The Wilderness Only No Favor Challenge

[Ebergar]

Hello there me forumites!

The time has come for my insane mind to do something, well, insane. I've forgotten how to do quests, what is a quest and where to find these.
As a result, I had to do ye olde 1-to-20 run but oooonly via Wildernesses, without gaining any favor whatsoever. This made this kind of grind tedious and time-consuming, but I've been stubborn and lasted it all.

What's on the table: THE RULZ

• Any and all xp that involves doing quests is off the limits, with one exception - Korthos starting area has to provide you with Grotto xp, even if you skip it. Boo. Teleporting outta beach is not possible.
• Otto's aren't allowed, obvious reasons.
• Exotic methods like buying daily dice rolls for xp is not allowed.
• Everything else is still a fair game - "legal" daily rolls, xp pots, slayer, rare, explorer, re-farming rare, etc.

The tools of the trade, I mean, grind premium itemz:

• Slayer pots. Literally boatload, most bought on promotions (hey Cordo, thanks for these!). Constant use, unless I've forgotten to drink. Not super exactly sure how many I've to drank, but after all said and done at least 30 has been drank, with 11 leftover. These were THE MVP's of keeping my sanity at relatively lower levels.
• Exp pots. Not THAT many as you'd expect. During first part (let's say it was <10 levels) I've tried bigger ones stored here and there. Later on I've moved onto 10% ones tops. Reasons below. No clue about the amount, bought package of 10%'s for the grind, and drank whatever was found on the alts mostly

THE GRIND

Rough pre-start:
First thing I've done before starting was to count XP's on ddowiki tables whether this is actually a feasible thing to do. I really wanted to avoid farming for rares (second kill is 33% XP only), so I had to acquire enough XP from Slayer/Explorer/First time rares to get me to next level before I could enter next Wilderness. These are level-gated obviously, with minimum level being the target of my maths.
The maths went not as good as I wanted them to be, so help had to be had. Xp Pots, big ones drank for the last slayer xp spikes.
What is more, I've also dreaded the endgame of this challenge - there were big holes between epic and heroic Wildernesses (last Wildernesses were able to be entered on 16th level or so, that leaves 4 levels to get on last 2 Wildernesses, or so I thought). This was proven to be false and endgame wasn't that strict on the XP.
Also, a formerly-primary goal has been formed - to do all the Wildernesses 100% S/R/E. This turned out to be an unecessary pain in the butt, but will help me later when I decide to finish 100%-ing.

The build, and it's weirdness:
My goal was simple, this journey wasn't about DPS. It was about travel time. You need to run to far away groups of mobs, and grind rares if need be. Said mobs should be a piece of cake to beat anyways. What has the fastest travel time? An arrow. Who is the fastest? Let's do a monk-rogue splash as a very fast build. Why rog, you ask? Well, at least some Wildernesses need doors to open and traps to disarm, so here we go. Very fast q-staff 15/5 monk/rog elf.
Wait a minute... Did I just say an arrow? Well, yes, but the speed of shooting said arrow was like extremely slow. So on second or third level I decided to re-feat and do a q-staff with that sweet sweet 15% swing speed buff. Not to mention 5% movement speed from 5 levels of rog via enh.
Hmm, the elf thingy. Yep, a freebie elf for such an endeavor. Why, you ask? Well. Elf is the one and only race that has the access to Arcane Archer (my go-to ranged combat tree for this) and very importantly, the Shadow Walk from Dragonmark. This way I get very nice speed boost to get to the farm spot, and to defeat things from range quickly. As you might imagine, the Arcane Archer never came to be.

The rough actual start:
Beach. Trying to tele-out by various means. Nada. First quest XP gotten from Grotto, but no favor. RUN FAILED, LADS N' LASSES, POST ENDS HERE.
But wait. No favor, lets-a-go!

Korthos. Sunny side. Stubborn guard considers me an untrustworthy to enter Korthos area and apparently still thinks, that dragon is around and snows... After a crying in the corner one or two times I proceeded to next one on the list. (bytheway Lynnabel, this shouldabe be on your trash-can-priority list of bugs, consider putting it there!)

The Cerulean Hills. First doubts about the run started here, everything felt so slow and tedious... but I managed to get 100% of this area.

Waterworks, Tangleroot. As my XP points were boosted by xp pots (small 20-10% was running 100% time, while bigger was on huge XP spikes) these weren't that bad of places to farm XP. Except Tangleroot was grindy to get max mobs. Curse the one who put 1,5k mobs requirement here. It was not THAT boring of an area considering some others, but run has just started so I had no context at that time to compare. So far the XP proves to be greater than expected (mostly due to pots and daily dice rolls).

Three-Barrel Cove, Searing Heights. TBC - One of my favourites. Very beautiful place, with plenty of mobs to farm. This needs bigger tier of slayer IMHO. The current max one of 1,5k has been reached way too soon (comparing to Tangleroot at least). While Searing Heights... boy, this place is gorgeous! Favorite Wilderness of the run. Shame it is visited so rarely, and these visits avoid the fun parts (volcano and the drow). It was a pleasure to max out slayer there. Who on his/her right mind put only 750 mobs there...

The Red Fens. One of THE worst grinds out there. Many pots drank, not so many mobs killed per run. This one was a real roughie to max out. So far, the XP is on my side, while being bigger than expected.

Ataraxia. Whatever. Just an area to max out.

The Restless Isles. First problem with maxing out - you need a quest to enter area with a rare and an exploration point. Besides that, an interesting and relatively short area to do s/r/e stuffs. This means that the place isn't 100%-ed but I firstly decided to come back on 20 and do quest and do that part, but gave up eventually on this.

Barovia. This place... is THE WORST, BY FAR, ON THIS LIST. VERY vague information on the internets about rare spawns, and I have finished my 7.5k mobs way before getting all the rares. All, besides the one and only... Illithid you teleport to via mysterious mist. I've tried at least a couple hundred mists (300? 350?) before finally moving on to other Wildernesses. This is first non-100%'ed area (technically the second). Still pains to think about that place. Besides the super ultra tedious farm the place was decent to run through. BTW. To enter this you have to do a quest, or get help and get teleported to the area (even super quality uber expansion pack does send you before the actual quest enterance). Guildie teleported me there via bracelet of friends. Later on I tele'd via dying and spirit binding there.

Sands of Menechtaurn, Ruins of Gianthold. Good areas, multiple slayers are THE thing. Relaxing experience after that place we don't talk about here.

Orchard of the Macabre. Avoided grinding the corpse train by doing the area with some random people. By the way, I've gotten quite a big deal of help from various people up to this point. Didn't expect that!

The Cogs. Very interesting place, close to the top on the list. Grind wasn't that tedious due to aesthetics. And the most surprising thing is that I disliked the place initially when entering on previous life, but I've grown to like it. Also, this is notable to hold the first hard mob area - that melted/destroyed foundry with forgewraiths was a challenge comparing to all the other Wilderneses. Due to one rare spawning there, and NOT spawning for me for several runs, and already broken my 100% streak, I've decided to move on.

Wheloon Prison. This had me doing the longest hiatus from the game (several weeks), so it took longer to do. I haven't even tried to 100% the place - I simply visited all spawn spots as I farmed. This place puts the rare in rare mobs - If I am not mistaken, about half rares were done while attaining 7.5k kills. Quite bad area to run through, not much interesting stuff there, at least not for my liking. The challenge itself is at an end now, not exactly sure but I was way above the XP requirements for most other wildernesses when leaving this.

Keep on the Borderlands. Wait. What's this doing here? Well, its time to do the newly added mount grind.

Storm Horns, High Road, and others Now I simply started entering the Wildernesses just to max out the easy stuff (explorers, some rares) and finish up the challenge. One of the highlights was the fact, that High Road allows for full xp on rares all the time.

The finish line:
This has been crossed on Shavarath, nearby enterance to the raid staging area. Plenthora of available Wildernesses like Soami Gardens/Reysalon/Eerie/etc. allowed for quick farming of XP from rares and expolrer/diary objectives, so the finish line has been relatively easy to achieve with just 10% XP pots. Also, this endeavour was unique due to constant re-gearing. You spend a lot of time on each level, got time to think what is best on each and (mostly) every level.
Speaking about the time, I managed to do this from September to January. This sounds bad, but I had a lot of breaks and not so much in way of constant daily gameplay.
BTW. The character was about as fast as an 180% mount at the endgame. And yes, mounts. You can't imagine my reaction when mounts were introduced then I was at the Wheloon grind... Yesh, perfect time, the challenge is almost complete, character is almost as fast as a mount, and NOW you introduce these. PERFECT TIMING SSG :P



Epilogue Thanks Dala for encouraging me to do this, and thanks the DDOpl guild for support. At the end these mad lads have dubbed me The First Nomad of DDOpl Guild. Wohoo!







I will be back here in these forums, got things to accomplish, ye will all see.

[Barali]

Congrats on this tedious challange!
Back then, I think it was end of August, when I've spoke about it on guild/party chat... never thought you would start it, but as we see, I've understimated you and made it to the end - sorry for this idea, maybe I'll think of something more fun in the future

[Seljuck]

If only guild rank system was working correctly, you would be nomad forever.
And don't think of forever, like it's a bad thing. ~ Some dead dragon said... :P

[psykopeta]

just saying, there's 1 guy here who hit lvl 20 with only korthos and daily rolls, sadly i forgot the thread name or even category

it took... 2 years? lol

[Cordovan]

Good luck!

[droid327]

This seems like a good place to mention this again...

I wish that WZs werent such an afterthought compared to Quests. There's no reason both playstyles couldn't be equally valid for your leveling process - equal XP/min efficiency as Normal quests, at any rate, since they're Normal in difficulty

I'd love to see a "daily slayer" system added where you got a chunk of XP for killing the first 25/50/100 mobs in each WZ, each day. Maybe less for zones with no easily farmable spawns (10/25/50?) and more for zones that are highly mob-dense like Epic Orchard (50/100/200).

It'd be a nice way to compensate for the time going out to quests that require a lot of running around WZs (e.g. Stormhorns or Wheloon). Or if you dont feel like doing an actual quest and just want the catharsis of mowing some mobs down for a few mins Killing ~100 mobs in most WZs probably takes as long as a short quest (~5-10 mins) so you should get about as much as you get for a short Normal quest at a similar level....like ~20k in Epic, ~2-12k in Heroic, divvied up proportionally at each tier.

Good luck!

He...he already did it, Cordo

[cdbd3rd]

Regarding Restless rare & explorer, you only need to enter a quest, not complete.

[Memory failing me on the exact steps, but basically running thru to the pit, falling to the correct tunnel, then acquiring the statuette thingy. Recall/Reset/Repeat a few times then go try the hallway.]

Can gather several statues then keep trying the secret hallway til you get that one to pop.

----

Agreed on the Red Fens slog to Slayer max. Been there, done that.

[Amundir]

I saw mention of no ottos, but I also saw mention of using pots. Did you buy pots from the store, or use those able to be bought from challenges or from daily dice rewards?

EDIT:

Also, while I agree that Red Fens sucks for slayers, I think I actually ended up hating Sands more. There are so few drow.

[Ebergar]

I saw mention of no ottos, but I also saw mention of using pots. Did you buy pots from the store, or use those able to be bought from challenges or from daily dice rewards?

EDIT:

Also, while I agree that Red Fens sucks for slayers, I think I actually ended up hating Sands more. There are so few drow.

I did buy pots from the store. It takes 2 Otto's to finish the grind youknow

[SirValentine]

• Any and all xp that involves doing quests is off the limits, with one exception - Korthos starting area has to provide you with Grotto xp, even if you skip it. Boo. Teleporting outta beach is not possible.

...
Korthos. Sunny side. Stubborn guard considers me an untrustworthy to enter Korthos area

...
Barovia.
...To enter this you have to do a quest, or get help and get teleported to the area (even super quality uber expansion pack does send you before the actual quest enterance). Guildie teleported me there via bracelet of friends.

See, if I were to do something similar, I would specifically authorize myself just those quests that are pre-requisites to get into slayer areas.

The Red Fens. One of THE worst grinds out there. Many pots drank, not so many mobs killed per run. This one was a real roughie to max out. So far, the XP is on my side, while being bigger than expected.

Many years ago, before Slayer pots existed, I tried to max all wilderness areas. I did max Red Fens then, but it burned me out and I stopped. If you have +200% pots, it's three times faster than back then!

The Restless Isles. First problem with maxing out - you need a quest to enter area with a rare and an exploration point.

OK, I actually have some help for you here! You don't need to do any quest to that Restless Isles rare & explorer. You do have to step into a quest, and pick up an item in that quest, but you don't have to do anything close to completing it. You can step in, pretty much run straight to the item location, and recall, skipping 80+% of the quest and certainly not completing or getting any favor. (Picking up the object does give a tiny bit of Optional XP, though.)

Barovia. This place... is THE WORST, BY FAR, ON THIS LIST. VERY vague information on the internets about rare spawns, and I have finished my 7.5k mobs way before getting all the rares. All, besides the one and only... Illithid you teleport to via mysterious mist. I've tried at least a couple hundred mists (300? 350?) before finally moving on to other Wildernesses.

That annoying mist-to-Illithid spawn rate sucks. I've had similar experiences; I think he's been the last one by far I found every time I found them all.

Wheloon Prison.
...
This place puts the rare in rare mobs

Yes, to me Wheloon is way worse than most of Barovia, due to the horrible spawn rates.

[Saekee]

just saying, there's 1 guy here who hit lvl 20 with only korthos and daily rolls, sadly i forgot the thread name or even category

it took... 2 years? lol

Hint: he posteD later in the thread, begins with C

Good luck!

Too bad you did not read the OP!


Can we all /sign to offer the title of The Nomad to his forum name?

FAQ forumite attained a goal of maxing all slayers and rares, and achieved it. It was nuts.

I did a heroic nude run so I like challenges but won’t do that one again

[Lord-Vega]

I do very similar to this, not because I don't like the quests, but because I like the WZ's, and due to time, work, etc, I'm often solo. I take it all the way to 30 and do both TR's. I've lost track of the number of life's I've done, got the trip Barb, fighter feat, and trip primal and Martial ED. Now working on the racial PL feats.

I do the Korthos quests, and enough Coin and K to get a full backpack and bank, and the mists quest for Barovia.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Congratulations for your stubbornness !

Since we're already talking about wilderness areas :

Personally, i found the Wheelon (wheel-on ?) idea of adding mini-quests into that area refreshing, but I could never finish them so far, mainly because i was clueless on how to solve them.

I'd like the idea of having a vast free public wilderness area in which quest givers are´as well.
Maybe someone living in a wooden house. "A kobold stole my axe ! can you retrieve it for me ?" Okay, that would be too much of an fed-ex quest, but anyway it should be a quest solveable in the wilderness area. Maybe a quest to escord another NPC to somewhere else ? It shouldn't be too difficult for even level 5 characters.

Or buying coal lumps from one NPC so that another could warm his house with that. The NPC wanting the coal could give me money or items for trade for this quest. I could even imagine that a collector of wood sells something looking like the Festivult Jester's "Festival twigs" for the NPC who wants a warm house, too.
That would be a perfect low-level quest. If I manage to mke profits out of that (haggle !), I could keep the profits.
A far more grim version of that would be slaying those "twig blight" or "vine blight" creatures, collecting their wood, and give them to that NPC who wants a warm house.

The Keep wilderness gave me a few ideas. I think it would be nice to have a wilderness consist of a bit more than "slay this" kind of gameplay. The discoveries are something - I'm an "explorer" kind of player type - really relishes. But, there could be a bit more. I really loved that riddle with the seals in the Keep's wilderness. I want more (but not too difficult) of that type !

[Ebergar]

Thanks all!

Good luck!

Thanks, but I've already done it

[ahpook]

...
I'd like the idea of having a vast free public wilderness area in which quest givers are´as well.
Maybe someone living in a wooden house. "A kobold stole my axe ! can you retrieve it for me ?" Okay, that would be too much of an fed-ex quest, but anyway it should be a quest solveable in the wilderness area. Maybe a quest to escord another NPC to somewhere else ? It shouldn't be too difficult for even level 5 characters.

Or buying coal lumps from one NPC so that another could warm his house with that. The NPC wanting the coal could give me money or items for trade for this quest. I could even imagine that a collector of wood sells something looking like the Festivult Jester's "Festival twigs" for the NPC who wants a warm house, too.

Kings Forest did this (though neither free or heroic) and I wished they had kept putting them into explorers. They may have decided they weren't appreciated by the players. In my opinion that was more due to the low number of mobs in the forest and the low spawn rate of these "quest" rares. That made them not worth pursuing more so than the idea itself.

[ChicagoChris]

Wheloon Prison. This place puts the rare in rare mobs

I *hate* the rare spawn rate on this area. I've run it through, oh, 60-70 lives and I would say I've seen a max of 1/3 of the rares any given life.

And the key. That blasted key for Oraphaun's Missive #8. @Lynnabel - This key needs sparkles, fireworks and a search-light beacon... ANYTHING to make it easier to find. Or ****, allow the door to be picked/knocked/broken. At this point in my leveling I can kill dragons, demons and devils but a simple door is a block...