Update (Feb 06): not much new for monks
This update had some pretty long quests. I got 5 out of the 8 new quests completed, and flagged the new avatars battle so far. So to my todo list of quests there is now:
"Shadows of the Departed" (and the follow up "Apocalypse Nigh")
"Waking the Beast"
In terms of new items, there isn't really anything interesting for monk. Carbuncle's pole could be ok just for fun, but I already have better poles (the tp bonus might be useful i guess in some special strategies). In terms of armor, Ethereal Earring could be also kinda fun to have but mostly for fun (Converts 3% of Damage Taken to MP). I think it was designed more for paladins, and 3% is still so little, 30 mp for every 1000 damage taken doesn't quite seem that good when i could get 300+ mp just from a few swings and spirit taker, or using a yagudo drink or a few stacks of mulsums etc.
I wonder where the hydra set comes from, 2 of 3 of the hydra armor sets can be used by monk, one to give slight boosts to NPC fellow (HP and MP +50 or something, seems too minimal to care or to carry around 5 extra items and give up all my normal armor...) and one set with enhancement every 20 real hours, nice boost to melee stats but for how long? Maybe 30 seconds? Plus it's only once every 20hrs only... again probably not worth the cost in storage, we'll see.
As far as crafting, there is only one addition that seems interesting to me, the alchemy concoction key item which would let me make stacks of hipotions while farming dodge headbands from malboro type mobs for my clothcraft. All other new key items are basically to save crystals in making old recipes, which might help the economy by lowering price oin crystals, but really for most of those recipes the cost of the crystal is not the biggest factor.
"Shadows of the Departed" (and the follow up "Apocalypse Nigh")
"Waking the Beast"
In terms of new items, there isn't really anything interesting for monk. Carbuncle's pole could be ok just for fun, but I already have better poles (the tp bonus might be useful i guess in some special strategies). In terms of armor, Ethereal Earring could be also kinda fun to have but mostly for fun (Converts 3% of Damage Taken to MP). I think it was designed more for paladins, and 3% is still so little, 30 mp for every 1000 damage taken doesn't quite seem that good when i could get 300+ mp just from a few swings and spirit taker, or using a yagudo drink or a few stacks of mulsums etc.
I wonder where the hydra set comes from, 2 of 3 of the hydra armor sets can be used by monk, one to give slight boosts to NPC fellow (HP and MP +50 or something, seems too minimal to care or to carry around 5 extra items and give up all my normal armor...) and one set with enhancement every 20 real hours, nice boost to melee stats but for how long? Maybe 30 seconds? Plus it's only once every 20hrs only... again probably not worth the cost in storage, we'll see.
As far as crafting, there is only one addition that seems interesting to me, the alchemy concoction key item which would let me make stacks of hipotions while farming dodge headbands from malboro type mobs for my clothcraft. All other new key items are basically to save crystals in making old recipes, which might help the economy by lowering price oin crystals, but really for most of those recipes the cost of the crystal is not the biggest factor.