HentaiVerse Advice
Important disclaimer
Information on this page may be outdated or somewhat biassed. It was last reviewed in December 2021, which made it better but still not perfect. It is highly recommended that you use the HentaiVerse forum to ask for advice.
For help with shortened terms see the acronyms page. For extra help see HentaiVerse Advice Advanced or Ask The Experts.
Pre-Level 100
Don't invest too heavily into any Play Styles or Fighting Styles just yet. Keep stats balanced. Try out everything for a bit while the overall challenge and investment into the game is very low.
Level 101-309
Fighting Style Summaries
Around level 100 it's best to stick to one style at a time. Viable options are:
- One hand style (1H)
- Main hand: 1H weapon. Rapier or shortsword are good choices - both have generally good damage and parry. Slaughter suffix is the best, but others work as well.
- Off hand: Shield. Block is the most important stat, the higher the block the better.
- Armors: Heavy (Light works at low levels)
- Good style overall. Many players find this the easiest to play on high difficulty at lower level.
- Deals strong single target damage with counter-attacks providing some AoE.
- Gets a significant performance increase as you level up into the 200s due to increased counter-attack chance. Light armor has anti-synergy with counter-attacks, which is why it's not recommended after this point.
- 'Vital Strike' does great single target damage against System Monsters such as schoolgirls, but make sure the target is stunned and imperiled (if available) and have spirit stance on as well.
- Against normal enemies it's best to use your overcharge to stay in spirit stance.
- Don't be afraid of the high burden and interference. That's how 1H with heavy armor works.
- Dual Wield (DW)
- Main hand: 1H weapon. Best to go for a high damage weapon. A weapon that gives 'stun' (i.e. club) can be useful. A rapier works well, but you can also use a shortsword.
- Off hand: 1H weapon. Best to go for a weapon with high parry. If your main hand doesn't give 'penetrated armor', it's best to use an off hand weapon that does (i.e. rapier)
- Armors: Light
- Highest melee damage vs single targets, some AoE with Fighting skill 'Frenzied Blows', and slightly less defense than 1H.
- Can take advantage of 2 different procs (e.g. stun and penetrated armor) because of offhand strikes.
- You need to manage your overcharge and use 'Frenzied Blows' to maximize your damage.
- Can reach very high parry chance, but weaker against magic attacks.
- Imperil is needed (if available) for schoolgirls and other System Monsters, but not for normal monsters
- Mage
- Main hand: Staff
- Off hand: -
- Armors: Cloth
- Highest offense, but terrible defense. You will need to play at lower difficulty until you can invest credits in equipment and forging.
- Below level 310 you won't be able to spam the 'imperil' spell which you need to play at higher difficulty.
- Pick one element and have all your gear match that element. Use 1 or 2 cloth armors to boost the relevant proficiency (elemental/forbidden/divine), with the rest phase of your element.
- Elemental is best for beginner mages due to faster cast times, lower mana cost, and better mitigation reduction from imperil.
- Fire and cold are the cheapest options, but slightly weaker end-game.
- Holy is the worst for all but the richest mages due to most expensive gear, highest mana cost, slower cast times, and worst synergy with imperil.
- 1H Mage
- Main hand: 1H weapon with battlecaster or nimble suffix and high parry (i.e. Wakizashi)
- Off hand: Shield with low burden and interference (i.e. buckler). Best to go for a buckler of the barrier, which has higher block than other bucklers, or buckler of the battlecaster if using a nimble weapon
- Armors: Cloth
- You basically cast spells like a mage, but with the defense of a shield and parrying weapon instead of the offense of a staff.
- Still very good AoE damage, but somewhat lacking against System Monsters.
- Depending on difficulty level, imperil will become necessary sometime in the 200s. However, the last level of the 'Faster Imperil' ability does not come until level 310, and that makes this style much more pleasant to play.
- Elemental is best due to faster cast times, lower mana cost, and better mitigation reduction from imperil.
- Fire and cold are still cheapest, but they do just as well as wind and elec in 1H mage.
- Two Hand (2H)
- Main hand: 2H weapon. Ethereal prefix is recommended.
- Off hand: -
- Armors: Light
- Does AoE damage with Domino Strike, but difficult to play at high difficulty. This style just lacks defense. And unlike mage, it doesn't compensate for it by giving high damage.
- Mace, with its stuns, is the least bad option.
- Easiest style to apply procs on multiple monsters
- Niten Ichiryu (NI)
- Main hand: Katana
- Off hand: Wakizashi
- Armors: Light
- Partial benefits from 2H and DW:
- Domino Strike limited to 5 monsters.
- Offhand damage but no parry bonus.
- This style is playable, but not as good as DW or 1H. You will probably need to play at lower difficulty.
- With full balance (crit chance) gear, NI stacks Bleeding Wound incredibly quickly.
Continue to keep stats relatively balanced except for INT (unless maging) and replace your gear every ~30 levels. Gear of your own level is better since you will not be soulfusing for a while. Getting level 10 potency in Item World gives a nice offensive boost for melee weapons.
Leveling Adjustments
As you progress in levels you'll start facing monsters with increased Power Levels, mostly above PL 400 (and thus with powerful spirit attacks). Most of the fights will become significantly more difficult at roughly level 150+. There's a few adjustments you can do:
- Lower your difficulty setting until you get accustomed to the new monsters. Try to play on at least Hard level to obtain shards.
- Get better equipment (especially a better weapon). Do not worry if its a few levels lower than you, the stat difference isn't that big.
- Utilize your deprecating spells such as Weaken, Silence, and Sleep.
- Use more buffs, such as Haste, Protection, Shadow Veil, etc.
- It may be wise to invest in an Innate Arcana slot if you haven't already. The first slot costs 50 hath.
- Make sure your accuracy is at least 100% to ensure your attacks won't miss. Further accuracy up to 194.8% reduces monsters' chance to evade your attacks.
Level 310+
Same styles remain viable. But some things change because level 310 allows maxing out the 'Faster Imperil' ability which lets you spam imperil with no cooldown. Level 330 allows maxing the 'Better Imperil' ability, increasing its effectiveness further.
Mage is much more viable with imperil. Mage can be played at higher difficulty above level 310.
By now Melee styles should Item World their weapon(s) to Item World level 10. Melee styles also benefit from casting imperil. 1H with imperil can do very well with a relatively cheap Shortsword of Slaughter. Without imperil, the more expensive Rapier of Slaughter is best. But even a Rapier of Slaughter will benefit from using imperil. You don't have to land imperil on every single monster---getting most monsters imperiled is already an improvement.
Melee styles other than 1h will notice some attacks getting parried by monsters. Stunned monsters cannot parry, so club and mace are good options. At high player levels and with good equipment and forging, switching to heavy (power) armor can also be faster in some styles.
For all melee styles, switching from plate/leather to power/shade will provide a good offensive boost for a slight loss of some defensive stats. Shade armor is better than leather armor in general, because it increases attack damage, has zero burden, and has more evade. Power armor provides an even bigger increase in attack damage, making it better than plate armor in general. Use power of protection when you need defense, and power of slaughter for offense. The skills Orbital Friendship Cannon and Fus Ro Dah can be very helpful for survival. Orbital Friendship Cannon is much better offensively, while Fus Ro Dah costs only half as much overcharge.
Regardless of Build
The following are universal regardless of whether you choose a melee or a mage build.
Abilities
- Do NOT invest into abilities you do not actively use (e.g. Holy/Dark abilities if you use only Elemental). AP consumed counts across all equipment sets. Abilities only take effect if equipped in an unlocked mastery slot. At lower levels you will have more AP than you can spend as you have not unlocked most of the available abilities; this will change at about level 200. You can get more AP via Ability Boost training.
| Ability | Reason |
|---|---|
| Top Priority | |
| HP Tank | Increases health pool, massively increases survival. |
| MP Tank | Increases mana pool, greatly useful. |
| Better Cure | Reduces cooldown and increases the amount of hp healed. Vital as health potions are very weak in this game. |
| Better Regen | Stronger and longer heal-over-time. |
| Better Protection | Solid survival boost. |
| Second Priority | |
| (Applicable Armor & Weapon abilities) | Improve with proficiency and work well with the fighting style to which they belong.
Mages can ignore Staff Damage and Staff Accuracy. |
| Recommended | |
| Better Mana Pots | Mana is the most recommended type of restorative to bring into battle. |
| Better Haste | Increases how fast you attack/cast spells. This increases your survivability as less monsters will be able to attack you for every attack you do and they will charge their MP/SP skills slower. |
| Stronger Spirit | Procs earlier and uses less SP per proc. |
| SP Tanks | Good for melee (to use Spirit Stance more) or once Spark of Life / Spirit Shield become available (also useful for mage). |
| Better Shadow Veil | Decent survival boost, especially at lower levels. |
| Optional | |
| Better Imperil | Increases damage done using Imperil, especially good for mages. |
| Faster Imperil | Reduces cost and cooldown of Imperil as well as increases targets affected, especially good for mages. |
| Better Spark | Not as important if SoL is auto-cast but helps to reduce MP usage otherwise. Very important once you start seeing monsters with SP bars regularly (level ~150+) as SP attacks deal a lot of damage and can 1-shot you. |
| Substandard | |
| Better Drain | Very weak increase in damage. |
| Faster Drain | Already a fast spell, still a long cooldown. |
| Better Absorb | Just procs more often, still a weak spell. Most monsters do not deal magical attacks either, and the MP gained is very low. Only really useful to some extent when fighting certain boss monsters such as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. |
| Better Slow | Replaceable with Better MagNet once the MagNet spell becomes available. |
| Mind Control | Both spells are not highly useful even when they break less often. |
| Discouraged | |
| Better Blind, Faster Blind | Weaken is more useful. |
| Ether Theft | Already occurs as part of the Mage play style. |
Equipment
- Low level players should look for free or cheap equipment in the WTS subforum.
- If you have a piece of equip that you want to use for a long time, you can soulfuse it. It is possible to soulfuse items up to 100 levels higher than your own. Soulfuse will make a piece of equipment untradable.
- Equipments of a higher quality don't necessarily have all their stats higher than a lower quality, so think twice and check the stats that matter to you before replacing your equipment. Check the Equipment_Ranges to know the minimum and maximum of a given stat for your equipment, as well as the possible values for the higher quality.
Items
- Utilize your restoratives. They're meant to be used, not for collection.
- It is always safe to use an item since it takes 0 action speed.
- Draughts are best used on long battles as a weak regen. Potions are more for emergencies. Elixirs are better off for when the aforementioned 2 are on cooldown or when both effects are desired right away.
- Low level players can obtain free draughts from some players, check the WTS forum.
- Tokens of Blood used for fighting FSM give the best return on investment. Clear all the Ring of Blood challenges only once for their credit bonuses.
- TT&T is second best, if you still have tokens to spare. It's a difficult fight, so be prepared and consider lowering your difficulty.
Monster Lab
- You can check for gifts as often as you want but remember that it takes at least 1 hour for new gifts to appear and weaker monsters likely won't have them that frequently.
- Remember that monsters who haven't given you a gift in 3 days will acquire one automatically.
- To maximize gifts, unlock as many monsters as you can.
- Funny monster names are recommended. Do not use the same name with numbering or gibberish.
Trophies
- You can turn these in for equipment or sell them any time you want. In the settings, you can choose to turn more than one at the time at the shrine. More at a time gives slightly better total shrine value.
- Trophies should never be sold to the bazaar; shrining them will almost always be worth more or at least they can be sold to players for far more than the bazaar pays.
- Easiest way to sell trophies is through the item trade market in the game. Or look for offers on the WTB section of the forum.
Training
Warning: Training is a massive credit sink and generally offers very little rewards except for Adept Learner and Ability Boost. Do not start dumping all your credits into Scavenger, etc. Maxing Scavenger will cost more than 17 million credits and will only increase the chance of item drops from 10% to 12.5%; these are meant for players with a lot of credits to spend.
Equipment Shop
- Clicking on the padlock (
) next to a piece of equipment prevents it from being sold (
). - Most gear in the bazaar will be very high level or of Average quality (or lower). It's usually better to buy directly from players on the WTS subforums.
The Forge
- The first 5 upgrade levels don't require bindings (but may cost Rare Materials), thus making them relatively cost effective.
- You will get 90% of the materials you used to upgrade an item when salvaging it, except for catalysts. Therefore, it is fairly inexpensive to upgrade items at a low level as you can salvage to get most of the materials back.
- Remember that stacking infusions increases their duration but not their effects.
- Reforge equipment right away when it gets a potency you don't want as every level of potency requires another amnesia shard to remove.
- Soul Fragments should almost never be bought. They can be easily farmed by clearing Random Encounters (regardless of difficulty).
Very Important Hotkey!
If you want to get an equipment's link, mouse over it and press C.
- Make sure Caps Lock is off and popups are enabled.
