[dayaMonocle] Clutch Plays

I haven't gotten a chance to post here often, but here are some videos worth checking out on my channel!

Lost Saga: Clutch Plays 2015 [Compilation]

Lost Saga: Clutch Plays, Unbreakable

[Mercenary Demonstration] Robin Hood

With the arrival of the Robin Hood evolution in NALS, I decided to create a mercenary demonstration video after taking a long hiatus on the series. This is a much improved setup that now includes text, better frame rate, and will often be followed up with a gameplay video if I get the chance to do so. Enjoy!

Robin Hood Mercenary Demonstration

Robin Hood Gameplay

[Video Guide] Fast Level 60 Crusade Quest

There are many ways that the level 60 crusade quest can be completed, therefore I created a brief and simple guide to completing it in the fastest way I know how solo. A partner would definitely make things easier by distracting the boss for you, while your job is to kill as many minions as possible before the boss is killed. However, a partner will not always be available depending on a variety of circumstances such as being busy and not having enough tokens. In addition, this guide could be directly applied to the level 80 hard crusade quest, but knowing the increase in difficulty, the challenge is by far greater especially with the spawning in of the mini reaper. Good Luck!

Quick Guide: Level 60 Crusade Quest

[dayaMonocle] Pokemon Series

A little late on posting this onto the blog, but my friends and I have collaborated with one another to create a Pokemon trainer themed gear design cosplay. We hope you will enjoy it as much as we did making it! In the future we are hoping to work on other themes so stay tuned for that.

Pokemon Red Gear Design Cosplay

Pokemon Trainer Battle

Collaborative Youtube Channel: Dizzy Inc.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

[dayaMonocle] Dark Monks Trinket Gear Design Freebie!

Uploaded a new video to the channel featuring a free gear design template.

Enjoy!

[Reminder] Lost Saga Youtube Channel

Check out my youtube channel for the latest let's plays, hero demonstrations, gear designs, and more:
https://www.youtube.com/user/dayaMonocle

[Notice] Lost Saga Mercenaries Blog Moving Forward

As many of you have noticed, the Lost Saga Mercenaries app is no longer available for download (a tale for another time). This however does not prevent the blog from being updated with future Lost Saga content and guides. Moving forward, the medal list is due for another update, while other guides are in need of a few changes as they contain some out dated information. Thanks again to everyone who enjoyed my content thus far.

For more current Lost Saga happenings and content refer to:
https://www.youtube.com/user/dayaMonocle

Fast Exp and GP Guide

Introduction

Leveling your character(s) and earning GP is part of everyday Lost Saga. Players want to out level their friends, buy styles, and purchase permanent gear chests in hopes of getting the equipment they are looking for. Neither of which are simply handed to you, as players are normally required to spend hundreds of hours of in game time to get them. No worries though, even if you don't have much time to play, we have several tips and tricks to get you started! Let the daily grind commence!

Experience Gaining Tips and Tricks

1) Purchase and/or obtain an experience booster. An experience booster is available for purchase in the shop with ZP for 7 and 30 days respectively. Alternatively, it is pretty common to find these by completing quests and participating in events. When these are not viable options, playing easy crusade for the daily quest is a good way of getting boosters from the present rewards, although it is not always guaranteed. Playing the higher tiered crusade modes is another option, primarily dependent on your level of proficiency when it comes to using golden tokens, and the cost of one or two bronze tokens. Last but not least, it is possible to get boosters as a special prize during the award ceremony as well.

Exp +200% Booster Cost:
7 Day(s) = 5,880 ZP
30 Day(s) = 11,820 ZP

Exp Booster

2) Make friends and play with them! Play with your buddies and earn +20% Exp/GP bonus, and a maximum of +40% when two or more are playing in the same room as you. The same applies to those spectating.

3) Go fishing when you are not actively playing. Find a lucky fishing spot and watch your character level up slowly, but surely, with successful and unsuccessful catches. This is great for low level characters.

4) Bring out your relic kit. Relic hunting requires the opposite action of fishing, you being there. The experience you gain isn't anything to celebrate about, but at least it's better than nothing.

5) Find a room and stay there! Sticking to a battle room increases your replay bonus by +5% Exp/GP per game, and a maximum of +50% the moment you finish your tenth game. Many players miss out on this unfortunately. Winning isn't everything, stick to it!

6) Give it your all in everything you do! Your total effort at the end of a game will depend solely on how well you carried yourself and your team. The Exp/GP bonus you earn at the end of the game will be equivalent to the amount of effort you finished your game with.

7) Faction battle with your guild members. When faction battling with your guild, you earn an additional +5% Exp/GP bonus.

8) Hire a squad of mercenaries. There are some major benefits to hiring timed/permanent heroes besides utilizing their unique skill sets. For each hero you own you are granted +20% Exp bonus, and a maximum of +100% Exp bonus for your fifth hire.

9) Purchase a Hero Exp Booster from the clover shop. For mercenaries under level 30, you can apply a Hero Exp Booster that doubles all experience gained. Unfortunately, it has no further use the moment you reach level 30, is non-transferable, and won't work for any mercenaries already past that level. This is definitely worth the 150 clovers if you want to level up quickly.

Hero Exp Booster

10) Focus on a single character to level them up quickly. Swapping between heroes can unevenly distribute experience among your squad. Sticking to a single hero will help you to level up faster, especially if you choose to use it in every game type specifically.

Character Levels

11) Play the game! Find a character that you enjoy playing as, and set goals for yourself to accomplish in a reasonable time frame. Most importantly, make sure you are having fun or else you will burn out quickly.

Most popular game modes to gain experience fast:
a) Deep Forest Master Run - 3 bronze tokens/10 minutes/Average EXP: 3000 - 4500
b) Snow Town Master Run - 3 bronze tokens/10 minutes/Average EXP: 2500 - 3500
c) Hard Crusade - 2 bronze tokens/15 - 30 minutes/Average EXP: 900 - 1200
d) Medium Crusade 1 bronze token/10 - 15 minutes/Average EXP: 400 - 700
e) Prisoner - 5 - 15 minutes/Average EXP: 80 - 500
f) Team Deathmatch - 5 - 15 minutes/Average EXP: 80 - 500
g) Easy Crusade - 5 - 10 minutes/Average EXP: 50 - 200
(Note: Average Exp is based on estimated experience with all possible bonuses active, minus those from events. Your results may vary depending on time played, effort, mode, number of rounds, changes to the game, and other such factors.)

GP (a.k.a Peso) Earning Tips and Tricks

1) Purchase and/or obtain a GP booster. A peso booster is available for purchase in the shop with ZP for 7 and 30 days respectively. Alternatively, it is pretty common to find these by completing quests and participating in events. When these are not viable options, playing easy crusade for the daily quest is a good way of getting boosters from the present rewards, although it is not always guaranteed. Playing the higher tiered crusade modes is another option, primarily dependent on your level of proficiency when it comes to using golden tokens, and the cost of one or two bronze tokens. Last but not least,  it is possible to get boosters as a special prize during the award ceremony as well.

Peso +100% Booster Cost:
7 Day(s) = 5,880 ZP
30 Day(s) = 11,820 ZP

Peso Booster

2) Make friends and play with them! Play with your buddies and earn +20% Exp/GP bonus, and a maximum of +40% when two or more are playing in the same room as you. The same applies to those spectating.

3) Go fishing when you are not actively playing. Purchase a rod, some bait and go fishing. Fishing is a great activity when you are off doing something else. While it may not pay off all the time, the rewards can be pretty good especially if you catch a time lost engine, which gives a whopping 250,000 peso for SSS rank. Other notable catches that you can sell for a good profit after opening include hero scrolls, basic gear chests and permanent gear chests (resist from selling this if you can!).

4) Bring out your relic kit. Relic hunting is more heavily inclined to benefit those looking for GP. A decent relic bonus, fast movement speed, spare time, and a bit of luck is all that you need. All in all, it can be quite tiresome and rewarding if you have the patience for it. Good luck!

5) Find a room and stay there! Sticking to a battle room increases your replay bonus by +5% Exp/GP bonus, and a maximum of +50% the moment you start your tenth game. Many players miss out on this unfortunately. Winning isn't everything, stick to it!

6) Put all your effort into everything you do! Your total effort at the end of the game can be a substantial amount depending on how well you carried yourself and your team. The Exp/GP bonus you earn at the end of the game will be equivalent to the amount of effort you finished your game with.

Player Effort

7) Faction battle with your guild members. When faction battling with your guild, you earn an additional +5% Exp/GP bonus.

8) Maintain a consecutive winning streak. Having consecutive wins is not only about the bragging rights, rather for every win an additional +10% GP bonus is applied, and a maximum of +100% GP bonus after the tenth consecutive win. Winning frequently pays off.

9) Be a part of the award ceremony. Do you see those numbers below your character in the award ceremony screen? Add those numbers together to get the total and yet another GP bonus.

10) Level up your mercenaries. Players are rewarded with GP every time they level up their heroes. Multiply the upcoming level by 100 to determine how much peso you will receive. ex. lvl 29 * 100 = 2900 peso.

11) Craft and sell unwanted items from crafting. Crafting can be a great source of income as long as you have the ingredients to do so. Craft timed heroes and equipment and sell them for some additional pocket change. Be sure to know what you are doing as it is possible to lose more than you would gain.

12) Buy beginner's gear supply from the clover shop, avoid win or lose money bags. A beginner's gear supply, also known as a trial gear chest, is one of the cheapest items in the clover shop. Win or lose money bags cost the same in terms of clovers but is normally a lose from experience buying them. Depending on how active your friends are in sending you clovers, it is possible to make a minimum of 15000 peso a week from trial gear chests alone. If you are really lucky, you can even get perm gears from it, or just have timed equipment for you to enjoy and use.

Beginner's Gear Supply

13) Register sealed gears in the market. Find something worth while that someone else might find useful? Sell it and keep your earnings, or take your chances and buy more!

Market Sale

14) Spend your GP wisely. There are many things that can be bought with your well invested GP. Prioritizing what is most important to you will factor in whether you become a millionaire or someone barely surviving on fish bait. Events are good opportunities to buy discounted items, maybe you could even get stuff for free that you would otherwise fork money over for. Ask yourself a few questions before making your decision. Are styles more important than making my character stats more powerful? Should I buy another permanent gear chest, or wait patiently for the gear to be sold in the market? How important is this to my overall experience in the game? All in all, make a decision and know that you can make it all back eventually, it just takes time.

GP

Most popular game modes to gain GP fast:
a) Snow Town Master Run - 3 bronze tokens/10 minutes/Average GP: 3500 - 7000
b) Deep Forest Master Run - 3 bronze tokens/10 minutes/Average GP: 1800 - 3000
c) Hard Crusade - 2 bronze tokens/15 - 30 minutes/Average GP: 1200 - 2000
d) Medium Crusade 1 bronze token/10 - 15 minutes/Average GP: 600 - 1200
e) Prisoner - 5 - 15 minutes/Average GP: 200 - 750
f) Team Deathmatch - 5 - 15 minutes/Average GP: 200 - 750
g) Easy Crusade - 5 - 10 minutes/Average GP: 200 - 400
(Note: Average GP is based on estimated experience with all possible bonuses active, minus those from events. Your results may vary depending on time played, effort, mode, number of rounds, changes to the game, and other such factors.)

Optional: Participate in Events!

Take advantage of events and keep up to date when you should be actively participating. The most frequent type of events hosted usually involve bonus Exp and GP. More importantly, buying bronze tokens during these occasions are highly recommended if you ever want to rank up quickly. Don't forget to invite your friends and play together! Have fun!

Gear Design Tips and Tricks

Introduction

Gear Designers rejoice with the return of their beloved past time. For those of us new to the gear designing scene, it would be nice to get some insight in what it takes to make the best designs out there. Let's bring out our artistic palettes and get to work!

Step 1: Choose Your Software

Paint just doesn't cut it if you plan on making detailed, beautifully crafted, gear designs. Photoshop on the other hand would be one of the more popular choices when it comes to photo editing, but it doesn't come cheap. Luckily, there are free alternatives available on the web that can perform just as well as Photoshop can with a little practice and patience. Let's take a look at a few options:

1. Gimp - Official Website
Has a strong community following with plenty of tutorials to choose from. A powerful and always improving photo editing software.

2. Paint.net - Official Website
Easier to navigate than Gimp, nonetheless has a ton of great features for those who don't want to spend too much time finding the tools they need to accomplish their artistic ideas.

3. Pixlr - Official Website
An interesting choice as it is browser based rather than something you download directly to your computer. Take your gear design ideas anywhere you go. (Note: Link only view-able on PC)

Step 2: Obtain a Gear Design!

Don't skip this step! Purchase a gear design item in the shop with ZP and/or participate in events when available. Always a good idea to have one sitting in your inventory in case you want to preview something.

Step 3: Grab a Template

Obtaining a template to design is a very simple task so long as you have the permanent gear in your inventory. More importantly, previewing any sort of gear design you create/obtained requires that you already have the item permanent. Asking friends and the community for templates can be a hit or miss solution. Fortunately, a gear design kit has been created for all to share and enjoy. Link below.

Created by Mello - Gear Design Templates
(Note: Users on mobile that are having difficulty downloading templates from here should go to the Gear Design section of the app. PC users can access this normally. Sorry for the inconvenience.)

Step 4: Plan of Attack

How you approach each template will vary from gear to gear. Very detailed equipment will obviously be more difficult and more time consuming to edit, but the results can far exceed that of the simpler templates. Let's take a look at a simple way to tackle almost any template by color coding different parts of the gear. Once you figure out the result of your changes you can proceed with completing your design.

Savage Berserker Helmet

Step 5: Common Practices in Photo Editors

Photo editing tools can be very intimidating especially if you don't know what you are looking at. Below we will be discussing tools and techniques used in photoshop. (Note: These aren't full explanatory practices and will require some additional research on your end. In most cases, names will vary from photo editing software but result in similar outcomes.)

Re-coloring:
Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation
Image > Adjustments > Desaturate
This is by far one of the fastest way to change something from one color to another. Changing the brightness slider does exactly what you would expect, while saturation describes the intensity of your color. Desaturate feature can also get your colored images to black and white in no time. Use these techniques often!

Paint Bucket, Brush Tool, Pen Tool, Eraser:
These are most of the commonly used tools that almost everyone plays around with in photo editing software for the first time. The paint bucket tool allows you to color over large, selected, spaces. Can also be used as a gradient filler providing multiple colors. The brush and pen tool are much more precise and vary in different brush sizes. Add intricate details and shadows to make your creations pop. Eraser is what you would expect. Eliminate pesky pixels that you don't want to see, or even change the opacity to control your level of visibility.

Opacity and Layers:
Opacity and layers is a powerful technique you would not find in paint. Opacity allows you to control the transparency of an image from completely visible to invisible, the choice is yours. Layers are important in every gear design you plan on working on. First of all, name your layers so you know which piece of the gear you are working with, whether it is the gloves or the sleeves of a shirt for example it is a good idea to maintain an organized naming convention. Second, place your layers in the appropriate order. Layers can add a depth of perception if you want to add things such as text on top of a material. The possibilities are endless.

Eyedropper Tool:
Find a specific color by pointing at the desired pixels with the eyedrop tool. Great tool for finding similar colors.

Burn and Dodge Tool:
The burn tool will make nearby pixels appear darker depending on your exposure settings, while the dodge tool does the exact opposite and brightens nearby pixels.

Lasso Tool, Marquee Tool, Magic Wand Tool, Quick Selection Tool:
Select areas that you want to make individual layers of with either the marquee or the lasso tool. It is also possible to make copies of or delete selected areas. The marquee tool is normally square/rectangular, and getting more precision will more than likely lead to the use of the lasso tool. Magic wand tool on the other hand will let you select large areas with similar pixel colors and shading.

Clone Stamp Tool:
A fantastic, but sometimes difficult to use tool for retouching images, extending a drawing, creating a copy of a selected region and stamping it in another and so forth. Things can get very messy very quickly so clone stamp wisely. Monitor your history of changes and save beforehand if you want to be safe.

Text Tool:
Pretty straightforward in allowing users to add text to an image with varying sizes, fonts and other such features.

Filter Tab:
The filter tab has a variety of fun options making something look as if it were drawn with a sponge, created with colored pencils, water colored, and so on and so forth. Play around with this and you can get some pretty interesting results.

Step 6: Upload Your Masterpiece

Show off your completed design to the world! Make sure to preview your design before you apply the completed work, make adjustments accordingly. File naming is important especially if you receive any errors when uploading. Make sure that there aren't any spaces, uses english characters and does not contain any special characters such as !#$%&. When all is said and done, you are ready to enjoy, and possibly make even more gear designs!

Optional Step: Sell Your GD in the Market

Step 1: Must have a gear design item on hand

Step 2: Have a sealable item

Step 3: Gear design the sealable item as you normally would any design

Step 4: Apply the gear design item and template to the sealable gear

Step 5: Have a gear sealer ready and sell the sealed gear designed gear on the market

Step 6: Profit!

Crafting Guide

Introduction

Crafting was introduced with the arrival of adventure mode, players can create equipment and mercenaries for free granted they have the corresponding ingredients to do so. With the right amount of fragments and luck, it is possible to obtain permanent items from crafting. Selling what you don't need because of the limited crafting inventory available can also provide a decent source of GP.  Learn more about crafting below.

Crafting User Interface

Crafting Ingredients/Terminology

Before you can start crafting, you must first obtain ingredients as a reward through normal game play completion, or by purchasing ingredient pouches in the shop. In addition, it is also possible to dismantle timed and permanent equipment to create hero specific fragments, and get catalyst from legendary gears.

Hero Fragments - Hero fragments are used to craft specific characters/equipment.

Catalyst - Used primarily in target crafting to transform the ingredient into additional goal hero fragments.

Hero Soul - Transform hero fragments into timed/permanent heroes.

Rare Hero Soul - Transform hero fragments into timed/permanent rare heroes.

Gear Fragment - Transform hero fragments into timed/permanent equipment.

Dimensional Gear Fragment - Transform hero fragments into timed/permanent legendary equipment.

Hero/Gear Crafting Recipe

Hero fragments, along with a single hero soul or gear fragment, will be most important ingredient to craft a hero and/or gears. You are required to have a minimum of 10 hero fragments to transform the recipe, while the maximum number of hero fragments that you can enter is 10,000. Using 10,000 hero frags does not guarantee a perm, but it does increase your chances by doing so. If you are lucky to get a permanent gear it will have a starting stat value of +0. 

Infantryman and Graffiti Artist results

Part Crafting Recipe

Want a random hero fragment? You will want to use the part crafting recipe. Similar to the hero/gear crafting recipe, part crafting requires that you have a minimum of 10 hero fragments. In exchange, players receive a random, but smaller stack size than previously entered. Part crafting is generally performed to combine heroes that you would otherwise not need, and if you wanted to take your chances on obtaining unreleased hero fragments. It is important to note that if you have no crafting inventory space available, then it might be wiser to use the GP crafting recipe to get rid of fragments prior to using the part crafting recipe.

Part Crafting example

Target Crafting Recipe

The target crafting recipe is by far the most useful method for gathering additional hero fragments. The amount of catalyst inserted can determine whether you get 25% and the possibility of more depending on the number of catalyst used. Furthermore, total ingredient fragment transformed will change based on the transformation success chance shown (ex. Average, High). A maximum of 1,000 hero fragments can be placed in your ingredient slot. What you determine as your target hero is entirely up to you, while focusing on a single hero fragment, rather than several at at time, will speed up the process. More importantly, it is advised that you only spend one catalyst at a time, using any more than this can be a waste of catalyst depending on the amount of ingredient fragments entered. 

Catalyst usage formula:
Amount of catalyst: 1 / 333 / 666 / 999 = 25% / 45% / 65% / 85%
(#catalyst / 25 * 15 + 250) * (#fragment / 1000) = Total ingredient fragments converted to target

Target Crafting example

GP Crafting Recipe

GP crafting is the final and simplest recipe to understand. The GP received is equivalent to the number of ingredients entered as long as the total amount is greater than or equal to one. e.g. 1534 ingredients = 1534 GP. While this might be the least used crafting recipe for some, it does however help to get rid of those smaller stack hero frags from taking up valuable crafting inventory, which in turn will begin to fill up your gift storage space.

GP Crafting example