Not a Guide: Melee Fighter

Yalah

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: Melee focused character. Human with STR and probably DEX/PER. Starting Background is not important. 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 alt, but my intent is to play them as a fresh character as much as possible to better show what a new player would experience. I will note if/when I use resources from my main.

If you see a Not a Guide with (Pre ECG) know that they are outdated and probably not worth your time.

For weapons: I will start with axes because they're a solid weapon and upon completing the tutorial, you've got a set of very good axe skills. I will experiment with other weapon options, but my early goals will all revolve around axes. In the early game, you can skate by with lower defenses so I'll go with a 2H axe to maximize damage.

For stats: STR governs physical abilities and your Physical Might so it's an obvious choice.

CON More HP - never a bad thing. It will also increase your fortitude which helps negate physical debuffs.
DEX Armor Pen is great since we'll be pure physical. Cooldown Reduction is a plus, but we might suffer from mana rengeration issues which shorter cooldowns only makes worse. Evasion is a solid stat if you are not wearing medium or heavy armors. The encumbrance from both of those will nuke your evasion.
INT is not great for us. The mana regen is the best part, but I'm not going to be putting raw points in INT for it.
PER Accuracy is needed for our auto attacks and for stacking whatever debuffs we want to apply. Crit and Crit damage is also very good for us.
WIS is basically just Willpower for us. This would help us heal with magical debuffs.

I'm choosing PER/DEX to go with STR for the time being.

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.

What I would say is, I feel like melee characters are much more dependent on their gear and stats compared to mages. Humans and Iridra have the most stat points and while they do not offer a +4 in any stat, they're also not going to have a 6 in anything either.

I'm going with a Human because I don't feel like the bonuses from the other races equal out to their downsides when it comes to a melee character. Chadra is a good option, if you keep their energy up, but since their +4 is Dex and not STR, it's a pass for me.

Background Choice: Since I've already said I was going to use axes, Gladiator is the obvious choice and it's kind of a bad choice. Since the tutorial was revamped, there's whole lot of new skills available in it and they're all very easy to get. Every single skill given by the Gladiator Background can be gained in the tutorial which means you could choose a different background for those skills and then just switch to an axe and those skills when you have them.

With that being said, there's actually not any other really good options. The mage backgrounds all give stuff we can't use with an axe and while we might be using a different, Spell Channeling, weapon later, by that time, we'll probably have learned those skills anyway. I will probably take Druid because several of those skills are harder to get, but honestly, it doesn't matter too much.

That's the basic introduction. From here on out, I'll probably make 1-2 posts a day talking about my general goals and what I actually managed to accomplish.

Yalah

Day 1 Plan:

TLDR: Decide if I want to craft gear myself or just farm gold and buy gear. 2k for a house is still a priority because I will want imbues and a house is still the easiest option for those regardless of if I craft my own gear or buy it. I will focus on reagents for imbues and getting more Axe skills. END TLDR

Since Elysium has been up a bit, buying gear from other people is a very viable option. Many will sell lower quality T2 items at a steep discount because they're grinding out those items to get better at crafting them. Remember to look at the materials used because not all are created equal - especially for metals. Tin, Iron, and Copper will cut durability in half making them, in theory, worth half as much as the same item made of say Steel or Bronze. (The lower durability items can still be a good deal.) Also remember that Poor quality (grey border) items cannot be repaired.

Other than farming gold from monsters, you can also check out the "View Market Requests" tab at a marketplace in each of the cities. Those can be good sources of money to instantly sell the resources that you've been farming. Be warned that some people will put up those orders with prices that are far lower than the actual value of items. 300g for a Proficiency Orb is not a good deal. The approximate value of items (so you don't get ripped off) is far too large of a topic for here, but this is a valid option for making quick money early so I wanted to point it out.

With that stuff in mind, lets get started.

Tutorial: Get everything to 100%. It's free knowledge and skills that are very easy to get. Take the time, don't skip it. If you still want to skip it, at least snag a horse before taking the portal.

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. Take extra care as a melee against these.

I'm going to start on Arboreus for a couple of reasons not part of this Not a Guide, but I think both locations can be good. Syndesia probably has better access to skills so that might be better as a first choice.

Skills to look for early: Here are some skills I'll be looking for and what I plan to kill to get them. You can look at each skill in game for the full list of options for each skill.

Axe Fighting (you want these cause more damage):

Decimate: Mammoths 50% (Aerhen)
Strike Down: Wolf Spiders 20% (Aerhen), Mud Aligators 25% (Terra)
Hack and Slash: Felghoul 100% (Aerhen)

Other:

Hunter's Mark: Goblin Tracker 80% (Aerhen), Groko Hunter 80% (Terra) (This negates evasion on the target which means your auto attacks always land without needing any accuracy.)
Aura of Oppression: Elder Mountain Troll 40% (Terra) (The crushing damage always hits and Slow is a nice bebuff against monsters that will mostly be auto attacking you.)
Challenge: Groko Chieftan 80% (Terra) (You do more damage to and take less damage from your target.)
Summon Skeletal Knight/Ghoul: Skeletal Knight/Ghoul 100% (Aerhen) (There is a world where you keep a summon on your hotbar as a damage sponge/distraction.)

There are more than just those, especially if you want to use other weapons. For now, these will keep me busy.

Skills to use: Bloodlust/Strike Wounds depending on if I need the healing. Whatever Axe skills I can use. Bear Summon to act as a meat shield if I feel like I need it (this is probably not worth the time against weak monsters. With a Greataxe and the basic skills you should be blowing things out of the water).

Equipment: I will use the starter city marketplace to find a Greataxe for sale on my starter world and my first goal will be killing my way to wherever it is sold and buying it. As a melee, getting T2 weapons ASAP should be a big priority because their damage output is much better than primitive weapons. I will also be looking for a quick life on hit imbue to help with healing.

Hide armor is not bad at the start. I don't like the encumbrance of it so I will be keeping an eye out for cheap Leather Armor for more damage (less damage penalty) and then I'll also keep an eye out for cheap Chain Mail and Plate for a more defensive option. (I'll likely use Hide or Leather for the first several days since defenses are not as important.)

Talents: I'm not sure which way I will go to start. I do like getting my accuracy up early and also evasion is a nice thing to have since we wont have any combat healing outside of Bandages.

That's all I can think of for Day 1.

Yalah

Day 1 Results:

TLDR: 6 hours today. 66k Knowledge, rank 18, about 11k gold. One recipe. Stuff was killed and gear was got. END TLDR

Gear: I bought a Greataxe for 300g and a set of leather for about 400g. I threw a health of hit imbue on the Great Axe and Mana Regen on the armor pieces.
Health on Hit:

Mana Regen:

These are very cheap options for the Imbues. There are many possible reagents, you do not need these, but if you started on Arboreus, these are extremely common (and you should have Necrotic Bone from the Tutorial).

Skills:
I started the day with these skills:

I ended the day with these skills:

Talents:
I started by putting my points in this order:

I ended with these talents:

What Happened: I started the tutorial as a Druid and used that all the way to the end because I was too lazy to change. Once I went to Arboreus, I sold a few items in the starter city and found a Great Axe as well as Leather Armor that was cheap and over on the east side of Terra. I decided to ride over there, killing and gathering on the way, and basically by the time I arrived, I had enough for everything I wanted and the materials needed to imbue them with the previously mentioned imbues.

Since I was close to my friend's house I used his imbuing table just to save time, but if you don't have a friend and aren't an alt with an established house, you have some options.

Join a city and or guild that allows access to imbuing stations.
Find a random person that will give you temporary access to their imbuing station on their house (careful, they could rob you by letting you add items to the station and then removing your access).
Farm up your own money, pick a house spot, build your own house, and then imbue your items.
Buy a plot in a location central to where you're going to be, build only an imbuing table, imbue your items, abandon the plot. (This might sound nuts, but the imbuing table can be built outside so you do not need to build a house first. I've literally done this before. 2k gold is not that much and it's a quick solution to getting imbues. You can also throw a chest or two on the plot to store items temporarily. Make sure you get all your items off the plot and abandon it before you switch planets otherwise you'll have a plot that is real far away.)

On my way out to buy equipment, I went ahead and hunted down some Mud Alligators to unlock Strike Down. I added that to my bar and dropped Strike Wounds. What I did next is probably not something I'd recommend for new players, but I decided to try and kill some Elder Mountain Trolls to get Aura of Oppression. (Elder Mountain Trolls are fairly common on the east side of Terra.)

My strategy was to throw out my bear and attack using Bloodlust and Health on Hit to keep my health up. Then I'd resummon the bear when it died and the cooldown recovered. The first couple of tries weren't pretty, but I was able to kill 8 of them and unlock Aura of Oppression. I wont actually use this for a while, but since I was there, it was a fun challenge.

After I finished beating up the trolls, I returned to the west side of Terra (I took a boat this time) and jumped into Bandits. Right off the bat I tried some group pulls and got downed pretty quick. Leather Armor is not as tanky as I remember it and some of the bandits have some new skills since the last time I tried this. I switched to chain pulling one after another and building my Execute stacks.

Doing chain pulls, I had no issues. Focus on Mages > archers > melee in descending order and you should be pretty good. Basically one rotation plus a couple auto attacks was enough to Execute everything. I did need to rest every so often but I tried to do this when I was going to lose my execute stacks, for one reason or another, so I could maintain that faster pace.

Eventually I started to get a better feel for what I could handle and started chain pulling duos and trios depending on the kind of bandit. I have, but have not bothered trying the Bear here. It's just not needed (and I'm not sure it will be needed anytime soon). I haven't been using bandages at all, but I'd probably drop the bear for them if I wanted to. They're not good healing, but you can basically spam them as a passive healing source. If you ever end up in Heavy Armor, you might need them, but with Quick Rest, I don't see a need now.

I got maybe halfway through bandits before I decided to call it a day and returned to town. When I got to town I started rethinking my talents. I went down STR for the Physical Power, Two Handed Style, and Two Handed Mastery, but I realized that I was spending 10 points of, "not more damage" just to reach them. I poked around a bit and decided to try out the second set of talents and see how they do on Day 2. Feint caps out my accuracy when I dodge (which is often since Leather Armor is considered Light Armor) and The One is one point to dodge projectiles. The rest of the points are in Crit Chance and Armor Penetration which are just solid damage points. I though about putting more into evasion, but my base evasion is 600 just from DEX and most things I'm fighting now don't have a ton of accuracy. I threw 2 points into Mana Regen because I was pulling fast enough that I was running low on mana even with the mana regen imbues.

Yalah

Day 2 Plans:

TLDR: Pure Knowledge grind. Bandits Then Groko to 100% END TLDR

Because I was able to buy gear, and I already have money needed to buy a house if I wanted to, I'm basically going to just grind knowledge on Day 2. I don't know if I will 100% Bandits, since you can finish them on Syndesia, but I will definitely get all their POI. Secondary goal is to 100% Groko. I might be tempted to catch a free ride over to Aerhen since it has more skills that I want, but I think I'll stick to Terra for now.

On house locations: I really don't know what I'd pick. If you wanted to craft your own stuff, you're going to need metals for the weapons at a minimum. On armors, I'm really not sure what will be needed. This early, leather is fine, but later on I think we might need more defenses. The Rogue Set is a T2 leather that synergizes with our build. It has improved defenses, but not great defenses. Arboreus is the better planet for leather farming. If we switch to any metal armors, for real defenses, then Syndesia is probably the better option.

I'm honestly not sure which armors I would use long term. I was always a big believer that Leather Armors were the best armor sets in the game, but armors got a rebalance since I last played melee and you might need "real" armor to handle the tougher monsters now. (I really put a lot of effort into showing off how OP leather armors were so that nerf is probably partly my fault, heh.) There's also a world where I just keep buying gear - at least for now.

If I had started on Syndesia: Goblins, Bandits, Undeads. The first two should be easy. For undeads, I'm not sure how Felghouls and Crawling Horrors would go and the Spider Lich will almost certainly use your skull as a cup with current gear.

Yalah

Day 2 Bonus Content:

For my own uses, I went ahead and made a list of all the various weapon skill and where I'd get them. Since I already had it, I thought why not share it. The options listed are not exhaustive nor necessarily the easiest. They are a mix of "easy to obtain," "stuff I would kill naturally at low levels," "stuff that I would get while getting something else," and occasionally the only option or the best of bad options.

Axe Fighting:

Execute, Lacerate, and Sharp Strike are available in the Tutorial.
Decimate: Mammoths 50% (Aerhen)
Strike Down: Wolf Spiders 20% (Aerhen), Mud Aligators 25% (Terra)
Hack and Slash: Felghoul 100% (Aerhen)

Swordsmanship:

Eviscerate: Mammoths 75% (Aerhen), Colossal Huskworm 60% (Terra)
Swipe: Brown Bear 25% (Both), Armored Bear 25% (Terra)
Slashing Wave: Skeletal Warrior 80% (Aerhen)
Whirlwind: Skeletal Warrior 40% (Aerhen)
Pommel Strike: Skeletal Knight 20% (Aerhen)
Counter Strike: Skeletal Knight 60% (Aerhen)

Fencing:

Double Strike: Bandit Spellsword 20% (Both)
Pierce Through: Bandit Spellsword 60% (Both)
Heart Piercing Strike: Giant Spider 60% (Aerhen), Termidian Warrior 60% (Terra)
Lunge: Grokoton Warrior 20% (Terra)
Puncturing Strike: Grokoton Warrior 40% (Terra)
Impale: Grokoton Warrior 80% (Terra)

Knife Fighting:

Bleeding Strike and Debilitating Strike are available in the Tutorial.
Coup de Grace: Goblin Cuthroat 80% (Aerhen), Street Rat (Background)
Crippling Strike: Bandit Thug 40% (Both)
Disrupting Strike: Ghoul 60% (Aehren), Scorching Dartfrog 60% (Terra)
Lethal Strike: Bandit Thug 50% (Both)
Rend Armor: Bandit Marauder 50% (Both). Grokoton Stalker 40% (Terra)

Mace Fighting:

Crushing Assault and Heavy Blow are available in the Tutorial.
Concussive Strike: Bandit Leader 20% (Both), Skeletal Priest 20% (Aerhen)
Resonating Blow: Elder Mountain Troll 20% (Both)
Spine Breaker Blow: Bandit Ruffian 80% (Both)
Split Earth: Bandit Leader 100% (Both)

Yalah

Day 2 Results:

TLDR: 4.5 hours today (10.5 hours total). 131k Knowledge, rank 26, about 14k gold. One recipe. 100% on Bandits and Groko. Move to Syndesia. END TLDR

Gear: I played the entire day with the same gear I ended Day 1 with. To finish up Day 2, I bought and imbued the following gear:

I bought a Blue quality Steel Greataxe for 1200g that I went ahead and got to +2. I imbued it with the same Hit Health as Day 1 and added a Cooldown Reduction with the following:

I repaired my Green/Blue quality Leather. (I bought raw leather on a market to repair with. Repairing was more expensive than just buying a new set, but I wasn't ever close to a cheap new set so this saved time.) The same Mana Regen imbue and I added Axe Fighting Proficency with:

I made a Fox Tail Amulet for the extra evasion. I threw on the same Cooldown Reduction as above as well as a T2 evasion with:

These are very cheap options for the Imbues.

Skills: No changes from Day 1.

Talents: From the end of Day 1 talents, I basically just added points into Health Regen and then Runner and Racer. My logic was that because mounting will drop your Execute stacks, the extra movement speed was a nice quality of life to keep me running between packs faster.

At the end of the day I switched to the following Talents. Basically, I had gotten enough talent points that I could push all the way to Two Handed Mastery and still get all the rest of the damage points that I had before. (I did lose 1 PER and some crit chance, but Two Handed Style actually put me at a higher crit chance.)

Not sure how I feel about The One. I think I will keep it for now since I still need to do Goblins and the Bandit POI and there's a fair amount of archers in those, but I think I'll drop it after that.

What Happened: There's actually not much to say here, it was pure slaying. I did decide to go ahead and get Bandits to 100% on Terra even though I would still need the POI on Aerhen and could have finished there. You got options either way, but I don't really like the layout of Bandits on Aerhen so I prefer to get 100% on Terra and speed through on Aerhen. It's really up to you.

After I got most of the Bandit POI, decided to head back to the northern starter town to clear my inventory and then hit the northern Groko camp because it's close to that starter town. Nothing even remotely challenging in Groko though I was careful with the Shaman and their poison stacks. Group pulls, chain pulling, barely rested. Once I snagged all the POI, I stopped back in the northern starter town and my plan was that rather than riding down there, getting the river bandit POI on the way, and then riding back (a.k.a. the cheaper way) that by taking the boat I'd spend 600g, hit the bandits coming back north, and save all that time riding.

I hit the southern Groko camp strait from the harbor and it was more slaughter. I kept an eye on what I still needed to get to 100%, but otherwise I mostly rode through. Once I got them to 100% I headed back up to the northern starter town, snagging the remaining bandit POI along the river.

I thought about heading over to the Termidians, but a PvP event was starting so I decided to pack my stuff and head to Syndesia. Before I went, I checked the markets and bought a Blue quality Steel Great Axe, enchanted it to +2 and some refined leather to repair my current leather outfit. I looked up the imbues mentioned above and was sure to bring along all the materials I would need for those imbues (getting the rest after I arrived).

I used my main character's house on Syndesia for the new imbues (with only my own materials). If this were my main character, I'm still not certain where I would want my house because I haven't gotten to the point of needing better armor. If you also don't know, you could do another temp "house" on Syndesia or try the other strategies listed in Day 1.

Edit: I did buy the first row of inventory spaces for what should have been 6.5k. I'm not a hoarder.

More on House locations: You could set up a semi-permanent starter house either very close to a city with open crafting stations or a starter city. (Or just become a citizen of a city to get access to their crafting stations.) You can skip a lot of the crafting stations on your own property then and stick to refining stations. Forge and Charcoal piles for metal, Tanning Tubs for Leather, and an imbuing station since those are restricted even in player cities. Doing this can save you a lot of time on building the "perfect" house when you're not really even sure where you want to put it.

If you are interested in crafting metal gear you should also consider proximity to Coal and metals. If you're going to use your own crafted items, it's entirely viable to make larger amounts of items out of poor quality metals and just toss them when you're done (or recycle them to get 20% of the raw materials back). Specifically, Tin has the lowest melting point out of any metal and will only require a single Charcoal to smelt. This can make mass refining this metal a lot easier than grinding out on something like Mithril or Blood Iron. I'm not going to reccomend any specific location for a metal focused crafter because there's just a lot of options.

If you are interested in Leather crafting (which might be viable for us with T2 leathers), then you probably want to be in or near the snowy areas. Wolves, Bears, Mammoths, and Moose will give you tons of hides and since they're fairly heavy, I wouldn't want to haul them long distances.

One last tip for Execute usage:

If you look at a HP bar, each of those half ticks are 200 health. Starting out, your Executes will probably be in the 400-500 range so once you get something near or under that 2nd to the last tick, you can usually pop them with Execute. Eventually, you'll get a better feel for what you can finish.

Yalah

Day 3 Plans:

TLDR: Goblins to 100% and Bandit POI. END TLDR

Pretty strait forward today. Goblins should be pieces of cake and those will be my starting targets. If I get done with them early, I'll think about snagging the Bandit POIs, but I may decide to do a little cross country to snag some of those southern undead POI, and some knowledge from clearing them. Fully doing 100^ undead knowledge is another alternative. They do have lots of skills from non-axe schools if you are wanting to switch to other weapons.

I may also smack some Mammoths to get Decimate.

If I had started on Syndesia: I would probably be looking to get to Terra and hit Bandits and Grokos. Termidians if I had time.

Yalah

Day 3 Results:

TLDR: 4.5 hours today (15 hours total). 218k Knowledge, rank 35, about 15k gold. Three recipes. 100% on Goblins, ~50% on Undead. END TLDR

Gear: Same gear as I finished Day 2 with.

Skills:

Talents:

What Happened: I knew I was going to Goblins, but I wanted to test killing some Mammoths and Jotunn on the way. For this, I dropped Shockwave and added in Challenge. Buff to your damage and debuff to their damage. I like using it when I know I'll be going 1v1 against harder monsters. Mammoths were easy and Bloodlust was enough to keep my health up. I thought about killing them to get Decimate, but I wanted to focus more on Knowledge grinding.

Further on, I tested Jotunn Berserkers, Warriors, and Huntresses. I was able to kill all of them, but I used a summoned bear to tank some for me. I might have been able to get them without the bear, but I had it memorized and used it. When the bear died, my health on hit and Bloodlust was not enough to keep up on healing, but when I resummoned the bear, it would tank long enough that I could heal back up. I could definitely 100% those with nothing more than what I ended Day 2 with. I also popped a few Felghouls using the bear, but I don't think I needed it.

I stopped at the starter town before goblins and switched to the skills I posted above. The Slow from Aura of Oppression is nice against auto attack heavy monsters and the passive AoE crush damage was nice for the group pulls.If I would have had Decimate, I would have swapped it in for Execute. The stacking Buff from Execute is very good, but when you're chain pulling groups, it is more difficult to maintain the buff because of not being able to target very well.

Either way, Goblins was very easy. Group pulls while I focused on mages -> archers -> everything else. I almost got downed once when I tried a group of 3 wargs at once. (Bleeding + Bloodlust + a reduced healing attack that hits fairly hard.) I had to throw up a bear and still barely made it. I did get downed the first time I fought the rogue legendary. I jumped him with about 7 other goblins including a Death Shaman. Damage over Time got me. Bleeds, Poison, and Acid are all pretty bad for melee because there aren't a ton of good ways to drop those debuffs.

I got Goblins to 100% while getting all the northern Goblin POI. After hitting the bank, I decided that I would take a boat to the southern most tip of Aerhen and then ride northish to get the various undead POI down there and then go to southern Goblins and ride through for their POI. It was a good plan, but I got side tracked with undead and ended up getting them to about 50% knowledge while I got Crawling Horrors, Black Widows, and Vampiric Spiders to 100%.

I used the bear on the Crawling Horrors because they came with a chunk of spiderlings and I was taking a ton of poison stacks/damage. Other than that, I didn't use the bear and was group pulling undeads while focusing the mages -> archers -> everything else.

Yalah

Day 4 Plans:

TLDR: Finish Goblin POI, get Bandit POI, and probably work on finishing undeads. END TLDR

I might start the day by getting Decimate up in the snowy area from Mammoths. I want to try it out on group pulls while I am still doing them. After that, I'm almost certainly going to sail down and get the Goblin POI then ride through bandits for their POI.

One thing I am thinking about is how I plan to handle the various elementals. Their debuffs can be a pain without having good resistances (and Fortitude/Willpower). An alternative to that is to use the matching Protection from <damage> spells, which don't give a ton of resistances, but do give you immunity to their debuffs. The problem is, those protection spells require Spell Channeling and there are no axes with Spell Channeling.

Looking through my skills, I do have most of every weapon group. Actually I'm missing more Axe skills than I am any other single weapon. All of them have spell casting options, but only Maces have a 2H Spell Channeling option with the quarterstaff. However, the Quarterstaff's damage is not a lot more than several of the 1H options. Some of these weapon abilities have changed since I last used them and I'd have to look through them again to see which one I'd want to use.

I'm using Leather Armor now, which is Light Armor, so there are no issues with casting spells. Chain Mail has fairly good magic resistances and would still allow for spell casting while being cheapish. I want to avoid that encumbrance though.

Anyway, looking at Elementals, I either need to swap weapons and use the Protection spells or I'll probably need to make some armor that is resistant to the various elements and swap those in. Although, I might be able to use the bear, but I know that any minion gets smoked by magic and elemental damage. I'm leaning towards Protection Spells, but I will need to think about it.

If I had started on Syndesia: Termidians, if they were not done already, and then I would be looking at what I call "world spawns." All the various monsters that don't have POI and are found spread out all over the maps. Terra has a lot of these in the form of insects, lizards, mountain and forest trolls, Treants, and a fair chunk of other monsters. There's acutally a very big chunk of knowledge tied up in these monsters and you're going to want at least some of it to get to rank 50.

Yalah

Day 4 Results:

TLDR: 4 hours today (19 hours total). 266k Knowledge, rank 39, about 9k gold. Two recipes. Goblin POI, Bandit POI, 100% on most undead, and some progress on world spawns. END TLDR

Gear: Same gear as I finished Day 3 with.

Skills: Did the Mammoth farm with these:

Spent the rest of the day with these:

Talents:

What Happened: Not a ton to talk about today. I wanted to try out Decimate some so I went ahead and rode around the snowy area to farm Mammoths, wolves, bears, and moose. No challenge on any of that stuff. I did go ahead and get Mammoths to 80% to unlock Eviscerate for swords.

Knowing that I would eventually grind some bleed immune undead, I went ahead and switched my skills up to the second set. (I did still have Bear then, but I never used it.) Took the boat nearest to the southern Bandit POI and rode through them and then west and through the southern Goblin POI. From there, more west to that harbor and I took that up to the big island on the east side of Aerhen.

The goal there was to finish off undead and get that POI (I still need some more Ghoul and Felghoul, but I will finish those later). After those, I decided to go ahead and 100% Sea Trolls while I was in the area. I also built a wagon and loaded up on Folgorite to take back to my main character's house. (If you're not hurting for time, it's pretty nice to make a wagon and take a load of materials back home with you whenever you're in the vicinity of good materials. You're already going back to your home so why not take a load of goods with you? It'll save time down the road.)

Edit: I did try a Spider Lich and as expected, it tried to use my skull as a cup.

Took my wagon and loot via a boat to the harbor closest to the northern Bandit POI and rode through to get those. (This area's layout is more difficult than the southern POIs. If you're going to ride through you might want to do it naked, with no inventory, so you can get downed and not take a hit to your gear. Alternatively, whenever you need to ride through tight spots, stop and clear them. Or just clear as you go, it's still fairly good loot.)

Home after that.

Yalah

Day 5 Plans:

TLDR: Get Hack and Slash then test Jotunn and Elementals to find working strategies. More or less a "testing day." END TLDR

So... I'm approaching a point where it could be viable to switch back to Terra, finish it off, and then come back to Syndesia to finish it.

If I chose to go to Terra, I would hit the Termidians and then work on some of the world spawns for that first day. Ogre action on the second. The problem is that I don't know that I'm at Ogre killer level right now. I can definitely get some of each kind since I've already taken some Jotunn down, but I'd rather be able to get them all at once.

What I'll probably do is stay on Syndesia for at least one more day. I'll start off by Finishing Ghoul and Felghoul to get Hack and Slash. After that I want to wade into Jotunn's proper and see exactly what I can and cannot handle without needing a gear upgrade. I doubt I can take Stormborn because they're legitimately difficult and I've not fought them since we had the big combat rebalance. Clerics and Sorceresses are an unknown. Their magic will melt my summon meat shield, but I really lay down some good damage with my Great Axe.

It'll be a matter of how hard they hit me when my summon is on cooldown. My resistances are terrible in the Leather Armor so I think I might need some better gear or a change of strategy for them. I do know of one way, that should work, which involves Crystaline Touch. (It's basically the same as my "Elemental Killer" build from my Summoner Not a Guide.) It's not the first strategy I want to try and I'd rather find a way to kill most things without having to rely on it, but it should work.

Two gear options would be Rogue set which would give me a bump to resistances and a damage boost from the set bonus. And then a basic Chain Mail set which would almost double my resistances, but negate my dodge chance and give me a 17% damage penalty. (But is the far cheaper option for gear.)

However Jotunn go, I also want to drop in on some Elementals to see how I do against them with my current setup. As long as I manage the pack size, I'm confident I can handle anything except perhaps the Greater versions. The same solutions mentioned above would also help on the Greater Elementals. Another thing to think about would be to greatly buff our Willpower because that counters all of the elemental debuffs and should make a noticeable difference. There is also the various "Protection from" spells that will help with them. Using those would take a weapon change.

So yea, tomorrow will probably be a test day to see what works and what I need to do so that I can finish off the major Syndeisa farm and move back to Terra with everything I need to be able and finish of enough of that farm to hit rank 50.

Yalah

Day 5 Results:

TLDR: 4.5 hours today (23.5 hours total). 319k Knowledge, rank 43, about 18k gold. Finished Undead except for Spider Lich and the dragon. Jotunn POI 3/4 done and Jotunn probably 80% done. Ice Elementals and POI 100%END TLDR

Note: Someone asked, the gold amounts are what I earned in that day. It's too hard to keep a running total while buying items, repairs, etc, etc.

Gear: Same gear as I finished Day 4 with.

Skills: I dropped the Skeleton Knight because it reserved too much mana. Now that I'm back to mostly single target I dropped Decimate for Execute.

Talents: Once I was in Jotunn, I dropped CDR for flat mana because the bear + Aura + Challenge was reserving too much mana.

What Happened: I started the day wasting an incredible amount of money on repairs. I should have just made or bought a new set. If you're not using T2 armors, armors made of rare materials, or armors with enchanting levels repairing seems like a pretty fantastically bad idea. I could have bought 10 sets for the price I spent on repairs. Plan ahead and have extras.

After the money induced migraine, I went down to finish Ghouls and Felghouls in a nice little rotation I know about. Once I finished them I swung down to Crystal Elementals to pickup Crystaline Touch incase I wanted to use it in later tests. I only bothered killing the normal Crystal Elementals and Crystal Primelings, but they were no challenge (it's nice not being a mage against those).

Took an extended break and when I was back I decided to try out Ice Elementals and see if I could handle the Greaters. I would pull 2-4 Primelings at a time without much issue. I tried to get the normal Ice Elementals solo or not with more than 1-2 Primelings (because I was close to dying a couple times from 2). For Greaters, I would pop my bear, send it to attack and wait for the Frost Nova (pillar that freezes) and then jump in, challenge, and waylay them without resummoning the bear. I always took these solo, but didn't have any problems once I settled on the strategy.

Note: Do not interrupt or stun their channeled ability Hailstorm. It does relatively low damage.

I was pretty happy with being able to 100% Ice Elementals without new gear or switching out skills, but they're probably the easiest elementals for melee to handle because Chilled/Frozen doesn't have any additional flat damage relating to the debuff. Fire and Acid will not be as easy and Storm will be closer to those than to Cold while Crystal will be closer to Cold. I did come up with a plan for these other elementals, but I'll need to buy some gear and see how it works.

After Ice Elementals, I swing down to Jotunn where I caught a lone Cleric and it actually went down faster than a couple of the weapon focused Jotunn. I decided to head into the Jotunn area proper and see what I could manage. To make a long story short, I was able to kill every Jotunn, although Stormborn were ugly and I got downed once by them.

For Clerics and Sorceresses, I rode my mount in until they cast their first big spell, then dismounted, popped Challenge, and chopped (no bear used). The Sorceresses got real close to killing me a couple of times, but it was working. For the other melee, I would pop the bear, pull, challenge, and chop.

Stormborn were killed, but are not at farming level. It was basically bear into dumping my skills (by which time the bear was dead), battle jumping away, kiting around objects, and starting from the beginning with another bear summons. I will probably skip these until later because I definitely wont need them to hit rank 50.

Note: I did not test them, but a Rogue Set would probably make a big difference. That actually might be what I need to better handle Stormborn.

Yalah

Day 6 Plans:

TLDR: Finish Jotunn, buy a new weapon, test Elementals. Fire -> Storm/Crystal. END TLDR

Finishing Jotunn wont take long. I only need a few more Sorceress kills (I'll skip Stormborn for now) and then maybe 6 POI. After that I need to hit a town to find a Scimitar and or a Dagger to use on the Elementals. I will save the details for the Day 6 results, since things could change, but the general Plan is to use something with Spell Channeling so I can use the matching Protection From spell.

I'm going to head to Fire Elementals first because those will be the hardest. If I can figure something out for them, then it'll work on the rest of them. I will note that you do not need to 100% everything in this area because Terra also has a volcano and it has all the same monsters except for the Fire Primeling. That's the only one you need to 100%, but it will be very easy to do.

Once I establish my strategy will work, I'll probably ride through to get the POI and leave to the next elemental area. I'll finish the fire monsters on Terra. I don't know if I'll hit Storm or Crystal next, just depends on how I'm feeling. These are the last major groups of Knowledge that I'm missing on Aerhen. I've even got almost all of the world spawns. Day 7 will probably be heading to Terra.

Yalah

Day 6 Results:

TLDR: 5 hours today (28.5 hours total). 362k Knowledge, rank 46, about 15k gold. Jotunn and all Elementals 100%END TLDR

Gear: Same gear, but for Fire Elementals I replaced the imbues on my amulet with Evasion and Willpower.

Skills: Used the Day 5 skills for everything except Fire Elementals then I switched to the following:

Talents: D5 talents and then the following for Fire Elementals:

What Happened: I started by grabbing the last 7 Jotunn POI that I needed and finishing off Sorceress (skipped Stormborn). Fire Elementals had a PvP event so I went to Crystal Elementals instead. Primelings and normal Elementals were easy. For the Greater Crystals I would jump in, Challenge, and unload until they use Primal Storm (their channeled AoE). Once that started, I jumped out, summoned the bear (I should name it shouldn't I?), sent the bear when the channel ended, ran back in, popped challenge again, and finished them off. Once I got that strategy down, I didn't have any problems with them. (Only got the Greaters to 50% because I didn't want to waste time farming them.)

All of that was actually fairly quick, but we had a lot of riding today and that ate up a lot of the total time. Anyway, PvP event was still happening at Fire Elementals so I went over to the Storm Elementals. (Loading up a wagon of crystals while I was there.) Primelings and normals were even easier than Crystals (Storms have lower resistances). For the Geaters, I would mount up to bait out their Lightning Strike and then immediately dismount, Challenge, and drop them. (I did 100% the Storms because I know a good rotation for 4 of them.) Note: It might be easier using a stun instead of Battle Jump for the Greater Storm's channeled ability Thunderstorm.

Took the crystals back to my main's house and then went to Fire Elementals. I had intended to swap to a Scimitar and use Protection from Fire, because the warm and burning debuffs are just that much worse than the other elementals (except maybe corrosion from Acid). The problem that I ran into was that I did not bring an extra set of Leather with Sword Proficency and between the damage loss from that and the damage loss from switching to a Scimitar, it was just too slow to kill stuff.

Instead, I switched to the skills and talents shown above and I swapped on a necklace with Evasion and Willpower Imbues. This brought my Willpower up to 460 or 480 and that was enough of a reduction in stacks that I was able to mostly avoid Burning on everything but the Greaters. I was actually chain pulling groups of 2-3 and maintaining Execute stacks fairly well. The Greaters took some testing, but I eventually worked out a strategy that let me down them every time fairly safely.

Start by summoning the bear and then keep your distance from the bear as you send it into the Greater. The bear is just strong enough to eat an Explosion and Fireball. As soon as those happen, or the bear dies, jump in, Challenge and drop them. Use Shockwave to stun them out of their channeled ability Firestorm (more to prevent warm/burning than to stop the damage).

Note on Syndesia volcano: Previously, I mentioned that the only monsters unique to this area were the Fire Primelings. I want to add a note saying that you might also consider finishing off the Forge Snappers here as well because there's a lot more of them here than there will be on the Arbroreal volcano. The Fire Lizards also might be more common on Syndesia, but you will get packs of them on Arboreus too.

And yea, that's about everything there is on Syndesia.

Yalah

Day 7 Plans:

TLDR: Head to Arboreus and hit some combination of Termidians, world spawns, and Ogre. END TLDR

With 366k Knowledge, there are a lot of options left to hit rank 50 while skipping a lot of other stuff. I have a plan for what I will do, but since this might be the last Day for this Not a Guide, I'll list everything out that we're missing on Aboreus.

Termidians are the easiest POI and should not be any challenge. Many of them will stack Corrosion so you'll want to be careful of that, but otherwise you should not have any issues. The bear might help with the Matron, but I'm not even sure it will be needed.

The next thing would be the various world spawns. The main groups are Lizards, Insects, Treants, Forest and Mountain Trolls, Acid Elementals, and Earth Elementals. (There are a lot more, but things like frogs and crocodiles don't have any good/dense farming spots. These, and the rest, are more of a skip or kill when you see them)

You have options for farming Lizards and Insects, but I think the best spot for them is inside the Treehugger Ogre POIs. You'll find packs of all of them that you can quickly take down. Teants, trolls, and Earth Elementals can be found in the jungles of eastern Terra. Mountain Trolls and Earth Elementals can be found in the mountain area surrounding the Volcano. Acid Elementals are in the green area south of the Volcano.

All of the random red POI in the jungles of eastern Terra are Arboreal dragon POIs. You can easily ride into them and ride out.

The red POI in the mountains around the volcano require a lot of riding. You can honestly skip them, but I usually take a campfire or two and ride the loop at least once to get them.

The volcano is the last set of POIs. Not too much to say except that expect fire damage and fire debuffs.

About Baby Dragons: Arboreals should be fairly easy for this build. They will stack poison, but we aren't swinging a wet noodle. If you have any problems, a Bear will fix them. Mountains should not be hard, but they are tanky. Again, a bear will fix any issues. Fires should be the hardest because fire is OP (if you hadn't picked up on that yet). I think we can get them without the bear, but we do have a bear so...

About Big Dragons: I have no plans to even test them. They all can be killed solo, but they're a clear step above other content and should require specific gear. They're just not something these Not a Guides cover.

I'm not sure what my plan will be. My normal strategy would be Termidians into world spawns and then Ogre after, but I'm tempted to kill some Ogres to test and see if they're too hard to kill. Given how Jotunn went, I think most or all of them will be killable. Archdruids and Lords will be the hardest.

If I'm being honest, I thought about ending this Not a Guide today because we're easily strong enough to finish this last 50k knowledge to get to rank 50 and I tend to end at rank 50 or when, "there's nothing left but grinding." With the success on Syndesia, I'm very clearly at the second point, but I decided to go ahead and do one more day.

Yalah

Day 7 Results:

I ended up deciding to just run all over and kill a few of each monster to confirm that I could kill all of them so that I could wrap up this series. To make a long story short, I killed everything except the large dragons (which I didn't try) using the strategies I've already mentioned. I used the bear right away on the Ogres and baby dragons just because I was going for speed and not really testing "how little" I needed to do, to kill them. Some of them definitely did not need the bear and none of them were as challenging as the Jotunn Stormborn.

I outlined most of the remaining knowledge targets in my Day 7 planning post so I don't have too much to add here. You only need about 415k knowledge to hit rank 50 and there should be about 560k knowledge available. Post rank 50, there's no point in getting more knowledge other than showing up higher in the rankings. (You might still need to unlock more skills, but that's sorta separate from your total knowledge points.)

One final thing I want to mention, but keep forgetting to add in, is that if you're not able to maintain your Execute buff, you should consider using it when the monsters are below 30%, but before the killing blow. That lets you get the double damage bonus from it and the full damage potential. I was seeing 1200-1900 on the very end game stuff without any Execute stacks. If you can maintain the 10 stacks, I would do that, but food for thought.

Yalah

Not a Guide: Melee Fighter - Conclusion

TLDR: Axes are not only viable, they are very strong for reaching rank 50. It would have taken me about 30 hours to hit rank 50 and that wasn't trying to speed run, just buying gear and being focused on what I was doing. END TLDR

A lot of people feel like melee is lacking when compared to mages in this game and I'm one of those people. However, melee can be very strong for PvE and are able to take down virtually all of the monsters in the game with relatively low investment (for a melee). You could quickly improve on what I did just by throwing on a Rogue set for that stacking damage buff.

Because of the fundamental difference in melee versus ranged, melee will always need more investment than mages, but you can still get by with relatively low investment as I did. Hopefully, we'll get some improvements to melee sometime in the near future, but until then we can make do. It's worth pointing out that some of the decisions I made will not be the most powerful option. I would encourage people to try other stat combinations and find what works best for them.

Different Weapon Choices

I think Axes are either the best melee weapon or at least in the top 1 or 2, but I don't have a ton of experience with the others since the Combat Endgame Changer (EGC) patch about 6 months ago. I'll talk a little about the others below.

Fencing is the one I have the least experience with, but I know pre EGC, people were showing off some impressive single target damage with the spear and the rapier is a popular sword and board option because it has spell channeling. My primary problem with the school is that the Spear's AoE is a line and that makes it hard to effectively use against groups of monsters. Additionally, their skills are single target or a line. If/when the Halberd is reintroduced, that might make the school more appealing to me. (Assuming that it will use Fencing.)

Knife Fighting used to be my favorite melee weapon. I, and others, were quietly using it to take down every non legendary monster in the game. EGC changed some of the skills, specifically nerfing Strike Wounds, and it's not as strong as it used to be - at least not in the same builds. I'm not saying they're weak, just that they took a hit (from what I would have considered to be the strongest option). Daggers have spell channeling so you can work in some magic with them and even use the Battlemage set to buff their damage even more. The Assassination tree has some obvious skills that might interest you and I would specifically look at Death Mark in combination with all the debuffs that are available to Daggers (including weapon poison). One last thing I will say about Knife Fighting is that you can only have one active strike at a time, but there is nothing stopping you from having multiple on your hotbar and rotating through them, keeping each on cooldown.

I would argue that Mace Fighting is probably the weakest weapon school. I did a Not a Guide (Druid Background) right before the EGC patch that used Maces and I did not enjoy my time. The big draw of Mace Fighting is that the weapons all have the Bashing property which is a on hit stun. In my Not a Guide the gameplay where my Quarterstaff really shined was when farming fairly big groups of lower level monsters. It was basically a looting simulator. I think Maces need some adjustments, but to be fair to them, The Quarterstaff is probably the weakest 2h option and so it wont excel with weapon skills (but it is the only 2h option that allows spell channeling). Also, with the advent of summons allowing reliable back attacks, Spine Breaker Blow might be significantly stronger than it was for me.

I would probably argue that Swordmanship is the more defensive and versatile option when compared to Axes, but overall very similar. I have not used them post EGC, but I would expect very similar results as what I got from this Not a Guide and axes. The one notable difference is that swords have a 1h option that allows spell channeling (and that's a big part of why I think they're more versatile. Not too much more to add.

Non Weapon Options for Melee
Note: The following comments are made under the assumption of having no Proficency in their respective schools. Orbs are a long term goal and by the time you're able to use imbues to max one school and start getting respectable levels in a second school, you should have figured out what works best for you and your style.

The first thing to point out is that Poisons are a great way to add damage to any weapon that has the "Poisonable" tag. The tree has talents that help with poisons and I would try to work them into any build using poisons. Familiarize yourself with the different poison crafts and keep an eye out for those materials.
Warfare has some good skills. Shockwave, Battle Jump, and Bloodlust are probably the top 3. The big problem I have with most of the others is that they have pretty low uptime and long cooldowns (due to PvP balancing). For example, Second Wind sound good, but you get a 15 second 50% penalty to healing which includes health on hit imbues and Bloodlust if you are using them. It's pretty easy to math out how many attacks you'd make in 15 seconds to figure out if it's worth using.
Frenzy sounds good, but even if you have the talent for two sustained abilities, you can still only have a single Battle Stance at a time. You have to choose between Bloodlust, Frenzy, Strike Wounds, and Viciious Attacks. And that's if you have the two sustained talent, if not then you have a lot more options you have to put it up against. You'll notice I stuck with Aura of Oppression at the end of this Not a Guide.
Hunting has some options. Hunter's Mark is a good way to make sure that your auto attacks always land, but if you're skipping real accuracy, your debuff stacking will suffer. Most of the traps are new, post EGC, so I don't have a lot of experience with them. At first glance, they might be worth testing to see if any are worth the debuff stacking.
With the exception of Strike Wounds (which is solid) Assassination only works with Light Armor and one handed weapons (and not when you have a shield). These are fairly restrictive and I'd argue most useful for PvP. I will throw out there that Death Mark would make debuff stacking much better.
Leadership has some good options, some good options with terrible uptime, and some options that are more PvP focused. I really like Aura of Oppression as a "generically good" toggle ability that is useful for many different situations. This is when compared to something like Bloodlust which is only useful when you can apply bleeds and your target isn't immune to them. (Which is to say this Aura is not "the best.") I like Challenge a lot, but arguments can be made for other link abilities. Everything else in here gets kinda Iffy. Inspire and Shields up? 33% uptime by default and with 40% CDR they're still up less than half of the time. Everything else is situational or balanced for PvP.

Concluding the Conclusion:
You're going to need to invest in a Melee build for it to feel good. At a minimum, you need a T2 (metal) weapon ASAP. Buy your first one and try to avoid Copper, Tin, Iron, Silver, and Gold versions unless they are very cheap or very easy to get. You can invest in Medium and Heavy Armors, but be aware of what encumbrance does (it's in the lower left of the Character Window). You don't need the special set armors to progress, but several of them will help depending on how you choose to play.

Don't be afraid of starting by using axes and then switching to your preferred weapon after you get some of the skills. The Tutorial gives some great Axe skills.