Farming at Sleepers with a Monk

When asking other players how to make money, you may have been told to "go to Sleepers". This guide explains how to farm money there.

Introduction

Sleepers are a type of monster in Ragnarok Online. They live mainly at and have two very important properties:

Very high defense
Dropping the item "Great Nature", which can be sold for 5.000 zeny.

It's obvious why dropping a valuable item makes Sleepers a good money farming spot. However, why is the high defense of Sleepers such an important property? Doesn't that just make them harder to defeat? Well, yes and no. Most characters will not be able to damage Sleepers very much and will not be able to farm there effectively. However, there are some characters in Ragnarok Online that can (in the right circumstances) either ignore their opponents defense or even deal more damage the more defense their opponent has. Common methods for this include:

Using the Weapon "Ice Pick" (sometimes called House Auger, depending on the version of the game you are playing). This dagger has the property of dealing more damage, the higher the opponent's defense is. However, the dagger itself is very expensive.
Critical Hits will always ignore the opponent's defense. This is especially useful to the Assassin class, which can use Katar-type weapons that double the user's critical rate.
The Monk's skill "Occult Impact" (sometimes called Investigate, depending on the version of the game), which also deals more damage depending on the opponent's defense.

In this guide, we will focus on the last method because it requires the smallest upfront money investment. In the following, we will assume that you are making a Monk character specifically to farm money at Sleepers.

Upfront money investment

Farming at Sleepers effectively with a Monk requires a "Sleeper Chain", which is expensive. Prices on OriginsRo for such an item currently start at roughly 7.5 million zeny, but they can easily cost 10 million or more. You can earn part of the money for this item while you level up your Monk at Wolves, Mandragoras or Rafflesias, but earning the money will take easily 10 hours of your time. Things will go a lot smoother if you already have a Sleeper Chain at your disposal.

How to assign stats for your Sleeper farming Monk

Summary

The damage of the Occult Impact (OI) skill depends highly on your character's atk value. Atk can be raised by putting stat points into STR and DEX. STR raises atk more than DEX, so it is very important that you have a lot of it. Besides damage, there are also two other concerns: Cast time, which is reduced by DEX and your SP regeneration, which is increased by INT. These will likely be the most important stats for you.

To farm Sleepers effectively, you will have to be able to one-shot them. Otherwise, killing them will take twice as long. It is imperative that you reach high enough atk for one-shotting sleepers as soon as possible, so you will want to put your stat points exclusively into STR until roughly level 65. Then you should start adding DEX and later possibly INT. You might want to add some AGI to be able to dodge Sleepers and get less damage, though this is not recommended because you would need a lot of AGI for that. Especially if you want to participate in WoE later on, you should think about adding DEX

What the stats do in Detail

If you're not interested in the finer points of stats, this section can be skipped safely.

STR: Mainly increases your character's atk (attack), which increases the damage you will deal with autoattacks and physical skills. Adding points to STR does not increase you atk evenly. Instead, your atk will go up slowly as you increase STR and by a much larger amount, each time your STR reaches a value divisible by 10 (e.g. 30, 40 etc.). STR also increases the amount of weight your character can carry, which is helpful because it means that you will be able to carry more loot and don't need to return to town to sell it as frequently
VIT: Increases your character's HP, HP regeneration and VIT-def. To clarify, in Ragnarok, there are two kinds of def: VIT-def (soft def), which is just a flat damage reduction and equip-def (hard def), which is s percentage-based damage reduction.
DEX: DEX increases hit, decreases your casting time by 0.66% per point and increases your ATK by for every 5 points. Hit is irrelevant for you because OI never misses. However, the ATK increase and cast time reduction are quite nice. However, OI's cast time has a portion of 0.5 seconds which can never be reduced.
AGI: Increases your characters ASPD (attack speed) and flee (dodge chance). Attack speed is irrelevant for OI because it only affects autoattacks. Flee could be useful because it would allow us to dodge attacks from monsters, but the amount of flee you need to dodge well is frequently very high. Your character's base flee is always exactly (your level + your AGI) and all monsters have a minimum flee value. Your chance to dodge them is (your flee - their minimum flee value), up to a maximum of 95%.
INT: Increases you MATK (magic attack), maximum SP and SP regeneration. The maximum SP and SP regeneration come in handy because they mean that we have to worry about running out of SP much less. The MATK increase is useless if you just want to use OI. However, it does become useful if you ever want to use some of the other skills the monk has, like Throw Spirit Sphere and Asura Strike. Your SP regeneration increases by 1 for every 6 points of INT
LUK: Increases your critical hit rate by 1% for every 3 points and increases your perfect dodge percentage by 1% for every 10 points. OI cannot ever hit critically, so the crit rate improvement is almost useless. The perfect dodge percentage is nice, but the increase is far too small to even matter. Avoid putting points in this stat.

Things to watch out for when distributing stat points

What stats you should have at each level

Which skills to get

For this topic, it's useful to play around with a skill simulator. All monks will have to choose Acolyte as their first job class. Because the requirements for all monk skills are so high, there is not much choice when it comes to what Acolyte skills to pick. Also you will very likely have to level to Job level 50 as an Acolyte to pick up everything you might need, unless you want to spend your precious Monk skill points on Acolyte skills. Here's what that I would recommend:

Divine Protection: Level 10 in this skill is a prerequisite for all Monk skill, so this is not really a choice.
Demon Bane: Level 10 in this skill is a prerequisite for all Monk skill, so this is not really a choice.
Blessing: This skill is a buff that increases each one of your most important stats by 10, which is well worth the skill points.
Increase Agility: Increases your walk speed and AGI. The walk speed increase is not dependent on the level of the skill, so level 1 is sufficient. However, leveling up the skill increases its duration so you don't have to refresh it constantly
Heal: Your basic healing spell. Especially if you are going to have high INT, using this skill will help you save money on healing items. The amount of HP healed increases with the level.
Cure: Heals status conditions. This is useful because there is a monster called Demon Pungus on the Sleeper Map which blinds your character. Also this skill costs only 1 skill point.
Ruwach: A buff that you can only apply to yourself and which detects nearby hidden monsters. This is useful because Sleepers can in fact hide.
Teleport: Level 1 teleports the player to a random location on the map (same effect as a fly wing). Level 2 teleports you to your save location (same effect as butterfly wing). Not so useful because the items it replaces are cheap, but it is a prerequisite for Warp Portal
Warp Portal: Level 1 creates a portal to your save location that you and other players can use. Levels 2-4 allow you to memorize up to three other locations for warping with the /memo chat command. This skill is very useful since it gets you to your leveling locations instantly. Also required if you want to use INNs for regenerating SP
Pneuma: Creates a small field which blocks the next 11 ranged attacks. This skill is useless for leveling at Sleepers but invaluable should you ever want to take part in PvP or WoE. Since it's only 1 skill point, it makes sense to get this skill anyways.
Decrease Agility: Like Pneuma, this can be very useful in PvP and WoE. Usually, it's not useful to get more that level 1.

My Monk has the following Acolyte skills:

Divine Protection: 10
Demon Bane: 10
Blessing: 10
Increase Agility: 4
Heal: 5
Cure: 1
Ruwach: 1
Teleport: 2
Warp Portal: 4
Pneuma: 1
Decrease Agility: 1.

Regarding the Monk skills, there is a lot more choice:

Occult Impact: The main skill you will use when leveling at Sleepers. Maxing it out makes it deal more damage which is required for one-shotting Sleepers.
Iron Fists: Increases your damage with Knuckle-type weapons which you will likely never use. Get only the level that is required for you following skills
Summon Spirit Sphere: Summons little balls that circle around your character and increase your atk. OI and several other skills consume them, so you will need to cast this a lot.
Spiritual Sphere Absorbtion: Consumes one of your Spirit Spheres to regenerate the SP taken to create it. Can also be casted on monsters and will absorb a little bit of your SP. Definitely get it for this purpose.
Flee: As the name says, this passively increases you character's flee value by 1 per level of the skill. The increase is too small to really matter, so get only what is needed for other skills.
Throw Spirit Sphere: Throws some of your spirit Spheres to deal damage. It's better than OI, especially on low def monsters and in some PvP situations
Guillotine Fist: Kind of the signature spell of Monks, this deals loads of damage, depending on your atk and current amount of SP, but uses up all of them and 5 spirit spheres and disables your SP regeneration for 5 minutes. Useful for PvP and MvP hunting, so definitely recommended to get this.
Snap: Consumes 1 spirit sphere to teleport you to a position on your screen instantly. Very useful in PvP and WoE, sometimes also MvPing. Not really necessary for leveling. Getting this skill with all its prerequisites takes up 47 of your 49 monk skill points, so you will have just barely enough skill points to max out OI

In general, the only really necessary skills for farming at Sleepers are OI and Spritual Sphere Absorbtion. After that, it depends on what you want to do. I would recommend going for Snap, which is useful in PvP situations. If you want to be very good at killing MvPs, you might want to max out Asura Strike instead.

How to level up

Level 1-10: should be done in the novice training ground. If you have already left the training ground. Go to "Poring heaven", which is on the map and kill Poporings there. If you have a friend who's already stronger, have him tank the monsters for you
Level 10-35: you can level at the wolves , which are good EXP and also drop strawberries that fetch a nice price from other players. If you want even more money, you can also try out Mandragoras
Level 35 to 65: There are multiple options for what you can do here. You could continue doing wolves, which will get quite slow with time. Other options are Metalings at which are formless type, so especially good if you have a chain with pecopeco egg cards, or Rafflesia's which are Earth element, so especially good if you have a chain with Kaho cards and it's also very helpful if you have a sage with endow. Rafflesias also have the advantage of dropping a card that is quite valuable, so it makes sense to level there. All of these leveling areas require the use of healing items such as meat or fresh fish.
Level 65 to 99: Once you can afford a Sleeper chain and have good enough stats to one-shot them, you should start leveling there. It will be tough at first but get a lot easier later on. This is your main leveling spot for the rest of the game. If you're interested in a change, you might also want to try out Turtle Island.

What Equipment to Use

The main goal with your equipment is to be able to one-shot Sleepers. This is only really possibly through the use of carded weapons. So you will first and foremost need a a Chain [3] with a combination of Kaho Cards and PecoPeco Egg cards (optionally also Skel Worker cards). Higher upgrades on the Chain also helps, because it increases the atk of the weapon. Once you have such a Chain, it makes sense to look into your equipment in the other slots. I will list options one by one for each slot:

How to level at Sleepers

Once you have a certain amount of atk, you can one-shot Sleepers, making this leveling area viable. There are a few additional things that you might want to consider when leveling there:

Killing the Goats and Demon Pungus will only slow you down. Use fly wings or the teleport skill to get away from them

You will consume a lot of SP and frequently run out. There are multiple ways to counteract this: Putting more stat points into INT and skill points into Spiritual Cadence helps a bit. What a lot of monks do is use their Spiritual Sphere Absorbtion skill to steal SP from the Goats on that map. That skill fails a lot but is relatively cheap. Having more dex makes this process a lot quicker. Theoretically, one could also use SP-restoring items like Strawberries or Blue potions, but they are prohibitively expensive. Finally, some Monks use the following strategy when they run out of SP: Set your save point at the Prontera Inn. Whenever you run out of SP, use the Teleport skill to get there, pay the Innkeeper 5.000 zeny for a bed, which will restore your SP and then use Warp Portal to get back to the Sleeper map. This is somewhat expensive, costing 5.000 zeny for resting and 500 zeny for a Blue Gemstone, but it is faster than the other solutions and getting one Great Nature already almost pays for the rest.

Especially early on, you should bring healing items. Using healing items is often a lot faster than the Heal skill because it does not cost SP. Meat is one of the cheapest healing items that you can get, considering how much it heals. However, the weight is so high that you need to restock frequently. A more convenient alternative is Fresh Fish, which can be bought from the Chef's Assistant in Comodo. It heals the same amount as Meat but weighs much less. Many players also use white potions, which heal even more but are yet more expensive.

How to sell your loot

This section contains some suprisingly non-obvious information: Great Natures sell to NPC vendors at 2.500 zeny a piece (3100 with Overcharge). However, there is a lady in Umbala who, once you have done the prerequisite quests will split up your Great Natures into 6~10 Green Lives, which yield 500z each (620z with Overcharge). Doing this is greatly recommended as it will increase your yield by a lot. Alternatively you could sell Great Natures to other players at some Discount if you are too lazy to spend time splitting Great Natures at the old lady.