War of the Immortals Focus Orbs Guide

War of the Immortals Focus Orbs Guide by gyorokpeter

I think Focus Orbs are an interesting and complex feature and deserve deep analysis on their own. I’ll try to collect all the info about them. If there was an official wiki this would fit there.

Overview
Focus Orbs are “yet another” way to enhance a pet’s attributes. However, if you read further you will realize that Focus Orbs are sensitive things, almost like they are pets of a different kind. They must be caught; they have a level, type, growth, stats, skills, and can be melded, and even trained! Focus Orbs can be vended, and they get their own page in the vendor window and Item Search.

Requirements
You need to be level 60 to catch and use Focus Orbs, and the pet you are using them on must be level 55 or higher. Some Focus Orbs might require higher pet levels.

Catching
When you reach level 60 you will receive 9 “raw” focus orbs. However, if you want any more, you must catch them. To catch one, you need a Soul-Sealed Orb. (I think this should actually be called “Soul Sealer Orb”, based on its function.) You can craft this item if you have learned Handicraft, the required materials are Galaxygrass and Dragon Essence Stone (the latter is dropped in the Dragon’s Nest LV1 instance). Alternatively, you can buy the orbs from Kardanny.

Certain monsters have the capability to be sealed as focus orbs. When you select the monster, a tag labelled “Fcs” will appear next to the name. This tag can be red, yellow or blue. This differentiation of color is fundamental when using focus orbs. However, the level and possible stats of the focus orb also depends on which monster you are catching. To decide which monster to go on your focus orb hunt, open the focus orb window (the 3rd button at the bottom, after “Char” and “Pet”), then click on the “Illustration” button. This shows a nice guide to which monster can yield which color, level, skills and stats of focus orb. The actual stats are selected randomly between the displayed ranges.

The actual catching process is simple: use the Soul Seal skill on your target. This skill appears on the Special Skills page when you reach level 60. Each catch consumes one Soul Sealer Orb and yields a “raw” focus orb. If the target is tagged by another player or dies before the spell casting finishes, the skill will fail.

The target monster can’t be more than 10 levels higher than you.
The catch CAN fail after using the Soul Sealer Orb. When this happens, the monster will attack you.

Smelting
When you have some raw focus orbs, you must smelt them into actual focus orbs. You can do this by opening the Focus window and going to the 2nd page (“Smelt Soul”). Smelting requires Ether and increases Fusion Exhaustion (this is not the same as any of the EXP, Gathering and Crafting exhaustion).

Properties
Once you have a functional focus orb, you can go to the “Focus” page of the Focus window to view its properties. At the first glance it can be hard to understand these, so I’ll try to describe them in groups.
– Growth: Just like pet growth, this stat determines the overall effectiveness of the orb. Basically a global multiplier.
– Fortitude, Martial, Acuity, Defense: These are like the stats STR, VIT etc. on characters. Each stat determines one attribute on the focus orb. Each stat has an Endowment which is a hard limit on how far it can be improved by melding. This is determined by the monster type.
– Soul LV and Cultivation: These are like pet level and EXP. When you reach level 70, you can activate Comprehension mode, which will allow you to “train” a focus orb by killing monsters. When the cultivation bar is full, the orb will gain a level, up to 20.
– Color: Decides which stats the orb has, and which it can meld with (see below). Each pet also has 3 slots, one of each color, so it can only equip one orb of each color.
– Times Melded: Pet breeders will be familiar with this too, although melding works differently here. A focus orb starts with 15 meld chances and can gain additional 5 using Fruits of Meld Potential.
– Level: Not to be confused with Soul LV. This never changes, and only depends on which monster you caught the orb from. It acts as a one-way limiter for melding, see below.
– Attributes: This is basically what the focus orbs exist for. Each orb has 4 attributes, and only 4 (no, there are none that won’t fit into that little box). Which stats the orb has depends on the color of the orb, and its strength on the stat directly to the left of it (plus growth and Soul LV).
— Yellow + Fortitude = MP
— Yellow + Martial = Elemental Power
— Yellow + Acuity = Critical Chance
— Yellow + Defense = XP Resistance
— Red + Fortitude = HP
— Red + Martial = Physical Attack
— Red + Acuity = Accuracy
— Red + Defense = Physical Defense
— Blue + Fortitude = Elemental Resistance
— Blue + Martial = Magic Attack
— Blue + Acuity = Evasion
— Blue + Defense = Magic Defense
Also note that some attributes can be marked “Talent”. According to the description, this means that higher Growth thas greater effect on these attributes. Which attributes are chosen as “talents” seems to be random.
– Skills: They depend on which monster you got the orb from. Not all skills are positive – for example there are some that increase damage received from Undead monsters by 3%, but of course most skills are good. The “Skill Database” part shows which skills the orb can learn by levelling up, and the “Skill” part shows which it has already learned.

Melding
As mentioned before, melding works differently for focus orbs than for pets. You start with two focus orbs, but end up with only one. The only other system it resembles is Soul Transfer, with the exception that some parts of the result are random.

When you want to meld, you must choose one “primary” orb, which is analogous to the “source” gear during soul transfer. Most of the properties on the primary orb will remain, with the exceptions noted below. You then choose a “secondary” orb, which determines how those exceptions actually work. The secondary orb is lost in the process.

The two orbs must be of the same color, and the “primary” orb’s level (not Soul LV) can’t be lower than that of the secondary orb – like how you can’t transfer from high level gear to low level gear.

There are 3 types of melding that can be done.

– Meld Talent: Use this if you want to boost the Growth of your orb. The secondary orb should have a higher growth, so the resulting growth is random between the primary and secondary orb’s growth. Melding with a secondary orb of lower growth is pointless since it has no effect but wastes a meld chance.

– Meld Zenith: Use this to boost the stats (For, Mar, Acu and Def, see above). Each of the four stats behaves individually like growth does in Meld Talent (but growth itself is unchanged this time). Once again, you should only meld with secondary orbs that have much higher value in one or more stats than your primary orb. If the secondary orb has some stats worse than the primary one, you don’t have to worry since the higher stat will override the lower one (the reverse case invokes the random scenario mentioned above). Meld Zenith can’t generate stats that exceed the Endowment, in that case the upper limit for the random generation will be exactly the upper limit of Endowment.

Comprehension
Comprehension is available from level 70. You can put one of your focus orbs in comprehension mode. In this mode, you have a random chance to comprehend any monster you or your party kill. This applies to world monsters and some instances (but not all of them). Most give 100 or 300 comprehension. When your orb levels up by comprehension, it will sometimes learn a new skill from its Skill Database or upgrade an existing one, including the bad skills.

Meld Skill
This requires level 70 too. During the meld the main orb has 50% chance to keep any of the skills either the main or the secondary orb has. There is also the Resurrection Crystal item (250 ZEN which I think is expensive for now), which actually has nothing to do with the Meld Skill process but the option to use it is on that page. When you use the Resurrection Crystal, the skills of the selected primary orb are reset to their “original states” (needs research if this counts in skills upgraded via comprehension or not).

Meld Skill doesn’t decrease the focus orb’s meld count. Thanks to Kahlan_HUN for pointing this out.

How do I get my perfect focus orb?
The above was the theory, now it’s time for the practice. How do you get the best focus orb for your pet?

First you have to set a goal. For each of the 3 orb slots for your pet, you must choose which stat(s) you want to boost the most. Next, open the guide (Illustration) and find the highest level mob that you can capture and gives the highest Endowment for your preferred stats. For example if you want to improve a pet’s Physical Attack and you can capture level 2 orbs, you should capture for example Lizard Rampagers (400 Martial – 300 Fortitude) or Piranha Ants (400 Martial – 300 Defense). Each mob has strong stats and weak stats, and once you capture one you can’t change its limits.

Now get lots of Soul Sealer Orbs (best way to get lots is to do the Dragon Slayer quests) and go to the mob you have chosen. Keep catching them, perhaps even until you run out of orbs, since you can store lots in raw form while you can only have 12 smelted ones.

Next, smelt 12 of them and look for one that is a good candidate for a main. The talents are fixed forever so they are important, as well as the basic skills. Not every orb will learn every skill even at level 20. However, it takes a long time to level them up so you have to make a compromise. A good starting main has a talent in your chosen stat and perhaps 1 or 2 other stats, and relatively good stat values. Usually you won’t find a perfect one, but you have to use your judgement to tell if one is good for you.

When you have found a suitable main orb, time to boost it. Look at your inventory and find orbs with very good stats, then meld them with your main, and refill by smelting more. Don’t be afraid to toss even 11 orbs without melding any. I recommend only melding with orbs that have Superb or Perfect in a stat that the main orb is lacking. This goes both for growth and stats, but make sure you don’t confuse Meld Talent with Meld Zenith, because doing so will waste a meld chance and an otherwise useful secondary orb.

For skills, I’m going to assume that they work the logical way, which is that the Resurrection Crystal restores the skills to the state after the effect of comprehension (if it’s the other way, then I suggest ignoring Meld Skill completely as it’s a waste of time). If you want good skills, you should first level up some orbs a bit to see if they will learn all the good skills and as few bad ones as possible.This will take some time, as you will have to catch orbs that can have the skills you want, then level each one up. If it has the skill you want and no bad skills (or you don’t mind having the bad skills) then do Meld Skill.

The “Lost Souls”
You might notice that in the Focus Guide some of the monsters are nowhere to be found in the map. These are all found under LV2 orbs and seem to have superior stats to even some LV4 orbs. Here’s the secret: when you kill the Clan Sacred Beast, it will drop some chests that contain those orbs. The Sacred Beast will become a form that depends on the ratio of meat and grass fed to it.