DDOCast 608 - Gearing Up pt 4

[pjstechie]

We talk about this week’s game news, including the 3 week rollback of Wayfinder, then Samius Gurobo is back for part 4 of our Gearing Up discussion!

Have thoughts on this show, ideas for round table topics, questions you’d like us to answer, or topics you’d like to see us debate? Leave us a comment, send us an email (ddocast@gmail.com) or give us a tweet (@ddocast)!

Check out www.ddocast.com for mp3 audio, our show calendar, archives, and more!

Want to support the show? You can feed the kobolds (give money) on our Patreon page! We use these gifts to support the show and give out prizes.

Game News - 1:49
Lightning Post - 14:57
Gearing Up pt 4 - 22:17

Watch shows live at twitch.tv/ddocast

Wayfinder Server Data Issue: August 6th 2020

[FuzzyDuck81]

One of the big things to have right from level 1 on a character that can make life easier are consumables, which I then make a point of actually remembering to use when required. While they're not all essential & often many can be ignored with certain builds, on TRing my characters I typically have 1 entire inventory page filled with most, if not all, of the following that can be used straight from level 1;
Curatives - lesser restoration, remove curse, remove blindness, remove disease, cure poison, cure serious wounds, panacea (woodblossom mead from collectable turn-in), lily extract (CL10 CMW from lily petal collectables, actually does more than the basic CSW pots), healing elixirs from daily dice & tasty ham (heal over time is useful before a fight), restoration (rare drop, sometimes daily dice, also from night revels) & the festivult cookies that have rejuvenation cocoon (more for use going through dangerous traps, that temp HP buffer helps a lot).
Boosts - haste (CL20 versions come from daily dice), greater heroism, blue & red fireshield potions, jump (+30 can be found in white plume mountain at the mud room), freedom of movement flask (remnant turn-in), death ward (night revels, fairly rare drop or daily dice, also available as a flask from remnants) & protection from evil.
Other: medium eberron dragonhsard turn-ins - shard trinket of summon monster (a bit indulgent but it's summon monster 7 at level 1!), shard trinket of greater restoration & shard trinket of memonic enhancement (major SP pot) - each have 20 charges of their power. Other items from festivult, eg. ottos sphere, firewall, call lightning storm & blade barrier can be fantastic at low levels.

Pro tip related to the above, if you want to play the benevolent santa giving gifts to all the new boys & girls starting in snowy side korthos, leave & return via the keep on the borderlands not the ship's mate, as that won't trigger the storyline skip to sunny korthos

For ML7, temple of elemental evil has some very solid weapons *if* you can find them or put the effort in to craft one of the melee weapons with the AoE proc. The club is fantastic with a scimitar's critical range, a 4d6 damage proc as well as old-style vampirism that procs on every hit & it's the 1d4 HP version... it's wooden & has low durability though so you'll need item defence to make sure it lasts more than a handful of fights.

Hat from slave lords, 100% agree it's worth having, I slot the hardened leather helm with a 100% fort augment & it'll often keep me going until level 20 on a lot of builds.

White plume mountain, don't overlook the crabshell buckler, it's one of those ones that makes you daze your enemies when you land a crit with your main weapon - great for a bear druid since it's non-metal & their strikethrough means regular attacks can crowd control multiple enemies with a little luck.

Level 13 most notable item for me is the pansophic circlet, one of the few items that can displace my hardened leather helm. While it's not the most powerful casting item, it's still pretty solid especially if you're using multiple elements or are on something where you need to gear both fighting & casting capabilities.

There are a few very solid older items that can be worth keeping an eye out for that still hold up really well against the new things for specific builds; ML2 tattered gloves from the captives in cerulean hills are great for fire spellcasters since the crit chance is higher than you can get from random loot until about level 10, tome of legend weapons from the orchard have some unique effects & damage profiles that can work very well for specific builds (shout out to Phosphor in particular, a heavy mace with a scimitar crit profile & is a very capable ooze beater too), plus shining devastation, an everbright adamantine greatclub that hits like a truck & axe of the unseen blow from litany of the dead, a nice handaxe with a x4 multiplier that in my swashbuckler barbarian's hands has a 16-20/x6 profile at level 14

Good call on the starter pack, phenomenal value especially if you can get it on offer, eg. black friday sales - I picked mine up a few years back for something like £1.70 or approx. $2.50.