Newbie Questions

[bookmarked]

I'm having difficulty with difficulty , so here's a few more questions:

While looking at various builds in the forum, I often see DC in the description. According to the wiki Glossary as well as the forum's DDO Acronyms and Slang Terminology, DC is either disconnect or Difficulty Check/Class. I'm having trouble seeing how either meaning applies to a build. Is there another meaning for DC in this case?

Next, regarding quest difficulty, the wiki says that Normal and lower difficulty is okay for soloing due to scaling. However, while Hard and Elite do mention scaling, they do not mention solo which seems to imply that Hard and higher difficulty should not be attempted solo. Am I interpreting that correctly, or are Hard difficulty quests doable solo? If they are doable solo, is that only using a higher level character, with hirelings, or any other requirements?

Thanks!

From Difficulty:

Normal

Dungeon Scaling is in full standard effect.
Enemy misses become Grazing Hits on raw die rolls of 17-19.
Rest Shrines can be used every 15 minutes.
Most normal difficulty dungeons are most evenly balanced against a party of four players. However most quests are also designed to be soloable on normal as well due to scaling. If it's a raid, 12 players are still recommended, but often not required.
Normal difficulty is intended to be the default choice for the large majority of players looking for a balanced experience.
Monster Damage Reduction, at their best, block only 50% of your damage instead of their true value

Hard

Dungeon Scaling is in effect, but has less of an impact than Normal.
Favor is 2 × Normal.
Main XP is roughly 1.05 to 1.08 × Normal.
There may be more and/or larger encounters than Normal.
Enemies are always a higher CR, and have far higher statistics designed to challenge more prepared parties.
Enemy spell casters often have more and higher level spells.
Monster Damage Reduction, at their best, block only 75% of your damage instead of their true value.
For example: If your attack deals 16 damage, but the monster has DR 15/-, your attack still deals 4 damage. You can see it better against the DR 100 monsters: ghostly skeletons in Delera's and gargoyles in Stone Form.
Enemies can upgrade to a Tier 1 Monster Champion.
The quest's level is increased by 1 solely for purposes of generating better chest loot and comparing against the party's level for XP adjustment. Rewards from the quest's giver are unaffected.
Traps are greatly increased in difficulty, in terms of damage dealt, save DC and skill DC needed to disable them. They are intended to challenge decently-geared rogues of appropriate level.
Hidden doors and Lock DCs sometimes scale up a few points.
Enemy misses become Grazing Hits on raw die rolls of 15-19.
Rest Shrines can only be used once. Some quests have fewer shrines when compared to Normal.
Hard is intended for full, well-balanced groups of 6 players, or 12 if it's a raid.
Free to play and premium players cannot open a quest on hard unless they have already completed it on Normal or higher difficulty, or they underwent True Reincarnation at least once. They can use Hard Difficulty Quest Unlock Token from the DDO Store to bypass this limitation.

[TitusOvid]

I'm having difficulty with difficulty , so here's a few more questions:

While looking at various builds in the forum, I often see DC in the description. According to the wiki Glossary as well as the forum's DDO Acronyms and Slang Terminology, DC is either disconnect or Difficulty Check/Class. I'm having trouble seeing how either meaning applies to a build. Is there another meaning for DC in this case?

Next, regarding quest difficulty, the wiki says that Normal and lower difficulty is okay for soloing due to scaling. However, while Hard and Elite do mention scaling, they do not mention solo which seems to imply that Hard and higher difficulty should not be attempted solo. Am I interpreting that correctly, or are Hard difficulty quests doable solo? If they are doable solo, is that only using a higher level character, with hirelings, or any other requirements?

Thanks!

From Difficulty:

DC here is Difficulty Check. To put it simple: The higher your DC is the better. If I am a caster for example there are a lot of spells with saves, reflex save for evocation spells for example. So my Spell DC is rolled against the monsters save. If the target wins I make half damage, if it loses I make full damage. Or there is a melee ability called Stunning Fist/Blow. If my DC is high enough = is better than the monsters save, I stun the target helpless. Traps or doors ahve a Dc, too. If your search is too low for the DC of the door/trap you won't be able to find it.

Scaling: the entries are not correct anymore. There is a scaling, yes but you can't say per se that it is not possible to solo. There are people in the game that solo'd R10 dungeons - the highest difficulty possible. It depends on your character power, strategy, equipment and dungeon knowledge. There are a small number of dungeons that are not soloable because of the dungeon design (be in 2 places at the same time for example).

In general: The mobs are getting harder with higher difficulty and with group size (raids are an exception for the number of members). The jump from hard to elite is considerably higher than from norm to hard. There is a discrepancy in the jump from elite to reaper. The more reaper points you have, the easier gets reaper. Since you don't have the benefit of your reaper enhancements in elite (there are some exceptions in the core abilities) it is possible that elite is more difficult than reaper.
The group size influences the difficulty, too. Most dungeons are supposed to be balanced for 4 players. Having less than 4 causes the dungeon to scale, while having 5 or 6 causes no additional scaling. That means a dungeon should be easier with a full group since you practically got 2 more people that can help out without making the monsters stronger. You can test this easily, if you check the HP of monsters when you are solo and when you have more members in the group. The HP will increase with each member up until 4. (It is possible to see HP of monsters, if you have some Monster Manual entries).


Cheers,
Titus.

[bookmarked]

DC here is Difficulty Check. To put it simple: The higher your DC is the better. If I am a caster for example there are a lot of spells with saves, reflex save for evocation spells for example. So my Spell DC is rolled against the monsters save. If the target wins I make half damage, if it loses I make full damage. Or there is a melee ability called Stunning Fist/Blow. If my DC is high enough = is better than the monsters save, I stun the target helpless. Traps or doors ahve a Dc, too. If your search is too low for the DC of the door/trap you won't be able to find it.

So, if I understand correctly, when a build says it's DC focused, they're saying that it's designed to maximize DC as opposed to something like DPS, right?

This isn't one I was looking at, but it'll do as an example:
The Arcadian Avenger - A hybrid Divine Melee & DC Caster build
"The core build concept is to build a viable Divine DC-based Spell caster combined with good Melee DPS." and
"The first key concept behind how this build will work is that Spell DCs will built [sic] towards achieving viable Crowd Control, with [sic] comes with a 1-2 of preventing damage to party members and potentially upping Melee DPS performance."

So they're saying that they're trying to maximize the DCs of the crowd control spells and maybe the buffs?

[TitusOvid]

So, if I understand correctly, when a build says it's DC focused, they're saying that it's designed to maximize DC as opposed to something like DPS, right?

This isn't one I was looking at, but it'll do as an example:
The Arcadian Avenger - A hybrid Divine Melee & DC Caster build
"The core build concept is to build a viable Divine DC-based Spell caster combined with good Melee DPS." and
"The first key concept behind how this build will work is that Spell DCs will built [sic] towards achieving viable Crowd Control, with [sic] comes with a 1-2 of preventing damage to party members and potentially upping Melee DPS performance."

So they're saying that they're trying to maximize the DCs of the crowd control spells and maybe the buffs?

Correct.

[bookmarked]

Okay, little by little I'm starting to put the pieces together.

Thanks!

[magaiti]

Regarding spending money on this game:
1) play for free for as long as you feel comfortable. There's plenty of free content at low/mid levels, but it dries out closer to level 20. Decide if this game is worth your time and money.
2) play as VIP for a few months, visit as much paid content as possible, take notes on which adventure packs you like/don't like. Hoard DDO Points.
3) switch to premium, buy and play content you like, buy more as you earn more DDO points through play.