Solo Project

[RonHiler]

Well, I just finished Tangleroot last night on Normal. Having finished most of the level 6 quests on Casual/Normal, I decided I could open up the level 7 quests and the first two I did were the last two quests of this series.

I picked up a nice Resistance +2 cloak as an end reward (that has a +3 cold DR on it as well), so that was pretty good.

I'm going to blow through the entire quest again on Casual now. When I started this quest line, Casual mode wasn't available yet, so I wanted to finish the whole thing through on Normal before starting over again on Casual. I think that's the last quest line left where I had done Normal but not Casual yet.

I won't get anything for it. The XP will be trivial (probably 0 for the first few quests). I won't get any Favor, and the loot will be vender trash. The only real reason to do it is to check off the boxes in the quest table. But that's the sort of anal retentive person I am (it's why I'm a good programmer, hehe).

I figure it won't take long. On casual, it will take me a couple of nights of questing to run the entire line, even given my usual "Explore everything" attitude. Though I may detour a bit and do some more Tangleroot slayers (I still have another 700 kills to do to finish it off).

I'll start that up tonight after I finish up my work for today (damn real jobs, hehe).

[frank13]

I stopt your solo build Ron at lvl 15. Could not get the motivation to go further. maybe its your build or something else but i find the lvl 12 and 13 quest hard.

Playing a monk/wizard in upgrade 5 there should be a patch for Pale Master.

Good to hear you had a fun evening. Sounds like you have fun in killing 700 mobs.

[RonHiler]

Good to hear you had a fun evening. Sounds like you have fun in killing 700 mobs.

No, it's a bit of a grind. That's why I try to do them a bit at a time when I'm doing something else.

Generally, what happens for me with Slayer missions is I get a lot of them when I'm hunting down the Rares. For example, I just finished 3BC Slayer trying to get all 13 rares (I still have one more to go that doesn't want to seem to spawn). In Tangleroot, however, I finished all the Rares with quite a few Slayer left to finish (about 700 or so).

That at least gets that part of it done without it seeming like such a grind.

For what was left in Tangleroot, instead of taking the shortcut to the dungeon, I simply walked there each time, which is about 7 or 8 trips. That gets you another 30 kills or so each trip. By doing that, plus one time just going through and killing everything in the instance, I've now got that down to about 400 left. And I still have Tangleroot dungeon left to do on Hard and Elite.

So Tangleroot and 3BC are mostly done, then I can start thinking about Searing Heights, which I've only barely started (but that slayer is only 750 rather than 1500).

So far, I'm still going quite strong on this character, and approaching level 10. But her AC is starting to fail. I find myself healing quite a bit more than I used to. I'm going to have to start relying more and more on the crowd control spells, I think.

[RonHiler]

Well, I just finished up the very last Level 4 quest. I should probably explain that

I don't mean Level 4 as in quest level 4 (I finished all the level 4 quests long ago). When I say Level 4, what I mean is the entire set of quests that include all the game level 5 quests on Casual, level 4 quests on Normal, level 3 quests on Hard, and level 2 quests on Elite.

Taken in that context, the range of quests I was running were from 4 to 7, and I thought that range was getting a bit too wide. Especially since my character is level 9.4, quickly approaching level 10, and at level 10, my XP for level 4 quests wouldn't be 0, but it would be pretty close (-99% XP). Even running those quests at level 9 was giving me a -75% penalty.

So I went through and ran all the level 2 quests I had left at Elite and all the level 3 quests on Hard over the last few days. So now my quest range is level 5-7, which is a bit better.

I'm going to try to catch up on some of the level 5s now, as when I hit level 10 (fairly soon), I'm still going to be tagged with that -75% XP penalty. And I have quite a few to do (I've done all the Level 5 quests on normal, and most of the Level 6 quests on Casual. But I haven't done ANY of the level 3 quests on Elite and almost none of the level 4 quests on Hard).

Oh, and I finished the Slayer/Rare/Explorer sets for 3BC and all except the last few Slayers in Tangleroot. With those done, I turn my attention to Searing Heights. I don't know SH all that well, actually, so it should be interesting to track down all those S/R/E areas.

[Khateyana]

Wow, busy busy guy!

Is your quest list really all the free quests in the game currently? I thought it would be more for some reason.

Personally, I have been working through the harbor and doing casual to learn the quest and then go right back in after repairing on normal. If its easy enough I try hard.

On the newb island I ran all the quests until I got the items I needed or wanted so there were several reruns there. I know you are pursuing a much more structured path than I am.

The cleric summoned dog is fantastic, except for one thing. Absolutely ZERO control on that thing. I learned the hard way it attacks what ever it wants, when it wants. And forget trying to sneak haha. It has its place but it is certainly a tactical deploy tool.

Glad to hear you are steaming ahead to uncharted waters!

Keep up the good work.

Thanks,
Khat

[RonHiler]

Wow, busy busy guy!

Yeah. I really SHOULD be programming. I try to take some time on the weekends though to quest. Otherwise I tend to burn out on whatever project I'm working on at the time.

Is your quest list really all the free quests in the game currently? I thought it would be more for some reason.

Not the free quests. That's every quest in the game, more or less. I'm a VIP, so I don't really know very well which ones are free and which ones are paid. To me, they are all free

I'm missing some of the high level quests (anything above about level 18 or so may or may not be in the list). And the brand new stuff (level 7 and 8) they put in with the last update is not fully in yet. And of course, whatever they end up putting into the game with today's release won't be there.

Glad to hear you are steaming ahead to uncharted waters!

Well, not really uncharted. I've been playing this game since Beta, I've been in Searing Heights plenty of times before. I just haven't spent a whole lot of time there really learning it. That's one of the great things about a soloist, though. You can really spend as much time as you want getting to know an area that you can't really do with a group.

There's not much of this game I haven't seen, other than a couple of the raids that I've never been in. My highest grouping character is level 19.2, and he's run through just about every quest in the game at least once.

[frank13]

Frank sits in his corner of the room he has a 19.2 char sniff sniff.


Wait one moment Pale master is fixed and we have Augment Summoning yeaaah.

Oh did say this before. Its good to be evil.

[RonHiler]

I hit level 10 yesterday while doing the two level 4 Depth quests on Hard. I didn't realize how close I was to leveling, heh.

Sadly, this puts me in the same position I was at level 9 in that I needed to complete the Level 4 quests. I now need to finish all the level 5 quests before I get too far ahead of them and get no XP. I'll be getting a -75% penalty on those now as it is. Fortunately, a lot of the level 3 quests (on Elite) are the Catacomb quests, and I'm well equipped for undead (I have an Undead Guard Trinket I got from finishing the first Necropolis series, as well as an Undead Bane Heavy Mace). So that will be my fourth (and final) time through that series, and it shouldn't be too hard to do.

Some of the level 4 quests on Hard though are giving me nightmares already (I'm looking at you, Proof is in the Poison!).

Added to that, I probably need to work on finishing up the Slayers in Tangleroot and do some significant work in Searing Heights before I start outleveling those as well.

What that all comes down to is that it may be a while before I even get back to working on the level 6/7 quests. Which is too bad, as those are around the levels where it really starts to get more interesting (for me anyway).

Lastly, since I am now full tilt working on my Engine Rendering system (which is arguably one of the more complex and difficult systems to get right in any game engine), I actually will most likely have to scale back my questing for a while. That's going to require my full attention for at least a few weeks (although perhaps I can sneak in a few quests here and there ).

[Khateyana]

Congrats on level 10, Ron

It sounds like there are just too many quests, almost all with 4 difficulties to them, for you to be able to do and not outgrow them. Is this accurate?

If so why not just do each one on casual and normal then later on when you hit a plateau somewhere go back and do all the hard and elite?

Just a thought, I still dont know a whole lot about how the game works.

Anyways, happy coding and dont get burned out

[RonHiler]

It sounds like there are just too many quests, almost all with 4 difficulties to them, for you to be able to do and not outgrow them. Is this accurate?

Yep, it is now. It didn't used to be that way. But since they've added the explorer zones and more lower level quests, you will definitely outlevel the quests before you finish them all (I mean I'm now 3 levels above the highest level quest I've done, and I've only JUST started those, heh).

If so why not just do each one on casual and normal then later on when you hit a plateau somewhere go back and do all the hard and elite?

You could. That's what I USED to do before when there weren't as mamy and you actually had to go back and do the hard/elite sets before you had enough levels to continue on with the Normal quests (in fact I had a rule to that effect, but I've removed it now).

The only issue is the XP penalty. I don't really want to leave the quests to the point where I'm getting 0 XP for them, and that happens once you are 7 levels above the quest (IIRC). At 6 levels above the quest you are at -99% XP, which is close enough to 0 as to make no real difference (although you can at least make some of that up with the bonuses, which is why the devs do that. Once it hits 0%, you get 0 no matter what bonuses you aquire). So I like to do them no later than 5 levels above (-75% XP) so that you are at least getting something for them.