Author:cborg

As the topic states, this is a guide focused on lvl'ing - and not on pvp. A guide provides guidelines and is not a walkthrough. This is merely a guide on how to level up fast and efficiently.

The guide is written for the people who are starting from scratch and who do not have any other characters, gold or items in storage. Also this is focused on non-item-mall-users, no premium pack or coin-items. Premium and/or coin users can use this guide as well, but should bear in mind, that they in general are tougher players and have the luxury of following different paths, while being an efficient grinder.

There are 6 different clans. Each of the clans have different quest lines, clan maps with different mobs which again have different drops. I will not write for any clan in particular, but I will introduce the most important traits and characteristics of each later on.

Character Creation:

The choice between female and male and the different facial appearances does not in any way affect the game mechanics. It does however affect the online community. As the majority of players are male, you can choose a female character for somewhat cheaper items and sometimes an easier approach on making friends. However the choice is of little importance and you should pick whatever you like. Note that Shaolin is a male-only clan, and Sacred Flower is female-only-clan.

Put all of your first points into strength, and choose Tai Shan as a starting base, no matter whatever clan you decide on pursuing later on.

White Clans:

Wu-Tang: No clan buff.
Main weapon Gloves, secondary Sword.
Mid-fast Buff animation time.

Beggar: +200 HP buff.
Main weapon Gloves, secondary Staff.
Slowest Buff animation time.

Shaolin: +55 Attack Rating buff (does include chi kung attack rating).
Main Weapon Gloves, secondary Pole.
Fast Buff animation time. Male characters only.

Black Clans:

Heavenly Demon: No clan buff.
Main weapon Gloves, secondary Saber.
Fastest Buff animation time.

Brotherhood of Bandits: +50 Defence buff (does not include chi kung defence).
Main weapon Axe, secondary Spear.
Slow Buff animation time.

Sacred Flower: +55 Dodge (Does not include chi kung dodge)
Main weapon Dagger, secondary Wheels.
Mid Buff animation time. Females only.

Brotherhood has the highest dmg weapons as main and secondary styles. Sacred Flower and Heavenly Demon have imo the nicest animations and design. Sacred Flower animation sounds can be annoying in the long run, especially smashes going chiing chiiing every other second. Beggar items are often cheaper in general. The Heavenly Demon Advanced Meditation does provide +100 HP and +100 VE like other advanced clan meditations, despite the lack of displaying so. The Heavenly Demon and Wu-Tang clan is widely the most populated clans. In writing moment an increased popularity of Bandits is showing.


Clan Map
You will start off in Tai Shan. Skip the introduction quest unless you want to waste 5 minutes on getting a staff (worth 1 gold) and learn how to work the very most basic buttons which you can figure out rather easily anyways. Go to the town entrance and kill the foxes. Pickup everything till you can sell enough to earn 110 Gold. Move on to a new mob group when they go light blue. Buy a training axe (10 gold) at the Blacksmith and learn Basic Axe and Basic Meditation skill (50 gold each) at the trainer. From here on you can Lvl-up and learn more skills as you like in same pattern. Until you join a clan, you can enter any clan base (male characters restricted from entering Zixia Dong, and female characters can not enter the Shaolin clan base). If you're a perfectionist, I suggest you learn all the clan base skills before joining a clan. Once you join a clan, you will be restricted to 3 of the clan maps. If you failed to learn the skills in those maps, they are lost forever. White clan members can only enter white clan bases and visa versa. If you joined Wu-Tang, you will still get attacked by guards in Shaolin and beggar clan base, but they are slow and lose aggro easily.

Losing Self:
Add 1 Dexterity and 3 Strength per lvl-up. Use your basic axe skill. The Basic Axe Smash if you want to max it just for the heck of it. The Basic Axe Smash is pretty worthless, low damage and burn your Vital Energy pool quickly at this level, however a very fast smash. Don't do quest each time a new one appear, try to spend the time efficiently, stack up 3-5 quest icons at a time, and do them together, more than often, you'll save some running and you run slow with basic gear. The only collection that shows in the Living Tab, is the Wan Daye shirt collection, another pretty worthless item, do it if you want. You can however look up the Death Valley collection and save any potential drops in the list for later. (In the Heavenly Demon clan base, Small Cases drop for example, 5 of these are needed in the Death Valley collection). Kill mobs yellow-green only, light blue's exceptionally if you can't find any other mobs suitable for you. Better meditate more often, than dying. At this lvl you will not lose xp from death, however you will lose karma and blood count. If you want to speed up your meditation time, you can buy some consumables at the Tavern, which can only be taken in peace-mode. Simply equip them to your action bar, and before you find a safe med spot, go into peace-mode and eat a consumable (Fried Pork f.x). If you learned all the basic skills, you have the luxury of using (almost) any weapon you find - or you can use the training axe and buy a new one from the blacksmith when you lvl-up LS5-7, they are pretty cheap. However, starting from scratch you'll probably want to save up on gold. The first things you should buy is 2 backpacks from Drapery and a Storage Contract from Storage Keeper/Courier. When you earned around 8 000 gold, you can optionally run to Hangzhou's/Nanchang's first city and buy a 3 pocket jacket and pants. It is likely that you will die on the way and lose any karma and blood count gained. Reviving on spot will give you a death penalty and reduce stats for a small amount of time, later on, reviving on spot carries a big xp loss as well.

Hangzhou's/Nanchang's first city also provides 5% speed clothing ornaments. When you have enough gold, you can buy wrists, boots, jacket, pants and hat, there is a low chance of each purchase to go slotted, if you keep buying you can get a full 2 slotted set this way. Same is true for weapons bought at the Smithy's. Expect to spend around 100k to make 2-slotted wrist, 200k for boots, 400k for shirt and pants, 200k for hat, if you buy the cheapest available. At RC12 you can complete the Secret-Solver quest which gives you 10% speed, 1% dodge boots. Speed is not very important for grind however, unless you are playing Asura PK server, where grind and pvp often go hand in hand.

Gathering Chi:
Add 2 Con, 2 strength, and then go 1 dex, 3 strength again. Stay and lvl-up in Clan Map, till you feel it's not efficient anymore (mobs are light blue or the only mobs left, gang you too hard for an effective xp rate) Move to Shi Zang/ZhengZhou. During Gathering Chi you will join a clan, and learn new skills. Using smashes and charge-up should only be of the purpose of maxing the chengs, not for faster grind. Hybrid/healer smashes are awful as they are now, they are bad for grind and not great for pvp either. If this is your first time ever playing the game, you will notice the mobs start to become more of a threat, xp rate is still very fast, and deal with it. Soon you will pick a role and learn healing skills that makes life and grind easy.

Shi Zang/ZhengZhou
Stick with the Yellow-green rule. Still watching your hp, and be prepared to Lightfoot away from danger in good time. The different colour of the mobs, indicate the lvl-difference between you and the mob. Each colour changes the dmg you take, dmg you make, the amount of crit hits you land and hits in general. Xp rate is greatest at red mobs, and so is the penalties and external wounds. I personally never found a situation (not including nukers) where orange mobs is better than yellow-green mobs. Even though the xp per mob is greater at orange mobs, the penalties does not make up for this. I will however grind light blue mobs, rather than orange mobs, if the pick is between the 2 of those.

Opening Chi:
You've finally chosen your role as well as your clan. Use the 1 minute heal skill when it becomes available and at OC10 learn the quick heal (instant cast, 3 sec re-cast time). Buy 10 yellow manuals suitable for your role, and read one every 30 minutes. Learn the buffs as well. In this map you'll see stands in town quite often, have a lookout for cheap elixir 1's (25-30k) in order to get a permanent +2 bonus. Elixirs can be re-taken if they don't max in first try. Wisdom elixir can wait till later though. Also, know the prices of Blood Essences and Korean Ginseng on your server. They are sometimes sold way under priced in this map, and can be re-sold to gain an early financial head-start. Around OC7 you should hit your first 999 blood count, provided you didn't die yet. You will trade the 999 blood count for 1 blood essence. These levels are pretty tough with bad gear, however doable. XP is fast and if you want to, you can try to save up for hp clothes (200hp max on a 3 pocket jacket, 150 max on 3 pocket pants). You should not spend more than 200k for pants or shirt. Learn to use your heal skill often and all the time. Not only are you keeping yourself safer, but you're lvl'ing it at the same time. (remember to read the manuals continuously). The first quest weapon worth refining is OC9, refine it +2 if you like. Basic (clan-name) Meditation and Steps should be maxed first, and when they are close or done, save up and buy the advanced meditation and steps. If you can not afford it yet. Do not grind with Greater Med and Steps turned on, they eat your mana and do not provide any bonus worth it. A nice way to lvl-up Steps and Meditation is to have more Vital Energy recovery than you spend, go peace mode and sleep/rest/eat/make stand/whatever. Vital Energy Recovery rate can be gained through epithet, satches, rings, clothes etc. Training buffs and heals, I like to watch television or read something while doing it, only pressing buttons, and listening to the sounds, and press p when no sounds are heard for 4-6 seconds.
You should try and keep your heals and buffs maxed for your lvl. Keep a lookout for Advanced LightFoot tomes for your clan, you should not spend more than 45k on this no matter clan.

Refining higher than +2 involves Blood Essence and risk of breaking your weapon, causing a loss of weapon and BE refinement material. Before RL its simply not worth refining weapons more than +2, as the refine bonus isn't great on low lvl weapons, and the weapon you refine will be switched in matters of hours.

Revolving Chakra:
Add the 2 points into essence and wisdom. Keep an eye on the weapons at the blacksmith and the drops you get, keep your dex a few points higher than what a weapon requires at your lvl, and add rest into strength.

Some good mobs in this map to be mentioned are:
Male and Female Bandits
Red Foxes
Tarantulas
Brigands

With heal skill:
Leopards
Bears
Twin Brutes and Armoured Twin Brutes
Powerful Giants and Superior Giants (quick heal 88/per 3 sec + 1 min heal skill 123/per 3 sec)
Black Confucianists (quick heal 123)
Drunken Swordsmen (quick heal 123)

If you gotten and RC karma relic drops, you can use them immediately if you're are good karma user and have at least 1 gk more than bk, if you gotten any bad karma relics, you can go to Bloody Plains and trade karma with another player. Note that the karma trade must be within a decent lvl-range, I do not know what the current cap is, but I believe around 15-20 lvl difference is max.
If you're healer keep a look out for hybrids and trade them buffs, and visa versa. A party, shared or not, healer-hybrid combo is a very effective grind. Optimally with a warrior to dmg buff the party. You can mostly tell what role they are by the weapon and skills they use. If you're in doubt, either ask or right-click them and chose "Brief info".
Finish the all the quests you've got and move on to Datong/Jinan at RC12 to Bloodthiefs. You will earn a new and better clan epithet along with the secret-solver epithet and a 10x4 adv manual which you can save for later, or sell for an immediate profit (800-900k). You will also receive a RC12 quest weapon, refine this to +2 if you like.

Wan Daye Blue Jade Seal can be equipped at RC5, and provides a +5 bonus to all stats. It can either be earned through collection, or bought from other players. The collection is usually finished at fd-sm lvls, if you try to find most collectibles yourself and buy the few remaining ones. Buying the seal from another player, expect to pay 4-5 million. Paying more than 4-5 million, and it's cheaper to collect it yourself, even through buying each collectible. The collection consist of 23 collectible's, each can be bought for less than 200k on all 3 servers in writing moment.

Raising Light:
Let's look at the stats, we're talking raw base stats. You can see these stats at the character selection screen when you login. Another way is to un-equip all items, and remember to subtract any buff bonuses.

Your stats should be close to this:

Strength 167
Essence 10
Wisdom 10
Constitution 10
Dexterity 53

I personally prefer bad karma relics and use:

Hybrids: Str, Dex and Ess relic. (try to at least have your hybrid self buff at cheng 6 at RL1, giving you 63 dmg, 42 defence, 19 con for 8 minutes)

Healers: Str, Dex, Con and Ess relic.

Generally I like to have my buffs and heals maxed at each lvl. You'll max them sooner or later, but sooner you certainly benefit more from them.

Hybrids focus on:
Quick heal
+15 all stat buff
Dmg/def/con self buff.

Then do the clan buff if any, and do the reflect buff last. You will find that training the heal skill is good in combination with either the all stat or clan buff.

Healers focus on:
Quick heal
Str/Dex
Ess/Con.

Then do the defence buff, 10 min buff and 3 min buff. Use the ve-heal in parties if you are in shared parties, but I don't recommend shared parties with more than 2 people till later on, at these lvls you'll encounter a lot of in-efficient grinders and leechers. The ew-heal can wait till later, as it's faster and more efficient to just use ew-medicine bought from any clinic. Once you maxed it, it still only provides around 1100 ew heal, 3 sec cast with 9 sec cool down time. Water herbs and Holy Revival pills are a better choice unless you simply don't have any.

Hybrids with maxed heal and decent lvl'ed buffs will have it easy, you'll not have any troubles at yellow-green mobs.

Healers have a con stat penalty, and buffs does not provide the same amount of con as the hybrid can achieve during RL, however just keep watching hp and keep healing and you're fine as well.

Good mobs to be mentioned:
Bloodthiefs
Bears (often very crowded, so avoid this area if you have a choice between 2 good spots)
Monks
Beggars (CC1)

At RL10 and if you're black clan, you can choose a slow grind. The quest mob "Cursed Lighting" drops Golden Coin collections and Mansion passes which can be sold for a decent amount of money, depending on which server you are at. He spawns 7-10 seconds after death in the Demon-Gathering house. You can also go and grind in Bloody plains while farming herbs, and prepare yourself for next lvls in CC. You will need a lot of herbs soon. First mobs in CC go yellow at RL11. You will need a c8 heal minimum and decent buffs to have a pleasant grind, however you will be rewarded with better xp, better drop chances along with blood essences dropping in pairs at times. RL10 is a good lvl-up to try for a [CoF] Killer Epithet as well. You'll need help to achieve this though, if you choose to solo it, you can do so at early SM lvls. Late RL lvls you might want to refine the first weapon beyond +2.

Five Dragons:

In Cave of the Conqueror you are poisoned all the time. You need the Conqueror's herb to counter the poison. They drop from the chest spawned around the entrance, and respawn every 5-10 minutes. They come in 10, 20 and 30 minutes and can not be renewed before the old one wears off. This makes it a tricky and risky business, I suggest you put an alarm on your cell phone if you have trouble remembering, as the xp bonus quickly seems like a petty thing when you die every 30 minutes. (many people laughed at me when they heard I used cell-phone alarm, now most of them do the same, most mobile phones have an easy-set alarm, and can be timed to go off by the second)

It is possible to grind in CC without any herb for healer and hybrid, however you will need less than 4200 HP and maxed heal skill. The poison takes exactly 10% of your hp every 3 seconds, so you can heal through it as long as the dmg from mobs + damage from poison is less than your heal. I personally never liked this kind of grind, however it is possible. You will want a healer partner to fill up your ve, or put up with a very long med time. It is not possible to outmed the poison with Greater meditation or lower, only advanced meditation is strong enough. Should you get into a no-herb-trap meditation, you can logout and re-login or ask a fellow grinder to enter pvp mode with you, to end the meditation mode immediately. It is often quite useful to have herbs located in the action bar, as they are easier and quicker to access doing so. Note that there is a bug that sometimes does not allow you to eat a consumable instantly. This bug is related to skill cool down time, simply press u to cancel any actives, wait 1 second and try again.

You'll move on to Flowers when they go yellow and again to Shaolins when they are Yellow. Stay at Shaolins till they go light blue. You can now choose either to stay at Shaolins or go Jinan/Datong and fight Stone-skinned Demon and Four-Armed Demon. If you chose to move to Jinan/Datong you can collect some more collections for Valley of Hell along with finishing the FD2 quest which will reward you with 80 Attack Rating/ 80 Chi Kung Attack Rating Hat. Stay here a few lvls and turn back to CC and hit Infantry. Avoid bowmen as they have a nasty skill that stuns you and due to this skill, they have a bad xp gain rate.

Bowmen and Infantry belong to the group I call Terra Cotta mobs. Other members of this group is:
CC2-Heavy Infantry and Crossbowmen
CC3-Elite Infantry and Glaivemen
CC4-Bodyguards of General Wei & Messenger of General Wei.

What is special for this group is, they all drop keys for the chests on each floor, along with wrist bands and green crit weapons. CC1 50 dmg wb's, CC2 50 dmg wb's, CC3 100 dmg wb's, CC4 150 dmg wb's. The chest's best drops are the karma plates. From the design some would argue that General Wei and True General Wei belong to this group as well. They drop 300 dmg wristbands and karma plates and green weapons (15-30% crit and Wan Daye's), but no keys. Note that they are 200 dmg wristbands as well, they come from the statues in CC4.

As for stat points, you'll want a base of 12 ess, con and wis for relics. Dexterity a few points higher than what a weapon at your lvl requires and rest into strength. You will be following this general rule till High sm lvl, when you max out strength and then focus on dexterity. A few points into con if you're healer and feeling it's troublesome to keep watching hp. Unless you still want to lvl-up attack skills, switch to axe no matter clan, and refine an axe to +4 or +5. Preferably 2 slotted. You should try to max out lvl 2-3 elixir at the end of this lvl.

Some ppl have questioned why axe is better with basic axe skill, rather than gloves/dagger with a better active.
FC2 Gloves +9 : 311-399 dmg +758
(i didn't have any fc7 +9 gloves, but dmg difference between fc2 and fc7 isn't worth mentioning)
FC7 Axe +9 : 219-711 dmg + 1148
Enough said.

Sun & Moon.
You switch to CC2, skip the Brotherhood mob and go for Wu-Tangs, the Brotherhood is scattered in one big room, and make inefficient grind, because of the time wasted on running back and forth from mob to mob. You'll experience a slower xp gain along with a less be drop rate. Be drop rate will never be as good as they were at beggar/flower/shao in cc1. Stay at Wu-tangs till they go light blue and kill Heavenly Demon mobs. If you want to save herbs, this is the right time to do it, and go Hangzhou/Nanchang. The heavenly demon mobs spots are not crowded together decently anywhere, so you might want to switch a few lvls. In Hz/Nc you can kill Scrappers and Iron-hammer Wielders, and either go CC2 to Heavy Infantry when they go yellow at SM10 or chose a slower grind at mansion/tower pass mobs. All mobs named "Vanguard" can drop passes. Nanchang pass mobs have a lot of hp and are a pretty bad idea unless you really want passes, Hangzhou Vanguards are better, with very good grind spots. Same lvl you can kill Zombies, but for healer and hybrid, these spots are not optimal, the mobs aggro slowly and often your grind is ruined by a lot of nukers. The nukers are not ruining your grind on purpose, they simply have a 2 sec cast time + 1 sec animations/skill activation, which often will make it look like they are ks'ing you. They have very few places to grind efficiently, and you should as hybrid/healer look elsewhere. At SM7 you can learn the resurrection skill which often will come in handy for your friends. During SM lvls you should get help and try for VoH-Killer Epithet. You should have saved up a decent amount of money and BE, and keep a lookout for VE-hat, secondly for mansion/tower shirt, pants and boots in the order mentioned. Look out for a new weapon, preferably SM4-7 and refine/buy +6 or +7, again crit is nice, and you can sometimes find cheap green SM crit weapons in Hefei. +300, +500 or +700 crit.

If you choose to grind in Hz/Nc you can do the party quest at the same time.

Golden Blossom.
CC3 beggars are again scattered over a big room, you can choose to grind here or go Hangzhou/Nanchang again for pass mobs. At Gb4, Shaolins are a good spot (avoid flowers because of their nerve skill). At GB6 the Defence Trinket boss (Vicious Fist, The Blood Lord) goes orange and you can either grind near hermit for a good spot, or grind at a less effective spot near the Glaive Men while keeping a lookout for the boss. As healer/hybrid your grind build is max dmg, and you have no need for the trinket. However the trinket is good for pvp and sells extremely well on all servers (90-140 million). The boss is often camped and fought about. When Glaive man goes yellow you can still look out for boss, and grind at a good spot. Stay at this mob till GB12, and go Hangzhou/Nanchang till ec1. If you made a +7 crit SM weapon you can skip refinement till early EC. Otherwise refine/buy a new weapon around GB10 +6 or +7. Try to have lvl 4 elixirs maxed out.

Elemental Crown.
Fight the Brotherhood mobs. When you go down the stairs from CC3, turn right and find the spot near a trap. This is a good mob spot, and of the 3 boss-spawn places for conqueror's trinket boss. The trinket is useless for healers and hybrids, but sells well and is good for warrior grind. Switch mobs when they go yellow and do EC party quest if you like at ec7. Personal experience, grind is faster provided you grind efficiently. Most of the time, you spend a lot of time waiting for a party get together and frustration over lazy players always being afk leeching. However, a good party quest can be better, because you can grind in between the quest mob spawns. You will move up your base ess, con and wis stat to 14 for EC-relics. Optionally go LiaoDong, the xp rate is decent and drops are decent. Healers and hybrids rule this map. EC weapon, refine/buy +7

Floral Crown.
Prepare yourself for some serious boring grind. The Bodyguards have a lot of hp, almost twice the amount of normal mobs, they are often badly crowded with players and drop rate is low. Keep yourself entertained reading a book or watching TV while grinding. I can actually suggest this already during GB lvls. It is quite easy to do u+heal+a and rinse repeat by the sound, only checking for drops and chat occasionally. Messengers only bring the message of frustration, avoid this mob. The reason to grind at bodyguards is that you are relatively close to General Wei which spawns each 4 hour after death (on the second. never late, never early). He can be killed at FC4 earliest, soloing is not to be suggested till FC7. Drop rate begin to fall at FC8 and drastically decreases at FC10, when he simply stops dropping at CS1. Go to LiaoDong for faster xp. FC party quest is to be avoided now when we have LiaoDong. The xp (unless using a party bug which I wont mention) is slower doing party quests, the number of passes needed are relatively high and expect people to be in bad mood of waiting, arguing over drops, bad runs and who's to blame when something goes wrong. You'll want to do runs only for clothes and epithet if you haven't achieved it yet. Around FC5 you might want to stop pumping dex, for a con boost. You'll want a higher hp pool fighting bosses in LiaoDong. Refine/buy FC7 weapon +8 or +9, depending on how much you can afford.

Shen Mo is mainly a pvp epithet and you should get it at FC8 latest. After you will have lost your chance of getting the epithet, as the boss will give you penalty for attacking it. (Shen Mo is Gb6 lvl and hard to solo at this level).


If you are playing Asura server, you need to have some pvp-perspective blended in with your grind. Especially lower lvls maps are danger zones for you, and you'll be attacked up to 20 times a day depending on the amount of hours you play and if you're in a band or not, and if you are, what kind of reputation that band have. Generally, you should have a bit larger hp base and a lot more speed equipped or easy to swap to, in an open backpack. Healers can't expect to win against backstab attacks during low lvls, and need to outrun and heal outside pvp mode. Hybrids have the choice of fighting back, unless a nuker backstabs you, in which you will have to outrun and heal.

Short guide for RL Hybrid-pvp:
Items needed: 2 slotted pants, shirt, hat, wrist and 10% speed boots. Wis and con RC bk relic, +5 all stat relic, optionally ck ar relics if karma titles is achieved.
Buffs and heals maxed.

Obtain :
Secret-Solver Epithet and use this for grind rather than clan epithet or Killer epithet (with the exception of Shen Mo, should you be one of the few RL ppl with shen mo-epithet)
RL Wan Daye Bracers, for the ck attack rating bonus and speed bonus. Can be obtained doing the cof and voh collection along with 1 quest elixir.

Wan Daye Weapons are made by collections or traded by players. Wan Daye RL weapons requires 1 of each Lvl 2 elixir (not [Dungeon]) and 5 be's.

Have pants, shirt, boots equipped during grind and have wrists and wis and con relic along with the bracers for easy swap in bag.
Para-nuke maxed. Do this before you start lvl'ing in Datong/Jinan; you can do this at Deva Kings or Zombies. Have a friend help you with reaching 90-99% external wounds so you benefit from the double skill xp. Use clan manuals till Cheng 6, and the quest 10x4 manual after. Preferably do this during double-xp time as you can max this nuke 1-2 days this way. However, be prepared for some tiring skill lvl'ing, and I suggest you already gotten advanced meditation.

When you grind, keep an eye out for higher lvls. They often have higher lvl weapons equipped, epithets you don't usually see around your lvl along with tower or mansion clothes. If they stop, you start by throwing a heal, and hide among the mobs, making it hard for them to target you, till your hp is full. If you do get attacked, do not attack back before:

1: estimate if you can win or lose, if you are most likely to lose, simply run to a safe zone. You'll be hard to kill with good speed equipped, and casting heal every time pvp mode wears off. A heal which has been cast outside pvp mode will be 100% effective, and your pvp timer will at most be 5 (showing 4) seconds as long as you don't attack back. Once you attack back your timer will be 20seconds, and 1 minute if you made a kill. Be careful of item mall users especially, they often wear item mall deco's, so it's easy to notice. A premium user will have a +20 hermit buff (equivalent to 5x20 stat points +20 for penalty stat). Perhaps a jade and trigram boosting his/her hp/ve with 1300hp/800ve. A backstabber usually comes fully medded and often buffed, you'll stand poorly against this guy at RL lvl, unless you're a coin user as well.

2:be at full hp, and have a heal going on, your ve should not be lower than you can cast 10 para nukes without running out of ve. If you know this is a guy you can beat, and your ve is low, simply run out and med a safe place, and return to hunt the person.

3:if the person is masked and you know where the guards spawns or already walks around, kite the person to the guards for an easy get-rid-of. Some people might frown upon this tactics and say its cowardly, however backstab low lvl grinders is even more so.

Now say you got attacked and decide to defend yourself, use your para nuke and run to maximaze distance between the re-cast delays in order to minimize the hits you take. Do not use any melee or other nukes. If you get beat to badly, take a run before you die, meaning you still have enough hp for minimum 2 hits. If the attacker starts to retreat, you will want to minimize the distance, and optionally para nuke him, while moving all up-close. Or you will end up losing the target, especially if he is faster than you. It is quite hard to keep a person in para-lock at RL levels, so pvp-technique means a lot. Always have your camera-angle max zoomed-out for a better perspective, and try not to get caught in edges, bushes, trees, signs or whatever when you run.

General Sidetips

Preferably grind with some ppl in party, and make a pact with them, to stick together against any backstabbers. A few good RL pvp'ers can take most fd's and 2 good RL hybrids can take out even a gb on a few occasions

Breakpoints
There are certain breakpoints to be met regarding defence, attack rating and dodge. As Amethyst pointed out, the most noticable breakpoints are at each 500-step. There is slight differences in each 100-step as well. According to test made by above-mentioned person, the maximum defence one should go for is 2500, as the test showed that more defence does not add any particular bonus. I have yet to confirm this myself, but Amethyst is a experienced player and usually a good source of information. Pay attention to your stats. You'll often be able to better yourself with a few relic changes or epithat change. Having 1401 defence is practically the same as 1499 defence, put on a relic that add more defence or change epithat to pass the borderline.

Skill Training - Buffs and Heals
I can not stress out the importance of training buffs and heals enough. Even though its tiresome and hard work - just do it. You'll enjoy your grind more and your fellow grinders will worship you for having the best heals and buffs around.

Skill Training - Kung Fu Skills
Sometimes I like to learn and max out every single skill. Basic Clan skills is fairly easy to do so, but clan and role-specific skills are generally very time consuming and not an easy task. As the game is today, healers and hybrids only need to max out 2 actives. A max dmg active (3 ve) and a 2-ve axe-active. The max dmg active is used during lvls below FD. The axe-active for FD and higher. Even though another active has higher dmg, the axe will be more effective even with basic axe skill. This is specifically true for high lvl weapons with high refine.

Skill Training - Chi Kung Skills
Healers: 15 range Nuke
Hybrids: Para Nuke
Both skills are for pvp only and slow to train. A good idea would be doing it on double xp event with 90-99% external wounds on slow mob with manuals. The 90-99% ew is to gain double skill xp, this bonus apply to kung fu and chi kung combat skills only. The easist way of obtaining external wounds is to equip anything that add hp; epithat, relics, hp clothes and hp weapons. If your base hp is very low you can get buffed to additionally boost your hp. I forgot to mention that you should write down the hp before equipping max hp. When you're hp-equipped, note the difference of normal hp and max hp, in order to get 99% you will need to get external wounds equal to that difference. Hit red mobs to quickly gain external wounds and use equip a low balance weapon to further speed up this process. Since you're healer or hybrid, you can cast heals continously and not have to med all the time being afraid to die. When you external wounds equal or greater to the difference of max hp and normal hp, un-equip hp items till you reach 10-1% hp - also called flashing hp. If you're have been buffed, you might want to wait out for the buffs to run out.

Note that if you die and ress on spot, you will recieve a death penalty that includes a stat-penalty. After 3-5 minutes the death penalty wears off and your base con will change back to normal, so unequipping hp gear before death penalty has worn off, is a bad idea. Also note, that the advanced meditation add 100 hp, and re-logging will by default have it switched off, and you'll gain 100 hp when you meditate or turn on advanced meditation skill for the first time.

Action Bar
Setup up your action bar in a logical and practical way from the start. Some skills are used in combination with other keys and therefore it is wise to have them located in such a way, that you can use both keys in a easy and quick fashion with 1 hand only. F.x. Lightfooting is used in combination with [alt] and healing yourself in combination with U-key. Alot of people prefer to have Lightfoot as the very first skill on all 3 action bars, to be able to activate the skill with middle finger and jam [alt] with the thumb. I've also noticed most ppl prefer either 2nd or 6th action bar box for heal. 2nd because you use the heal skill alot for party and its easy to press u+2 with indexfinger+ringfinger. 6th using indexfinger and middlefinger. Actives, med and steps can easily be put in a second or third action bar, and free up spaces on the more important 1st action bar. Finally, if you grind in cc, reserve 1 slot for herbs, as they are simply quicker to access through the action bar, and if you die from poison, you'll get a big annoying ad blocking the view, making it hard to access your bag and consume a new herb.


credit to mystwyze, amethyst, warda and other ppl who made easy to understand guides, i have linked to