A guide to Crimson Guardian killing

 Old version for those of you who for whatever reason cares

Welcome.

I have wrote a few guides before, and if you read them you would know that I suck at writing a good intro. Therefore, let's skip that and go straight to the chase.

First, the requirements. If you don't meet these requirements, reading this probably won't do you a lot of immediate practical good:

 Requirements

At least 3400 HP. If you have a top/bottom set and no zhelm, you may want to have more then 3550 HP JUST to be on the safe side.
Maxed Eruption/Rain
Level 12+ puppet
Optional: Level 1+ Inferno/Blizzard for luring

These are the MINIMUM requirements. Obviously, more is better. It's best if you have Sharp Eyes so you don't take forever to kill them, a high level for the same reason, and so on.

So, why Crimson Guardians? Well, the main reason, the exp here is unparalleled as far as soloing is concerned. Of course you're gonna get better exp with a bishop in newties or skeles, but chances are, the bishops you know can either already be training with other people or are just plain greedy and charge you fee for training with them. And if you WERE to solo, Crimson Guardian's exp is second to none.

Besides, since you're sniping, pot usage is fairly trivial. You're not gonna get much money back, but you won't be spending much in the first place.

Also as of patch 0.61, there's an event that focuses on obtaining "boxes" from monsters and opening them with a key from CS. The better of the two boxes, Gold box, comes from either Crimson guardian or bosses. Bosses that can be quite hard to kill and even harder to find otherwise. Crimson Guardians, on the other hand, are easy to find, plentiful to kill, and actually drops them at a somewhat common rate. Each box can be worth quite a bit (not as much as two days ago unfortunately, but still a viable source of wealth), so you'll be making mucho money here. For a limited time, at least.

Having said all those, let's take a look at some of the stats of our friend here.

 boring numbers

Level: 120
MaxHP: 120000
MaxMP: 2000
Speed: -20
Physical attack: 650
Physical defense: 1000
Magic attack: 800
Magic defense: 800
Accuracy: 230
Avoidability: 40
Exp: 6100
Elemental Attributes: Immune to holy, resists Fire, Ice, Lightning, Poison

Those are all very nice and dandy, but aside from maxHP and exp, they're mostly useless numbers. What you probbaly need to know is what damage do they do, and stuff like that. Well, Crimson Guardian's touch damage can do 33xx to a fairly equipped level 12x archer (like me), so having 3400 HP is important here. It has two magic attacks - a sword attack (when its eyes glow purple) which does about 17xx-18xx to me, and a mace attack (when its eyes glow red) which does 48xx (and instant death) to me. Fortunately, Crimson Guardian has an extremely short horizontal range (quite a large vertical range though), so it often can't hit you even when you're practically right next to them. This fact, plus the layout of the map, gives us the ability to snipe the entire map with rain/eruption and train without being harmed. They also have a seal attack that actually has a VERY wide range, but you needn't worry about those as it's a minor annoyance that takes one holy water to cure. You should bring LOTS of holy waters, though.

Anyways, one last bit of information before the main course - the map's layout. Guardians can spawn both on top and bottom, with a lone guardian patrolling the middle of the left side. The guardians on the top platform can move about freely, but the bottom are restricted by two invisible walls, effectively segmenting the bottom into three parts - bottom left, bottom middle, and bottom right. This will be of some importance.

Now, the main part! To train here, you will mainly be using two sniping positions, and using eruption/rain to hit both the upper platform and the bottom platform. Here's the sniping position on the right:



From this position (note that I'm standing on the first step above the middle), you can hit both the upper and bottom guardians with eruption. Unfortunately, it isn't a PERFECTLY safe spot, as the guardians right on top of you (the one I hit 2749 on) CAN fight back. This is easily solved, however, by puppeting - If you face right and puppet, you will (most of the time) land the puppet right in the middle, out of harm's reach from all the guardians. YOu can then proceed to Erupt/Rain everything into oblivion. Once the top guardian dies, pay attention to when it respawns, so you can puppet accordingly. If you get continously sealed after aggroing that guardian, simply jump down to get out of its range, puppet, and jump back up.

This position will allow you to hit the middle and right segment of the bottom row, but eventually bottom left will build up.

Sniping position on the left:



From this position (I'm standing two steps above the middle), you can hit all the guardians within reach. The left guardian won't be able to ever attack you for some reason (unless you stand WAAY too much to the left, in which case it could touch you), but if you stand TOO much to the right, you might get hit from the guardians on top. If you look two steps above where I'm standing, you should see a crevice in the steps - keep your horizontal position left of the crevice, and you should be alright. You won't need to puppet here - nothing on the map will be able to hit you assuming you stand correctly. You will be able to hit the top, bottom middle, and bottom left in this position, but the guardians on bottom right will eventually build up.


As you can see, you will need to utilise both spots to solo the entire map. I tend to stay over the right side more, mainly because it's less boring and I can stay for longer before having to go to the left to clear bottom left. However, you may like the left side more. Either case, you'll be staying in one spot until the spawn begins to become crappy, then you'll be going for the other side to kill any built up spawn.

Sharing here is also possible. It's kinda hard to find people here (at least it was so before the gold box came to existence), but if you do, it will be faster if you simply take one side and let the other person take the other side. You can even party here, though it might be hard to get a priest for HS. Then again, they will likely have max Dispel (since the leech level of guardian is 115), which saves on Holy Water.

 Miscelleous tips

-Don't bother going out of your way to loot unless something good drops. It'll slow you down and you'll end up losing more money to pots.
-You can use blizzard/inferno to lure guardians over to train.
-Before looting or moving away from safety, double puppet to deaggro everything.
-If you got shoved to the bottom with guardians still aggroed at you, quickly jump down. Touch a guardian for cover if you must.
-It's safer moving from left to right (and vice versa) from top. If you stand on the topmost stairway, the top guardians can't touch you.

Well, that's guardian training in a nutshell. Questions or comments? Feel free to post. I probably made over nine thousand mistakes here, so inputs are appreciated.

Welcome.

I have wrote a few guides before, and if you read them you would know that I suck at writing a good intro. Therefore, let's skip that and go straight to the chase.

First, the requirements. If you don't meet these requirements, reading this probably won't do you a lot of immediate practical good:

At least 3400 HP. If you have a top/bottom set and no zhelm, you may want to have more then 3550 HP JUST to be on the safe side.
Maxed Eruption/Rain
Level 12+ puppet
Optional: Level 1+ Inferno/Blizzard for luring

These are the MINIMUM requirements. Obviously, more is better. It's best if you have Sharp Eyes so you don't take forever to kill them, a high level for the same reason, and so on.

So, why Crimson Guardians? Well, the main reason, the exp here is unparalleled as far as soloing is concerned. Of course you're gonna get better exp with a bishop in newties or skeles, but chances are, the bishops you know can either already be training with other people or are just plain greedy and charge you fee for training with them. And if you WERE to solo, Crimson Guardian's exp is second to none.

Besides, since you're sniping, pot usage is fairly trivial. You're not gonna get much money back, but you won't be spending much in the first place.

Having said all those, let's take a look at some of the stats of our friend here.

 boring numbers

Level: 120
MaxHP: 120000
MaxMP: 2000
Speed: -20
Physical attack: 650
Physical defense: 1000
Magic attack: 800
Magic defense: 800
Accuracy: 230
Avoidability: 40
Exp: 6100
Elemental Attributes: Immune to holy, resists Fire, Ice, Lightning, Poison

Those are all very nice and dandy, but aside from maxHP and exp, they're mostly useless numbers. What you probbaly need to know is what damage do they do, and stuff like that. Well, Crimson Guardian's touch damage can do 33xx to a fairly equipped level 12x archer (like me), so having 3400 HP is important here. It has two magic attacks - a mace attack and a sword attack. The mace attack can hit you from quite far away but only does about 2k damage (though, sometimes the mace will *physically* touch you and you will take touch damage instead), and a sword attack which can only hit you from nearby but does close to 5k (instant death for most). Thankfully, the map we will be in (Crimsonwood Keep, aka the map outside the keep itself) is layout in such a way that it is very possible to snipe the guardians from above and/or below, avoiding both their deadly sword attacks and their not-so-deadly mace attacks. The guardians can also seal, which can hit quite a bit of distance away both horizontally and vertically, but it doesn't do damage and therefore is more of an annoyance than anything. You should bring LOTS of holy waters, though.

Anyways, one last bit of information before the main course - the map's layout. Guardians can spawn both on top and bottom, with a lone guardian patrolling the middle of the left side. The guardians on the top platform can move about freely, but the bottom are restricted by two invisible walls, effectively segmenting the bottom into three parts - bottom left, bottom middle, and bottom right. This will be of some importance.

Now, the main part! There are two sniping spots that are important to us. Let's look at the main sniping point we will be staying in, first:



As you can see, by standing one step above the middle on the right side, you will be pretty much completely safe. Neither the top guardians nor the bottom guardians can hit you with their magic attacks, and you can basically just snipe here with AE/AR until you get bored. Or you could, if it wasn't for the fact that the bottom sections are segmented, and thus spawn will build up on the bottom left section of the map. You will eventually notice how the spawn will thin out eventually, and that is when you must go to the next part to clear out the other side's spawn.

(Note: Don't AFK on the staircases, though - If someone attacks the bottom guardians and they fight back with their mace attack, you WILL get touched by their mace and thus take touch damage, most likely hurling you into a pit of angry guardians below you.)



Stand below the bottom left guardians and AE/AR them all to death. Simple and effective, and as usual they can't fight back. However, there simply isn't enough spawn here to justify staying in this spot for much length, so you will most likely AE/AR the guardians above you to death, maybe strafing/hurricaning/sniping a few guardians to your right, and then return to the right side spot. Luring is ineffective because of the invisible wall (around where the door's archway is) impeding the ability of the guardians on the right to walk to where you are.

So yeah, those two are the only spots you will need to solo the entire map to get good exp. Sharing here is also possible. It's kinda hard to find people here (at least it was so before the gold box came to existence), but if you do, it will be faster if yotake the right side and let the other person take the left side. You can even party here, though it might be hard to get a priest for HS. Then again, they will likely have max Dispel (since the leech level of guardian is 115), which saves on Holy Water.

Miscellous tips:
-Don't bother going out of your way to loot unless something good drops. It'll slow you down and you'll end up losing more money to pots.
-You can use blizzard/inferno to lure guardians over, at least on the right side of the map.
-Before looting or moving away from safety, double puppet to deaggro everything.
-If you got shoved to the bottom with guardians still aggroed at you, quickly jump down. Touch a guardian for cover if you must.

Well, that's guardian training in a nutshell. Questions or comments? Feel free to post. I probably made over nine thousand mistakes here, so inputs are appreciated.