Powerleveling / High LSI / Monster Hunter build guide

[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

As far as characters builds in Castle Age are concerned, there are basically two ways to go, with variations in the middle:

High LSI / Monster Hunter build, and High BSI / PvP build.

This guide is about the High LSI build.

High BSI build
BSI = Battle Strength Index = (attack + defense) / level

High BSI means that relatively to your level, you have very strong stats (attack and defense). In a nutshell, if you want to use this build, you should: The issue with this build is that your leveling speed will get slower and slower if you play for free; at high levels it will take ages to level up if you don't refill.
 * Add energy up to 2,000 and stamina up to 1,000, so that you can make full use of Full Potions and refills (which give a maximum of 2k energy and 1k stamina).
 * Put all further Skill Points (SP) into attack or defense (or health, depending on how much you are interested in Guild Battles and which guild class you want to use). Currently, attack is usually considered a better choice than defense (mostly because of Chaos Gems).

If you're starting the game (or a new account) now, I would strongly advise against this build, unless you know you want to spend a lot on the game - in which case this is the best build for you (you will still be able to level up fast with refills, while having better PVP stats).

I won't talk about this build any further in this guide.

High LSI build
LSI = Leveling Speed Index = (energy + stamina*2 ) / level

High LSI induces a fast leveling speed.

High LSI means that you will be able to level up very fast, with all the benefits it brings. I strongly believe that this build is from far the most fun and beneficial for a player who wishes to play for free (or only spend a bit).

In fact, with the addition of many features in the game like Runes and Item Archives, you don't need to use SP for attack, defense and health to still get thousands of points in these stats.

In a nutshell, if you want to use this build, you should:
 * Only put SP into energy and stamina (never into any other stats).
 * Put all your SP into energy first, stamina will come later (explained below).

With this build, you'll be able to enjoy all aspects of the game even without spending. You'll be a very strong Monster Hunter, and when reaching higher levels (which won't take that long), you'll be able to be relevant in other aspects of the game (PvP).

Getting started
Copied from another comment, to organize :

Even though this guide gives some good pieces of advice, it's getting old and has become partly outdated, so don't follow it to the letter.

One important thing to note is that if you know from the beginning that you want to be a "powerleveler" (high LSI), you shouldn't add any Skill Point (SP) in atk or def. That's the case if you know you want to be 100% Monster Hunter for instance. Put all your points in Energy (and a few to Stamina if you wish), and you'll be able to level up without waiting for hundreds of levels.

For example, you can add to energy only until you reach 3k or 4k Energy (in the meantime, you can add some stam to reach 150 stam for instance). Then you can still add Energy, or you can begin adding to stam more substantially if you prefer, for more Monster Hunting fun. You could reach about 5k energy / 2k stam by the time you reach level 1000 (which can be achieved in only a few months time).

'' Note : The reason why it's important to add a lot of energy before stamina is that energy is used for quests, which give you SPs. A lot. Then you add those SPs to energy, and you get more SPs again. You get the idea. Stamina doesn't allow this. In addition, energy gives better XP per SP than stamina.''

Then you can rely on Runes and Item Archives (IA) for atk and def.

The current best general alliance for a Monster Hunter is 1-Barbarus 2-Dolomar 3-Sahar/Monkey King (Sahar is way easier to obtain, and should also be a lot better until you reach great amounts of attack from runes & IA).

This build is the best for a Monster Hunter, and makes it really easy to get essences, red &amp; green crystals, and a lot of freebies during events. So you can level up your generals a lot more easily. It also makes it a lot easier to complete the Hunter & Engineer Conquest Paths, which otherwise can take extremely long to complete. And ofc it's also easier to get gear from monsters, and to complete Chaos Campaign tasks.

'' Note : You can also farm Favor Points (FP) more efficiently with a lot of stamina. You can then promote your heroes without buying FP with real money (it will take quite some time though).''

It should be noted that nowadays, your generals stats (& equipment) can be a huge factor in the damage you'll deal to monsters, now that you can level them up to level 80 and easily promote them to at least 5 stars.

After you reach very high levels, you can then also become useful in Guild Battles and the like with high runes & IA, great generals, great gear and great chaos gems.

Edit: Ofc, if you don't care about spending (a lot) of money on the game, you can use any build and still get all items and gear more or less easily. But for a F2P player (or mostly F2P), if you want to be a Monster Hunter (and probably even for other stuff), I believe this is the build you'd want to use.

Guide by St0liae