[X] My Assistant

I used the shield, and I found it better. But the damage is really low. The Arena, with 85 Rounds, cost me 90 minutes to finish. Is it normal? And I used hundreds of potions... The difficulty is X15.

you will get quicker. But Schoolgirls are tough. Soon you will do 85 rounds in 20 min or so. Or faster.
- Proficiency: you just switched to 1h heavy, it takes time to build up proficiency
- Skill Vital Strike: use that on schoolgirls. But only when they are stunned
- Imperil: use imperil on schoolgirls

I've been doing arenas on PFUDOR for ~1week now ,mainly the lv 225 and 250 ones and it's going okish . Noticed the massive increase in exp required to level up so I'm spending more credits on adept Learner 110/300 rn, although I'm not sure how many credits I wanna sink in that .

So in terms of training I wonder what the highest value stuff to train right now are ? I sure like more exp, to level up faster and get access to better gear, more abilities etc. but I'm also wondering if I can make more credits by spending some on scavenger or archeologist .

Another question for melee playstyle I have is how do you deal with monster resisting deprecating magic ? I'm lv 276 with depr prof at 314 . Most of the time I won't have huge issues but sometimes there will be 1 or 2 monster that I'll need to cast Imperil 4 times on to land it . Thankfully silence/sleep seem easier to land but it'd be nice to miss less with those as well . I know mages have magic acc. and can even get depr prof on their gear so I'm wondering how does melee deal with this since I'm assuming monster will keep getting tougher .

So in terms of training I wonder what the highest value stuff to train right now are ? I sure like more exp, to level up faster and get access to better gear, more abilities etc. but I'm also wondering if I can make more credits by spending some on scavenger or archeologist.

archeologist is not so useful now, since artifacts dropped in price, so don't rush with it
scavenger maximizing is always a good idea, try to find a balance between it and adept learner

Another question for melee playstyle I have is how do you deal with monster resisting deprecating magic ? I'm lv 276 with depr prof at 314 . Most of the time I won't have huge issues but sometimes there will be 1 or 2 monster that I'll need to cast Imperil 4 times on to land it . Thankfully silence/sleep seem easier to land but it'd be nice to miss less with those as well . I know mages have magic acc. and can even get depr prof on their gear so I'm wondering how does melee deal with this since I'm assuming monster will keep getting tougher .

I use Rapier. So, I would have the equivalence of IMP after 3-4 attacks.
I usually auto after casting weaken 3 times (no matter whether it is successful or not) and call it a day.
Any additional action will go beyond my purpose of playing as 1H XD

If I sell/salvage equipment and buy it back, is it possible that someone else buy it before I buy it back?

This post has been edited by l13763824039: Jun 21 2024, 00:22

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Another question for melee playstyle I have is how do you deal with monster resisting deprecating magic ? I'm lv 276 with depr prof at 314 . Most of the time I won't have huge issues but sometimes there will be 1 or 2 monster that I'll need to cast Imperil 4 times on to land it . Thankfully silence/sleep seem easier to land but it'd be nice to miss less with those as well . I know mages have magic acc. and can even get depr prof on their gear so I'm wondering how does melee deal with this since I'm assuming monster will keep getting tougher .

You could consider buying the depr. proficiency perk, but only if you can afford it. Imperil gets better at level 310, then you can just recast immediately on 3 monsters at a time. At your level, it's normal that PFUDOR is a bit of a struggle. It's quite good that you manage at all. You could just imperil once, and start killing off the one that got imperiled, and repeat. And not every monster needs imperil - do that once you get to level 310. Focus on defensive spells, sleep, weaken. Personally, I prefer weaken over silence, but it you prefer silence that's fine of course.

What abilities should I be using with a 1-handed build? Currently I'm using:
- HP Tank, MP Tank
- All the 1-handed and heavy armor abilities
- Better haste, protection, regen, cure
- Flame spike shield

And then I'm mostly just attacking with a rapier and throwing in an occasional shield bash/vital strike/merciful blow. Any other spells I should be leveling up and using, or do those only get useful at higher levels?

What abilities should I be using with a 1-handed build? Currently I'm using:
- HP Tank, MP Tank
- All the 1-handed and heavy armor abilities
- Better haste, protection, regen, cure
- Flame spike shield

And then I'm mostly just attacking with a rapier and throwing in an occasional shield bash/vital strike/merciful blow. Any other spells I should be leveling up and using, or do those only get useful at higher levels?

you can probably ignore better haste. Get one defensive spell instead, weaken or if that's not yet available use one that is (slow, silence, blind). Or sleep, sleep is nice as well for 1h. Defensive spells enable you to play IWBTH (or even PFUDOR).
Don't use shield bash. Only use vital strike against bosses. Merciful blow can be used agianst flying spaghetti monster. instead, just use spirit stance in normal rounds.

Oh, I was thinking the buffs I cast on myself are better, since hasting myself is like slowing every enemy. At my level weaken only targets 2 enemies. Do people cast weaken once and leave the weakened enemies for last? Or repeatedly cast weaken until everyone is weak?

edit: I've been casting weaken on everyone and it seems to be working out alright.

This post has been edited by AnnabellaTerra: Jun 22 2024, 07:09

Oh, I was thinking the buffs I cast on myself are better, since hasting myself is like slowing every enemy. At my level weaken only targets 2 enemies. Do people cast weaken once and leave the weakened enemies for last? Or repeatedly cast weaken until everyone is weak?

edit: I've been casting weaken on everyone and it seems to be working out alright.

Weaken can be used both selectively and en masse because of its quick cool-down time, depends on how difficult it is to survive.

Why are you having issues surviving? What are you wearing and what difficulty are you playing on?

Just want to make sure I'm reading the wiki right, an Ethereal weapon at IW10 keeps its void type+strike but gains another random elemental strike type?

Just want to make sure I'm reading the wiki right, an Ethereal weapon at IW10 keeps its void type+strike but gains another random elemental strike type?

Yes.

Just want to make sure I'm reading the wiki right, an Ethereal weapon at IW10 keeps its void type+strike but gains another random elemental strike type?

yes

Why are you having issues surviving? What are you wearing and what difficulty are you playing on?

Using plate mail, a force shield, and at the time I wrote the question a rapier, now a wakizashi since I found a legendary.

I was doing random encounters on 15x and succeeding maybe half or 2/3 of the time, playing very carefully and constantly healing and defending to keep my health bar near full, since I could get 1-shot from over 70% health.

Now with weaken (and wakizashi) I'm consistently beating 20x random encounters, but I'm still being very slow and methodical in the first 12 or so rounds, alternating weaken and cure until I've stuck a weak on everyone.

That would be too tedious.and mana intensive to do for an entire arena though, so I'm doing arenas on 7 or 10x where I can just auto attack without fear.

Using plate mail, a force shield, and at the time I wrote the question a rapier, now a wakizashi since I found a legendary.

I was doing random encounters on 15x and succeeding maybe half or 2/3 of the time, playing very carefully and constantly healing and defending to keep my health bar near full, since I could get 1-shot from over 70% health.

Now with weaken (and wakizashi) I'm consistently beating 20x random encounters, but I'm still being very slow and methodical in the first 12 or so rounds, alternating weaken and cure until I've stuck a weak on everyone.

That would be too tedious.and mana intensive to do for an entire arena though, so I'm doing arenas on 7 or 10x where I can just auto attack without fear.

That's quite good. Personally, I'd strive towards IWBTH for arena's. upgrade the block on your shield. Waki isn't perfect, so don't invest too much into that. Get an exquisite rapier of slaughter, that's better than a legendary waki. But you can use the waki for a while of course. Shield is most important now. Replace whenever you find a shield with higher base block, and then forge the block as far as you can. Salvage the old shield to recover the materials.

When block is okay, then upgrade parry on your weapon. And IW your weapon to 10 to get void strike extra.

When block and parry are okay, you will have no problem playing on IWBTH. Then start using power armors to speed up by getting more damage.

Using plate mail, a force shield, and at the time I wrote the question a rapier, now a wakizashi since I found a legendary.

I was doing random encounters on 15x and succeeding maybe half or 2/3 of the time, playing very carefully and constantly healing and defending to keep my health bar near full, since I could get 1-shot from over 70% health.

Now with weaken (and wakizashi) I'm consistently beating 20x random encounters, but I'm still being very slow and methodical in the first 12 or so rounds, alternating weaken and cure until I've stuck a weak on everyone.

That would be too tedious.and mana intensive to do for an entire arena though, so I'm doing arenas on 7 or 10x where I can just auto attack without fear.

Noni already gave you good advice, I'll just add a few things and elaborate. A Lego wakizashi is actually a good tool for farming high difficulty random encounters for a new player due to its high parry. But far from optimal for Arena due to its low attack. As Noni mentioned, even an Exquisite Rapier of Slaughter would be faster (higher attack, but more importantly, rapiers' Penetrated Armor ability is a game changer, especially until you can spam Imperil), but if you see a 3-primary-attribute-bonus Magnificent Rapier of Balance or of the Nimble (in that order), you can also go for that, as it would be only slightly slower than Exquisite of Slaughter (statistically, in practice — maybe even faster).

For your other gear, getting Magnificent heavy armor with 3PABs is more important than aiming for a specific suffix at your level. The progression is usually Mag 3PAB Plate of whatever, then Plate of Protection, then, once you have no trouble surviving on PFUDOR difficulty, Power Armor of whatever (preferably Protection or Balance, rather than Warding, but you'll just want the attack bonus, to be faster, and by then you using Imperil plus the extra attack will make you kill faster and so take less damage, compensating for the lower than Plate's defense) and then Power Armor of Slaughter.

Don't fixate on Forging block, especially when it gets up there and starts to require lots of expensive wood. Parry is objectively worse, but also much cheaper to forge. Also don't fall into the trap of spending so much on forging that you literally could have just bought a better equipment piece.

Also don't be afraid to ask if you don't get something that you're told or want more information on it. Old players sometimes just assume that something is obvious or is common knowledge and don't think to explain it.

Not an expert and please correct me if I'm wrong on anything, but from my experience leveling up so far Waki is great for defense but gets really slow later on in arenas . So slow in fact that I've been too lazy to do any arenas cause of how long they take lately, since it seems impossible to find a better weapon right now .

In terms of suffix in these low levels I think Balance might be better than Slaughter . When I featherweight my armor with my balance Waki I have ~205% hit chance . Anything above 200% is useless afaik but with a Slaughter wep I'd have below 200% which for x20 diff is not optimal I think .


In terms of deprecating magic, I don't use weaken at all simply cause I haven't spent AP on upgrading it . Weaken needs 33 AP to max upgrade both its % and make it hit 3 targets and to max upgrade it you need level 250 .
Meanwhile mind control and better silence cost 24 AP together and upgrade sleep , confuse and silence to hit 3 targets at level 170 . These spells do have longer cooldowns but there's 3 of them . For me as long as I Silence everything, nothing can hurt me at x20 diff .
That said Faster weaken might be worth getting anyways, even without spending a lot of AP to upgrade better weaken . Depends on how much you've spent training Ability boost I guess .

This post has been edited by fsdfgiosdgio: Jun 24 2024, 22:33

Not an expert and please correct me if I'm wrong on anything, but from my experience leveling up so far Waki is great for defense but gets really slow later on in arenas . So slow in fact that I've been too lazy to do any arenas cause of how long they take lately, since it seems impossible to find a better weapon right now .

In terms of suffix in these low levels I think Balance might be better than Slaughter . When I featherweight my armor with my balance Waki I have ~205% hit chance . Anything above 200% is useless afaik but with a Slaughter wep I'd have below 200% which for x20 diff is not optimal I think .
In terms of deprecating magic, I don't use weaken at all simply cause I haven't spent AP on upgrading it . Weaken needs 33 AP to max upgrade both it's % and make it hit 3 targets and to max upgrade it you need level 250 .
Meanwhile mind control and better silence cost 24 AP together and upgrade sleep , confuse and silence to hit 3 targets at level 170 . These spells do have longer cooldowns but there's 3 of them . For me as long as I Silence everything, nothing can hurt me at x20 diff .
That said Faster weaken might be worth getting anyways, even without spending a lot of AP to upgrade better weaken . Depends on how much you've spent training Ability boost I guess .

Thanks for this insightful post. Balance is nice at low levels, certainly. Still, rapier of slaughter would be faster, I think. It's great that you can use sleep & silence, indeed then you don't need weaken. Confuse, I don't think that does very much. I suspect you'd be just as safe when only using silence + sleep, and leaving some without debuff. Personally, I use blind in isekai tower, but never confuse. The effect is just too meh.

Not an expert and please correct me if I'm wrong on anything, but from my experience leveling up so far Waki is great for defense but gets really slow later on in arenas . So slow in fact that I've been too lazy to do any arenas cause of how long they take lately, since it seems impossible to find a better weapon right now .

In terms of suffix in these low levels I think Balance might be better than Slaughter . When I featherweight my armor with my balance Waki I have ~205% hit chance . Anything above 200% is useless afaik but with a Slaughter wep I'd have below 200% which for x20 diff is not optimal I think .
In terms of deprecating magic, I don't use weaken at all simply cause I haven't spent AP on upgrading it . Weaken needs 33 AP to max upgrade both its % and make it hit 3 targets and to max upgrade it you need level 250 .
Meanwhile mind control and better silence cost 24 AP together and upgrade sleep , confuse and silence to hit 3 targets at level 170 . These spells do have longer cooldowns but there's 3 of them . For me as long as I Silence everything, nothing can hurt me at x20 diff .
That said Faster weaken might be worth getting anyways, even without spending a lot of AP to upgrade better weaken . Depends on how much you've spent training Ability boost I guess .

Schoolgirl arenas as 1 Handed Heavy without a Rapier and Imperil are more than a chore, closer to torture. You absolutely want that Penetrated Armor and Imperil mitigation reductions and you want to do as much damage as possible, and that means Slaughter. If your accuracy is low, Voidseeker Shards are pretty cheap nowadays and give a whopping 50% accuracy boost for a whole hour a pop.

Outside of farming random encounters on PFUDOR for max loot and XP, Ring of Blood, last (boss) round of Arena or upper levels of Item World, you shouldn't be in a state where you must constantly cast defensive debuffs to survive. If you are, switch down the difficulty, farm Arena for trophies, sell them to buy better gear and then switch up the difficulty.

Schoolgirl arenas as 1 Handed Heavy without a Rapier and Imperil are more than a chore, closer to torture. You absolutely want that Penetrated Armor and Imperil mitigation reductions and you want to do as much damage as possible, and that means Slaughter. If your accuracy is low, Voidseeker Shards are pretty cheap nowadays and give a whopping 50% accuracy boost for a whole hour a pop.

Oh I've been using voidseeker for arenas for a while, without knowing it gives an accuracy buff lol . Thought I was getting more accuracy from featherweights on my armor pieces .

Outside of farming random encounters on PFUDOR for max loot and XP, Ring of Blood, last (boss) round of Arena or upper levels of Item World, you shouldn't be in a state where you must constantly cast defensive debuffs to survive. If you are, switch down the difficulty, farm Arena for trophies, sell them to buy better gear and then switch up the difficulty.

I think my main problem right now is low damage . I think my strategy for SG arenas works quite well though . I'll silence/imperil mobs and then focus the SG . While I'm killing the SG the rando mobs die to counters . Idk if it's even possible to find good enough gear to be surviving in an SG arena at this level with this strat without the silence tbh . Don't think I'd have the budget to afford that anyways .

Oh I've been using voidseeker for arenas for a while, without knowing it gives an accuracy buff lol . Thought I was getting more accuracy from featherweights on my armor pieces.

Lower burden/interference doesn't give more accuracy, but keeping your burden under 70 is relevant to 1H Heavy: it prevents it from lowering your Critical Rate, so raising your average damage output.

I think my main problem right now is low damage . I think my strategy for SG arenas works quite well though . I'll silence/imperil mobs and then focus the SG . While I'm killing the SG the rando mobs die to counters . Idk if it's even possible to find good enough gear to be surviving in an SG arena at this level with this strat without the silence tbh . Don't think I'd have the budget to afford that anyways .

There's lots of affordable gear out there, the hardest part would be finding stuff soulboundable to your level. Getting a Lego Shield should be easy: sub-optimal attribute combinations and non-force go for dirt cheap at Superlatanium's auctions. A Rapier of Slaughter might be affordable too: even good roll legendary ones routinely go for around half a mil. Lego Rapiers of Balance/Nimble or garbage suffixes (Vampire/Banshee/Ilithid) often go for as low as 50k. Same for power armor: Slaughter goes for half a mil on average, but Warding, Balance and even Protection are often very affordable or even go for the starting 50k. And I'm talking about legendary stuff here.

Keep an eye on Super's auction for something low level and affordable enough and grind Soul Fragments in the mean time. Just don't break your bank chasing after the high end stuff and don't buy high level stuff that will collect dust in your inventory for months or even years.

As for credits, Schoolgirl Arenas are the obvious route, but if you can't motivate yourself for that grind, you can farm Random Encounters and clear lower Arenas for Token drops: Chaos lets you make more monsters, that have a chance to bring really expensive stuff even at low power levels, and Blood lets you fight Spaghetti Monster and get the Appendage that sells for a good 70k.