Damage and Refining
Understanding Gear and "Damage"
Weapons do not have a “damage” stat like in other RPGs. Damage is primarily based on either your total attack, or magic attack if you're a mage class. This means anything that gives attack is just as effective as attack given by your weapon. Your weapon just happens to give a lot of attack up front making it a high priority early on but when tiering up starts to give 10-30 attack for a few million zeny you really should consider other options to boost your attack, you may be surprised at how much you can get for the same price.
Initially you’re going to buy or craft basic gear for your class. Most guides give you a good idea of where you’re heading but not where to start, they just tell you to get a ton of stuff. This is very true for Miss Maven’s guides which are wonderful sources to understand your build and where you're going, but suggest gear that is far out of reach and don't explain the path to get there.
For your main, you should aim to buy the base versions of your recommended gear and slowly upgrade them, prioritizing your weapon and any pieces related to damage such as ignore defense pieces, etc. For alts however, see some starter suggestions in the Gearing Up section for cheap weapons suited to alts that will save you a ton of money early on that are good enough to start farming decent zeny.
Most other slots offer you very small bonuses to attack or small percentage bonuses so your weapon will most likely be your priority here for quite some time. Items like the Ancient Cape and Rosa Bracelet provide a significant bonus without any tiers or refines and are always great investments to make early.
From here you should be thinking about what your priorities should be. This means you should not tunnel vision your gear. Yes, boosted accounts need upgraded gear, badly, including tiers and refines. However, once these upgrades start giving you 20-30 attack for 2-5 million it may be better to go for something else. This may be crafting and depositing unlocks into your adventure handbook, cooking mastery, investing into Aesir monument, or even guild praying.
Accessories are a great point of discussion here as I’ve had several new players talk about wanting to upgrade their accessories, yet the cost of the accessories they are looking at are astronomical for a new player for a mere 10-12 attack per tier. This is wasteful early on and at the price of one dogtooth glove they could secure the first 150 attack in their handbook and still walk away with a ton of zeny.
Given the price of some of the most popular accessories (powerful ring, dogtooth glove, orleans glove, etc) upgrading accessories should be your last priority. Luna brooch is cheap attack and cheap to tier up if you need some more so stick with it for now and upgrade to expensive accessories later.
Attack is your base for almost everything, never forget that!
Damage Formula as of 3/3/19 (expand this for details)
For those really interested in how damage calculations works, I've provided the last estimated formula provided by reddit user JosephClimbr who tested and figured this out back in March of '19.
Original Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/RagnarokMobile/comments/awvpyz/dmg_formula_exposed_each_dmg_modifier_explained/
Skill Damage =
(((baseAtk*AtkInc%*WeaponSize*SizeMod*ElementMod*ConverterMod*ElementDmgInc+StatsAtk)*RaceMod*Penetration*HiddenRefineBonus*DefRed)+RefineAtk)*GearSkillMod*RuneMod*SkillMod%*DmgInc%
Auto Attack Damage =
(((baseAtk+MainStat*3+bonusAA)*AtkInc%*WeaponSize*SizeMod*ElementMod*ConverterMod*ElementDmgInc+StatsAtk)*RaceMod*Penetration*HiddenRefineBonus*DefRed)+RefineAtk)*DmgInc%
The post ends stating the following:
In General: DmgInc = Pen = Crit% = skill% = runes% > Race > Size = Element = converter = atk%;
For skill (0def target): baseAtk>statAtk>refineAtk;
For AA (0def target): mainStat>baseAtk>refineAtk;
However, as time has gone on we've noticed that general priority seem to be: DmgInc > Pen > Crit% > skill% = runes% > Race > Size = Element = converter = atk%
Don't follow this rule blindly however, as 3% damage increase may at times, be worse than 4% pen. DPS dummies can be placed in homes now to test these things and trust me, these things will shift as your stats grow and having zero pen and lots of damage increase only means pen will have much more of an effect.
As far as attack goes, it's important in each formula as it feeds into all multipliers, therefore it is imperative to find as many sources of attack as possible so I will be driving this home throughout the guide.
Refined Gear
This used to be a section about refined gear traps, however new players are now thrown into the lion's den with high level characters and gear that's not suitable for any content outside of Louyang areas. As you try to clear ET, Oracle, Thanatos Tower, Echoring Corridor, and the new Palace of Beauty you'll find yourself getting absolutely massacred by mobs you're barely dealing any damage to. Before you go out and blindly buy gear you need to understand what refining does and why you should care because at this level of play, by the time you'd normally hit 120 without a boost you'd have refined gear by now, usually to +10.
The first bonus of refining is the +12 true damage bonus per refine. This means that buying a +7 doom axe is only 84 more true attack compared to a clean doom axe. Refine damage is added onto the near end of the damage formula (see above if your interested in the details) after core skill multipliers go making this bonus extremely small for how expensive this is. If you’ve already bought a refined weapon and are shocked that you’re barely seeing an increase in damage this is why and I’m sorry. This is not like other RPGs where upgrading your weapon to +2 would provide a sizeable raw damage bonus.
The other reason to refine gear is to activate special bonuses listed on gear. If you check out the Doom Axe below, there is an explicit refine bonus shown when it reaches Tier 8 that adds % arm cannon damage for every refine level. Arm Cannon is an ability is for a third job blacksmith and a staple for your Lightbringer, especially if you get your hands on the rune that allows you to "stack" arm cannon charges for one big hit.
For your lower level farming alts however, this axe pretty much does nothing at +7. Look at your target gear and see what really makes it stand out. Most weapons have roughly the same base attack range when fully synthed so those refine bonuses are large differences between your alternative options and are what allow your damage to start scaling pretty well depending on what you're using.
Other examples below show other bonuses that only activate at +10 or even +15.
Example refine bonuses on Robe of Cast
Example refine bonuses on Doom Axe
Example refine bonuses on Mystery Bow
We’ll come back to refining later but for now just know that your boosted character will need their target gear (whichever guide you're using to tell you what to craft & purchase) at some refining level to start seeing nice returns which is usually +10. Sometimes these refines kick in earlier and will allow you to switch over to this gear sooner. Many refine bonuses on gear offer % bonuses to attack or damage so more base stats means better value and with this boost you're starting with a decent amount of attack.
Be mindful, this can cost anywhere from 15-30 million to safe enhance your weapon to +10, in addition to the 20-30 million zeny to synth it. On the new server you could expect to pay even more since the market and population is just not established yet.
However, do not tunnel vision your gear! For boosted accounts gear is extremely important right now, but don't forget that you get attack from other sources and once you start to get your weapons refined and synthed. Consider alternatives for stats since the costs of several of these systems are very cheap to entry compared to the costs of refining.
Let’s say you have 3000 attack and buy a +10 mystery bow. The +10 refine bonus on this bow gives you 2% attack which comes out to 60 more attack at your current attack value. A +10 Mystery Bow costs just over 32 million on global while a +5 is just over 2 million. This means you’re spending an extra 30 million zeny on an extra 60 attack, or 500k per attack.
Compare this to depositing a wolf card into your adventure handbook which gives your entire account 9 attack. This costs 308k, just over 34k per attack. Not only is this significantly cheaper, but it also helps your alts. Do not tunnel vision your gear, think first.
In fact, you can get the first 100 attack in your handbook for under 4 million, enough to beat out this bonus all the way up to about 5000 attack, a huge bonus indeed. Always consider other options before going for high refining.
To be clear, % increases are critical for the mid to end game. However, even though your account has been boosted make no mistake, you're still in early game as far as your gear and handbook stats are concerned. Established players in the 120 level range would normally have a lot of handbook stats, a +10 weapon, and several other expensive equips at their disposal which for many, still was not enough to one shot the mobs without using gear and buffs that specifically target the enemy weaknesses. It's going to take some work to get you out of the Wind Breath and Wasteland zones out into the rest of the world..