Posts made by Yalah

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).

Basically, I feel a lot better about the state of summons after doing some high level testing and talking with some other people. Maximizing your healing potential via Restoration Proficiency, increasing your Spiritual Power, and Cooldown Reduction, significantly helps you to be able to keep your summons alive. I think it's very possible to hit rank 50 with a "pure summons" build where you focus on supporting them (though it always helps if you do damage too).

The tankier summons can do very well against monsters that mostly rely on auto attacks or anything that you are able to out heal. However, summons struggle against monsters with strong magic or monsters that use a lot of magic and or attack skills.

My suggestions from the OP have not really changed, but I am much less worried about the state of summoners than I was before my high level testing.

@Prometheus If you want help, lemme know. ;D

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.

Edit: This post was updated on 23 July, after a hotfix that fixed some summons bugs and after I did some high level testing. anything that is italicized is new/changed from the initial posting. The first reply to this will give a TLDR of the changes I made so if you already read this, that TLDR covers my new observations.

Original post:
I've about at 20 hours messing with summons now so I wanted to throw some feedback up. This was about 15 hours of starting as a brand new character with no outside help (items from my mains, etc) and then about 5 hours of testing on my main character with good gear and all the skills available. My focus has been to rely on summons as much as possible while not just standing there like a lump.

I'm not going to go super into bugs here because I've posted them elsewhere. This will be feedback/suggestions

Feedback TLDR: Summons are a lot of fun so far. I do think the current iteration are a good start, but will struggle against some higher level monsters. I think a lot of people are going to want to be able to be "pure summoners" and might be disappointed, but should be able to reach rank 50 as "pure summoners. In the nearish future I'd love to see more of them and a wider ability to buff/supplement their power. Least fun part of summons: Long cooldowns.

General Positive stuff:
I'm having fun. I'm kinda biased though because I've been wanting summons for years. I really like that there is very good summon variety right out of the tutorial. It's all been fairly intuitive to me, but I am very experienced with the game as a whole so I don't know how a strait new player would feel.

Feedback:
The least fun aspect of summons is easily the cooldown timer when they die or are unsummoned. There are pretty severe limitations with summons (ai, movement speed, unsummoning at distance, etc). They are not 400-800 damage nukes that you can toss out and then easily run around with while you wait for cooldowns. I'm just asking that you reconsider how long of cast times and especially cooldowns are appropriate for them.

Summons not having the movement speed to keep up with you when you're running does not feel great (especially when combined with long cooldowns when they're unsummoned). The fastest ones aren't too bad, you do need to slow down for them, but the slower ones feel really bad to run around with. In my opinion, the Zombie is so slow, it's worthless compared to other options.

When using the Kill command, summons are switched to aggressive and this causes them to immediately take off trying to kill anything in range as soon as the target dies. It's nice when you're fighting multiple monsters at once, but it's not so nice when they head off screen to pull new groups/monsters. I'd like to have some kind of option that either let you use kill, but kept the same AI mode or something that kept them from running all over the place.

The current summons are solid for low and mid level play and they can handle a fair to good portion of higher level monsters when you have better healing and proficiencies. Heavy casting or offensive skill monsters are very difficult if not impossible (I need more testing to know exactly what might help to kill these monsters). I know this balance is hard, I just think the current pool needs a bit more, there should be some way to buff summons to make them more resistance to spells, or 1-2 4/5 point summons should be considered soonish.)

The range on being able to use the Kill command is very low. It's very difficult to send your summons in to attack first without facepulling the monsters on yourself. I think 50% more range would feel a lot better.

Suggestions:
You've also said there will be more summons.

More summons that do elemental magic damage (or a way to make all summons do magic damage) so there are more options for hunting ghosts and other similar monsters (currently only Primelings work).

Some way to increase the healing received on summons or just your ability to heal summons. (Maybe an armor set bonus?)

Some way to increase Buff duration on summons.

Making certain "aura" skills also apply to your summons (Protection from Fire, etc). Or possibly make them apply to your summons instead of yourself.

Adding a "Stay" command option so you could have your summons wait for you while you pulled/did stupid stuff.

Besides repurposing an armor set, maybe add a specific staff that did summon specific things.

Add some way to share your own stats with your summons. % of your fort, or wilpower, or whatever.

(Some of these are obviously long term stuff, but since I was writing anyway...)

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

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.

re: Fresh Server

So... I'm not excited by this change, but I understand the logic used in coming to it. To be honest, I always expected a new server at release - though I thought it would be to better support a new region rather than for the reasons given. The concern that I have is this: Since your primary reason for this new server is in concern for new players, how do current (and future "current") players know that you wont repeat this decision in the future? Leaving a trail of "old" servers in your wake? Your current plan does nothing to make people feel better about this and I really think you, the Devs, need to answer/address it.

On the topic of Fresh Servers I have two suggestions.

1 - Convert the game into something more akin to the "seasonal" style seen in many ARPGs. Maintain Genesis as the long term/permanent server and every so often (6 months?) spin up a new "fresh start" server. Then merge the current fresh start server's characters/items into Genesis. By doing this you continually provide new and returning players with a fresh/equal environment to "catch up" to the mature game environment and you also prevent the feel of regulating older players to an old/abandoned server.

Make it clear, right from the start, that Genesis (or other "permanent" servers when they are needed) will always be the long term environment and that new players should always expect to be joining Genesis. In fact, getting strong enough and experienced enough to join Genesis should probably be the ultimate goal.

Make it clear, right from the start, that the fresh start servers are for newer players or players that want to experience the "rush" of a fresh start scenario (which is a big draw for many seasonal players).

I'm sure people will not like this idea, but I think it does a very good job of addressing the problems that Dynamight have said they are concerned with and also those that the current, long term, players have given with "new servers" in general. Be very open about the nature of the servers and the purpose of fresh start servers. Do not give anyone an opening to complain that they didn't know.

2- (This suggestion could be made in tandem with the above suggestion, but, I think, should be added regardless.) Immediately upon release, allow transfers to Genesis for anyone with all of their items/exp/whatever you can figure out how to transfer. (Clearly letting people know that these are one way and non-reversable.) I view this as an incentive to keep people playing on Genesis and have them try and recruit/draw players into a "matured" game environment.

Edit: I see no special reason to have "seasonal" themes or bonuses for the fresh start server (as you would see in ARPGs). They were just given as a reference point. I suppose you could incorporate PvP events into these, but I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about that aspect.

re: Store and VIP

It's not clear, does having VIP mean you have it on all available servers for the same time/duration? (I would assume yes, but you should probably say so given that you're going with multiple servers now.)

re: New PvP Rules

I am most sad that "3 worlds" concept is being abandoned before it was even completed with the addition of Tartaros. (Which is why I always harped about wanting Tartaros added.) You may be right that the concept failed and would have continued to fail even after Tartaros was added, but we'll never know, and I think that is a shame.

I have no strong feelings about the newly announced rules, except that I think PvP focused players will continue to be unsatisfied in the current game state. The success or failure of these new rules hinge on how quickly you can get the additional PvP centric systems added. I would agree that these are a massive priority now.

(At some time in the much, much, much distant future, when all the core systems and locations are completed, I wouldn't mind seeing a new server spun up based on the original "3 worlds" ruleset, just to see how it would fair.)

re: God Trials

Seem good.

re: tutorial overhaul

My only comment here is that I would remove any "tutorial only" KP or make it very, very, very, clear that there was turorial only KP and that people would miss out on it if they did not get the KP before they left. (I know the current amount is essentially "trivial," but if you're remaking the tutorial anyway, address this issue.

re: Summons

Summons HYPE. I knew bothing Jacopo every few months would pay off. The only immediate comment I have is that I hope the talent tree will be updated to better support this new style of summons (not that I ever considered totems as summons). I have other questions and concerns, but I'll wait until I see more about them before asking.

re: Q3/4

Alliances & Seasons: PvP stuff should be a priority. Good stuff here.

City Progression: I'm glad you went the bonus route. I wont go deep into this topic until it comes up specfically, but I favour each city having custom/changing bonuses of some kind. If each city is the same or could give the same, then you lessen the potential political tension between players/guilds. In my head, it would be better if people wanted a specific city location and not just anything they could get. Then players have to make a choice between what they have and what they percieve as being better. You want that "best" spot? You're going to have to fight for it (physically or politically).

New Races: Less important than new PvP stuff, but I'd like to see these much sooner than later (unless you're going to offer race changes in the shop - which might not be a terrible idea given the recent changes, rebalancing, and new pvp rules).

I started up a new bowman and the first 5-6 camps I ran into (both POI and not POI) were all ghosts. In contrast, I've seen no ghosts in the highest level areas when I've been running around on my higher level characters.

The weapons needed to damage ghosts are not newbie weapons. Ghosts spawns and POI should not be showing up until somewhere around medium level difficulty areas or whenever you think it's reasonable for players to have obtained those weapons.

Right now, I don't think they are a positive factor in the newbie experience.

@Prometheus said in Patch b.1.0g - Economy, PvE & PvP Balancing:

@Yalah said in Patch b.1.0g - Economy, PvE & PvP Balancing:

The difference between 1500 and 2000 resistances is 5% less damage taken difference. You can see the formula here: https://fractured.wiki.gg/wiki/Resistances

The difference between 1500 and 2000 resistances is 20% less damage taken (20% vs 25%), that's the correct way to see it balance-wise. Example: a 2000 damage attack from a legend deals 400 damage instead of 500 damage (20% less), which could make the difference between life and death. However, I agree with you that we need to revise the formula to make the last points more impactful (if it was 65% vs 80% for example, i.e.43% less damage taken, it would be much better).

I consider legendary fights to be completely separate for the purposes of my comments. I am not suggesting it would be a good idea to tank the very hardest monsters in non-heavy armor. I'm saying that for the other 90%+ of content, the heavier armors are uneeded and only penalize you because the other armors are too good.

@Yalah said in Patch b.1.0g - Economy, PvE & PvP Balancing:

However, I know that, in practice, a well made leather set lets me easily kill any non-legendary in the game solo. (Without relying on proficiency imbues.)

That is another issue entirely. I am aware that you just heavily CC that ogre and you do it in light armor. We'll get to that.

Other people do that. The only CC that I use is Aura of Oppression and that's not actually needed as much as it's helpful and I have extra slots.

@Xulu Thanks, but remember that I'm just one person and I'm not infallible (for example, I'm pretty sure the energy resist numbers on all of those are too low because I misread the new Mage Armor). Also, I'm actually asking for a rebalance of all armors that would overall be a nerf ;D

These guys are smart and I think they know their numbers too. In this case, I just think there is a difference between what the numbers say on paper and what they actually reflect in practice. For example, Promethus and Spoletta are totally right when they point out that quality and enchants will make a Knight set (the higher base values) scale more quickly/easily. However, I know that, in practice, a well made leather set lets me easily kill any non-legendary in the game solo. (Without relying on proficiency imbues.)

I have not gotten out to try the new patch, but I don't see anything in the notes that makes me feel like that has changed.

I'm only posting this because I said more was coming and it's not.

The issue is that subsequent patches and comments have made it obvious, to me anyway, that a real effort is being made to push WIS out of a damage modifier roll. I don't disagree with this move because it's easier to balance the different stats if they stick to more specific things, but it does mean that I don't think a WIS/CON/STR caster "Druid" build is going to be viable.

Maybe Druid will remain the exception to the rule and maintain WIS for damage, but even if it does, I don't think that alone is enough to carry a build.. Could you still make one, yes, but I think that it would, generally, be inferior to other options. At least with how things are looking right now.

With an enchanted Knight armor and the armor talents (which work as percentages, besides the first one, so they are stronger on heavy armor) you can max out all physical resistances (2000/2000 each). That's an 80% damage reduction, add a shield and you're able to sustain insane amounts of damage. You don't even need an Excellent +4 armor - Good/Great and +2/+3 is enough.

How does light armor + mage armor even remotely compare to that? I think your problem is just that you didn't consider quality, enchanting and the talents

I think the problem is that you picked the literal worst comparison and threw out everything else. That's kinda disingenuous.

I think you and others don't talk about is how resistances scale, the punishments from encumbrance, or that evasion is a 100% mitigation.

The difference between 1500 and 2000 resistances is 5% less damage taken difference. You can see the formula here: https://fractured.wiki.gg/wiki/Resistances

That's the stats on a +0 Poor quality Mountain Dragon Rogue set with all of the defensive talents. A 0+ Poor quality Mithril Knight set will be ~1500 physical defenses and ~900 magical defenses with the same set of talents. That means for Pierce and Crush, this Mithril set will reduce the damage an extra 9%. That isn't nothing, but...

Is that extra physical damage reduction from a Knight set worth a minimum 32 point encumbrance difference. That is -6.4% Attack Speed, - 6.4% Movement Speed, -9.6% to all of your damage, and a whopping -64% chance to dodge. PLUS the loss of any spell casting potential.

Please, keep in mind. That is the literal highest base physical defense armor set against a leather set that is not meant for tanking as far as I know.

But wait, take the resistances from that screen shot and add 160 to each of those physical resistances to account for Mage Armor at 20 WIS and 0 Proficiency. A very easy number to meet. It does use up one slot skill slot, but the Pierce and Crush damage reduction drops to 6%. This bonus can to up to 300 for each physical resistance stat if you went 25 WIS and 10 Proficiency. (I don't think that is likely which is why I do not include that number by default.)

I ask every person out there, is that balanced? A minimum 32 point encumbrance difference. -6.4% Attack Speed, - 6.4% Movement Speed, -9.6% to all of your damage, and a whopping -64% chance to dodge. For those extra defenses, not to mention effort of making Mithril. I say no.

I do not deny that armors with higher base stats are easier to scale. I do not deny that Knight armor can more easily hit 2k/80% damage reduction. What I am saying is the defenses from armor sets are not balanced between each other or according to their downsides. Not at their base levels, not when you consider the damage reduction formula, and the downsides of encumbrance.

When you combine evade and the current armor values, it is far too easy to reach high physical damage mitigation levels - especially on lower encumbrance equipment.

If you are rolling around in any heavy armor set, I honestly think you are hurting yourself. Make a basic leather set and get to 1k evasion and try it out. If you really want to push it, you can make it out of Mountain Dragon Leather and or Make it a Rogue/Ranger set to get the numbers up.

P.S. I've never, in my entire life, had to argue so hard for a player power nerf. I show up with numbers and examples. I fully document 0 to hero leveling runs that display how strong my methods are. And when I start asking for nerfs, I get dismissed out of hand without even the effort at serious consideration. That just kinda blows my mind.