Not A Guide: Summoner
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Edit 31 AUG: Around the 2nd week of August, several new summons were added and the original set of summons (which are talked about in this Not a Guide) got minor to mid range buffs to their resistances. To make a long explanation short, you can expect the minions talked about here to be a little more tanky than they were before.
This is current as of Mid July 2024 (1.0 - Elysium)
This is not a guide or step by step planner. It's just some notes from leveling an alt character that I thought new players might find helpful. I'll go through my thoughts and goals so others can see what I think about and how I decide to progress and rank up. This will be lots of words and is not for everyone (it's not a guide after all). I will include a TLDR on all posts.
I will only focus on PvE content as that is what is required to hit rank 50. I'm only focusing on ranking up. If I say a skill is good/useful it's only in the PvE context or to rank up.
TLDR: Summoner focused character with supplemental magic. Planning for Erwydra with INT/WIS/DEX. Starting as a Druid Background. END TLDR
Introduction: I will post updates as replies to this thread as I continue forward and go as long as I feel like I'm making progress or until I feel like the only thing left to hit rank 50 is pure grinding. These will follow the format of, "Day X plans," and, "Day X Results."
I wont refuse to party with people, but I will try to make sure that if I do, it's someone that is around the same level as I am, and not some uber character just powering me through.
This is my first Not a Guide since the Endgame Combat patch. If you see a Not a Guide with (Pre ECG) know that they are outdated and probably not worth your time.
For weapons: Because I plan to focus on summons and magic for this character, I will probably be going with staves. Mending would benefit healing my summons while one of the elemental staves would help with any damage I wanted to "help" my summons with. There are melee options that would allow spell casting and give me better defenses, but I'm feeling like staves to start and then we'll see how it goes.
For stats: WIS governs all summon scaling (via Spiritual Power) as well as Restoration. This is the one mandatory stat that I think any summoner should take.
- STR is Physical Power and synergizes with Leadership skills (to buff summons) as well as let me get up close and personal to fight with them or use bows and bow skills well.. Going this route could work well, but I want to focus on spells. (It's handy for Carry Capacity if you're a loot hoarder.)
- CON More HP - never a bad thing, but I have summons so this seems much less useful than normal.
- DEX Since I'm relying on summons, this seems to only give me Cooldown Reduction. That isn't bad, as it will help with ability cooldowns (i.e. healing your summons). This would also help with evasion if I decided to stack it for, "oh shit," moments.
- INT is Magical Power and buffs all offensive and buffing magic. This opens up all spells, buffs, and debuffs. Since I'm going magic for this build, this is mandatory.
- PER If I was going to rely more heavily on spellcasting then it could be good for me. Crit and Crit damage is obvious. Accuracy would help with applying debuff stacks. But since my choice for magic is secondary, I don't know that I will take it.
WIS/INT for sure because I'm choosing to supplement my summons with magic.. After that... I'm going to go DEX, at least at the start. Partly because nothing else really stands out to me and then just for that extra CDR.
For race: In prior Not a Guide(s) this section was always pretty long, but there have been a lot of recent changes in Fractured that have made the race choice eh... Easier and more complicated at the same time. I know, some people will feel very strongly about race choice, but for the purpose of this Not a Guide, I'm not going to deeply dive into races.
I will say this, since I want to focus on summons and magic, Blood Demon, Human, Iridra, and Erwydra are all more caster focused races. Human or Iridra are both "balanced" and would let you respec into anything else that you might decide to play without any real downsides of the race. They're both very good and you could argue that either is flat out the "best" race.
I'm probably going to choose Erwydra because that race lends itself more into casting and that style is something that I tend to prefer. If, later, I decide to stop being a summoner, it would let me slide into being a very good caster.
That's about it for the introduction. I tend to post the results and the plans for the next day, each day.
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Day 1 Plan:
TLDR: Make 2k while looking for a house plot so I can craft gear later. Either world is good, not sure which I will pick. Groko or Goblins, and then Bandits if I no life long enough. End TLDR
Looking for a house location: I'm honestly not sure where I think the best house location is with all the recent game changes to the game. I will definitely need one for imbuing and any advanced crafting. Right now, I'm leaning towards building on Syndesia since I know they have some good options for materials that don't require using the Stargate to travel between worlds. I'm honestly not sure at this point. My general advice on house location is to build it where you plan to spend most of your time. Be prepared to relocate and start from scratch - as you play more you might find something that suits you better.
Tutorial: I'm going to 100% all of the monsters, finish all the quests, and get out of dodge. You might be tempted to leave there early or to stay and farm. I would strongly advise against either. There are Tutorial only monsters that will give you knowledge that you can never get again once you leave. Look in your Book of Knowledge and get all of the monsters listed there to 100%. (You don't need this knowledge to hit rank 50, but it's very easy to get.) Also, there are TONS of skills that are very easy to get because of the increased knowledge gain in the Tutorial.
Once done with the Tutorial knowledge and quests, get to the main world. Yes the tutorial has loot, and you can take that loot with you, but it wont over any more knowledge.
Picking your first world: When leaving the tutorial you can choose between going to Syndesia (Aehren) or Arboreus (Terra). These are different worlds on the same game server. Once you choose a world, the only way to travel to the other one is via the Stargate which takes resources to open. Before, each world had different PvP rules, but now they're the same. Your PvP or PvE preference should not decide which world you pick. If you plan to play with friends, pick the same world. It will take a little bit of time to farm the resources needed to open the Stargate.
- If you want to start on Syndesia, the Day 1 plan will be to focus on Goblins or Bandits. Bandits are harder, but might have less people around to compete with.
- If you want to start on Arboreus, the Day 1 plan will be to focus on Grokotons or Bandits. Grokoton are categorized as easier than Bandits, but they have poisons and bleeds that can be challenging for a new player.
Syndesia and Goblins are probably the easiest option, but Syndesia might have more people which means more competition.
I'm not positive which location I will pick. The summons you get from the Tutorial, especially if you get them all, are strong enough to handle any of these low level areas. Where you'll want your house (because you will have 2k gold before you have the resources to open the Stargate) could be important to your choice. Which skills you want to try for first might be important too.
Skills to look for early: Your Book of Knowledge has an abilities tab that will tell you which monsters you can learn each skill from. Depending on the Background you pick and whether or not you clear the tutorial, you will already have some of these. Unless I specifically say to prioritize a skill, I wouldn't suggest dropping everything to get it now. Just keep an eye out for it.
- Cure Wounds, Healing Burst, and Healing Wave. These are three very good healing spells. You wont need all of them right away, but they're definitely ones to look for.
- Life Link. You don't need this skill early and not even for mid level monsters, but it becomes very important later on. It can only be found on Arboreus, but by the time you need it, you will easily have enough resources to open the Stargate.
- Collecting the various summon skills. If you start Druid, you get Wildland Being, and you can get Zombie, Skeletal Archer, Wolf, and Bear from the Tutorial. These are plenty until later, but if this is a priority, I'd probably suggest you start on Syndesia since you can get all of the remaining summons there.
I probably wont target any skills on the first several days - starting with the Druid Background and getting everything out of the tutorial will be plenty to clear all of the low level and mid level content. For now I'll gain skills just by farming up knowledge.
For talents, I'm going to work my way up Wisdom, looking to get the extra points for summons.
I think that's about everything for Day 1.
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Day 1 Results:
TLDR: Busy day. ~11 hours total. (~3 hours house building, for a friend, and ~8 hours of THE GRIND). 103k Knowledge, rank 23, about 20k gold. One recipe. One Orb of Restoration. One empty house plot. END TLDR
Gear: Druid background quests call for a Quarterstaff and Hide Armor. I made both and tossed the Quarterstaff immediately in favor for a magic staff. This was my gear all day long. No changes, additions, enchants, etc.
Summons: I ran wolf and bear at the start and added in Skeleton Archer as soon as I had Warlock unlocked. No other summons or deviations.
Skills:
Above were my Skills coming out of the Tutorial. (I ran Wolf and Bear to start, but kept Skeletal Archer handy.)
Everything here is pretty self explanatory. Blinding Venom because it has a long attack range with no AoE. I have been using it to help solo pull monsters from groups, but you can use the auto attack from a mage staff for the same thing. Healing Burst is being used to heal my summons and deal AoE damage. Verdant Regrowth and Battle Jump were mostly there, just because I had nothing else I wanted.
Either way, I ended the day with few changes to skills:
Firebolt from Crazy Pyromancers. Cure Wounds from Grokoton Shaman. Healing wave from Greater Woodland Wisps.Talents:
Strait to Warlock. Getting those two extra points lets you pull out 3 summons and it's a big improvement on your damage. I'm not sure I could agree with any other first goal for a "mainly summoner" style.After that, I went down to DEX and CDR. I just really like that stat when I can get it. If you can get to the 40% cap, that's a lot more heals you can throw out there (never mind more attack spells and shorter cooldowns when your summons die). I don't think this choice is for everyone, but neither is DEX to begin with.
Third was Life Shield (as I got those new, healing spells). And lastly I'm working on Mana Regen and INT.. Because I'm not sure what else I want right now.
What Happened: Stuck with INT/WIS/DEX and to the plan of quick 100% of the Tutorial then bailing to the real world. I ended up choosing Arboreus (Terra) because I'm very comfortable with that world, meaning I can farm it pretty quickly. This also let me help a friend work on their house once they'd gotten online (I gave them the cash since he started late). The route I took was all over the map because of my friend. My actual time grinding is probably closer to 7 hours, but we'll call it 8 because I was getting random knowledge (and a skill or two) while I was running around.
I started with Bandits because I expected less people there and know it's good money (plus Groko have those poisons and bleeds which I can handle, but are annoying until you can over power them). The gist of my strategy was to use an auto or ranged spell to pull 1-2 monsters out and then get the pets in there. It's slower than just jumping in, but it's much safer and results in less dying. I toggle between Follow and Attack because I find that gives me the greatest control over what my pets are doing. (Read as: preventing them from running all over hell and back pulling 6 different camps at once.)
I was focused more on cash than knowledge at this point because I wanted to try and get enough money for his house and mine. Made about 4k before we went to work on his house. I also got a Orb of Restoration from the very first divine that I dropped so that was very nice. Somewhere in this initial bandits run, I had Warlock and was using all three summons.
(His) House stuff happened - not super important beyond what I already said about why he chose there. What is important is that I decided to kill 5 Greater Woodland Wisps while I was on the east side of Terra. This unlocked Healing Wave which is one of the healing spells I'd wanted. Greater Woodland Wisps are found around the volcano of Terra and are mixed in with Treant packs and sometimes Earth Elemental packs. They're not difficult if you got magic damage. Just pull them out alone and spam spells and staff attacks on them. They can hurt so take some armor.
Getting back to the grind, I full cleared the northern Grokoton POI because there was a Tyros event starting. This meant that certain monsters were golden, kept resurrecting (until they didn't), and dropped extra gold. I had no problems with any of the Groko, whether or not they were event spawns. Not too much to say here. I did unlock Cure Wounds. I did not 100% their knowledge because I planned on finishing them off at the southern camp where I know a couple of good spawn rotations. (I did get a recipe for Battlemage Armor.)
Hit the bank and went to Bandits.
Options for Bandits: Because bandits are on both worlds, and you will want all of their POI anyway, the most efficient way to 100% them is probably to just roll through each POI, on both worlds, clearing as you focus on POI. Then when you have all the POI, hunt down whatever bandits aren't at 100%. I have no problem with this, but I find the layout of the Bandit camps on Aerhen to be pure cancer so I choose to 100% them on Terra and then speed through them on Aerhen. It's really personal preference and their drops aren't bad for the rate you end up killing them (e.g. if you end up killing way more than you need).
By this time I had everything in my end of day skills ready, except Firebolt, and I basically laid waste at bandits. Pulls were 3-4 at a time and I just AOE'd and healed. I was careful with the mages because those will tear up summons if you get several at once. I would jump two mages if they were alone or a mage plus 1-2 others, but a couple times I did try a mage pair with an archer and other stuff and things got a little hairy. Like with any area, find a good set of spawns and work a rotation so you can grind through the rarer ones. (Archers also hurt, but less than mages.)
General tip for Archemage Outcasts: they will teleport away from their aggro target so move around with your pets so that you're putting them between your pets and a wall or other impassible object. Otherwise they teleport all over the place and reset, pull adds, etc etc etc. (It helps to pull everything around them first.)
I was able to solo both of the bandit rares that spawn in this area. The physical guy was easy, and the mage was a pain in the ass because he is an Archmage Outcast (see above).
Coming out of Bandits I had my full end of day skills and basically buzzed over the southern Groko camp spraying napalm and cackling wildly. Their bleeds and poisons will keep your health down, but not remotely challenging at this point. (Verdant Redgroth is great for Bleeds btw.) Finished out their POI and 100% netting me Life Link from the Shamans and Mass Cure Wounds from the Sages (though I probably wont use it).
At this point in time I was basically done for the day. For Day 2, I could keep pushing out on Terra, because there's a lot of knowledge I can get without much more in terms of skills and loot, but by this point I decided that I wanted my House on Syndesia.
My options are to stay on Terra and grind out mid level monsters for their knowledge, delay my house for a day, and then probably head to Syndesia on Day 3 or... Head to Syndesia now and spend an "easier" Day 2 by working on my house and getting Goblins to 100%. I chose to head over now.
What is good for you depends on what you like. I do like an early (day 2-3) world swap because it opens up a bunch of knowledge that is super easy to get. My thought is: Get easy knowledge on planet A, go to planet B, get easy and mid knowledge on B, go back to A, finish knowledge on A, then back to B and finish. What you feel like is good for you might be different.
Talent Pic:
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Day 2 Plans:
TLDR: Get my house going on Syndesia and 100% Golbins or Undead. END TLDR
There wont be too much here because I'm planning for an easy day. House will probably take a big chunk of time because I'll be solo and I'll want to get it "finished." After that, I'll either work on Goblins to 100% or Undead for the summons I am missing (and to 100%). I'm not sure which, it might depend on how busy Goblins are and I don't need the missing summons at this point.
For the house, I'm planning on somewhere up north, but not sure where. I'm not recommending this area, it's just what I think I'll like. Silver, Iron, Coal, undead, not too far from docks, and a few other things. I am planning on making Mending Staves and Chain/Cleric Armor so I will focus on that stuff for the house. I'll also need an Extractor, Distiller, and of course imbuing table.
If I had stayed on Terra: Termidians would be next up on the block. They shouldn't be any problem. Matrons might be iffy, but you can always skip those. After those, I think world spawns is the next choice. Earth Elementals, Treants, Forest/Mountain Trolls, various bugs. There's no POI for these, but they are a lot of knowledge all added up. Once these were out of the way, I'd 100% go to Syndesia. Anything harder on Terra is way less knowledge/hour than the massive chunks of knowledge on Syndesia.
The actual days that you do stuff is not that important. I just wouldn't push past this difficulty without getting equivalent and lower knoweldge on Syndesia.
Other things to consider: We've really thought about most of the basic stuff by this point. One thing I should be paying more attention to is what imbues I will want and what stuff I need to be picking up (specifically what plants to harvest) as I'm running around the world. I'm going to go for 10/10 Restoration via five T2 Restoration Proficiency enchants. I'm not sure what the other imbues I'll get will be. I like CDR, but my character wont need them.
But yea, planning for an easy day. We'll see how that goes.
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Day 2 Results:
TLDR: 9 hours today (~20 hours total) with about 7.5 hours on house related things, and 1.5 working on Knowledge. 162k Knowledge, rank 30, about 40k gold. One recipe. One Orb of Axe fighting. One full house plot. END TLDR
Additions to stuff from yesterday: I did buy the first row of inventory space once I had secured my house money. Those first ones are pretty cheap and good value for someone that likes to pick everything up. (Be sure to watch the price on those, they will go up significantly at a point.)
Gear: I made a whole new set of gear that was the same Hide Armor and Primitive Mage Staff, just because I don't need more than that for anything I was going to do today. I did pop on a Wolf Headdress just for that one more Dex.
Summons: No changes from Yesterday.
Skills:
I started and stopped with these skills. The only change I made was dropping Firebolt so I could get some more AoE with Pillar of Fire (from pyro bandit).Talents:
I will put the talent pic at the bottom again, but there's not much to talk about since I just continued down Mana Regen/INT.What Happened: Not much. That 7.5 hours includes building the entire house and everything it, two ore runs, two coal runs, running an alt out to the house, and a lot of "farming stuff that was close by." Gather half a cart, kill a loop of monsters, gather the other half, kill a loop, build half, loop, etc etc.
It's not how I would always do it, but because I had a good range of monsters (and wanted the other undead summons) I figured it was better to grab some kills now versus camping a POI later. Plus it helped break up the day. Skeletal Mages hurt summons a lot so I tried to kill everything else and then get those. Everything else, I just went all in on without any issues.
Wolves, moose, bears, and a good selection of undead. I got most of that to about 50%, but I did manage to get Skeletons and Ghouls to 100% and unlock those summon. I don't plan on using them (at least for now), but it's good to have Ghouls out of the way since Ghouls are one of the less common undead spawns.
House Note: I had an open character slot so I made alt, got the horse from the tutorial (skipping everything else) and ran it out to my house. If you have extra slots, you might consider doing the same at some point. It can be incredibly valuable to have a character there to rotate your crafting stations and keep those long timers going without having to run your main character all the way back every few hours. (If they are too weak to get wood for charcoal pits, you can always just load up a couple of wagons and leave them at your house for your alt to unload without having to go get them.)
After all that house stuff, I made my way down to the northern Goblin camp. The mages can mess up your summons so take them out first or get them solo. The Wargs can lay out some heavy damage too so watch them. Because I had those 3 heals and some AoE spells, everything else was group pulling and blowing it up. Not any real challenge for my level. I had intented to get Goblins to 100% here, but someone, who was obviously lower level, came and I decided to finish out the POI and call it a day. I got them to maybe ~70%.
Talent Pic:
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Day 3 Plans:
TLDR: Probably another easy day. 100% Goblins and their POI then "quickly" run through Bandits for their POI. END TLDR
Right off the bat, I'll probably do a refining rotation at the house, which probably just means a charcoal pile, but maybe another set of ore and coal runs. After that, 100% Goblins, and then collect the Bandit POI.
Usually when I do the bandits on Aerhen, I'll hunt/clear one set of POI for the money and drops (which are solid for how hard they are) and just run through the other set of POI because I'm so disgusted that I want to get the hell away from them. We'll see, but I feel like my "easy day" tomorrow will be less time rather than Day 2, which was more time, but way less focused.
There's a good chance I'll call it a day at this point.
Just to talk a bit about skills, I do want to get the rest of the summons, but otherwise, I'm not looking for anything specific.
If I keep going: Probably 100% undead since they're close to my home and or because I'm getting the various undead POI that are spread out over Aehren. Otherwise, collecting some more of the various world spawns (bear, moose, wolves, etc).
If I had stayed on Terra for Day 2: 100% coming to Syndesia. Some combo of Goblins, bandits, undead. As I said before, these are easy Knowledge that you can quickly bang out.
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Day 3 Results:
TLDR: 3.5 hours today (~23.5 hours total) with about 1 hour on house related things, and 2.5 working on Knowledge. 192k Knowledge, rank 32, about 55k gold. One recipe. One Orb of Leadership. END TLDR
Gear: No Changes except I got a 5 speed horse so I'm full zoom now.
Summons: No changes from Yesterday.
Skills: No changes from Yesterday.
Talents: No pic today because I only got two points. I put them in Health Regen because I'm thinking about the CON/STR nodes that reduce encumbrance. (At this point, you got a lot of options and I think good arguments could be made about a lot of stuff.)
What Happened: I started just before the morning patch so I decided to do a couple ore runs. After the patch I ran out to the northern Goblin camp and got almost everything to 100% before another new looking player showed up so I decided to just finish at the southern camps. Nothing real to talk about at the southern camps. It was all easy. Goblins and their POI to 100%
100% Knowledge note: Don't feel like you need to get every single thing to 100% because you will hit rank 50 with lots of knowledge to spare. For example, while doing Goblins, I only got Warg to ~50% because they're not super common and I didn't want to waste time just getting them. You always can get everything to 100%, but you don't always need to.
I decided that I didn't want to put any effort into Bandits so I rode through the southern camp (knocked down once) to get the POI. Took the boat from that area to the northern Bandit area and also rode through (knocked down a couple of times).
That's about it for Day 3. I did snag a load of coal on the way home, but I'm otherwise off the computer for today.
Note about gathering heavy resources: If you're getting a resource that is far enough away, consider riding out there and making a wagon at the location to haul stuff back. You can just trash the wagon when you're done with it. It's kinda up to you on how far away they need to be to do this, but keep it in the back of your mind.
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Day 4 Plans:
TLDR: Undead to 100% and then onto elementals END TLDR
So yea, Undead to 100% for the knowledge and the remaining summons. I feel like I'll drop bear for Skeletal Knight, but not 100% yet. (Felghoul and Crawling horrors are not super common so those are ones I probably wont grind to 100.)
After undead, the only big things we have left are world spawns, elementals, and Jotunn. I can't think of anything I want from the Aerhen world spawns so I'll probably skip those for now and work on some Elementals. I don't know how well these are going to go because summons get ate by magic. The good news is that today's patch seems to have fixed monsters resetting when summons die so you should be able to chain summon as needed.
For an order.. I'll probably hit Cold first, because they're close to me, then Storm or Fire, then Fire or Storm, and lastly Crystal.
I might go Ghoul and Skeletal Knight/Bear instead of three summons just because some of the big magic attacks just 1 shot the weaker summons. The only other strategy I have in mind is to bait out the big elemental hits on myself and then let the pets go in. Because of the talents I have, I will heal myself while healing them so that should work, but we'll see. It's entirely possible that I'll need some real armor to be able to push through these.
I will say this, I might be skipping Greater Elementals at this point. I just don't know if they will be dying with my current gear/imbues. I will at least get all the random mobs, primelings, and normal elementals down.
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Day 4 Results:
TLDR: 3.5 hours today (27 hours total) with 30 minutes on gathering. 213k Knowledge, rank 34, ~8k gold. Ice Elementals to 100% plus others. (END TLDR
Gear: No Changes.
Summons: I switched to Ghoul and Skeletal Knight.
Skills:
I started with the Skills you see in Day 2 and switched to the following about halfway thru the day.
I added Shockwave in my empty slot as a stun to help with breaking channeled spells.
Talents: No pic today again. Just got two more points in Health Regen. (Though I might move these to something else until I can actually get the encumbrance reduction. Need to think about it.)
What Happened: I started the day by doing a couple of ore runs along with a charcoal refill. I whipped up 50 steel ingots because I plan to make a "long term" chainmail set with imbues.
After that I decided to head to Ice Elementals because there was a PvP event around the undead area near me and it wasn't worth the hassle of dealing with when I had other options. I started with my wolf, bear, and Skeletal Archer setup and was able to kill everything in the area, including Greater Ice Elementals. Nothing to really point out except that the Greater Ice Elementals rocked my summons as expected. I could kill them, but the wolves died from basically everything in 1 shot and the bear and skeleton didn't do all that much better. After the into attack, I was basically resummoning on cooldown.
After doing down once, I decided to head back to my house and respec. I also decided to kill another 5 or so Skeletal Knights to get them to 100% and unlock the summon. Once I was done with Knights, my new skills are as seen above. The Skeletal Knight and Ghoul both have good ice resistance and are immune to chill and freeze. I put Shockwave into my "empty" slot because I wanted a short cooldown stun to interrupt any casting from the Greater Ice Elemental. (Yes, Pillar of Fire stuns, but I wanted to spam that for damage and still have a backup.)
With the new setup, everything was easier, but it's hard to target the Skeletal Knight with targeted heals (Healing Burst). The Greater Ice Elementals were both easier and harder. Because the Ghoul and Skeletal Knight have such similar stats, the starting pair would often end up dying around the same time. This left me with no summons waiting for cooldowns. I never got knocked down while tanking, but it made me wish I had actual armor on.
Buuuuuuuuut, they lasted longer than the previous summons set so I got in more attacks and heals of my own so the overall kills were easier. (And after that first set dies, my summons are staggered so it's not an issue.) I thought about going in with the single summon until ~50% health and then summoning the second, to self stagger, but I never tried it.
Not much else to talk about. I was able to get the Arctic Wolves to ~50%, but didn't feel like grinding them out. I got minor knowledge progress on a bunch of random world spawns.
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Day 5 Plans:
TLDR: Undead to 100% and then even more Elementals END TLDR
Undead Knowledge is less important now that I have the Skeletal Knights, but they're all around me so it's hard not to get it.
For Elementals, I'm leaning towards Fire or Crystal next. Fire would get me a couple of the stronger fire spells that I could swap in for the two I use now. Crystal would get me the Crystal Primeling which uses Crystalline Touch - a silence. I'm thinking this could be really useful when dealing with the other summons. For science, I'll probably at least get the Crystal Primeling first.
That's all I expect to do on "short" 3-4 hour days. If I do more stuff, it'll just be more elementals and or picking up the various undead POI all over the map.
At some point I'm going to go lookup some Restoration imbues just so I can start getting those materials ready. I'll definitely have these ready before I return to Arboreus (which will be after all the Elementals are down). I don't know that I'll bother with other imbues. Maybe just mana regen so I can spam stuff even harder. I might sneak in a couple of Cooldown imbues as well. I'll also make a Mending Staff (for the Spiritual Power).
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Day 5 Results:
TLDR: ~8 hours today (35 hours total) with ~3 hours on gathering. 249k Knowledge, rank 37, ~8k gold. Crystal Elementals, Undead basically to 100%, some Fire Elemental action. (END TLDR
(I went "easy" today so the times are a little inflated compared to what I actually did.)Gear: I went ahead and threw on some Chain Mail made from Iron. The durability is crap, but it's basically throwaway gear since I would need to grind it to unlock the Battlemage and Cleric sets. I don't think it helped me at all over the basic Hide that I was wearing, but it's free and no one would buy it so shrug
Summons: Started the day with Ghoul and Skeletal Knight. I used that most of the day except when testing out Fire Elementals. I will cover these in the explanation below.
Skills:
I started with the Skills you see in Day 4, but with Lifelink instead of Shockwave. I used these for everything except Fire Elementals.
I started Fire Elementals with this:
Ice skills are self explanatory, but I chose these because they did not require channeling and were AoE. I will explain the choices of summons in "What Happened."In Fire Elementals I switched to:
Shatter Wards to dispel Fire Cloak from the normal and greater Elementals. Fire Protection because I was getting burning too often on myself.I will explain the choices of summons in "What Happened.""Finished" Fire Elementals with:
Unequiped my staff and used my own Crystalline Touch to pair with the Crystal Primeling for even more silence.Talents: Will post a pic below, just because it's been a while. I did switch to get more carry capacity because I'm definitely not a hoarder. The way I'm approaching this build, there's not too many talents I would take beyond the INT and WIS ones I already have. The extra damage nodes at the end of INT are probably good if you use spells more. If you want better debuff stacking, you should probably go PER and Accuracy. There are lots of options for summons, mine is just one.
What Happened: Started with lots of gathering runs and the classic Charcoal Pile restack. During this I passively worked on undead knowledge. I'm at 100% on undead except Crawling Horror, Felghoul, Spider Lich, and of course the dragon. I have killed everything besides the dragon so they can all be done with my current level of gear, they're just not common enough for me to want to grind them out. I do need most of the undead POI still and I will get them eventually by riding through (and killing anything I need knowledge on still).
First real stop was Crystal Elementals. The only things in their area are them and some random wolves. Primelings and normal Elementals were easy. Greater Elementals were more challenging and required resummoning. The basic problem with them is their big channeled area attack. You wand to stun them out of it, but it silences you. I basically ran away when it happened and tried to drop a pillar on them to stun them before it wiped out the pets. Most of the time I failed, it really hurts and pets do poorly with magic.
Note about Crystal Elementals: Energy damage will heal them. This means do not use auto attacks with basic mage staves, Mending Staves, or any other weapon that does energy damage.
I got Primelings and normals to 100%, but only got the greaters to 20%. They're not worth the time to farm them with my current strength.
After Crystals I went to Fire Elementals
Note about Fire Elementals: Terra's Volcano area has every monster in this area besides the Fire Primelings. I would advise you push through it, killing normally, to get the POI then 100% the rest when you're doing the volcano on Terra. (You should easily 100% Primelings just by getting the POIs here on Aerhen. Or vice versa if you're coming from the other direction.)
Alright, so Fire Elementals... There's a couple of issues with these that we, as summoners, need to overcome. First, fire is OP and will dunk you and your pets. Second, your pets are already weak against magic and only two of them have anything better than trash fire resistance. The first is a Fire Primeling, which you can't use because it will heal the fire elementals. The Second is the bear, which is a tank and that's awesome right? right? Sure, but all that fur burns...
Going into Fire elementals my plan was to use the two ice spells to try and blow stuff up before it could do too much damage. Then Crystal Primeling for it's Crystaline Touch silence ability on normal attacks (to shutdown the elementals). I chose to run the Ghoul knowing that it would get blown out of the water by the normal and greater elementals, but that it would still be ok/good against everything else while providing more damage than the bear.
Killed everything fairly easily except the Greater Fire Elementals. The normal ones did blow up my ghoul as expected, but the Crystal Primeling did help. The Greater Fire Elemental shit on me and my summons.
To make a long story short, fire OP and burning melts summons (and you since most of their spells are large AoEs). I dropped the ice spells in favor of Shattered Wards to dispel Fire Cloak off normal/greaters and Protection from Fire to greatly reduce the damage I was taking so I could focus on the summons. I dropped Ghoul in favor of Ice Primeling because I felt it would do the most damage and that a bear would still melt to burning damage. (It seems like companion primelings are immune to burning.) This improved the situation with greaters and let me kill one, but it was still tough.
My Crystal Primeling wasn't able to lock down all casting from the elementals. Life Link wasn't helping too much and was frankly a bit of a distraction since stuff was dying so fast. I decided to unequip my weapon and toss in my own Crystaline Touch. Pretty sure the combination of these two skills is the solution to mages with summons. I was only able to test on one Greater before I had to leave the area (I was stacked full of loot from all day long and a pvp event was starting), but my primeling and I basically had it on lockdown and without their cloak ability, we just pounded it to nothing. Will need to test more, but I think Crystal Primeling and Crystaline Touch will work very well on all mages (plus Shatter Wards for those with a cloak ability).
That's about it for the day.
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Day 6 Plans:
TLDR: Fire Elemental POIs, Storm Elementals, Sea Trolls, and preparing to go to Terra. END TLDR
I think I've got the strategy needed for Fire Elementals and I don't expect too much trouble getting their POI (I will 100% them on Terra). Storms are easier than Fire, but I might try the same general strategy for them. We'll see. Sea Trolls are in the same general area as the Storms so I will probably hit those too, but they also don't have any abilities I want so it will depend on if I can find a nice rotation for them.
Reminder that you do not need to 100% every monster to hit rank 50. You got a pretty good range of extra stuff
At that point, I need to hit the random undead POI around Aehren and I'm basically done except for Jotunn and I'm purposefully saving them for the return so that I'm at my maximum strength (and only have to test them all once).
Next step is Terra, but I want a set of imbued gear (along with a set or two of junk gear). Mending Staff plus Chain Mail (Steel) will probably be what I go with unless I decide to grind out chain, save them for later use, and make a Cleric or Battlemage set. Either of the T2 sets are better than plain Chain and both are viable for different strategies, but I don't know that I want to put in the time for them right now - specifically because I'm trying to get this Not a Guide to a finishing point. I think just getting my Restoration imbues will be enough so I'll probably aim towards that and pivot later if needed.
I will note that I am reaching the point where I may not be one hundred percenting monsters, but I will test a few kills on them to see if they can be killed and by what means. (Similar to my comments on the rarer undeads from Day 5 Results.)
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Bonus day 5.5 Results
TLDR: 2 hours (37 total) Mostly riding around. 258k Knowledge, rank 38, 2k gold. Finished Fire Elemental POI and rode around to get the various undead POI END TLDR
Got a second wind and decided to play some more. I went to Fire Elementals to get the POI and try out the build I used at the end of Day 5 to kill some more Greater Fire Elementals. When I tried this (on the single Greater Fire Elemental) I thumped it pretty good without too much effort, on the next 6-7 of them it did not go as well. As best I can tell, this strategy relies on being fully awake and alert so that you can spam your Crystaline Touch auto attacks while weaving in your healing. I was not awake and alert enough to do that.
I did get the kills, but it was ugly. Lots of resummons, got downed twice, and it was overall a hectic mess. Having 10/10 restoration would help a lot and the next time I try them (on Terra) I'll have an imbued set handy to get em. I did try dropping my "extra" talents (and a few from DEX) to get as much accuracy as I could. It seemed to help, maybe dropping DEX for PER would help enough to make this viable? I'm not sure I will bother testing, it will depend on how things go on Terra.
From there, I rode across the southern part of Aerhen to snag some Tin and get the undead POI across that region. This was waaaaaaaaaay too much riding just to do this, but I don't think I'll naturally be in that area for this Not a Guide so I decided to just do it.
Day 6 will still be Storm Elementals and Sea Trolls plus prep for going to Terra (I plan on being on Terra by the end of Day 6).
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Day 6 Prep:
In preparation for Day 6 events, I came up with 4 very cheap/common options for Restoration Imbues.
Angel Trumpet, Anthurium Pistils, Passion Flower Stems: Plants found all over Arboreus.
Lavender: Definitely found on Syndesia, can''t remember about Arboreus.
Penny Bun Mushrooms: Found on both planets.
Spell Residue: I find these most often from the bandit mages, but they do drop elsewhere. (Both planets.)
Primal Blood: These are found from Primordeal monsters in the Book of knowledge that are not elementals. Trolls are the ones I most often get them from. (Both Planets)
Ghoul Saliva: From Ghouls and Felghouls (Syndesia)
Living Wood: From Sproutlings and Treants (Arboreus)The downside of these options is that they require reagents from both planets. My plan is to take my Syndesia reagents with me, gather the rest on Arboreus. Then I'll use my friend's imbuing table (from Day 1) to get the imbues. This is not an option for everyone, but you may be able to find someone that will let you temporarily use the imbuing table at their house.
If you do not want to rely on reagents from whatever the opposite planet is, you can look into Alchemy (wiki.gg) and the extract systems. Extracts provide 5 points of their aspects which is enough for T2 imbues.
Note: There are tons of options you can use depending on what resources you have available. Don't think these are the only options or even the best.
Note 2: This scenario is why you should poke around and figure out what imbues you want early. You can keep an eye out for those reagents and make sure to collect a bunch of them and take them home with you. (Since I started on Arboreus, I could have just collected these and brought them with me when I first came to Syndesia.)
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Day 6 Results:
TLDR: ~6 hours today (41 hours total) with ~2 hours on gathering. 284k Knowledge, rank 10, ~10k gold. Storm Elementals and Sea Trolls both to 100% END TLDR
Gear: I had to throw on a new set of Iron Chain Mail, but otherwise, no gear changes today.
Summons: Started the day with Ghoul and Skeletal Knight, tried Crystal and Fire Primelings for Storm Elementals, but decided to use Crystal Primeling and Skeletal Knight for them.
Skills:
Lots of skill stuff yesterday so I'll repost my "generic" skills that I used for Sea Trolls.
I should probably upgrade my damage abilities, but I'm lazy and they're working. I'll think about it tomorrow.
In Storm Elementals I started with:
Basically the same setup as I came up with for Fire Elementals. I ended up dropping the Fire Primeling in favor of the Skeletal Knight for better DPS.I did choose to 100% even the Greater Storm Elementals here because I know of a nice little rotation and it's not too bad to finish them off.
Talents: No significant changes. I will say this, you should probably make a preset that involces max carry and movement speed. It's handy to have when you know you're only going to be transporting.
What Happened: I started with Sea Trolls (and various world spawn monsters that I did not have to 100% already). Everything was very easy with two notes on the trolls. The normal ones will do little explosions and there's not much you can do besides healing thru or resummoning. The Elder Sea Trolls will do a channeled AoE that will smush your summons very quickly. I saved Burning Pillar to interrupt the channel and it made Elders very easy.
Storm Elementals (including Primeling) have a lot of AoEs which will tear through your pets, but the Crystaline Touch combo with Crystaline Primeling summon basically stopped all of it. I had very little trouble in this area and I choose to 100% even the Greater Storm Elementals because I know of a nice little rotation and it's not too bad to finish them off. It's not fast, but it worked very well.
The only other thing I've done today was gather more materials and I went ahead and got myself to 2/4 in Chain Mail so that I could make Battlemage or Cleric sets. I also got the materials needed for some Mithril, but I doubt I will use it until my skill is better. (I'm kinda cheap.)
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Day 7 Plans:
TLDR: Start the day on Terra and I'll probably 100% Termidians and maybe some of the insects around their area. Extra time will be spent on some of the world spawns of Terra. Treants, Earth Elementals, etc. END TLDR
It wasn't stated at the end of Day 6, but I will have traveled through the Stargate by the start of today. My plan is to bring two sets of Chain Mail (one junk Iron and one imbued Steel.) and a Staff of Mending. Even though I wont have all 10 proficiency slots unlocks, I will have the steel set with 10/10 restoration (and probably nothing else, cause I'm cheap).
Terra has some pretty good Knolwedge locked away behind "world spawn" monsters (monsters that don't have their own POI) so I will probably start with Termidians, but also be working on that world spawn stuff. I don't know that I'll get to any other POI today.
Termidians are not overly difficult, but they do have a lot of acid and that can be annoying so while they are "easier" than some of the stuff I've done so far, I doubt I'll be pulling big groups and trying to mow them down. Only the Matrons should be difficult, and I'm not sure how hard they will actually be. I've only ever killed them a few times and it varied widely based on the build I was using. I might not 100% them because they are, by far, the rarest spawn in Termidians.
The area around Termidians does have some good insect spawns, but there are areas in the treehugger Ogre that also are good for the insects. It will depend on how tomorrow is looking to know if I want to bother with them around Termidians.
Treants, Earth Elementals, Forest and Mountain Trolls, and something else I can't think of are the notable world spawns I'll also be targeting today.
Oh, planning to use the same skills that I started Day 6 with. Termidians might need some adjustments, but I think all the rest of that will be fairly straightforward.
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Day 7 Results:
TLDR: ~4.5 hours today (45.5 hours total) with ~30 min on gathering. 331k Knowledge, rank 44, ~8k gold. Termidians to 100% and a bunch of world spawns.END TLDR
Gear: No changes to the el cheapo (Iron Chain Mail and a primitive mage staff).
Summons: Skeletal Knight and Skeletal Archer all day.
Skills:
The basic set:
Talents: No significant changes.
What Happened: Another easy day. I basically only messed with Termidians today while also picking up a bunch of the world spawns around their area (mostly various insects) and some stuff I ran past getting to and from. Overall, the Termidians were much easier than I expected. Only the Matron was difficult enough to mention and I just threw on Soul Link and took her down no problem. I did go head and get Matrons to 100% because I know a little rotation for them. (I hope you've noticed a common theme of when I skip or don't skip 100% on the rarer spawns.)
On the basic insects, none were challenging. I believe I have now killed every world spawn on Terra and there were all doable, if not slow. The one exception was the Elder Forest Troll which out healed the little damage my summons and I can output. I didn't bother trying other pets/skills, but I'm sure there is a combo that get em.
I did run across a few Ogre camps and tested some kills on those. Ogre Brute was just easy. Ogre Watcher and Ogre Shieldbearers required healing spam and Soul Link, but went down without too much fuss. Ogre Mage wasn't very hard either (despite being mages they have very little offensive magic). Those are all the ones I ran across and tested.
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Day 8 Plans:
TLDR: More world spawns and one of either Ogre types or maybe a loop around the volcano. END TLDR
The POI that I'm missing on Terra are: Industrial Ogre, Treehugger Ogre, volcano center (fire), volcano ring (earth ele and mountain dragons), acid pits (not an actual POI, but a very well defined area). Everything else is world spawns and I still have a fair chunk of that left.
I will probably pick one of the Ogre camps or a lap around the volcano as my primary goal and kill world spawns on the way. For the first time, I will take my "good" equipment with me. As a reminder this is:
Steel Chain Mail with T2 Restoration and T2 Mana Regen imbues.
Hardwood Mending Staff with T2 Cooldown reduction imbue.
Fox Tail Amulet with T2 Restoration Imbue. (I only have this so I can use it once I hit rank 50. Right now my proficency is locked at 8/10 so it's not needed.)I added the mana regen imbues because there's nothing else I really wanted and if I'm really slamming spells, I do run out of mana.
Based on what I know now, that heavy magic users are the main thing that destroys minions, I should be able to kill just about everything left on both worlds besides the large dragons and probably 1-2 of each type of Ogre and 1-2 of the Jotunn. My "elemental killer" build might help with the Ogres/Jotunn that I expect to be hard, but I'm not sure about the dragons. I have some ideas for these, but I'll just have to see when I get to them.
BTW, this is the mana regen imbue I used. It's just one option, but it's very easily obtained on Terra (where I happened to be).
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Day 8 Results:
TLDR: 4 hours today (49.5 hours total) with ~30 min on gathering. 371k Knowledge, rank 46, ~10k gold. 100% to Industrial Ogres plus some world spawns.END TLDR
Gear: I started with the el cheapo (Iron Chain Mail and a primitive mage staff) and switched to the Steel Chain Mail and Mending Staff mentioned in Day 8 Plans.
Summons: Skeletal Knight and Skeletal Archer all day.
Skills:
I started with the same skills as Day 7, but I felt like my DPS was lacking so I switched to the following:
Talents: I will post a pic below, but basically when I switched to the above skills I dropped a chuck of my right side points and went into PER for more accuracy (warm/burning stacking). Carry Weight because I'm not a hoarder.
What Happened: Started with 30 minutes of charcoal piles and ore runs then switched to my main and ran out to Industrial Ogres. In this Instance, I literally ran out (and back) so I could kill all the world spawns that I ran across and pick reagents.
At Industrial Ogres, my el cheapo set with the basic skills were enough to kill everything there - really really really slowly. I decided to pop on my better gear and drop one healing spell in favor of Ignite so I could throw out even more fire stacks and get burning damage. It was a nice improvement in damage and I'm too lazy to try more when it was working (and I was keeping up with respawns, sometimes even have to wait a few seconds).
Ogre Masters were the hardest thing to kill, which should be obvious because they do the most magic damage of the Industrial Ogres. I'm honestly not sure Ogre Lords are using all their skills which, if true, would have made them much easier than they should have been. (I did not 100% Armored Bears just because they're not super common and not worth grinding out just for the knowledge.)
I did try to kill an Elder Forest Troll with my "dps skills" but they still out regenerated me and my minions.
Talent Pic:
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Day 9 Plans:
TLDR: More world spawns and either Treehugger Ogres or maybe a loop around the volcano. END TLDR
Not much to say that wasn't described in the Day 8 plans. I'm very quickly approaching rank 50, and the end of this Not a Guide. Thinking about that, I'm almost certainly going to hit up Treehuggers just because I want to test killing all of those to see what is possible.
The only two Treehuggers that I'm even remotely concerned with are Druids and Archdruids. Both of them are magic heavy and the Archdruid is legitimately a tough kill and can put out some damage.
The Treehugger area is also a very good place to 100% basically all of the lizards and insects that are world spawns on Terra.