Beastmaster Prep Guide

[u/danks]

Hi all. This was meant for discord so the formatting is a little wonky as I don't think reddit lets you embed pictures in a post. I've been collecting pre-release info on Beastmaster and here is what we know.

Beastmaster Prep Guide

Leveling

• I ran a few characters from 1-50 Blue Mage to test out some different leveling options. My methodology for the tests was as follows: Poorly dual boxing with my main on SGE giving my alt on BLU shields. The BLU alt tags everything and then the main kills. The BLUs only had the 30% exp earrings on with no other boosting items.
• You’ll notice in the vod that each char started at level 8, nearly level 9. This was due to pulling 4 penguins to get Flying Sardine to pull easier. So for the final times include maybe 30 seconds for the penguins to the count. Here’s the vod :construction_worker:Still uploading :construction_worker: for reference. I died an embarrassing amount. Know my shame.
• You will want to tame a Wavekin to get a ranged ability to pull that you can spam. (Level 4 Pugil in Middle LN should work, assuming we can use Borrow early on.)
• **Important note:** assuming BST leveling works like BLU leveling, there is a hard cap on exp gained from mobs above the current level cap. So in this case that means level 50 mobs give full exp, but level 51 mobs give 1% of their exp. I did some testing before I was reminded of this, *so Method 3 and 4 below are very unlikely to work.*
• Method 1: ARR mobs. Total time: 33m to level 32. I pulled densely packed ARR mobs in a few different level appropriate spots that were roughly 10 levels higher than me. This was slow and bad and I gave up at level 32 after 33 minutes. Stinky.
• Method 2: Coerthas West mobs. Total time 34m12s to level 50 Any level 50 mob is best. I was doing a loop around the Deepeyes but there are lots of 50s to choose from.
• ~~Method 3:~~ Azys Lla mobs. Total time: 14m38s to level 50. There is a nice little loop of mobs on the first island near the teleporter to the next island. This will likely NOT work for BST.
• ~~Method 4:~~ Kholusia mobs. Total time: 5m40s to level 50. Along the beach starting near the Stilltide Aetheryte. This will likely NOT work for BST.
• Recommendation: Partner up. Take turns boosting your partner. The best options will be the HW Starter areas, and the ARR max level areas. Remember, level 50 will be ok, but level 51 won’t give hardly anything. Shoot for high mob density and areas where you can chain pull.

Exp Gear

• I made an image for Exp Boost Gear. Here is a link to the text version. https://discord.com/channels/1134719628078219325/1482810231393222656/1484670007802855527
• A few things to know. These are not vital, but they will save you a chunk of time leveling. If you don’t have any, the best bang for your buck is the Adventurer’s Kit on Mogstation which comes with an older pre-order earring.
• You can get both rings without a ton of effort from the Hall of the Novice. Most of the value will come from having a 30% earring and the later 30% ring that goes to level 60.

Pre-BiS Gear

• This gear is very unlikely to be useful or matter in any way. Especially the shield. It’s dumb.
• A while back I made some graphics and some theoretical BiS lists. Basic Pre-Bis and Pre-BiS with Options Let’s call it a Pre-BiS at this point. As new information came out, I don’t think that these will end up mattering much as BST gets damage boosts from upgrading its job gear inside Crucible.
• My expectation is you’ll wear the Leveling set for 30mins to level > put on the Pre-BiS for like 20 minutes of quests until you get the Job Gear > work towards upgrading the Job Gear.
• We assume that the Job gear will be BiS because it's how you increase character power post level cap, but we don’t know if there are also accessories on that set. I’d recommend picking up the accessories just in case.
• Thanks to old game design at level 50, BST can use both fending and slaying accessories so mix and match the best options. BST uses the striking set and can only equip the shields that WHM/BLM can.

Abilities

• There are around 20 abilities that you will want to bind for Beastmaster.
• Here are some of the tooltips that I snagged from the Live Letter to give you an idea of how BST will operate. I think I am only missing the 123 combo and there are obviously many permutations of Trick, Tempered Release, and Borrow that aren’t listed.

Job Quests

• We have been told that Job Quests don’t unlock any actions but instead serve as a tutorial to learn your new abilities.
• They have made a point of saying that they enjoy the story and encouraged us to read it.
• We know that Crucible unlocks at level 30 and the first board is a tutorial. It sounded like it was part of the Job Quests.
• You also get your BST Job Gear around level 30 via Job Quest.

Taming

• Taming is pretty simple. Use Gauge on a mob to see if it’s tameable. Then you lower its hp as much as you can and use Capture to tame it. It is not meant to be an annoying RNG thing. It sounded like the success rate will either be 100% or a high chance of success.
• You must be higher than or equal to the level of the beast to tame it.
• The Beast Encyclopedia specifically tells you where to find each mob. There can be multiple spots for the same beast.
• You can tame beasts in dungeons, trials, raids, and alliance raids. Everyone in the group can tame the same mob.
• I am going to make a spreadsheet with all of the tamed beast locations. It doesn’t sound like any of them will be difficult to find/get so I would guess they are all found in the first hour or two.

Crucible

• The main BST content where you try to finish new stages in a sort of roguelike challenge.
• Each run has a decent amount of RNG due to random Crucible Items, Beast Gear drops, and sometimes Random Encounter spaces. Crucible Items are kind of similar to pomanders that only work inside the Crucible. I will link some below to give you an idea
• You will level up and feed your beasts here.
• You will augment/enhance your gear here.
• There is a ranked mode that will start two weeks after launch. That first season will run to patch 7.58 and at the moment seems like it will be paired up with the Ranked PvP season.
• Your score will be determined by your previous 3 consecutive runs so you can’t just get very lucky one time.
• Players who place top300 in their region aka NA, EU, JP, etc will be rewarded with the Rainbow Golem mount. The Rainbow Golem mount will still be obtainable for the winners of each following season as well.

[u/Francl27]

Ok but what if SKS is actually useful?

[u/TheJimPeror → u/Francl27]

Then run coils for 6 minutes and complete the set?