Post by Zeli on Jan 21, 2016 10:54:26 GMT -5
HELP FOR NEW PLAYERS - STUFF I WISH I KNEW BEFORE I LEARNED THE HARD WAY
SOURCE: www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1206769
Poster: heethin
Date: October 2015
Edited: November 2015
DISCLAIMER:
This list is way biggerer than I expected, but I got a lot of help and it has blossomed. You may need to be familiar with *some* Neverwinter jargon. I recommend a touch of time in game... follow the quest paths, get to maybe level 8 and then come back. You won't damage your character. If things go well, come back a few times as you gain experience and things that made no sense early on will hopefully have more meaning. Good luck. If you feel something is missing or confusing, I'd be delighted to clarify.
The Point
This guide is meant to provide useful tips that aren't obvious to new players. It's one person's opinion. There are many ways of doing the Neverwinter Adventuring bidness. The dream is to provide enough info that when a reader hits a familiar topic they go "Oh, yah, I remember getting screwed by that." or "I wish I knew that a while ago" or "This guy's an idiot... but let me think about that, anyway."
I'm not intending to post "the obvious", my apologies if you feel that I have. Unless it's something that I've screwed up, or against which I've seen many people bang their heads, in the name of brevity, I'm leaving it out. (ed: Brevity. HAH. Wrong Thread.)
GENERAL
A good intro from the early days and another.
Want a *quick* rundown on the classes? Redditor cacktusjack made a great summary right here.
PC - Need in-game help? Use the unofficial chat channel, type "/channel_join NW_Newbie"
PC - There is a chat channel dedicated to players who don't use exploits or cheats. Join via "/channel_join NW_Legit_Community"
On Identification
Only use scrolls to identify gear (and sell it) to the point where you can get your first mount for 5gp. (If you pay Zen for a mount, then there is no reason to hoard gold by identifying and selling gear.)
After that, don't ID anything green your characters can't use. Exception: Refinement of Artifact Gear begins at level 60.
Equipment that is "Recommended" is not always better. The game uses a simple sum of statistics and it fails to include key aspects in the calculation.
Understand how trade-able an item is before you get it.
"BoP" = Bind on Pickup. As soon as your character touches it, it's staying with them until you sell (not trade), use, salvage, or discard it.
"BoE" = Bind on Equip. Trade-able. Anything on the Auction House is BoE. You can get it, pass it between your characters or resell it, up to when your character wears or uses some aspect of it.
"BtA" = Bind to Account. You can't put it on the Auction House, but you can move it between your characters.
Also - The Devs have goofed a few times during special events by mislabeling BoP companions as BoE. People have been "burnt." Before you spend hours grinding for a companion, take a few seconds to search the interwebs for related news.
On Inventory
Don't skip the quests in Blacklake District or Neverdeath Graveyard, they give you free bags.
Dragon Cult 20-slot bags have often been a better buy on the AH than the Bags of Holding from the Zen Store.
Bags you buy are NOT transferable between your characters, and they may bind immediately, and without warning, if you have an open bag slot.
The bag from the Dragonborn pack can be claimed on all characters.
Do not buy a Bag of Holes.
An item is Recommended when it has a gold glow around the icon in your inventory.
Shiny purple enticing lockboxes drop during battles and may have prizes inside. You may purchase keys to open them (usually about 100 Zen (~50 kAD) per key/lockbox). I can't speak to how good the lockbox loot is. I can say that it is perfectly OK to discard the lockboxes, if you choose not to buy the Zen keys. I have one slot in my bag dedicated to them. Eventually, when the game offers a new style, I discard the old pile. Some lockboxes have become quite valuable when held long enough for them to become rare.
On the Monies
Don't buy Zen through Steam, use Arc.
Don't use Astral Diamonds to buy from the in-game vendors if you haven't first compared prices on the Auction House. If an item is on the AH, it is probably cheaper than the game's built-in vendors like the "Wondrous Bizarre."
Don't buy anything in AD that you can buy in Gold. Gold is only valuable at the beginning of the game, the most exciting things will be bought with Zen or Astral Diamonds. At level 70, you will probably have more Gold than you know how to spend.
The seals from Bounty Hunters in each zone are not valuable, they get you equipment that would be good for a character who hasn't completed the tasks needed to earn the equipment. (Seals of the Elements and Seals of the Protector are exceptions).
Send Gold to your other characters using the Bank in Protector's Enclave. Open your Bank window. At the bottom of the pop-up, there are fields to deposit and withdraw Gold.
Pass Astral Diamonds between characters using the Astral Diamond Exchange (on the Gateway, the tab with the symbol for Zen and Diamonds). On the character with AD, create an offer to Buy Zen at a price of 50 AD each. Then, with the "Listings" tab, cancel the offer. On the needy character, in the "Buy Zen" tab, click the "Withdraw" button.
On the Gateway, for PC only
Visit the Gateway (It is not available for XBox players). Access your professions. Try the Sword Coast Adventures when they become available to your character (requires level 10? and a companion). You will get a free dog companion.
With the Sword Coast Adventures, every day, every character can get free stuff... not big stuff, but stuff.
From the Gateway, you can interact with your inventory. So, when your inventory gets full, you don't need to visit a merchant. (Therefore, don't choose the artifact Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog *solely* for the easy access to a merchant.)
On Teaming
You don't have to do any of the team dungeons or skirmishes as you level, though you may miss a title. Some of the gear you win is good respective to the level.
Please take a moment to understand dungeon etiquette.
Your character's class has an effect on how quickly you can queue for Dungeons. For example, Paladins queue quickly. HRs do not.
Miscellaneous
To get items out of the mail, you must go to a mail carrier or box. There are a few in Protector's Enclave (one near the main entrance, Coriol Street Gate), but they are rarely in other zones.
Mimics are treasure chests that attack when you open them. To identify a mimic before it attacks, hover your cursor over all chests. If there is an olive-green money bag or a gear at your pointer, it's a treasure chest. If it has nothing, the chest is a mimic and will attack you if you activate it.
You may find that you have no quests. (This is likely if you are questing with someone else.) Try building experience with Skirmishes, Dungeons, Invoking and Foundry quests. Put Azure Enchantments in your available Utility slots. When you gain a level, check back with Knox. He will eventually give you something to do.
You can use a companion before one is given to you by the game at level 16. They often sell cheap on the AH.
You can use a mount at level 4, before the mount education quest at level 20.
Save your coalescent and preservation wards.
It takes about 40-60 hours to get to level 60, another 15 to get to 70. Until you get to level 60, leveling up is mostly linear; it does not take much longer between levels as you increase.
When a chest requires a key, you can often keep the key if you decline the reward... a nice option if you don't get the desired loot and don't want to pay for another key.
Here is a list of dungeons which were removed temporarily with Mod 6. You may still get their quests, but they are not completable.
Strongholds - Here is an outstanding guide to Strongholds. Absolutely worth the read.
Have you finished all of your quests and want to go back to the questgiver(s) at a recent camp fire? Try changing the map instance (see bottom right of your map window) which places you at the closest campfire.... Or...
PC - There is a set of foundry quests under NWS-DCBUN62WF which can be used to get you back to Protector's Enclave from some of the most far off places in each adventure zone.
PC - Here's helpful thread that includes how to test your build and check-out new releases via the preview server.
Xbox - There's no foundry for Xbox.
LEVEL 10 - Heroic Feats and Paragon Paths. Want to follow a Build?
At level 10, you get the option to personalize your character with Heroic Feats and, later, you can choose a paragon path. Below are some well known builds. I can't make a recommendation for all classes, and I have not tried the ones below, I just see them recommended frequently. I don't claim these are current, or what you want... but they are good places to start. (Recommendations are Welcome.)
Kaelac's Guide to Devoted Clerics
Ironzerg's Guide to Control Wizards - Spellstorm Renegade
Azrael's Guide to Guardian Fighters
KatoZee's Hunter Ranger Trapper Build
Vell Crowe's Soulbinder Damnation Build
Lazalia's High Crit Great Weapon Fighter Build - Mod 6
LEVEL 10 - Professions
Most professions offer more character development ("I imagine my character is good with leather...") than booty. To get lots of AD, they must be Worked and require considerable start-up costs.
An exception (somewhat) is Jewelcrafting. It offers BiS Personalized Gear which can't be obtained any other way than through the profession. There's some decent instruction here on how to do it.
Alchemy is an easy profession to get a tier 3 result and unlock an extra professions slot. This is because the rare tasks that can give tier 3 results are much earlier in the Alchemy than with others. Though progressing in Alchemy is subject to RNG, if you don't have all of your slots open, it's probably the fastest to get to level 25. (If you have AD... you can buy a lot of the resources that are used for experimentation and steamroll Alchemy).
To make Unified Elements in Alchemy, you must perform level 25 experimentation a few extra times.
Leadership used to provide Astral Diamonds, making it everyone's favorite. More recently it's been changed... :s
For Profession Assets: Study the auction house for a while to find cheap assets. It can be cheaper to buy 4 greens and upgrade to 1 blue than purchase a blue asset; ditto for 4 blues to 1 purple conversion.
If there is a current or new lockbox with a profession box as a potential drop, a Zen store sale on profession boxes, or some event that has a BoE drop of something profession-related, assets will be cheaper. Watch for them, as people will open them hoping for something specific, and then unload the things they don't want and keep undercutting each other. In these cases, things are usually cheapest over the weekend.
Corollary: if something new comes out in professions, (like jewel-crafting) that shares an asset with the profession, the prices will sky-rocket for it, and probably be highest over the weekend. ]
For a task that can utilize more than one asset, the Optional slots can be filled with any asset for that profession.
LEVEL 10 - Mounts
You get a free token for a temporary/rental mount at level 10. You probably don't have enough gold to buy a mount outright. Use the rental mount. Probably, by the time its timer is up, you will have the Gold. When you have the Gold, use it to buy a mount. There's no better use for it.
If you decide you want a non-standard mount, strongly consider buying a Purple Mount with Zen. It will be available to all your current and future characters. Upgrading Mounts is not cost-effective, mounts on the AH are Bind on Equip (BoE) and not available to more than one character.
LEVEL 10 - PVP
PVP can be frustrating if you aren't aware that it is loaded with people who are spending money or who have high level characters supplementing low level alt's.
LEVEL 11
Pray (Invoke your God) frequently, with Ctrl+I at the camp fires once it becomes available. It is necessary to have first completed all of the Blacklake District's quests, and you'll need to complete a quest for invoking from Sgt. Knox.
LEVEL 15 - Enchantment/Refinement
Don't refine enchantments after you've tried it and learned how. (Here's why.) After that, sell enchantments or use them. It is cheaper to buy a higher level on the AH than it is to refine. You probably won't have the option to buy upper level Artifacts (available level 20ish), so refining Artifacts is a good use for Enchantments you don't wear.
The quests that educate you on how to enchant will provide you with a ring with an enchantment slot. It's not a bad idea to get the best enchantment that you can afford from the AH and use them both.
Before you get to 60, your gear will change often. Getting the 'right' enchantment for your build will be fairly meaningless. Radiant (yellow) enchants are a great bet, they offer power or hit points which are always useful.
My preference for early gaming is Azure (blue) enchants in Utility slots for experience gain. If you can get Dragon Hoard Enchantments... they are *vital* for the artifact refinement boosts they drop. PVPers might want Dark (magenta) for movement.
Before level 60, Rank 5s are a good target, but not required for PVE. For early PVP, Rank 5s are a pretty decent balance between cost and power. Of course, they may not put you on par with the most dedicated PVPers.
Your native success rate for creating an epic weapon or armor enchantment from an enchantment shard is 1%. Yes, 1%. This is why coalescent wards are valuable.
LEVEL 16 - Companions
At level 16, a quest gives you a free companion. The Apprentice Healer is the only free healer you can get. Even if you only use him between battles, the savings in healing potions is excellent. PS. He is saying, "I have one word for you... *Leeches*."
You cannot have more than one of a particular type of Companion active. To clarify, two Strikers (style of companion that does damage) are OK... Two Sellswords (one type of the Striker genre) are not allowed to be active.
Augment Companions are often regarded as the most important to have... that suggestion is contestable (/understatement). See the discussion started by Ironzerg on this reddit thread. I have validated his statement that he can put out more DPS with a fast proc'ing combat companion using 3 perfect bonding runestones in my own testing, and so have many of my guild-mates. So, my assertion is that if you are after BiS, augments are a waste of resources.
It has been noticed that the stats for "3 stat enchants" (Black Ice and Draconic, for example) do not show in your companion's stat sheet. When using a bonding or eldritch runestone, or an augment :s , they do show up in your character's stat sheet, though it may be necessary to dismiss and re-summon to see it.
Only a summoned augment companion will give you its full stats. If you have more augments in your stable, you will only get their active bonus.
If you have a Jewel (from Jewelcrafting) that increases the Regen/AP/Stamina stats for the equipment you have on an augment companion, the Regen Jewel does get reflected in your character stats but the AP or Stamina increases do not.
It is usually cheaper to buy Purple companions outright than to upgrade a lesser to purple.
Once you decide to upgrade a companion to Legendary, if it is active, any summoned companion will grant you 15% of its stats.
Before buying a companion, is it the one that you want? Learn about companions' active bonuses.
At low levels, the companions with straight stat bonuses (such as "Armored Orc Wolf, +100/190/300 Critical Strike") may have appeal, but as your performance increases, you will get greater benefit from those with percentage adjustments (such as "Blink Dog, +2/3/5% Combat Advantage Damage").
Your companion gear slots are not level restricted! Put max level gear on them for best results. How about some of these?
LEVEL 26
You get to begin the Tyranny of Dragons campaign. It's worth doing a bit each day. You'll get decent gear, good experience, and progress on boons (permanent bonuses to your character).
LEVEL 60
From Level 60 to Level 70, you will get to play along with Minsc and Boo. If you do, you will also get to adventure in these zones: Drowned Shore, Reclamation Rock, the Fiery Pit, and Spinward Rising. In each zone you will be asked to perform 8 Vigilance tasks in each of 3 areas.... so 4 zones x 8 tasks x 3 areas... and you can perform more Vigilance tasks than that. You do not win much loot from the first three zones, and you do not need to do all of the Vigilance tasks, though they may provide the best experience for leveling. Spinward, however, is different. Starting at level 67(?... there abouts), do all 24 of its vigilance tasks to get a free artifact mainhand. You can also skip Spinward, if you have enough progress in the Tyranny of Dragons campaign for the "Dragonforged Artifact" task.
Any Vigilance task can randomly give Unified Elements and Elemental Aggregates. You can check for this when you are picking up the tasks. Rewards reset every hour.
Recommendations for what to do once you get to 60, until you can get to level 70. Highest Priority First...
Utility slots = Azure Enchantments.
Do Tyranny of Dragon quests from Harper Boward and the compadres that sit with her.
Do all the rest of the dragons in the adventure areas (Ebon Downs, Neverdeath Graveyard, Rothe Valley, Whispering Caverns, and Icespire Peak).
Do some work in your Stronghold if you have a guild.
The Minsc Quests.
The Elemental Evil areas (Spinward would get first priority).
... prioritizing the work in that way gets you experience AND progress toward your Tyranny of Dragons campaign boons.
At the upper-most levels, you may "out-level" the ToD quest givers that are near Harper Boward in Protector's Enclave. The problem is that to complete the Common Cause task, you have to complete, say, Barrow Demolition, but the quest giver with Harper Boward does not visually indicate that they will give you the Barrow Demolition task. So, before heading off from Harper Boward, check with all of her friends even though they do not have a quest marker to make sure that you have all of the quests you need to continue making progress in the campaign.
LEVEL 70
To get started, look into buying high powered Blue gear on the AH.
When you do an epic dungeon or skirmish, you may get Blue T1 equipment which can be salvaged. This equipment can also be purchased with the Seals of the Elements. (Most Purple Gear can be salvaged, too). That gear and Guild gear from Strongholds - blue and Dragonflight - are account bound, and can be given to your alts... and each class can purchase gear for any class (this is awesome, just requires looking through the full menu of your Stronghold's Outfitter).
Do the Vault of the Nine quest. The artifact that you win can be used by all of your characters at the same time (for your other characters, pick them up from the Reward Claims agent). These artifacts cannot be used to refine other arties, their only downside. It had been the case that you needed 2 characters which had reached level 70, but it has been reported (not officially confirmed) that you can do the quest as soon as you reach level 70 with 1 character.
In the Dread Ring, make quick progress on the boons by focusing on the dungeon lair quests (Death Forge, Phantasmal Fortress, Dread Spire). You don't need to do the other dailies every day. Also, you can lessen your grind with Priceless Thayan Antiquities or Thayan Relic Fragments, which you may be able to find on the AH or get them from Unearthed Lockboxes or Rusted Iron Lockboxes. Turning these in will reward you with enough campaign loot to get to your first few boons in no time.
In the Death Forge, you can prevent some of the Adds from joining the fight by interacting with the Soul Batteries / Caskets that she spawns.
You can buy the first two Sharandar Boons (buy Fomorian Concoctions on the AH, use them at the Sharandar Merchant to turn them into Gold Crescents), and have them almost immediately, but doing so does not reduce the time that it takes to get to the rest of the boons.
You can use the Barbarian relics stockpiled by one toon to make Ice Wind Dale easier on other toons, meaning you can just do the daily (Needless Distractions) and be done. 20 relics give ample supply to pay for the boons and black ice shaping. You will still need to chase a bit for the 300 black ice, but it's not too bad.
You can find a Genie's Gift in some lockboxes, it can give you a boost in any of the campaigns. These can also be bought on the auction house.
As you improve your gear, you will want to start paying attention to the possibility that you've overloaded on a stat. ie, HR can easily have too much Armor Penetration for PVE, where the belief is that the most Resistance Ignored (from ArmPen) that you could use is 60%. Here's a post that helps prescribe Armor Pen related to some of the maps.
Here's a list of all of the weekly quests which grant AD:
Arcane Reservoir (Sharandar)
The Red Wizards (Dread Ring)
Biggrin’s Tomb (Icewind Dale)
Reclaiming the Horde (Tyranny of Dragons)
Protecting the Portal (Harper Boward, Tyranny of Dragons)
In the Well of Dragons zone chat, when people say "Fresh run," they mean a new empty instance that has been formed, not just a new run. This reduces the chance that people are questing or sitting afk at camp, thereby improving your success rate.
... Thanks to my guildies and the Neveredditors for their help on this.
And thanks in advance for your ideas.
--heethin
SOURCE: www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1206769
Poster: heethin
Date: October 2015
Edited: November 2015
DISCLAIMER:
This list is way biggerer than I expected, but I got a lot of help and it has blossomed. You may need to be familiar with *some* Neverwinter jargon. I recommend a touch of time in game... follow the quest paths, get to maybe level 8 and then come back. You won't damage your character. If things go well, come back a few times as you gain experience and things that made no sense early on will hopefully have more meaning. Good luck. If you feel something is missing or confusing, I'd be delighted to clarify.
The Point
This guide is meant to provide useful tips that aren't obvious to new players. It's one person's opinion. There are many ways of doing the Neverwinter Adventuring bidness. The dream is to provide enough info that when a reader hits a familiar topic they go "Oh, yah, I remember getting screwed by that." or "I wish I knew that a while ago" or "This guy's an idiot... but let me think about that, anyway."
I'm not intending to post "the obvious", my apologies if you feel that I have. Unless it's something that I've screwed up, or against which I've seen many people bang their heads, in the name of brevity, I'm leaving it out. (ed: Brevity. HAH. Wrong Thread.)
GENERAL
A good intro from the early days and another.
Want a *quick* rundown on the classes? Redditor cacktusjack made a great summary right here.
PC - Need in-game help? Use the unofficial chat channel, type "/channel_join NW_Newbie"
PC - There is a chat channel dedicated to players who don't use exploits or cheats. Join via "/channel_join NW_Legit_Community"
On Identification
Only use scrolls to identify gear (and sell it) to the point where you can get your first mount for 5gp. (If you pay Zen for a mount, then there is no reason to hoard gold by identifying and selling gear.)
After that, don't ID anything green your characters can't use. Exception: Refinement of Artifact Gear begins at level 60.
Equipment that is "Recommended" is not always better. The game uses a simple sum of statistics and it fails to include key aspects in the calculation.
Understand how trade-able an item is before you get it.
"BoP" = Bind on Pickup. As soon as your character touches it, it's staying with them until you sell (not trade), use, salvage, or discard it.
"BoE" = Bind on Equip. Trade-able. Anything on the Auction House is BoE. You can get it, pass it between your characters or resell it, up to when your character wears or uses some aspect of it.
"BtA" = Bind to Account. You can't put it on the Auction House, but you can move it between your characters.
Also - The Devs have goofed a few times during special events by mislabeling BoP companions as BoE. People have been "burnt." Before you spend hours grinding for a companion, take a few seconds to search the interwebs for related news.
On Inventory
Don't skip the quests in Blacklake District or Neverdeath Graveyard, they give you free bags.
Dragon Cult 20-slot bags have often been a better buy on the AH than the Bags of Holding from the Zen Store.
Bags you buy are NOT transferable between your characters, and they may bind immediately, and without warning, if you have an open bag slot.
The bag from the Dragonborn pack can be claimed on all characters.
Do not buy a Bag of Holes.
An item is Recommended when it has a gold glow around the icon in your inventory.
Shiny purple enticing lockboxes drop during battles and may have prizes inside. You may purchase keys to open them (usually about 100 Zen (~50 kAD) per key/lockbox). I can't speak to how good the lockbox loot is. I can say that it is perfectly OK to discard the lockboxes, if you choose not to buy the Zen keys. I have one slot in my bag dedicated to them. Eventually, when the game offers a new style, I discard the old pile. Some lockboxes have become quite valuable when held long enough for them to become rare.
On the Monies
Don't buy Zen through Steam, use Arc.
Don't use Astral Diamonds to buy from the in-game vendors if you haven't first compared prices on the Auction House. If an item is on the AH, it is probably cheaper than the game's built-in vendors like the "Wondrous Bizarre."
Don't buy anything in AD that you can buy in Gold. Gold is only valuable at the beginning of the game, the most exciting things will be bought with Zen or Astral Diamonds. At level 70, you will probably have more Gold than you know how to spend.
The seals from Bounty Hunters in each zone are not valuable, they get you equipment that would be good for a character who hasn't completed the tasks needed to earn the equipment. (Seals of the Elements and Seals of the Protector are exceptions).
Send Gold to your other characters using the Bank in Protector's Enclave. Open your Bank window. At the bottom of the pop-up, there are fields to deposit and withdraw Gold.
Pass Astral Diamonds between characters using the Astral Diamond Exchange (on the Gateway, the tab with the symbol for Zen and Diamonds). On the character with AD, create an offer to Buy Zen at a price of 50 AD each. Then, with the "Listings" tab, cancel the offer. On the needy character, in the "Buy Zen" tab, click the "Withdraw" button.
On the Gateway, for PC only
Visit the Gateway (It is not available for XBox players). Access your professions. Try the Sword Coast Adventures when they become available to your character (requires level 10? and a companion). You will get a free dog companion.
With the Sword Coast Adventures, every day, every character can get free stuff... not big stuff, but stuff.
From the Gateway, you can interact with your inventory. So, when your inventory gets full, you don't need to visit a merchant. (Therefore, don't choose the artifact Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog *solely* for the easy access to a merchant.)
On Teaming
You don't have to do any of the team dungeons or skirmishes as you level, though you may miss a title. Some of the gear you win is good respective to the level.
Please take a moment to understand dungeon etiquette.
Your character's class has an effect on how quickly you can queue for Dungeons. For example, Paladins queue quickly. HRs do not.
Miscellaneous
To get items out of the mail, you must go to a mail carrier or box. There are a few in Protector's Enclave (one near the main entrance, Coriol Street Gate), but they are rarely in other zones.
Mimics are treasure chests that attack when you open them. To identify a mimic before it attacks, hover your cursor over all chests. If there is an olive-green money bag or a gear at your pointer, it's a treasure chest. If it has nothing, the chest is a mimic and will attack you if you activate it.
You may find that you have no quests. (This is likely if you are questing with someone else.) Try building experience with Skirmishes, Dungeons, Invoking and Foundry quests. Put Azure Enchantments in your available Utility slots. When you gain a level, check back with Knox. He will eventually give you something to do.
You can use a companion before one is given to you by the game at level 16. They often sell cheap on the AH.
You can use a mount at level 4, before the mount education quest at level 20.
Save your coalescent and preservation wards.
It takes about 40-60 hours to get to level 60, another 15 to get to 70. Until you get to level 60, leveling up is mostly linear; it does not take much longer between levels as you increase.
When a chest requires a key, you can often keep the key if you decline the reward... a nice option if you don't get the desired loot and don't want to pay for another key.
Here is a list of dungeons which were removed temporarily with Mod 6. You may still get their quests, but they are not completable.
Strongholds - Here is an outstanding guide to Strongholds. Absolutely worth the read.
Have you finished all of your quests and want to go back to the questgiver(s) at a recent camp fire? Try changing the map instance (see bottom right of your map window) which places you at the closest campfire.... Or...
PC - There is a set of foundry quests under NWS-DCBUN62WF which can be used to get you back to Protector's Enclave from some of the most far off places in each adventure zone.
PC - Here's helpful thread that includes how to test your build and check-out new releases via the preview server.
Xbox - There's no foundry for Xbox.
LEVEL 10 - Heroic Feats and Paragon Paths. Want to follow a Build?
At level 10, you get the option to personalize your character with Heroic Feats and, later, you can choose a paragon path. Below are some well known builds. I can't make a recommendation for all classes, and I have not tried the ones below, I just see them recommended frequently. I don't claim these are current, or what you want... but they are good places to start. (Recommendations are Welcome.)
Kaelac's Guide to Devoted Clerics
Ironzerg's Guide to Control Wizards - Spellstorm Renegade
Azrael's Guide to Guardian Fighters
KatoZee's Hunter Ranger Trapper Build
Vell Crowe's Soulbinder Damnation Build
Lazalia's High Crit Great Weapon Fighter Build - Mod 6
LEVEL 10 - Professions
Most professions offer more character development ("I imagine my character is good with leather...") than booty. To get lots of AD, they must be Worked and require considerable start-up costs.
An exception (somewhat) is Jewelcrafting. It offers BiS Personalized Gear which can't be obtained any other way than through the profession. There's some decent instruction here on how to do it.
Alchemy is an easy profession to get a tier 3 result and unlock an extra professions slot. This is because the rare tasks that can give tier 3 results are much earlier in the Alchemy than with others. Though progressing in Alchemy is subject to RNG, if you don't have all of your slots open, it's probably the fastest to get to level 25. (If you have AD... you can buy a lot of the resources that are used for experimentation and steamroll Alchemy).
To make Unified Elements in Alchemy, you must perform level 25 experimentation a few extra times.
Leadership used to provide Astral Diamonds, making it everyone's favorite. More recently it's been changed... :s
For Profession Assets: Study the auction house for a while to find cheap assets. It can be cheaper to buy 4 greens and upgrade to 1 blue than purchase a blue asset; ditto for 4 blues to 1 purple conversion.
If there is a current or new lockbox with a profession box as a potential drop, a Zen store sale on profession boxes, or some event that has a BoE drop of something profession-related, assets will be cheaper. Watch for them, as people will open them hoping for something specific, and then unload the things they don't want and keep undercutting each other. In these cases, things are usually cheapest over the weekend.
Corollary: if something new comes out in professions, (like jewel-crafting) that shares an asset with the profession, the prices will sky-rocket for it, and probably be highest over the weekend. ]
For a task that can utilize more than one asset, the Optional slots can be filled with any asset for that profession.
LEVEL 10 - Mounts
You get a free token for a temporary/rental mount at level 10. You probably don't have enough gold to buy a mount outright. Use the rental mount. Probably, by the time its timer is up, you will have the Gold. When you have the Gold, use it to buy a mount. There's no better use for it.
If you decide you want a non-standard mount, strongly consider buying a Purple Mount with Zen. It will be available to all your current and future characters. Upgrading Mounts is not cost-effective, mounts on the AH are Bind on Equip (BoE) and not available to more than one character.
LEVEL 10 - PVP
PVP can be frustrating if you aren't aware that it is loaded with people who are spending money or who have high level characters supplementing low level alt's.
LEVEL 11
Pray (Invoke your God) frequently, with Ctrl+I at the camp fires once it becomes available. It is necessary to have first completed all of the Blacklake District's quests, and you'll need to complete a quest for invoking from Sgt. Knox.
LEVEL 15 - Enchantment/Refinement
Don't refine enchantments after you've tried it and learned how. (Here's why.) After that, sell enchantments or use them. It is cheaper to buy a higher level on the AH than it is to refine. You probably won't have the option to buy upper level Artifacts (available level 20ish), so refining Artifacts is a good use for Enchantments you don't wear.
The quests that educate you on how to enchant will provide you with a ring with an enchantment slot. It's not a bad idea to get the best enchantment that you can afford from the AH and use them both.
Before you get to 60, your gear will change often. Getting the 'right' enchantment for your build will be fairly meaningless. Radiant (yellow) enchants are a great bet, they offer power or hit points which are always useful.
My preference for early gaming is Azure (blue) enchants in Utility slots for experience gain. If you can get Dragon Hoard Enchantments... they are *vital* for the artifact refinement boosts they drop. PVPers might want Dark (magenta) for movement.
Before level 60, Rank 5s are a good target, but not required for PVE. For early PVP, Rank 5s are a pretty decent balance between cost and power. Of course, they may not put you on par with the most dedicated PVPers.
Your native success rate for creating an epic weapon or armor enchantment from an enchantment shard is 1%. Yes, 1%. This is why coalescent wards are valuable.
LEVEL 16 - Companions
At level 16, a quest gives you a free companion. The Apprentice Healer is the only free healer you can get. Even if you only use him between battles, the savings in healing potions is excellent. PS. He is saying, "I have one word for you... *Leeches*."
You cannot have more than one of a particular type of Companion active. To clarify, two Strikers (style of companion that does damage) are OK... Two Sellswords (one type of the Striker genre) are not allowed to be active.
Augment Companions are often regarded as the most important to have... that suggestion is contestable (/understatement). See the discussion started by Ironzerg on this reddit thread. I have validated his statement that he can put out more DPS with a fast proc'ing combat companion using 3 perfect bonding runestones in my own testing, and so have many of my guild-mates. So, my assertion is that if you are after BiS, augments are a waste of resources.
It has been noticed that the stats for "3 stat enchants" (Black Ice and Draconic, for example) do not show in your companion's stat sheet. When using a bonding or eldritch runestone, or an augment :s , they do show up in your character's stat sheet, though it may be necessary to dismiss and re-summon to see it.
Only a summoned augment companion will give you its full stats. If you have more augments in your stable, you will only get their active bonus.
If you have a Jewel (from Jewelcrafting) that increases the Regen/AP/Stamina stats for the equipment you have on an augment companion, the Regen Jewel does get reflected in your character stats but the AP or Stamina increases do not.
It is usually cheaper to buy Purple companions outright than to upgrade a lesser to purple.
Once you decide to upgrade a companion to Legendary, if it is active, any summoned companion will grant you 15% of its stats.
Before buying a companion, is it the one that you want? Learn about companions' active bonuses.
At low levels, the companions with straight stat bonuses (such as "Armored Orc Wolf, +100/190/300 Critical Strike") may have appeal, but as your performance increases, you will get greater benefit from those with percentage adjustments (such as "Blink Dog, +2/3/5% Combat Advantage Damage").
Your companion gear slots are not level restricted! Put max level gear on them for best results. How about some of these?
LEVEL 26
You get to begin the Tyranny of Dragons campaign. It's worth doing a bit each day. You'll get decent gear, good experience, and progress on boons (permanent bonuses to your character).
LEVEL 60
From Level 60 to Level 70, you will get to play along with Minsc and Boo. If you do, you will also get to adventure in these zones: Drowned Shore, Reclamation Rock, the Fiery Pit, and Spinward Rising. In each zone you will be asked to perform 8 Vigilance tasks in each of 3 areas.... so 4 zones x 8 tasks x 3 areas... and you can perform more Vigilance tasks than that. You do not win much loot from the first three zones, and you do not need to do all of the Vigilance tasks, though they may provide the best experience for leveling. Spinward, however, is different. Starting at level 67(?... there abouts), do all 24 of its vigilance tasks to get a free artifact mainhand. You can also skip Spinward, if you have enough progress in the Tyranny of Dragons campaign for the "Dragonforged Artifact" task.
Any Vigilance task can randomly give Unified Elements and Elemental Aggregates. You can check for this when you are picking up the tasks. Rewards reset every hour.
Recommendations for what to do once you get to 60, until you can get to level 70. Highest Priority First...
Utility slots = Azure Enchantments.
Do Tyranny of Dragon quests from Harper Boward and the compadres that sit with her.
Do all the rest of the dragons in the adventure areas (Ebon Downs, Neverdeath Graveyard, Rothe Valley, Whispering Caverns, and Icespire Peak).
Do some work in your Stronghold if you have a guild.
The Minsc Quests.
The Elemental Evil areas (Spinward would get first priority).
... prioritizing the work in that way gets you experience AND progress toward your Tyranny of Dragons campaign boons.
At the upper-most levels, you may "out-level" the ToD quest givers that are near Harper Boward in Protector's Enclave. The problem is that to complete the Common Cause task, you have to complete, say, Barrow Demolition, but the quest giver with Harper Boward does not visually indicate that they will give you the Barrow Demolition task. So, before heading off from Harper Boward, check with all of her friends even though they do not have a quest marker to make sure that you have all of the quests you need to continue making progress in the campaign.
LEVEL 70
To get started, look into buying high powered Blue gear on the AH.
When you do an epic dungeon or skirmish, you may get Blue T1 equipment which can be salvaged. This equipment can also be purchased with the Seals of the Elements. (Most Purple Gear can be salvaged, too). That gear and Guild gear from Strongholds - blue and Dragonflight - are account bound, and can be given to your alts... and each class can purchase gear for any class (this is awesome, just requires looking through the full menu of your Stronghold's Outfitter).
Do the Vault of the Nine quest. The artifact that you win can be used by all of your characters at the same time (for your other characters, pick them up from the Reward Claims agent). These artifacts cannot be used to refine other arties, their only downside. It had been the case that you needed 2 characters which had reached level 70, but it has been reported (not officially confirmed) that you can do the quest as soon as you reach level 70 with 1 character.
In the Dread Ring, make quick progress on the boons by focusing on the dungeon lair quests (Death Forge, Phantasmal Fortress, Dread Spire). You don't need to do the other dailies every day. Also, you can lessen your grind with Priceless Thayan Antiquities or Thayan Relic Fragments, which you may be able to find on the AH or get them from Unearthed Lockboxes or Rusted Iron Lockboxes. Turning these in will reward you with enough campaign loot to get to your first few boons in no time.
In the Death Forge, you can prevent some of the Adds from joining the fight by interacting with the Soul Batteries / Caskets that she spawns.
You can buy the first two Sharandar Boons (buy Fomorian Concoctions on the AH, use them at the Sharandar Merchant to turn them into Gold Crescents), and have them almost immediately, but doing so does not reduce the time that it takes to get to the rest of the boons.
You can use the Barbarian relics stockpiled by one toon to make Ice Wind Dale easier on other toons, meaning you can just do the daily (Needless Distractions) and be done. 20 relics give ample supply to pay for the boons and black ice shaping. You will still need to chase a bit for the 300 black ice, but it's not too bad.
You can find a Genie's Gift in some lockboxes, it can give you a boost in any of the campaigns. These can also be bought on the auction house.
As you improve your gear, you will want to start paying attention to the possibility that you've overloaded on a stat. ie, HR can easily have too much Armor Penetration for PVE, where the belief is that the most Resistance Ignored (from ArmPen) that you could use is 60%. Here's a post that helps prescribe Armor Pen related to some of the maps.
Here's a list of all of the weekly quests which grant AD:
Arcane Reservoir (Sharandar)
The Red Wizards (Dread Ring)
Biggrin’s Tomb (Icewind Dale)
Reclaiming the Horde (Tyranny of Dragons)
Protecting the Portal (Harper Boward, Tyranny of Dragons)
In the Well of Dragons zone chat, when people say "Fresh run," they mean a new empty instance that has been formed, not just a new run. This reduces the chance that people are questing or sitting afk at camp, thereby improving your success rate.
... Thanks to my guildies and the Neveredditors for their help on this.
And thanks in advance for your ideas.
--heethin