Miriam Build Guide
Because I'm bored…
A simple guide for how to make builds for Miriam. Due to how the game works it is possible to make a lot of different builds, and the players skill level can change what strategies works best or worst. As such I'll go through the basics of maximising a build for its purpose, but it's still worthwhile to adapt it to your own needs.
First of all builds can generally be summed up into 2 types:
Since they require different builds, but any weapon can use the same type of builds, same with shards can use the same type of build. So let's dig more into which stats are worthwhile to build for:
Strength is going to be the primary stat for weapon builds. Intelligence same for shard builds. Constitution and Mind are generally not worth investing into as all they do is give more Def/MDef and it's usually easier to just flat out get better Def instead.
Luck despite many people loving the stat is honestly very lacking, the critical chance isn't high enough to compete with the Str/Int stats in pure damage output, and the drop rates are barely noticeable until very heavy investment into luck. The notable exception is Plunder Ring which just gives you a flat +25% drop rate to all non shards, the most efficient way of farming is maxing out Str or Int and slap on 2 Plunder Rings, to kill the enemy as fast as you can with the 2 Plunders equipped, reset and repeat.
Mana Per Second is generally put always useful and separate from gear, since they're permanent bonuses you get from certain food, specifically the drinks. Notably you can get the first after getting the “Drinks/R” recipe book after Abyssal Guardian mini boss. It's going to be crucial for any Shard builds, but it's generally something you want no matter what for any build. You can get away without it if you make a weapon build using a weapon that doesn't use much or any Techniques (like Greatsword).
Defence is a very important or almost useless stat depending on the player skill. If you're good enough you can largely ignore it entirely and just pick whatever gear gives the best Str/Int bonus. But most people aren't quite there, and I recommend upgrading Def as often as you feel the need to. Generally put you can sacrifice 1-2 pieces of gear, preferably the ones with the smallest amount of Str/Int for gear that gives more Def instead.
MDef being an invisible stat that most players doesn't even know exists (and thus make them question what Mind even does?), you can pretty much ignore.
Since all weapons scale with Strength it's a very straight forward and simple build idea. You can do this from the start of the game since you don't need anything particular like the MPS-drinks to get started.
All you really need to do is try to stack as much Strength bonuses as you can. Be it gear, new weapons with higher damage, food bonuses (to Str), various shards (Weapon mastery and Optimizer, later Augment Strength). This works the same for all weapons.
Some useful gear:
Accessories:
Body:
Head:
Back:
The most important shards:
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Example, before/after Craftwork you could have:
Before Bathin you could have:
Before/after Orobas you could have:
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Shards scale only off Intelligence, so you can focus entirely on that stat. But spell-slinger-builds suffer from a couple of restrictions, namely that they're entirely dependent on MP/S bonuses thus they're very weak and annoying to play in the early game. While it's still possible to play spell-slinger early on, you'll spend a lot of time just standing waiting for MP to regen or run back and forth through doors to hit candles for that tiny 5% of MP back.
This means spell-slinger becomes much more feasible once you beat the Abyssal Guardian mini boss, and can get to the Drinks/R recipe book, you can then craft all 4 drinks for +4 MP/S. Combine with one or two of the gear pieces that increases MP/S and they play style becomes much more enjoyable, and much less downtime.
Anyways, similar to the other build, just stack Int from gear/food/shards.
Some useful gear:
Accessories:
Body:
Head:
Back:
Weapon:
The most important shards:
How to get +MP/S:
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Example end-game max damage build:
Example mid to end-game before grinding out everything build:
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This weapon deserves its own chapter. It's an 8bit weapon, so you can pick up the 8bit coin outside of the village and run back and craft it right away. It's a whip, and can be upgraded with 16bit coin and so on, but there isn't much point to, as it gives you everything you want as a spell slinger with the first version.
It has the ability to swap between doing Dark and Light damage. It starts in purple mode (Dark), and holding in the attack button for a bit changes it to yellow mode (light).
This effect is buggy as all heck, and doesn't just affect the weapon, but shards as well. No one has done full research on just how many shards this affects, but it does work on most damage shards people have bothered to try or use. Heck, it even works on the damage from Spike Armour!
The way this works, is that it adds Light or Dark in addition to whatever other damage types the shard (or weapon) has. So if you use Va Schia (Ice), then if you're in Yellow/Light mode it would now do Ice+Holy. When you hit an enemy with an attack with two or more damage types, it will use the one the enemy is the weakest to. Hint, most enemies are weak to Light!
You can check if it works in two ways:
TLDR: Grab this whip as soon as you can, change to Yellow/Light mode, and keep it there for most of the game. No need to upgrade it or invest into WhipMastery or Optimizer etc, you just have it equipped to make all your attacks into Light. You can swap to Dark against bosses/enemies that resist Light.