Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
You are correct. Estoc >>>>>>>>>> spears, especially in PvP. It is in 3-1 but somewhat out of the way. IIRC it's behind a passage where you need to destroy some furniture to find.
That said, if they like the spear and already started upgrading it, it will serve just fine in PvE for that purpose.
Okay, that's good to know. Not gonna use spoiler tags since I assume you want this information, anyone else can just skip reading this I guess.
Fair warning, following this guide might make the game far, far easier than it normally is.
I would suggest going to 4-1 as soon as possible and pick up the Crescent Falchion right away (guarded behind a difficult enemy, a black skeleton, but you can run past him without too much difficulty). The "Crescent" upgrade path scales with your magic stat and deals split magic/melee damage, so it's perfect for a magic build. If you don't like its moveset, that's OK, you can always make another weapon as "Crescent" or "Moon" (with darkmoon stones -- found in Shrine of Storms -- or moonlight stones -- found in Tower of Latria) down the line, but it can serve until then.
I would suggest you do this:
- 4-1 to pick up the crescent falchion. You don't need to beat the level just yet, it might be a bit too hard straight out of 1-1 regardless. Though you can always try of course.
- 3-1 to rescue Sage Freke ASAP and pick up the Silver Coronet (boosts your max MP slightly) and Ring of Magical Sharpness (boosts spell damage). He can trade in boss souls for spells. Plus, the soul of the boss of 3-1 can be traded to him for a major upgrade to your Soul Arrow, "Soul Ray". Soul Ray will be your major source of pew-pew for the game.
Oh yeah, 3-1 also has a vendor that sells cheap Spice (and a lot of Old and Fresh Spice as loot in the level), I suggest you spend your souls to stock up on them, it'll be worth it. You can also buy/find some Royal Lotuses in that area, which will be useful for world 5.After that, you can do (order doesn't matter much):
- 1-2, to defeat the Tower Knight and get the boss soul for Warding. It can be a very useful defensive spell.
- 2-1, to get the boss soul for Firespray (trade to Sage Freke).
- 2-2, to get the Flamelurker soul to give to the blacksmith in 2-1, he can make special weapons. The crescent falchion will really shine here, some of the enemies are super resistant to physical attacks but weak to magic. Also the boss is hard to melee but very weak to magic, so pew pew him for easy victory.
After that:
- 2-3, to get the Dragon God soul to trade in either for Fireball (Freke) or Firestorm (Yuria, which you can unlock later). Both spells are very good, but for PvE Firestorm is probably better, it can nuke some bosses really easily. Expensive (requires 3 spell slots and 100 MP to cast) but quite powerful.
- Now that you killed an Archdemon (an archstone's final boss, such as the 2-3 boss), 1-3 is now unlocked. You can find Yuria in there, she's another magic trader. However it might be a bit challenging, so you can do 5-1 or return to 4-1 or whatever first.
After that order doesn't matter much. If you picked Firestorm, you can do 3-2 and nuke the otherwise challenging boss.
Then kill the boss in 3-3 and trade the boss soul for either a very good PvE spell, or a very strong catalyst at the blacksmith (that sadly cuts your MP bar in half, but if you spam Spice it's OK for the power trade-off).For a melee weapon, use Moon or Crescent as upgrade path. You can make most weapons as "Moon" (including strength-based/heavier weapons like claymores, greatswords etc.) and dex-oriented (quick, light slashing/thrusting) weapons as Crescent. Moon are slightly more powerful, but Crescent have passive MP regen. Personally, my mage/melee hybrid tend to use moon/crescent uchi and estoc (aka "crestoc" xD), since they are fast, have good 1h movesets, leaving your other hand free for casting.
Phew, I wrote way too much... well, no matter what you choose to do, enjoy! Spellswords are a bit gamebreaking in how powerful they are, but they are quite fun and rewarding to make.
The only frustrating part is finding enough chunks/pures for your weapons. You need to turn the world tendency black and farm the annoying crystal lizards -- there is no other way to obtain the pures. I'd suggest you hit the Wikidot guide if you need more info about that. Another alternative, if that's too much of a hurdle, is simply to make a normal +10 weapon and buff it with Light Weapon, preferably with that boss soul catalyst I mentioned. That's another way to get good melee damage as a magic-user, but it does use up 2 spell slots, so if you prefer to focus on spellcasting with melee as a backup it's not ideal. An unbuffed +10 weapon might still be OK as a pure "last resort" backup, mind; it just won't be as good as a Moon/Crescent weapon.
