Best Solo Grinding?

[codehunter87]

I finally have a serious topic to post that was NOT answered elsewhere.

Does anyone know the best enemies and places to grind the skills on Solo? I have no XBOX Live Gold, and no decent internet connection, to Survival Grind with, so I kind of need to know the best Solo Grinding options. I have two Master Rings and two Soul Eater Rings for the record, and am going to work on EVERY character eventually.

Let's start with the whip users first though, I'm currenly grinding on Simon, and don't know a good place to grind Holy Water (Or R. Fire Bomb for that matter). I've been using Legion on Hard for the Axe, Knife, and Cross however. Is this a good place, or is there better?

EDIT: Forgot to mention, for those of you who did not read or do not remember my introduction post, I have all DLC Chapters and Characters.

[Iron Blue Arremer]

Multipart bosses like Legion and Beelzebub are actually pretty good choices. On Beelzebub, it's easy to level Javelin, Axe and R. Axe. Legion is perfect for the latter two, Bible and all the horizontal subs (e.g. Cross, Boomerang, Knife, etc.). Astarte is actually wonderful for leveling Holy Water and its retro counter part. The Knife, Paper Airplane and R. Dagger also are very easily leveled on Menace.
For the Wrecking Ball, check my Jonathan guide for the zombie exploit. Otherwise, big targets like Gergoth or Dracula are good choices for it. Ricochet Rock works with anyone in a small room not named Astarte, so Death could be a good choice (the projectile also cuts through his scythes, so...).

For Yoko, Holy Flames on Astarte, Holy Lightning on Legion or Beelzebub, Blue Splash on big bosses like the latter two, Dracula or Gergoth.
Maria's are rather easy to see as well: Go for Beelzebub with the cats, for Legion with the dragon and the birds, and Astarte with Hymn.
On Shanoa, Legion is the best choice for all DLC spells. Nitesco you can go for on Astarte, Ignis just a big target, Grado and Fulgur on Menace.
For Fuma, Legion is generally the best choice I'd say.

[swerve]

This was extremely helpful advice! I default to Legion on hard with two master rings for everything, but floating bosses aren't practical for things like holy water. I was able to nudge it up to 8 on Richter using Astarte as indicated, and I'm working on Julius next.

For knives, I found it faster to throw on two masters and BDC a full bar of mana on the beginning of Chapter 4 (3 is probably just as good), then force-fail and repeat. I got all 4 of my whippers to level 8 knives in minimal time using this method.

[jaygarrettt]

I managed to get Julius maxed up to level 8 on everything by soloing menace and legion, because survival is dead. I've only ever been able to find a game once.

[swerve]

One other thing I found helpful for the holy water specifically is using it to kill final guards on chapter 6. There are 3 of them, and they're wide enough to maximize the number of hits per use, plus they take a lot of punishment to kill.

[codehunter87]

I know this thread is pretty much dead by now, but I have some suggestions for specific skills or locations for skill grinding that I've been using.

For Holy Water and R. Fire Bomb, I've mainly chosen to use CH. 8's Final Guard, as I could grind that while grinding other subweapons as well on Legion. It's not as many hits as some other stages, but if you're going for all the chests anyway, it's useful when you get behind that Final Guard and use it to help get back out anyway. For me, Astarte moves too much to use those skills on. Both skills are also handy on other enemies on the stage, namely Mimics, Nova Skeletons, Fishheads, Minotaurs, Cave Trolls (Sort of), and Malachi.

For Ricochet Rock, small rooms are ideal, but I find Legion to be better to use it on, as it doesn't move enough to dodge the weapon, and you can easily score a lot of hits with Ricochet Rock on him per playthrough, and several per use of the skill.

For Shanoa, Fulgar I admit Menace is great for, but for Grando, I opt for CH 8 again, this time on the Fishhead enemies directly left of where you start. They only take one damage per hit (and if I'm not mistaken, it's the number of hits and not damage dealt that level up a skill), and unlike most opprotunities, you can actually make Grando hit TWO enemies at once, instead of only hitting once per use. Granted, this method is best used if you do not intend to finish the stage though, because it takes most of the half-hour time limit to kill them with Grando. If you do kill them, you can move onto the next stack of two Fishheads and do it over again until time runs out.

Can't say I have any suggestions for Maria yet, since I've only spent two hours on her total right now, partly from trying to get 9 of the darn Philosopher's Stone first with Yoko. However, I'm not sure if Hymn would be better on Legion (Who doesn't fight back at first if you're ideally placed), or Astarte (Who spends most of her time level with Maria).

[swerve]

I haven't seen this mentioned here yet, but you can get a lot of miles out of the Dullahan. Hitting the body of the Dullahan does 0 damage (you'll see it say "GUARD"), but still counts as a hit for the purposes of leveling a skill. What this means is that if you have a skill that doesn't hit the head, and a Dullahan somewhere near a Grimoire, you can use this method:

1) Burn a full bar of mana hitting the Dullahan's body for "GUARD" hits
2) Use a mana prism
3) Burn another full bar
4) Head to the Grimoire to get another mana prism
5) Rinse and repeat until out of mana prisms, then force fail and start over

This is highly effective, albeit rather boring, for many skills. In particular weapons like the holy water which hit multiple times can be leveled to 9 with a relatively minimal number of loops. Chapter 4 works very well for this due to the presence of a book-adjacent Dullahan.

Menace remains more effective for many of the slot-rotated skills (Cross, etc.) due to the ability to multi-hit and again refresh mana at a Grimoire during the fight. Legion is great for almost everything, but keep in mind that the amount of time you spend getting to him can begin to outweigh the advantage that those extra hits provide relative to the options that allow you to get to a Grimoire. Things like ricochet rock are the exception due to the truly massive number of hits and comparative ineffectiveness of other options (you don't get many hits per use on Menace due to the size of the room, etc.).

Being optimal at this also isn't necessary as others have mentioned, since you can be working other things in parallel. The scenario where you are slowly working through the hundreds(300+ and counting for me personally with no results!) of kills you need on Astarte to get your miser rings while grinding is a great example of this. I got Maria's hymn to level 9 before her other spells reached 8 in this manner.

[Squeezit]

Thanks for the tips Swerve!