GuidesElite 1
Elite 1
Everything you have worn so far was something you found, used and threw away. Elite 1 is where that stops. It is the bottom rung of a ladder that runs to the end of the game, and you never replace a rung — you turn it into the next one. Which is why the sensible time to start paying for it is well before you can wear it.
68
first piece wearable
86%
the craft succeeds
6
tiers above it
2/hr
the currency it runs on
Why bother at 60
The last set you ever buy
Elite gear is not seven sets. It is one set, seven times over. The chest piece you make at level 68 is the same object you are still wearing at 146 — each step converts the piece you own rather than replacing it, so nothing you put into it is ever wasted.
That is the whole argument for starting early. Anything you buy between 60 and 68 gets sold back; anything you put toward Elite 1 stays with you for another eighty levels. The pieces come into range one at a time — the shirt at 68, the chest at 73 — so you do not need the full set on any one day.
It is also the reason the first rung is the expensive one. E-1 is the only tier you build from raw materials. Every tier after it is built from the tier below, and those steps cannot fail.
Three ways to get a piece: make it at the Crafter, take it off something, or wait — the level milestones hand over a whole set at 120 and 130. The first two are covered separately below; the third is the section straight after this one, because it changes what the rest of the page is for.
The chain
- E-1level 68 – 73
- E-1.5level 79 – 84
- E-2level 89 – 94
- E-2.5level 110 – 115
- E-3level 121 – 126
- E-3.5level 131 – 136
- E-4level 141 – 146
One piece, seven forms. Paladin is the exception — its ladder starts at E-7, level 177, and has no Elite 1 at all.
Read this first
The game gives you a free Elite 1 set at 130
It would be dishonest to run a page about crafting Elite 1 without saying this up front: reach the level milestones and you are handed the whole thing, weapon included, for nothing.
| Milestone | What it hands over | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| Level 110 | Your class’s Elite 1 weapon — both entries, so both weapon types where your class has two | Just reach it |
| Level 120 | Four E-1 armour pieces — protector, gloves, belt, shirt | Just reach it |
| Level 130 | The other four — chest, helmet, pants, boots | Just reach it |
| Level 140 | Your class’s Elite 1.5 weapon, a whole tier up | Just reach it |
So why craft one at all?
Because of the gap. A crafted Elite 1 piece is wearable at 68 and the set completes at 73. The free one arrives at 130. That is fifty-seven levels of wearing whatever you can scavenge, on a set the whole rest of the ladder is built out of — every later tier converts the piece you already own, so the sooner you own one, the sooner the ladder starts.
What the free set is good for
A second set, an alt, or a class you have not committed to. If you are past 110 and have never touched the Crafter, claim the milestones and start the evolution ladder from there instead of building a set you are about to be given. And if you crafted yours at 73 as this page suggests, the free one is still eight pieces of Elite gear you can trade to another player — E-1 trades freely between players, it just cannot be sold to an NPC.
The recipe
What a piece is made of
Three materials, the same three for every piece and every class: two grades of Mayan material, and one soul that depends on what you play. No heim at all — the Crafter charges nothing for these.
| Piece | Wearable at | Mayan Metal Lv.3 | Mayan Jewel Lv.3 | Class soul | Points for the Mayans |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shirt | 68 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 250 |
| Belt | 69 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 350 |
| Boots | 70 | 10 | 8 | 9 | 450 |
| Gloves | 70 | 10 | 8 | 9 | 450 |
| Pants | 71 | 12 | 10 | 13 | 550 |
| Weapon | 71 | 25 | 20 | 18 | 1,125 |
| Protector | 72 | 10 | 6 | 7 | 400 |
| Helmet | 72 | 12 | 8 | 11 | 500 |
| Armour | 73 | 14 | 10 | 15 | 600 |
Know which one is yours
Your class, your set, your soul
The Mayan materials are shared by everybody. The third material is not — each class takes its own soul, and it is the only part of the recipe that changes.
| Class | E-1 armour | E-1 weapon | Soul it takes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berserker | Apollo | Niebelung |  Soul of Destroyer |
| Dragon Knight | Ares | Igdrasil |  Pride of Dragonkin |
| Valkyrie | Nike | Neftis |  Voice of wind |
| Elementalist | Artemis | Cloris |  Tear of Nature |
| Shadow | Hermes | Anubis |  Symbol od Darkness |
| Mystic | Persephone | Hecate |  Rest of the Ancients |
| Helroid | Mars | Osiris |  Destroyed Memory |
| Witchblade | Athens | Sekhmet |  Frosty Anger |
Start today
The Mayan ladder, and the mistake everyone makes
The two Mayan materials are the bulk of the recipe, and there are three ways to get them: buy the low rungs from the online-point merchant, kill things that carry them, or clear a mission you have never cleared before. The merchant is the steady one, and it is the reason this grind can start at level 60 — points accrue from being logged in rather than from being strong.
Lv.2 Mayan Metal
3 pointsBuy this rung. Five of them combine into one Lv.3 at 60%, which is what the recipes want.
Lv.2 Mayan Jewel
3 pointsSame ladder, same odds, slightly higher heim fee on the combine. The other half of every recipe.
- 1
Be logged in
Online points build up at two an hour for being connected — no kills, no quests, nothing to do. They are held to a maximum of five hundred, and once you are sitting on five hundred the clock stops paying you. Spend them; do not hoard them. - 2
Find the point merchant
Cronous in Waldchen and Temps in Aukra sell against the point balance instead of heim. They carry both Mayan materials, at two different grades, and one other thing this guide needs later. - 3
Buy Lv.2, never Lv.1
Lv.1 costs one point and Lv.2 costs three, so Lv.1 looks like the bargain. It is not. Working through the combines, one Lv.3 costs about 25 points if you buy Lv.2 and about 52 if you buy Lv.1 — the dearer rung is less than half the price, because you are paying for the 80% combine you skip. - 4
Combine five into one
Take five Lv.2 to the Crafter and it returns one Lv.3, 60% of the time, for a small heim fee. That is the material the Elite recipe actually asks for. Budget eight or nine Lv.2 for each Lv.3 you need rather than five.
| What you want | Cheapest route | Points | Why not the other way |
|---|---|---|---|
| One Lv.2 Mayan | Buy it | 3 | Five Lv.1 at 80% averages 6.25 points and a heim fee. Buying is cheaper and instant. |
| One Lv.3 Mayan | Buy 8–9 Lv.2, combine | 25 | Built from bought Lv.1 instead it averages 52 points — more than double, for the same material. |
| One Lv.4 Mayan | Don't, not for E-1 | 250 | Ten Lv.3 apiece. Nothing in the Elite 1 recipes asks for Lv.4; only the 20% Incomplete route does. |
New
Three ways to earn them instead of buying them
Until recently the point merchant was the only source of a Mayan anywhere in the game, which made the whole Elite ladder a waiting game. It is not any more — and the largest source of the three is one you cannot help collecting.
| Where | What it gives | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| Captains | Lv.1 Jewel or Lv.1 Metal | 3 in 100 kills |
| Bosses | Lv.2 Jewel or Metal, sometimes Lv.1 | 5 in 100 kills |
| Lucky monsters | A stack of Lv.2, or a bigger stack of Lv.1 | 6 in 100 kills |
| Any mission at level 80+ | 1 Lv.3 Jewel and 1 Lv.3 Metal, both at once | First clear only |
| Every level milestone from 60 | 4 Lv.2 Jewel, 4 Lv.2 Metal, 2 Lv.3 Jewel, 2 Lv.3 Metal | 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110 |
| Level milestones from 140 | Lv.3 Jewels — 5 at a time to 160, then 2 at every level to 170 | 140 – 170 |
The milestones are the big one. They are entries in the Area Conquest window (J, Achievement tab) that tick over when you level and have to be claimed like any other. Nobody goes and does them, and by level 170 they have handed over 29 Lv.2 Jewels, 24 Lv.2 Metals, 47 Lv.3 Jewels and 12 Lv.3 Metals — several sets’ worth of the material this whole page is about, for nothing but playing the game. Check the window periodically; unclaimed rewards sit there indefinitely.
Note the imbalance: the ladder pays nearly four times as many Lv.3 jewels as Lv.3 metals, and an armour set needs 82 metal to 60 jewel. Metal is what you will run out of, and metal is what the merchant is for.
The mission reward is the one worth planning around. It pays the Lv.3 rung directly — the rung the Elite recipes actually ask for, and the one that costs 25 points and two combines to make any other way — and it pays both materials, not a choice between them. There are twenty-three qualifying missions, so a character who works through them collects forty-six Lv.3 Mayans on the way. That is most of an armour set.
The hard part
Where the souls come from
The Mayans are a matter of patience. The soul is a matter of going somewhere dangerous — and the somewhere in question hands out finished Elite pieces as well, which changes the plan.
The souls come off the lucky monsters in the Temple of Blood — the shadow copy of the world you reach through a portal in the region maps. Six kinds roam it: Bloody Slime, Ferocious Rat, Crystal Monster, Scarlet Dragon, Infernotous and the Betrayer of the Temple. Thirty-eight of them are spawned across the thirty-four floors.
The one you want is the Bloody Slime. It is the only one of the six that carries the soul table, and a Bloody Slime kill pays out four separate times, all four guaranteed rather than rolled. The other five pay twice: a finished Elite piece and the ticket back in. Every one of them is worth killing — but the souls come from one monster, not six.
Thirty souls
Bloody SlimeNot one — thirty, on every Bloody Slime kill. Seven of the eight souls share the table evenly, so roughly one Slime in ten is a stack of thirty for your class and the other nine are stacks for somebody else's. Four of your stacks cover the whole set and the weapon, failed crafts included.
One finished Elite piece
all sixNot a material — an actual wearable piece, 72% of the time E-1 and 28% E-2, across seven classes. About one kill in ten is an E-1 piece for you specifically.
Photons, Zards and crystals
Bloody SlimeExtra and Trans Photons in stacks of up to five, the occasional best-grade Zard, and — from the soul table — a one-in-ten chance of ten Crystals of Protection, which is the material that awakens the set you are building.
More entry tickets than you spend
all six · 61%The portal eats one Pledge of King on the way in. Three kills in five give one back, sometimes up to five at once — about 1.3 per kill on average, so the tower funds its own door.
The Pledge of King is the other thing on the point merchant’s shelf — 190 points, and the portal takes one every time you go in. That is the real reason to keep points moving rather than sitting at the cap.
There is no level requirement on the portal. There is a very effective one on the other side: everything in the Temple of Blood is level 129, and the lucky monsters carry between 35,000 and 55,000 health. At 68 this is not a place you clear. It is a place you go with people who can, and it is the single reason the Elite 1 grind is worth starting in a group rather than alone.
Shortcuts
What you can skip, and what you cannot
Two questions come up every time someone reads the recipe: can I make this without Mayans, and can I get the souls without going to the Temple of Blood? One answer is no and one is yes.
No, there is no Mayan-free recipe — but you can skip crafting entirely
Both routes to an E-1 piece want Mayans. The main one takes Lv.3; the other, a 20% gamble built around an unfinished piece, wants Lv.4, which is ten times dearer. There is no third recipe. What there is instead is the fact that finished E-1 pieces drop — so the shortest path to a piece is often not to make it at all. Every Temple of Blood lucky kill hands over one complete Elite item, and roughly one in ten of those is E-1 for your class. Nine kills, no Mayans, no craft roll.
Buy them from the people who cannot use them
Souls trade freely, and the soul table is the reason there is a market. It hands out a stack of thirty from a random one of seven classes, so anyone farming the Temple of Blood is drowning in six souls they will never touch — and needs the seventh from somebody else. If you are not going yourself, this is the route: ask in trade chat for your class’s soul by name, and expect the person selling it to want the one you pulled. E-1 pieces trade too; they simply cannot be sold to an NPC. Mayans trade at Lv.1 and Lv.2 only — Lv.3 is bound to whoever made or earned it.
Yes, there is a second place the souls drop — the Secret Room
A separate instance, opened with a Wizard’s Stone rather than a Pledge of King, with no level requirement on the door. Its captain drops the same thirty-soul stacks at a slightly better rate, and unlike everything else in there it has almost no health — the difficulty is the level-158 crowd between you and it, not the kill itself. Two catches: it covers only six of the eight souls, missing Destroyed Memory and Frosty Anger, so Helroid and Witchblade gain nothing from it; and the stone that opens the door mostly drops inside the room it opens.
The mission bosses, for completeness
A handful of late mission bosses do carry E-1 pieces in their tables. The rates are a hundredth of a percent and there is one of each, so this is a pleasant surprise rather than a plan. It is listed here only so nobody spends a week testing it.
The weapon merchant in Waldchen is a dead end — do not save for her
Standing in Waldchen is a merchant called Enigmatic Woman L. who will hand over any E-1 weapon in the game — Niebelung, Igdrasil, Neftis, Cloris or Anubis, either version of each — for a single Piece of the Crystal of Light. One piece, one weapon: no Mayans, no soul, no craft roll and no 14% chance of losing the lot. Everyone who finds her assumes they have found the shortcut, and the item’s own description sends them looking, because it names her and says she trades “in a warm place with fire”.
Nothing in the game produces the piece. It has never been dropped by anything that spawns; it only ever came out of three containers, and all three are themselves dead — two have no source at all, and the third is sold by a merchant who was never placed anywhere in the world, in exchange for a token from a 2012 event that also has no source. So the shop works, the weapons are real, and the currency cannot be obtained. Craft the weapon the ordinary way, and if you want to check any of this yourself, the drop lookup says the same thing.
She is also, for what it is worth, a woman whose item description calls her a man. The English translation never did agree with itself on that one.
Put it in order
What to actually do at 60
None of this needs to happen at once, and most of it does not need you to be strong. In rough order of when it pays off:
- 1
Stop buying gear
Anything you pick up between here and 68 is a stopgap. Repair what you have, take the drops, and put the heim toward the combine fees instead — you will need a few hundred thousand of it before this is over. - 2
Turn your points into Lv.2 Mayans as they arrive
Three points each, and they never expire or go stale. Every hour you spend logged in is two-thirds of a Mayan whether or not you were doing anything. Letting the balance sit at five hundred is the only way to actually lose here. - 3
Level to 68 and craft the shirt
Six Metal and four Jewel — the cheapest piece in the set, and the first one that fits. Making it is how you find out you have understood the window, on the piece that costs least to lose. - 4
Work up the table as the levels come
Belt at 69, boots and gloves at 70, pants and the weapon at 71, protector and helmet at 72, chest at 73. By the time you are 73 the set has arrived one piece at a time and none of it was a rush. - 5
Get into the Temple of Blood with your guild
This is the part you cannot do alone at this level. You need to be in a guild: on Saturday morning any guild can go in, and the rest of the week only the guild that holds a region can enter its temple. One good run is not one material — Bloody Slimes drop stacks of thirty souls, and every lucky monster drops a finished Elite piece and, more often than not, the ticket back in. - 6
Or trade for the soul instead
If nobody is running the tower this week, buy the soul. Anyone who does run it is sitting on six classes' worth they cannot use and wants the seventh. Souls and Mayans both trade freely, so this is a normal trade-chat transaction rather than a favour. - 7
Awaken what you are wearing
Awakening runs +1 to +9 on every piece and cannot fail — the roll is a flat certainty. A fully awakened E-1 chest is worth roughly double an unawakened one, which is a bigger jump than the next tier gives you.
What it opens
The second rung is nearly free
The expensive part of the Elite ladder is behind you the moment the first set is on. E-1.5 is not a new set you go and farm — it is your E-1, converted.
No soul, no risk
The step from E-1 to E-1.5 takes the piece you are wearing plus the same Mayan count the piece originally cost, and it succeeds every time. No class soul, no percentage, nothing lost.
Levels 79 to 84
Which is roughly one region of play past the point the E-1 set finished landing. The tier after that sits at 89, and the spacing stays comfortable the whole way to E-4 at 146.
Awakening carries
Every tier awakens +1 to +9 the same way, always at a flat 100%. Sockets and enchant levels are the other two axes, and both are worth more on a piece you intend to keep.
Guide
Armour
Every tier of the ladder, class by class, with the defence each set gives you at base and fully awakened.
Guide
Crafting
The Crafter NPC in full — where to find one, how the window behaves, and where every other material in the game comes from.
Guide
Enchanting
The other axis. +1 to +15 with Photons, and the exact step at which a failure starts destroying the item.