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

[Dulcimerist]

All of that sounds great! Thanks!

I wasn't aware of the seeds at level 30! 21 quests, and I've got my 42!

This character won a Heroic True Heart of Wood back in the day when DDO Lotteries had them as prizes. I do have a lot of Tokens of the Twelve, though

I do have Delera and Threnal. I would need to farm up voices and cloaks? I haven't done Threnal in six years. Being level 30, and with the power creep since then, it probably wouldn't be too hard or exceedingly tedious to farm both chains on causal. (I really want that green ioun stone from ES that gives the XP bonus, but the augment is easier to slot.)

The list at that link I ran across before posting this thread. It made TR'ing look intimidating, so I went for a "bare bones" TR list. I'll read it again, since unexpectedly ending up at level 30 opens up more doors which I initially wouldn't have considered.

[Dulcimerist]

I have enough Heart Seeds to get my Epic Heart of Wood now. Still waiting on the Quiver of Alacrity.

In the meantime, I've been capping more destinies and having chances at a Jibbers while running dailies as I acquired Heart Seeds. I got lucky enough to pull an Epic Assassin's Kiss with an epic ToEE farming group.

While I wait for the quiver to drop, I'd like to pick up a decent armor for epic play. Would a rogue assassin prefer the Flawless Black Dragonhide Armor, and possibly the matching Helm of the Black Dragon? (Groups running epic Tor rarely do the dragons, unfortunately.) If the black dragon armor is among the best choices, I could have a different character farm up the scales and helm. Are there any epic items I should try to get now before I TR?

Looking over the "big TR list" I see that Invaders tokens are mentioned. I could easily solo farm that to get the Ring of Balance, but is that item not very relevant anymore?

How often does the Royal Guard Mask drop in Bring Me the Head of Ghola-Fan? Hunting that quality-of-life item is probably too much of a time sink, unless having the flagging item for the Titan raid in my TR cache would be worth it.

I still need to toss a character into the challenges to get the Bracers of Wind.

Thanks again for all of the advice! My first TR is going to be a lot more enjoyable because of it!


*** Update: If the quiver doesn't drop for me during the next couple of Ascension Chamber runs, I will be tempted to Epic Reincarnate and then work my way back up to level 30 for a second ER before I heroic TR. Maybe it will drop for me as I go from 20 to 30 again.

[EllisDee37]

I do have Delera and Threnal. I would need to farm up voices and cloaks? I haven't done Threnal in six years. Being level 30, and with the power creep since then, it probably wouldn't be too hard or exceedingly tedious to farm both chains on causal. (I really want that green ioun stone from ES that gives the XP bonus, but the augment is easier to slot.)

Yeah, blasting through on casual is fine. Both voice and mantle are guaranteed drops in the chain end reward lists.

You would also need 5 greater tokens of the twelve, which only drop in the old epic raids in eberron. The most common / easiest place to farm them is Chronoscope. Most people don't need greater tokens (they already have their master's gifts) so are generally happy to pass them. People do like favor, so a good way to get people to join is to post an EE "favor run."

Looking over the "big TR list" I see that Invaders tokens are mentioned. I could easily solo farm that to get the Ring of Balance, but is that item not very relevant anymore?

Not really.

How often does the Royal Guard Mask drop in Bring Me the Head of Ghola-Fan? Hunting that quality-of-life item is probably too much of a time sink, unless having the flagging item for the Titan raid in my TR cache would be worth it.

Not often. I mean, you could ransack the chest once just to see. Or maybe just run it once a day.

Speaking of useful named clickies, you might also do the same for a Planar Gird.

*** Update: If the quiver doesn't drop for me during the next couple of Ascension Chamber runs, I will be tempted to Epic Reincarnate and then work my way back up to level 30 for a second ER before I heroic TR. Maybe it will drop for me as I go from 20 to 30 again.

That's not a bad idea.

[Dulcimerist]

Yeah, blasting through on casual is fine. Both voice and mantle are guaranteed drops in the chain end reward lists.

You would also need 5 greater tokens of the twelve, which only drop in the old epic raids in eberron. The most common / easiest place to farm them is Chronoscope. Most people don't need greater tokens (they already have their master's gifts) so are generally happy to pass them. People do like favor, so a good way to get people to join is to post an EE "favor run."

The XP augment is BtC, so this would be a good time to get at least one. Those chains might be easier on my warlock, which could help my rogue if I had BtA items she could slot into and pass through the shared bank?

The greater tokens only come out of raids, not regular quests? I've been seeing a lot of them lately, but maybe that's because I've been running three characters through epic VoN a lot?

Planar Gird, Bracers of Wind, and Quiver of Alacrity are my short list of must-haves. I won't aggressively pursue the Teleport clickie or Ring of Lies.

If Epic Stormreaver raid is run regularly, I could get my Comms of Heroism for epic black dragon armor. There's always that "just one more item" temptation.

[EllisDee37]

The XP augment is BtC, so this would be a good time to get at least one. Those chains might be easier on my warlock, which could help my rogue if I had BtA items she could slot into and pass through the shared bank?

Cannith crafted items are BTA regardless what's slotted in them. All my melees (and ranged DPS lives) use the same set of goggles to go from 1 to 30:

The greater tokens only come out of raids, not regular quests? I've been seeing a lot of them lately, but maybe that's because I've been running three characters through epic VoN a lot?

Yep, the VON raids drop them too. (As does ADQ.)

If Epic Stormreaver raid is run regularly, I could get my Comms of Heroism for epic black dragon armor. There's always that "just one more item" temptation.

Flawless black dragonscale armor isn't bad, but even fully upgraded it's not exactly great. Maybe if it were ML21, but at ML25 it's kind of meh.

[Dulcimerist]

Flawless black dragonscale armor isn't bad, but even fully upgraded it's not exactly great. Maybe if it were ML21, but at ML25 it's kind of meh.

Which armor would be good for a melee rogue assassin in epic play, if I don't get the dragonscale?

I like the goggles, especially since I mostly play melee characters. What crafting level do I need to be to make those? My rogue would definitely use them after her TR.

[EllisDee37]

Which armor would be good for a melee rogue assassin in epic play, if I don't get the dragonscale?

Possibly shadow scale with Shadow Killer, but again, that isn't necessarily the greatest must-have armor either.

If you can craft, I'd probably just use cannith crafted until cap. The biggest value with crafted armor is that it can be the same effects as you level, as opposed to named armors where it might change as you level making the rest of your gear need to switch around when your armor changes.

For an example of a crafted melee gearset all your melee lives can share, see my Cannith Crafted Melee Gearset thread. I actually crafted that gearset and have used it for multiple lives, and have been very pleased with it. The biggest downside is that it doesn't slot Deception anywhere, so it's not perfectly suited for a rogue life. (Though I'll almost certainly use it as-is for my rogue life, and just not have deception.)

I like the goggles, especially since I mostly play melee characters. What crafting level do I need to be to make those? My rogue would definitely use them after her TR.

The base effects are very low level: Seeker and Deadly are both crafting level 50, and the goggles are plenty good enough to use without the insightful effects. You can always add insightful later, which is what I did. You can see in the screenshot I did that, actually, since effects are added to the top of the list, meaning the last effect added is listed first. It was several weeks or even months between creating and using the base items (seeker of deadly) and when I added the insightful effects. This applies to the entire crafted gearset: I crafted all prefixes and suffixes (and added the augments) and considered them "good enough" until I got my crafting level high enough to add insightful effects later.

The biggest hurdle for a newer crafter will be the ML shards, which are ML*10 crafting level. Meaning the ML2 (level 20), ML7 (level 70) and ML13 (level 130) are easy to start with, but the ML21 (level 210) might be delayed a bit.

Inisghtful effects range from level 175 to 225, and static effects (eg: true seeing) are typically 250. So figure once you get to around crafting level 230 you should be able to craft all the effects you want, then around 320 to craft all the ML shards. (ML34 shards are level 340.)

Note that being in epics now, you are in the ideal situation to stockpile essences. Once you have a few tens of thousands of essences you should be able to level your crafting up to at least the high 200s if not low 300s.

EDIT: Looking more closely at the crafted melee gearset, non-assassin rogues could drop Ring 2 entirely and go with Ring of Lies / whatever to get your deception / improved deception without losing anything. See Finger items for a list of named rings you can search for Deception. There's several epic rings with improved deception.

[Dulcimerist]

If you can craft, I'd probably just use cannith crafted until cap. The biggest value with crafted armor is that it can be the same effects as you level, as opposed to named armors where it might change as you level making the rest of your gear need to switch around when your armor changes.

That was my strategy behind going from heroic black dragon armor to the epic version. Unfortunately, I began to think that my characters were going to end up wearing named armor, so I deconstructed all of my augment-slotted armor crafting blanks to clear an inventory clog.

Deception I've been wearing on the Backstabber's Gloves. I'm still using them at epic levels, since I don't have anything better. Assassin's Kiss gave me the Improved version. Golden Guile is available to me, but I've been wearing Jorgundal's Collar instead for the striding and alacrity. This has made me debate on farming up the Reaver's Fate raid for the Ring of Lies before I TR. I already have the Seal of the Stormreaver to go with it to give it Improved Deception. I've been using Ring of Shadows and Ring of the Buccaneer on my fingers.

Currently with crafting, I'll work on the level 1-13 stuff to help make the early levels of the TR more fun. With several alts, and always deconstructing instead of vendoring, I might be sitting on 50-100k essences. Perhaps I should wait for a crafting XP boost weekend, and go to town on grinding. Can you link me to a step-by-step crafting XP grinding guide for the most efficient way to go about it? I'll have crafting XP pots ticking. In the meantime, my level 30 rogue assassin will probably be doing an epic reincarnation while waiting for the flippin' quiver to drop, and do a second epic reincarnation before her heroic. That buys my crafter more time to level, and myself time to find the right blanks.

[EllisDee37]

Can you link me to a step-by-step crafting XP grinding guide for the most efficient way to go about it?

I linked the main crafting leveling plan guide in the External Links section at the bottom of my wiki dashboard. To sum up:

Preparation

• Buy a single +100% crafting xp elixir for 40 TP
• Buy a single pack (25-count) of +35% crafting success boosters for 150 TP
• Farm up 50+ 25% crafting success boosters by repeatedly running the crafting tutorial (Bladeforged work best for this since they start right next to a teleporter you can take to the House Kundarak crafting hall. Sadly, the House Cannith crafting hall doesn't have a tutorial dude I don't think.)
• Optionally buy 100 or so +10% crafting success boosters from the house cannith patron vendor (requires 50 house cannith favor)

Execution

• Try to only craft during crafting bonus weekends
• Only craft ML shards since they costs essences but not collectables
• Craft only the lowest % success ML shards you can; 3% success is ideal
• Use success boosters while leveling:
  • Use 35% boosters when your base chance is lower than 20%
  • Use 25% boosters when your base chance is 20% to 60%
  • Use 10% boosters (or no booster at all) when your base chance is over 60%
• After successfully crafting a shard, you may want to close and re-open the machine to refresh the %s (I forget if this is needed)

Each 3% chance shard (38% chance with booster) raises you many crafting levels for a single success. The lower the base % chance, the more xp you get, with 3% being the lowest % you're allowed to try. While you're leveling, you'll catch on pretty quick how it works. Essentially, you're aiming for levels that end in 1 in order to uncover the next 3% shard. So if you're at level 120, only craft enough to reach level 121, NOT 122 or higher. Overshooting a 3% shard is a major bummer.

Using the above technique, maybe 30,000 essences (and 190 TP) to reach the low 300s? I think? I forget, it's been a while.


The free alternative is to just farm up a bunch of free 25% boosters and a free +75% crafting xp elixir, all from the tutorial quest. I don't know the math on it, but hazarding a guess, figure 50,000 essences if doing it that way? (ie: Pay 190 TP to save 20,000 essences.)

I'm happy to elaborate on any of these points if needed.


EDIT: After sleeping on it, I've gone back and adjusted the booster thresholds downward. It's hard to remember for me because I leveled up my main account to the low/mid 300s over three different crafting bonus weekends, then after that was all set I leveled my dualbox account to the low/mid 300s over two different crafting weekends. And this all happened over a year ago so it's all kind of a blur.

I never had more than 20,000 essences on my person during any given crafting bonus weekend so I had to break the leveling into several sessions. It sounds like you'll have enough essences to reach 321 (giving 3% chance at ML34 shards) in one shot. Note: Once there, you may as well craft a few ML34 shards since you'll still be running the pot. Extra crafting xp never hurt anybody, and you'll probably actually use the ML34 shards eventually, right?