Gear?

[Himkano]

I know this probably isn't the right place, but this is the only forum I could find dedicated to epic levels.

I am coming back from break. I am aware of greensteel, because it was in the game last time I came back from a break, but I don't have any.

So, now I am almost level 20, and I have no idea what I should be doing for gear. I have some gear, and I have some weapons that there is an epic version of, so I know a little about that, but I use dual kopeshes. Am I counting on random drops for DR breaking, or do you ignore DR at that level?

Like I said, I know this is probably the wrong place, but if someone could point me in the right direction of where to look, I would appreciate it.

[Miow]

If you have access to Motu just get your butt over to Eveningstar and star farming commendations for new easy to acquire more powerful than old epic gear.

[Mercureal]

I'm not sure if there is a good place in particular in which to point you for that question, so I'll try to answer some of it here.

The need for DR breaking really depends on what you plan to run. You probably know the older formulas (Shroud and Tower of Despair = Silver+Good, DQ = Cold Iron+Good, Abbot = Blunt + Good). For newer content, there's the House C quests and raids which are construct heavy (Adamantine, and Adamantine+Good for one raid boss) and the Expansion chains. There's not as much need for DR breaking in the various expansion chains, although I haven't run them all yet. There are some demons, which are probably Cold Iron *or* Good; some may require both like the DQ, but I think those will be pretty rare and at level 22 I haven't seen it yet.

The general consensus seems to be that GS weapons aren't really worth building now for use at high-level, and I certainly don't find myself using the ones I've made very much. There is another option for crafting, which you may or may not know about, Cannith Crafting. I'll point you to the wiki page for this, rather than try to explain it all:

http://ddowiki.com/page/Cannith_Crafting

Short form, if you have a random weapon of some metal type, you can put various effects on it like holy or good to make it a DR breaker. A lot of people have switched to these, rather than using GS Mineral weapons.

[Himkano]

I'm glad I don't need to farm green-steel (it sounds like a lot of work, and impossible to do solo), but are canith crafted really better than what can be looted at level 20+, or it just in terms of getting reliable (rather than random) modifiers?

[Mercureal]

For high-level items, the Cannith Crafting is generally for boss-specific DR breakers rather than general weapons.

For those bosses, the Cannith Crafted weapons will almost always be better than something you can find randomly. You do need to find a random loot weapon of the specific metal type, but once you have it you can strip off the (likely useless) effects it comes with and put what you like on it. Those effects are generally holy or holy burst, and bane or greater bane. Holy and Bane are effects around level 40 or 45 of crafting, and burst and greater bane are around 75 or so. Even the lower level effects are an extra 4d6 + 2 damage.

There are ways to get those Cannith weapons even if you don't have the crafting levels - people will sometimes craft unbound versions and put them on the Auction House, albeit for very high asking prices. Or, if you have the base items and the required essences, you may be able to get someone to craft unbound versions of the effect shards for you. There are a number of people with very high crafting levels willing to do that if you give them the materials. If you're interested, check the forum for your server and ask if anyone would be willing. There are still a lot of helpful, community-minded players in the game.

Level 20+ random weapons will generally be better for things that don't need DR breakers. If you had access to something that could help with the DR breaking, like the Paladin capstone or an artificer, I you could use some random weapons against those raid bosses - but I think it'd still be hard to find effects that would do more damage.

[Draxis]

I dunno 'bout you, but I find the new item properties on random lvl 20+ loot WAAAAAAY better than anything that can be crafted with old-school essence based Cannith crafting.

At least for the weapons, anyway.