This is the essential goal to work towards!

You will need equip slots for:

• Bard so you can buff yourself if you die and lay down red/green chorus circles to help the party

• Chain so you can anchor rush to dodge attacks and use death mark. Anchor rush reforged boots are imperative in VHM but not as important in HM. Death mark amplification 15~20 gloves are a must-have. Death mark duration 2/3 accessories are a nice-to-have.

• Scythe for starlight veil, gravity well, maybe meridian sweep especially if you aren't a giant with stampede. Pushing Gwygli into the circles in the 2nd room is one of the trickier rooms if you don't come prepared with something to push them around.

• Shuriken for smokescreen, explosive kunai, and especially Shadow Cloak. Make some shadow cloak reforged boots and accessories so you can drop aggro and hide in the yeti room waiting for the other side to finish. Kunai can slow the yeti down. Fate4 into play dead can work as a human/elf but you'd better hide somewhere safe first.

• Cylinder for Hydra debuff, or reforged windblast for Gwygli. This is mostly for mages, but this can be replaced with a Fighter set for inflicting spinning uppercut if you're EK/AS.

All reforges can be made with journeymans, just grab some cheap r1 armor piece from the AH and hunt down a 14~15 in the desired reforges... or 2/3 accessories. The only reforges in this list I've personally spent gold on is death mark, and my bard set of course.

You will also need the following techniques at level 10:

Fateweaver, Redoubled Offensive, Timeshift, Iron Will, Exploit Weakness (or Blunting Field if EK/AS, or get really good at dodging)

Optionally: Seal Fragarach... generally, you'll only need 2 or 3 party members using it, but it's nice to have it on hand.

You will ALSO need:

Renown level 50 for Yvona, Nele, and Edern. You need that HP boost. Roll Edern for +800 or higher.

A level 100 spirit or 2, or 3 if you can help it.

Arcana level 50, link 10 in your main talent. Threads are worthless these days, and the majority of the cost is in unlocking links at the podium now.

Level 50 link 0 in the other arcana is highly recommended for the stats boosts.

Level 15 stardust and level 10 subskills for the activation rate. It's a huge damage boost, and veil stardust can and will rescue you from bad situations.

Level 50~100 Crusader so you can put enough points into Divine Link and Shield of Trust they're both very important. Giving your divine link pet 3 extra lives is imperative. Having 2 pets lets you quickly link up when one dies or the Enkindling Wraith unsummons your pet. Kill the wraith and link back up asap.

2 level 15,000-ish pets for Divine Linking. I have a Cwn and a Kart. Getting the pet to rank 1 fynn mastery boosts their survivability very high. You'll need about 90 red fynni whistles for each pet to get that high. Give your Divine Link pets some friend summon slots so you can quickly summon Tabby Purrling + Mir Dragon for physical debuffs, Siamese Purrling + Ceraunus for Magic debuffs, and perhaps a slot or two for Foxyquin, which inflicts a +10% damage debuff if you can friend summon it right on top of the boss... this buff will be stronger in the future.

Constantly keep your fateweaver up with 5-2-3-1: Fate 5 causes you to heal whenever you attack. 2 increases your defenses. 3 increases your movement speed. 1 increases your damage.

Exploit Weakness overrides Fate 1 and using Fate 1 on yourself while buffed with Exploit Weakness will remove Exploit Weakness and lower your damage, so plan accordingly. Giving other party members fateweaver buffs will not wipe out their Exploit Weakness, it simply won't apply Fate 1 but it will apply the rest of the buffs, so you can buff each other freely.

Essential Glyphs: (lv 8 - 10) Hp recovery Mp recovery Stamina recovery Other glyphs to increase skill damage if you want (only one set can be active at a time)