My character feels under-powered

[gillzj00]

This is just kind of a question to you guys but I feel, for my level, I am pretty weak and pathetic lol. I am lvl 51 in Archery and I think 49 now in Mentalism. Isn't the max level you can have on any single skill 70 (feel obliged to correct me)? I feel like for being only 19ish levels away from maxing out I am pretty pathetic when it comes to soloing anything. I am still hanging out in the Eltibule Goblin Crypt thing and get pwned there if I take on more than a few mobs. My armor looks like I just got off newb island but I never loot anything better than what I have. I am constantly depleting my power when fighting. I also seem to run slow.

I feel very vulnerable in Kur in general and if I go into the Kur Tower area I can kill 1 or 2 mobs at a time but generally draw 6 of them and get murdered. Is my thinking wrong? Do I feel weak because I am not hunting in groups? I just feel like for lvl 51 I haven't seen much of the map and in general haven't done anything that exciting.

As a note I have focused on my fletching too and I can make Expert level arrows. I am currently using Amazing level arrows I bought from a player vendor.

I guess I could see me feeling like a weak newb if the level cap is 250 or something but would think that at my level I should start feeling like a higher level character and definitely do not.

Thanks for any input !

[alleryn]

In PG, a large majority of the character's power comes from gear, rather than from levels. This is likely why you feel underpowered. Finding appropriate level gear with the right mods for your build can make a huuge difference.

Another part of it might be Mentalism. I haven't used it much myself, but i believe it's a more group-focused skill, so might be a little on the weak side for soloing. It certainly has some good solo skills, so i could be wrong -- like i said i haven't really tried it myself.

I'd love to give you some advice about where to get better armor, but i'm not really sure. I'm nearing level 70 and still in mostly level 40 gear i found in Sun Vale from Winter Court Fairies. It's hardcore-only armor though, so i'm guessing that's not a lot of help.

Good luck!

[pilotfisherman]

http://www.gorgonexplorer.com/build-planner

Use this tool to really wrap your head around the mod options then roll the die until you have precisely what you intend to.

[Niph]

Isn't the max level you can have on any single skill 70?

You can get to 80+ on Mentalism and Psychology, although there are no abilitiies available at the max level you can have.

My armor looks like I just got off newb island but I never loot anything better than what I have.

Yes, for better loot you need to fight in higher level areas, one mob at a time.

I am constantly depleting my power when fighting.

You might want to take a break from fighting and learn some cooking, flower arrangement (or buy food and bouquets from other players, although I'm not sure how the economy is on this since I make my own stuff). On a side note, it is surprising to run out of power for someone using Mentalism.

I also seem to run slow.

Doesn't really matter when you fight, but to run from one place to another maybe you want to learn some basic Battle Chemistry, to get haste buffs.

I feel very vulnerable in Kur in general and if I go into the Kur Tower area I can kill 1 or 2 mobs at a time but generally draw 6 of them and get murdered.

Learning how to extract one mob at a time from a bunch of them is a very useful "skill". Press the ALT key when you target a mob, this will tell you the distance from it, and learn for every mob you fight what the limit is before it notices you. Reaching this limit on the closest mob, then falling back, will pull it single.

I just feel like for lvl 51 I haven't seen much of the map and in general haven't done anything that exciting.

You need a group!

Do I feel weak because I am not hunting in groups?

Groups are indeed more efficient. There is no secret, you need to try repeatedly to make your own.

Good luck.

[Tagamogi]

Sorry in advance if some of my suggestions seem a bit basic. alleryn is correct and a lot of power comes from gear but just to cover everything I can think of:

I'm not sure why you would be running out of power. Are you using your combat refresh abilities (basic shot, mind reave) whenever they'd return power to you? Are you eating? Have you tried stacking the highest level meal your gourmand skill can handle and adding a snack? Mentalism's power wave is also obviously helpful, but I don't think you'd really need it much in the goblin dungeon.

For mentalism, a few of the nicer abilities are unlocked by gaining favor with an NPC in the Serbule mushroom cave, if you haven't found those yet.

For archery, it only matters which ability level you use, not which arrows. If you use a level 1 archery ability, you will do the same damage whether you use a basic arrow or an amazing arrow. Higher level archery abilities require different arrows to use, so that's where you do want different arrow types. However, it looks like at archery 51, the most you should need are expert arrows. You may want to check your abilities to make sure you are always using the highest level available to you - that sounds a bit obvious but I've played around with different loadouts before and accidentallly reset myself to a lower level at times. You may also want to check the Wiki to make sure you aren't missing any really neat abilities taught by an obscure NPC somewhere.

You are not going to get any gear beyond maybe level 35-40 out of the goblin dungeon. To get nicer stuff, you'll need to either take up crafting or kill higher level mobs. Groups can help you with getting better loot pretty easily. I can't really think of any good solo places - you may want to try outside in Kur (you can always hang out near a fire) or possibly Sun Vale. Neither of those will get you level 50+ gear, but maybe at least a couple upgrades from your current stuff to allow you to move on to other areas. I think Kur Tower would be a pretty rough place to solo with archery/mentalism due to all those zombie clusters. You may do better in either the yeti cave or the wolf cave in Kur - the mobs feel less clustered there although they might be a bit higher level than you really want right now. The wolves are vulnerable to poison though, so that might have potential for you... Sorry, I'm really not sure about the best places to go if you want to solo - hopefully someone else will have better suggestions. I primarily leveled with battle chemistry, so what I find easy to solo doesn't really apply to archery.

I don't think there's much you can do about your runspeed - there are a few armor pieces that give a sprint bonus but if you use them, you'll miss out on combat skill bonuses. I don't think either archery or mentalism have any abilities that would help you run faster, unfortunately.

[Celler]

Ment goes up to around 79 or so I think, mainly drawing bonuses from phren.
I wouldn't consider ment or archery weak, both have been weakened though the Aoe lost from Electrify especially was a style changer.To be honest in Kur you have 2 issues, firstly cold if you don't deal with it properly and have plenty of buffer from warm clothes, good food etc any land based battles are going to get to you soon enough.
Those Zombie like things in kur tower can mob folks quite easily there damage soon mounts up,try walking towards them until 1 or 2 start coming, then back up until there is plenty of room between them and the rest, If you drop an arrow of ment spell in the group they will all come at you.

As for speed with that build your only help is the mod for boots for the ment heal I think. For land based travel I'd switch in a psych or shield skill or both.Or perhaps battle chem. Or get druid for some wings and use the ment skill to keep you airborne for long periods.

Your arrows do need upgrading yes, but it's always been an archery bottleneck for the new folks as it requires carpentry,alchemy and fletching of course.
If your always low on power you need to use better food and flowers to help overall and make sure you use the combat refresh skills to help,It's often better to kill something with 3 or 4 weaker hits than 2 big power hungry bashes.

In lots of ways its not having 2 or 3 combat skills at good lvls that makes you a stronger player.Its being able to cook and eat good food,grow and appreciate good flowers and craft good cold resistant gear etc. Being able to use higher lvls of first aid,armor patch and dig deep etc.
Also as Stated above gear is vital really as is having obtained the higher lvl of skills from mushroom and npc in vale for ment etc.

To be honest the 4 toughest dungeons in game are practically deathtraps alone most wont get far, perhaps there are a few min maxers but I've not seen um, although you can poke around in top of dc .
To be honest at lvl 50 you could perhaps do most of crypt,mushroom,little goblin house,upto fog in goblin,under the hand (not sure about slimes current regen), animal nexus. The rest I'd imagine is beyond you, to be honest even with my skills high there are few other places than that that are not capable of kicking me around especially if I get sloppy.
I do worry that as more players appear the lvl of monster density on surface world may end up being problematic for the lone explorers too at times but we shall see.

Hope you find a way to have some fun

[Sasho]

I play Sword/Archery and both are maxed. My archery skills are Mangling Shot (2200 dmg), Aimed Shot (800 dmg), Heavy Shot (2400), Multi-Shot (900 dmg), Snare Arrow (500 dmg), and Heavy Mulit-Shot (2100 dmg). Because Mentalism doesn't use a hand slot, allowing you to hold something extra like a cross bow with specific bonuses to archery, I've seen players do over 5k dmg with one arrow of Heavy Shot when they have your kind of load-out.

Here's the thing: you're not going to get good damage with every ability. You'll have to chose your build out but you just wont have room for Long Shot, Basic Arrow, and Blitz Shot all in your combat tab and expect to do a lot of damage. My load is an example of what yours should be - diverse! Stuns, AoE, Simple Shot, Mesmorizes, maybe even a Damage of Time (DoT) of fire if you want. You're going to need to make choices. Second of all, you need to buy those good skills. Mangling Shot is a must because of it's ability to stun and high damage. Initially it's not high, but because almost every piece of armor/jewelry comes with a potential for +dmg% mod on it for Mangling shot it can become strong quickly. I personally don't have anywhere near a perfect set of armor and I'm already doing good damage with it. Your going to need favor and councils to get these skills though. Talk to Elahil in Serbule for that. Third of all, be patient while you hunt the armor and get the mods. I tend to priorities mods that give +damage% to my Mulit-Shot skills first, because I find AoE more valuable (my personal preference). As you find a mod here and there are replace your current armor with it you'll find that really quickly you've become extremely powerful. -If you need help getting armor ask to form a group and kill some bosses in Kur Tower.

As for power, make sure you are using a Meal Food and a Snack Food. Snack Foods give a good +Health +Power bonus, Meals don't usually give any bonus unless it's a drink in which case it's a +Power Bonus. But if you do make cheese (which isn't the priority at the moment), that's the only Meal Food that gives a +Health bonus (yes it also makes Snack Foods as well for some of the highest bonuses in the game). Another way to get power is to gain Nature Appreciation by eating flowers. Flowers can boost your power around +100 for 1 Hour at the highest levels. When you start off eating small ones like Blue Bells they give you +10 Power for like 30 minutes if I remember correctly.

As for run speed, there's really no easy way to do it aside from having a specific load-out. I have a load out of Shield/Battle Chemistry that I use for speed abilities, along with different equipment in my inventory that gives +speed mods. Because the armor sucks in itself, I only use the armor for this load out. But it helps when running from place to place.

Good luck and feel free to ask more questions in game.

[Tagamogi]

Also, archery is going to get combat bonuses from anatomy and mentalism from phrenology. You are hopefully already working on anatomy but it takes quite a while to level. You can get phrenology from Kur Tower, so if you can't reach the trainer there by yourself, it may be worth asking for help just to learn phrenology and start working on that.

I was also just thinking that a lot of the gear that drops in Kur Tower has archery bonuses built-in, so it's definitely a very nice place to get loot for you if you can find a group, or maybe just a duo partner.

[Dragone]

I'm hammer/druid so this might not be comparable but when I got into my 60s 70s the abilities upgrade available to buy drastically increased base damage across the board

[Crissa]

Mobs in the Goblin crypt are up to 45 and can totally group up hard core, so I don't see why a lone 50 ought to be able to solo it? I can solo the entrance, and have for quite some time, but I'll still get owned in the Serbule crypt if I try to solo too far. Especially if I miss and get stunlocked.

As a side note, on a Mac, I have a problem getting ctrl-targeting to work; there's some bug in the UI.