Damage Reduction Bypassing

As you begin your training, you'll notice that some foes are more vulnerable from your attacks than other foes. For instance, while a skeleton crumbles to dust easily with a few blows of your fist, a zombie will withstand far more punishment from unarmed attacks.

As a Shintao or Ninja Spy Monk, you will likely fight unarmed most of the time. A Henshin Mystic might use a staff. Your fists and most quarterstaffs are considered Bludgeoning weapons. In the example, a skeleton is vulnerable to bludgeoning effects, but a zombie resists bludgeoning. A slashing weapon is needed for best effectiveness.

You will need to change your tactics to increase your damage against some foes or they may kill you before you can kill them.

A typical enemy's resistance to weapon, spell or elemental effects is known as damage reduction, or DR.

Damage reduction appears in many forms:

• Metallic (Byeshk, Cold Iron, Adamantine, Silver)
• Elemental (Acid, Fire, Electricity, Water, Sonic, Force)
• Alignment (Good, Evil, Chaotic, Lawful, Neutral)
• Magic
• Weapon damage (Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing)
• Crystal
• Light
• Epic
• Untyped

Of all of these, you cannot bypass Untyped. This appears in the notation of "DR #/-" on an enemy. Whatever that "#" number is, that foe will always negate that amount of damage received. Epic DR is found only on certain enemies, or on a Level 20 Monk, who gains DR 10/Epic: The first 10 points of any damage is ignored.

To fight effectively throughout the game, you have several often-complementing options to negate, or bypass damage reduction.

• Use another weapon that bypasses the damage reduction of an enemy.
• Find handwraps or weapons with Red augment slots and add an appropriate gem for material or alignment bypass.
• Wear items that add a type of damage, such as a pair of Brawling Gloves, which add piercing damage to unarmed attacks.
• Wear an item that ignores damage reduction, such as Banishing weapons.
• Use special crafting options from House Cannith.
• Train yourself through Level 16 for Adamantine bypassing.
• Use quarterstaves that deliver Slashing damage.
• Train as a Shintao Monk.
• Become an Epic Monk, gain 23 WIS, and take Vorpal Strikes for Slashing damage to your attacks.

You can find a comprehensive list of monsters and their DR and other vulnerabilities in the DDO Wiki.

Weapons other than handwraps

Aside from unarmed fighting, all Monks are naturally proficient in a few simple weapons. As you begin as a disciple of the Way of the Elements, carry about at least one kama, which adds Slashing DR to your attacks.

Quarterstaffs are Bludgeoning weapons, like your fists. Remember this well, Henshin Mystics. You'll encounter a few staves that add Slashing.

If you are a student of the Inevitable Dominion school and are training as a Ninja Spy, you gain the ability to use shortswords, piercing weapons in many forms and metals to help bypass DR. It's easy and inexpensive to add shortsword proficiency to any Monk--just take the first core enhancement of Ninja Spy for 1 AP.

There is some special training, such as Whirling Steel Strike, which allow the use of large weapons such as longswords. To add puncturing damage, Zen Archery can be used to add damage from ranged attacks that are more effective than those from shurikens.

Skilled students that are knowledgeable of Fighters and other melee classes could use Kensei training to ultimately make daggers, maces and even axes as ki weapons with the right training.

Non-Weapon DR Bypassing

Normally, a weapon has only one weapon damage bypass. A sword is a slashing weapon. A rapier is a piercing one. Handwraps are bludgeoning accessories.

You can find accessories that add effects to your weapons that aren't weapons themselves. One example is the Brawling Gloves, special gloves available only through the Treasure of Crystal Cove event. These add STR but also add spikes to your unarmed attacks--Piercing damage. These help against Rakshasas and Crimson Foot spiders but watch out when fighting oozes (wearing these will break them apart into more foes).

As you reach Level 18, you can unlock the Incredible Potential of special rings found in the Plane of Shavarath that add alignment or elemental burst effects to your unarmed attacks.

Note to Ninja Spies: The Brawling Gloves's piercing effect does not allow the Ninja Poison or Ninja Master vorpal effects to work. Nor will handwraps with Spiked properties work to inject poison with Update 19.3. You must use a true weapon with piercing/slashing effects (or the Poisoned Darts ability) to inject poison.

Banishers

Banishing handwraps are a special case. Rather than worrying about bypassing an enemy's damage reduction, they ignore it altogether. Banishing weapons are sensitive to where an enemy originates and not their inherent damage resistances. As as result, you can use these effectively against foes such as the lawful outsiders of Eladrin ("Running with the Devils") or other extraplanar foes if you have nothing else available.

The primary advantage of banishing handwraps is that you may send them back to their home plane, quickly removing them.

Banishers can work well against foes that cannot be banished, adding 100 points of damage on critical hits, if you are fighting them in areas where banishing is not possible, such as devils and demons in their native home of Shavarath, or fighting a red-named enemy that cannot be banished.

Banishing requires that the enemy's total hit points be less than 1,000 before a banish attempt will work. Otherwise, they receive 100 points of damage.

Combination Damage Reductions

A few of the nastiest enemies require you to bypass two or more damage reductions simultaneously to hurt them fully. The most known foe of this kind is a pit fiend in "The Shroud" raid called Arratreikos, or "Harry" for short. His kind cannot be damaged substantially without a weapon with both Silver and Good as its property.

For a Shintao Monk with Argent Fist (whose unarmed attacks can bypass Silver), your handwraps must have (or you must wear an item that adds) a Good-aligned property to your hands to bypass Harry's DR.

All other Monks need one of the following weapon qualities, armed or unarmed:

• Metalline of Pure Good/Righteousness
• Silver of Pure Good/Righteousness
• Holy with Silver
• Aligned with Silver

(You can't have "Holy with Metalline" as Metalline and Holy are exclusive prefix properties.)

Again, a higher-level Artificer is very helpful here. If you have Good-aligned wraps, ask for a Silver-weapons buff. If you have metal-based handwraps, ask for a Planar Weapons/Good alignment buff.

Remember that red augment slots allow the use of Good or Silver augment gems. Putting the proper one of these in handwraps such as Devotion or Eternal Rest handwraps is a quick way to create a pair of "Harry Beaters."

The most challenging DR property to fight is Crystal. This DR is found on the Devourer of Dreams, the boss of "The Dreaming Dark" quest. He needs Crystal+Good to fully damage him. You can design handwraps in House Cannith using Alchemical formulas to help here.

Experience with this foe shows that the Crystal bypassing isn't required for damaging him. However, as the Devourer of Dreams creates spawns that quickly drain your ability stats, it's imperative that you find the best solution to take that boss down quickly before you're left helpless.

Henshin Mystics should seek out the Dreamspitter, a crystalline quarterstaff designed to fight dream creatures and can be upgraded in two modes. Being made of crystal, the Dreamspitter is also very durable and wears down very slowly in comparison to wooden staves.