When the Esper reaches Level 5, the duration of Death Volition will be extended 5 seconds
Psychea - Mecha Torrent: When the Esper reaches Level 5, the damage after exploding seeds from Mecha: Torrent is increased by 25%
Hydran - Meteor Shower: When the Esper reaches LV5, the damage to each hit is increased equal to 10% of Attack Power and removes 1 buff from the target

I further recommend you check the source website, is has information on all espers. Dont know how long it will operate though.

So not only does Firmus give passive bonuses to these often used skills, it also has the best stats (sharing with Soul Scepter) of espers, with the exception of Heartrending Flower.
Also, for classes that are able to hit multiple times fast, the firmus esper skill itself gives an amazing debuff:
100% chance to increase damage dealt to the target each time it's struck for 16 seconds. Max of 20 increases, each at 20% of caster's Max Attack

What this means is that within 16 seconds, everytime you hit your opponent that you've used the skill on ( and thats been debuffed ) takes 20% of your max attack MORE per each hit. It stacks up to 20 times. This ables alot of tanky builds that dont utilize critical hit chance at all, and focus on attack power.


What's next ?

Next I recommend ascending your esper. There are people who might say that you shouldnt ascend before you've bloodsmelted or maxed out the bonus stats (green stats), but its rubbish. After ascension espers stat increase scales up, so ascension makes no difference on upgrading your espers stats.

You will need an Esper Ascension Orb. These are dropped by 150 bosses, some instances and can also be exchanged at Esper Ascension NPC in Sunstream for 2 Golden Letters.





What ascension does, is first it reduces alot of profiency from your esper - it reduces esper level. From level 30 (minimum level required to ascend an esper) esper level will drop to something between 1-8, maybe more maybe less, cant remember since I dont do this. From 35 however, which I recommend personally, level is dropped to 28.
But it also increases stats on the esper. Unascended esper at 28 would have alot less stat bonuses than an ascended 28 esper. After ascending, level it back up to 35-37.
Also by ascending at 35 your esper will have decent stat bonuses if you cannot afford to level it back up straight away, so it wont affect your grinding in a major way.

Ascension also unlocks esper Fusion, and esper Inheritance.

Esper Fusion allows you to transfer random effects from other esper skills to your Firmus. Unfortunately I dont have an example of in a Firmus, but I have in a HF from oldy goldy files. See below.



Neither of the first 2 effects in the esper are Heartrending Flowers normal effects. (Bestial assault and Retrieve souls)
Bestial assault is from a 105 Kytos faction esper and Retrieve souls is from a 105 Rayan faction esper.
Yes you can add ANY esper skill effect to your esper, however some effects are significantly changed or nerfed when fused. These include Soul Scepter's SP drain, Firmus's max ap% stack, and some others like Ruby Pagoda's cooldown reset skill. Theres a way around this though through Inheritance, read on.

The 2 effects fused in the HF esper (picture above) are ones I would recommend to fuse into your Firmus. This way when you cast Firmus damage stack debuff, you will also stun/silence them, given that you have adequate resistances. Thus opponent is helpless as you bash him into oblivion, unless theyre hydran (LOL).
There are alot of useful effects in espers, I recommend you study different espers and try to fuse the effects that benefit your build, IF you arent insanely OP and dont need anything else but your trusty 1hit aoe skill.

Note however that esper fusion results are random, they can remove the effects you want to keep on your esper. When fusing, you get to choose whether you want to accept new result or to keep the old.

So how to do it?

First, your main esper, that you want to fuse other effects into, HAS TO BE ASCENDED.
Second, the esper you want to transfer effects from, HAS TO BE ASCENDED.
When making these espers I recommend just making them lvl 30, and then ascending immediately.

The secondary esper, which youre transferring effects from, will be destroyed in the process!

You will need this item PER EVERY FUSION. It can be acquired everywhere that esper ascension orb can, mentioned earlier.

Esper Fusion manual


Fusion window at NPC in Sunstream


Accept or Reject window



So I've added these awesome effects to my now OP esper, can I make it better?
Yes.

Esper Inheritance
Inheritance allows you to transfer the skill of an esper to another esper, as a separate skill. This means you can have a Trigram skill in your Firmus if you so wish. But as mentioned somewhere earlier, this allows Celans (SP drain build) to use Firmus as their main esper, but still utilize the insane SP drain from a Soul Scepter (72% of max SP drained every 2 seconds)

One of the strongest esper skills is Bloodcaller, from the Focused Hate esper, that can be exchanged for items acquired in the instance Dread Labyrinth (takes a long time to get)
This skill transforms the opponent into a flower, that cannot move or use skills or attack, for 7 seconds - with a 60 second cooldown.
I do not recommend this esper as a main esper, for one because firmus is better, and secondly the item required to bloodsmelt (improve stats) is also only acquired from playing the instance.

IMPORTANT! The Inherited skill will also have a skill level, which cannot be changed after inheritance. Level of inherited skill is determined by the level of the skill in the esper youre inheriting - Its 2 levels higher than the espers skill, so before inheriting, roll the esper skill lvl into 3, thus the inherited skill will have a lvl of 5, which is the maximum.

Required for Esper Inheritance:
Esper you want to inherit the skill INTO
Esper you want to inherit the skill FROM (will be destroyed in the process)
Accessory of the esper you want to inherit the skill FROM (will be destroyed in the process)
Tome of the esper you want to inherit the skill FROM (will be destroyed in the process)

Continues in next post

[pukachu]

Here I will refer back to my picture of the HF esper - since I do not yet have inherited skills on this server


Under the Bonus Skill: Lonely Cloud LV3 (espers main skill) you will see two (Inherited skill)
The first one is the Dread Labyrinth esper skill
Second is a Firmus skill (the HF esper is better on some builds due to higher maximum resistances so I just added Firmus into it for the damage stack)

These skills can be used just as if they were the main esper skill, although you will only see the first inheritance skill in the esper/invirogation bar, others can be found in Hotkey R (skills) -> Other -> Esper
Espers can have a maximum of 5 inherited skills, but due to esper fusion I wouldnt recommend more than a few

Am I finished?
Oh god no, no, you arent.

Bloodsmelting

This step is by far the most expensive/resource consuming, so I would suggest to focus on it after you've done the earlier mentioned things, or possibly whilst youre farming for your Focused Hate in DL.

If youre just looking to increase your AP by 50, you can skip this phase
You need to increase your maximum growth limits on your esper. You do this by first buying 90 Tangon Jades (GJ shop or marketplace)

Tangon Jade in marketplace


Then you trade your tangons to these stones (10 of each) at medium exchange



After, assimiliate these stones with your esper. All of them. This increases the maximum growth and lets us bloodsmelt our esper stats higher - you need to use them all inorder to increase the overall maximum growth of the esper, this will not only help us, but actually will save resources.


For Firmus, you currently need 45 Treasure Bowls (450 Green Jaden, also available in marketplace), a random 75-105 esper (faction recommended, 50g per 105 esper) per EACH bloodsmelt. So better not waste your resources on lottos anymore. For this example, were using resources of 1 bloodsmelt.

If youre wondering how many bloodsmelts youre going to have to do, it depends on your goals - but on this server I recommend just maxing out the resistances, which will take up to 500-700. Since its VERY expensive, consider only bloodsmelting the resists than benefit your build, i.e. Stun and Weaken for Balo - this will be significantly cheaper.

So, on with it then.

After youve acquired your 105 faction espers and Treasure Bowls, you need to buy Heaven cycle jades - these instantly change bloodsmelting status of 105 esper into Divined, which increases the chance of a successful bloodsmelt, so you have to do it, will be cheaper aswell than to just use random espers with random BS status.

Treasure bowl


Heaven Cycle Jade in exchange


You will need a secondary esper in the bloodsmelt process, so buy trigrams (theyre cheap, secondary esper WILL BE DESTROYED IN THE PROCESS)

Do not pay attention to the 105 esper randomly changing faction. Irrelevant.


Now you should have a 105 Divined esper, and 25 Treasure Bowls left . Turn those 25 Treasure Bowls into Spirit Dust - you can do this by exchanging your bowls into spirit dust packages at the exchange (you can change larger amounts faster by choosing the bigger packs)



After youve opened the packs (you can use invirogation to open them if youre lazy), convert the Spirit Dust into Firmus Mediums.

BE CAREFUL TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT MEDIUM. Not only will this make the bloodsmelt fail if you accidentally use Firmus as secondary esper, but also if you buy the wrong ones, no way to change them back.



Now you should have a Chillsoul (Firmus Medium), a 105 Divined esper, and your Firmus ready to be bloodsmelted.

But hold on, you cannot bloodsmelt it yet. Look up this orange text on your esper:



If you bloodsmelt your esper while it has random status, it will bloodsmelt a random attribute! which we do NOT want it to do.

How you change this to the attribute you want to increase, is by first buying a load of Trigrams - remember ? the cheap esper ?
Buy a load, and lets assume you want to increase the Stun res, then buy those until you find one with this:



After you find one, you need a Best Dragon Skin - easiest way to acquire is by exchanging 20 Sunny Jades at the sunny jade NPC in Sunstream. You are going to need several of these, depending on how many stats you want to increase, it increases exponentially.



Now bloodsmelt your Firmus as Main, Trigram (with the stun) as Secondary, and Best Dragon Skin as medium



And the result: (Ignore the green stats I will explain them later)



Now you can bloodsmelt and hopefully increase the attribute !

Use Firmus as main esper, your divined 105 esper as secondary, and the Firmus medium, Chillsoul as medium. Result:




Congratulations !

Now, repeat the bloodsmelt process (you dont have to change the bloodsmelt attribute before you want to increase another attribute) until you get a message in chat saying: "Failure to bloodsmelt esper." This means you have achieved the maximum of the attribute
Now you can change the attribute with Best Dragon Skins and Trigrams, and repeat.

After alot of bloodsmelting, you will notice that randomly an attribute might decrease.

Youve hit the growth maximum.

From this point on, espers overall stats balance out on its own, some stats decrease while you increase 1. The attribute youre bloodsmelting can also decrease. This is where it gets irritating.

On this server I do not recommend pushing much further, but for example if your build doesnt require spirit from your esper, you can keep bloodsmelting other attributes until your spirit under a +100 - this will allow others to increase closer to the single attribute maximum growth.

Max stats on a firmus, you can expect resistance to be anything between 239 and 265, Max ap 1100-1450. There are people who say that the lvl1 unaltered resistance mean something on max growth, but its not true. If a lvl1 firmus has all +8, it usually just means that the max growths are identical. However the lvl1 resistances do indicate if theres any difference between growths. Firmus with +3 stun resist and +9 paralyze wont end up with same max resists.


So what are the Green stats ?
They are added bonuses on top of the bloodsmelted(or non) attributes and can only be increased. AP, HP and SP are increased by assimilating with orbs from the esper mystic, bought with gold - After halfway assimilation starts to fail often and you dont gain the +stat, but you will lose the orb



Bonus resistances are slower to upgrade, since the item needed can only be acquired by turning in MTH vouchers (sound familiar?) - Moontophollow Instance, Champion voucher. You receive 20 Radiant orbs per voucher. These have a higher chance to fail, but in respect they have a lot lower maximum.




Maximum bonus stats, or green stats, are (on a level 37 esper!);
+1260 AP
+8400 HP
+8400 SP
+40 of each resistance

Yes, these are maximums, the limit is increased towards these with every lvl esper gains.

But mister whats that blue text on your esper?



They are esper tags, items that can be added to esper inorder to increase a attribute according to the tag, whilst invirogating. They drop from Vigilant monsters - but since I dont have any char below 150 to get loot from those monsters, heres the database page: http://jd.pwdatabase.com/pwi/item/11387
You can check the other tags by just searching "tag" on the database - they look alike, colours differ.

[pukachu]

Reserved next days check to see what ive forgotten. Need fresh eyes.

[CompeR]

Bounty granted: 3000 GJ.