How should I crack the level 29 equipment nut?

[Annex]

Hey. My equipment pretty much ends at level 20. Since I always reset my characters when reaching level 30, and since I can reach level 30 playing level 20/21/22/23 quests, I never really bothered to play any level 30 quests or gather any level 29 stuff. With the level cap going up, and since I was away for well over a year, I decided to try some newer level 30 quests and quickly realized my characters need serious help to function at that level.

So, I find myself wanting to make one or two level 29 equipment sets. Problem 1: Level 29 equipment pretty much only drops at higher difficulties, but to play higher difficulties I need level 29 equipment. Problem 2: When I do find a piece of level 29 equipment it never fits in with what I have, meaning I must collect many of the correct level 29 pieces before I can actually change anything. Problem 3: Ravenloft was fine but I really dislike quests after that. Sharn quests, in particular, cause me to quit midway through each quest and play something else. Condition 4: I do not group or raid and must collect everything myself. (Please save your chastising post for someone else.) Problem 5: I am in the process of transitioning from dagger rogue to crossbow rogue (for the obvious reason) and would like to collect as much equipment as possible that works in either mode. Problem 6: I do not have a useful sentient weapon. Since I find so few named items I cannot generate much sentient weapon experience. I stuck my Kobold gem into a level 20 dagger that annoys the heck out of me and rarely gets used.

Given all that, how should I best proceed? Should I make myself a full set of level 30 Cannith crafted equipment? Should I start by making a level 25/26/27 equipment set? Is there some easy way to acquire useful level 29 pieces at low difficulty? I guess I am looking for a way to make an extremely painful process somewhat less painful. :/

Thank you in advance for any ideas and suggestions.

[Sho-sa]

Just checking that you know you can get a lvl 29 weapon from the Ravenloft Epic Wilderness area in addition to the lvl 10 you can get from Heroic Wilderness.

Also don't forget to check the Auction House and the various vendors in Eveningstar from where people have sold.

[Kaboom2112]

If you're skipping the level 30+ content you're missing out on a ton of fun and reaper XP.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Given all that, how should I best proceed?

Group.

Yes. I said it.

Just put up an LFM, mention that you don't have any Sharn gear, and be prepared to pike your way through the content. The gear is outstanding and some of the quests aren't terrible.

Do the same for Ravenloft. Put up an LFM saying that you don't have any of the Legendary Ravenloft gear and that you are looking for help running the quests. I can solo Ravenloft and Sharn on R1 with no problem, so I can certainly do it with a partner and pass you all the gear. If I can do it, I know the players who are actually good ('cause I certainly am not) can do it too. No matter what server you're on. Even Wayfinder.

[ValariusK]

What you need to do is this:
Get your free level 29 weapon every life from the NPC in the Barovia explorer area. He'll also toss you a sentient gem each time.
Second: Join any reasonable group for ravenloft or sharn that's out there. Even a group on LN or LH will get you gear over time. And you don't have to wait till near 29 to start doing it. Doing Normal or hard on a lot of the ravenloft and sharn quests is good xp anyway, and the sagas are a great boost.
Also, if you join groups to help people get key items of gear they need, two things usually happen. First, they'll often pass you the other stuff besides what they're farming. Second, they'll often be willing to help you get what you need later on too.

Just remember, if you can't run EE or R1, EH will do. Its just the difference between 33% and 18%, and it can often run twice as fast ( or infinitely faster if you can't handle EE with the resources at hand).

[jydog100]

if your running level 20-25 atm I would start with running the borderlands chain. quick quest, some xp and above average loot. no weaps or armor if im not mistaken. check the wiki to get an idea of what u want and which quest its in and go. craft armor to fill a few gaps or get the heroic sets from sharn. if your running hard or lower that should get you most of the way to 29.

[Wizard1406]

I agree with the other posters, you gotta group up if you want to progress at a faster pace. DDO's loot system is tailored around a group of players that pass gear around. Of course 6 players doing elite or R1 is best, but even 3 players on hard have a higher chance of getting a specific item vs. 1 person on elite. (3*16% vs. 1*32%)

Solo, it will take much much longer. Get to lvl 29, get the free weapon and free sentient jewel from the guy at the Caravan in epic Barovia wilderness. Then use that weapon to farm epic Borderlands gear (should be able to do elite), fill in gaps with other low level epic gear or Sharn heroic. Then use that gear to farm Ravenloft on hard (or Sharn and Cogs, but it's harder)

[kamimitsu]

I've gotta agree with everyone else. Group up. Most of the Ravenloft quests are stupid fast and many players already have more RL gear than they could need. They may be using what they pull for food (sentient weapons), but if you let everyone in the group know ("Hey, I'm new to this content and am trying to put together a RL set, I'd appreciate any hand-outs") you'll probably end up with whatever you need in just a few runs.

[bonscott87]

Hey. My equipment pretty much ends at level 20. Since I always reset my characters when reaching level 30, and since I can reach level 30 playing level 20/21/22/23 quests, I never really bothered to play any level 30 quests or gather any level 29 stuff. With the level cap going up, and since I was away for well over a year, I decided to try some newer level 30 quests and quickly realized my characters need serious help to function at that level.

(snip)

Thank you in advance for any ideas and suggestions.

I think you're skipping a LOT of stuff in between.

For older stuff, are you running Shadowfell and Stormhorns? You get your choice of level 25/27 named items in the quest rewards. Many should be great upgrades if all you have is level 20 stuff. Note that these *cannot* be fed to your sentient weapon but they may fill in much needed stuff.

You have access to everything right now. Epic Borderlands has quite a bit of good stuff. Epic ingots drop like candy in the rares in the wilderness, get your choice of pretty decent weapons, collect them all! :) Epic Catecombs and Epic Delara's are pretty quick runs too and nice equipment as well.

So farm this stuff for now, work your way up.

You said the Kobold gem was annoying. Just go into the audio settings and turn the gem voice off. I do that after the first couple hours for any gem as they all get a bit old over time.

Want quick sentient XP? Farm those ingots in the Borderlands. The weapons you get from them can all be fed. They aren't a ton of XP, but it ads up. It the 3-4 hours you farm feathers for your horse, I'll bet you'll have farmed enough ingots for 1000 sentient XP.

Good luck!

[rabidfox]

I solo'd those end game instances for several lives and didn't know what I was missing out on. Now I routinely wind up in raveneloft and sharn r1 pugs in my mid-20s (and I equally put groups together when I'm 29/30 that takes anyone from 20 to 30). Having 6x people at 30% chance each of getting named loot is worlds beyond better than 1x at 10%.

[Matuse]

Cannith Craft yourself some higher level gear (level 34 if you can, but making those shards needs fairly high crafting skill), and use that to get the named stuff. CC has lower caps on things like attribute boosts, but it's quite a bit better than level 20-23 stuff.

Don't be afraid to work at Legendary Hard if Elite is too much...Elite is a big big jump, and without the goosed up equipment (or a group), you will have trouble even whittling down the huge HP pools that those enemies have.

[Enkidu]

Just in case you missed it, GROUP! The first r3/4 (I don't know why, but this seems to be the sweet spot for gear drops vs. difficulty) Sharn or RL run I saw I'd join and explain what what I needed. A lot of players run these reapers to get rxp and they have all the gear already, so they'll hook you up. Also, tell them you have res scrolls in case you die. They won't need them, but you'll make them laugh and that always helps your rep.

[Dr_SoulReaper]

As everyone has said group up... lets just say i was determined to get part of the legendary sharn stuff... as a first lifer with barely any gear i decided to solo (somehow successfully solo at that) epic elite scavenger hunt coz i wanted the legendary wildwood vest... I had no gear but the 1 time i did EE, i got the 33% named AND the one I wanted... dont do that, thats a bad idea, group up and get the loot that way (althou i was hella proud of soloing EE for the first time)

[Saekee]

Just writing an oppositional post to some above recommendations.

You are not grouping already for a reason so let us start by supporting your choices. I suggest you have fun in the Borderlands and use it to load up on a great ML 21 gearset. Even just the trinket there is awesome for ranged toons; aim for the boots and a couple other things; you probably already have stuff like Ring of the Stalker etc. and can craft filler stuff. That is a solid ML 21 gearset for you. If you want to go crazy for the best one you would actually add in the ML 15 Sharn wallwatch set but then you would need to run heroic sharn in epics, pffft. While running Borderlands, you will have fun with the variety of quests; get a horse; and get loads of ingots. The ingots can be used to make a nice ML 21 Great exbow and the rest can be burned for sentient food. It is not much but adds up. Meanwhile, while running borderlands, you will pull even from the wilderness named items ML21 which are good sentient food. So you see, you are prepping for endgame. Of course splash in other quests as you level.

I know you dislike Sharn but if you are willing to visit it on normal and get to know the quests, they get easier and funner. You can pull some nice gear and you also get Sentient toolkits etc. Fast sneaky rogues can farm the chest in Same Old Song even on R10 rinse/repeat (no killing or fighting) in which you also get sharn crafting ingredients, filigree and toolkits. The walkups are fast and short, especially on normal, so you can ransack them easily while leveling and pull some nice stuff if lucky. Start with Ruinous schemes--easy--and get the Helm Walwatch Circlet; Do Scavenger hunt for the vest. Security Detail drops a solid Great Xbow (or just use the free Ravenloft one) and three chests if you do the optionals. That leaves Reach for the Sky, a toughy to get to know, for the gauntlets. Leave it for last...if ever...

IF you decide to group, then host the group for the quest you know well and let people know you are trying to get X item in the LFM. Since Sharn has been out for a while, a lot of vets will jump in and help and pass it along. Just use some fun text (which you do so well) to lure them in. A lot of people in game are either nice or Chest Huffers Who Want to Show Off so either group will aid a damsel in distress.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Named gear does drop on Casual and Normal settings (just not as often)(actually, my friends are convinced named loot drops most often on Hard.)

I do wish there were more good items between 21 and 29 though.

[SirValentine]

Problem 1: Level 29 equipment pretty much only drops at higher difficulties, but to play higher difficulties I need level 29 equipment.


That's not really true. It drops at higher rates in higher difficulties, but you don't need a fully-tricked out gear set just to complete Elite, let alone Normal/Hard.



Problem 2: When I do find a piece of level 29 equipment it never fits in with what I have, meaning I must collect many of the correct level 29 pieces before I can actually change anything.


Sometimes, true, yes. Not always.



Problem 3: Ravenloft was fine but I really dislike quests after that. Sharn quests, in particular, cause me to quit midway through each quest and play something else.


You can't get the loot if you won't run the content the loot drops in. That's up to you.



Condition 4: I do not group or raid and must collect everything myself.


A lot of people don't raid, but you can get lots of good loot without raiding. As for grouping...have you sworn a vow or something? You can eventually get loot without grouping, but it will be much, much, much slower.



Given all that, how should I best proceed?


OK, here's an approach that I think might be useful for you:
1. Figure out which gear you want, including set bonuses, et cetera.
2. Run HEROIC Sharn and get the Heroic equivalent of the ML 29 items.
3. Then run Legendary Sharn to get your ML 29 items.

Why?
a) First, you get a chance to learn the quests well in a lower-threat environment, so maybe you'll learn not to hate them.
b) The Heroic loot is actually decent.
c) Your upgrade path is super-clear. Just replace the Heroic item with the Legendary item when you get it.

[Annex]

Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond and offer advice. I truly appreciate your help. :)

[Tist]

Problem 1: Level 29 equipment pretty much only drops at higher difficulties

Since 2016's release of Slave Lords, named items have a standard chance to drop based on the difficulty setting of the quest. That drop chance is the same in heroic content and epic / legendary content, for all packs since Slave Lords.
There's very little chance you will actually plan to use anything from before that time, long term (you might use it since it happened to drop, until you got something better).

This means you have the same chance (based on running same difficulty) of getting a named item to drop, in heroic ravenloft, heroic sharn, epic borderlands, epic catacombs, epic deleras, legendary ravenloft or sharn or gatekeepers.

So .. while your statement is sort of true (there's more chance of a drop at higher difficulties) it really doesn't matter that it's L29 gear, cos all other gear you might want has the same % chance to drop in that content.

In fact, the actual chances are that gear has less chance to drop in older content [pre-slavers], unless it's the 100% end reward semi-randgen stuff from some FR quests.

Anyone saying random stuff about drop rates like "things drop more on hard than elite", tell them to look up confirmation bias - it is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or strengthens one's prior personal beliefs or hypotheses. although of course if you only run things on hard mode, more things will drop on hard mode than elite, cos you never run elite.

As an aside, many people have been using ravenloft heroic set, plus some choice upgrades based on build, to level from 10 thru to 29, since ravenloft came out. Many people then started using heroic sharn gear, to level from 15 to 29, since sharn came out. Nowadays you have the option to also get a solid gearset from epic borderlands at 20/21 and then some choice pieces from epic catacombs (23?) then epic deleras (27?), since that content is also relatively new ... that's a whole lot more than lots of people have been able to access, to get to your target of 29 farm-capable. Check out those packs on DDOWIKI and see the loot available from the quests in the chains, find out if any of it interests you. Borderlands especially are very quick to complete.

[Bjond]

TLDR summary: don't play DDO. Play Maetrim's DDO Builder, THEN play the game knowing exactly where you're going and what to farm to get there.

Items in the builder are free and only take one click to farm and try on -- beats fumbling at your bank for whatever random junk happened to fall on you and might paste over the gaping holes from a cascading upgrade.



Level 29 equipment pretty much only drops at higher difficulties

This is supposedly true according to wiki, but that's not been my experience. My first character farmed L29 solo on EH and then upped that to EE when capable. Drops DECREASED significantly to the point where I reduced it back to EH to continue. This was for farming RL when it was the top content.

Completely subjective, but I feel that content drop rates are tuned individually and that brand new fresh content has MUCH higher drop rates for a short time before being hammered back down to entice crystal re-rolls. After the tuned-down pass, I think they pretty much never go back to fix or change anything.


level 29 equipment it never fits in with what I have, meaning I must collect many of the correct level 29 pieces before I can actually change anything

PLAN your gear. Every piece, every augment, every swapped in item. AFTER you have the plan, then farm. If you don't know exactly what you want and where it drops, your character's gear progress will be almost nil.

Currently, the best and (I think) only tool for gear planning is Maetrim's Builder. ElisDee's Compendium is critical for any Canith Crafting you might need, too. Without those tools, I'd have punted DDO long ago.


Sharn quests, in particular, cause me to quit midway through each quest and play something else.

Sharn difficulty levels are VERY far out of line with the rest of the game. The DCs in particular are absurdly high. Typical MMO strategy is to balance new things for the "top tier end game players" and then let power creep fix any difficulty issues. The problem with doing that in DDO is that there's no gear-progression where you step-wise move from easier to harder content. Instead, it's all about the gear plan and stepping directly into the end.

It's also going to be like that for everyone with every new expansion unless they completely revamp all gear to support progression-style gearing. You'll know they're doing that if they ever announce moving stats around so that certain stats are only available in particular slots; ie. making single-item upgrading possible.


I do not have a useful sentient weapon. Since I find so few named items I cannot generate much sentient weapon experience. I stuck my Kobold gem into a level 20 dagger that annoys the heck out of me and rarely gets used.

I regularly use Sentient Kits to move my gems around. Each of my characters want one L21 (for ETR) and one L29 or L28 raid (for rxp/saga pre-ETR & raiding). Sentients completely killed all weapons from L22 to L28, imho. It's just too costly in terms of time and effort to bother upgrading as you level.

Where to get sentient kits and a lot of other "necessities"? DDO Store. This is (imho) DDO's biggest pitfall: monetizing "necessities" instead of "fluff". If you're unwilling to spend an extra $50/month on DDO, your game life will be VERY frustrating. You can do it and some very determined people do make a go of an f2p or minimal spending style, but that is THE biggest thing that will keep you from making a strong character. My regular buys: crystals, augments, kits, and raid timer resets. Each character I truly play also gets tomes (supreme, skill, xp, and fate), bank slots, and inventory slots. Those are one-time buys per character, but it adds up and only really pays off if you think you might play over a long time.

Without extra spending and/or minimal play time, your build and gear PLAN will be even more critical. Get Maetrim's builder. Play with it. Make multiple gear sets for your character; I do L15, L21, and L29 plans. I'll often use my time to only play with the builder for a week or so, not logging on at all until I have a full path I'm happy with. Then I farm the gear sets and after all that, finally play it.

And that's another vital difference between DDO and every other MMO. Jumping in and figuring things out as you go without offline planning is highly likely to end in frustration because there are no dev-planned paths for gear-progress. When a nice item drops on you, it's going to be for a slot that has another vital item with completely different stats.

Unplanned gear upgrades always cascade into a frustrating salty mess.