Firebolt Ballooning Guide by Sinsie

Hot-Air Ballooning, Secret Firebolt Techniques

I'd like to give credit to Zyrus for explaining how great Hot-Air Ballooning with Firebolt could be for newbies and this guide for giving me my starting point:

http://mabination.com/threads/1831-M...Air-Ballooning

This guide also covers how you should handle Hot-Air Ballooning if you main Ranged skills primarily:

http://mabination.com/threads/29419-H.A.L.O-Ballooning

However, I've noticed that some people feel hunting Ice Wyverns is too tedious and that getting to level 25 is too much effort for something that's not worth it. If you weekly rebirth then I can understand this, but for anyone and everyone I want to present Hot-Air Ballooning in the best possible light so everyone can make a good decision on whether they can use it or not to boost their characters. Over all the time I've spent hunting Ice Wyverns, I've noticed some little things that greatly speed-up the process without taking much effort at all. Getting to level 22 exploration is like nothing to me now, and the other three levels only remind me a bit that I'm grinding for AP, and they still aren't that bad for me. Now, let's get to the guide part of this guide.

First off, since this method uses Firebolt, you'll need all equipment slots filled (clothes, two accessories, robe) and have all your equipment with Ice Elementals on them. For Firebolt, you'll get a Firewand with Chaincasting +4 on it. Firebolt Rank 5 is recommended, and for my directions, Rank F Meditation is also necessary. Buy Wings of a Goddess (mandatory), Small Hot-Air Balloon Kits (mandatory), and Flints (unless you're the best Ice Wyvern hunter ever, have at least a stack of these on you at all times. AT LEAST ONE in your inventory). Make sure your Wings of a Goddess have Calida Exploration Camp selected as the warp point. I can't tell you how bad my mood turns when I realize I just warped to Qilla Base Camp and lost all my stars and totally ruined everything.

Finally, have a lot of dough ready. Like, 200,000 gold at least. Preferably more. The biggest and only downside to this, other than having to find new accessories every now and then, is that my method needs money for repairs (wand mainly) and the products you need to Hot-Air Balloon. Although you can indeed find rewards that you can sell to other players for lots of money, and if you level to 25 probably will find a few, it isn't guaranteed, so be wary. It is very possible to make more money than you spend, but it might take you some getting used to before your money takes care of itself.

Okay, we have all the basic stuff listed, and you might be wondering, "hey, you forgot the mana potions." Yes, I did. We aren't using mana potions.

First secret: hunt Ice Wyverns at nighttime only. The time when mana regeneration is boosted by the night. This is why you're also using Meditation, which is mandatory for this guide, not just recommended.

Second secret: Firebolt only needs its base mana cost to charge a fully-charged Firebolt. I'm sure lots of you already know this, but it's a very key point which is obvious at this point. If you don't fully understand, using Firebolt with a Chaincast +4 Firewand (which you will be using for this) and a full mana bar will drain a lot of mana, I'm not sure on the exact amount because it's irrelevant to me. Although it will use up the appropriate amount of mana if you have it, to actually load the skill up you only need the base cost (for humans and elves with Rank 5 Firebolt, 5 mana. Giants, 7 mana). In short, if you follow this guide, each Firebolt you cast will only cost you 5 mana after you go through all your mana.

Third secret, which the guide practically revolves around: you can load Firebolt uninterrupted. The Ice Wyverns attacks, the freezing attacks that make them a huge pain to fight? It's the best part of fighting them. I'll explain.

When your character is hit by the ice attack, one of two things will happen: your character will be frozen, or will not be frozen. How to determine this is simple: if your character doesn't react to being hit, the character will not freeze. If the stun animation appears (as in, what would happen if you were hit by a monster attack), your character will freeze. This always happens just like this. Now, when your character is hit and goes into stun animation, loading Firebolt will result in your character charging up Firebolt while encased in ice. Because of this, Firebolt will NOT be interrupted by any attacks, and Firebolt will finish charging up by the time you're thawed out of the ice. It's much easier to attack the Ice Wyverns instantly than it is to charge up Firebolts.

I'm sure you've figured it all out by now: go out hunting Ice Wyverns at night with Meditation active, charge up Firebolts when stunned (meaning, about to become frozen), charge up Firebolt 100% chance, repeat on as many Ice Wyverns as your heart desires. Because you have such a consistent technique of loading and shooting Firebolts, with essentially limitless fuel, earning 10+ big stars is fast. This means you'll use less flints (I only use 1 max each run now), which means you'll do more runs. This is good, because you're only hunting them at night. I always do three runs a night when the server isn't having any problems and the Ice Wyverns act appropriately, so in normal conditions this method works great.

After you're done getting your stars, warp back to camp, get your reward, rush out and kill more. When it's almost day-time, transform for an extra boost in mana so you can finish off the Ice Wyverns faster and be done for the night.

Pros of this method:

1. No mana potions.
2. It's fast.
3. You don't need to be a mage to do this. I'm primarily a warrior character, my Intelligence is naturally below 200. My Firebolt is Rank 3 but honestly I should've stopped at Rank 5.
4. Once it's daytime in-game, you can take a break. This is what I do personally, I'm taking as many breaks as I am playing the game. You can read, go eat something, chat, whatever, just come back when it's nighttime again and do three runs.
5. It's easy. I'll prove it soon.
6. You can stock up on potions anyways. You can get lesser rewards on purpose and get 10 MP 50 Potions, 10 100 HP potions, or get herbs instead (10 Mandrake or 10 Golden Herbs).
7. If you do this until level 22-25, you're more than likely going to encounter a rare reward. Could sell for a lot to players.

Cons of this method:
1. It costs lots of gold.
2. You'll have to prepare a source of accessories eventually when they wear down.
3. You'll have to have a source of Ice Elementals and Holy Water for gear/new gear.

Basically, it costs money to things this way, but it always costed money. The firewand is mainly what makes this point more outstanding. I will argue that by effectively Hot-Air Ballooning, your use of flints will go down, potentially saving you more money than before on them.

Final Tips:

Go for crit. I'm not a mage and I usually one-shot regular Ice Wyverns and two-shot Hungry Ice Wyverns. Increasing my Magic Attack won't do much. However, if I put on a Crit-increasing title, I'll one-shot those Hungry ones more often. Love it.

If you accidentally load Firebolt when you weren't stunned, spam hitting the Firebolt hot-key. Even if you're attacked and interrupted, you'll most likely start charging another Firebolt when you're frozen for realsies. There's also a low-chance that none of the attacks freeze you, and your Firebolt charges perfectly fine.

Target Hungry Ice Wyverns first. When you kill Ice Wyverns, more spawn instantly. If you have a chance to crit Ice Wyverns, then the times you one-hit the Hungry ones will make things go faster. Heck, even when I never crit Ice Wyverns, killing the Hungry ones first still makes the run go much faster than targetting only regular ones. Probably because you have to hunt down both kinds and it doesn't take that much longer to kill the Hungry ones anyways.

MAKE SURE CALIDA EXPLORATION CAMP IS YOUR WARP POINT. Seriously, just double-check.

Once it's daytime, you should restock on stuff you need. I recommend five Wings of the Goddess, three small hot-air balloon kits, have a stack of flints in your inventory at all times, and go to Qilla Camp to repair your wand for convenience. Everything you need is right there for you, it just costs money to keep things going nicely.


Still not so sure about Hot-Air Ballooning? Worried that raising Firebolt will feel wasted and you won't get enough Exploration AP to make up for ranking it plus more? Don't worry, I'm providing you proof that this works. I recorded an average session of me doing these runs. It's three runs in-a-row, you can see where I start off, how I lure the Ice Wyverns, I zoom up on my character to show when I'm loading Firebolt after being hit, and I prove how easy this method of hunting Ice Wyverns is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyJyASm7KIU

Watch as much of it as you need to in order to convince yourself whether or not getting all that exploration experience is worth it. In the end of the video you'll see both my explore level and regular level. All of that is just from hunting Ice Wyverns, so if you do this at the start of your rebirths, you can have explore levels maxed and regular levels start off at a good base.

Persevere, and you too can join me in my journey to spread extinction on this species of Iria.