Dyes and Symbols
Now you've reached one of the most important matter about olympiads and even from the Lineage 2 itself, if you want to be one of the strongest players, you need to learn about dyes and symbols as much as possible, because if you're using the wrong symbols combination, especially in the olympiad, your winning chances are pretty low depending on your class.
We olympiad fighters are always trying to find some symbols combination to be able to fight all classes with the class we chose, but there are some situations where you can change it to increase your win rate, and here I will not give you the perfect or correct symbols, but I will teach you how to find the best combination for yourself, because changing them will also change your gameplay.
Basic Inicial Status
First, you need to know that each race beggins with a different combination of basic status, and it also changes if they are a fighter or a mage, check the values in the image below:
Be aware that if you are, for example, a human Phoenix Knight and creates a subclass from another race, like Spellsinger, your basic status will be as if you were an elven mage while you’re playing in your subclass, and will come back to the human fighter status once you come back to Phoenix Knight. But besides that, there is only three ways that allows you to change these status, which are:
- Getting an augmentation skill in your weapon with +1 from one of the six status. +1 point is the maximum and it’s impossible to get this augment to increase more than one status.
- Wearing complete set of clothes, which usually increases one kind of status and decrease another, like +2 WIT and -2 MEN. The changes are based on which clothes you are wearing, there are many options.
- Drawing symbols through the dyes, from which you get 2 symbols to draw after the first job, and a third one after completing the second job, but while in the first job you need to use some lesser dyes. Also you may only increase a basic status with dyes by +5 points, and there’s no limit for points reduction.
Symbols
Symbols are the results of mixing 10 units of the same dye in a Symbol Maker, the responsibles for this service, who are located in the Magic Shop of each town, where you can also buy some dyes. At the image above you can see in the first line the symbols related to the physical status and in the second line the symbols related to the magical status. This is important because you can't reduce from a physical attribute to increase in a magical one, or the other way around, keep it in mind.
- Symbol of Strength (STR): Increases your physical attack, physical skills critical rate and Skill Mastery chance for fighters. By drawing this symbol, you will lose DEX or CON points.
- Symbol of Dexterity (DEX): Increases your attack speed, physical critical rate, accuracy, evasion, speed, success rate of shield defense and blow skills (daggers). By increasing your attack speed it reduces physical skills reuse time. By drawing this symbol, you will lose STR or CON points.
- Symbol of Constitution (CON): Increases your maximum HP/CP, HP regeneration rate, stun, shock, and bleeding resistance, breath underwater and your weight limit. By drawing this symbol, you will lose STR or DEX points.
- Symbol of Intelligence (INT): Increases your magical attack, success rate of curses/debuff skills (by increasing your M. Atk.) and Skill Mastery Chance for magicians and healers. By drawing this symbol, you will lose WIT or MEN points.
- Symbol of Wisdom (WIT): Increases your casting speed, magical critical chance, hold/slow debuffs resistance, and some curses resistance related with HP regeneration and HP regeneration rate, such as Seal of Disease and Scourge. By increasing your casting speed it reduces magical skills reuse time. By drawing this symbol, you will lose INT or MEN points.
- Symbol of Mentality (MEN): Increases your magical defense, maximum MP, MP recovery rate, poison/curses resistance and decreases the chance of your magical casting skills being interrupted. By drawing this symbol, you will lose INT or WIT points.
As you can see, there are many possible combinations, but some classes are restricted to draw some magic symbols. These restrictions are complicated to understand, so I will write down which classes may use each magic symbol, refering to their first jobs:
- + INT – WIT: May be used by all Fighters and Wizards.
- + INT – MEN: May be used by Wizards.
- + WIT – INT: May be used by all Fighters and Wizards.
- + WIT – MEN: May be used by Wizards, Healers and Shamans.
- + MEN – INT: May be used by Wizards,
- + MEN – WIT: May be used by Wizards, Healers and Shamans.
- Fighters: Adventurers, Dreadnoughts, Duelists, Eva’s Templars, Fortune Seekers, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Sentinels, Grand Khavataris, Hell Knights, Maestros, Moonlight Sentinels, Phoenix Knights, Sagittarius, Shillien’s Templars, Spectral Dancers, Sword Muses, Titans and Wind Riders.
- Wizards: Arcana Lords, Archmages, Elemental Summoners, Mystic Muses, Soultakers, Spectral Masters and Storm Screamers.
- Healers: Cardinals, Eva’s Saints, Hierophants and Shillien’s Saints.
- Shamans: Dominators and Doomcryers.
First Dyes
These are the lesser dyes, they can only be added between the first and the second job, and give the maximum of +1 point, decreasing from -1 till -3. You can buy the ones with -2 and -3 points in a magic shop, but the ones decreasing -1 point are availabe only in the Merchant of Mammon for Ancient Adena, through the Seven Signs Event.
Greater Dyes
The greater dyes gives you stronger symbols, but you can use them only after the second job, yet they aren't the better ones, because they don't give you the choice to increase +1 and decrease -1 point. They increase from +1 up to +4 points, and decrease from -2 till -6 points, so you have lots of combinations, and you can buy them in the Magic Shops from the Town of Giran or Goddard.
Stronger Greater Dyes
These are the best dyes, because they allow you to make the equal proportion between removing and increasing your status (+1 -1; +2 -2; +3 -3; +4 -4; +5 -5), but it's usually harder to get them, depending on the server cconfiguration. Nowdays in higher rates servers they make it easier to buy them, sometimes selling it for adena on GM Shop, but if that's not the case, the best way to get them is buying in the Merchant of Mammon for Ancient Adena, through the Seven Signs Event.
It's also possible to get them through spoil or normal drop, but the chances aren't very high. Another way is through craft, but it's even harder, because you can only get the recipe and materials fishing, which usually demands a lot of time.
Creating Your Symbols
To create your three symbols, you must remember that you can increase one status for maximum +5 points, and there's no limitation for decreasing it, so let's use a mage set of symbols as one example. The goal here is to make +5 for a main status that you will need, I will chose WIT in this case, and a second status to get +4, let's pick INT, then we usually decrease everything from one status that we won't always need, is this case let's choose MEN.
