I’m certainly not the first to grind in Moontop Hollow. Not at all. But, for those of you who are nearing level 120 Asc and planning on grinding in 120 Asc caves, I thought I’d give you a bit of my own advice as to where to grind during these levels.

You’ll notice that Ascension Caves are cool and all, but once you reach the 120 caves it gets much harder. With a +6 Body & Weapon, I really feel like I’m borderline on making profit there. In 24 hours of an Asc cave cave grinding, I’ll make a small amount of gold but that does not include the price of pots, pet batteries, and… Ya, I think that’s it… LOL. I have to sell all of my Affinity Beads & Dragonsoul Charms to help make a miniature net profit there! It doesn’t sound worth it to me. Plus, if you lose connection here the chances of you getting killed & losing EXP are big!

In Moontop Hollow, I can sell other faction pieces to 900g-1.2kg each + the accessory or tome pieces for 250-300g each! Celan/Rayan Esper mats (I have proof of this in my bag) drop now that the factions have been released and are selling fast like drugs.

This gives me about 1k-2k per day, depending on quantity and type of Esper drops I get in a day’s grind.

The best part of grinding here, is that when you finish you will have enough gold or enough drops to make a 135 Balo Esper and be cool like the other high level Asc Balos!

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120-131

With a +6 120 body, I’m getting hit for -1′s without Iron Guts on!
That removes the need for Health pots. (Low level M/D pots should cover it.)

I only use +Attack Power skills (Tiger Ice, Dragon’s Light, Dragon Speed, & Clan attack buff.)
That removes the need for a ton of Spirit Pots. (Low level M/D pots should cover it.)

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I typed in the names of the mobs I do NOT want to attack into the Invigorate Settings to the right of the Invigorate Area section. Now I don’t attack mobs that spam stuns or sleep.

I attack only the Enflamed Embrace mobs. These mobs give Weaken (all mobs here give Weaken) and Silence effects. The only problem I see is that these mobs are using a +Evasion buff. It’s short lived, but they do spam it a bit. If you have +accuracy equipment, it will help here. It isn’t really needed though because I have no +accuracy equipment and I’m satisfied.

Since I’m silenced almost the whole time, I can’t use skills. If I have skills trying to go off while silenced, I WON’T ATTACK UNTIL THE SKILL GOES OFF! That means you MUST put your Esper skill with a 99999 second cooldown! If it’s on 0, you’ll be sitting there not attacking waiting for silence to wear off. You are aiming for a non-skill melee-only grind here.

The only skill I have in my Esper tray is Dragon’s Light. This is for the +Attack Power bonus. You’ll want this. I set my cooldown to 400 because it gets funky on me when I minimize. You can probably do 600 and be just fine. Test it out for yourself to see what is good.

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It takes me about 30 seconds to kill each mob. I KNOW, that sounds slow, right? It’s not that bad of a deal. Each mob gives 138k EXP atm without double exp and drops like, 4 provisions each. Keep in mind that you will gain exp faster in a Pre-Asc map because of sleepless, dispatcher quests, and use skills. You don’t get any of that here.

I currently have a 120 +6 skytouch weapon and a G12 pet with evenly spread Celebeans that I’m using to kill these mobs.

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*Problems with pets*

Set your pet to defensive so that it will attack only after you’ve been hit first.

My pet keeps running away. I think this happens when it gets silenced. I’m not understanding why that is happening. I don’t want it to run away. I have enough pet pots for it to last a long time.

Your pet will take damage from the AoE, so you’ll need a bit of Pet pots. These are what… 10g each? They last a long time with a good pet. Don’t expect to need much of these.

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So while it isn’t like grinding in Ascension Caves w/ Affinity Beads and Sleepless, I’m still making way way way more gold than if I were to grind in pre-asc areas because of the 135 Esper drops & Ethereal equipment that drops there.

It’s easy to say that grinding here is more profitable than when I was grinding as Arden Pre-Asc with Swamp Bull and Silence plant. I was using a ton of health pots & a ton of spirit pots just to keep my plant and bull going 24/7. Now, I barely use any pots at all.

If you have questions, ask them.

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Miscellaneous info about Moontop:

The snakes & spiders in the middle of Moontop Hollow have Spirit Drain & Sleep & Weaken. Don’t bother fighting them. And beware of Horrid Fumes. They will **** your day up with that bleed. I tried to kill one yesterday at 126 & couldn’t even pot through that ****. It’s not worth the fight. Just run past it to the other side. Avoid these three mobs at all times if you can.

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I have done some leveling and experimenting and have some new mobs for you to try!

133-1xx (133-140~something, I guess?)
(geez I’m triple posting here.)

I made it to the stairs to fight the next level of mobs now that I’m level 133. The first set of mobs are now greennamed since the last time I was in MTH.

They do like -300 damage with the attack posture on. I switched to the defense posture with Combat Spirit still on, with Turtle Ice, and they hit for -1 again. So while I have to buy buffs to get hit for -1 again, it isn’t anything too drastic. I still wear +6 Skytouch body and weapon. Honor Gem body +8 would probably have helped here instead of a Skytouch.

I’m still satisfied with the -1 though.

AND… I’ve switched mobs. Lambert Hanyao have crazy Evasion. Stun mobs are my new targets. I timed fighting only silence mobs and then timed fighting only stun mobs. I found out that it takes much less time to kill the Stunning mobs than the Silence ones.

If you want to work your way through as a balo, try using Shatter and Sky Rift in your Esper Tray with 0 usage time. That should make quick work of them. Maybe I’m dodging the skills, I don’t know, but they don’t seem to spam that Stun like Bone Spirits.

Tianmo Ghouls (stun mobs) like to go down in 30 seconds, Lambent Hanyao (silence & evasion mobs) like to die in 43 seconds. I used Skyrift and Shatterer with my pet during those times.

There are some problems I noticed. Sometimes they would start to spam those status effects and it will take me a long time to kill them. Here are some examples:

Tianmo Ghoul w/o skills: 1:00.
Tianmo Ghoul w/ skills: 1:30.
Tianmo Ghoul w/ skills: 0:46.
Tianmo Ghoul w/ skills: 0:39.
Tianmo Ghoul w/ skills: 0:57.

Lambert Hanyao w/o skills: 1:09
Lambert Hanyao w/ skills: 1:30.
Lambert Hanyao w/ skills: 0:40.
Lambert Hanyao w/ skills: 0:41.
Lambert Hanyao w/ skills: 1:24.

Those long times are when the mobs decide to spam me with debuffs and keep me from attacking. The w/o times are without using skills.

…I suppose it’s a toss-up…

Once I hit T5 and I’m wearing better Armor & have Powerful Aid and Durable Fighter, I’m sure I’ll be killing these mobs much faster. When I end up getting Ancient Soul, it will be even better for me.

Give me 3 more levels and I can give you some better stats on my time inside Moontop Hollow. ^^

I went to go further upstairs but got distracted and stopped running right next to a Horrid Fume Source. Soooooo now I’m laying dead waiting for a resurrect.

After getting a res, I go upstairs until I reach the crazy mobs with 4 legs and 4 arms. Here is what they look like:

I enjoy fighting these more. The stun lasts for 2 seconds. TWO. They give a Disarm debuff like the Tianmo, but I don’t even think Disarm works… lol. I don’t see it doing anything…

There is also an Elite Boss that wanders around they dies faster than the surrounding mobs.

However, I think in the location you see in the map above there is a Horrid Fume Source spawn location. Grinding here is dangerous because one could spawn there. Take that into consideration. For right now, there isn’t a Horrid Fume Source and I’m enjoying my kills.

Credits go to Scabies.