The following started out as a quick run to Quickie Mart for munchies and ended up being a full 3 course dinner. I had an ancient, and I mean ANCIENT, level 28 Warforged Wizard. We are talking OLD first lifer, from back in the days of “Follow the critting Wall of Fire”. I never bothered to TR him because I always had other projects to work on. I decided to replace my old toaster with a shinny new Sun Elf powered roaster/deep fryer combo.
1. Appetizers- After getting the required 4200 Commendations of Valor, (totally didn’t feel like a grind), I cashed in my chips and got a free Epic Heart of Wood. I respected from level 28 to 1 and all the way back to 20. I selected the 3% elemental critical chance. I took this because it looked the most appealing. The other option on the menu is 3% less on all spell cool downs. This may sound tasty on the surface but, when you look at the fact that a spell with a 60 second cool down and 3% is only about 2.33 seconds I had to pass.
2. Main Course- I made it back to level 20 and was ready to eat more Heart’s of Wood. I took a stroll to my old friend in the Twelve and cashed in again to get a free True Heart of Wood. Now you may be thinking ‘this has to be enough to fill you up’. Wrong! I needed more. So I selected a side of Sun Elf. Now I know that it comes with a mandatory sauce of Cleric level 1. No problem. Desert will wash down the sour task that Cleric has. Rerolled back up to level 15. Go the added bonus of Past Life Wizard. Very tasty.
3. Desert-For the final course I could not accept anything other then the best. I ordered up a FREE helping of Lesser Heart of Wood +20 complements of Turbine/DDO. You may be thinking ‘why waste a +20 to get rid of only 1 sour tasting level of Cleric’. My answer is “The entire 2 course meal is free”. No need to spend hard earned platinum or Turbine points.
Lessons learned
1. I was unhappy to see that a TR Sun Elf does not get the Cosmetic armor kit that a first lifer gets. Why? Just silly.
2. Only 1 pre-constructed item from the Sun Elf is even worth looking at for level 15.
http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Cloak_of_the_Dawn
Everything else went straight to the compost heap accept I stashed away
http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Balanced_Boots for a rainy day.
3. I was happy to see that the first tier of Spell Focus has been made a class feat. This makes feat selection much easier for a Wizard. I always worried about getting to level 20 and only having Augment Summoning, Enlarge or Eschew Materials left as options.
4. 6 Million Destiny EXP and 8 Epic levels seem to be worth more than 3% critical chance and 1% elemental absorb. Just my opinion.
5. The Fate Spinner had a nice footnote about “If you get 4 Epic TR’s you can have a free Twist of Fate. Cannot find this on the wiki. Again, just my opinion, but this is not worth the extreme grind.