Stalled Character Frustration

[Fhen]

I am looking for some advice about moving my character forward.

I have a skill at 70, one at 60 and a bunch in the 40's and 50's. It may explain my stalling but my play-style is generally go out into the world, run around, have fun. I've done a lot of favour grinding of course but little in the way of trade skills.

I have reached a point now where I'm spending my time in the same area's and not progressing to harder content. My issue I think is that my equipment is not up to it and I am not getting better stuff to replace it with. I also think that I don't have a solid grasp of itemisation and the mods on equipment. I started augmentation for example but I'm not 100% sure on how it works although have the basics down.

I generally solo and maybe this is an issue but I am sure there are players out there in the same boat.

So I am looking for advice on getting over this bump. I have started leather working so should I raise that and make my own stuff. Should I focus on just patiently grinding a particular area until I get better equipment and then go from there? The new dungeon is a bit tough for me for example and I can't farm something like the wolf cave beyond the general trash mobs.

I'm good at surveying!! Although at this point I think I have enough money to pay for my skills so I don't think money is the problem.

Any help much appreciated.

[Niph]

A general advice would be to become proficient in the Transmutation skill, it's a life changer. You can also identify which of your gear items are the weakest, and try to replace them with crafted equipment. You said you have started leatherworking, but doing it yourself is not necessary (although it gives you a good idea of the steps involved and raw materials to acquire). You can ask other players to combine for you, if your goal is just to overcome this bump.

[Fhen]

Thanks for the help. I believe I have started doing some Transmutation. I guess I'd like to do it under my own steam if possible. I thought that my issue was maybe that my equipment is just not of a high enough level/of a higher quality but maybe I should look at what I have and do some transmutations. I was thinking I should get some good equipment first and then Transmutation it but maybe that is the wrong way around.

[mrwarp]

Use your leatherworking/tailoring/whatever gear craft leveling to fuel your transmutation/augmentation leveling. Also level your industry along side of it.

[Niph]

You said you have a skill at 70 and the other at 60. I would only use transmutation on level 60+ gear, because it's quite expensive. You don't want to transmute something that could be quickly replaced by a simple drop, unless you can transmute everything.

[Fhen]

Thanks again. I guess the way to improve my character is to go to areas where 50-70 stuff drops and then use Transmutation but that is the part I am having trouble with. Maybe I am hitting up the wrong places.

[poulter]

There are quite a few people experiencing the same situation i.e. where do I go from here now that I have (a) level 70 skills, but am under geared?

My advice is to take the plunge and join Gazluk Keep (GK)) runs. With a few hours of grouping, you will have level 70 gear and be able to tackle /explore the Gazluk caves.

Most groups will take 1 or 2 fresh level 70s if the group has 6 people. (A group with 2 veteran players can carry 4 fresh l70s).
When joining a GK run, just let the organiser know that you are undergeared and ask whether a portal to GK is available (to avoid dying from the cold debuff in Gazluk).

This approach is even easier if you are in an established guild. If you are not in a guild at the moment, consider joining one.

Gearing up:
Run GK or gather the materials and ask in guild /chat if someone will craft you some gear (excellent approach if you solo a lot)
Consider leather winter or evasion sets if you want gear crafted

Augmentation:
Run GK to obtain l70 loot, gather the gems, etc. and ask in guild /chat for someone to extract for you. Use the NPC to fit it

Food:
Make or buy the best you can. You will need it and it makes a huge difference to survivability.
Many people under-estimate just how important food quality is in PG

Modification /Transmutation:
Maximum damage & healing require that your mods match the skills /spells that you are using. It is a huge part of current end-game. Sometimes you can have 10+ mods impacting one spell
If not matched, you die a lot, if matched you can 3 - 5 shot-kill most mobs (1 or 2 shot kill in max-crafted & augmented gear)
Level transmutation & learn to 'phlog' your loot drops

Attaining level 70 skills and gears allows you to change your emphasis from grinding favour and money to buy skills and spells to one of maximising your gear.
The good thing about PG is that once you have done so, you can repeat it circa another 20 times :)

[Fhen]

There are quite a few people experiencing the same situation i.e. where do I go from here now that I have (a) level 70 skills, but am under geared?

My advice is to take the plunge and join Gazluk Keep (GK)) runs. With a few hours of grouping, you will have level 70 gear and be able to tackle /explore the Gazluk caves.

Most groups will take 1 or 2 fresh level 70s if the group has 6 people. (A group with 2 veteran players can carry 4 fresh l70s).
When joining a GK run, just let the organiser know that you are undergeared and ask whether a portal to GK is available (to avoid dying from the cold debuff in Gazluk).

This approach is even easier if you are in an established guild. If you are not in a guild at the moment, consider joining one.

Gearing up:
Run GK or gather the materials and ask in guild /chat if someone will craft you some gear (excellent approach if you solo a lot)
Consider leather winter or evasion sets if you want gear crafted

Augmentation:
Run GK to obtain l70 loot, gather the gems, etc. and ask in guild /chat for someone to extract for you. Use the NPC to fit it

Food:
Make or buy the best you can. You will need it and it makes a huge difference to survivability.
Many people under-estimate just how important food quality is in PG

Modification /Transmutation:
Maximum damage & healing require that your mods match the skills /spells that you are using. It is a huge part of current end-game. Sometimes you can have 10+ mods impacting one spell
If not matched, you die a lot, if matched you can 3 - 5 shot-kill most mobs (1 or 2 shot kill in max-crafted & augmented gear)
Level transmutation & learn to 'phlog' your loot drops

Attaining level 70 skills and gears allows you to change your emphasis from grinding favour and money to buy skills and spells to one of maximising your gear.
The good thing about PG is that once you have done so, you can repeat it circa another 20 times :)

Appreciate the info thanks. I only play very of peak and due to some other things will probably only be soloing. I don't mind doing it all myself up until whatever point I am unable. Is there a gear upgrade path for example go here until you get good 40's gear which then allows you to go here to get 50's gear etc?

[Niph]

Thanks again. I guess the way to improve my character is to go to areas where 50-70 stuff drops and then use Transmutation but that is the part I am having trouble with. Maybe I am hitting up the wrong places.

To obtain level 60 gear the most efficient way, in my opinion, is crafted stuff. In the past it was to join Manticore groups and Labyrinth groups, but they don't happen as remotely as often than during the "glorious" days of level 60 cap.

You could try the new sewers in Rahu, but if you've hit a bump it will just be the confirmation that this is too hard for you too.

Gazluk Keep is the endgame gearing up, my feeling is that you're not at this stage yet. However, if you get an invite there, by all means accept it and keep the treasure. :)

[Mbaums]

Getting over that hump when you feel stuck in level ~40 gear but you are like... 60-70 is rough, and I was absolutely there. Getting gems and materials and then find a guildie to craft some level 60 gear is my first suggestion. I think I hit my first skill at 70 by farming the dinos in eltibule for skins. It was slow and painful. I probably should have ran around the early parts of the goblin dungeon and just looted chests once a day to try and get better quality gear.

Slowing down to put augmentation and transmutation on the radar is a must. These skills will let you stay in a dungeon and just keep on looting things. If you get stuff you don't need, you can break it down into prisms and beads. The prisms will sell well to players if you stay getting too many.

The daily quest from the casino are perfect for you. Try and do them multiple times even if you don't need the final turn in. And look out for groups killing manticores!

Next, gardening-->cooking-->gourmand, and just generally figure out whose favor you need to raise. I would probably recommend getting help from someone and unlocking augury. The lucky buff while inside Rahu Sewers is sweet. I think the goal you should have is, getting yourself ready for the rahu sewers, which is no joke. If you group up with 2 people who are in your same gear-boat, you should be fine in the sewers with minimal deaths, and that is probably the fastest way, but you'll need to rely on others a lot more.

[Ranperre]

You need to grind money incessantly and level transmutation. Transmutation is not optional, augmentation is. This is not necessarily a fun stage of the game, you need a LOT of money and can't even farm good content yet.

GK requirements: 400-500 armor. And 3k burst damage over 4-5 moves or lower damage and a couple of heals. You will be leeching off of others even if you meet my "requirements", please disclose your weak status to the leader. The worst thing that can happen while leading is you start fighting and realize you have 3-4 leeches.

[Deldaron]

Cooking/gourmand is not to be overlooked. I recommend sushi prep for meals as the mats are easy to get especially for something with income from surveying and then find a snack you like and get a bunch of them. The power and health bonuses add up. Meditation and calligraphy can also provide buffs pretty easily depending on your needs. As a mostly solo player I know your pain and really it's just about what excites you, find the path of least resistance/most enjoyment.

Transmutation as mentioned can be a big help - shamanic infusion (especially since the update) in place of augmentation might be a faster gain. Shamanic Infusion skills that increase armor and health especially. If you're looking at transmutation www.gorgonexplorer.com can help you theory craft what you're looking to roll for.

Treasure Cartography is an unsung way for quickly gearing up to around 60 (might be 50 - not 100% sure) as you can do it without engaging in combat at all.

As mentioned there are dailies - if you're in a guild it might be worth looking for a group to do a daily slowly. Most daily groups rush through so quickly that it's hard to properly loot, but with a small group of friends you can take your time.

Also keep in mind what foes you're strong/weak against. When I was leveling battle chemistry I loved Ilmari because extra skin mutation made me strong against grimalkin. Leveling hammer, not so much - so I moved to Rahu wilds and picked off foe by foe because crushing is good against undead.

[Golliathe]

End game progression is:

1) get a good rolled 50 gear set (skippable if your guild laughs at GK and can drag you along)
2) max out trans/aug to roll on armor and mod it as desired (aug is skippable if you know people who have it and can rip mods)
3) get GK armor or crafted max enchanted armor.
4) Wait many moons to fix said armor via rolling. Currently this may be many many weeks...

Note: Treasure Cartography is super cool and I just recently got to where I made like 30 Ilmari maps (ranging 30-40 something). The top end maps in Etibule were giving me 3-4 pieces of level 50 gear including yellows. Let me emphasize that you can get yellow knights armor (tied for highest chest armor with gazluk gear) this way.

But you need a ton of makes to make it work. So get digging or vendor diving.

[Deldaron]

Follow up on TC - There are other means to get eltibule maps than digging up corpses/vendor diving in reliable ways. This can be uncovered through careful reading during the quest progression: The weird statues give 2 maps each per moon phase. They take specific items for sacrifice half of which can be discovered from a book in game
- all of the items are on the wiki for TC. The statues rotate what they take clockwise each moon phase change, but this will give you 4 maps of each of the 4 tiers for 16 total (per character) - not the MOST exciting skill in the game, but certainly an interesting one and can get you good money/interesting items

Ilmari maps drop off of rakkie iirc.

[Golliathe]

There is also the sewer now and you could take a group of 50's with well rolled gear in there to fight things.

I wouldn't go for the bosses however unless you had a pretty strong carry or two.

[Tagamogi]

Leatherworking is a fantastic way of getting good gear but if you are at all money-conscious about leveling it (i.e. do leatherworking work orders), it can take you some months to get to a point where you can make gear that's good enough for your high-level skills. On the plus side, once you reach that point you'll never need to worry about being undergeared for any skills ever again.

My advice for leatherworking would be to do work orders when you can. Rubywall crystals are the cheapest way to make gear that requires gems but if you are lucky enough to have a work order to make gear that you might actually want to wear yourself, make sure to use the specific gems for your skills. For example, if you have an order for 10 quality leather coats, make 11 total with mods for your skills, equip the best one for yourself, and turn in the other 10 for the work order. (Just make sure the gear you want to keep is equipped or in a loadout when you turn in the order to prevent the order from snagging it up.)

If you are able to use a staff or club, you may also want to look at carpentry for crafting yourself a nice weapon. (Crafting for other weapons or jewelry is not in the game yet.) Again, it's not necessarily going to be fast to level, but a very reliable source of gear once leveled up.

Transmutation is very helpful - the Wiki transmutation page is great. It took me a few re-reads to get the concept but it feels pretty natural now.

Every time the topic of level 60 gear comes up, I say Gazluk wolf cave and nobody else does, so I'm not sure if that makes me crazy or inspired or what. :p I want to say I usually head to the Tower View Cave in the mid to high 50s, with purplish level 50 gear. In my opinion, the real problem is just getting there, the cave itself is very pleasant to solo. Yes, I die, but the first chest is easy to reach and the other two are doable with some focus. If there are other players there, I can reach the chests faster, if I'm the only one there, I can kill more wolves for loot and xp. Win/win. Loot throughout the cave is 60-65, although it seems a bit jewelry heavy.

For navigating the Gazluk outside to get to the cave, winter gear or a blanket or fire helps but is not strictly required as long as you know where you are going and have pretty decent movement speed. The map on the Wiki shows the cave entrances - once you are inside, you no longer have to worry about the cold.

A couple more comments on Gazluk:

If I'm worried about my body heat, I will usually die when entering Gazluk to reset my heat to max, then sprint for the cave I want. The New Prestonbule cave has friendly NPCs (including vendors and a bit of storage), the Tower View Cave is the easiest cave to start farming for gear.

Both caves may have some mobs hanging around near the entrance; don't stop to fight, just zone in asap. I find my key bindings really helpful here if the cave entrance is covered in nasties: I'll spam my key for "Select Next Non-Combatant" while running until I have the cave entrance selected, then I run up to the cave and hit "Use Selected" to zone in - much smoother if there's no mouse target and clicking involved. I'd recommend being very close to the entrance before hitting the Use button - the AI pathing near the entrances can be a bit erratic and you don't want it to slow you down to get chewed up by the six mobs that have been chasing you.

Note also that the tower opposite the Tower View cave is both warm and a safe zone. Mobs will not follow you inside, so you should be able to stand in the tower and lose aggro. I've had occasional problems with range attack mobs not resetting right away, but they should lose interest in you eventually.

Once you are more comfortable in the zone, you can use the NPC Outpost in the northeast to buy some racial slot jewelry that will allow you to stand near glowy yellow crystals without getting sick. The crystals give off heat, so they are a great spot to warm up if you are too cheap to buy firewood.

Oh, and make sure you have food buffs going when running around outside - it helps a lot if something starts hitting you or you are taking frostbite damage but are almost close enough to reach a warm spot.




Appreciate the info thanks. I only play very of peak and due to some other things will probably only be soloing. I don't mind doing it all myself up until whatever point I am unable. Is there a gear upgrade path for example go here until you get good 40's gear which then allows you to go here to get 50's gear etc?

Gear progression is still a work in progress in the game. I usually spend a lot of time in Kur Tower which gives very nice 40ish gear ( I want to say I've gotten 45-50 level pieces in there too, but they are rare). The zombies in Kur Tower tend to come in groups but can be solo'd and in the lower level of the Tower, the mobs are far enough apart that they can be fought one or two at a time. No chests there, but I get very steady gear drops from the regular mobs. ( I never really warmed up to the Kur Wolf Cave for some reason - it's a bit out of the way and the elites at the back are really intended for groups.)

After Kur Tower, there is this long stretch where it feels easier to group, until you finally have the Gazluk caves as soloable 60-65 again. We'll be getting more content in that bare spot eventually ( and the sewers are a start if a bit rough right now, imo).