Level 99 Trophy

[DeadStanley]

What a painfully boring grind that was. The tricks mentioned in the guide work well, though I found it to work even better with some adjustments.

 

For clarification the spot the guide references is found when you exit the top of the Mana Temple, immediately before the end encounter. There's a land bridge that zig-zags upwards over two screens. Both screens have 2 or 3 Elephant monsters that will spawn. This is the first time that you'll see them in the game, so once you recognize them you'll know you're in the right place. Position yourself at the top of the 1st screen, such that you can move up to the 2nd screen of Elephants and then back down to the 1st screen as needed.

 

Instead of Excalibur, equip your Lightning spell. Fall back on the Excalibur method when you run out of mana, though I found this was rare, and even when it did happen I'd level up shortly thereafter, thus refilling my mana.

 

Let your Action Meter bar fully charge. Stand next to the screen border you plan to retreat on and shoot a bolt with the intention of hitting all of the Elephants in its path. Since they may be off screen, listen for the audio cue that you've hit at least two of them. Once you do, quickly move to the next screen. Let the Action Meter charge again and shoot another bolt at the Elephants. Quickly move back to the previous screen. Repeat this process as desired.

 

As the guide mentions, you will be taking advantage of the fact that you earn the XP at the start of the death animation. So long as you leave the screen before the animation ends, you can immediately return to it for respawns (normally you would travel 6 screens away and come back to force a respawn, which you may need to do on occassion).

 

The charged lightning is just as strong as a charged Excalibur dash, thus one-shotting the enemies. However, while the Excalibur dash only hits the enemies from their backs, the Lightning will always hit regardless of the Elephant's orientation. Also, I had some issues where I'd do the Excalibur dash and not make it off the screen in time because the enemies may have died too far away from my start point, and by the time I landed, they'd have ended their death animations.

 

The guide suggests this takes about 10 hours, but it took me 4-5 hours using this adjusted method and starting at XP level 68. So that you can gauge your overall progress, when you do reach level 99 your total XP will be something like 999,490.

Edited February 6, 2017 by DeadStanley
Spelling/Grammar

[Xylobe]

I don't mean to discredit this method (it may well still be faster than the guide's suggested method), but the ~10 hours the guide says it takes is a ridiculous overestimate. Using its method took me about 5 hours starting from level 51.

[viech54]

On 2/6/2017 at 9:20 PM, DeadStanley said:

 (normally you would travel 6 screens away and come back to force a respawn, which you may need to do on occassion).

Which isn't even the case here, go south until you see the teleporter, take it, go back to the elephants and continue your killing spree. Anway... Will give your strategy a go tomorrow.

[ethinethin]

It only took me about 3 hours of post-game grinding, from level 67. I used excalibur, and just grinded on the elephants right before the final forest area. The trick is to leave the screen before they disappear. You'll still get the XP, but they'll still respawn when you re-enter the screen. Still, a tedious trophy that added nothing to my gaming experience.

[Dragon-Archon]

Nice, I tried this method and got from lvl 55 to 99 in 4-5 hours.

[visighost]

I'm sure the lightning strategy works well. but it implies too much wasted time letting your bar charge. I simply tweaked the Excalibur strategy a tiny bit: using the strongest axe instead of Excalibur worked much better. You still kill the elephants in one or two hits, but you're much less likely to trigger the boosted attack that makes you travel through the screen and often screws up your chances of the elephants respawning. Those few hours were still pointlessness but I got to the trophy pleasure-trigger a wee bit faster.

[fbdbh]

Condolences to anybody doing this trophy, here, this will help with the crushing guilt:

 

https://www.savetheelephants.org/

[ShianKiri]

Gonna be real, I didn't realize there was a point of no return, so I had to revert to a save prior to Dime Tower... so while I had borked my run initially, I did check out the Elephant grind and was kinda underwhelmed at the idea that that was the place to grind. They're worth, on average, 250 XP which is pretty good but, overall, not that great and it is kind of a pain in the ass if something goes wrong.

 

If they're not lined up the right way for Excalibur dash or if you accidentally kill all of them having to reset... the hassle for slightly higher XP per kill was just not what I had expected.

 

So going back to my Dime Tower save, I went to the top left corner of the map of the first floor where the stairs are. It bypasses the outdoor area, but in that same room, there are a bunch of Ghost Hands and Ghost Swords. To the right is a room with small round monsters and a larger bird-ish? monster.

 

I would kill everything but one monster on each screen, going back and forth. If I accidentally killed them all, I would reset by going up the stairs and back down, then moving to the right to kill the round monsters and bird-ish? monsters and then go back since the monsters don't spawn right away when coming back down the stairs. Each pass of going from left to right averaged anywhere between 400 XP to 3000 XP, but overall, you're making about 1000-1500 XP each pass which is equivalent or better to the Elephant grind. If I needed 20,000 XP, I would say I need 20 passes. So 1 pass is going from the left screen then to the right, then coming back. Sometimes I level before the 20, sometimes I level a little after but it doesn't take more than a few seconds on each room.

 

Each monster is worth, on average, 220-230 XP but they have the potential to spawn a large number (I've seen 8 spawn) of them on both screens but also have the potential to spawn only 2.

 

I would use the Mantis Scythe so I don't have to deal with any animation locking and it can kill all of the monsters since they don't have immunity to it.

 

I was getting a level every 3 to 5 minutes. It took me about... roughly 3 hours to go from Level 50 to 99.

 

The key thing is saving time by not dealing with animations, not moving too far and not taking too long to reset. I only walk into each room far enough to hit as many monsters as possible without causing them to despawn, then I would move to the previous room and do it again as fast as I can. Over a long grind, this saves much more time than doing the Elephants and if, for what ever reason you wanted to still have the ability to go around the game and explore, you could without locking yourself into the end dungeon.

 

 

[Inuty]

@ShianKiri 3-4 hours farming, Great tip  

[Jelly Soup]

Planning on picking this back up in a bit and checked the guide. I'll throw in that many of the same tricks from the original release on GB still work here. Every playthrough I did had the max level grind way way earlier in the game. One screen south of the Silver Mines exit is a narrow forest area with a line of werewolves. Grind on them until your stamina meter is at such a level that it fills in a couple seconds. Then it's just a matter of walk in, toss ax, walk out, walk back in, toss ax, repeat.

 

Sure, it's only around 20 or so xp, but it's 20 or so xp every three seconds and can be whittled down to 2 seconds with all the levels your getting. So we're clear, I'm not saying it's any better. Mathematically it isn't. But it's a great place to start given where you should be around the time you get there. I'd normally hang around werewolf town until 30 or 40.

Edited August 20, 2023 by Jelly Soup