Monk Training Grounds is a Farm event where the signature unit is directly dropped from indicated monsters in selective event maps for players to Cost Reduce and Skill Upgrade. For new players this is a sort of lottery event since drops are not guaranteed as well as your chances of getting successful Cost Reduction and Skill Upgrades. Refer to my post regarding Event Missions for more details about Farm events in general.

The Unit: Monk Rin

Rin is a Platinum Monk, a class that is built with evasion and multiblock capabilities. Monks in general have low UP cost, and functions as an early game unit that deals with weak monster rushes. Their DPS are generally considered decent due to the relative attack and speed given their low UP cost. Rin has a HP/Attack affection, which is a buff to monk’s general strength since their weaknesses has always been on defense. Rin will also see the beginning of the many farm signature units that come with 10 skill levels, gradually setting the benchmark for most future farm event units. Her skill gives her attack/defense boost for a short period of time, with a fast initial cooldown yet long subsequent cooldowns after that. This means that strategically she isn’t suitable for use after early game as her multiblock with low defense will hurt her and demand more healing attention, directly undermining your healer’s effectiveness in the area. This also means that for Rin to do her job she needs skill levels, and usually the target is level 9.

Map Preview:

Monk Training Grounds has 5 maps as usual. This is a pretty easy event in terms map monsters and difficulty apart from some tricky situations that will caught players off guard on their first try, particularly unexpected rushes. You will also be seeing black ogres for the first time as well as the slime guardians(women in fact) that deals damage like Princesses. These are high MR units so ranged physical damage is useful against them, as well as witches for the slow.

In terms of trickery, map 4 is a 0 ranged map removing prolonged healing from the mission, meaning that you can only rely on melee units to do the damage and withdraw. You will want to prepare quite a number of assorted melee units for this one like Bandits/Heavy Infantries. Map 2 has the slime guardians so be sure to leave a couple of archers for those towards the end of the map, while Map 3 generally has high mobility units all round demanding delicate position timing and UP cost management. Map 5 has quite a number of high defense units that will serve as a frontline while a rush comes in at their back so high AOE magic damage is recommended as well as a couple of multiblockers. There is also a tiny shortcut path that monsters seldom use so it will catch you off guard if you do not prepare enough to cover this path since the last wolf rush will exploit them alongside an ogre.

Team Preparation:

You will want a bit of everything for this event. The bronze soldiers trained for Spirit Rescue H can be handy for those lacking in trained melee units for map 4. 2 CCed healers will cover most of your needs for this event; usually a third is not required unless your healers aren’t well-trained. 2 Mages are also required for map 5, you can also prepare a Bronze one in case the UP isn’t forgiving enough. Multiple Soldiers are useful for early game UP generation as well as blocking rush, and you want to have multiple Heavy Infantries/Bandits for strategic blocking and temporary burst. Having a couple of Valkyries can help out with UP generation as well as providing some sustained melee DPS. Also prepare a couple of witches for emergencies. Prepare the usual ranged physical units for map 2; archers/bounties/pirates are all fine.

Other Important Stuff:

1)Rin as a Core Anti-Rush Unit?
In my honest opinion, monks generally are very hard to be considered core. Their valuable strengths in being a low-cost multiblock evasive unit is strongly undermined by their weakness in defense. When comparing the hybrid class with their base classes in Soldier and Rogue there are multiple aspects to see that having a bit of both from these 2 base classes is not a very good idea. Rogue evasion works well because you are talking about 50% chance for a single blocked monster to hit or miss. While the same applies to multiblock scenario in monk the chances of getting hit or miss is doubled because of the one extra blocked monster. This means that monk relies even more heavily to the evasion procs than rogue, as they don’t actually gain too much of a HP advantage to rogues considering their defense frailties as well as the advantage of rogues having assassination procs to immediately end a fight compared to monk with mostly DPS boosts. While Rin in herself does gain defense boost on skill activation with the long reuse cooldown she will lose out in prolonged fights.

Comparing monks to soldiers further undermines the class because of the absolute skill advantage soldiers have. There are few skills as valuable as passive UP generation and monks certainly will never outclass this advantage. Moreover, in terms of stat they lose out in the defense battle since most soldiers come with decent defense stats and HP to give them the necessary defense mechanics for the extra block. I feel like monks will only be a relevant unit class until their defenses are shored up; give them the necessary defense stats and evasion as a tradeoff for not having passive UP generation/assassination advantage.

2)Drop Farming
Silver Soldier is the story here, with Crave and Rosalie showing up in both map 4 and 5. Soldiers are extremely important as CC fodders so having extras will never hurt considering their wide usage as more unit classes show their way into the game. Silver Bandit is another fodder that is usually required by Rogue/Bandit/Pirate/Ninja CCs. If you are going for soldier farms, map 4 is the perfect map for you with Crave/Rosalie both showing up. Map 5 generally has the best Rin drop rate, while the overall drop rarity is considered decent as well.

Conclusion:

From a free player perspective, Rin is NOT* a unit you want to spend an arm and a leg on to max CR/SU. Her Return of Investment just isn’t that great. Do look at the possibility of spending for the silver soldiers though, especially if you have spent for Len and are still a bit short to hitting the stamp card target for this month. Otherwise just go with the event collecting the SCs and farm leisurely.

*Fixed an issue where spellcheck removed an important word that would change the entire context of the sentence.

A member of the HAT combination, healers are extremely vital in Millennium War Aigis simply due to the fact that there is a unit limit of 15 that players can take into a mission. Healers are the sole reliable sustain unit in the game, where the class itself is self-explanatory; healers restore HP of non-vampiric units within range that have taken damage. They are pivotal to most if not all strategies, and it is generally advised that a team of 3-4 main healer units form the basis of your long-term compositions depending on their rarity.

Training priorities for healers vary, and are mostly tied to their rarity because it directly affects their consistency in heal strength. High attack healers are generally preferred, but because they are the main healing unit in the game more so in EN when other supplementary healing units are still not available that UP cost also holds a major benefit for this class. Cost reduction and skill upgrades are strongly recommended to all healers in the game; getting one out as early as possible is always a good thing to ensure overall survivability of your units on the field.

Healer skills range from basic healing power boost to extended range as well as curing status ailments. In deciding which healer to max first, always pick the ones with the highest base attack stat including affection for the best impact. Much like archers, range extension for healers are great, but situational at best. Also, status ailments are pretty rare at this stage of the game so status ailment removal skills won’t be the top of the list at the moment.

Silver:

The interesting part about all silver healers in this game is that they share the same skill. They are also the only healers that can be summoned within 1 Reinforcement III rotation at 15 UP when max CRed/CCed hence why even cash players always keep a couple of silver healer copies to deal with extremely harsh early rush maps. All things considered Dorca is a weaker healer than Alissa and can be considered as irrelevant for min/max players, with the only issue being variety as this means that you need only Alissa copies to effectively CR your silver healers, rendering Dorca a skill/awakening fodder, which can take a long time to cultivate. Christopher is never going to provide the sort of healing power due to his affection bonus being pretty inferior but he is the only reliable source of male-only sustain for majority of the players. In fact in comparison between Christopher and Robert Christopher actually provides better base healing than Robert during skill downtime of which Robert has better healing output during skill activation. This means that having at least 1 copy of Christopher helps a lot in male-only mod maps, while safe players usually train 2 as contingencies although male-only maps are generally not too difficult.

Gold:

For a free gold healer, Iris is pretty good at her trade. In comparing between her and Fedora it is the matter of healing ceiling and wider range. Iris is generally preferred in most conventional strategies because of her overall growth including post Awakening; she is an all out healer, meaning that she is built exactly for that purpose, to provide heal and more heal, with instant heal upon deployment and faster status ailment decay as her Awakening passive. In contrast, Fedora is a situational healer; her build serves greater purpose in situations where you have few range slots and require your healer to be able to cover a bigger than usual area. Fedora’s awakening also tend to aid for emergencies with a minor UP cost reduction. Robert, like Christopher, pales in comparison with their female counterparts due to bad affection bonus. His additional passive and awakening bonus provides better drop rate of alcohols or male affection items in maps which is again not too useful unless you are building a male-only composition.

Platinum:

Camilla and Chydis are the only available healers of this rarity in Nutaku Aigis at the moment. Much like her sister Iris, Camilla is also an all out healer with the highest heal ceiling in the game on skill activation as well as the same awakening skill set as Iris. In contrast, Chydis is the best healer a freemium can get, with a skill that provides range extension and reasonable heal augmentation. This means that much like Fedora, Chydis is a situational healer, but suffers in tankiness due to her low HP. Her awakening passive and innate magic resist all aim to boost her survivability, but in terms of physical damage reduction Camilla with a flat HP advantage is in a much better spot.

Black:

Liana is a sad story for freemium players, since this is supposedly a collection event unit and has to be turned into a summon unit due to the lolicon restriction barring another Saint healer Iris into Nutaku’s version. Liana’s skill is unique that she not only gains range extension but the ability to cure status ailments. In contrast with the healing sisters’ awakening ability, Liana’s skill cures status instantly while the sisters reduce the duration of the status. This is huge because in maps where certain status ailments like enhanced paralysis is present your units can be in deep trouble when getting severely paralyzed, especially units that rely on defense stats to survive since they suffer defense stat loss for the duration. Apart from that, she has the best base healing strength, only losing out to the Platinum healers when skills are considered. This means that she provides more base healing overall but will not be as good choice as the Platinum healers if you are looking for burst heal periods like during a period of boss fight.

Heir to the Strategist is a Collection event where you farm for collection items up to a certain amount to unlock a Heaven Strategist reward unit and upgrade her. This is second collection event of the game following the release of Vampire Bride earlier.

The Unit: Heaven Strategist Ren

Ren is a Rearguard Tactician, an extremely niche unit class that serves as a support to reduce skill reuse cooldown. In terms of her attack, the unit has a pretty low attack, compensated by her firing 2 projectiles for one attack cycle. This is further compounded with a low attack range at 140 pre-CC and 180 post-CC. Thus from a DPS point of view this is not a unit that you are expecting to dish out handsome damage which is not her specialty anyway.

For a player to properly use Ren he/she must first understand that this unit is a support unit, meaning that her presence on the field is not to deal damage, but to augment others. Particularly on her passive where she reduces skill reuse cooldown of onfield units by about 10-20% per second. This only applies when she is on the field, and once she is withdrawn the skill reuse cooldown of other units are reverted to their original state. Ren’s passive also does not improve initial skill cooldown.

Ren’s skill when activated grants a global defense bonus. This is overlapped on Prince’s skill so the bonus is pretty handsome for a start. Therefore Ren’s usage are mostly on 2 key scenarios: the first scenario is when there is a need to fight for a long time with high skill reuse rate, and a second scenario where a bonus is required to tank a megaboss. She is also pretty effective when you are running a composition comprising of many skill based units like Maribel for instance.

Map Preview:

Heir to the Strategist spans 8 maps and of course new monsters. Talk about goblins! Apart from the usual purple/red goblins, armors, gargoyles and wolves there will be a new set of black goblins including the riders that deal ranged damage and moves at a pretty decent speed as well as a couple of rogue tier goblin King that boasts high magic resist and HP.

The difficulties of these maps scale pretty heavily post map 3. If you are taking the conventional build path CC units are mostly required starting Map 4 onwards, and will only get harder after Map 6. In particular a couple of hard hitting monsters are back in this event; the Viking Armor units that is strong both offensively and defensively, the introduction of the goblin kings that hit just as fast as a rogue and obviously at a higher attack power, as well as the annoying riders that are ranged and the black goblin archers that also boasts high attack speed (like no kidding, very high attack speed).

Almost all units will be required for this event; collection events are typically hard going forward, and this one in particular requires various units due the the multiple damage source being effective in different areas. In particular, archers/mages are key to this event due to their high DPS as well as AOE damage. Your blockers have to be established in order for them to deal with the multiple rushes that will occur in different stages for each map, as well as tanking the goblin kings who can be extremely brutal if your units aren’t well trained. Also for once I will actually recommend the usage of rogues in some parts of the event. The assassination might be useful for players who struggle, as well as dealing with a couple of the early rushes if you have no consistent high attack blockers.

For cash players, Vampire Hunters can prove very useful in this map due to their burst. Likewise Olivie can also shine when used against the goblin kings since her high evasion can be effective against the high attack speed of the monster. Free users can use Karma although the key here is to quickly burst the goblin king down instead of dragging the fight. Skill usage in terms of timing is important as well considering a couple of the maps do drag for a bit with high density of monsters spawning over a period of time. Utilize area damage well with your multiblockers as well as strategic placement of healers to achieve balanced healing coverage. This is particularly important when going against maps that come with a lot of ranged monsters. Ninjas can serve as backup units to deal with leaked monsters, while Samurais like Sakuya are useful against rushes involving black goblins as well.

Drop Rate:

Despite requiring only 700 art of wars the drop of the event is also adjusted appropriately to match the difficulty in collecting the required amounts. Only drops of 1, 2 and 3 are available in this event, and the drop efficiency isn’t that fantastic. The only really effective map to farm the art of wars is map 8, with a 0.75-1.0 efficiency for min-max drop in terms of stamina usage assuming you get the relevant monsters. Other maps generally have a 0.5 efficiency for min drop with exception to map 1 where you get nothing at all and map 6 where the efficiency is at 0.4. Map 7 gives the best max drop efficiency at 1.17 while other maps are generally at 1.0, with map 3 being the worst at 0.75. This means that for players who cannot do map 8, the other good alternatives are map 2,4,5 and 7, although in comparison with charisma and drop qualities you will want to farm map 4 and 7 instead.

Other Important Stuffs:

1) Art of War Targets

Since Nutaku’s Aigis generally releases all event missions from the get go with the same event period as JP this means that crystal spendings for the event is generally more forgiving, with realistic targets at about 20-35* crystals being more than enough to get a fully CR/SU Ren.

For players who cannot effectively farm this event especially new players, getting 30 is probably enough for a guaranteed copy of her. Ren is not overpowered at all; in fact I have all the reason to believe that this release is going to be her pre-buff state, and that is not a very good Ren at all.

For players who can farm map 8, Ren’s value is her skill bonus. Since she is already built with low UP cost a -2 is considered pretty decent for her calibre, but you will want her skill to be at level 3 and above for a better defensive bonus spike. In general if you are on an unlucky streak for two weeks getting 250 should be minimal for 0 crystal spending. Usually anything higher than 300 will require crystal spending unless you are extremely lucky, so a rough spending of 5-10 crystals are required if you are looking for +3 and above in skill levels.

2) Is Ren worth the cash?

Despite me loving the unit for various reasons at a very general level I’d say no at the moment. Ren’s problems far outweighs her strength; Her first pre-buff state is a defensive tactician, where her affection bonus gives her HP and defense, which is way less important since she is a ranged unit and is not expected to be the front tanker by any means. Secondly, her attack range is too small to be effective to the extent of granting her a range slot on the field in most scenarios; other alternatives are always available, and in scenarios where these alternatives cannot solve Ren as her own will not be able to solve them either. She is not a make-or-break unit; strategies aren’t built around her, its always the other way round.

But the biggest problem on Ren is her overall usefulness at this stage of the game. As mentioned earlier, Ren is useful against megabosses and long duration maps. When I talk about long duration maps I am talking about maps that require more than 5 minutes to complete; These are usually Grand March maps or maps with long spawn durations and megaboss maps. At this stage of the game Grand March event has yet to make its way to the stage, awakening has yet to arrive and there is no consistent megaboss map spawns yet; the closest boss to that megaboss status currently seen here is the Black Oni from the previous Shiho event. Lacking of long duration maps means that there won’t be a lot of demand for skill reuse by the same unit, thus removing the need for a percent cooldown reduction buff. Lacking of megabosses means that the defense bonus granted by Ren is not that vital. Moreover the bonus granted by Ren is similar to the Prince bonus yet it is skill based; for that duration of time unless you are dealing with situations where you have to deal with multiple damage threats then Ren’s bonus is minor, especially when it is percentage based so units with low base defense will not receive too big of a bonus anyway.

The argument for Ren is that her usefulness scales later as the game progresses. With her recent buff giving her more DPS instead of HP and the introduction of more megaboss maps in both story and event missions Ren is gradually finding a spot in the composition picture. Buff units are extremely powerful in megaboss maps due to the fact that in most scenarios the only monster left at the end of the map is the megaboss and thus allowing for multiple buff units to be placed in since there won’t be enough slots to position damage units around the boss anyway so attack range is not too big of an issue here, especially if the boss will just one-shot everyone along the way. Also because after awakening her passive grants global defensive bonus without having to be deployed and a way better cooldown reduction this means that Ren will be picked up as core strategies in a couple of future tough maps.

3) Ren’s Synergy

When you talk about rearguard tacticians you will want to look at multiple units, present and future that can work extremely well with them. Ren’s passive provides skill reuse cooldown, scaling from 10-30% depending on her state at pre-CC, post-CC and Awakening. This means that any units that run burst type skills, or skills that only last for a short duration but are extremely powerful are great with her. The most common skill is Request Reinforcement, since it is an instantaneous skill that goes into cooldown timer in a couple of seconds after activation, thus any Soldier with the skill is good to use with Ren. Karma is however an exception since it is rare for one to use Karma’s skill twice in the same map run. Units with extremely long skill reuse cooldown will also benefit since her passive is percentage based.

Ren is also generally touted as the saviour of summoners due to her passive. Summoner is a class that has yet to feature in Nutaku’s Aigis; if Solano does not get hit by the lolicon restriction she will most probably be the first summoner here. Summoners are units that will not attack out of skill activation period; their skill is their attack. This is a problem for the class because despite their attacks being highly powerful their long dormant deployment period usually does not warrant them a deployment slot. With a well trained Ren Summoners can reduce their dormant period and cast more, greatly increasing DPS over time in a long map.

4) Drop Farming

In terms of drop farming this event is the well known Spirit farm; each map has a selective Spirit drop. While majority of these Spirits are Gold Spirits, Map 8 drops Black Spirits so it is a good map to farm if you haven’t pass War of Magic yet. Lauren the male archer drops in Map 8 as well.

Another new silver Samurai unit Sanosuke drops in map 4; Bernard is a map 6 drop. Other drops are considered mediocre; mostly low tier affection items.

Conclusion:

Ren is not easy to use, and requires players to be effective in their skill activation duration and remembering cooldowns. This is a unit that can help you out a lot if you are a mechanical player; otherwise she probably will not be in your composition at all, serving as a benchwarmer. It is best to take this into consideration before deciding whether spending crystals for this event is worth the penny.

* I redid a realistic calculation and noticed that 20 is a huge ask; this can easily be a 30-50 SC expenditure depending on drops and initial stamina gauge limit.