Swyftfeets guide to DDO ( a brain dump ) for new players

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Who this guide is aimed at: This is an overall guide for someone who has heard about the game, wants to start, or only a few weeks/months in who are overwhelmed by the enormity of DDO and the lack of any explicit directions on how to DDO.

This aimed at people who are willing to spend some money on a VIP sub and pony up for at least the Menace of the Underdark and Shadowfell Conspiracy so you get access to Epic Destinies. Its also got some info on what and what not to buy in the store. Theres a pack for $59 in the store that gives you these expansions with Raveloft which you can decide if you want to go that route around level 10 through 12.

It’s a mishmash brain-dump of general knowledge I wish I knew when I started the game a couple years ago. There’s a non-zero chance that some of the information is wrong through ignorance. I don’t know everything about the game, some of the content is subjective, some objective.

What this guide is not:
It’s not a step-by-step guide with build, quest, and level progression.

Is the game dying/dead?
No, not if your reading this.

Is the game laggy and buggy?
Sometimes, but even with the downsides its fun as all get out. No other MMO has the character building aspect that matches this game. You can also accomplish something even if you only have 15 minutes to play.

Is it expensive?
First, I should preface everything is possible by earning points by playing. It might take more time than you have left on earth if you play occasionally, or you're a lot more patient than I am if you can accomplish this.

But, if you're like me the answer is somewhat resounding yes, I would not recommend it to someone who has problems paying their normal bills. Entertainment per hour wise, If you can trade 1 night at the movies a month or one dinner out, its worth it. Its $15 for a sub per month. Less if you buy in qty. You're looking at an addition 150sh dollars to get all the expansions and significantly more to unlock all the classes. thats cash out of pocket, almost all of it can be bought in game using DDO points.

You don’t have to do it all at once. And you most definitely shouldn't. Again you *can* do it by earning points from questing, but it would take too long for me.

With a subscription netting 500 per month and favor farming you get enough points organically to afford things you will want/need.

Equipment wise:
This can run on an atari 2600. Seriously tho its not that gear dependant. I personally wouldn’t play without 2 monitors. One for main screen set for full screen windowed mode and the other for the DDO wiki/compedium. There's maps and hints and all kinds of info that’s useful that would be too crazy to be alt tabbing about. Can you do it yes. Not my cup of tea.


Are there active players at my level?

Yes, given how DDO is playedvs other MMOs, there are experienced players at almost every level all the time. its not a wasteland to cap. After you do the opening quest hit the O button and join a group or start your own LFG by typing something like “noob needs a tutorial someone anyone help me please” in the comment line, I'm willing to bet it would get a bite in no time at all. 90% of the player base I’ve run into is very friendly and most will help a new person. We want more subscribers, it keeps the servers alive for a game we love. if a group is running reapers or r1 in the comment, send the group leader a tell and ask if they mind dragging a noob about, most likely it will be fine.


Should you get a VIP subscription?
I would say until you get out of the harbor its not really required. Test the water, see if you like the game. Korthos (the starting Zone) and the next zone from there The Harbor are all free to play quests. You can even google “DDO F2P quests by level.” There’s a lot of content for FTP but you will run into things where you’re gated. Like achieving enough favor for more bank space or getting favor enough for more bag space, some other unlocks I will mention below.

Now why would you want to?
1) It gives you all the quest packs, but not expansions, its a ton of available content from packs alone.
2) It gives access to all the races while your sub is active. (pick F2P race in case you let sub expire)
3) It gives you some shared bank space
4) It gives you a 10% bonus to xp
5) It allows you to open the quests on whatever difficulty you want to play at. If you aren’t VIP and are a 1st life character in order to get max favor from a quest you have to play it 3 times. Normal->Hard->Elite. More on this later.
6) Gives you 500 store points a month
7) A weekly gold roll
8) Allows you to skip 1 quest per saga
9) Keeps the servers running and pays the Devs (even if you don’t like every decision they make)

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DDO is a bit different than most MMOs, in that its much better to concentrate on one main character. This game is somewhat alt unfriendly, due to how character power is achieved. The main method inside the life your playing is to increase a character’s power is standard level progression, ability points and Epic Destinies.

But the real character power that gives you a leg up is past life progression. The metagame inside the game is the True Reincarnation (TR).

Essentially there are 4 main types of past lives. Each past life gives you a past life feat enabled at level 1 of your next life after reincarnation.

1) There’s Heroic Past lives which gives you a past life based on the class you played to 20, due to being able to multi class generally it’s the class that has the most amount of levels or if it’s an even split its alphabetical with exceptions for newer classes. These stack 3 times. Don’t get stuck on this yet.
2) There’s racial past lives which is based on which race you chose at creation. These stack 3x.
You get to choose either a heroic or a racial past life when you TR at 20. You don’t get both.
3) There are Epic Past lives which many will argue give you the best bang for your buck as far as character power. These stack 3x
4) Lastly There’s Iconic Past lives which can give you a stance or click ability that is available from level 1 as well as the heroic past life and you start at lvl 15, but you have to xp all the way to 30. You don’t get an epic past life, you iconic TR to 1. These stack 3x

See a pattern yet?
Theres 45 Heroic, 42 racial, 24 Iconic and 48 Epic lives available

It takes a vet ~18-30 hrs per heroic or racial, and roughly 9hrs per epic. for an Iconic its prob 12sh.


All in all, there are over 159 different past lives achievable on one character. So for someone who plays around 10 hrs a week that's in the zipcode of 4.5-5 solid years of game play. Not all are required to MIN/MAX a character, but each will incrementally improve that one character in some minor way. These stay with that one character and are not server wide, that’s why DDO is not considered alt friendly.

Most Vets will agree that Epic past lives (EPLs) > Racial Past Lives (RPLs) > Heroic Past Lives (HPLs) > Iconic PLs (IPLs) with exceptions.

3x paladin past lived gives you +30 healing amplification, that’s pretty useful on just about every build.
1x Wizard gives you a feat to take that gives you +1 Dice Check (DC) for every spell school.
3x Tiefling Scoundrel past lives gives you +30% run speed toggle at level 1 which is awesome unless you have an upgraded quiver of alacrity (which is from a raid that gets run rarely or the anniversary gift which may still be active at the time of this writing).

The other source of character progression is reaper points. These are achieved by playing a quest on reaper difficulty. We’ll get into that later.

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You have 5 ranks per level each representing 20% of that levels XP. For each rank (or circular pip on the right side of the bar) filled completely of your current level you gain an ability point, except for the last. You get 4 ability points for each level for a total of 80.

You can bank experience, meaning you can keep getting experience till 1 xp point short of getting 2 levels higher than the current level shown on your xp bar. Meaning you can bank 1xp short of getting lvl 3 at level 1. This is what people call “capping” or being “capped out.” Some players like to bank to get all 4 attribute points at once when they level or because the next level may not have as many quests available that they like to do.

You get XP by completing quests, optional objectives inside the quest or killing mobs in slayers zones. You can also consume the xp stones you get form daily rolls.
Every day you should do your daily dice. Every week you should do your weekly. You can access it from the main menu or clicking the little diamond next to your nameplate on the UI. I usually bank the ones worth 300xp+ on a bank toon to consume when I do a True Reincarnation (TR) down to lvl 1.

It takes double the 1st life experience to gain a rank on your second life and triple on your third life.

You get more XP per quest by completing it on the hardest difficulty you think you can do on the 1st time you complete the quest and a bonus for each time you complete it on a different difficulty. The reason you see so many people playing R1 through the levels is because they need as much bonus XP as possible to advance. You don’t get any more regular xp for playing beyond R1, but you do get more RXP for each incrementing number. Its generally not worth the difficulty of doing a non-legendary (lvl30+) quest on anything more than R1.

Another Reason to pony up for VIP is Delara’s Tomb. Completion of that quest line gives you a trinket “Voice of the master” which is a 5% bonus to xp.

Other ways to increase the xp you get inside the quest is to smash breakables, find hidden doors, disable traps, killing more or less than a certain amount of mobs.

Reaper Experience:
Playing a quest on reaper gets you reaper XP (RXP), the more point you get the more powerful you get in reaper mode. You also get more HP for each point you spend in reaper trees. But if you’re wondering why some folks have triple your HP at the same level as you in a reaper quest, this is the reason.

You can generally avoid reaper leveling until your 3rd life. I have seen people on first life characters with reaper wings (75 reaper points). Would I do it? No. but its possible. I would suggest you glom onto Reaper groups when you hit 29. You get far more Rxp by doing legendary quests than you do through leveling.

Reaper Questing can become easier than Elite questing after you have 20 or so reaper points for some classes, mainly casters. Reason being is that you get bonus HP for each reaper point you spend and while killing mobs theres a chance that a little ball "lost soul" appears in the air that will give you mana points. no such bonus for melee classes.

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You get favor by completing quests.

You get the base favor for doing it on normal, 2x for doing it on hard and 3x for doing it on elite or any Reaper level. You don't get any more for favor running a quest once you've run it on elite or higher.

All Favor is valuable, some much more than others. You get a fair bit of store points for hitting first time favor thresholds on each server, this is called favor farming.

With general overall aggregated favor you can unlock Drow Race(400), lvl 4 character creation (1000), 32 point starting characters and one +2 ability Tome of choice (1750) , Favored Soul (2500) , lvl 7 starting characters(3000) all the way to +5 tome(5000 that’s a hell of a slog and requires access to quest packs and expansions)

Ones people tend to run every life:
Coin Lord Favor:
75 gets you 20 more inventory slots
150 + a collapsible portable hole and some platinum gets you 20 more
The rest you have to purchase in the store.
Kundarak
Same deal
75 + platinum gets you 1 more bank slot for 20 spaces
150 + more plat gets you an additional 20
Argonesson
gets you the portable hole for the extra bag above.
Theres a lot more one time unlocks:

Cannith one time per server:
150 gets you artificer

Per character one time unlocks:

(Universal Tree) Vistani Knife Fighter from Ravenloft Expansion
(Universal Tree) Inquisitive from Sharn Expansion
(Universal Tree) Feydark Illusionist from Feywild expansion
(Universal Tree) Harper from eveningstar quests
(Universal Tree) Falconry (from Free Agents) this one is a PITA, prob easier to purchase since you need to run titan raid to get enough favor to unlock and no one runs it.

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DDO Store
Now that we’ve covered favor, it’s a good idea to cover what to buy and how not to make poorer choices (dont shoot me devs):

Things to save your points for:

Greater Tomes of Learning:
By life three your probably going to want to by a heroic greater tome of learning. Gives you a +50% bonus to the first completion of the quest.
An Epic tome of learning is helpful for every epic life. No matter how many past lives you have it still takes the same xp per epic past life.

Ability Tomes:
These are go big or don’t go at all. It is unwise to purchase anything but the maximum available +8 supreme ability tome (gives you +8 to every ability). Its like 5400 store points which is hefty. DDO is not alt friendly. You can get a discount by buying the 3995 store point 10th anniversary pack. Doing it 1 at time or incrementally upgrading costs insanely more than buying the supreme upfront. Just save until you can get it. I don’t know why the price schema is so horribly punishing to people willing to spend money in the store, but it is that terrible.

Skill Tome:
Mostly not worth it, but it’s the only place to my knowledge to get a +5 to UMD. This one is worth it in my opinion. It can make the difference between getting a raise dead off during a heated battle or not.
You can get +3 tomes for completing epic sagas in game and some bigger ones drop in raids.

Potions:
Major Slayers Pots for making epic lives go quick. I tend to buy them for characters that have done enough sagas that don’t need +3 tomes anymore. Do not waste them in heroics. Use only in epics.
XP pots I tend to by a few when they are on sale. I wouldn’t do it for the first 10 or so lives.

Expansions:
Most are available thru the store. Ravenloft Lvl 10& 29 gear if you didn’t purchase the bundle is great. Most of us used RL gear all the way to 29 where we replaced it with lvl 29 ravenloft gear. Sharn right after it. It’s a decent boost from ravenloft stuff. Feywild is unneeded but good if you have expendable cash.

Classes and Iconics
If I could do it all over the very first Class/Iconic I would buy is Tiefling Scoundrel providing you own epic destinies. Doing three Iconic Past lives of this gives you a plus 30% runspeed toggle plus a heroic past life. This one is worth it first. Then do all the others as you get a hankering to try new things.

IF you havent purchased EDs , Warlock would be a good 1st or next following Scoundrel as it’s a good class to complete almost any epic destinies and racials. Even though its not a powerhouse of a class and has been nerfed to all get out from its glory day, its a very reliable slow and steady that is very difficult to screw up... Its very good early levels, doesn't require the keyboard skills of a professional pianist can reliably survive r1 content under geared even on a first life as an enlightened spirit build post level 12.

If I had to prioritize providing you bought the $59 expansion bundle and are VIP, meaning you have access to Epic Destinies.
1) Learning Tomes (epic 1st) Heroic by 3rd life
2) Sharn
3) Tiefling scoundrel

• Makes great favor farmers on other servers
• Makes great bank toons.
• Lvl 15 Spellsingers can destroy Coin lord and House K questlines with sla Sonic blast and Shout. 2 levels of rog make GH traps a little easier if you dont have twink gear.
• Sprint boosts (8AP in WC)
• fast running +1% per bard level (7 AP in SB), no need to farm a horse on a server your just trying to get to 100 favor on...
• Plus Dimension door for fast exits. Lvl 4 spell, choice at char level 10.

4) Warlock
5) +8 Supreme ability (or anniversary pack with bank space and +8tome if still available)
6) Feydark
7) +5 UMD
8) Biggest collectable bag
9) Biggest augment bag.
10) Slayer pots.
11) Classes as you need them.
12) Getting to 1250 craftable storage slots
13) Xp pots
14) Character slots when on sale
15) Bank slots when on sale
16) Inventory slots when on sale

What not to buy:
1) Veteran Status (can be earned)
2) Build points (can be earned)
3) Universal Trees (can be earned, exception Falconry too much of a PITA)
4) Piecemeal ability tomes or incremental upgrades
5) Almost anything else. Literally do not spend points until you’ve got the 10 items above covered.

How to get more points:
Farm favor on other servers, buy them, keep VIP running, keep TR'ing (Every life gets me 500-700sh points via favor.) on average Im gettng about 1300sh store points in a month which enough for a class or a Iconic.

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Now this is where some of my prejudices might affect the information included here. Can you start with any class? Sure, all are viable, and you certainly can pick whatever you want if you have access to that class. But on a first life build your class choice will affect some things later down the line. Here is the first part where someone who is completely ignorant might want to take some advice.

For a solo player I suggest either a pale trapper (18Wiz 2 Rog) or a Paladin. The paletrapper if you like playing caster styles as the past life for wizard gives you a +1 to Every spell school DC. I usually take this feat by at least level 12 on every caster Ive ever created. Paladin is good in that it gives you healing amp. Every heal that lands on you will be more powerful, its passive.


Class Builds Matter
How you build your character from the start really matters to how successful you will be able to solo. Now if you have a whole group of friends playing together, it will matter a lot less. But your starting attributes can make or break a build. I recommend searching for first-life, no-tome friendly builds in the forums. If you screw up you may not be able to get stuff you really want later without buying your way out of it. You’ve been warned. If you have only a couple hours on a character and you’ve screwed up, just scrap it and start fresh.

If you are perusing builds and it mentions any of the classes that you don’t get from F2P or any universal trees that you dont have or requires a Tome, avoid them until you have those trees unlocked via favor or are prepared to purchase the requirements from the store. You can a lot of times modify a build for 1st life characters but ensure you use a planner so you know what starting attributes are required to unlock the feats at the appropriate level.


Feats
Besides your class defining attribute, why do starting attributes matter so much? Feats. A lot of feats have a minimum requirement in an ability or skill score. For instance, 2 handed fighting requires 15 base Strength to make it available, this is the value you must achieve before gear is accounted for. So just putting on some gauntlets that give you +5 STR if your base is 10 is not going to cut it. Some feats have a minimum Base Attack Bonus (BAB) and a minimum attribute bonus. So if you have a particular kind of fighting Two Handed Fighting (THF), Two Weapon Fighting (TWF) or Single Weapon Fighting SWF, make sure you accommodate the requirements to progress with your starting attributes. This matters less if you have ability tomes, but on a brand-new starting character you have less points to spend 28 vs 32 on your second life vs 36 on your third things can get tight. Which is why again I suggest Dwarven Barbarian. Pump Strength to max and put the rest into Constitution. If you have any leftover INT isn’t a terrible place to put it for more skill points. Then from that point on just put all points into strength when available when you level.

Skills
The number you get per level is based on intelligence and class.
Generally if you can pump UMD it’s a good idea to do with any left over points.