Venomancer Guide 2013

Animal tailed girls; wild ladies who like to poison you. Our menfolk are big fuzzy barbarians who turn into big fuzzy tigers. (Or even bigger panda's.)

If you want to know more; read the quest text. It's a long sad story of slavery, warfare, love and revenge. Then wraiths attack, and it's all the fishmen's fault. Then you go back in time, and it's all your fault, but you fix it before it happens. Kinda.

(Admit it though, you became a venomancer for the foxies. Boing boing boing. Fluffy fluffy. Poing.)

Ignoring the lore for a moment, a venomancer is a pet class. A hybrid healer+tank+Direct damage (DD). The full holy trinity; with a smatterring of control skills too.

The downside? We're not actually very GOOD at most of it.
We're a third rate tank (well, our pet is, we ourselves are way down at 6th or 7th), a third rate DD (though there's some places we shine - a quirk in the damage calculations means our pets can deal serious damage to level-[?] monsters), and we can only heal pets, and ourselves. We have exactly TWO long-term buffs (bramble and summer sprint), and one of those is self-only. (Technically at high level we have several variations on bramble. And fox form is technically a buff, but I'm not including it as that.)
We have the best debuffs. We have a stun. (And a couple of snares.)

In the past, we were the 'go to' class for soloing. But we're not even the best at that any more.

So, why would you be a venomancer? Because there's nothing we can't do. Any squad, doing anything, is improved by adding a venomancer. Our debuffs count. And there are a few situations we really shine in.

Oh, and we may not be the best soloers? But we're a damn solid second. You can count the content we can't (eventually) solo on the fingers of one hand. While in fox form.
We're very versatile. Lots of magic, lots of melee, and a lot of power packed into a variety of pets.





As a venomancer, there's a bunch of stuff you can do.

Probably the default option is to stand at the back, with the cleric and the wizard and the archer and fling spells at the enemy; while sending your pet forward to slug it out with the tigers and the blademasters and the assassins. Our spike damage is relatively poor; but our sustained output is surprisingly good. Most of our spells cast quickly, and have relatively short cool-downs, so we can just keep pouring on the damage.

A second, usually more useful, role; is to constantly run around - catching additional monsters that head for the cleric, luring monsters to the tanks, purging where needed, and throwing your debuffs and attacks where they'll do the most good. Other classes can do all these jobs; but we can do them best; because we can be in two places at once - our pet doing one thing, while we do another.

Alternately; you can dive into the front line yourself. We're not as good at surviving as a tiger; but we're way less squishy than some classes are. So we can survive an AOE attack or two, and get up close to throw some really nasty debuffs (especially amplify damage). Or to take over from the tiger who's had to have a little lie down.

Playing solo, we can do pretty much every quest easily, and many of them levels before we have to. (Memorably, I was helping my guild-mates with some level 85 content while I was level 70. And by helping, I mean 'killing it all while they had a little talk with the cleric'.)

Usually, we work on one monster, kill it, and then move to the next. Sometimes we deal with one monster while a pet deals with a second. Sometimes the pet holds a few monsters attention while we keep the pet alive. Sometimes we throw an AOE attack of our own. (And sometimes, we have to run away with our tails between our legs. We can do everything, but only if we're CAREFUL.)

And of course, we can mix and match; and do all of these things when they're the best thing to do. This is the best thing to do - one of our key class abilities is our flexibility. Make the most of it.

Final note here - we are the energiser bunny of the classes. Other classes need to use charms, or potions, or sit and rest. We have five skills related to refilling our HP and MP; and even while we're recovering (or digging up herbs) our pet can keep fighting. We keep on going. Only wrist strain can stop us. (As a side note - if you've got a terrible ping, then as a pet class we can cope a lot better than most others, who generally need to be able to react more quickly. When lag strikes, hold down pet heal and hope.)


The primary, default, venomancer form is Arcane, or human-form venomancer. In this style you are largely a wizard, using your foxform only occasionally for the debuffs it has and a daring escape when everything goes wrong.
This playstyle can be also called 'wood-mage' (as we're acting as a DD class, and our skills are almost all wood element)
It's a solid, effective style. It has a disadvantage of being somewhat easy to die this way; but outright deals the most damage - and usually the rest of the squad, or your pet, should be taking the hits - not you.

The second playstyle is, obviously enough, foxform. This can still use arcane armour; or can go to light or even heavy armour. It concentrates on melee, and either surviving while using the pet for most damage; or doing the majority of the damage yourself and relying on your armour and skills to survive.
This playstyle is fun for those who want to charge right up to the enemy and bite their kneecaps.
The upside is good survivability. The downside is that we're not very good at dealing spike damage this way. And compared to other tanks, we have few aggro management skills. (We have a pet 'roar' skill, but this is single target only.)

Finally, there's the hybrid venomacer. This starts as an arcane venomancer; and sacrifices a little attack power for a little survivability - either with vitality or using light or heavy armour. With modern gear, this tradeoff is of dubious value (as it is easier to get hitpoints and defence boosts from gear than it is to boost attack power) but if you're not rich, it's a useful option. (Note that the very top-end venomancer armour is arcane, so for heavy and light armour, our end-game gear choices are slightly limited.)
You can play be hybrid and then mainly go either arcane or fox form; but you can't go hybrid and also use melee armour - you just won't have the stat points for it.

Note that for best play any venomancer will utilise both forms sometimes. Although a primarily caster-form veno probably won't want to use their basic physical attack often, you still want to use some of the fox-form debuffs (and the HP and MP stealing can be nice too).
Similarly, a primarily-foxform melee venomancer will need to drop into human-form sometimes, for ironwood, for the AOEs for HP and MP recovery and to pass sparks.

Note that you can, somewhat, use shards to shore up your weak spots. You'll almost always want to add magical attack to your weapon; but your armour can be partially citrines for hitpoints, and partially garnets for physical defence if you're using arcane armour or maybe sapphires for magical defence for the heavy armour users. Rich people get more options, with attack and defence levels to consider instead. If you can afford those, they're almost always better.

So the very best venomancers alternate play styles. The very richest even use multiple sets of gear, but most accept a trade-off and are a little less effective in one form than another.

It is almost fair to say that there are venomancers with the legendary pets; and there are venomancers without them - and neither understands how the other half lives.

With a legendary pet you are much more powerful. All that 'do anything' stuff? That assumes a legendary (specifically, the hercules). Without that, many bosses will be beyond your solo capacity.
But if you're usually in a squad - that matters a lot less; you probably won't be the main tank anyway.
The legendary pets downside? They cost a heck of a lot. They're end-game gear, but available right from day one, if you want.
The legendary pets are cash-shop pets; but it is possible to grind out the coin needed to get them. You're looking at 50-100m, depending on demand and periodic price reductions.

If you don't play with a legendary; you have to pay a lot more attention into keeping your pet alive. You have to lure more often, as you can't just charge into the middle of a group and expect the pet to survive. You get to choose which pets to use, some are better in some situations, some in others. And you get to play with a range of different pet skills. Pay attention to the debuffs, and the bash and elemental bash skills especially.

The quick rundown:
The hercules is a tank. It doesn't die; it hits pretty hard.
The phoenix is a DD. It hits stupidly hard, and quickly. It's not as tough. Originally designed for PVP.
The harpy is an AOE pet and ranged. It's designed primarily for crowd control.
The monkey is really specialised as a PVP pet. It still hits hard in PVE though.

One other advantage - at level 100 you can evolve them into pets which can go on land, and fly, and swim. (Some popular non-legendary pets also evolve; but they don't gain this ability.)

There are a huge number of pets available; but only a few will really last you into the end game. The glacial walker is the best tank pet. Scorpions and sawfly's (and skatefish) and Dark Wanderers are DD pets. There's no AOE pet available to you.
Plenty of debuff pets exist. (Pay attention to the skills of the wolves especially, there's a few unusual skill combinations tucked away here and there.)
One thing to note is that a low level pet that levels up with you is usually a lot stronger than getting a new pet that starts at a higher level.
You have the eldergolth sharp shooter monkey, and a couple of cacti as ranged pets. One thing to note in contravention of the previous note is that their range does not increase as they level up; new ones have higher ranges. (To actually get them to use their range you have to turn off their default skill, otherwise they'll run right up close for the skill before using their normal ranged attack.)

There aren't many water quests; it's usually sufficient to tame a water pet when you need one. In case it matters, the turtles are solid water tanks, and everything else is more DD aligned.

There are also rare pets. These are normal in every way - except that they come with some rare skills (mostly pounce) and only spawn very rarely. They're cute; the bears are good tanks, the others are good DD and debuff pets. It's worth mentioning the level 101 dinosaur rare pet; which is an excellent damage pet; but, well, level 101. You can (if you're very lucky) find it at "Derjan's rest" in Morai.

Some rare pet eggs (and some less rare) can be combined to make all-class pets; these are fashion-only.
There are many rare-pet guides available on the wiki. If you're interested, go there.

There's quite a few unusual pets available at high levels. Mostly they are not very useful; but they can still be fun for fashion. I give special mention to the giants (which truly are huge) the acephalid horseriders and the firefox.



Luring is using a quirk of the aggro mechanics to cause a single monster (or a chosen few) to attack, rather than grabbing the whole group. You do it by hitting the moster with your pet, then unsummoning the pet. Our tame-pet spell can do this too.
Venomancers are masters of this skill. Mystics can do it the pet-way too, and one genie skill can do it.
See the wiki for more details.


To use any of our skills, we have to use a magic weapon. (Or our bare paws. There is no reason to willingly do that, however - it's only there in case your weapon breaks.) That means putting 3 points into magic every level.
And you need to put some points into strength to be able to wear your armour.
The remainder of the points... well; they can go anywhere.

For an arcane user, most or all of them should go into magic. This armour gives you great magic defence, and, well, nothing else. Physical attacks will hurt, a lot. You'll probably want to invest into shoring that up somewhat with your ornaments and shards.
Arcane armour requires the fewest stat points - it means putting one point into strength every other level. Arcane armour also has a magic requirement (3 points every other level); but that's covered by the requirement of your weapon already, unless you're using a very odd build.

If you want to use light armour... then, quite honestly, you should probably stop wanting that. It's not good enough for the stat cost. But if you do want to do that, then it's 1 dex, and 1 str every level. Which has the advantage of being easy to remember.
Light armour (compared to arcane) gives you a bit more physical defence; higher physical attack, better criticals - but lower spell damage and a bit less magic defence.

To use heavy armour is a guide all of its own, as it takes 3 magic and 2 strength every level, and a dex point every other level. And so you need to get extra stat points from somewhere. Lots of planning is needed!
It gives greatly improved physical attack, and the best physical defences you can aspire to. The downside is greatly weakened magical attack and defence (compared to arcane armour), and the need to invest in stat point bonuses on your equipment. (Or use lower level equipment somewhere.) It's also pretty costly, because ideally you want to have two sets of armour - so that you can switch from physical to magical defence when needed.

So, where should your points go?

You can put extra points into Strength - you need to to wear light or heavy armour; Other than that, it boosts our melee damage, but only a very tiny amount so it's not a good idea to put them into strength for that reason alone.
Similarly Dexterity - apart from armour use - it boosts our accuracy; but almost all of our skills automatically hit. And foxform gets a respectable accuracy buff already. It does boost the chance of a critical hit - so one possibility is to get it up to 20 (including bonuses from your equipment) to get that advantage. Personally, I'm not in favour of critical hits; but some play styles love them. So it might be worth raising dex to 20 to get that bonus critical.
Vitality. This is contentious - because we get the best HP per point of all the mage classes; but it's still not a very large amount. It also boosts defence slightly. In your early levels it can be nice to have a few points here. But be aware that a couple of citrine shards is just as good; and not really that expensive. Still, it's an option - and if your budget is limited, or you really really want hitpoints at the expense of everything else, it may be a good one.
Finally - magic. For an arcane user, most or all of them should go into magic. This boosts the damage of your attacks and the strength of your pet heals, as well as giving you a larger mana pool to swim in.


If you know what you're doing it's perfectly possible to get through this stage of the game in one day.

I urge you not to. You'll miss a lot of flavour, and a lot of oppportunities to be slowly introduced to your skills and the various ways different monster types react.

I'm not going to cover the stuff that's common to all new players in any details; like the season quests and the daily charms and getting sent to Archosaur at level 20.

Do complete your gold quests - especially as otherwise you'll miss getting your first pet, and acquiring fox form!

Skill-wise; you should get the first level in each skill as it opens up to you, so that you can explore what it's like.
As a caster, your main skills in these levels will be Venomous Scarab and Ironwood. Frankly, that's true for the entire rest of the game. Don't miss befuddling mist though; while the accuracy debuff isn't a very reliable way to stay alive - it's an AOE skill and not everyone realises that. And don't forget your pet heal!
Foxform venomancers - melee mastery! And probably befuddling mist - foxywallop is ok early on, but lags behind later.
Soul transfusion stands out as a bit of an odd skill. It swaps your hitpoints and mana; so allowing you to refill whichever was low. It works on a percentage basis; so if you only have 10HP, that can still turn into thousands of MP. It also consumes up to one spark - if you have less than one spark - the skill still works. Very handy. Also, very dangerous, and great for scaring the **** out of clerics. Once you have this, you should be able to avoid running out of mana ever again. (Very slight exaggeration; but only very slight.)

If you're not going the legendary route, then choose a pet to stay with you for a long time. The scorpions, glacial walkers, dark wanderer and sawfly are the most popular pets for a reason. But some of the others (the wolves for example) come with very overlevelled skills and can be very good choice.
It you're going the legendary route then you can pick whichever pet appeals to you most on pure aesthetic grounds as you won't be using it long and they're all good enough for the early levels.

It you're going the heavy-armour path, then round about level 20 you'll start to run out of stat points. At this point you need to decide whether to lag behind in your weapon, in your armour, or get very aggressive on seeking out reduced requirement and +stat equipment. One other option is to consider using light armour for the lower levels - it's probably good enough (better for resisting magic), the requirements are easier to meet, and you benefit from the added crit. The dex is needed for higher level HA too, so it's not a waste of stat points. (But check where you should stop.) You really need to see the separate guide on this.

Learn to lure! "And all his friends came too" is not a lure!

Don't level out of this range until you have at least: Got your fox form, and a pet, got 1 level in every skill available to you, got your permanent flying fish (even if you're using one of the timed ones right now) got your level 39 cultivation, and found some friends. Oh, and got at least 4 lines of bank open. And died from a soul transfusion at least once.
To stay at a low level a little longer, you can feed experience points to your genie.


Tip one very much has to be... find a good guild. The game truly TRULY sucks for medium level players right now. It's almost completely abandoned. Be thankful that you're a venomancer who can do your own quests!

In these levels you should be acquiring your full skill set. Put at least one level into everything.
Caster-form venomancers should work on maxing out Venomous, Lucky, Ironwood and Noxious (your main AOE). Also prioritise out Amplify Damage, and at least one other fox-form skill (as you can't change back to human for six seconds) I personally use Befuddling mist; but Leeching is a good alternative.
If you're a heavy foxform player, you want instead to max out befuddling mist, and probably leech life too. Stunning blow is useful to stop the runners, and consume spirit is a nice way to keep your mana topped up. (It's pretty nice for primarily arcane form venomancers too, but while skill points are tight, it can't be a priority.) Foxy wallop isn't so great; and malefic crush (because it uses two sparks) is for special uses only - but does have the nice quirk that it's an AOE that will cast even if your target dies (where noxious and nova will fizzle.) Prioritise amplify damage - but don't neglect Ironwood and lucky scarab.
Everyone should grab at least a few levels of Natural Synergy and Metabolic Boost; and realise why being a venomancer is so much better than those potion sucking other classes.
Whichever path you follow; ignore frost scarab and keep your pet heal up to date. You WILL have to pick and choose your skills for these levels; you won't have enough spirit to increase all your skills.
If you squad up regularly, and are the only venomancer then also concentrate on increasing bramble. Your tanks will appreciate it. (Or if youre tanking on yourself...)

One unusual skill you gain in these levels is "Lending Hand". This lets you send a spark to another character; who can probably make better use of it than you can. Use it to top the cleric back up after they put up their blue bubble; or the tank after they use their big yellow monk, or the BM throws the fire dragons, or the wizard or archer launch their huge AOE skills. They'll love you for it. (Assassins typically don't need sparks, seekers are also usually self sufficient.)

Your bounty hunt quests are a good way to practice, to level up, and to acquire level-appropriate equipment. (The items crafted from divine orders are nice too.)

Mostly.. you'll be pressured into doing "FC". This is, by far, the fastest way to level; and you'll not be contributing much at this level, just soaking up the XP. This is not fun, and I urge you not to give in. At the very least, watch for monsters breaking away from the group and practice catching them.

At level 60 and again at level 70, you'll be able to use Twilight Temple (TT) items. The TT60 Magic-sword isn't bad; though other items are just as good. (The 70 weapons ditto) The TT70 arcane armour... royally sucks. Stick with purple gear with good add-ons. (The TT light and heavy gear is pretty good, if you're going that path.) Note that you need to decompose some TT70 gear to make higher level TT stuff later.

Enjoy these levels; around about level 50 you are actually the hardest hitting class for a while. you get overtaken again shortly, but it's fun while it lasts.

Don't level out of this range until you have at least: 3 pet slots, a guild (to chat with, if nothing else), your level 59 cultivation (you ideally ought to have your 69; but it's acceptable to not finish that until level 72 or so), at least 3.5k HP and 3.5k pdef. And your main pets should be at least within a few levels of you.

Unless you're always running with higher levels, your lures are really useful here. Learn about genie luring, tame-pet luring and maybe play with some of the really odd edge cases. There's an excellent luring guide on the wiki.

Here you start to specialise; and get your best (but least reliable) debuffs.
Don't miss these debuffs. At level 79; "Myriad Rainbow" has two versions, one human and one fox form - and both throw a host of random debuffs. Or sometimes do nothing at all. Get them from apocalypse pages (Higher TT runs, or 89, or make from tokens) and medium ink (buy from a merchant).
The foxform one is an AOE; but has a shorter range. Eventually you want both.

At this point in your career you start hitting bosses you can't solo even with a legendary pet (Jewelscalen, Polearm, some of the TT bosses)
You also start to meet monsters with AOE more regularly. Start filling out your skills - and start worrying about needing to max out 'Purge' - one of the few skills we have that works better than any other class. Not many bosses need it; but the ones that do, really really do.

Start collecting gear with an eye towards it either upgrading, or being resold as you head for your endgame gear. TT80 and 90 suck a lot less than TT70 does (but note you have to decompose earlier TT gear to make them). Start getting left behind by other classes, as their gear begins to overpower your pet. Start to get really annoyed with keeping pets levelled up.

At level 89, you get to make the choice between Sage or Demon. We have one of the closest balances between the two paths. Demons get speed, and critical hits - but more randomness. Sage gets more solid reliability, but less spike damage. Pick whichever appeals to your play style most; both sets get some unique stuff to lord it over the other with.

You'll be doing a lot more Bounty Hunts (BH69 is pain, BH79 and Eden are joyous venomancer playgrounds. Brimstone is.. interesting. Painfully so.); but again - the largest activity here is FC. But now you get to DO stuff. Practice keeping your pet under control, practice stunning things - and practice keeping your damage under control and not dying too often when you throw an AOE.

If you can, get into a gamma run before you hit 85. They're few and far between - but it'll do you good to learn how.

Don't level out of this range until you have at least: 5k HP and pdef. Chosen your cultivation, and got at least a few skills to level 11. Opened up the past-time maps. (Shameful really, that nowadays I have to put this here; you can get in at level 70! Try it!) And make sure you've got your chosen ranged pet.

Luring is important less often; still, there are a few really nice ones you can pull off now.


The best gear is constantly evolving, and is, of course, the most expensive. Right now it's the rank gear.

If you haven't got your legendary pet(s) yet; get them now! Finish off getting your sage/demon skills as you can. Get the ones you use most first, obviously. Some of the most desired skills are amplify damage (both versions), soul degeneration (sage) - and for fox-form users, melee mastery (demon). The morai skills we have are almost solely PVP - though bewitch (and variants) is still a seal on monsters.

Go to the lyceum, and evolve your pets. Then go back and destroy some of those bosses you couldn't touch earlier in your career. It's very very satisfying.

If you went hybrid; consider buying the reset scroll and restatting as pure, now that your gear (hopefully) is making up the difference. Or maybe consider going Heavy Armour (far easier to do it now, than struggle up through the ranks that way.)

Frankly; unless you solo a lot; you'll probably never lure properly again. People are impatient, and use genies. Or just tear into the middle of all the monsters and kill them all at once. Which has a certain satisfying quality too.


Pets being a somewhat central part of being a Venomancer, it's worth giving a quick rundown of pet skills here.

The majority of pet skills can be obtained from the Zoologist NPCs in Achosaur. That's also how you put the skills onto a pet, and level up skills. Skills cost around 100k, and levelling up costs 200k. Some rare skills are only available through events (Lyceum and dragon temple primarily - but they're tradable) or come pre-equipped on rare pets. If you have a high level faction base, some pet-skill scrolls may be on sale there, too. Those are very expensive (36m), but are the best available.

So what skills should you put on your pets? There are really three types of skill - damage, debuffs and utility.
Damage skills are the simplest. Bash is the most well known as the best for generating aggro - but there are equivalent skills in each element. There's also flesh ream (which inflicts a bleed) Pounce is an attack, an attack speed increase and a stun. Sadly, it's also rare (and has a long cooldown).
The useful debuffs are mainly howl and pierce. And you can mostly duplicate pierce with ironwood; so get howl. There are other debuffs too, such as threten and shriek.
For utility - the healing skills aren't really powerful enough; but tough is a pretty nice way to stay alive; (as is threaten). The rare utility skills (strong, claw, protect, blessings of the pack and reflect) are all awesome if you can get them.

At level 100 many pets can evolve - and then it gains some additional skills as well as a bunch of stats. This is a good thing, don't miss it! Check with the zoologist for details.


Venomancers can use all the usual genie skills.

We have a few that we get especial use out of:
Fortify makes you immune to movement debuffs. Which is nice on its own as an anti-stun; but it has a special combo with our Feral Concentration skill - turning it into a long-lasting invcibility with no real downside other than the cost.
And Blinding Sand stacks with Befuddling Mist to give an accuracy debuff that's large enough to be really useful. (Unless you're doing lots of damage with bramble, then it's potentially really annoying.)
For self preservation, absolute domain is always a popular choice, as is holy path (though demon path venomancers especially get really quite fast).
For healing - second wind is a nice chunk of healing; it's instant - and unless you're a hybrid-vitality venomancer, will probably be a nearly complete heal for most of your levels. If you do have a lot of hitpoints, then Tree of Protection can be a better choice (healing more, but more slowly. It also tends to tick your charm, if you use one.)
We lack aggro skills - so if you intend to be a tank (even just an "Oh ****, everything went wrong, I'd better save the cleric even though it's suicide for me" tank) then you can't go wrong with Alpha Male. It used to overwrite brambles, but no longer. Which is nice.
And lastly earthflame. Our bane. It's a perfect lure (the same way your tame pet is.) So get it if you feel like being really lazy. Or at least learn to watch out for your squadmates using it.

All the general all-class advice for good genie skills applies to us too - gaining chi is always nice, for example. (Though sage path veno's need this less than most classes.)
Earthquake is (at level 10) a perfectly reliable AOE interrupt, and a knockback - which is very nice combo to have sometimes.
Lightning chaser is a less reliable interrupt.
The channel time reducers are nice, though our channel times are mostly short to start with.
Wind Shield reduces damage a bit, quite cheap, pretty nice.
Expel applies silence, but also immune to physical damage for a while. Use it to stop a caster, or use it on yourself as an alternative to Absolute domain.
Badge of Courage is an unstun. One of the few things you can do while stunned, which is nice.

The venomancer-specific "Soul Transfuse someone else" genie skill is... not well regarded. It can't be used except in PVP (no replenishing squad-mates MP, unless you're in a duel with them), and while theoretically useful in PVP it's too specialised to be useful very often.
And Hollow Fist is basically a pdef debuff, the same as Tangling Mire; Tangling Mire being better at it - though without the small damage and bleed that hollow fist adds.

TODO: Suggested minimum attack strength at each level boundary.
TODO: Links. (Wiki, Rei's HA guide., the list of links sticky.)
TODO: Endgame stuff. Though the guide is already huuuuge.