How long to make addy cloak of dragon?

[Kinerd]

I like Cloudkill for the jariliths, but I also like killing as few things as possible in Ring of Fire, so I'm satisfied with slow burns. If you have to use tokens this might not be the strategy for you.

[sirgog]

How do you avoid getting swamped though? We are running at level 24 / 25 as my running partner is 24, and he's between epic destinies and I'm only 22 and not massively geared. we kills all the things in the arena fight of course but seem to suffer too many mobs issues in the others if we don't use some charms.

Charms are OK as a last resort in that situation, but AoE damage or kill spells are really important to get even a mid-range score.

[MrCow]

If I may ask, what are you soloing these with?

Druid, Favored Soul, Cleric, Sorcerer, Monk, Ranger/Rogue, Artificer, etc. Some of them aren't quite as potent as the others, resulting in me doing the challenges at a lower level Character Level than I cited (such as the Ranger/Rogue). Also, most of my characters that are Epic are still at level 20 or 21 (or I do some runs at level 10-19 via the Key to the City - Eveningstar when True Reincarnating), which helps keep the HP inflation of the critters down.

Some screenshot examples on a level 10 character (7 Druid/2 Monk/1 Rogue) doing Level 15 Eveningstar Challenges:

Defenseless
Fight to the Finish
Ring of Fire
The Great Tree

[danzig138]

I only need a cloak on one character (lvl 20 DS monk, no GS, no ToD rings), so I've been giving these another go. So far, going in at -2 levels is tough enough (I did 5-star the underdark arena though, so that was cool). I went into the one where you have to keep the war wizard alive at -4 levels just to check it out and failed. So it's going to be a while unless they add an ingredient exchange or change the binding on them. On the ones I can solo, I'm going to try -1 level, see how that goes, etc. It sure seems like AoE or CC would work much better than having to individually punch everything to death.

I've never been very good at protecting NPCs. Would much rather just go avenge them.

[EllisDee37]

Hurricane Sandy knocked me offline for 8 days, then when I got back online it was the last day of Mabar so I spent that on mote farming. After that 9 day hiatus I went back to the cloak and finally finished it. On the plus side that cleared out my ransack timers, but I only pulled one cormyrian weapon in the last batch of runs and it didn't yield any parts I still needed.

I ran everything solo on level 22 with my wizard. The first dozen or so runs he was level 20, but then I took 21 which lowered my underlevel bonus from +2 to +1. The last 10 or so runs were during a +20% challenge mat weekend.

Pulled four Comyrian weapons total, and the three that helped totalled 245 golden lions, 175 fey toadstools, 99 enchanted moss and 100 platinum tricrowns.

Golden Lions (Ring of Fire)
2400 - 245 = 2155 needed after cormyrian weapon turn-in
20 runs @ 109 average

Fey Toadstools (Defenseless)
2800 - 175 = 2625 needed
19 runs @ 144 average

Enchanted Moss (Great Tree)
2800 - 99 = 2701 needed
9 runs @ 311 average

Platinum Tricrowns (Sunset Ritual)
1400 - 100 = 1300 needed
13 runs @ 105 average

20 + 19 + 9 + 13 = 61 tokens used to make the cloak. Close enough to MrCow's estimate of 50 that I'm quite pleased with my performance. He didn't factor in cormyrian weapon turn-in, though, so in reality he'd probably be in the mid-40s.

I can't imagine using anything other than a wizard for these challenges. Dominate monster and dball seemed to be required (or at least made it way easier) for sunset ritual, and having two dots (both with 7/1/1 enhancements backing them) you could stack on bosses at the same time greatly increased my score in most runs.

It's worth noting that I happily guzzled potions whenever needed. I probably went through 30+ pots all told despite having a torc and concop gs.

By the end it was feeling extemely grindy. In all 61 runs I had exactly 1 fail, and that was my first ever sunset ritual. That fail did manage 1 star, though, so I guess you can't call it a fail but it did end early when the dude died. I got ~65 tricrowns from the failed run.

[Kinerd]

I think you would reduce the grind a lot by doing Ring of Fire pacifist style. I don't bother with trash past what I need to spawn the Lancer and what I can't CC with Web (so I can still ring gongs), at higher levels I don't bother with the Brimstone Archon at all (between the HP and the Fire Render Archers[??!] it's just punitive). I only manage about 80 lions per run, but at probably 1/3 the effort, and 8/11 * 3 > 1. Think of it as taking the scenic route, although again as someone using tokens the cost may be prohibitive, I don't really know on that front.

Sunset Ritual is just a disaster of a challenge, nothing you can really do to alleviate that. Luckily you don't need as many.

[voodoogroves]

I really can't imagine doing some of these on the character that needs the ingredients. I've pretty much written them off for most of my toons.

I really wish mats were BTA.