First Level 20, and First TR - Pre-TR Advice?

[Swimms]

My first character, a dwarf barbarian with level 19 banked, has the most total favor at about 2000. He will stick around in epics for a while to farm total favor for Favored Soul (Veteran Status came with MotU), and his barbarian HP and tankiness would hold up far better in epic quests than my rogue.

After running a couple of epic quests on my rogue tonight, I don't think I want to run her up to 30 on first life. One of those quests was Spies in the House, which always makes me completely question my ability to even play DDO at all; so that was probably a bad quest to try. (I did have a shot at Jibbers prior to Spies, and didn't want to simply bail on the group after TTT.) I think I'm up to 300k epic XP now. I should probably open my Shadowfell items to get the epic learning tome on her - I didn't expect to be earning this much epic XP before TR'ing. The barbarian should open his first in order to get the greater epic learning tome, letting the rogue take a lesser.

Yes you should use the tome, also the epic experience in general is pretty juicy and easy to acquire by focusing on a few key quests. You might be surprised at how easy it is to level to 30 doing epic normal quests. My rotation includes the following quests, I do not try to do them all every day but by rotating them I find there is always something I enjoy running that I can solo and get decent exp from:

The entire Wheloon prison story arc or just Through a Mirror Darkly if you are short on time, not sure why but I just love these quests and after you struggle learning the ropes in Mirror you can get about 100k (+- depending on bonuses) exp in about 8 minutes. Von 3, Von 4, Wiz King, Offering of Blood, Spies in the House (after about 3-4 slow runs solo you will have it down pat), Two Toed Tobias, What Goes Up (one of my favorite quests, for some reason I never get tired of it), the entire druid story arc is really fast and good exp/min. , In the harbor area I like to run Grim and Barrett, Lords of Dust and Servants of the Overlord are fast and easy to solo and I am always short on tokens of the 12 so I always try to include Eberron quests in my rotation. If you have completed the arc, running The Battle for Eveningstar is fast and decent exp. Once I get into the high 20's ill spice in a Slavers run or two just for giggles.

[Lonnbeimnech]

My advice.

If you were able to get to 20 on a first lifer with no gear, you shouldn't have a problem getting to lvl 20 on a second lifer with a little bit of gear.

Don't worry about it.

[PhotoRob]

Something I've never figured out - why do people run them on Hard and then Normal? Hardx2 and Normalx2 give you effectively the same XP. Is there some trick that I don't know about that calculates XP differently than I think it does?

Pure speculation here, but running a daily EH has a couple of bonuses I can think of over running EN: slightly higher base XP combined with the daily first-run 20% bonus gives a nice chunk of XP and higher drop rates for named and special items than EN.

I imagine that people do EN on the second run is that EN can be completed so much quicker than EH, that even though the overall XP is considerably lower, the XP/min might actually be higher. Thus giving a nice bit of "bonus XP" for not a huge amount of extra effort.

[Matuse]

If memory continues to serve me correctly, I'm unable to work on two nuggets simultaneously?

You can only have 1 nugget from each "side" at a time. You can hide one nugget in the bank so that the other side will give you one.

Also, the trade-in for the Nightshield is best done prior to having a nugget go to the 10-charge anti-beholder level?

You have to go Nugget -> Amulet -> Pendant -> Talisman -> Nightshield dress.

So you have to build up to the 4th reward first, then take a second nugget up to the third tier. Unless you hide one in the reincarnation cache - but that means doing a heroic or iconic or racial reincarnation to get it into the reincarnation cache, and not having access to it for a long time.

[Dulcimerist]

Thanks for the Silver Flame Nugget clarification!

Yesterday I managed six solo runs in Tempest's Spine for the cloak. The robe in the other chest in the room dropped first run, but no cloak. The runs allowed me to experiment and practice rogue assassin tactics, so that was nice. Finding a group to help me farm it on Orien might be the only way I'll pull this.

I had never run Dreaming Dark before, but put in six runs of that tonight and had fun with some great people. The disk was offered after run three, and the PLIS was offered after run six. A seventh run upgraded it, so I have that for TR.

I'm finally about to go to sleep, and am positive I'll have disturbing dreams about the crazy jumping from Dreaming Dark...

[EllisDee37]

I had never run Dreaming Dark before, but put in six runs of that tonight and had fun with some great people. The disk was offered after run three, and the PLIS was offered after run six. A seventh run upgraded it, so I have that for TR.

Nice, gratz!

[QuantumFX]

- Do your crafting tutorial, grab your success boosters and save them for later. This will reset when you do a Reincarnation that leaves you all the way back to level 1.
- Pick up your free Ravenloft dagger from the guy in the wilderness.
- Pick up your free Legendary Ravenloft dagger and sentient Jewel in the Epic wilderness. Even if you don't use it, you can feed it to a sentient jewel.
- IMO, get your 5,000 favor while going to level 30. A free +5 ability tome of your choice waits for you.
- Get your Yogoloth and Silver Flame favor so you can buy their potions before you TR.

[unbongwah]

I had never run Dreaming Dark before, but put in six runs of that tonight and had fun with some great people. The disk was offered after run three, and the PLIS was offered after run six. A seventh run upgraded it, so I have that for TR.

****, I wish I got that lucky the last time I tried to make an upgraded PLIS.

[Matuse]

Should I mention the PLIS that I had drop last life in a level 3 quest? No. I shouldn't.

[Dulcimerist]

- Do your crafting tutorial, grab your success boosters and save them for later. This will reset when you do a Reincarnation that leaves you all the way back to level 1.
- Pick up your free Ravenloft dagger from the guy in the wilderness.
- Pick up your free Legendary Ravenloft dagger and sentient Jewel in the Epic wilderness. Even if you don't use it, you can feed it to a sentient jewel.
- IMO, get your 5,000 favor while going to level 30. A free +5 ability tome of your choice waits for you.
- Get your Yogoloth and Silver Flame favor so you can buy their potions before you TR.

Got the crafting tutorial done and passed an XP Booster to my artificer to grind out crafting levels. Will go for success boosters on future characters to pass to my crafter.

Unfortunately, I don't own Ravenloft yet. I need that in order to run in and get the free dagger?

There are several adventure packs which I haven't purchased yet, and that would leave me just short of 5000 favor. The +5 tome would be really sweet, since I had bought a +4 Supreme set of tomes for this character back when ML on it was 15. During the course of it sitting in inventory while waiting to hit level 15, being largely inactive in the game while battling health issues, having a clogged inventory, and having things automatically added to inventory such as expansion purchases and weekly coupon items; the tomes and a couple of other items disappeared. Perhaps I shouldn't have been logging in once per week during that time just to grab weekly coupons and daily dice. Thinking about tomes makes my stomach turn.

I do have two other characters only a rank or two from level 20, and would love to spend most of my time getting them to level 30. One of those would be considered my "primary" and is my very first character and has the most total favor on the server. Perhaps I should focus on those two, and TR my rogue ASAP and put her "on the shelf" until my epic characters can replace her missing set of tomes through questing.

[QuantumFX]

Unfortunately, I don't own Ravenloft yet. I need that in order to run in and get the free dagger?

Yes. But buy the pack anyway. It's good level 10-12 and 20+ content. You might want to squirrel about $50 away for a christmas gift to yourself. This end of year %50 off sale on all the things is surprisingly good.

I do have two other characters only a rank or two from level 20, and would love to spend most of my time getting them to level 30. One of those would be considered my "primary" and is my very first character and has the most total favor on the server. Perhaps I should focus on those two, and TR my rogue ASAP and put her "on the shelf" until my epic characters can replace her missing set of tomes through questing.

I tend to keep one character at level 30 for raid shenanigans. Right now, it's the character with the least number of past life feats. But, when I get all the rTtr's done and the first 2 stacks of Scourge Aasimar done, I'll probably leave him alone until SSG releases more races or classes.

[Dulcimerist]

Ravenloft is now officially on my Christmas list!

Last night a helpful gnome ran me through Tempest's Spine twice, and I pulled the Cloak of Invisibility. My shopping list is nearly complete!

I've found myself addicted to farming up Ioun Stones now. Another player is trying to get his PLIS, so I'm trying to help him plow through Dreaming Dark. 25+ runs last night. I guess it's something to do while waiting to finish the pre-raid stuff for the Abbott. Are any of the other Iouns worth grabbing? I kept a Charisma one to let my haggle bard upgrade, and hung onto two VPIS in case I TR a caster later on who likes spell points and spell penetration.

[EllisDee37]

Last night a helpful gnome ran me through Tempest's Spine twice, and I pulled the Cloak of Invisibility. My shopping list is nearly complete!

Nice, gratz! Don't forget to stick a heavy fort augment into its green slot.

Any progress on the ML3 bracers of wind? I see that the images in my Challenge Tutorials thread have disappeared. In fact, ALL images I've posted anywhere on this site have disappeared. I'll see if I can get that corrected tonight for my "big ticket" threads.

I've found myself addicted to farming up Ioun Stones now. Another player is trying to get his PLIS, so I'm trying to help him plow through Dreaming Dark. 25+ runs last night. I guess it's something to do while waiting to finish the pre-raid stuff for the Abbott. Are any of the other Iouns worth grabbing? I kept a Charisma one to let my haggle bard upgrade, and hung onto two VPIS in case I TR a caster later on who likes spell points and spell penetration.

Only those vibrant purples you already pulled are worth keeping. The rest are pretty much garbage. Of course, any extra PLIS you can manage to pull would be worth holding onto, though I get that since you're helping someone else farm one, the runs end once its pulled.

[Dulcimerist]

Any progress on the ML3 bracers of wind? I see that the images in my Challenge Tutorials thread have disappeared. In fact, ALL images I've posted anywhere on this site have disappeared. I'll see if I can get that corrected tonight for my "big ticket" threads.

Sadly, I still have never set foot inside of a Cannith Challenge. I have three empty character slots, access to Shadar-kai and PDK, and access to all classes but FvS. Could you please point me to a simple (not too much hotbar clicking) challenge farmer build? (Creating a new character would also help me unclog some inventory issues.)

I'm completely flagged for Abbott now, ready to go after him and my quiver. Finding a group for this is incredibly difficult!

While waiting around, I found a good Reaver's Fate raid group and now have a Seal of the Stormreaver. Perhaps I'll end up with a Ring of Lies before I'm even able to see the Abbott.

[EllisDee37]

Sadly, I still have never set foot inside of a Cannith Challenge. I have three empty character slots, access to Shadar-kai and PDK, and access to all classes but FvS. Could you please point me to a simple (not too much hotbar clicking) challenge farmer build? (Creating a new character would also help me unclog some inventory issues.)

You only need 400 parts from kobold island and 400 parts from lava caves, running the introductory (easiest) challenge in both. For that I would just roll up a PDK following the default path and using the default gear.

[Whitering]

Sadly, I still have never set foot inside of a Cannith Challenge. I have three empty character slots, access to Shadar-kai and PDK, and access to all classes but FvS. Could you please point me to a simple (not too much hotbar clicking) challenge farmer build? (Creating a new character would also help me unclog some inventory issues.)

I'm completely flagged for Abbott now, ready to go after him and my quiver. Finding a group for this is incredibly difficult!

While waiting around, I found a good Reaver's Fate raid group and now have a Seal of the Stormreaver. Perhaps I'll end up with a Ring of Lies before I'm even able to see the Abbott.

Ellis had a challenge farmer build, but here's what matters for Caanith challenges. DDoor, run speed and good ranged damage along with ability to destroy boxes en masse. There's also some difficult fights in Rushmore if not properly prepared. Feather fall and jump are also good.

I built a PDK/lock farmer, run speed though was only the quiver and thus felt slower. To be honest I could have likely thrown in some barb levels for 10% more. That character has a sword of the shadows. At 15 you can run all of the challenges. She has had 17 banked for probably more than a year, but is pretty good at her job, if I get lucky I can 6 star Rushmore, but either way, she can get 800ish mats from one run of Rushmore, which is not fantastic given how many you can get from Dragon's Hoard but pretty decent if you need those mats. I also put black dragon armor on her, not a lot of need for ASF reduction, so any decent medium armor would do.

I imagine a rogue/arti build could just fly through these challenges.

[Dulcimerist]

My brain is still working to put together a challenge farmer. There are too many options.

Working to "beef up" and also try to unlock some self-healing in the Primal sphere before taking on the Abbott, I suddenly find myself at level 23. I do have a Raider's Reward Box:
http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Raider%27s_Reward_Box
This rogue is a TWF dagger user. Is Agony, the Knife in the Dark probably a must-have?
http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Agony,_...fe_in_the_Dark
I could conceivably use Balizarde or Celestia, but wouldn't get my dagger bonuses with them.

It's looking slightly more likely that I'll just go all the way to 30 for the epic TR as well as the heroic.

[Dulcimerist]

Playing a first-life rogue in epic play has been interesting, but I've been learning better tactics and it's been an overall good experience with fun quests and nice people!

Tonight I hit level 30 and capped the Martial Sphere at 6 million karma. I'm sitting at about 2800 Commendations of Valor, so it looks like I need to farm those up for an Epic Heart of Wood. While doing that, I suppose it would be helpful to unlock more destinies? Are the destinies I cap now still capped in the next life, after an epic and heroic reincarnation?

I still want my Quiver of Alacrity, wouldn't mind a Ring of Lies, and hope to make a level 3 Bracers of Wind. I did pick up the Eveningstar Key. I didn't expect this character to end up at level 30, so I'm unsure what else I could do now to make the next life more fun and efficient.

[EllisDee37]

Tonight I hit level 30 [...] I'm sitting at about 2800 Commendations of Valor, so it looks like I need to farm those up for an Epic Heart of Wood.

Now that you're level 30, for every epic quest, the first time you run it in a day you get 2 heart seeds in the end reward list. Take those to pay for your heart and save the valor for a rainy day.

It doesn't matter how short the quest is: House of Rusted Blades, Impossible Demands, whatever. If it's an epic quest, you're level 30, and it's the first time you've run it that day, 2 heart seeds are offered in the end reward list.

On a separate, unrelated note, you should also look to farm up 20 tokens of the twelve. Devil Assault on Epic Normal is a good way to farm them.

While doing that, I suppose it would be helpful to unlock more destinies? Are the destinies I cap now still capped in the next life, after an epic and heroic reincarnation?

Yep. Epic Destiny XP is permanent.

EDIT: One project while waiting for a quiver might be to farm up a Master's Gift augment or three. Are you a VIP, or do you own both Delera's Tomb and Ruins of Threnal? If not, it's not that important.

[C-Dog]

...so I'm unsure what else I could do now to make the next life more fun and efficient.

You could easily spend a couple months more doing "everything"...

o https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post4993658

... so don't worry too much about it. If something jumps out, chase it, but get back on the Reincarnation train and hope to pick it up next cycle.