This morning I have a letter sitting in my inbox from Phlor. It reads “I am thinking of Cannith crafting a trinket item for lower levels for my main when I TR next. Any suggestions?”

Oh boy, where to start….

For me the trinket slot is a heavily swap slot. And I have many different trinkets that get various amount of love as I level up. I will rattle of a few important ones at the end but lets look at the crafting a few.

I almost always start with a look at the following page, “Crafting Recipes by Gear” from EllisDee37

Looking at the trinket section of the page there are lots of good things that can go on a trinket. As always the suffix section is about 10x as good as the prefix section but there are some gems in the prefix section anyway.

So lets just throw some things together that I may have in my pack/s.

Nat Armor of battle skill
Nat Armor of dodge +1
Of dodge +2
Potency of Lore
Of True Seeing
Of Absorption Electrical

Just to name a few that I have around. If I were to say make one for a melee focused a simple “of Melee Alacrity” or “Nat Armor of dodge +1” are two of my favorites. Thankfully lots of the same bonuses you can add to a trinket can also go on Goggles and some on Bracers. So if your an AC build dodge +1 can go in one place dodge +2 on the other.

One last think about crafting trinkets, if you can buy the ones from the store. Sure you can use Shroud Shards of power as trinkets but they are BtC and the wipe when you TR. Where the store ones are BtA even after crafting. And they don’t wipe in the TR cache as if you need to leave them in the cache as they can go in the shared bank and can be held by an alt, saving you valuable space.

So lets hit some of the not craft able trinkets I carry around on most lives. There are some that I also carry if I am doing the caster thing. But these are more or less always used.

Bottle of Air
Phiarlan Pendant of Time

Greater Bold Trinket
Greater Stalwart Trinket
Some times I even dig out the other cove trinkets. But the two above I always have at hand….
Dark Blue Ioun Stone (upgraded- lives where I am the trapper)
Pale Lavender Ioun Stone (upgraded)
Voice of the Master
Mummified Bat (there is something to be said about having a unique icon to click for as your free falling)
Bloodrage Symbiont
Pouch of Jerky
Head of Good Fortune
Shard of Xoriat
Shimmering Arrowhead

Friday night I TRed Samius into an arty. With the notion I would just gear up and play with the rune arms and what not, maybe get to level 2 to do so. Then Saturday we capped out Sinfully, Fopo’s alt on the completionest train with me, in Sins of Attrition. Meaning that he could TR also and he did. Full on xp time bitches! Except the wife is wanting to think about coming along now. So I spent some time Sunday rocking her through some xp.

But Fo and I did get about 4-5 hours of TR time with the holiday and whatnots. I know some of you haven’t bought artificer yet. And don’t want to read a ton about them so they keep holding out for a sale or hoping for the favor. And I am sorry but here are my thoughts from lvel 0-5 and odds are good that there will be a day or two of them a week. Sorry.

Okay, lets start off at level 1: No rune arms until level 2. 😦 But other then that level 1 is just a stepping stone. Dug out an BtA repeating xbow of Pure Good. Swore a lot about forgetting to buy returning bolts before TRing. Ran to the Cannith crafting machines to make some bolts didn’t see a level assigned to them and played Error, Error, Error making +3 Holy bolts (level more then 1), +1 Holy bolts (again lvl more then 1) +1 acid bolts (lvl 2). grrrrr! So I ran to the gen vendor and bought 300 normal bolts. Still ran out fairly soon and ended up finishing the quest with a normal club I happened to have found and not sold yet. Btw the dog is very cute at level 1. A quick docent of Invulnerability and an acid module and the dog is good for a few levels.

Level 2, rune arms check. Real weapon check (+1 icy burst of pure good longsword BtA with Masters’ Touch) Have to say the little burning hands rune arm is not bad at level 2. From level 2 to 3 was lots of fun. Really like Static Shock. It has a fair range and my Dcs are not bad, max INT a +2 hat and that past live as a Sorc at work.

Level 3, I fell in love with the Lightning Sphere spell. It brakes boxes (thru walls/locked doors btw), it stuns mobs, it is a nice aoe and it has a nice lobing effect. Fopo said it looks like slow pitch/bowling with a dragon’s eye. It is a very smooth spell. Hope it holds up well enough. Swapped to Flicker it was fine enough but in hindsight wished I had remembered the Candlelight.

Level 4 involved a weapon swap to a Icy burst Holy of Pure good Scimitar again thanks to Master’s touch. I also switched my feats some and took the first mark of making. Wanted a way to heal the dog some and this was the best way at the time. Soon I hope to just have room to take a repair spell proper but as I am still healing fine with just pots with out the construct essence feat so I thought I could shift it down some. Oh and Cove trinkets for more Hp or really just more damage…:)

Level 5 is a big one. Gear swap heaven, Full Abishai set is great here.
Profane Natural Armor Bonus +1,
Profane Strength +1,
Profane Constitution +1,
Evocation Caster Level Bonus +1,
Conjuration Caster Level Bonus +1

One of the few classes that can use the full thing over just a 3 piece. Also VoM and Mantle time. It is good to have True seeing available again. As well as my +2 goggles of battle and a better false life belt. Doing this TR thing a few times really helps with what gear goes where thing.

Rune arms: Where to start level 5 gives us Khyber’s Fury which I thought would be the best one available at the level and I have to say I was right so far. It is a beast. The Exploding Fire Shot is super powerful and fitting in fort via the rune arm makes fitting in the 5 piece Abishai set doable.

I also now have room to fit in elemental weapons for myself. I was scrolling it for Fopo and the puppy before but now that I can fit it in for myself it is so sweet. I am sure you all know but my string of numbers is base, icy, holy, pg, rune arm and elemental weapon. If crit add in Icy burst and if that crit is a 20 add the Shocking Blow damage. It is cool to see that much damage fling across the screen at such low levels. If I had some of those light pots and or a weapon with the force damage added that would be 10 rows of damage dice per hit. That is a ton of damage at level 5……

Have to say I am super pleased as to how the Arty is playing at low levels. It is by far one of the most challenging builds I have ever played. Rune arm, spell, spell, melee rune arm all at the same time. I have the felling that it might hold my interest for a long time, which is not want I want in a run to 20 and TR build… But if the wife wants to TR right away I wont have an issue TRing one of my off Casters into an arty to play catch up with her as if she needs any of my help.

Anyway work time.
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I am looking at the feat/feat order for my arty life. And I have a problem I have never had before. I have 3 feats that I don’t really have a super duper plan for right now. Don’t get me wrong I can put things in but I am not used to having so many feat slots at helpful levels.

Here just look

1 (human bonus) Augment Summoning – take it early and rock summons as long as possible.
1 (normal) Power attack
3 (normal) Barb past life- more Hp now!
4 (arty bonus) Construct Essence – more healing options
6 (normal) Maximize or Empower – just starting to have some real combat spells other then buffs
8 (arty bonus) Maximize or Empower – take the other spell damage boosting feat.
9 (normal) Quicken – starting to get hit hard enough that I want it around
12(normal) Marks of Making 1
12(arty bonus) Marks of Making 2 – start to grab those bonus crafting levels and free healing
15 (normal) ????
16 (arty bonus) Mark of Making 3 – final Mark time to rock some crafting levels during down time.
18(normal) ???
20 (art bonus) ??? – but does it really mater a lot, I plan to TR again almost right away.

Now there are feats to put in those slots, Cleave, Great Cleave, Imp Sunder, Toughness, Heighten (maybe) past life feats like the Wizard one, Insightful Reflexes and others.

But no more must needs. It is weird. If I splash 2 monk levels for Evasion and feats then there are more options with a gain of +1 feats when ever I need it.

Anyway something to think about. This Arty life will have some fun choices to make at leveling time.

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As you know I have been running picture portals a lot the last 3 days or so, last night was no exception. But unlike the last few hundred runs were things went smoothly, last night I died a lot.

I am not real sure what happened. I was having an off night for sure. But at one point I was getting divine punishment x3 dotted. And in undead form that is less then good times. But at least one death was almost out of the blue…. Any way that is not the point.

The point is, I decided I needed to kill faster. Level 21+ necro removal is out, so elemental damage and web/necro SLAs have to do the heavy lifting. But I didn’t have any of my normal spell boosting clickies on Samiusbot. Just shows how old busted and under geared his janky ass is.

So I made him three of my normal clickies thanks to the Cannith crafting. Superior level 6 or better for Lighting, Cold and Neg Energy spells. I would have made him a fire too but I have gotten away from Wall of Fire for Ice storm. I have always like Ice storm better anyway. :p

Now I have a trick that I have followed since before Cannith crafting when it comes to temp boosts like clickies, crafting just makes it a lot easier. I use a skin for a class of boosts across my account/s.

I always use rods(clubs) for arcane boosting effects, weapons for divine.
Lighting boosting clickies use this skin:

Cold boosting clickies use this skin:

Fire boosting clickies use this:

I tried to get pictures for all of them but google only did so much for me. 😦

Anyway I use that one that looks like a pharaoh head for my Neg Engery boosts.

Having those clickies helped a lot on the rest of my runs, I might have to make another Neg Energy one as it saving it for when I needed to clear still left me a clickly short on the last boss.

Anyway food for thought.

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Its has been a few days since I have capped my fighter. And other then getting gear out of the bank he had had 0 in game time.

????

I know it sounds funny to me too. I spend all this time and energy to get an AC tank together and he has tanked nothing. 😦

What I have been doing is running challenges. Both epic and non epics for mats for the different mats to make items and earn epic tokens to gear Samyus. And when I run challenges it is on Samiusbot, because he is able to handle these runs alone.

I have been looking at the different rewards and how they are awarded and they are few funny. For example:

Dr. Rushmore’ Mansion:Picture Portals gves 17% of your score.

Scoreing for this challenge is :

Monsters killed – ~1-3 per kill
Gates opened – ~40-100 per gate
Outlaw Bosses killed – ~600-800 per boss

My normal run has a score of about 1400 give or take so I get little more then 200 per run. At 3 runs an hour it is not super fast but good enough.

Anyway I have ground out the 1200+ epic cups and epic scrolls to make Samyus’ ring t3 epic. But now I need Jade Scorps. Which comes from one of that harder challenges for me to do, Lava Caves: Colossal Crystals.

Lava Caves are filled with scorpions, drow and other nasty things. And all hinges on getting one koblod to turn in one crystal. And there for is easy to fail. Even if Fopo and I have a fairly low failure rate it can still happen.

On the plus side it looks like all the kobold rock farming quests it gives 83% of your score which is tied not to mobs you kill but rocks you farm. So a few good runs can make all you need. I just need a better tool for fighting drow and things that hid under ground. My monk maybe?

The other option is the cups trade for scorps at a 2 and a epic fragment for 1 for I could solo my way to the 1200 I need by farming out another 2400 cups and trading them in. But is it easier or faster to run Colossal Crystals?

I don’t know. But I will let you know.

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So people want to know how I plan to gear out Samyus, at least in the short term. I am sure the expansion will bring a ton of changes for gear. But for now I will lay out gear as if I had everything I needed today to make everything on my to have list.

Lets do this by importance.

Cavalry Plate t3 slotted with G Nimbleness
Epic Chimera’s Fang slotted with Good (powered by the Sentinel marks)
Off tanking weapon Epic Antique Greataxe slotted with +7
Bracers of Wind (lvl 16 t3) dodge +1 added
Epic Ring of the Stalker t3 (Y, C)
Epic Chimera’s Crown (Y, C) (powered by the Sentinel marks)
Crafted goggles – Blindness Immunity(or water breathing goggles got the shaft for prefixes) of Dodge +2
Epic Templar’s Bulwark to replace my current cannith crafted tower shield

Stalwart Necklace
Cinder’s Band Exp – Str+2
Epic Brawn’s Spirits or intim trinket / heavy swap.
HP gs belt not sure how to build it yet.

3 piece Greater Might of the Abishai set
Epic Charged Gauntlets
Epic Envenomed Cloak
Epic Boots of Corrosion

May need to have the Epic Helm of Frost as a swap item for Horth tanking drinking yogo pot means -1 AC??

Thoughts, questions, comments below plz.

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Now that My.ddo is allowing posts again, here is yesterdays post.

So this weekend was fairly full of win. Avengers was great. If you haven’t seen it yet, go now. I will wait….. Also both Samius and Samyus capped out. So lots to talk about lets get started.

So Avengers, after some delays the wife end up in the local theater for Avengers in 3D. I will not go into spoilers but I will say Joss is the man again. And did a great job. And I thought the 3D was the best I have ever seen. I am going to put it in my personal top 5 movies, right under Iron Man.. It is that good, if not better.

Samius is now a 10/9/1 Rogue/Monk/Fighter That last level could have been Anything really. But picking up another feat for the few days it takes for the train to get rolling again is no big deal.

Right now I am still thinking Pure Arty for the next life. But I need to get a class layout from everyone just to be sure. Think both Phlor and Fopo will be tagging along again. Fopo is going to knock out his Pally life I think and Phlor was talking about some kind of not pally divine. A FvS/Clr/Bard would be nice to have.

Thought the wife was going to bring her “main” and return to her clonk love but she rolled up a new clonk and is having fun doing the first life thing right now. Tobril I think is planing to nab some quick xp on his Arty so we/I might have some nice side by side arty talk soonish….

Samyus, I am glad to have gotten this guy capped. Did a lesser on him once I capped. Swapped the travel marks for the sentinel marks along with some for fun leveling feats for things like the two handed fighting chain and whatnots. I am slow now and will miss the travel marks but over all he is a lot tougher now then before.

With a few little gear swaps, Cove armor and my big boy sword his ship and self buffed AC is 81. 82 hasted so Normal AC tanking is ready (once I slot good on my sword). This next week I hope to do a little grinding. I want to try for my Tod ring, make my Slayer ring and hopefully nap the last seals and/or shards for my hat and shield. Once I have those then I need to start hitting epic Chronos for seals and shards…

I will give my projected gear lay out once I am 100% done with what does where. Along with what I think was easy and what was hard to come by. But for the most part, I got Samyus to a really good Ac with only a few hard to get items (one epic item so far that didn’t come from the cove). If I can do it anyone can.

Alright back to work,
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Morning, once again we will be talking about building my arty. Today I will ramble on about Stats. But before I do I want to say made 19.4 and change last night. So should cap out sometime Saturday, as long as my trip to the movies tonight for the Avengers don’t make me want to go again and again spending all weekend at the movies.

Lets keep in mind I want to focus in both Melee and Casting for this run. Xbowing is way down the list for me this run. Oh and remember these are for a Human arty with more then 3 past lives and +3 tomes in every stat…. I plan to steal some fast crafting xp along the way and with both the Repair Marks and Bonus crafting levels I think I will be able to go fairly big..

Anyway stats, having never build an arty I have to play from past experiences with different kinds of wizards to help with stats.

Average normal covering most of the bases stats:
14,14,14,18,8,10

Not really ideal here as I am looking to melee it up as well as cast. I can use buffs like Insightful Strikes and Insightful Damage to use my Int as a main stat but as you can’t have both running at once I don’t think so.

More of a battle caster:
16,8,16,18,8,8
These lose Dex and Chr for +1 to hit and HP per level. Not to bad…

Ranged Caster, think Imp Precise Shot ready with a +3 tome or with a +2 and a stat point.
10,15,16,18,8,8
or
14,15,14,18,8,8

As I am not focusing on ranged even though I don’t plan to totally skip it these are not right for what I want to do.

A little more well rounded but not max DC:
14,15,16,16,8,10

These still will allow room for Imp Precise Shot and I can see more of a buffer melee/range build using them but I want to use plenty of combat spells.

So what am I thinking?
16,10,14,18,8,10

I will not be Imp Precise Shot able and I will not have those extra Hp from one more CON. But I will have more Str for Melee and don’t have to rely on Insightful Strikes and Insightful Damage I can carry IS for when I need to go ranged and use that Int Mod if I need it. Doesn’t penalize AC or UMD even if it doesn’t help.

As always thoughts and comments welcome.
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Yep part two of my thought process of getting my head around playing an arty. Today’s topic I hope is fairly clear from the title, Run arms.

First of all. If someone out there is good at copying data and entering it in to a spreadsheet let me know because I am not so good at those like of things. And I have gotten into the habit lately of keeping a spreadsheet for rare items, thanks to Tobril and Fopo for more or less handing me a base spreadsheet to use. Okay it is mostly for epic ingredients but almost anything that is harder to come by or becomes BTC once you use it. And rune arms to me would fit.

Anyway, I am trying to get my head around how they work and what rune arms I am willing to “ruin” to get the full arty experience.

What do I mean by Full Arty Experience and Ruining rune arms? Simply rune arms double your trinket slot. If only at crafting level 3.. and that is huge. I have quite a few cannith crafted trinkets. And wearing 2 at once would be huge! Melee or Ranged Alacrity, Attack Bonus, Dodge are just the tip of the iceberg of good stuff. But take the same slot on a trinket. Now you can easily fit in two. I am totally going to be rocking some tweaked out rune arms. As for Ruining them, I am sure there are some that bind on equip and I think that once you craft on them they BTC (they are not cleanable so I need to be sure what I am added is what I want) as I don’t plan to say arty forever any that I make BTC are burned. 😦

So how about we look at some rune arms? I made a vet 2 arty last night just to play with some arms.

For the 5 and lower levels, aka a few hours I have Flame Warden, Thought Spike (BTC), Candlelight and Flicker or all of them. I didn’t get t play with the Thought Spike however. I don’t think I need to spend a lot of time here. I will just use the Thought Spike maybe the Flame Warden if I want a little more damage added to melee attack.

From 5- 7 you know where I can test there are some really good rune arms, I even have most of them (Missing The Devourer’s Hunger).
Chulchannad’s Claw, Khyber’s Fury, Chimera’s Breath, Coronach and The Pea Shooter.

Quick impressions, I like the ones that XXX blast or XXX Lash the best. They seem to be the easiest to hit with both at close range and further out. The Blast one are great closer up. And the Shot ones I like the second to least because of the spread out then come back in to hit the target, although I have the feeling that they will grow on me as they hit 3-more mobs at once. But the XXX bolt ones seem to have the most issues hitting at range and in melee. Slowly backing up with a hard target on the training dummy I started to shoot the ground about 30 feet.. But if I aimed with the mouse look it hit from the end of the ship so if I ever want to snip something the bolt arms are good.

Oh for effects I liked the most that I shot last night: Khyber’s Fury and Flicker

Okay looking at the extra powers the stand outs are The Pea Shooter for Superior Potency III and not a lot else. Kyber’s Fury is cool with the Fort, but I have a cove hat for that. And for some guys I can see Chimera’s Breath for the Proficiency: Bastard Sword and Diehard… I might have some good low level Bastard Swords now that I think about it… Hmmm

For the imbue I like the ones that add light and force. And below level 7 those are Coronach and Thought Spike. I really don’t want to be level 7 and still using a level 1 rune arm… The Electrical II from the Chimera’s Breath should be okay at level.

So for the first 7ish levels for the ones I played with it is Khyber’s Fury, Chimera’s Breath and The Pea Shooter.

But let me tell you something. I think you can lower the level of the rune arm with masterful craftsmanship shard. So if there was a 9 I really loved I could make it use able at 7 and then keep using it until I found a better one. As this is just a tmp life I don’t want to burn any harder to get ones like the ones from the Tor dragons so the next ones with real options are at level 15.

So is there are rune arm that stands out in the level 9 range that wouldn’t suck from level 7 to 15?

Yep the Recoyle. It is a force based Rune arm, so Force II. It has a max charge of 3 which is not bad. The level 13 ones are charge 4. Is has Anathema which reduces spell hate. Let Fopo take the hate this time. And has four crafting levels. On the down side it is a shot weapon of which as above I am not currently a fan as well as having Superior Impulse V. There are two arty spells that do force damage, Elemental Prod at lvl 3 and only damages elementals. And Tactical Detonation lvl 6 which is out side of this rune arm’s range. Oh Prismatic Strike does a little force damage and is level 5 so… win?

Anyway that is my current thoughts on rune arms. I will need to play with them some in real combat. The training dummy only is so so as a weapon test platform.

Tomorrow… Stats?

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With my question/s from yesterday answered. Thanks to everyone that had helpful information btw. I think I can start to share my thoughts and fears of playing an arty in no particular order of importance.

I might really like the arty class a lot, and I am worried might want to stay that way for a while.
How do I fit my current gear load out in to an arty build.
The strongest build is an melee/arm/caster build.
Seems strange not using as much ranged on a ranged focused class.
Are the dogs going to be a help or an hindrance?
What rune arms to use as I currently want to return to a Wiz/rog build, any crafting I do will need to be on disposable rune arms….
Lots of feats seven regular + a bonus feat every 4 levels or 5 total bonus feats == 12 feats (+1human??)
Construct Essence feels real good from a super self reliant point of view. But how great is 50% of a reconstruct spell?

So those are the main thoughts floating around in my head right now.

Lets pick one and examine it a wee bit.

Lots of Feats: 12 to 13 feats 5 which have to come off a list. Ones that I can think of off the top of my head are: (again not in an order of importance.. )
Augment Summoning
Construct Essence
Dragonmark of Making 1 (If Human)
Dragonmark of Making 2 (If Human)
Dragonmark of Making 3 (If Human)
Wiz past life
Barb Past life
Rog past life?
Metamagic Feat
Heighten Spell
Maximize Spell
Quicken Spell
Power Attack

Extend seems good but a quick look at the arty spell list and it is not good enough.
Ranged feats? Just because I am not planing to focus on ranged doesn’t mean I never want to range. This monk/rogue life has been harder do to the lack of a good ranged attack.
Do I build for AC? It seems feasible at least while leveling. There are 2-3 “needed” feats if I wanted to do that.

Lets look at one more topic, My banked gear:
I have a lot of goodies that I have from when I was a caster that will help out a lot as an Arty.
CordOp sp bracers/Torc (leveling with a both is amazing)
Stormreaver’s Napkin – a finer leveling tool/slot for int and +1 Dcs I don’t think is out there.
Int,Chr, dex, Str tod rings and some of their set pieces
My GS rapiers will make a comeback Along with most of my GS minus the Kamas and Bow.
My uber quiver will remain uber, will need to grab a stack of returning bolts forget making stacks all day long I could be getting xps.
My amp gear will help off set my healing penalty a lot if I am not taking care of myself.

It might be worth the effort to make a Ring of Master Artifice like level 12t2 super quickly leave it BtA for leveling other permanent Arties/WF blue bar people..

Well that is enough for today. Tomorrow lets look at Rune Arms…..

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