I've been playing this game for a bit, and I'm currently starting to run through the four different north, south, east, and west slopes. I've accumulated a bit of items and weapons at this point. I have two questions:

1. Can anyone tell me what weapons I should customize, and exactly what I should be aiming for? There's just so many different materials that I don't know what I should combine to get the best possible customized weapon.

2. I think I might have ruined my Beserker. I initially thought the Iai-To was a single-handed sword, so I pumped more Dexterity into the Beserker than needed. He's got 136 Base Dex, but only 120 Dex is needed to use the best single-handed sword. It sounds dumb, but how bad is this?

His base stats are: 143 STR, 136 DEX, 142 VIT, 47 KI, and 25 CHR

Thanks all.

yea i did that also, that little extra dex is ok, problems happen it won't be a big deal. Just duel weapons with him and others that can dual weld (beserker, sword and brick i think) 120 dex for the dual swords and 135 strength for best helm and 2nd best armor (not a huge difference between the 130 str triple scale and the 170 str heavy armor, they both have the same slots and that little extra AC won't really matter.

For your weapons...

Your final weapons you want as much health leech on them as possible. That way as your warriors are swinging, they are healing up. Until you gather enough health leech items (hairpins and oni claws, i think, or maybe oni fangs) you can make your weapons with any extra damage to use until then. Pump them up with full offensive power of some sort (elemental damage, etc). You won't need weapons skills boost on them you'll raise up enough. So just extra damage.

Any caster character (mage, maybe ninja) you'll want a suit of magic regen armor so you can replenish your magic as your blasting. Not needed for warrior types.

Early on you'll want 1 character with max gold boost (250%) to open chests, and later if you can as many characters as possible with max gold boost so you can gain more from monster kills. I don't open any chests until i can get a max gold boost item, then i go back and open any missed chests for best benefit. Nothing you can do about monster kills of course, but what i try to do is just have individual characters try to solo kill stuff wearing the gold boosting items so i can get max gold from those kills, at least until i can get multiple characters with max gold boost. Usually with amulets, you'll want about 180% on an item. I usually use the best 135 strength helmet to make into a gold boost item. you can also early on make a gold boosting armor or something that can be passed around to who ever you are training up.

So, for your weapons, health leech is your final weapons so you can hack and slash and heal as you do it. Don't use knockback on anything, its a pain in the butt skill, and doesn't work on big enemies. Either health leech, or offensive elemental damage or something, max damage output. Stuns and slows, etc are pretty useless also, they work on early game foes, but later everything is immune to slow and stuns, ignore them. Just offensive damage.

oh, and any materials extra your carrying around just throw them on items your donating to the priest to boost spell points, presto. have a few extra regular weapons your going to offload? sell them to the store, or throw on some useless crafting material and donate them to the priest instead of you need spell points instead. No need to lug around a ton of pearls, weapon skill gems, and other stuff you'll probably never use on anything. Get some needed spell points out of them.]

Save your good crafting material for your final items. No need to rush, early on you don't need godlike gear to survive. Those rarer items you want to save up to put on the top armor/weapons that you can use. Once you hit those dex/strength levels to wear the triple scale, best helms, use the best swords , etc then start making your items. Don't forget you'll get strength and dex boosting items, usually in the general range of +20/+20 or so. So factor that into the equasion of building your character. See what boost you have when you are nearing your set levels.

Health leech items are some of the hardest to get ot drop/farm, i suggest at least those items try and farm to get them, they are very important on your weapons. I think the female archer/mages can drop them, but its like very very low chance. 1% chance for a 2nd drop, then its like a 15% chance its a hairpin. I usually save before a fight with a group of female archer/mages and reload if no hairpin drops. If even 1 drops, its a win win situation from the fight. With boss females, they always drop a 2nd item, so you'll get hairpins from them easier with save/reloading.

Don't worry. With Iai-To you'll miss more, but you'll have a similar damage output as with poles.

Armor:

Aim for Vitality / Health Points and if you need it, get some resistances. More armor is simply not worth it as after you get the best armor you can craft, there will be barely noticable difference or no difference at all in damage taken (There may be hidden armor cap)

There's a max of possible vitality, but there's no cap for Health Points. So if you're planning to play after killing Zanshin, you should aim for Health Points as you can get max Vitality without any bonuses.

Weapon:

The most powerful is poison damage as there's no resistance to it and it stacks. Poision damage last for 10 sec, so if your weapon have 50 poison damage, after 10 hits you'll deal 500 damage per sec from poison only. You can combine it with skill that is increasing attack speed and there will be very solid damage output. It's also good to have an indestructible weapon so you don't need to worry about breaking your weapon in a middle of fight.

I managed to solo kill Zanshin using the swordsman with the items I show in this video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=H64iPgWowjI

One Shinken with lightning damage and another with earth damage, fire and 20% life steal.