I haven't played in 3+ years... what do I need to know?

[Burning_Lobster]

The headline pretty much says it all...

When I stopped playing the level cap had JUST gone to 12, to give you some frame of reference to how out of date my gear is at the current moment. I am looking for some basic tips (Start over is acceptable, but I am hoping my old char is still viable!)

Currently my character is Halfling 7 rogue/2 ranger/1barb... and when the cap was level 10 this was a decent build, but I think now I am going to find myself woefully outclassed. Is there any way to "salvage" this into something useful at higher levels? He is a "batman" style character with extremely high mobility and a good set of trap skills, but those were starting to lag behind the pure rogues when I was playing. (I couldn't get the traps in raids for example, even with skill boost on.)

If anyone could give me a few pointers on how to orient myself, that would be awesome. I play on Ghallandra at the moment, if that makes a difference. I am really enjoying hacking through some of the low level quest with my GF, and I like that they re-did them to involve the new story line, rather than just having it be a kobold slaughter... it makes it feel like a "new game" in some respects!

Anywho... thanks for giving this a once over, and thank you if you reply! I look forward to seeing what all new content this game has in store, and I am also lookin forward to FINALLY killing a dragon.... someday.... maybe. :P

[Angelus_dead]

Don't worry much about getting items; get XP first and then items. However, around level 16 be sure to get flagged into Shroud and begin running Shroud every 3 days to collect ingredients (and ask people to assign you Shards whenever possible). Bring a Metalline weapon of Pure Good along, so you can seem helpful on the boss.

Don't leave the house without 100% Heavy Fortification (get it from Relic of a Sovereign Past if you must)

Note that a Cleric hireling a few levels below you is a very cost-effective way to purchase healing power, so you're not dependent on other players to beat most dungeons.


Currently my character is Halfling 7 rogue/2 ranger/1barb... and when the cap was level 10 this was a decent build, but I think now I am going to find myself woefully outclassed. Is there any way to "salvage" this into something useful at higher levels?
Stay Rogue with every future level. Get the Acrobat 2 enhancement, which will give you another 10% running speed, producing the zippiest character possible.

There are Greater Reincarnation and True Reincarnation things available to swap a class level, although there are some costs. (Don't worry about swapping levels much to start). The addition of level 20 capstones (and level 18 tier3s) made it more valuable to stay pure to a class.



He is a "batman" style character
What "Batman" meant was a character with both rog2 and pal2, so..


I look forward to seeing what all new content this game has in store, and I am also lookin forward to FINALLY killing a dragon.... someday.... maybe. :P
You can do that without much difficulty, but I won't spoil where the easiest dragon shows up.

[seobanio]

You could make a 12 ranger, 7 rogue, 1 barbarian build.

It would be odd, but when people ask you could tell them the that you went 12 ranger for tempest II (the second tier of one of the ranger prestige enhancements), and that the other 8 ranger lvls didn't give you muich dps. So you did 7 rogue for sneak attack and trap skills, and 1 barbarian for fast movement and sprint boost because you like to zerg your way through the lvls. Also I think you would get like 1 rage from that so that could be cool for like boss fights.

If you build the toon right it could actually be decent dps.

As far as what you need to know I wasn't around 3 years ago, but here are a few things:

If you max your rogue skills each lvl your trap skills should be ok. Just make sure to get the best +item for each skill you can to switch in.

In a recent update guild airships and guild leveling systems were put in. This is important because the higher the guild level the better the airship and the better buffs the airship can have on it. The buffs are really nice, and they are particularly powerful for lower level toons. If you can get in a guild with a nice airship it could make your leveling process easier. In addition its a nice way to have more fun in the game because of the social aspect.

The batman thing you mentioned I've seen mentioned on the forums before. I'm not sure if you think this or if this is even relevant but based on what I've read I'll just say that evasion will not work in medium or heavy armor, only light.

The game went free to play (f2p) a little over a year ago. With that came the ddo store and in game items you can buy with turbine points. One of the things you can buy in the store are hearts of wood. If you wanted to do what is called a lesser reincarnation you could redo the way your toon has been built up to this point. You can't pick a new race, but you can pick new classes (only certain hearts allow this), upgrade to a 32 point build from a 28 point (again only certain hearts), and redo your starting stat points and such.

Best of luck and welcome back! :)

[Burning_Lobster]

First off... thank you for the replies!

What I get from this is that I need to find a guild, to start... that seems as if it is going to be the first step. That should give me access to groups to start running the quest lines I need to get stuff.

Hmm... seems as if Rangers are something of the "new hotness". When I was playing they were woefully under-represented in the game as anything other than a "splash" class. It is nice to see them up there! I think I will focus mainly on Ranger from here on out... I like the added progression to the class. Again, thanks!

[Drakos]

I'm not sure if Rangers are the "new Hotness", but they are popular. They were, for a while, the most popular class because they could acheive the best AC/DPS mix. Due to some changes they had lost some of the popularity, however, they can still be viable characters. Ranged combat is doinked at the moment, but TWF is great.

If you looking to be high DPS you will want to look at getting Exotic Weapon Familiarity: Kopesh. They are the best melee one-handed weapon due to the Crit Profile of 19-20/x3.

Some things you might have missed while you were gone:
1) Monks
2) Favored Soul
3) Half Elves & Half-Orcs
4) The Val quests
5) Demon Battlegrounds (Amarath)
6) Epic Quests
7) Capstone Enhancements (sepcial enhancement you can get at level 20 if you have all 20 levels in the same class)
8) Prestiege Enhancments; aka PrE's (special enhancement lines for Classes/Races that grant special abilities like; Tempest, Frenzied Beserker, Arcane Archer, Pale Master, etc...)
9) The change to the way TWF works. Instead of getting extra attacks at specific points in the attack chain, now every attack, when fighting two-weapon has the chance to proc an additional attack. The % chance is 20%, you get and additioal +20% pre Two-Weapon Fighting feat (TWF, ITWF, GTWF) and some PrE's and Magic Items can improve this.
10) Doublestrike. All main weapon attacks have a chance to proc an extra free attack.
11) Magic Item Crafting. Greensteel, Epic, Sora Kel, Risa, etc... Craft powerful gear by collecting special ingrediance and using special alerrs. (Goto DDO Wiki to look up all the crafting options)
12) Special events that repeat every so often. Festavault, Riza Ice Games, Egg Hunt, Mabar, Birthday (currently running).

In general the power of the game has soared to unheard of levels. At launch people lookef forward to their first magic weapon and were happy to find +1 weapons. Now magic weapons are given out in the tutorial and +5 weapons are boring and generally vendor trash (won't even sell on the Auction House). End bosses in raids now have blankes immunities and ten's of thousands of HP.

Welcome back!!

[EustaceTrevelyan]

Hmm... seems as if Rangers are something of the "new hotness". When I was playing they were woefully under-represented in the game as anything other than a "splash" class. It is nice to see them up there! I think I will focus mainly on Ranger from here on out... I like the added progression to the class. Again, thanks!

Ah, no. I have a ranger that I WAS planning on taking to 18/2 ftr, but now i think i'll stop at 12 and go 8 ftr for a bit more damage. Looks like you missed the heyday of the dwarven tempest ranger (as did I, as i joined after). It was still not bad, and then they nerfed TWF generally by giving off-hand base chance to proc (and if it procs, it still rolls hit/miss, tho of course most ppl are going to be hitting on a 2), and removed tempest, zeal, and ftr capstone attack speed boosts.

Fighter and barbarian are better damage (and of course rogue situationally is highest of all against non-fort). Not that a well-played ranger isn't a very useful addition to a party, but you need a plan now more than ever. And bring wands and help off-heal in between fights. Keep the ranger rep up;) I finally rolled a cleric, and I was in a PUG with 2 rangers. Neither of them were even healing themselves with wands, despite it being a bit crazy (Irestone, possibly elite/under level. Everyone was running around like monkeys.)

Bit of a ramble, but if you play a ranger, try to add more than just dps, since you're not tops at that. Buff people, throw a bit of wandage around, show em that rangers don't have to suck.

[Burning_Lobster]

Yeah, lots has come into the game since I last set foot in it, and it looks like the class roles have gotten different... but using a class to its fullest is never a bad thing! That was my HUGE error on my main character, never taking UMD skill in favor of swimming... don't ask me what I was thinking because I really don't know.


As to the gear... I noticed that! I have a +5 dagger of pure good that was NUTS back in the day, and now it would more then likely be "meh" to most people. I have a set of Anarchic weapons as well, and a few others like "flame touched" and so forth... but nothing like what I see when I look up raid guides. I think some basic farming is in order for me.

Around level 9-10, what are some relatively simple quest lines to run, so I know what to ask for? I tried soloing and well... ouch. Very much ouch, even with my 28 AC I was getting hit a lot. I think I need to have something big making sure the bad guys look the other way.

[seobanio]

I'm going to assume you ahave access to paid content, sorry if you said you didn't and I missed that.

So first thing is do deleras, at your lvl people are going to want to do elite because most of it is pretty lower level than you. In deleras you are going to need a ghost touch weapon and a weapon with good on it. Do Deleras for the end reward to the entire chain (5 quests) which is the voice of the master. It is a trinket that gives +5% xp when worn.

As far as weapons: at that level you are still going to be using just randomly dropped weapons, so just try to get whatever you can that you are profficient with. Things to look for are: metalline of pure good (not great but what you need in raids so don't sell), holy/holy burst/pure good/maiming/ are all nice things to have on a weapon. If you go to the auction house you can browse weapons to see what types of weapons are common place now. The birthday event has kind of messed up the ddo economy, so ignore prices for now. They are really high even by normal standards. Things will go back to normal in a few weeks.

As you level you should be aiming for the most hp you can get. HP are very important now, and the type of build you have is liable to be low hp by todays game standards. With your build at end game you could be good dps and have some buff and healing capability. So as you level I would focus more on survivability and just learning the new content than trying to be awesome dps, because in all likelihood you are going to need a heart of wood anyway to redo everything at the end.

If you are really serious about that toon and want to fix it, shoot me a pm anytime an Wd we can have a more in depth discussion for what to do as you level.