Shell mask grinding, sub weapon, and flashing mana bars?

1. My character (dual sword user) is currently lvl 34 and I've been grinding shell masks for nisel wood and bitter nuts to turn into quests for lots of exp. From what I've seen, this is the most quick and efficient way to level. It's my highest lvl character, and I'm unable to continue with the main quest (another great source of exp) because the next boss is lvl 47, and I cant beat him, yet. I just wanted to make sure: are there any more faster/efficient ways to level up?

2. While I was grinding shell masks (and yes, by grinding i mean having se.. *cough* ehr... killing lots for their goods), I noticed another player switching between a crossbow and a sword. I have no idea how to use sub weapons tbh, is there a way to manually switch or are there other methods?

3. I noticed that whenever I attack something, my mana bars, from left to right, will flash. Kinda hard to explain, but the first one will flash, then after that flashes, the next one will flash and so on, so they don't flash at the same time or anything. They only start flashing when I attack something; they don't continue to do so after the last bar flashes. Is this for anything?

 

1: Nisel is the de facto best way to farm to 45-50. There are no better alternatives. (NC, or Nightmare Crystals is at lvl 70)

2: That wasn't a subweapon. Bowguns are only usable in the main hand, and swords are only equipable as a subweapon when you have a sword in your main hand with the Dual Wield skill. You could however, equip a sword in the main hand and an arrow in the sub hand to use both blade and shot skills simultaneously. (The shot skills animation would look like your character is throwing the arrow like a dart.)
You can swap weapons in the equipment screen, not sure if you could shortcut a weapon. You cannot change weapons once in combat (When your weapon is drawn).

2.5: I see what you did there. Had fun?

3: The flashing might just be your gauge filling. Weird, I must've never noticed it.

 

1. I would say that the reason you might be having trouble with combat is because you are using dual swords. Dual swords are very powerful, but they are a bit hard to use because thier slow animation speed makes it difficult to move out of the way of attacks, so you should either get some equips to raise your attack speed (ASPD), or try to learn how to time your attacks, whichever works for you.

2. Nice joke, but yeah, they probably just switched their main weapon in their equipment menu.

3. I'm not sure if I'm remembering this correctly, but I think the flashing has something to do with MP regeneration. There is a skill called "Sober Analysis" that allows you to passively regenerate MP during combat, and the regeneration goes in sync with the flashes, but I wouldn't get Sober Analysis if I were you; it doesn't work that great.

 

Wait, I'm confused. Does ASPD make it so that the time between autoattacks is shorter or does it make the auto attack animations shorter?

 

ASPD 1-1100 makes you attack more frequently, and speeds up attack animations; ASPD 1101-11000 only speeds up attack animation speed.