Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
DemonMage
Oct 14, 2004



What happens in the course of duty is up to you...
Otto's Boxes are back 20-29th if anyone wants to skip a life for 5000TP. Really wish they'd just do a Stone of Experience limited release instead of the overpriced boxes. Which I get is why they're doing it, but still. :argh:

Oh and it's +15% Guild Renown for the weekend.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Gammon
Aug 20, 2003
Cliff Yablonski Hates Me
Do you still get a second stone if you use your stone on someone else? I might try work out a way to split the cost of a box with my friend if so. And do those Sovereign Elixirs still work with the stones to take you higher than level 16? I read/heard they didn't work with the Level 7->15 stone.

DemonMage
Oct 14, 2004



What happens in the course of duty is up to you...
No, that was only for the MotU preorder stones.

And yes Otto's Stones work just fine with experience potions (it says so in the description, everything but global events). It's just Bigby's that don't work with experience stuff.

Gammon
Aug 20, 2003
Cliff Yablonski Hates Me
Well, that is kind of a bummer, and puts paid to any impulse I might have had to buy the drat box. If they did work that way, I likely would have gotten one.

DemonMage
Oct 14, 2004



What happens in the course of duty is up to you...
Given that they seem to be selling a ton of them, I can't imagine they're going to do anything to make them a better value sadly. Not anytime soon anyways.
Also 19.2 is coming out Monday (5am - Noon Central):
  • Fixes bugged House C items
  • Protection Tree becoming Warpriest Tree
  • Sagas are back, with a few extra ones
  • ML20/24 Eveningstar challenge weapons cost lowered to ML16 levels

Fenris13
Jun 6, 2003
Hey DM were you looking for shield or tome pieces, and do you still need them? I got a few ransacking Vol tonight.

Woden
May 6, 2006
Wow din't realize those Ottos boxes were so expensive, ~$30 to make getting +10 hp or whatever take one day instead of 3-4 is insane.

Really glad sagas are back, end game is really quiet on Cannith. Log in, see no raids or EEs happening do my DD and log out has been my routine for the last few weeks. Could do some EHs but don't need xp and the loot sucks, could try and form a raid but too lazy and trying to get people to do EEs is iffy as most of my friends are not on or doing TR stuff.

Still not sure which tomes to go for in Mabar, +6 str is probably the best bet long term as OC is such a strong feat that you'll want on almost any melee build and +5 cha for the other I guess as I have eaten +4 con/dex, +5 int and who cares about wisdom? Right now I'm a str dumped rogue so the str tome is kinda useless though and more dex/con is always nice, tough call.

DemonMage
Oct 14, 2004



What happens in the course of duty is up to you...
I'm almost inclined to do dex for the +6 since that lets you start with 15 dex like normal and still qualify for Combat Archery or Improved Sneak Attack. I don't usually have trouble qualifying for Overwhelming Critical, so that concerns me a bit less. Though I do tend to prefer casters (in the end... some decade) so I'm almost inclined to go for a DC boosting stat.

Need tome page 1, have 3 spare 8s.
Need shield 1, 3, 4, 7. Have a spare 5. These are not a big deal though, getting that tome page would be nice though so we can both get new Skivers (hooray for turning in and never using them before they got updated).

DemonMage fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Sep 22, 2013

Brownview
Oct 15, 2012

Nothing in this world can take the place of a power rack

Woden posted:

Wow din't realize those Ottos boxes were so expensive, ~$30 to make getting +10 hp or whatever take one day instead of 3-4 is insane.
Could you give me the cliffnotes on super efficient leveling?

DemonMage
Oct 14, 2004



What happens in the course of duty is up to you...
Do quests on elite that are two levels below you. Quests that are super good experience you can chain run if it doesn't make your eyes bleed. Things like Kobold's New Ringleader, Shadow Crypt, Vault of the Night 3, Delera's 2, Sane Asylum. Though chain running those is maybe a little less valuable now with the +20% daily bonus and faster bottoming out of repetition penalty (though it caps higher). Keeping the best experience potion you have running helps, as does insuring you always have Voice of the Master (/item with Master's Gift augment) equipped for all experience gains (which is why the augment owns). Greater Tome of Learning is a huge amount of extra experience. Having access to all Monster Manuals adds up over the course of a life.

If you want to be even more efficient learning what optionals are worth doing and which you should skip can help a lot too. As does doing quests with at least one other person so you can split up and do simultaneous objectives when possible.

Biggest problem is going to be keeping burn out away during the 15-20 and especially 18-20 stretch (for third life and beyond), which is where a leveling partner(s) helps a ton.

This is out of date, but it does a good job of pointing out the good xp/minute quests. Though it assumes leveling partner(s), and he even notes that just following in Mr Cows footsteps works better solo (which is basically do every quest once on elite two levels below you).

Woden
May 6, 2006
I usually start with 13 dex on str based TWF builds so ISA(kinda weak anyway) and CA are kind of non factors, speccing in ranged is seeming more necessary now than ever before though so may have to rethink things. Also dex to-hit and damage is everywhere so looking more viable. Always going to be some form of melee though so don't really care about caster stats.

Brownview posted:

Could you give me the cliffnotes on super efficient leveling?
Find opener for Shadow Crypt, farm the first optional a million times. Get your diplo/bluff to decentish levels and do the same in Crucible. If you have a couple of good TR buddies the opts in wiz king are great too, just do the quest right up until you need to grab the macguffin, recall and restart. Optionals only scale after you complete the quest now.

Other than that kind of stupidity, drinking an xp pot and doing the good xp/min quests EHHN seems like a good way to go and if you're taking a break for the day you can do EHH, then the next day do HHN or something like that.

I honestly hate grinding the same stuff over and over though, so usually take a week or so and just do most quests in the game once and done on elite.

Noricae
Nov 19, 2004

cheese?
I love that guide (and the 'lives of a...' series) but I can't come close to those runs timewise. Maybe on run 5 or so of the same thing in a row I will have memorized it to be fast enough, but I dawdle and feel compelled to not run into orange or higher dungeon alerts, and then there's 5-10minutes loading dungeon maps and alt-tabbing around. Real life time > just the run itself, so sometimes I will run quests that have bad time/exp ratio technically but I have memorized all the side puzzles and whatnot and spend time doing those. Like the rat maze Necro quest :D I'm one of those broken people that love this quest (not on melee, esp rogue, lives!). In fact levels 16+ of the couple of rogue lives I've done have been so tedious that I'm aiming for future runs to be all arti+rogue or sorc+rogue+LR, even though I like playing a capped rogue (who's staying at cap).

By the way, have date(s) for Mabar been announced yet?

Noricae fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Sep 22, 2013

DemonMage
Oct 14, 2004



What happens in the course of duty is up to you...
It's just more fun to do all the quests on elite, skipping the ones you really just hate and making up for it with some repetition here and there. I mean I'll run the gently caress out of Shadow Crypt, but other than that I don't do a lot of repetition until later on when I'm like "I really don't feel like running House C or Shavarath on Elite, I'll just run more of this other poo poo", at which point you can also just drop down to Hard. Even Mr Cow notes that his all hard run didn't take any longer than his all elite run, but that there's no real reason to not just be doing Elite until in the teens somewhere depending on your build/skill/gear.

Noricae posted:

By the way, have date(s) for Mabar been announced yet?

No, they never do until the last minute. They said it'll be around Halloween and "long enough for everyone to get what they want", whatever the gently caress that means.

Brownview
Oct 15, 2012

Nothing in this world can take the place of a power rack
How would I chain Delera 2? Wouldn't I have to do Delera 1 first, or finish the chain and repeat it?

Woden
May 6, 2006
If someone in your group has the quest and doesn't complete it you can farm it indefinitely. The other way is what's called window farming, someone opens up the the enter quest box while there are people still inside after completing, they recall, you enter and it's a new instance. No need to run back to the quest giver just in and out.

Mr Cow solos though, for efficient TR zerging 2-4 man seems optimal(4 for bloody crypt, 3 wiz king, etc.). Any more than that and scaling really starts to screw you over and less means more time fart arseing about backtracking, breaking boxes or struggling to pull levers while on orange DA or whatever.

Woden fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Sep 22, 2013

Brownview
Oct 15, 2012

Nothing in this world can take the place of a power rack
I'll have to get to a third life to start with elites on most of those quests. And I'll almost always be leveling solo, unfortunately.

Gammon
Aug 20, 2003
Cliff Yablonski Hates Me
I'm a pretty slow and inefficient leveller (although, I do only play 1-2 hours a day during the week so I guess that's why), but I have noticed that certain level brackets really drag while others fly by. I'm on my third life now, but I'm still fairly inexperienced as I just did quests to hit 20 and then TR'ed straight away. I can definitely foresee difficulty with the 15-20 period on my current life, as the xp requirements really start to climb there, but I bought a five of those +50% xp potions to use during that period while they are on sale now. I'll pop them when I get on a good chain and hopefully make my time getting through that period a lot less painful.

I'm currently duoing frequently with a RL friend at the moment who's also TRed, and it's so much smoother than trying to solo my way through everything. When I hit 20 this time though...I'm actually going to start doing epic content.

Fenris13
Jun 6, 2003
When soloing you will never ever come close to that 4 days for a TR. My build right now is incredible, I am abusing the poo poo out of multiple bugs, and it is still going to take me 80ish hours of play time to hit 20 this life. Having someone to window farm those good quests makes a big difference, so does splitting up. I had noticed that optionals were tied to completions now, but hadn't thought to just repeat without finishing. I wonder if I can get in and out of crucible in under a minute.

Woden
May 6, 2006
If you have at least one monk level you can do crucible in about 45 seconds, it's how I leveled up all those crappy EDs and also melted my brain. Hotbar a stance(air/fire/water), open up the recall notification, hit stance change and then the recall button straight after. Instant recall.

Woden
May 6, 2006
https://www.ddo.com/en/update-19-patch-2

Looks like they nixed the +6 tome from Mabar, so just 1 +5 of your choice. Didn't really want to grind it anyway, so not really complaining.

DemonMage
Oct 14, 2004



What happens in the course of duty is up to you...
Not really a grind for the signets, but agreed I'm completely fine with it.

quote:

Death Aura, Lesser Death Aura, and Negative Energy Burst are no longer blocked by items with Spell Absorption charges.

Here's hoping that fix will stick around for awhile.

Also the new character planner is out, updated for 19.1 and some of 19.2 (it has Warpriest). Do note that it's the first major release of the new system, so it's effectively beta and there may be things wrong or missing compared to live. They had to do a poo poo ton of work to get this working, but they'll work on any bug fixes here after a few days of rest.

DemonMage
Oct 14, 2004



What happens in the course of duty is up to you...
Mabar Sneak Preview tonight from 6pm-midnight Eastern. I just love six hour events with no notice.

Noricae
Nov 19, 2004

cheese?

DemonMage posted:

Mabar Sneak Preview tonight from 6pm-midnight Eastern. I just love six hour events with no notice.
What the hell! >.< Aww these signets are going to stress me out. Are 25s in a separate instance or with 28s?

edit: Shoot, 26+ isn't it. I'm going to have to level...

Woden
May 6, 2006
Hmm this sucks, can't open the ddo store to buy a key. Just causes the game to hang. Not sure how much longer this preview will go for either.

Edit had a key but the dude wont check bags for them, and we wipe anyway. So insanely laggy.

Woden fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Sep 25, 2013

DemonMage
Oct 14, 2004



What happens in the course of duty is up to you...
I was gone the whole time, so didn't get to experience the glory of a 6-hour Mabar Rush Fest. Not even sure if we care enough to do dragons for a +5 tome, I mean they're nice to have for epic feats but I'm pretty drat tired of Mabar already. At least for signets you don't really have to do anything but show up to the dragon fight itself, but waiting on that blows.

On the bright side:

QuarterMasterX posted:

"Just let us drop any armor into the Cosmetic Armor slot. Problem solved! There's already tons of looks for armor in the game. Old cosmetic armor kits would now be usable without any conversion."

Agreed... we are looking into this.

I'm happy to keep buying cool new cosmetic armors (the new Shadowfell Regalia is nice, particle effect woo), but being able to use all the existing nice looking stuff would own. So long as they keep making new stuff for named items (and even randomgen) instead of only making cosmetic gear.

Perpetual Notion
Nov 17, 2004

Don't worry, you didn't miss much. The drop rates on knucklebones etc is much better than last year, but the only challenge to mabar remains seeing which server you get assigned for your dragon encounter which determines if you get the 5 minute gently caress you slideshow or actually get to kill it for your scale/signet.

Woden
May 6, 2006
Sagas are closed again, wasn't fixing them supposed to be part of U19.2? Back to everyone running EH zergs I guess. :(

Also not sure why you wouldn't do mabar for a tome, it doesn't take long and people in chat will tell you when it's about to open so no need to waste time farming kills if you don't feel like it. Only bad thing about it is they still haven't fixed the raid lag, so it'll be pretty random in getting the signets.

Using named armours for cosmetics will be awesome as I really like the look of their older stuff like necropolis/von/etc much more than the newer stuff. I knew I kept that null cloth robe through TRs for a reason, shame I can't get my starter rags back though.

DemonMage
Oct 14, 2004



What happens in the course of duty is up to you...

Cordovan posted:

The +6 Tomes were removed because they were not working (they were not actually applying +6 to a stat.) Whether they make a return (after this year's Mabar) will be discussed at a later time.

I'm not really sure I want them brought back, I mean +5s aren't don't apply until 19. I guess it's cool for epic feat qualifying, but I don't know that I really want them going up to +10 tomes or whatever eventually. I mean I'm all for near infinite character advancement in general so it seems like something I should like, they're just super random to get which I like less. The bug actually makes some sense too since they said they never wanted to go beyond +5s, but that was a long time ago.

And yes Sagas were :airquote:fixed:airquote: with 19.2, and then turned off a day later. It's a shame, doing heroic gianthold all on elite nets you something like 64k free extra experience. Plus relatively easy access to skill tomes later on. Or large chunks of guild renown.

They also made it so you can't get Epic end rewards for the new quests too, since that system was tied to the system that tracked your heroic and epic raid completions seperately which they turned off since it was messed up. That's scheduled to be fixed (the quest part at least) with 19.3 (I assume, could be U20 I guess, they said next patch), but still kind of annoying.

And I'm pretty happy with both new and old armor looks in general, but having more options for your looks without having to give up stats is always good. Having cosmetics be something to earn is cool too, farming a cool named item you like, or raid dropped cosmetic armors like the purple cubeling though hopefully not as rare.

[Edit] Also just realized we haven't gotten a new monster manual volume since U17. Was supposed to be a new volume every update originally I thought. That really sucks. They don't even have Drow in it yet (which should have been there with it's release). It's nice chunk of extra experience while TRing and it's fun to earn the unlocks, even if getting the pets is a pretty significant grind. Getting the visible HP is also a grind, but isn't too bad for common stuff if you're TRing.

DemonMage fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Sep 27, 2013

Woden
May 6, 2006
Still need to buy the monster manuals, they're pretty fun and I love seeing mob HP. The thing I'm curious about though is does it only start tracking monsters after you buy it or has it been tracking ever since release, so can I buy it now and have say all the beholder stuff unlocked?

+7 tomes will be the cap for a long time if they go that way as they're planning on stopping at 30 for a while, I really do hope they add at least +6s in though as getting stuff like OC or e toughness is painful on a lot of builds. I generally make builds that need most stats to some degree, so I do feel the pain of not having a full set of +4s let alone +5s but having some tomes in game that aren't in the store is good for the game. People will run stuff to try and get them even after they've gotten all the named items or raid loot from the quests, right now end game is dead because there's nothing to go hunting for.

DemonMage
Oct 14, 2004



What happens in the course of duty is up to you...

Woden posted:

Still need to buy the monster manuals, they're pretty fun and I love seeing mob HP. The thing I'm curious about though is does it only start tracking monsters after you buy it or has it been tracking ever since release, so can I buy it now and have say all the beholder stuff unlocked?

95% sure the answer to this is no. It only tracks stuff for monster manuals you have unlocked. On the bright side, each creature in the MMs can give you up to 50TP, and there's 10 in Volume 1 and 2, meaning in the end you only have to pay 100TP for Volume 2, and Volume 1 is all profit (its free to Premium as well as of course VIP). Volume 3 just gives Astral Shards, not TP. Of course it's fairly time consuming to get those TP, but it's good to know for the long run.

DemonMage fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Sep 29, 2013

KittyEmpress
Dec 30, 2012

Jam Buddies

I am downloading the game now for the first time since way back when it went free to play. I don't remember my old account and will be playing free/mostly free at least for awhile. Any advice for a new player?

Fenris13
Jun 6, 2003
While the OP is nice and uptodate the most important piece of advice is to plan out your build. Unless you are doing the simplest build possible, i.e. a pure 20 in one class, you will want to know as much about what levels/feats/stats to take and when to take them before you start taking any. Then ideally run your plan by some people with experience and get feedback.

KittyEmpress
Dec 30, 2012

Jam Buddies

Fenris13 posted:

While the OP is nice and uptodate the most important piece of advice is to plan out your build. Unless you are doing the simplest build possible, i.e. a pure 20 in one class, you will want to know as much about what levels/feats/stats to take and when to take them before you start taking any. Then ideally run your plan by some people with experience and get feedback.

Is it worth buying the 32 pt builds? I am cheap, but 20 dollars is no more than what I spent getting lovely games before. Or can two people (me and a non goon friend) play 28pt characters, earn TP in game to buy adventure packs and manage to get to 1700 favor for our next characters?

KittyEmpress fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Oct 2, 2013

Fenris13
Jun 6, 2003
It is probably not worth buying 32 point characters right off the bat, play for at least a month or so and see if you get back into the game, you will likely end up having no problems unlocking 32 points from favor if you do end up sticking around. The three best investments are by far VIP for a month, and if not that then either monk or artificer classes.

KittyEmpress
Dec 30, 2012

Jam Buddies

Are pure ranged Arcane Archer Rangers more viable now with the ability to take multiple paths? The build in that path guide takes a ton of melee stuff.

KittyEmpress fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Oct 2, 2013

Monday_
Feb 18, 2006

Worked-up silent dork without sex ability seeks oblivion and demise.
The Great Twist

KittyEmpress posted:

Are pure ranged Arcane Archer Rangers more viable now? The build in that path guide takes a ton of melee stuff.

Yeah, much more so with the new enhancements, I think. At least mine is a lot better.

Also the worst thing about being free to play is they put a really low limit on how much gold you can have. If you get VIP for even just a month that limit is gone forever.

eth0.n
Jun 1, 2012

MondayHotDog posted:

Also the worst thing about being free to play is they put a really low limit on how much gold you can have. If you get VIP for even just a month that limit is gone forever.

You get that just by buying points from the store, which is probably a better lasting investment than VIP for a month. Depends on how much you'll get out of that one month of VIP bonuses vs the extra TP you could get for the cost of VIP.


Kitty, it's a shame you can't remember your old account. Even if you don't mind starting over, you probably have free TP on it from when the conversion to F2P happened, and possibly quite a bit of it, so it's worth trying to dig it up if at all possible.

Woden
May 6, 2006
If whatever build you'd like to play works well as a Drow you can easily unlock them instead of buying 32 point buy. It's what I did starting out, they're pretty good for pallys, rogues or wizards.

If you remember what email you used to sign up with it should be pretty easy to recover your old account, if not just spam them with reset requests from all your email accounts and hope one works.

DemonMage
Oct 14, 2004



What happens in the course of duty is up to you...

eth0.n posted:

You get that just by buying points from the store, which is probably a better lasting investment than VIP for a month. Depends on how much you'll get out of that one month of VIP bonuses vs the extra TP you could get for the cost of VIP.

There's a number of good quest chains for lowbies that are pack restricted: Shan-To-Kor, Tangleroot, The Sharn Syndicate, Deleras, Vault of the Night, Phiarlan Carnival (especially this), Sorrowdusk. Along with a few other less good ones, which when you're new you have no idea if you'll like them or not, and going VIP is cheap and gives you access to all of those to really let you explore before worrying about what's worth your money to buy. And with all the other benefits VIP get and being able to go $30/3 months if you're into the game longer term, it's really worth thinking about.

KittyEmpress posted:

Are pure ranged Arcane Archer Rangers more viable now with the ability to take multiple paths? The build in that path guide takes a ton of melee stuff.

If you mean pure ranger, yeah they're a ton more viable now. I should probably cut the building suggestion links out of the OP at this point, since they're not going to be updated anymore I think. I'm trying to at least put a basic build guidelines in the OP, other than that the class forums on the official forums or bugging someone for a build here are good ways to go about it.

Also we're getting a patch in a few hours:

quote:

We'll have Release Notes tomorrow (aka 10/2). This will fix a couple of things from Patch 2 (Sagas, End of the Road, Calomel Banded Heavy Crossbow/Elemental Longbow issue, Kobolds in Challenges), and improve a couple of things based on your feedback during our Mabar preview, among other things.

DemonMage fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Oct 2, 2013

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

KittyEmpress
Dec 30, 2012

Jam Buddies

So, my friend and I decided to roll an Artificer and Ranger respectively, and while he is having the time of his life I am just not feeling strong with ranger. Only got up to level 3, so I was wondering what class pairs well with an artificer, because I can rel level in a few hours tops.

  • Locked thread