QUOTE(zanky @ Aug 17 2013, 01:02)
Deprecating magic:
Read the wiki. Many people advise grinding it at 250 just because you can have 0 cooldown on weaken then, and get it much faster. You don't need assimilator to do it.
Training: Again,
Read the wiki. Keep in mind that training costs a significant amount, and you might be better served by holding off on some training to save your money so that you can afford some upgrades to armor. If you can play at a higher difficulty, you'll raise your drop roll bonuses from that. Aside from that aspect:
QUOTE(Tenboro @ May 18 2013, 03:31)
- Playing a large number of rounds at lower difficulties will now reduce the monster drop rate for a period of time.
-- It starts kicking in after 1000 rounds and reaches max effect after 2000 rounds. The reduction caps at 75% for Normal, 50% for Hard and 25% for Nightmare. Hell and above has no drop reduction.
-- The round counter cools down at a rate of 1 per minute (out of combat only).
^^ This means you're decreasing your overall, global drop rate by playing at lower difficulties. Even when you're playing IWBTH, it'll be decreased if you've hit these marks.
Also, PAB balancing might be part of why you can't do harder difficulties.
The wiki on this particular issue is slightly outdated, due to INT no longer giving any benefit to melee except adding to SP, as well as STR no longer adding health. Go back say 2-3 weeks worth in this thread for some examples of what is recommended aside from the baseline wiki start point.
QUOTE(nakata545 @ Aug 17 2013, 01:07)
@zanky not sure if this has changed but light armor isn't really something that mixes well so try to eventually get all shade or all kevlar and you'll probably need to get used to a mace or DW to up survivability
focus on replacing the head and gauntlets first, those are your weakest
Actually, no. You can mix and match light armor just fine, and until you're high enough level to survive it properly (300+ generally), you're best NOT to go full shade. Evade from equipment does not scale much, so you get most of your evade from PABs. Since shade armor has lower PMI, you rely on evading for your defense.
Head and gauntlets are actually the only pieces of armor that have endurance, which gives health, PMI, and MMI. Generally speaking, most leather pieces you're going to want to have protection suffix. If you have a specific mitigation type suffix, you want to have it be the one that compensates for the armor type's weakness; light armor is weakest in piercing so you want deflection (shade has NONE), and heavy armor is weakest in crushing so you want dampening.
Kevlar: read the most recent
Release Notes. It's obsolete now, and the current dropping leather has (most of) the strengths of both the old kevlar and old leather. Marvin uses dual axes, and does fine as well. You don't need a mace or club to stun, though it does help. If you are going to use a crushing weapon, you want it to be ethereal because giants specifically have high mitigation to crushing and hit hard, as do dragons. See the
WIKI for more info.
Finally, as many of the folks have stated before, if you're going to say "I'm not sure" about something, you're probably better off not answering the question and letting someone else answer it. Generally speaking, the Grandmasters are those who are level 300+, and have tried a variety of things, hashing out what works and what doesn't. I've only been chiming in recently about things where it's been answered before and/or referenced to either the wiki or release notes or something else Tenboro has posted, because there really AREN'T a ton of grandmasters, and they're not here in this thread 100% of the time.
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Aug 17 2013, 09:40
