A few (newb) questions

Hi all,

I just started playing the game not long ago (even though I did pay for it for a while) and I got some questions for the more experienced folks out there, to simply give me an idea on what I should be doing.

Right now i'm playing a sword/mentalism build, having both at level 25 (i think). I'm using mentalism because I like the idea of healing and those 1-minute buffs. So here are my (general) questions:

1. Should i be focusing on a more dps heavy build, like sword archery at these levels?
2. What is the best build to level up in your opinion, for soloing stuff? What I mean by this is that i want to be able to solo e.g. the mauler in Eltibule and/or other elites, dungeons etc. I did do it once but cannot anymore (critical hits, maybe not enough dps or power to use everything, maybe had a different build, etc).
3. Are long cooldown abilities worth it? E.g. Decapitate. That 1minute doesn't seem very useful to me compared to Finishing blow for example. Am I wrong?
4. Any tips on managing your power? I always seem to run out of it too quickly even though I use sword's basic attack. Also using lvl 10-15 meals and snacks. For example, i need to have full power when starting to fight a snail. Otherwise i cannot kill them because of their regeneration.
5. Am I the only one having 10-12 FPS in any of the dungeons? I've tried all possible graphical adjustments and it doesn't change anything. Even with many players in Serbule i get 30-60 FPS (except when fighting event mobs), but not in dungeons. Unless i'm facing towards the exit (and away from any mobs), it becomes close to impossible to move around and attack properly.
6. I tried soloing some of the dungeons (in which i can kill the mobs easily) but because of the low FPS and the fact that mobs respawn too quickly i died some of the times. Am I doing something wrong? Should I wait more? It sucks that sword doesn't have a good AOE skill (except the mod for many cuts), at least until now. Am I missing some "secret" tactic for soloing the early dungeons (mainly from Serbule)?
7. What would you pair fire magic with? I have it at lvl 15 i think, but sword seemed more reliable and less power hungry (also more damage consequently).
8. What should I be doing in game? I know this is general, but my goal for now is quests. Also doing some meat/skins farming runs. The thing is, i'm close to getting bored and don't want to get there. I would love to level up most skills but it feels a bit cumbersome (i.e. Just killing mobs or running around gathering plants). Any general tips please?
9. Is it a good idea to level up more fighting skills in the level 1-30 areas first, or just focus on some that I want to use, then come back much later? E.g. I like fire magic, sword, archery(but this is very cumbersome and expensive), knife fighting, mentalism, unarmed. I'd love to try and level Staff too (maybe with fire magic). Psychology seems cool but I couldn't find much usefulness in the skills. Animal handling also seems very nice, but not just yet - the idea is cool but it looks like a waste of an ability bar to have just a rat by your side.
10. Are animal forms worth pursuing now? Thinking about the werewolf for example but i couldn't find a thorough description of what that entails, anywhere (how the skill level ups go, their damage, resource costs, etc).

Sorry for any typos, i'm on mobile at the moment.

Thanks!

1. just do what u like u will change u skill sets many times in future
2. Many eg: sword/men fire/psychology
3. depend of what u fight
4. increase u max energy, there are few way : better equipment mods, meditation buff, sniff flower buff, some alchemy potion, shamanic infusion can add max power to some equipment.
5, 6. strange but sadly i have no idea how to help
7. try fire magic + psychology or shield or staff
8. any activity that are fun for :P do favor witch NPC or go for treasure hunting or be farm-man or just kill monster and skin them to learn money
9 Aminal Handing is much better that u think and rat is only beginning later there will be some bears and 'cats' (the Mangler in Eltibule can be u pet to)
Animal Handing and Necromancy are very good skills to fast leveling new skills
10. werewolf is PERMANENT maybe try any other for start witch animal form and remember that most NPC don't talk to animals
Go animal when u find un-animal potion probably most easy for u to find one will be un-pig or un-deer potion when find one of those just drink pig or deer potion and try it, if u dont like it just dring un-potion (ps: unarmed/mentalism/psychology work fine wit animal forms)

AND

Read WIKI

One: The builds are completely up to you, if you go with a party then a more support heavy build can work. But you can also just as easily run full dps and find a team to compliment that, I usually run a mix and just level a lot of skills so I can do what's needed for any situation but obviously that takes time.

Two: For soloing stuff I would say either Fire Mage or Battle Chemist, for early game Fire Mage is definitely more achievable than Battle Chemist because of Battle Chemists high Alchemy requirements.

Three: Long cool-down abilities can be very useful depending on how you use them, but since they can't be spammed are essentially something I always put near the end of my skill bar. And with that I usually either use lots of abilities to wait out the cool-down or use abilities with good synergy. And if you aren't soloing then you can have a party member cover you as I said before.

Four: For managing power it really comes with ability cost, so the best thing you can do is either eat better food or use an ability that regenerates your power, Mentalism has such an ability.

Five: The fps is normal if you don't have a super beefy computer, and while it will probably be optimized better in the future you should turn down graphics or exit full-screen and change resolution if you absolutely need to.

Six: Soloing dungeons at a low level is difficult in general, while I would normally suggest a party no matter what it can be done solo. As I said before you can fix your fps with a change of resolution, even exiting full-screen alone should improve it. I really understand the aoe issue but it can only really be solved by farming a lot so you can kill with single abilities a lot, or getting an aoe class and swapping it later once you've cleared.(This obviously requires a lot of time so you can grind both of them up.)

Seven: Fire Magic is very useful, and it can be paired with most things. I am starting to sound like a broken record here but Battle Chemist is amazing with it. Other than that most things go well with it but Necromancy, Druid, and Animal Handling would go very well with it, but in the end it is up to preference so just try lots of stuff until you find what you personally enjoy.

Eight: For this I really can't say, I just do what I feel like at the time and go from there; some days I want to max a class, and others I want to start a spider revolution, as you can see it can vary widely. In summary, just explore and enjoy yourself!

Nine: I personally level as many abilities as I can, even abilities I won't even revisit or be able to use in spider form which I use a lot, there's really no waste in trying new things. But if you don't enjoy using a type of ability after trying it then only level it if you need it for a bonus level in another stat which they often have. So yes, it is a good idea to level as much as you can as they will have a passive use a lot of the time and can help you fill a gap in a party if needed. Versatility is key as I say.

Ten: I am like a really scratched and broken record now, and I am very biased on this, however I'll try to maintain a neutrality. Wolf form can change to human easily aside from on a full moon in which you are stuck in Wolf form. This means you can't talk to most shopkeepers and even the ones you can talk to will need a kind of "bargain" quest to even let you speak with them. But Wolf is more versatile and other races sometimes have an ability which will let you temporarily appear human to talk to certain people who wouldn't normally do so. In the end I would say the abilities are worth it, but for things like Spider and Bat it's better to be an experienced player and have completed a lot of quests with npcs that won't speak to you after transforming. In the end its up to preference once again but you should save some unjuice in case you really don't like them. On the other hand Druids can turn into Deer with no real downsides other than the Druid class requirement and Druid events, so if you want to become a Deer then Druid has a basically permanent unjuice and rejuice.

Side note: someone already said this but the wiki can solve most questions other than what I have provided.

Thanks for the info guys. I know about the wiki and using it when needed :)
I guess I wanted some tips on what to do in the game to have fun in my limited time and not get burnt out from it.
Regarding the FPS issue, I did try everything except exiting full screen. My rig should handle the game easily (since I can play most released titles to date at max settings or close to them). My disappointment is that doing dungeons kind of puts me off because of the 10 FPS in them (since I can't really be anything else than a dps in them because of the lag). Gonna try asking for groups in general chat and see how it goes without soloing :)

Quick question: what should I be farming for level 25 gear in general? I'm not being very lucky with drops.

1. If you're soloing then you do want to focus on damage a bit, but a hybrid build will tend to work better in general. Especially in the lower levels, having access to heals and building a little tanky can improve your survivability by a lot.

2. Psychology is excellent for soloing because it gives healing and CC, but it lacks in damage. It also requires very little gear investment to be useful, so it works well even if you're wearing low rarity gear and you can focus all your gear on your main skill. Something like Fire Magic/Psychology would probably be the easiest build to solo with in general, although you do have a bit of a hurdle with fire magic research. I do believe Hammer/Psychology would also be pretty good now with the recent buffs as well.

3.Long cooldown attacks are typically very good for soloing because they have high base damage, and therefore let you quickly nuke troublesome mobs. For DPS they are pretty weak though. If you're soloing they can be pretty good though since time travelling, looting, etc will burn through the cooldown time in general, they can be used to kill stuff you don't want to deal with very quickly and you can always wait for the cooldown if you need it. If you're constantly fighting and enemies have a lot more health (Say for example, in dungeon run) they aren't as good unless if you have a spare slot you don't need another ability for.

4. Make sure you are using Dig Deep all the time. Don't save it for an emergency, if you are missing enough power for Dig Deep to be 100% efficient or near it, then use it. Also avoid starting combat with basic attacks until you are missing enough power to use the combat refresh efficiently. For snails in particular, you should try to avoid using your power-hungry moves until it's low on armor, then go for the kill.

5. Unfortunately I'm not sure about this weird FPS issue. Usually Serbule is where my FPS goes to 30, but then dungeons are 60fps. Especially with how it sounds like players don't affect performance but mobs do. Is it every dungeon or just a specific one?

6. Two things are much stronger early game, high armor and healing abilities. If you can get high armor equipment like Knight Armor, that'll help you a ton.

7. Psychology is a good choice for soloing. Staff is also pretty decent and can be very useful against physical mobs.

8. Try to aim for bosses, that's usually a good motivator to keep playing. Get stronger so you can murder enemies that you couldn't before. How you do that is up to you though. You can also try to focus on getting better gear as well, since good equipment goes a long way.

9. It's generally better to try and get two main combat skills up to a higher level because you'll get access to better gear, items, money, etc. However if you're interested in some skills then try them out! Maybe you'll find that you like another skill more and it'll be better in the long run to invest in it instead.

10. Once you have some good storage in Serbule and you can comfortably walk around the beach in Sunvale (Level 20+ probably) animal forms can be worthwhile. Cow is probably the easiest one to start with as long as you're strong enough to kill the boss that curses you into a cow, since you can just go and kill her whenever you want to change back. For the most part though, if you're playing as an animal it's because you want to use its combat skill, so only become a Werewolf if you're interested in using the Werewolf combat skill. There are other bonuses related to being in animal form, but they may not be terribly useful until you're around level 40+.

@Yaffy: thank you for the detailed post. About the FPS issue, it happens in every dungeon. Everywhere else I have 60, unless there is a huge event in Serbule (like the recent Kraken one), when they drop to around 20 at least. I don't know what dungeons have different that I can't properly turn towards a group of mobs in them (maybe the pathing algorithms?).

As a short term goal i'm thinking about going leatherworking because i seem to need health and power regen gear. Having only armor didn't work out very well in my opinion, but i may try it again if some good pieces drop.

So where should I be farming level 20-25 gear? I'm mainly getting amulets and it's frustrating :)

1) & 2) Recent changes greatly reduced amount of burst damage you can do, especially when it comes to AOE. So building full glass cannon is not good idea. Good heals, especially early on, are very valuable. Similar cc, or rage control - it can help you survive longer. Another good idea is to look for white high-armor items, like Knight Armor, or Elven armor set. They high Armor stat, and lack of Endurance requirement will give you tons of survivability early on. And since mods are not too strong up to around lv 30-40, such items will last you for a long while.

As for best leveling build - its really hard to tell. But few skills that I think are worth looking at:

Shield - good survivability, some cc, available very early, not too hard to obtain, and one of very few skills in the game that have build-in sprint boost.
Psychology - It has just about anything you might need - damage, cc, rage control, aggro control, sustain, damage reduction…. Hell, it even has boost to obtained exp. And it has no gear requirements, so you can pair it with anything.
Animal Handling. With recent changes, Pets become very strong. Even rats can do both respectable damage,and tank a bit. Once you get to lv 20 yu cna tame cats, that deal good damage, and are bulkier than rats ?(but not evasion). Fey panthers can even heal you. At lv 40, you can tame bears. Extremely tanky, with decent damage.
Unarmed - starts off weak, but becomes extremely powerful later on. Good sustain, damage, cc, and survivability.

3)Yes, long-cd skills (or Epic attacks, as they are called in game) are worth using, but they are not something you should spam. In general, they provide less dps, and have worse power economy than other skills, but they main purpose is to quickly burst down enemy. They Are basily your ‘oh shit’ button, when you need something die now.

4) Well, snails are very hard to kill, unless you can burst them down in one, two hits. I would advise avoiding fighting them altogether If you are using level appropriate food (and form what you said, you do), and still have power troubles, here are few tips:

Alchemy have some recipes for potions that either restore power, or boost your max power/power regen
Similarly, Flowers can help you. Bouquets boost amount of power you gain from your Combat refresh, while sniffing normal flowers boost your max power by huge amount.
If you are using Mentalism, stack Power Wave. It gives you additional Power regeneration, and you can have up to 3 going at the same time.
Check power costs of your abilities. Some of them, evn those with lower cd, have significant power costs, and you might want to avoid spamming them, unless you have to.
Other reason you run out of power might be because you do not deal enough damage. Check monster stats (you need to perform few autopsies so see them). If it's resistant to your main damage type (slashing/piercing for sword) it might be good idea to hunt other mobs.
As last resort, you might try to equip few pieces of cloth armor. It provides additional power on Combat refresh.

5) Unfortunately, I can't help you with that, since I don't have such problems.

6) Dying is part of the life in Pg. Accept it. Embrace it. Since you will be meeting your guardian elf quite often(if you don't know what i’m talking about - you don't worry. You will get there eventually). But in general, if you get swarmed by more than 2 mobs of similar level, wearing level-appropriate gear - you are probably dead. PG is not game where you should be trying to take on multiple enemies, unless you are overgeared as hell. Not only moab hit very hard, all AOE skills deal reduced damage when hitting more than 3 enemies.

As for tips
- avoid pulling multiple mobs,
- avoid any mob that have significantly more armor/hp than others,
- if you screen starts flashing, and some weird text start flowing - it's time to turn around and nope away(unless you are in strong party).
- use consumables (instant-heal potions, and many, many Alchemy recipes). Simple antitoxin that you can learn from Marna can turn early stages of Serbule crypt from spider-infested nightmare, into… well, not really easy mode, but it will be much more manageable.

7) Staff/Ice magic/ Shield… There are quite few options. But as new player I wouldn’t focus on it. Power hungry, and requires rare materials to obtain higher lvl spells.

8)It’s really hard to tell. Set yourself long-term goals, and do what you have to to give them. LIke obtaining some skill, or hitting certain amount of cash. This is part of the charm of sandbox games - no hand holding, means more freedom, but said freedom can be confusing.

9)I’d say, ist better to focus on one set of skills at a time. Having higher level skills will allow you to farm in higher lv zones, which in turn will allow you to find better gear, that will sell for more. Money is important, because you can level up your skills freely only up to lv 50 - after that you have to pay to unlock next level cap. Lv 50-60 cost something around 20k councils, unlocking lvl 70 cost almost 100k. On top of that, above lvl 50 you no longer learn any ability by leveling up - you have to pay for them.

After you get one set of high-level skills, you can use it to power-level others.

10) I would say that Animal Forms are not worth pursuing early on. Some key NPCs will stop talking to you, you will no longer be able to use most combat skills(only ones available for animals are Mentalism, Psychology, Unarmed - still need equip unarmed weapons - Animal handling. Deers, Spiders, Cows, and I think Pigs can use Druid, Rabbits can use Ice magic) . So before you discard your feeble humanity, first get most out of it - max all storages in Serbule, learn, and level up Carpentry to 50 (npc will stop talking to you when you turn animal, and you will no longer be able to chop wood, but you still will be bael to use any recipe you learned).

Of course that is true only if you pick one of lesser animals. Most of this downsides do not apply when you decide for superior choice, and become werewolf. As a member of this noble species, you will be able to switch between your animal and humanoid form at will. Well, almost. Newbiest might struggle with turning back at first, unless they state they bloodlust(you will need to kill several mobst to be able to turn into human) but with some practice this will no longer be a problem (starting at around lv 60). And for three days around full moon you will be locked into your wolf form.

And yes, unlike other animal forms, Lycanthropy can't be cured, but hey, who would want to do it? I mean, it's not like you can lose your mind on your first full moon, becoming mindless beast that just murders everything in sight, last traces of humanity slowly being drown in sea of bloodlust. But something like that happens very rarely*, and only to inferior specimens.

It's also worth noting that werewolves are only one in game that do not require you to spend money to unlock higher levels, and can buy them off before reaching current lv cap. Instead, you spend special tokens obtained from doing wolf quests during full moon (need to travel to Kur to be able to get them)

*latest estimation put it at around 87%

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Originally Posted by Crusader2010

@Yaffy:
So where should I be farming level 20-25 gear? I'm mainly getting amulets and it's frustrating :)

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If you're mostly only getting amulets, try changing what mobs you're fighting a bit. Enemies will tend to only drop certain gear pieces, so if you want a whole new set you'll want to fight a variety of enemies. At level 20-25 some good dungeons are the Carpal Tunnels and Mushroom Cave. Once you're a bit tougher you can try out Goblin dungeon. The latter two can be a bit tricky and require you to learn how to body pull (Bait one enemy to fight you by walking near it, then running a bit away so you can fight it by itself) so you don't get overwhelmed by enemies, but they have chests which can help you get gear.

@cr00cy: thank you for the details too!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Yaffy

If you're mostly only getting amulets, try changing what mobs you're fighting a bit. Enemies will tend to only drop certain gear pieces, so if you want a whole new set you'll want to fight a variety of enemies. At level 20-25 some good dungeons are the Carpal Tunnels and Mushroom Cave. Once you're a bit tougher you can try out Goblin dungeon. The latter two can be a bit tricky and require you to learn how to body pull (Bait one enemy to fight you by walking near it, then running a bit away so you can fight it by itself) so you don't get overwhelmed by enemies, but they have chests which can help you get gear.

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Thanks! I think i'll try that. It seems pointless to ask, but the mushroom dungeon can't be soloed at my level, right? :o
Body pulling is easy (have experience in tanking in WoW from the old and hard days). Too quick respawns are what trigger me :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Crusader2010

Thanks! I think i'll try that. It seems pointless to ask, but the mushroom dungeon can't be soloed at my level, right? :o
Body pulling is easy (have experience in tanking in WoW from the old and hard days). Too quick respawns are what trigger me :)

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You won't be able to beat the bosses unless you're very well prepared, but you can reach some chests fine (One chest which is straight right once you leave the starting room is very easy to reach). If you have trouble with the Myconian rooms, you can try to kill a few and then go around the rest. They are also easy to outrun since they're pretty slow. The Myconian room from the left of the starting room might be a bit much, but there's no treasure back there so you don't have to worry about it. It's more of a farming spot if you're good at killing them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Yaffy

You won't be able to beat the bosses unless you're very well prepared, but you can reach some chests fine (One chest which is straight right once you leave the starting room is very easy to reach). If you have trouble with the Myconian rooms, you can try to kill a few and then go around the rest. They are also easy to outrun since they're pretty slow. The Myconian room from the left of the starting room might be a bit much, but there's no treasure back there so you don't have to worry about it. It's more of a farming spot if you're good at killing them.

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Forgot to ask. What is the respawn timer for chests usually, if there is such a timer? I.e. What do I need to do to refresh the items in the dungeon chests, in general?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Crusader2010

Forgot to ask. What is the respawn timer for chests usually, if there is such a timer? I.e. What do I need to do to refresh the items in the dungeon chests, in general?

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Most chests, like the ones in Mushroom/Goblin dungeon, refill 3 hours after you've looted them.