Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

This is a rather addicting web based, turn based RPG type of game.  There's not much in the sense of what you can do, but it pretty much scrapes away all the dungeon crawling and presents something that many RPGers love: hack 'n' slash!  Pretty much you get equipment and match your avatar against others, increasing statistics and skills before eventually doing battle in the arena.

The best way to experience Duels.com is to sign up and start playing!  Or better yet, get an invitation from me so I can gain some much needed XP :)

That said, at the moment, I'm at level 21 and started being able to fight people who are even 3 levels higher than me.  Before this, I had struggled just defeating people one level below me!  So how can you do well?

Well, initially you'll be struggling just to get up the ladder.  The best thing to do is focus on melee skills.  If you check out many people at the upper levels, you'll notice that most people focus on doing damage as opposed to wearing armor.  In the game, wearing armor benefits you by providing some damage absorption.  However, you're given a limited amount of "Power" per level and armor takes up quite a lot of power.  The only way to offset a piece of armor's power offset is by spending points on "Armor".  However, you have to achieve 10 points of skills at the lower levels.  But by the time you get to this point, armor becomes worthless since you're better off spending all your points on melee skills.

Instead, you're better off putting all emphasis (if you're a fighter like my guy) on Edged Weapons for the first 5 levels, then put one point in Dual Wield, followed by 5 more points in Quickness.  Try to get Dual Wield ASAP because it'll increase your attacks and likelihood of being able to assault your opponent.  Quickness is critical because it'll increase the number of attacks with your primary weapon.  At this point, you should be able to have access to 3rd tier skills.  I screwed up at this point and put only one point into armor.  But you can put the remainder in Ambidexterity or Quickness.  My suggestion is to put the points into Dual Wield because it'll increase your chances to hit and do damage, whereas Ambidexterity seems redundant or simply complimentary to Dual Wield.

I tend to focus on doing as much damage as possible.  Other elements like dodge and critical are nice, but not very effective in my experience.  The chance of these occurring is far less than doing pure, guaranteed damage.  Also, doing guaranteed damage as frequently as possible is important.  So adding the Dual Wield and Quickness are imperative.

After this, get yourself a good weapon.  Swords look cool but towards the end they don't do enough damage but Axes do.  Fortunately, Edged Weapons encompass both swords and axes.  As I mentioned, putting 5 levels into Edged Weapons is critical because it'll reduce the required power necessary to wield them by a significant amount.  Doing this will allow you to have better weapons in both hands.

If I had another opportunity for developing my character, I would've gone this route.  But my character still is doing well.  I can take on an opponent with 300 HP more than me and I'll still have plenty of HP left over at the end of a fight.