Bougie's Ultimate LHC Guide: Updated Strategies, Optimal Compositions, and More for 2024

*This guide assumes you’ve already completed the pre-quests! Prequest guide can be found here by @Becca LHC/LKC Prequest Guide*
*Note: This guide will be mainly melee-centric, focusing on LHC golems.*

Table of Contents
1. Motivations for this Guide
2. Ideal Level Ranges
3. Identifying Your Goals
4. How to Recruit
5. Mandatory Buffs
6. Melee Class Tier List
7. Ranged Class Tier List
8. Melee Composition Tier List
9. Ranged Composition Tier List
10. Job Importance
11. Consumables
12. Playing with a Team
- Calling
- Gathering
- Utility
13. Pets
14. Additional Strategies
15. Positioning
16. Acknowledgements


Motivations for this Guide
The purpose of this guide is to turn you into an absolute LHC powerhouse in MapleRoyals. Whether you're out to farm totems like a beast or soak up experience faster than a sponge in a water fight, this guide has got you covered. Follow these tips and you'll be breezing through LHC parties, flexing your buffs, and rocking optimized party compositions.

Our goal is to teach you how to maximize your experience gain in LHC golems. With an elite party composition, you can achieve almost 500+ mil exp (during event) and collect over 100 totems. Trust me, stick to this guide and you'll be out-leveling your friends so fast they'll think you’ve hacked the game. Get ready to leave them in the dust!


Ideal Level Ranges
- Reindeers: Level 136 for experience
- Bearwolves: Level 143 for experience (optimal at 150+)
- Golems: Level 147 for experience (optimal at 165+)


Identifying Your Goals
- Totem Farming: Focus on Bearwolves
- Experience: Engage with whatever mobs you can handle
- Pre-quests: Do not join LHC parties if you need VL scrolls


How to Recruit
- There are two main categories of LHC parties: Standard and Ranged. Be sure to specify when recruiting (R>).
- Specify the goal of the party if it’s not for experience (totems, pre-quests, etc.)
- List the mandatory buffs your party already has and which ones you still need
- Indicate the level range you are looking for and the attack potions that will be used

Example recruiting message for a melee party:
R> Melee LHC Golems. 3/6. Need SI and MW20. Apple Run. Echo Ready.

Example recruiting message for a ranged party:
R> Ranged LHC Golems. 2/6. Need SE and MW20. Apple Run. Echo Ready.


Mandatory Buffs
Echo
SI
MW20
SE (if ranged party)
HS (Helpful but optional)
Haste (Helpful but shouldn’t be relied on)


Melee Class Tier List



Ranged Class Tier List



Melee Composition Tier List


S:
- 4 Warriors, 1 Bucc, 1 BS
- 5 Warriors, 1 Bucc
A:
- 1 Arc Mage, 1 Bucc, Rest Warriors
- 1 Bucc, 1 Shad, Rest Warriors
B:
- 2 Mage, 1 Bucc, 3 Warriors
- 1 Warrior, Bucc/Shad Mix
C:
- Multi Shad, Bucc/Warrior Mix
- Multi Bucc
- 3 or More Mage, Melee Mix - This will reduce totem drop rate
D:
- Monkey Comp, Mixed Range/Melee - Please do not do this


Ranged Composition Tier List


S:
- 5 NL, 1 SE
A:
- Mixed NL / SE
B:
- Mixed Sair / NL / SE
C:
- Adding 1 Mage to Ranged PT
- 3 or more ranged to mage pt
D:
- Monkey Comp, Mixed Range/Melee - Please do not do this



Job Importance
Warriors: Warriors are the gods of LHC. They deal the most damage and play a key role in rushing mobs into the right spot. With their arsenal of power stance, rush, and monster magnet, no class controls the pace of the run more than they do.

Buccaneers: As most parties only need one Bucc, they are absolutely mandatory. Their speed infusion skill allows every other attacker to output the most damage possible. In addition, they are also very capable of pushing mobs into place, bringing excellent utility to the team. This class only falls short to warriors in doing raw damage to multiple monsters.

Mage: If warriors are the gods of LHC, mages are the kings. Their ultimate 4th job spells allow them to hit every mob on the map for massive damage, constantly. Bishops' ability to increase the party's exp with holy symbol is an invaluable addition as well. Mages carry a few drawbacks though; they are heavily reliant on the warriors and buccaneers ability to push mobs into their damaging radius. They are also reliant on very potent and expensive attack potions (assuming they are not attacking a mob weak to their element). Their final weakness is their ability to lower totem drop rate. If your mages are too strong or you have too many (dealing 80% or more damage to the monster), the likely outcome is less totems for the party.

Shadower: Shadowers completely dominate most of the game's content, but most will likely be surprised with their mediocre performance in LHC. Though there are many reasons to include these shifty fellas. Smokescreen brings solid utility to the party, allowing the classes that stand inside the skill, to not be hit and subsequently knocked around. This amazing quality of life skill, paired with a buccaneer's time leap skill, can create very smooth runs for everyone! Unfortunately, shadowers fall short to the other classes when it comes to raw damage to mobs. This paired with their inability to push monsters, results in them living in the shadow of warriors and mages.

Archers: Simply put, archers fall into the same box as buccaneers. Every ranged party needs their party buff - Sharp Eyes. So taking one of these guys is an absolute must, for optimal damage. Recruiting too many will result in a drop in DPS, so be cautious.

Night Lords: Night lords are the backbone of ranged runs. They deal the most consistent damage, have excellent avoidability, and mobility. This allows them to slay mobs with an ease that other classes wish they had. Similar to warriors (who need speed infusion), night lords need the sharp eyes skill to deal the most damage possible. As an extra bonus, their alchemy skill allows them to save mesos on expensive attack potions as well.

Corsair: Corsairs are a complex and frustrating class to play and bear witness to. They are capable of out damaging night lords in ideal conditions, but those conditions are rarely ever met. They come with a laundry list of drawbacks in LHC. The first being, they are heavily reliant on both sharp eyes and speed infusion; a combination you will likely never get. Second, they have abysmal avoidability. This results in them being knocked around, and their ship breaking often, lowering their DPS. Lastly they require more actions per minute than the rest of the classes. Their need to move from group of mobs to group of mobs, requires them to constantly jump in and out of their ship, which appears tiresome compared to night lords, who effortlessly hop around.


Consumables
Potions: Apples, Stoppers, Gelts, Siwss Cheese/VL Pot (Every party will require you to consume these pots during the entire duration of the LHC run. As doing so will result in the best EXP gains.)



Playing with a Team
Calling
Calling plays a key role in ensuring your team rotates to the biggest group of mobs possible. This role is usually assumed by the party leader or the person with the highest level gathering skills (Rush, Snatch, Monster Magnet, Corkscrew). The idea and execution of calling is simple: navigate your party around the map to areas with three or more monsters.

Gathering
Gathering is the priority action for warriors, buccaneers, and shadowers. When your team kills mobs, new ones are going to spawn. When this happens, you need to get them into your team's damage range as fast as possible. This is easily accomplished using the specific skills of each class.

Warrior: Warriors use a combination of Monster Magnet and Rush to pull mobs into the damage zone quickly and efficiently. Their high durability and their powerstance skill allows them to stay in the thick of the battle while gathering mobs. For a detailed demonstration, check out our video on how to rush and magnet mobs towards the middle: Watch the video here.

Buccaneer: Buccaneers utilize Snatch and Corkscrew Blow to gather mobs. Snatch pulls enemies together, while Corkscrew Blow knocks them back into the desired position. Buccaneers also have the added utility of Speed Infusion, which increases the attack speed of party members. For a detailed demonstration, check out our video on how to snatch and corkscrew mobs towards the middle: Watch the video here.

Properly executed gathering ensures that mobs are consistently within the party’s damage range, maximizing efficiency and experience gain.

Utility
Shadower: While not as strong in mob control as warriors and buccaneers, they bring additional utility with Smokescreen, which provides a safe zone for party members to avoid damage while gathering mobs. For precise Smokescreen placement in LHC Golems, please refer to the screenshot below:



Properly planning your team's utility buffs helps your runs go as smoothly as possible. This means the leader assigns the casting order for things like Time Leap and Smokescreen to ensure the maximum amount of uptime possible. Having a system even as simple as: Smoke1, Smoke2, TL1, TL2, etc., can make things much easier to execute.


Pets
You might be surprised seeing a section about pets in an LHC guide, but trust me when I say, they are exemplary. Having three pets that are outfitted with the necessary looting items allows you to make significant profits in LHC runs. The mobs here drop valuable items, but also give amazing EXP. Because you should always be attacking, you need your helpful companions to grab the goods for you. Ideally your three pets are outfitted with:

Item pouch
Meso magnet
Binoculars
Wing boots

The other area pets can cover is mobility. Plenty of optimally composed parties do not see thieves and the haste skill they come with. To ensure you are navigating the map with as much efficiency as possible (when not on your mount of course), you should aim to max out your speed stat by scrolling your pet's equips for speed. This is most useful for warriors, who frequent a couple steps around the map to use rush and monster magnet.





Additional Strategies
Juggling Buffs
If you really want to optimize your exp, parties at the highest level will often have a character that can cast Sharp Eyes inside the map and out of the party (on melee runs). The goal is to juggle the character into the party, to give the team the skill, and then kick it back out. This results in a DPS increase for everyone!

Rush Mules
Similar to juggling buffs, rush mules sit inside the map and outside of the party. Primarily found in ranged runs, rush mules are used to gather mobs for team comps that don't have any on their roster.

Mage Skill Lockout
If a mage casts too many skills in one position, they can get locked out of casting. To prevent this from happening, telecast to loot your totems, which will refresh your casting position!

Extra Client Scouter
Hang another client on the right side of the LHC golems map as a scouter to see mobs spawn from the right side to rush to the middle. Make sure that the extra client is in the middle of the rope so it doesn't aggro mobs. This can double where to put your echo mule at also.


Positioning
The glue that holds a run together is good positioning. Each class has an optimal spot to be in, that allows them to utilize their kit to the fullest. See the image below for where each class should be. Note: Buccaneers and shadowers occupy the same positions, depending on mob location, as well as all warriors.




Acknowledgements
This guide wouldn't have been possible without the amazing support and contributions from the following people:
Main Author: Gio (Miliion)
Co-Author: Andy (iFightHoes)
Banner Design: Vivian (Gewn)
Sprite Images and Tierlist Concepts: Jae (itsJustJae)
Idea Contributors: Tom (Tomzwhere), Chris (ChrisBrew), Wes (BoyWithSword), Dave (Dashii)

A huge thank you to everyone who has joined us for LHC runs. Your help and feedback have been super valuable in making the most efficient and highest exp parties.

Special shoutout to our guild, Bougie, one of the top LHC guilds on the server. Bougie has significantly impacted the game with all-apple runs, setting a new standard. Thanks to LHC, we now have now have 20+ 200 characters in the guild!

Andy and Gio have been excited to drop this guide for a while now. We are incredibly passionate about LHC and, between the two of us, we have hundreds of hours at LHC. We have spent a lot of time theory crafting about how to generate the most elite squads for LHC. We really appreciate everyone who chipped in with ideas and support while we put this guide together.

 

sign

 

w

 

double U

 

It was a pleasure making this with you @andywtf
Hope everyone finds some good info!

 

@Ras @CindyTsai @autismax
familiar?

 

Dementia

 

Ranged LHC guide:

 

far too familiar

 

Effort bruhhhh nice guide D

 

ily

 

w guide

hero > pally

 

To actually clarify, for anyone interested! Most ranged parties don't have set positions the way a melee golems run does. Whether it be bears, golems, or reindeers, its based on calling, and the party is moving around constantly.

 

Curious about your ranking for ranged runs
I feel mages are particularly bad for ranged because they sit in the middle, and force the ranged parties off the wall.
Off the wall = long kb = loss of dps
Mages feel like having anti synergy from the rest of the ranged comp, but am interested to hearing your thoughts on this.

Also, I don’t think having melee in ranged parties is F tier. There are people before reset, or they need to get off and are willing to join a ranged party (I personally would never but melee have joined my ranged runs lol)
Even without si, wouldn’t melee out dps for 3+ mobs, and they can help keep golems off the walls
100%, melee should run with melee or they’re just griefing themselves, but from the perspective of a ranged party, including a melee into the comp isn’t F tier is it?

Last thought but my understanding is MM > BM when it comes to mobbing because pierce, but BM > MM for everything else lol.
MM could also kb golems with pierce/snipe, so they could also be useful for keeping golems off of the wall. Blind = no kb = more dps too
Are they still strictly a lesser tier than BM?
They don’t have si, so their single target dps is prob realllly bad
So it might depend on how much time the party is mobbing vs single targetting.
Was interested in hearing other people’s thoughts on this.

 

Oh and yes isn’t hero > pally?
Pally can only hit 1 platform… so in terms of dps, could they be close to, or perhaps be even less than shads?
They do have HH, but it’s on a pretty long cd and the animation is really long, which you lose out on dps from.
Interested to hear if anyone has actually done the numbers on it to see if they are actually a higher tier than shads
Of course they would suddenly turn S tier if the party has no rushers ofc, but in the ideal scenario, I’m curious to hear what the reasoning was behind putting pallys up so high

 

Good guide, +1

 

Shads can also stun mobs with boomeerang step.

 

I'll reply to both of your comments here!

Regarding mages in ranged runs: They're not great by any means, and would need to TC around. But due to their ability to output more DPS than a sair (and don't have a ship that breaks), they are still more useful, even if they aren't hitting every mob on the map -like they would in a run with rushers. Furthermore, I didn't intend to put melees in F tier, I just wanted them to be ignored. (Should've cropped them out) Obviously the addition of some of the melee classes would help, but the idea is that melee players are far better off in melee runs, and should do those. Resulting in only ranged classes going on ranged runs, and the tier list only covering ranged classes. Lastly for ranged runs, I put BM higher than MM simply because MM needs SI to deal optimal damage, while BM doesn't. Additionally, BM's can hit bearwolves super effectively, with their fire abilities -which a lot of ranged runs go to. This opinion is also shared by the master of all arrow shooters, and my biological father @Cynn who helped me when comparing the two.

Now for my special area of expertise! Hero vs Pally! In all honesty, I almost put pally in S tier. Though that would've been undeserving, I'm very sure they are better than Hero. I currently have a Hero (200) and a Pally (18x) who have both done LHC with the same gearset, numerous times. The pally yielded better results in almost every comp and at every level range (the exception being a 3 pally party, vs a warrior mix). This is due to a few things: Pally is able to attack 6 monsters at max attack speed (same as hero), for super effective damage (Holy type). This results in them out damaging hero as soon as the clump of mobs is more than 3, and doing very slightly less damage when 3 or less. Their ability to hit the entire map for cap every 20 seconds with HH makes up for this small loss, and then some. The other advantage pally's have is their threaten skill. This reduces golems weapon def by 20% for the entire party, which is an incredible boost to kill speed (when used alongside rush, the time it takes to cast is almost non-existent). The final thing to reconsider is the positioning of warriors when running. Warriors waste tremendous amounts of time if they are trying to rush appropriately, and then jump into a position on the stairs, to make an attempt at hitting multiple platforms. This is because they then need to hop back over the mobs and take multiple steps to use monster magnet, and catch the mobs on the far right, and then get back on the stairs (all time spent not attacking). Additionally, clumps of mobs less than 3, should rarely be focused. So a Hero or DK trying to hit multiple platforms also doesn't serve them much; as they would just hit the same 3 if they were on the right side of the mob (refer to positioning image). Respectfully, in no world are shads better than any warrior at LHC golems. Their multi target skills simply don't do enough damage compared to their warrior counterparts. The sample size I have for this is very large as well. The Bougie guild has multiple 200 DK's and Heroes, all leveled primarily by LHC Golems. Not a single one has been whited by a shad of any caliber, and all recommend taking a warrior over a shad (for raw DPS). As for pally, there are plenty as well, and once we all hit around 16x, there were no shads of any level, out damaging us (except this one guy who showed up with 81 CGS and was 20 levels higher). This info was gathered over the course of multiple members going on daily runs, for months, and over a year if you include the journey of our other warriors!

Hope this helps! I urge everyone to express curiosity and concerns! This guide is to help everyone clear this content in the most effective way possible.

 

The golems in LHC are considered boss mobs, and are NOT affected by status from attack skills. This includes: Blizzard's freeze, Boomerang Step's stun, Roar's stun, etc. That being said, a paladin's threaten now affects everything in the game (big bosses included). Not sure when this change was done, but it is very nice to have now!

 

Thanks for your in-debt explanation here!
Every time I tried to join lhc on my pally, I felt really bad about it because I thought they sucked lol
But maybe I didn’t have to feel so bad after all ^^

And if @Cynn said BM > MM even at content that requires mobbing…
Then sadly it must be true T^T
#buffMM