The other day, I finally got my character to level 20 Brawler. It's taken a long time — mostly because I preferred leveling the non-combat jobs, and now most of them are capped — but being level 20 in at least one combat job has been quite rewarding.
First of all, three-pip difficulty dungeons don't faze me in the least now, and one-pip dungeons are WAY too easy. Sure it takes a little time to get through the three-pips, but I can typically do a run without using all my potions and only losing one or two knock-outs.
I remember that as a Brawler in my teens, three-pip dungeons were pretty hard to do, if I could do them at all (even with help from Peter), and I'd go through a stack of potions and most of my knock-outs. It was really frustrating, but I don't blame that on the game at all…I just wasn't strong enough to do them alone.
Maybe now I can finish that tough boss battle to save the Queen…whee!
Stop tempting me! Not reading this, lalalalala!
So… difficult… to resist!
Congrats! My highest job is Pet Trainer at 18. I think my highest combat jobs are Ninja, Warrior, and Wizard are all 7. Long way to go for me. . .
You know, it really wasn't that bad to level up any of my jobs to 20. I've found that Contracts are definitely the way to go.
Know how you get a quest that says, "Talk to this NPC" and "Reach level # as a ___"? The person you're sent to talk to is the one who gives you Contracts — kinda like EQ2's writs — that will send you out into the world to do a task for whatever job it is you're leveling up. Then when you finish the task and return to the NPC, you get a mess of stars and coins on top of what you earned fighting or tile-matching or whatever it is you just finished doing.
When leveling my combat jobs recently (I hit level 20 Ninja…was it last night? or night before, I can't recall…and I'm level 17 Medic now as well), I've found that doing a few rounds of Contracts gives me enough to meet my next level goal. Doing 3 or 4 sets of Contracts sure beats doing a dungeon over and over and over and over…