The Role to Monk

Disclaimer : This guide is for those who want to level a monk, and not feel like your ‘grinding’ for weeks on one map. The idea of this guide is that you can progress to 99(and trans) at a decent rate, yet still enjoy yourself. Also, this guide has no combo skills, so if u wish a combo monk, there are other guides that will fit your needs more than this one would.
From charactor creation, your novice should be 9 dex, str, and agi. Spend the few minutes inside the novice area and get to job 10 before u leave. While here, get 10 dex and 20str. After this point, go change to an acolyte. If u take the test and get acolyte u wil be just south of the priest who starts the quest. To get acolyte as your suggested job, awnser the questions as a do-gooder nice guy who thinks of the past and is a public servent. If u get a diffrent suggested job, just tell him u want to be an acolyte, and he will put u where u need to be anyways.
From this point, after you talk to the priest, he will give u 3 possible NPCs to go talk to. The first being 1 map north of morric, in the top left corner of the map.
The 2nd possibility would be 1 map north, 2 maps west of pront(Actualy 2 maps north with the woe castle map above pront) around the center of the map near the pool of water.
The third possibility is 1 map east, 1 map north, then 1 more map east of pront, right at the exit to the next map east(which would be where you will go later to change to monk)
Remember that once you visit this NPC, THAT becomes your new save point, so once u get back to town, set up a new save point or you could find yourself back there when u die or use a b-wing.
Now once you are an acolyte, equip your mace, that they gave you at the nublet zone, and go smack muka (or metalings, although they can kill you with a single hit if they use mammo on you) Spam those novice pots u got at the novice area for your first few kills, since with your very low hp 1 hit will hurt. A few kills later u will be 20ish or so(on a 5x rate anyways) During this time, increase your str and dex stats to 50ish str(around 60 total with gears, job bonus, and bless) and dex to around 30(40 total with gears, job bonuses, and bless. As for skills, you get bless maxed first, then focus on a few points of heal(Level 4-5 will do for now, lv 10 if you have yourself a enchanted peach tree shield sinces its effect can save u a lot of sp with its autocast)
Once you reach level 27 or so, you can use a swordmace(or stunner I belive) and if you do not have a fire swordmace/stunner, the npc version (sold in morric, south west area, slightly north of the corner of town) does the job. Continue with muka until you are able to easily kill them. (2-3 shots each, around 85 hit with bless) If you are using a fire swordmace, you should(with bless) be damaging them for 350-400 dmg per hit.
Once you make easy work of the muka, you can move on to mosc, and can start hunting les(which will also get you rich depending on your server) Muka cast envemom, which really isn’t much of a threat, but the poison effect stops all regeneration, and lowers your def. They also drop green herbs, so hot key one of them, and you should never have to worry about being poisoned. They also drop aloe leaflets which are VERY good healing items, so you shouldn’t have to use yoursp to heal(save it for Bless and Agi up once u have that also)
You can quite easily, and quickly job 50 here. Do not Attack the Lesji(spelling?) at this point, since they have high defense, and hit REALLY hard and are only worth slightly more than the les themselves. They also like to spam heal everything around them, so if need be, lure les away from them before u beat the snot out of them.
While here in mosc, save all your stems, and you can later sell them to a biochemist/brewer for 2.5-5k per, which will more than be enough (after u job 50 yourself) to fund any future gear you may need.
Skills I suggest for this build and order as to get them are as follows.
lv 5 divine protection
Lv 10 bless
Lv 5 heal(lv 10 heal if u have a Enchanted peach tree shield)
lv 10 agi up
lv 10 heal
lv 10 demon bane(At this point the order of which to max first matters little, but u might choose to max this first if u want to go hunting undead before your a monk)
lv 9 divine protection(Divine pro won’t help you much, if at all, since your going to be relying on agility and flee rather than vit and defense. You pick up the last point of this as your first job lv as monk)
Now once your job 50(I strongly suggest you go the long road and do NOT change pre job 50, you will need the extra skills later on) Go and become a monk.
A simple trick (If u never did it as an aco) is to run back to the pront church, and talk to the fat guy near the girl that gives holy light plat skill, tell him to tell you more about being an acolyte, and he will offer to warp you to the monk job change area. Accept his offer for an easy trip.
RMS has a good guide on the main site under quests for the monk job change. Check this if you need help at this point.
Now your a new monk. You would have also gained a 3 slot knuckle duster as reward for being job 50 when u changed, which u can make use of, or continue to use the maces. Maces are nice because they do decent damage to large sized targets, while fists do 50% of normal. The downside is the abysmal atspd of maces.
As a new monk, you can head back to mosc and can stay there for as long as you wish, but I suggest u only stay here as long as u can manage it(At this point you would have been at mosc for some time, and this guide is about having fun, not grinding for hours at the same spot)
A few places I can suggest are Payon caves lv 3-4(munaks, sohees), mosc lv 1(les), ice caves lv 1(Siroma, if u have wind) Bibilan lv 4(swordfish, marc, beware swordfish’s waterball skill), Geffen dungeon lv 2-3(Try to get 180 flee or so first), mummies at pyramids, isis later on.
Skills you get as a monk are simple, since you avoid the combo skills.
Lv 5 Iron fist
lv 5 call spirits
lv 1 absorb spirits
lv 5 dodge
lv 5 finger offensive/throw spirit spheres
lv 5 investigate/occult
Lv 3 critical explosion/fury
lv 5 asura strike
lv 5 bladestop
lv 1 Ruwach
lv 2 teleport
lv 4 warp portal
lv 1 pnenuma
With remaining points u can make use of cure and/or agi down. The skills listed before this are ones u would most likley abuse the most, and agi down and cure both have uses. (Although I dont often find myself using either)
Stats are simple too. After your aco days, you have around 50 base str, 30 base dex. As you level you want to try to achive 180 atspd with fists, so u focus on agi for some time(to around 75-80 base) then dex to around 60 base. Final stats depends on gear, but u want(with buffs, gear, and job bonuses) around 100-105 agi, 110 str, 80-90 dex 20 vit(which is 14+6 from job bonus) and 24 int(12+12 job bonus/bless)
Gear is mostly easy to get even as an aco. Try to get yourself the pantie/undershirt set, a pair of shoes (Try to find a zombie slaughterer card, since they can be bought quite cheap with all the nameless abby hunting) a pirate bandana(or slot marionette hat with a vanberk or cramp if u have a tarou card to combo with it) A clip with a marine sphere card can give you as an aco/monk an aoe skill, and can also be used to ‘break’ casts of things in melee range. A ring also helps boost your str.
Once your at or around base 80 or so, you should be able to hunt most area’s with ’soft’ mobs(lower defense) with your basic attack, or magma, sleepers, etc using occult, or even stings if you can fire off a TSS fast enough (before they reach you) You will find that this build, while it doesn’t excel in any single area, is able to stay longest in the fight because you do not need to rely on your sp so often, yet when needed u can dish out the hurt.
Hope you have enjoyed reading this, and please feel free to suggest anything I have missed.