Ok, time for a dungeon duoing update for the last few weeks. I was actually at a bit of loss what to run after my last post when our skills were about in the 39-45 range - it seemed to me that that we'd already tried all the dungeons that we could reasonably do at that level and there was no particular benefit to going back, and that the next set of dungeons I could think of would be too hard for us (Borghild, Wolf Cave, Winter Nexus came to my mind). That might have been more perception than reality though. What we actually ended up doing:
Under the Hand
We rather outleveled it at this point and were able to kill both bosses with ease. All the stuns in this dungeon felt really annoying though. I don't normally mind it soloing since I'm focused on all the lovely snails who might drop snail shells for me, but duoing when it was clear we would be able to kill the mobs easily if they'd just stop stunning us long enough to get an attack in was tedious.
I don't normally see other people in this dungeon, so I think other players might feel the same about it. It seems the dungeon could use something to attract people and make them want to come back after they kill the bosses once for notoriety.
Borghild
Most of the dungeon felt startlingly easy compared to what I'd expected. With a bit of range from mentalism for the faces and stun from unarmed for the ghosts, we waltzed through the dungeon without problems, and handled adds and chest traps with ease. (Not "too easy", just not all that difficult. ) The bosses were another story altogether. I'm not sure if the bosses are actually too hard or if we were just unlucky since every single boss happened to be highly resistant to our main damage abilities.
We wiped on Venenae in the basement in no time at all and by the utter lack of damage we were doing to her, it was clear there was no point in retrying her even with more poison resistance.
Kiralem seemed almost possible - we did some very careful pulling to try to get him alone but always got an extra add during the fight that made it just a bit too hard for us. After wipe #2, we hooked up with a fire/druid player. With his help, we got Kiralem down pretty nicely, even with 3-4 adds in the fight. It was still a somewhat difficult fight due to the adds, and we had one player death. It felt fun, though.
Going back to Venenae, the fire/druid player nuked her down in maybe 10 seconds, while I watched open-mouthed.
Our try at the Forgotten Loading Golem went a bit less well. Neither my friend nor I could really do much damage against the golem and I at least was pretty useless against the crystals as well since I was all melee. So, I settled for trying to stun the golem as often as possible, while my friend focused on healing our lovely fire/druid dps. We got the golem down to the point where he spawned the mini golems which turned the fight from "maybe we can do this" to a wipe. Since the golem curse is incredibly annoying, our new third party member got someone from his guild to come out and annihilate the golem for us (thank you, Sims!!!).
Kur, try 2
Not much new to say about this - we were able to do both the first floor and the graveyard nicely. We killed Gravamux in a reasonably matched fight, then wiped on the rhino tower of doom due to rhinos and, well, doom. Or possibly more rhinos.
Winter Nexus
I had to try this but when it took us 3 attempts to get the Thorn of Decay down for the key, I had a pretty good indication of how the dungeon was going to go. And yes, we wiped several times in the first room before giving up.
( The Winter Nexus is kind of an interesting place to me. I'm up to 29 winterprizes from the Animal Nexus sitting in my bank now, and I have zero use for them since I still haven't gotten past the first intersection in the Winter Nexus. Now that the level cap is 70, are people still bothering to run this dungeon? )
Yeti Cave
This is apparently the dungeon I should have started with when I couldn't think of a place for us to try earlier. When we finally made it out here, my friend sliced through the yetis on the first floor like butter. It felt like our usual fight involved me hopping in, getting one kick off, getting stunned, and then my friend killing both yetis on me before the stun wore off.
The second floor of the yeti cave felt really nice and challenging, though. We worked our way through the elites pretty well before dying to an unfortunate 3-pull and calling it a night.
I would like to go back to the second floor but between the yeti cave being a bit out of the way and the long way through the more boring first floor, we haven't really had an opportunity. We did go back to the cave a second time, but managed to wipe before actually getting to the fun floor. Apparently the first floor yetis are less easy when we leap into a clump of 5 of them...
Kur Tower, try 3
With my friend's new pain bubble, we managed to one-shoot most of the rhinos and successfully ascended the rhino tower of doom. My friend reached 50 in mentalism on the way there, and promptly equipped some new 50/50 gear which I think helped a lot as well.
At the top of the tower, we were able to get Lomas by himself and managed to kill him on our first try, with my friend spamming his rage-reduction abilities and me bunny-tanking and spamming my apparently rage-increasing abilities. ( I always seem to end up with those fire dot mods on my gear. It's not on purpose. I think.)
I feel a bit like I've won the game now. Ice magic had been eluding me for a long time.
Wolf Cave
We made two short trips out to the Wolf Cave, one before and one after Kur Tower. The first time, we just went in to chat with Malgath, and then tried going a bit further into the main cave. We managed to kill a few elites but then had problem with one or the other of us dying and not being able to get back together.
The second time, we came for Hoplology, and decided to give Timothy a try. Or two. Or five. Towards the end, I had some problems seeing Timmy since he was hiding behind our tombstones. I'm proud to say we eventually got him down, although I wouldn't care to repeat that fight for a while.
Crypt, Second Floor
I left this one till late since I didn't really want to live with Khyrulek's curse, and I felt we'd used up our high-level player interventions in Borghild.
The second floor of the crypt was still mildly challenging for us, even with our skills in the 48-55 range. The fire sheep and snails were gratifyingly easy, but my friend ended up almost dying in the fight with Khyrulek and friends when he was battered and stunned by the rhino. I like the rooms in the crypt since they make it pretty hard to see what is in a room before starting the fight - we were definitely a bit more careless than we should have been when engaging Khyrulek, and we later got another fun surprise when charging that single super spider.
Oh - when we killed Khyrulek on the first floor, the portal to the next floor despawned before we'd finished looting everything in her room, so we had to wait around to kill her again. Not a huge deal, but it might be nice if the portal lasted a bit longer.
Future
We are planning on resetting our levels by switching to ice magic. If we were continuing at 50+, I think we would be in another spot without that many dungeons available. We'd probably be doing yeti cave second floor for a while and turning in Maligno's skull while we are at it, and a bit of the wolf cave, but that's about all I can think of. Winter Nexus may be worth trying again in the high 50s. I have never tried Dark Chapel but I suspect we'd need a bigger group than 2.
50+ isn't necessarily a bad spot - there are always outdoor mobs too, and the Rahu desert has a nice mob density. It just feels like there are fewer dungeons around than at 30.
Money and Inventory
If I'm tracking correctly, I have given my friend 75,000 councils in cash so far. Plus some items, but since I've been getting stuff from him too, I'll consider that an even exchange.
Since I'm not sure what exactly he has been spending the money on, I don't think I just want to say "newbie leveling is too expensive." But ... maybe? A little? I'm not sure. I know he got the level 50 unlocks for sword and foraging during the training sale weekend, but those are the main expensive items that I'm aware of. He has been doing a bit of surveying on his own and filled work orders in Serbule, Eltibule and Sun Vale. I'd guess that he's gotten all cooking recipes from Fainor which can get pretty expensive but it seems he's been mostly just focused on sword/mentalism and the necessary favor for that. On the other hand, since I've been dragging him into dungeons, he might have been leveling a bit faster and needed money more quickly than he normally would.
Inventory is continuing to work much better now that my friend is out of the newbie phase. Or maybe he spent all the money on bank slots? The main inventory delay I noticed recently was him running all the way out to Ser Arif in order to deposit the skulls he's saving for phrenology. Which may be playing the game as intended but really made me wish he'd just make a storage alt since it would be so much quicker.