Stormhalter Lands Progression/MA

Martial Artist Stormhalter Tourism Guide (heavy WIP, feel free to contribute)

This is a rough difficulty-sorted roadmap for gearing and leveling a Martial Artist with minimal outside help. Your experience may vary depending on available assistance, gifted gear, or personal skill. This is a living document as more information becomes available.

Assumptions

• You are level 18+
• You are 8th dan or higher
• You have completed the Crystal Gauntlets questline

AG PREP

WIP - Section showing some items to target pre-18. Suggestions to consider going to Bloodlands and doing Kobold Dungeon earlier than 18. DP farm spots and difficulty. Rings/Armor/Accessories/Weapons. Crystal Gauntlets questline. Delete Assumptions once finished.

ENTRY-LEVEL FARMS (18–24~)

XP Farming

Kobold Dungeon

Difficulty @ level

Easy

Pros:

• Incredibly safe, first floor of dungeon has 0 casters. 2nd floor only has a couple near the end. Don't go into the boss room unless you are ready The most dangerous part is the run to the dungeon.
• Nothing gives better XP for the challenge level of the mobs here
• Money comes from gems rather than coin. (You can honestly just ignore coin drops here, gems commonly sell for 50-100k)

Cons:

• Gems are very far and few between
• Aside from a few bosses at the very bottom floor (which you should avoid starting out), there is nothing all that interesting that drops here.
• Once you "Catch up" on xp, gets very dull very quickly
• Somewhat small pack density

How To Get There:

1. Travel to Bloodlands via the Hall of Legends south of Ydnac’s lair in Kesmai.
2. Go up the stairs into the portal vendor room.
3. Use the Red Circle Teleporter. (Add image)
4. After teleporting:
   1. Exit south.
   2. Hug the west wall upward.
   3. The 2nd wall tile above/below the waterfalls are secret teleport doors to town.
   4. Once you are ready, go southwest from the town west exit. (There are mobs and a mini boss in the water. The octopus with teeth things can poison, but are relatively easy to kill)
   5. Head all the way southwest to find a stairwell. This leads to the Kobold Dungeon. (See this map if you need a visual)

Recommended Route:

• Set recall in town, clear to Kobold, clear floor 1, clear floor 2 up to Lich/Boss room, recall back to town to sell, balm, repeat.

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Blackburrow Mines -1

Difficulty @ level

Hard without Death Protection • Easy–Medium with DP

Pros:

• Has 2 bosses that give 4mil xp (2.4m for one, 1.6m for the other)
• Bosses drop tons of gems
• Guard Captain can drop relevant rings if you came to the NG as soon as possible. Glowers, Shielders, Dex rings (rare)
• Tons of coin drops if you have a bankers ring to hold it (compared to kobold at least)
• Way more pack size than Kobold

Cons:

• The Gnoll Town can be surprisingly dangerous if all the casters are clumped together. Be ready for a lot of deaths being thrown at you.
• Mobs give a fair bit less XP than Kobold Dungeon
• Spiders can wreck you if your AR isn't up to snuff
• You need to be able to handle death, stun, and lightning to some extent. (The lightning doesn't do much damage but multiple worg pups can surprise you with back to back bolts)
• Way more pack size than Kobold

How to get there:

1. Travel to the Hall of Legends south of Ydnac’s lair in Kesmai.
2. Go up the stairs into the portal vendor room.
3. Use the Blue Background Circle Teleporter. (Add image)
4. After teleporting:
   1. Hug the north wall to reach the nearby town (balm/ring vendors).
   2. Head southeast to the Gnoll camp.
   3. Descend the stairs into the mines.
5. Going south from entrance takes you to both bosses (one boss is right by the entrance in a spiral 1 width box). This also takes you to Widowmakers (spiders) and +100 (leading to Frogs)
6. Going north from entrance takes you to Mines -2 if you want to explore further, no bosses up here and generally very safe. It's just melees with the odd caster or archer.

Recommended Route:

• If you can handle it, do laps between Crazed Miner and Guard Captain, then TP back to town to sell, balm, facet, repeat (minis take like 10 mins or so to respawn. Depending on speed, you may not need to facet). There are another 2 minis on the Surface leading to the mines you will encounter. Fifer patrols outside the Gnoll Town and there is another mini in the north building that almost always drops a 100k gem.

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Blackburrow Frogs

Difficulty @ level

Hard

Pros:

• Unparalleled money and xp compared to anything you have encountered up to this point (millions of gold, millions of xp)
  • Even if you can't handle the mini's, it might still be worth to hang around the rope as mobs patrol all over the zone
• Weekly quest can be done here for another 50,000,000xp
• Frog Gauntlets drop here (and even if you can't kill the boss, they often times get looted and carried around the map by mobs as most people don't loot the gauntlets that kill down here)
• Can hit Thussia if you have the DR to tank the Pirahna's for Frog Boots.

Cons:

• You cannot use recall rings anywhere in the zone
• Easy to get lost, and another messy map due to a bunch of teleporters
• You need a large range of resistances and effects (Fire/Ice required, Lightning helps but isnt mandatory, Poison helps but isn't mandatory, Insane Gnolls can cast whirlwind for about 60-100 damage exactly once, obviously need water breathing, managing all this at lower levels can be very stressful)
• Constant barrage of mobs as everything patrols everywhere.
• 2 roaming lair bosses and a really annoying mini (you WILL encounter these while hunting)
  • Froglock Knight - Very hard to hit (~1350 AR for a decent hit rate), self heals (meaning you might not be able to kill him), can sometimes surprise you with a double shield bash that can really hurt.
    • If you can kill him, he drops a gem worth 1.5mil or 3mil xp at Kyra
  • Insane Froglock Wizard - Very weird mob and also very hard to hit (~1350 AR for a decent hit rate). Casts all kinds of spells, and will sometimes push you out of bounds and cause weird as hell things to happen. (Like instantly killing you, sending you to the Hall of Legends as a ghost resetting your recall rings, then instantly getting revived and put right back into battle a few squares away with 0 death penalty and full health. Ask me how I know.)
    • Biggest threat is Ice Spear, but he casts it so you know when it's coming, its not instant
    • Also drops a gem worth 3mil or 6mil xp at Kyra
  • Nothon
    • Drops Frog Gauntlets
    • Can also Ice Spear
• MEOW

How to get there:

1. Enter Blackburrow Mines and progress toward the Guard Captain.
2. From the mine entrance, go south, then follow the path counterclockwise past the spiders.
3. Take the stairs up near the Guard Captain.
4. Cross the four bridges.
5. Look for a broken wall to the south leading into a grassy zone.
6. In this area:
   1. A frog hops around to the NE.
   2. A rope hangs from a sky tile.
   3. (If you hear a cat meowing, you are in the right place.)
7. Climb down the rope to enter Frogs.

Recommended Route:

• I dunno man, I just wander around and kill stuff. I feel like all the lair mobs tend to prefer the NE part of the zone by the rope though, but that might just be bias. I recommend hunting here as soon as you are able to handle it though.

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Plane of Water (recommended only w/ Blood Gauntlets)

Difficulty @ level

Hard

Pros:

• Blood Vials. You don't need more Pros than this.
• XP comparable to Frogs (kinda)
• Real easy to get to

Cons:

• Not really a XP spot, more of a loot target
• Terrible money
• Fights can get bursty if too many Giants or Greater Fish aggro on you at once.
• WD has a longish respawn. It's like 1-2 hours or something.
• Need gear, best done w/ Blood Ring and Blood Gauntlets at minimum.

How to get there:

1. Head to Bloodlands Graveyard (Southern part of Bloodlands Town)
2. Walk to the portal and speak (not command) "planum elementum"
3. Head east into the water portal.
4. Consult Water Temple map

Recommended Route:

• This is more of a "Thing to do" rather than a place to farm, but the XP is comparable to Frogs (the gold is trash though). Follow the Plane of Water map and beeline to Water Dragon, killing things on the way. Watch out for any combat involved both Giants and Greater Fish as trying to fight more than 1 of these can lead to unlucky combat rounds. Giant's can daze you with a lucky hit, and if that daze enables Greater Fish to poison you a few times, it can quickly end poorly for you. You will want 1850DR+ & White Sash+ for this. If water dragon gets a few good hits in on you, the fight can go poorly quick, but once you get consistent blocks it quickly trivializes the encounter assuming you have some ice protection.

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If you want other options, the table at the bottom of Stormhalter Lands Progression is always a great reference point.

Items to Target

MA Ring

Your first major upgrade. Take time to set up ring commands—this greatly improves both damage and survivability.

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Banker’s Ring

As you begin entering NG, gold drops become extremely heavy and will:

• Reduce jumpkick success
• Lower stamina over time
• Make travel more difficult

Your first 1,000,000 gold should go toward a Banker’s Ring from the Underkingdom Jewelry Store.

Once you begin farming Frogs, this ring becomes essential for keeping up with your training costs.

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Vanilla Endgame Rings

(Glowers, +6 shield rings, etc.)

The Blackburrow Guard Captain can drop:

• +6 str rings
• +6 shield rings
• +6 shield bracers
• Supposedly can drop +2 dex rings, unconfirmed by me after 10 kills though

If you lack any basic defensive accessories, kill him a few times.

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Frog Gauntlets

Unfortunately, our Bloodlands gauntlets (which can hit silver) are locked behind an incredibly difficult boss in an incredibly difficult map that expects either very geared people or a group of 3-5 to attempt. As such, the first weapon upgrade you can expect to grab without help is the Frog Gauntlets. These aren't that much better than your Crystal Gauntlets from a stat perspective, but they commonly apply poison which does significant damage to single targets with high hp pools (assuming you can hit them and aren't immune to blue glowing weapons). They also level up from experience so you can passively level these up alongside you for more AR. (As long as you have feather fall boots, doing a quick run to Destiny to upgrade these is trivial. If you can handle frogs, you can handle that run with 0 problems).

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Blood Gi

You will likely want a few friends for this. The Keep of Darkness isn't THAT bad, though the Caves where the escort starts has a giant zoo of death spamming mobs right outside it that you need to clear to get to the escort. You will either want a lot of health (like 400~) or friends to take that on.

This is a direct upgrade to the Kimono you hopefully picked up when doing your Crystal Gauntlets quest, as you get an extra 3 str (or more?) on top of the resistances. More importantly, it enables a combo with the Bloodlands Gauntlets that you will eventually get that makes that weapon really shine for quite awhile.

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Blood Ring

Everyone needs to eventually experience this quest to obtain their blood ring. Whether you use it to augment your blood gauntlets or not, this ring eventually becomes a +18 hp fire/ice protection ring with stamina regeneration. Very useful for any monk (it has caster benefits too!).

The problem is escort quests are a nightmare in this game, and the Forest zone where the escort starts is incredibly dense with monster packs. It is highly recommended to have a friend or two to keep you from losing your sanity and to do this at night (for -1 vision on the escort). This isn't hard from a "you will die" perspective, it's hard from a "the dog keeps throwing itself into the blender" perspective.

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Frog Boots

I originally discounted these because of the whole "Boots make jumpkick bad" but from what I can tell, wearing Boots causes Zhuna, jump to work pre-19 skill and does not affect the performance of Zhuna, jump whatsoever. AS LONG AS THIS IS ACCURATE (See MA Ring), then I recommend going for these Boots. You can farm them in the same place you kill Frogs at. Having ~1800-1900DR allows you to just kill the fish in the pond and trivialize the fight. Add it to your boss rotation cycle as these give WB and FF at Rare+ freeing up a ring slot, and Water Walking at max rarity.

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Bloodlands Gauntlets

From what I can tell, the biggest weapon damage boost you will get until far deeper into advanced content. This is not soloable unless you are over-leveled and over-geared for this section of the guide. Anubis is one of the hardest fights in Bloodlands. You will want a group of 3-5 adventurers to take this guy down, or a carry. These gauntlets are very helpful as they allow you to hit blueglowing, silver, and bloodlands bosses. Combine with a decent rarity Blood Gi to see real results. Once you obtain these, start farming Water Dragon for Blood Vials.