Epic Challenge Farmer (21 drow pure wizard)

[Stoner81]

Woohoo! Finally reached level 20 tonight at long last!

Now time to start gearing up and stuff but I'm going to take a look at the gear and see about coming up with a fully optimised gear set (be it hard or easy to acquire) so I best stock up on painkillers because my head is going to hurt again oh well part of the fun I guess (fun? I must be mad!).

Stoner81.

[Nodoze]

Grinding out the twists I wanted on this was brutal. For the first few days I played around trying to identify the easiest, most reliable xp I could get doing any given quest only once. Once I came up with a list I spent the next week fine-tuning the order and all the little tricks and tips to speed things along. ...

The daily run ended up being ~2.5 hours and ~530k xp. This included a 4% ship buff, 5% pots you can buy from cannith challenges, and no epic tome at all. Better shrine/pots/tome will increase the total.

Things to keep in mind: This build caps at 21, meaning it can't enter the higher level epics (ie: can't complete any epic sagas) and it can't pick up level 23/24 rogue hires to hit 80 open lock. That means no Death Undone and no hidden chest in Trial By Fury. Also, as an insta-kill build EN is much faster than EH since you can finger/wail orange-names on EN as you sprint past them.

...

Ship Buff #1 (~45 minutes, ~200k xp)
VON3
Devil Assault
Bargain of Blood (Video)


Ship Buff #2 (~60 minutes, ~200k xp)
Lords of Dust
House of Rusted Blades
Trial By Fury (Video)
Deal and the Demon
The Druid's Curse (Video)
Outbreak (Video)
...with instakills this is like a 2 minute quest. DDoor out and head to King's Forest.
Impossible Demands
Unquiet Graves

Ship Buff #3 (~40 minutes, ~130k xp)
Offering of Blood (Video)
Snitch (Video)
Under the Big Top (Video)
Fathom the Depths (Video)
Claw of Vulkoor (Video)
...I had great success using a single enervation SLA followed by a quick FoD on all the guardians.

...

I enjoy reading your threads in general and found this one particularly insightful.

Lately I have been running with 1-2 of my kids working on maxing out fate points for our twists as well as getting ePLs (we already have everyone we want as 36 pointers for now so no more TRs for awhile as we are focusing on epics). Since I can multibox multiple DDO clients at once I sometimes am solo with their 2 characters parked at the door though typically only 2 of us are on so we only have 1 piker then (the kids often take turns though sometimes all 3 of us are on).

If you we running an all ranged group with no insta-kills, would you avoid any of the above quests?

Have you decided on any changes to the above list since the XP changes?

For reference we are running slightly tweaked versions of the following ranged builds:

- Shiradi-Warcannon : WarForged 11Wiz/6Monk/3Rogue (our AoE aggro grabber with mostly full trap skills & great self full 'heals');

- Meteor-Shower-I : Halfling 12Monk/5Wiz/3Rogue (great DPS & bare minimum trap skills running in either Shadow Dancer or Shiradi);

- Elven AA 12FvS/6Monk/2Paladin (FvS Elven Arcane Archer Monkcher typically running in running in either Shadow Dancer or Shiradi or Fury);

[EllisDee37]

If you we running an all ranged group with no insta-kills, would you avoid any of the above quests?

Not really. It's nice in claw to finger the orange-names but by no means required.

Have you decided on any changes to the above list since the XP changes?

If you mean the rebalancing a few updates ago, the only changes from that are VON3 went down. All other adjustments were to increase quest xp, and many of the quests that got bumps were on the list. (Trial By Fury in particular was a pleasant surprise.)

I did a slightly modified version for a blitzer that included Don't Drink the Water, but I don't remember all the details. I do remember that I needed to come up with two different quest lists, since the lower level quests stop being blitzable once you get to the level 26+ range.

EDIT: Ah, found the low level version in my notes:

Circuit 1
---------
 - Captain to Harbor 
 - Rusted Blades
 - Death Undone
   - DDoor, recall twice, head in to demonweb
 - Trial By Fury
 - Deal and the Demon
 - Closing the Portal
   - Recall twice, teleport to House P, rebuff/smoke
Time: 44 minutes
XP: 173,462 (1953048 to 2126510)
Valor: 109 (1857 to 1966)
Plat: 15k

Circuit 2
---------
 - Key to Eveningstar
 - Turn-in & re-acquire quests from Circuit 1
 - Impossible Demands
 - Unquiet Graves
   - DDoor, recall
 - Outbreak
   - Turn in & re-acquire two king's forest quests
 - Overgrowth
 - Thorn and Paw
 - Druid's Curse
   - Turn in all 4 druid's deep, re-acquire first two only
   - Teleport to House P, rebuff/smoke
Time: 51 minutes
XP: 162,442 (2126510 to 2288952)
Valor: 126 (1966 to 2092)
Plat: 19k

Circuit 1 & 2
-------------
Time: 1:45
XP: 330k
Valor: 235
Plat: 34k

The higher level version was mostly druid's deep, high road and gianthold.

[Caprice]

This is a bit of a thread necro (of a necro thread!), but I have a couple of questions. The Challenges are fresh in my mind since I spent a chunk of the weekend farming the Epic Challenges on a non-ideal character build so I am considering how to rectify that in the future. At the moment I'm thinking through the Morninglord version since I may be too lazy to level from scratch, plus my queue of alts to level is fairly long already, but I am probably too cheap to buy into a LR+1 just at the moment.

1) Have you stuck with Boulder Toss or switched to a different twist? E.g. Wild Shots in Shiradi as mentioned previously?

2. How critical are:
A) ... the +1 enchantment DC from Enchantment Lore 3?
B) ... the 10% SP cost reduction from the War Wizard set?
With the recent armor changes I am wondering about taking advantage of the armor proficiencies the 19/1 gets from that Cleric level. By dropping Enchantment Lore I could go 2-3 into Arcane Fluidity and switch to Light armor for a little PRR , or with a Spell Agility augment I could even go for Medium Armor , although then the Heavy Shield swap has to deal with ASF which isn't ideal. Examples I have on hand already I would consider:

• Epic Duelists's Leathers: Light armor, 10% ASF, 22 PRR/15 MRR (=18%/12% reductions, respectively), +10% Dodge (w/Mobility), +15 Balance, Blue slot (Resistance +6, perhaps)
• Epic Cavalry Plate: Medium armor, 25% ASF, 40 PRR/30 MRR (=28%/21% reductions, resp.), +30-40 False Life HP, Resistance+5, DR3-5/Chaotic (I think I only have tier 1 of this one)

However on a Morninglord with no LR+1 taken, with all else being equal my Enchantment DC would be lower already thanks to missing out on the PM capstone. I probably won't invest into all the augments unless/until I get it kitted out and decide that I like it (or at least I may wait for the next big augment sale) and thus I'd be more like -4 DC to start. You cover Necro DCs, but Enchantment will be targeting Will rather than Fortitude so I'd expect some difference in effectiveness. Did you do any testing on those DCs?

On top of the Enchantment DC drop I'd also be looking at higher SP costs on everything since I wouldn't have the War Wizard set bonus. You mention not ever needing to shrine while questing. Does that carry over into Challenges?

I am also vaguely considering going Chaotic Neutral on the off chance that I decide that I want to go farm up a Torc someday. Chaotic takes takes slightly less damage from Lailat, and DDO doesn't seem to do much (non-player) Lawful damage - a few divines cast Order's Wrath and it would allows some damage from Druid's Word of Balance, but both seem fairly rare. However that's definitely a minor point.

[EllisDee37]

Alignment is totally irrelevant, as far as I'm aware. Chaotic Neutral (for torc farming) could conceivably also help against Devashta, though I doubt it. In any case, Chaotic Neutral is totally fine.

I still like and use boulder toss. It's particularly nice for taking out the occasional animated armor missed by energy burst, but really it amounts to a single-target insta-kill that costs no mana.

Being -2 int due to loss of capstone from a 19/1 morninglord should work fine.

I only ever use the enchantment school in Sunset Ritual. Outside of that one challenge I wouldn't even notice my enchantment DC. I did use enchantment enough to notice while farming fate points, though.

The 10% reduction in spell point cost is huge in longer challenges. I wouldn't sacrifice that. Besides which, the War Wizard's Robes fits the build perfectly. (Archmagi, Concentration +15, Resistance +6)

PRR is great in questing, but based on my experience it's pointless in challenges. You'll be facerolling all comers with 0 PRR and 0 MRR. I suppose it could help if you're in a full group (full scaling) and you decide to tank devashta, but while solo or with one other person it's trivially easy to tank her on this build with a heavy shield and no other sources of PRR.

Consider this CR25 Buying Time run, particularly the devashta fight that starts at 3:31 and lasts for 15 seconds:



I have no PRR at all, and this is the most dangerous fight presented by challenges in terms of needing PRR. At least in cannith challenges. You can see me shield blocking between casts, but for the most part it's just a mana-dump.

EDIT: To clarify, in the video I'm using the exact character detailed in this thread, both in terms of build and gear. I bought a cosmetic for the robe because I find the war wizard's kind of ugly.

EDIT 2: The video is a demo of averaging 300 parts per 5:00 run during a 50% bonus weekend without buying barrels or teleporters. Just 5 workers and 5 torches.

[Caprice]

Okay, that is all good to know and hopefully I will get started on mine soon. I definitely feel like PRR helps my SB heroic farmers a lot but Cures are less SP cost efficient and consume more time than Death Aura. My main remaining point of debate is whether I want to level to 28 while working on EDs and ER at the end. It seems like a shame to let all that XP go to waste, although the gains from a single EPL are really marginal too. I'll figure it out.

I agree that Devashta is the riskiest fight among all the Challenges as she has the highest DPS of any boss, but she has quite low HP compared to most of the other red names (I think Sam is probably the only one with less) and is positively anemic compared to the Eveningstar bosses. You definitely make her look easy there. I often duo these and IMO there is a noticeable difference in how difficult the fights are even with that small amount of scaling, but we'll see how I hold up. FWIW I tested being Chaotic some time ago and it does not help with Devashta. Her damage is typed differently than Lailat's, although I forget as what at this point.

I have already adopted your 5 minute run pattern in Buying Time. It's very straightforward, has good & consistent rewards, and the short run time lets me be aggressive with SP use. For an epic arcane it also means that Extended Haste will last the kobolds the entire time, although I have been running it mainly in heroics and thus I have to recast it a bit. Minor quibble: I think you should have put down a DDoor near the end of the line in the last 30 seconds - it looked like you'd have gotten at least one more purple out of it. ;-)

[EllisDee37]

I have already adopted your 5 minute run pattern in Buying Time. It's very straightforward, has good & consistent rewards, and the short run time lets me be aggressive with SP use. For an epic arcane it also means that Extended Haste will last the kobolds the entire time, although I have been running it mainly in heroics and thus I have to recast it a bit. Minor quibble: I think you should have put down a DDoor near the end of the line in the last 30 seconds - it looked like you'd have gotten at least one more purple out of it. ;-)

Yeah, agreed on all of that. Particularly the points about haste lasting for the whole challenge, letting me use quicken without worrying about mana, and the final DDoor would have been nice. I tried to cast DDoor when you say but it was on cooldown, which is the only downside to the epic farmer. The heroic farmer with the dragonmark can spam DDoor one after the other.

In the video, you can see me check* the DDoor cooldown at 4:44; there were 21 seconds to go. So at that point it was too late. (I cast DDoor when I first ran out there after the devashta fight at 4:05, though I did it on the run so you don't actually see the door in the video until I run around the circle at 4:27.)

EDIT: Regarding a potential EPL, I wouldn't bother. They don't do much for a wizard, but even if they did, farming out all the twists you need and maxing draconic still leaves you with only 3 million xp in the arcane sphere and much less in the other three spheres. An extra 3 million xp for a marginal benefit, and then needing another 300k to get back to 21 was way too much work for too little return for me.

*I map hotbars 8, 9 and 10 to the Alt alphabet: Alt+A, Alt+B, ..., Alt+Z. DDoor is my standard Alt+D key for all characters, so it's the 4th button on hotbar 8. I moved the handful of Alt keys in the standard keymapping over to Ctrl to make room for using the complete Alt alphabet. Fortunately there were no conflicts with existing Ctrl keys. IIRC, two of the existing Alt keys I moved to Ctrl are (for me) Ctrl+Z to hide the UI, and Ctrl+X to check the quest xp log.

[EllisDee37]

I agree that Devashta is the riskiest fight among all the Challenges as she has the highest DPS of any boss, but she has quite low HP compared to most of the other red names (I think Sam is probably the only one with less) and is positively anemic compared to the Eveningstar bosses.

Is there any particular boss you're thinking of in terms of PRR being useful? I'd be happy to go test it with my zero PRR/MRR if you like and report back what I find, probably with video. I'm always game for short tests.

[Caprice]

Is there any particular boss you're thinking of in terms of PRR being useful? I'd be happy to go test it with my zero PRR/MRR if you like and report back what I find, probably with video. I'm always game for short tests.

I don't think there's any need. If you can stay alive facing Devashta then your self-healing output is good enough to survive the rest, and with Endless Faith twisted you literally cannot run out of the SP you need to keep up Death Aura healing & NEBing (although you can't meta them on Echo fumes). I suppose that there might potentially be more incoming DPS at times during some of the Estar arena boss fights depending on trash spawn timing, but that's with a bunch of mobs in addition to the boss and you can just kill some of the trash to fix that.

I was watching your video on the default size while on a call and mostly I was keeping an eye on your HP bar and SP use, other than paying closer attention during the Devashta fight, so I missed some details like the DDoor CD mouseover. I had forgotten that the DDoor CD for Wizards is a full minute. Ouch. Clearly I've gotten spoiled by the DM and mostly playing Sorceror in recent questing. The Bard CD is a minute too but for some reason it never seems to be an issue for my current heroic farmer model; I suppose that between stacking Bard & Barbarian Fast Movement, Haste or Speed items, and Sprint Boost it's often just as convenient to run back to the center and peel off any mobs on the line on the way as it is to DDoor.

[EllisDee37]

I had forgotten that the DDoor CD for Wizards is a full minute. Ouch. Clearly I've gotten spoiled by the DM and mostly playing Sorceror in recent questing.

No joke. I ran a ton of challenges on my heroic farmer this past weekend to stockpile xp pots, and then when I switched to the epic farmer to farm up a quick dozen epic tokens the DDoor cooldown was a shock.

In the linked video you can also see me try to cast DDoor but fail due to cooldown at 2:29. I don't bother checking the cooldown because I knew that was the problem. I only checked at the end to show it for the video because the run was over anyway, so there was nothing to do instead.

[EllisDee37]

Updated the OP to the new output format. Nothing changed; just new formatting.

[Heathir]

Updated the OP to the new output format. Nothing changed; just new formatting.

Ellis, have you considered a warlock challenge get farmer or swashbuckler? They both have the dps and healing to complete easily.

The warlock has haste, ddo and wings plus amazing aoe dps.

The swash wold have better runspeed, haste ddo and good aoe, better boss dps.

[EllisDee37]

Both would be solid, for sure.

I personally haven't considered it because I already leveled and geared up the wizard, and he does fine.

[unbongwah]

Do you plan to swap epic Spell Pen for either of the new lvl 21 caster feats?

[EllisDee37]

Do you plan to swap epic Spell Pen for either of the new lvl 21 caster feats?

Wellspring of Power is the only one worth considering. +20% spell crits for boss fights never hurt anybody, for sure. I'll probably stick with epic spell pen, though. Mainly for Lava Caves, which are thick with drow.

EDIT: Though I suppose it's worth hopping into a CR25 lava caves just to verify what the drow CR is. If it's 25 or lower, epic spell pen isn't needed.

EDIT 2: They are indeed CR25, which means we can drop from 39 to 35 spell pen and still be no-fail against the drow. Wellspring of Power it is!

[GhostDargon]

I was wondering why do you put points into repair?

[EllisDee37]

I was wondering why do you put points into repair?

For reconstructing the extractors on kobold island challenges in a pinch.

[Stoner81]

Any thoughts on new gear for this m8 now that the new CC update is out?

Stoner81.

[EllisDee37]

New goggles would be an upgrade, for sure. Since he's level 21, any crafted stat item will be +10.

I kind of like the war wizard set for cheaper spells, but other than that, just about everything he's wearing could be improved with crafting. Even the staff, though that's not actually terrible. (The fact that it takes up both hand slots is bad, though.)

I haven't sat down to hammer out a good caster gearset yet, though.

[Stoner81]

Good to know I might have a nosy at it later on tonight if I get the time.

Stoner81.