Ancient Kingdoms

Slaanesh69 said:

The Magmadrakes give hunting skill ups I think, and food to increase cooking. But it looks like your exp reward is not based on level but on the creature's HPs, or a combination therein, so it is definitely worth it to find a dungeon cycle with some bosses, and with 5 easy access in Twisted Haunt it can't be beat.

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Yup.

The bulk of your EXP is from bosses. And because you can get 5x bosses in quick succession in there (and they're all 45+), it's really hard to beat it from an XP/hr standpoint. Now, obviously you're going to "cap" on the upgrades eventually, but I honestly think it's the best you can do for pure EXP, even at 50. The only exception is probably just almost full clearing (trash, not bosses) Sunken Temple in one pull with Mage AOE cheese.

I'd honestly keeping farming Haunt for your first 20-30VET points and then start the real "end-game" progression from there. You're going to need full leadership and at least 5/10 battle restoration for basically every "end-game" boss anyhow.

Well I was crawling through the giant city to get to the Northern Wastes just to check it out, and I was doing fine until I hit a Mage Giant and got dropped instantly. Resists clearly important.

Also finally killed Zarothak the Tormentor in Krom Razz and missed the 75% chance to drop Planar Rune for a quest. Feels bad man.

Also, what's with the mobs with the "50% spawn chance" or "75% spawn chance" never showing up. I've read a thread on steam that typically a 75% spawn chance elite can take a dozen or more zone respawns. I think all the chances are out by a decimal point.

Also, is this percent chance to spawn only when the zone is reset, or is it every x minutes, where x is the spawn timer for that mob?

Anyway, trying to get the 75% chance to spawn Orc Messenger in Urord Nog to spawn and so far I am at about 6 resets. Too bad the Fabled elite in there only drops 3 crappy items, I suppose it's fuel for the Primal Essences I need for the crafting molds - taking forever to gather 3,000 for a single craft.

Edit - currently at 21 vet points. I put 6 into constitution until I read Kirun's post above and the rest have gone into Battle Restoration and Leadership which, as he said, are pretty vital.

Anyone play on Steam Deck? Does it suck due to key bindings or is it pretty streamlined?

Slaanesh69 said:

Also, what's with the mobs with the "50% spawn chance" or "75% spawn chance" never showing up. I've read a thread on steam that typically a 75% spawn chance elite can take a dozen or more zone respawns. I think all the chances are out by a decimal point.

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The way that works is that you can just do the "zone reset" thing and it still has that x% chance to spawn on reset. Or, you can farm the "PHers" in the area it's supposed to spawn in, hoping it pops on respawn.

Slaanesh69 said:

Anyway, trying to get the 75% chance to spawn Orc Messenger in Urord Nog to spawn and so far I am at about 6 resets. Too bad the Fabled elite in there only drops 3 crappy items, I suppose it's fuel for the Primal Essences I need for the crafting molds - taking forever to gather 3,000 for a single craft.

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Huh? Fabled Darish drops one of the best rogue daggers for a loooong time, unless you're lucky enough to get the Legendary drop from Pyroth. His chest piece is also really solid too for how easy he is. There's a "mini" Urzak (the world boss) called the Overseer that can spawn at the fireplace who drops some really great gear too, but he's almost as tough as Urzak is. If you play Mage and have dispel though, he's not bad - which is the same for Urzak.

Slaanesh69 said:

Edit - currently at 21 vet points. I put 6 into constitution until I read Kirun's post above and the rest have gone into Battle Restoration and Leadership which, as he said, are pretty vital.

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You can reset vet points with an item drop and there's a town in Northern Wastes that has an NPC that takes that item + 10,000 gold. But yeah, BR and Leadership are vital for your first few points. BR you can "wait" on a little bit, but I'd get it to at least 5 right off the bat, followed by Leadership 10/10 (it's a massive upgrade for the mercs and only has about a 30s "downtime").

Brikker said:

Anyone play on Steam Deck? Does it suck due to key bindings or is it pretty streamlined?

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Unfortunately it sucks at the moment.

Kirun said:

The way that works is that you can just do the "zone reset" thing and it still has that x% chance to spawn on reset. Or, you can farm the "PHers" in the area it's supposed to spawn in, hoping it pops on respawn.

Huh? Fabled Darish drops one of the best rogue daggers for a loooong time, unless you're lucky enough to get the Legendary drop from Pyroth. His chest piece is also really solid too for how easy he is. There's a "mini" Urzak (the world boss) called the Overseer that can spawn at the fireplace who drops some really great gear too, but he's almost as tough as Urzak is. If you play Mage and have dispel though, he's not bad - which is the same for Urzak.

You can reset vet points with an item drop and there's a town in Northern Wastes that has an NPC that takes that item + 10,000 gold. But yeah, BR and Leadership are vital for your first few points. BR you can "wait" on a little bit, but I'd get it to at least 5 right off the bat, followed by Leadership 10/10 (it's a massive upgrade for the mercs and only has about a 30s "downtime").

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Surprisingly, having farmed Krom Razz for quite a while all my weapons and armor are better than what Fabled Darish drops so it's all just Primal Essence material. I may have given my ranger the fabled dagger, I can't remember. I got two other better dagger drops either in Krom Razz or from some other elite, not sure.

Yeah I did give it to him, and the chest piece actually lol.



My warrior is using this for the HPs:



I like the BR spell mostly for the wizard. Being able to continually clear and not have to wait too long for him to regen mana is amazing. For awhile the cleric started getting mana starved but a chest piece with mana regen between battles helped that a ton.



And the wizard improved with this:


And I haven't seen the messenger or the Overseer in the orc dungeon so far. I just assume they will spawn at the same time and wipe me so I can't get the messenger lol.

Slaanesh69 said:

Surprisingly, having farmed Krom Razz for quite a while all my weapons and armor are better than what Fabled Darish drops so it's all just Primal Essence material. I may have given my ranger the fabled dagger, I can't remember. I got two other better dagger drops either in Krom Razz or from some other elite, not sure.

Yeah I did give it to him, and the chest piece actually lol.

View attachment 628047

My warrior is using this for the HPs:

View attachment 628048

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Base damage matters a lot, but not as important if the warrior is just tanking, yeah. Base damage still matters though. Especially on rogue and rangers mercs, because it combines their weapon damage from their off-hands and bows into their damage formula.

This is good fun, really hits the single-player mmo target.

In early-endgame ( vet 30 ), I think I am going to shelve it for a while to let it cook though.

There's a few janky and easily fixable issues ( like not turning on auto-attack with ability, having absolute dogshit tab targeting, ludicrously stupid cd on spec swap etc ) but the biggest issue for me at the moment is pacing.

This is just from a warrior tank perspective - other classes may be different, but I am too lazy to level/gear one up.

It's both too slow and too fast. Serious boss fights are all 10+ minutes, which isn't inherently bad, but of a 12 minute fight, the first 10 minutes are pointless - you might as well be afk with a dipping bird hitting group restoration and leadership, then you have 1:30 where it is twice as hard and you need to cycle cooldowns constantly, and then 30 seconds that's almost entirely RNG except for sub 200ms interrupt windows with no signposting.

This seems kind of pants-on-head for me, especially given that single player actions are outrageously unresponsive and laggy. If it's going to take 300ms for a stun to register, you just can't have tiny interrupt windows.

"Just farm until it is trivial" works, but really it's kind of taking the fun out of it.