Fortification bypass

[0ldschool]

Agreed.


It's a dilemma. Traditionally, leveling "off destinies" is a painful slog; a chore you have to just grit your teeth and get through so you can get back to having fun. The fact that it's a "millions and millions of epic xp" chore is a bummer.

Bozone's post right above this describes the situation pretty well.

Your main issue is that your next life will be different, so spending a ton of effort setting up the perfect twists for this life won't serve any meaningful purpose. As soon as you finish setting up your twists and finally switch back to Shadowdancer, you'll be at cap and ETR / TRing back to 1 anyway so you won't get to play with the good twists.

Once Shadowdancer is capped in another 1.5m xp, do an experiment: Start leveling Legendary Dreadnought. If you really hate it and it's totally not fun, bail on "off destinies" and either stay in Shadowdancer to 30 or TR back to 1. However, if you can stomach taking Legendary Dreadnought to 4, you can then switch to Shiradi Champion which is actually pretty solid for your ranged build. Level for 2 million xp to max Shiradi Champion; it has fun toys for ranged builds. Once shiradi is capped, very quickly take Primal Avatar to Tier 1, maxing out the Tier 1 ability Rejuvenation Cocoon. Now immediately switch back to Shadowdancer and level the rest of the way to 30 (another 3 million xp) in that, with the following twist setup:

Twist 1: Pin (Tier 2 Shiradi)
Twist 2: Rejuvenation Cocoon (Tier 1 Primal Avatar)

That costs 5 fate points, meaning it requires 15 destiny levels. That happens to be exactly what you'll have when you switch back to Shadowdancer:

5 Shadowdancer
5 Shiradi
4 Legendary Dreadnought
1 Primal Avatar

This also leaves you more options next life since 3 more destinies will already be unlocked compared to staying in Shadowdancer the whole time.


EDIT: If you're running Epic Hard for bravery, when you switch to Dreadnought you can grind out the million xp for Tier 4 by rerunning stuff you've already run on Epic Normal, or explore wilderness areas for xp, or join an "Epic Dailies" LFM to blast through it super quick. If you can just manage to slog through a million, leveling Shiradi will be fun again. (Not as good as Shadowdancer, but not nearly as bad as Dreadnought.)

EDIT 2: Summary of the off destiny plan outlined above for quick reference if you decide to do it that way:

1: Shadowdancer Maxed (2 million xp, 2 million martial karma)
2: Legendary Dreadnought Tier 4 (1 million xp, 3 million martial karma)
3: Shiradi Champion Maxed (2m xp, 3m martial karma, 2m primal karma)
4: Primal Avatar Tier 1 (180k xp)
5: Back to Shadowdancer for final 3 million xp (Ends with 8m xp, 6m martial karma, 2m primal karma)

Update from OP, and sorry if the thread has now drifted way off topic but EllisDee's epics advice has been invaluable to me.

I am now 1.8M xp into Shadowdancer, soon to cap it. Epics is fun! I like not being restricted on difficulty levels first time in (I'm non-VIP), and I like that there is more freedom in grouping among the levels. Shadowdancer is very cool, it hits on a lot of things I care about for my rogue. I am 1 AP away from 24 and then I'll take Sealed Soul and finish off the tree. And then I suppose that I'll dump it all for Dreadnaught which has little roguish stuff and little for ranged toons This does kinda suck.

New question: I just bought a ton of new content (15 adventure packs) over the holidays, & I'm really enjoying playing in epics. Just made my first TF GxB last night. I will probably play to L30, and ER back to 20. I may do this multiple times. TR'ing back to 1 holds no interest to me at the moment. Based on this, would you still recommend that same path that was laid out here? While I'm not looking forward to LD, Shiradi is quite intriguing with some out-of-the-box ranged enhancements that would be fun, so I like the idea of getting there. And that enables the Cocoon thing that everyone seems to love. So maybe this is still the right path for me?

My other question is if it's possible to twist in something from Shadowdancer while I'm running LD. I'd love to keep Lithe or Meld if I could. If I did this, would I be 'wasting' the Fate points if my plan is to eventually go back to ShadowDancer full time? Can I re-allocate twists whenever I want to, or is that a one-time decision?

Thanks again

[EllisDee37]

New question: I just bought a ton of new content (15 adventure packs) over the holidays, & I'm really enjoying playing in epics. Just made my first TF GxB last night. I will probably play to L30, and ER back to 20. I may do this multiple times. TR'ing back to 1 holds no interest to me at the moment. Based on this, would you still recommend that same path that was laid out here?

Yes. Racing to Cocoon is never a bad idea, so I'd definitely try to get through LD4 so you can have fun in Shiradi while unlocking cocoon.

On that note, once Shiradi is to 3, immediately jump over to Primal and get it to 1 for cocoon, then jump back to Shiradi to finish it off.

My other question is if it's possible to twist in something from Shadowdancer while I'm running LD. I'd love to keep Lithe or Meld if I could. If I did this, would I be 'wasting' the Fate points if my plan is to eventually go back to ShadowDancer full time? Can I re-allocate twists whenever I want to, or is that a one-time decision?

Fate points are freely re-distributable as often as you like, no penalty or even any charge whatsoever. Not even plat; it's free!

With only shadowdancer capped, you'll have 5 tiers which means only 1 fate point.
Lithe is a tier 2, which means that alone would cost 3 fate points.
Meld is a tier 3, which means that alone would cost 6 fate points.

You could, however, twist in a tier 1 until you get LD to 4. Technician looks promising for that. Once LD is to 4 (and you jump to Shiradi) you will have 9 tiers total, so then you can twist in Lithe. I agree that Lithe is a solid choice.

EDIT: Congrats on all the new packs! You'll have loads of fun. While you're in epics, try to farm up and upgrade a Pale Lavender Ioun Stone before you TR back to 1. Even if you plan to stay in epics for a while, it's a great item for trivializing beholders.

EDIT 2: On a second life you can unlock Hard for your first runs in heroics, so it won't be quite as bad as the first life starting with Normals. (3rd life and beyond can unlock Elite/Reaper.)

[0ldschool]

Yes. Racing to Cocoon is never a bad idea, so I'd definitely try to get through LD4 so you can have fun in Shiradi while unlocking cocoon.

On that note, once Shiradi is to 3, immediately jump over to Primal and get it to 1 for cocoon, then jump back to Shiradi to finish it off.

Fate points are freely re-distributable as often as you like, no penalty or even any charge whatsoever. Not even plat; it's free!

With only shadowdancer capped, you'll have 5 tiers which means only 1 fate point.
Lithe is a tier 2, which means that alone would cost 3 fate points.
Meld is a tier 3, which means that alone would cost 6 fate points.

You could, however, twist in a tier 1 until you get LD to 4. Technician looks promising for that. Once LD is to 4 (and you jump to Shiradi) you will have 9 tiers total, so then you can twist in Lithe. I agree that Lithe is a solid choice.

Thank you again. Ugh, I wish I could keep Lithe at LD 1, it was a game changer for me. You are correct about Technician, that's the only decent choice with 1 fate point. Good to know that I can re-spec for free.

EDIT: Congrats on all the new packs! You'll have loads of fun. While you're in epics, try to farm up and upgrade a Pale Lavender Ioun Stone before you TR back to 1. Even if you plan to stay in epics for a while, it's a great item for trivializing beholders.

EDIT 2: On a second life you can unlock Hard for your first runs in heroics, so it won't be quite as bad as the first life starting with Normals. (3rd life and beyond can unlock Elite/Reaper.)

Hmmmm.... I already ran a large number of heroic quests on Elite for both favor and item farming. Are you saying that if I TR, that will be reset and that I will no longer be able to enter them on Elite, or are you saying that for quests I have not yet run I will be able to open on Hard? Very much hoping the latter!

[EllisDee37]

Hmmmm.... I already ran a large number of heroic quests on Elite for both favor and item farming. Are you saying that if I TR, that will be reset and that I will no longer be able to enter them on Elite, or are you saying that for quests I have not yet run I will be able to open on Hard? Very much hoping the latter!

Both, actually.

Heroic Reincarnation, where you start back at level 1, erases all your favor so you won't be able to enter them on elite, but since you'll be on a second life you can start them on hard instead of normal. On the plus side, you get all the bonus points for each 100 favor again.

Epic Reincarnation doesn't reset favor, so you're free to do that as many times as you like without worry.

Running a "once and done" Hard bravery streak for all quests (that you own) on a second life is tuned pretty well. If you own a large amount of content, which it sounds like you now do, it should take you all the way back to epics without too many (or even any) repeats. No need to run elite; blasting through a second life just on hard works great. I've done it a few different times and found it to be pretty relaxing.

[0ldschool]

Both, actually.

Heroic Reincarnation, where you start back at level 1, erases all your favor so you won't be able to enter them on elite, but since you'll be on a second life you can start them on hard instead of normal. On the plus side, you get all the bonus points for each 100 favor again.

Epic Reincarnation doesn't reset favor, so you're free to do that as many times as you like without worry.

Running a "once and done" Hard bravery streak for all quests (that you own) on a second life is tuned pretty well. If you own a large amount of content, which it sounds like you now do, it should take you all the way back to epics without too many (or even any) repeats. No need to run elite; blasting through a second life just on hard works great. I've done it a few different times and found it to be pretty relaxing.

Thanks, I was unaware of this. It also reminds me that if I want to farm any items on Elite from heroic quests for my next life, doing it now while I'm in Epics is the time!

[0ldschool]

Yes. Racing to Cocoon is never a bad idea, so I'd definitely try to get through LD4 so you can have fun in Shiradi while unlocking cocoon.

On that note, once Shiradi is to 3, immediately jump over to Primal and get it to 1 for cocoon, then jump back to Shiradi to finish it off.

Fate points are freely re-distributable as often as you like, no penalty or even any charge whatsoever. Not even plat; it's free!

With only shadowdancer capped, you'll have 5 tiers which means only 1 fate point.
Lithe is a tier 2, which means that alone would cost 3 fate points.
Meld is a tier 3, which means that alone would cost 6 fate points.

You could, however, twist in a tier 1 until you get LD to 4. Technician looks promising for that. Once LD is to 4 (and you jump to Shiradi) you will have 9 tiers total, so then you can twist in Lithe. I agree that Lithe is a solid choice.

EDIT: Congrats on all the new packs! You'll have loads of fun. While you're in epics, try to farm up and upgrade a Pale Lavender Ioun Stone before you TR back to 1. Even if you plan to stay in epics for a while, it's a great item for trivializing beholders.

EDIT 2: On a second life you can unlock Hard for your first runs in heroics, so it won't be quite as bad as the first life starting with Normals. (3rd life and beyond can unlock Elite/Reaper.)

Update on my first Epics journey. EllisDee, I am on plan! I decided to try out the Wilderness route for advancing in Dreadnaught with slayer potions that were conveniently on sale.

After taking LD, I hit Kings Forest and racked up 100k or so XP there (~500 slayer), not as time effective as I hoped because it just wasn't very dense with mobs. I then decided to try epic 3BC, since I enjoyed it in heroics and had the memory of lots of mobs in the wilderness. This was OK but the airships slowed any good slayer progress, and it just wasn't as full of mobs as it was in heroics. I ended up recalling and resetting when airships appeared, to speed up slayer count. After 100k there, I took the advice that I found on this forum and looked for a LFM for Grim Disturbance. Joined in and at least I knew not to kill the red name from the posts here (thank you!). What followed was a blur of slayer, quickly from 500 to 750, then 1500, then to 3000. This was all on the remaining 35 minutes or so of slayer pot I drank in 3BC and under 1 hour remaining of my last Sovereign XP pot. In that 40 minutes or so, I racked up 330k XP. For someone who took 5 months to move from Level 1 to 20, this was a breathtaking pace. My eyes were certainly opened to power leveling.

I got to Level 4 LD last night. 800k of 1.08M XP were achieved in Wilderness areas, mostly slayer but some from rare encounters too. Oh, I left Thunderholme queued up 9 kills short of 1500 to jump start Shiradi, and thanks to that I'm 100k into Shiradi without doing much of anything yet. And I got to twist in Lithe when I hit LD4, so I'm excited about that.

Side note: Dreadnaught was really not that bad. Increasing my HP by 20% alone was a pretty great benefit. I love increasing my crits and happily took the +6 to crit damage. A major find for me was that DDOwiki is out of date, and that Tier 2 'Action Boost Damage' is now 'Action Boost: Power', and that it provides a +30 boost to Ranged Power, 7 times per rest. The effect was dramatically noticeable, a great big fight clickie. This made me miss Archer's Focus, which was great but had to go when I picked up IPS. In the 7-8 quests I did run while in LD, I found the destiny to be workable, if not as interesting as SD. I actually plan to go back to LD after Shiradi and at least get to Advancing Blows and Devastating Critical, and perhaps all the way to Blitz. Why not put more XP into LD while filling up the Martial sphere, right?

Huge thanks again to EllisDee for mapping out this path for me, it's been really fun!

[EllisDee37]

Nice!

And yeah, once you get blitz, LD is actually pretty great for ranged.

[0ldschool]

Nice!

And yeah, once you get blitz, LD is actually pretty great for ranged.

Well, I will probably then max out LD after Shiradi, no reason to leave it unfinished. And thanks again for taking the time and effort to help a newb understand ED and map out a path forward, it is very much appreciated.

EDIT: Am I crazy to think that a dip in Fatesinger would be worthwhile for my Mechanic? I look at Siren's Song w/ Chord and Reign and I start to imagine interesting things happening, esp for Reign with my GxB that vorpals on 19-20. Tailwind is oddly specific to bows. Not to mention the fact that Turn the Tide looks 100x better than the crappy Shadwodancer Epic moment. It is calling me

[EllisDee37]

EDIT: Am I crazy to think that a dip in Fatesinger would be worthwhile for my Mechanic? I look at Siren's Song w/ Chord and Reign and I start to imagine interesting things happening, esp for Reign with my GxB that vorpals on 19-20. Tailwind is oddly specific to bows. Not to mention the fact that Turn the Tide looks 100x better than the crappy Shadwodancer Epic moment. It is calling me

There are only a couple epic moments worth having. Blitz in Dreadnought and Unbridled Fury in Fury of the Wild are both great, though the latter is really only great for a bow build using manyshot. (And ideally slayer arrows.) Other than those, meh. Fatesinger's is better than garbage but far from great.

The more off-destiny xp you can handle farming now the better, though be sure not to burn out on it. You can always do it next life when it might not even be an "off" destiny, so instead of a slog it becomes actually fun. That's ideal.

As for this life, the problem with fatesinger is that it doesn't contribute to your martial karma. I would wait until you do a bard life and level it then. Unless you're doing a wizard or sorcerer before bard, in which case you'll have to level fatesinger to 3 just to get to magister and draconic.

[0ldschool]

There are only a couple epic moments worth having. Blitz in Dreadnought and Unbridled Fury in Fury of the Wild are both great, though the latter is really only great for a bow build using manyshot. (And ideally slayer arrows.) Other than those, meh. Fatesinger's is better than garbage but far from great.

The more off-destiny xp you can handle farming now the better, though be sure not to burn out on it. You can always do it next life when it might not even be an "off" destiny, so instead of a slog it becomes actually fun. That's ideal.

As for this life, the problem with fatesinger is that it doesn't contribute to your martial karma. I would wait until you do a bard life and level it then. Unless you're doing a wizard or sorcerer before bard, in which case you'll have to level fatesinger to 3 just to get to magister and draconic.

Thanks. I just knocked out the 108k on Primal for Cocoon last night. High Road slayer for the bulk. I am going in order of level on epic quests, and just finished Sands (well, 3 quests) and am now 720k XP into Shiradi. More MOTU and Druids Deep is next, with Epic Gianthold calling if those aren't much fun. I struggled a lot on the long Sands quests on Epic Hard. I am on an Epic Hard streak of 13 now, but thinking after my Sands experience that I should give up on it. The lower level epic stuff on Hard was manageable, and more fun to me on Hard, but I burned through Raise Dead and Heal scrolls like never before in WizKing and Chain of Flame. I was getting hit hard by trash mobs. King Raiyum was a beast and wiped my hireling party in seconds. The quests took so long (1:45+ each) to figure out (and heal up) that it just wasn't fun by the end. This is a me problem, part of my "don't have enough time to play" issue.

Not only should I probably dial back to Normal now, but I think that I have an emerging gear problem. I've been using a core of Crystal Cove gear pretty much since I started here last summer. On the 2nd Cove appearance, I spent a lot of time over-level to get the gems needed to buy up to Level 20 gear. I was level 13 or so at the time. Well, now at L25 and banking, the L20 CC gear is starting to look dated. Beginning at Level 26, there is some amazing gear out there (according to DDOwiki), blowing everything I have out of the water. But reading DDOwiki, I don't think I'm nearly strong enough to hang in the quests/raids that give that gear. Defiler of the Just has three ML26 items that I would covet, any of which would be by far my best item. I really feel the urge to go in there. But I would probably be insta-killed just stepping in place, which I don't mind on my own but hate the thought of doing when in a group.

I guess my questions is this: should I be trying to get the best ML gear for my level, or are the raids set up so that you get this gear when you're closer to cap, and the intent of the lower ML on it is that the gear will be used not for this life but on a next life? My plan for now is to go back to Epic Normal and just play the quests and enjoy them, and perhaps skip the 'Very Long' quests when time does not permit 2 hours to complete. When my gear gives out, I'll worry about it then.

Thanks for any advice!

EDIT: Re-reading the plan, I realize now that you recommended taking Primal to 180k, not 108k, and that this was to get to Tier 1 so that it would count towards fate points. So I have 70k XP more to do in Primal