Chan Si still had to select the type or role her last character would play, as well as which class would be her DPS main character.

She decided to save the DPS decision for last, as it was easily the most important decision she would make, one which would be the most reliant on her other choices.

Her last class. Whether she selected a Dual Elemental Master or Free Soul, her tanking and healing was as good as it was going to get for her situation, she would not select another tank or healer. She also had her DPS handled between her main class and the AoE effects of the Dark Weaver. And her late game plan was centered almost entirely on the monstrous character.

She considered what she was missing.

Healing, check.

Tanking, check.

DPS, check.

Late game, check.

No matter which way she flipped it, she needed something to give her a jump start. A proper advantage as early as possible. Even if she selected the Free Soul it would merely be a reliable advantage early, not a truly great one. The faster she accomplished her goals the more opportunities Chan Si would accrue, she wouldn't let herself languish with a tough early game.

Chan Si considered her options and decided that something which would give her a wide array of basic skills would be best.

She knew that many classes would provide basic skills as a proper foundation to any class which needed them. Weapon focused classes would learn how to wield their weapons, for example. This was so a total noob could pick a weapon focused class and not instantly die.

Unfortunately, in this regard, Chan Si was a total noob.

She had unparalleled intelligence and multiple educations, but she had no training in any kind of combat, outside of some theoretical things she had picked up as a result of other games she had played.

If her social abilities were her worst skill, then her combat abilities were her second worst, and at least she was aware of her combat deficiency.

She would learn quickly from playing the game, no doubt, but without a proper foundation, wasn't there too much of a chance she made a fool of herself?

She wouldn't allow that.

Chan Si decided her final class would be a martial arts focused class. The martial arts classes could do equally well with or without gear, they were neither reliant nor unable to benefit.

This was because their foundation of their strength was in their bodies, honing them to be as both weapons and armor, but they could still use weapons and armor to further enhance this natural talent. As a result, they would receive the largest array of basic skills out of any class, from hand to hand combat to weapon usage to basic blocking and evading techniques.

Anything and everything Chan Si needed for a smooth early game was part of the martial arts classes. They were similar to Monstrous Characters, except actually good, but without the sheer late game potential.

Yet, there were numerous martial arts classes, and Chan Si still needed to choose one. It wouldn't be easy making a decision, not because she needed something critical besides the basic skills, but because she didn't. Her bases for DPS, Healing, and Tanking were all covered! She would need to find a class that actually added something to her party.

Truthfully you could never have enough DPS, so Chan Si was leaning that way, but she did not want another purely DPS class, even if it wasn't gear reliant. Yet exchanging DPS for tanking or healing abilities would be too redundant.

Was there really no decision she could squeeze any real advantage out of?

This was Chan Si, so of course she could, she just needed to think a lot about it first.

She considered her existing party composition further. A tank healer combo, a tank healer dps AOE machine, and a pure DPS machine, likely single target. Plus the monstrous character which could not be considered a real party member for a long time.

She considered how the party would function, imagining the items or elementals blocking incoming enemies while the DPS machine dealt with the most troublesome ones to lessen the burden on the tanks. Meanwhile the Dark Weaver would be weaving, adding various small advantages until the AoEs started triggering, which the party would then be able to rely on to take out the enemies.

And the Free Soul or Dual Elemental Master would be healing the pet tanks and party members as needed, and contributing a little bit of DPS, buffs, or debuffs while not doing so.

What she truly lacked was mobility!

What if she had a situation where things turned poorly, and needed to escape? Or simply get to a key area faster. There were many DPS classes with various movement abilities, even ones that could be used on allies, but there was a general rule with classes, and that was melee classes had better movement abilities than ranged classes!

It wasn't that Chan Si could not select a melee DPS class for her main character, but that she felt like doing so would be giving away part of her advantage. She needed something that could snipe enemies from far away, because she wanted all her enemies to gather as close as possible to the group for the Dark Weaver's AOE abilities, so if any enemies refused to do so, she wanted to be able to kill them quickly.

Plus thinning the horde of enemies as they approached would be easier with a ranged class, as a melee class would have to give up the cover of the tank pets to deal damage, and that wasn't good.

So, a melee focused martial arts class - which was most of them, though there were also many spell focused ones - with excellent movement abilities for both the self and the group. The group movement would be more important, but self movement abilities would be key in allowing the class maintain relevance later, as being able to move instantly to key parts of the battlefield and suddenly dish out damage or pull enemy attention would be key.

There were a few ‘types’ of martial arts classes that fit Chan Si's needs.

The Ninja types focused more on personal movement than group movement, but there were a few classes she could select with strong enough group movement to meet her needs.

Plus it was possible she could abuse the stealth, although the downside was that there would no Ninja classes which could taunt or otherwise specifically pull aggro.

What kind of ninja would announce their presence, yelling loudly?

There were the Old Master types. Old Master type classes granted party wide buffs, and many of them would often have movement effects attached. However, Old Masters were the weakest of the martial arts classes in terms of personal abilities, so choosing an Old Master class would increase her reliance on group play, making it harder to split the group.

Pavilion types were similar to single pet masters in that they controlled a second entity, but in this case known as a pavilion instead of a pet. What made Pavilions different than pets is not only did they have no will of their own, they couldn't even attack! Pavilions were useful for defense and movement only, and a Pavilion type and their allies would automatically gain various buffs, while enemies would suffer various debuffs, while inside the pavilion.

Pavilion masters were almost useless outside of their pavilion however, and were extremely reliant on enemies coming to them, or otherwise pulling enemies into the pavilion.

While it was no doubt among the most useful of the options, it had a lot of overlap with the Dark Weaver, in commanding a certain space on the battlefield. While the two could synergism extremely well, it was all about enemy coming to them, and doubling down on this strategy sounded like too many eggs in one basket to Chan Si. Still, it was in consideration for her, as the exact effects of Pavilions were highly varied, so perhaps she could find a class that truly suit her needs.

The fourth and final type that Chan Si considered were the Body Cultivator types. Body Cultivator types were primarily DPS and Tank hybrids with high mobility - they could allow allies to benefit from their own mobility through various means, from picking up that ally and carrying them, to performing a painless palm strike that would shove the ally some distance in a single direction.

The main weakness of a Body Cultivator type as far as Chan Si was concerned was that it couldn't grant mobility to more than one ally at a time. So if she used her Body Cultivator to run away with her main class, her other party members would still suffer defeat, for example.

She also wouldn't be able to use the class to speed up the overall party's speed. In a way it was almost the opposite of the Old Master, in terms of advantages and disadvantages.

Yet if she was losing, did she really need to flee with her whole party?

She could do item hot swapping after all, so she could concentrate all her most powerful items between the body cultivator and one other party member, and simply flee with those two, minimizing her losses.

Ninja Type, Old Master Type, Pavilion Type, Body Cultivator type. These were the four Chan Si was considering.

Again she decided to eliminate the weakest link, Old Master Type! Perhaps if she had a larger group, but as it was, it wasn't good enough.

Ninja Type, Pavilion Type, Body Cultivator type. Again she decided to eliminate the weakest link, Pavilion type. The overlap with Dark Weaver was too great.

It was down to Ninja Type or Body Cultivator type.

Certain Ninja type classes could grant speed and stealth buffs to her entire party, both of which would be immensely. useful in escaping a dangerous situation, or perhaps getting into places she was not supposed to be. It was the true utility choice and had everything she needed, and more. Yet the Body Cultivator type, despite being deficient in some ways, could truly make up for it in others.

It was not an simple decision, but finally Chan Si had an answer to a previous question, whether she should choose the Dual Elemental Master or Free Soul.

If she selected the Body Cultivator, she would choose the Dual Elemental Master, and if she selected the Ninja, she would choose the Free Soul! Both of these sets of choices had complementary aspects, making up for each other's weaknesses, and also synergistic aspects, being able to be used together in special ways.

But the specific Body Cultivator class or Ninja class mattered a lot, and would ultimately make her decision for her.

Chan Si reviewed the Body Cultivators and Ninjas, and decided that if she selected Body Cultivator there were two primary choices, and if she selected Ninja there was only one real choice.

For Ninja, it had to be the Operation Leader. Operation Leaders were not Old Master types, but had many similarities, with the largest assortment of group buffs out of any ninja type. Operation Leaders could grant their party members buffs with extremely short durations but amazing effects. However, their buffs also had very long cool downs, most only usable one per day.

The shortest cool down group buff ability for Operation Leaders was one hour! And it only lasted three seconds! There was not a class in the game with more lopsided duration to cooldown buffs.

Operation Leaders could also use their group buffs on only their selves, in which case the buff would last ten times as long, so they had some flexibility, though this did not change the cooldowns.

However, As Ninjas they still had more self buffs than group buffs, and thankfully their regular self buffs had more reasonable cooldowns, although still tended to last very short times. An example was the Flicker Step buff, a general buff shared by many Ninja types, which buffed the user's movement speed by 500%, but lasted literally one second. Thankfully the cooldown on the ability was a reasonable ten seconds.

Combined with the Free Soul, Chan Si could think of some truly monstrous applications for the Operation Leader class. It was truly a good choice.

For Body Cultivators, the two classes Chan Si needed to decide between were the Phoenix Heart Saint, and the True Totem Demon. The Phoenix Heart Saint was a fire element body cultivator type. If she selected this, she would also select the fire elemental dual elemental cultivator, as the Phoenix Heart Saint would have increased abilities fighting enemies afflicted with fire debuffs.

Further, the Phoenix Heart Saint, despite being fire element, was one of the best body cultivator types in terms of defense, as they would gain more powerful self-heals the lower their health went, going so far as to automatically purge debuffs!

But those were all side considerations, and the real reason Chan Si was interested in the Phoenix Heart Saint was that its movements abilities included flying abilities. Flying type movement abilities were rare in general, but very precious. And best of all, the Phoenix Heart Saint had the ability to sustain flying perpetually at very high levels! That meant she could make a flying escape with a party member if she had to.

The strength of the flight could not be underestimated in the game, so many problems could be solved by flying over them!

Meanwhile, the True Totem Demon was an odd class for a body cultivator. It could steal the bones of dead enemies and replace their own bones with them. These bones could grant them various stat buffs and possibly even [Skills]. It was like an extra set of items, although from what Chan Si had read about the class, they weren't nearly as good. The [Skills] gained were vastly inferior to the class's inherent [Skills], and the stat buffs were middling even when using the bones of Rare creatures. Even the True Totem Demon players who managed to fill their bodies entirely with Legendary bones were just extremely stat-buffed Body Cultivator types. The class did not have a good chance of breaking the game for Chan Si.

Why then was she interested in it, especially compared to the flight of the Phoenix Heart Cultivator?

True Totem Demons were one of the few classes that could create armor and weapons for free! Not only could they replace their own bones with the bones of creatures, they could craft those bones into weapons and armor. The crafting was incredibly quick, as well. Although the items would provide the same stat buffs and skills as the bones used, multiple bones could be used in a single item, as there were way more bones in the body to replace than item slots.

The end result would be gear that was in no way inferior to a comparable True Totem Demon's full body bone replacement. Which was to say, still vastly inferior to items, mostly providing stat boosts.

Most True Totem Demons did not bother with this part of the ability, as items they could find or buy would be better. But, who was Chan Si? She was trying to break the game, and she had already decided she would dedicate her very best gear to her main character.

This meant her other characters had a gear deficit. While she could have them wear the leftovers, if she sold those leftovers instead she would have more money to buy even better gear for her main character. Furthermore, because True Totem Demons' gear was mainly stat buffs and not special abilities, unique effects, or [Skills], it would be some of the most effective gear for those item unreliant classes like Dual Elemental Master and Dark Weaver.

If most True Totem Demons tried this strategy in a party receptive to it, they would still run into the problem of not enough bones. But Chan Si planned to farm large quantities of monsters for drops anyway, so why not use their bones as well? Let nothing go to waste!

She could do this from level one as well, so it would be the greatest jump start in her party strength. She would pair this with the Metal Dual Elemental Master, as True Totem Demons were only above average tanks, unlike the Phoenix Heart Saint, but had absolutely brutal and savage DPS they could contribute by breaking enemy limbs. It just filled the slot better.

Those were Chan Si's three best choices. A True Totem Demon and Light-Metal Dual Elemental Master, a Phoenix Heart Saint and Light-Fire Dual Elemental Master, or an Operation Leader and Free Soul.

Likewise, she had three main considerations in making her choice. Initial advantage, escape potential, and reliability. All three options had all three aspects in enough quantity for her to consider, but each one had its specialties.

The True Totem Demon had the best initial advantage, the second best reliability, and the worst escape potential.

The Phoenix Heart Saint had the best reliability, the second best escape potential, and the worst initial advantage.

The Operation Leader had the best escape potential, the second best initial advantage, and the worst reliability.

She had three other considerations, regarding the other three classes. They were flexibility, ability to break the game, and efficiency.

The Free Soul was the most flexible, the second most efficient, and had the worst ability to break the game.

The Light-Fire Dual Elemental Master had the best ability to break the game, was the second most flexible, and had the worst efficiency.

The Light-Metal Dual Elemental Master had the best efficiency, the second best ability to break the game, and was the least flexible.

So, pairing them her choices were: highest initial advantage and best efficiency; most reliability and best potential to break the game; or greatest flexibility and best escape potential.

She decided to rank each of these six elements from the most to least important. She began by considering only initial advantage and efficiency. Which was more important to her between those two?

Definitely initial advantage. Efficiency was good, but she was going to be blazing a new path to break the game, so efficiency. would only go so far. She needed the jump start.

Next she considered reliability. Was reliability or efficiency. more important?

Reliability for sure, she couldn't let her plans be disrupted. But between reliability and initial advantage, it was a more difficult choice. In the end she decided her initial advantage was more important than reliability, as again she was trying to do something that was actually a challenge for her, so it was best she was thoroughly prepared.

So far her list was Initial Advantage > Reliability > Efficiency. Next she considered potential to break the game. It was her very goal, the thing she was trying to do above all else, so when she compared it to reliability, it definitely beat reliability out.

But as for comparing it to initial advantage, it wasn't as though she lacked other methods to break the game, and if she didn't have enough initial advantage, she would fail before she began. So to her, Initial Advantage was more important.

Initial Advantage > Break The Game Potential > Reliability > Efficiency. Next was Flexibility. She rated that higher than reliability, as she needed to be flexible if she was going to successfully break the game, but she rated it lower than the potential to break the game itself, as all the flexibility in the world wouldn't help her without enough power to back it up.

Initial Advantage > Break the Game Potential > Flexibility > Reliability > Efficiency. The last consideration was escape potential. Was that more or less important than flexibility?

Things would for sure go wrong, but she considered it less important. If she stayed flexible, she could avoid those situations in the first place. Was escape potential more important than reliability? Also no, if she could reliably do what she needed, it again lessened the need for escape potential. But it was way more important to her than efficiency, in fact she started considering how little she actually cared about efficiency.

Setting that aside, she assigned each of these a point value based where they were on the list. She assigned efficiency a point value of 10, it wasn't useless but it was her baseline of least useful.

Next was escape potential. She considered how much more escape potential was compared to efficiency. Twice as important? More than that. Three times as important? Maybe. Four times? No, that was going too far. Between three and four times? Still too much. She considered between two and three times and important. That sounded about right, but she thought it was closer to three times as important, so she gave it a point value of 28.

Next she considered reliability. Reliability was more useful than escape potential, but not by much. Not even two times as useful. One point five? Maybe less. One point three? That came out to thirty six point four, but she wasn't going assign fractional points, so she decided if she should round up or down. She decided she didn't value it that greatly compared to escape potential, and so rounded down to 36.

Next was Flexibility. She values this much more than reliability. She considered two times as much. It sounded about right. 72 to Flexibility.

Break the game potential. She already knew she valued this one point five times as much as flexibility, as although it was her goal, flexibility was still very useful. 108.

Initial advantage. This was more useful to her than the sheer breaking the game potential, but how much more? She considered the lower numbers first, as she thought even one point five would be way too high. One point one? That would be one hundred and eighteen point eight, which she would round up. Yes, that sounded right. In fact, she would round it up to 120, which wasn't a huge difference, but could matter in her final calculations.

With her comparative values obtained, she realized this meant she valued initial advantage twelve times as much as efficiency. Did this sound correct to her? It was important for her to double check the end result to make sure it wasn't on the face absurd to her. She decided it sounded fine.

She would give each class its point value by taking the value of its best aspect, plus half of the value of its second best aspect, and no points for its worst aspect.

Thus she obtained the following values:

Light-Metal Dual Elemental Master: 10 + (108/2) = 54

Light-Fire Dual Elemental Master: 108 + (72/2) = 144

Free Soul: 72 + (10/2) = 77

True Totem Demon: 120 + (36/2) = 138

Phoenix Heart Saint: 36 + (28/2) = 50

Operation Leader: 28 + (120/2) = 88

She added up by the class groupings.

True Totem Demon and Light-Metal Dual Elemental Master: 192

Phoenix Heart Saint and Light-Fire Dual Elemental Master: 194

Free Soul and Ninja: 165

Phoenix Heart Saint and Light-Fire Dual Elemental Master had won, but barely.

That did not mean it was her choice, however. She had pulled the numbers out of thin air, all that this list told her for certain was that she would not be selecting the combination of Free Soul and Ninja.

If the difference was huge her choice would be obvious, but it wasn't!

She considered a third option as well. According to her own rankings, the Light-Fire Dual Elemental Master and the True Totem Demon were far and away the best options from their respective lists, without competition. What if she paired them?

She would lose the synergy between Phoenix Heart Saint and the Light-Fire Dual Elemental Master. However, she would gain a combination of the greatest initial advantage, and the highest potential to break the game. This choice had a hidden disadvantage, however. The True Totem Demon had the worst escape potential, and the Light-Fire Dual Elemental Master had only middling flexibility. With middling flexibility and the worst escape potential, Chan Si might run into problems she might be unable to solve through either means. If she was to use a comparison, it was a combo that had an excellent early game and late game, but the worst possible middle game!

The middle game was most of the game!

Chan Si truly considered it, though.