Samius is almost capped, and Samyus is not so far away that I can’t finish him up with a few raids and a few runs in the IQ and whatnot.

So it is time to start thinking about the next life. Right now I think that is going to be Arty, don’t be surprised if the next few posts have a lot of thoughts and fears I have about the Arty class. But that is not the topic of today’s post.

Today I want to know more about how the bonus crafting levels from Artificer Craft Mastery and the Marks of Making work? This is what the ddowiki has to say

“Your crafting level is first calculated based on what your current experience total would put you at, then the Artificer bonus levels are added. This means you save dramatically on leveling costs and time, particularly at higher crafting levels”

That is totally clear now! No wait I am still lost.

This is what I get, it I am 100 in all schools now when I hit 20 arty levels I wil count as if I am 110 is all schools. If I take all the Marks that is 10 more levels so 120. So my % for success moves up and allows me to make higher level shards, but how is the xp rewarded? Is it with or with out the bonus levels? Will it be worth being human and taking the making marks for the bonus levels xp wise?

Okay maybe my question/s is not that complex. ;P

Even so it is important to me as my Arty life is just a pit stop on my path to completionist but if I can knock another 20-30 ish permanent crafting levels and stock up on some harder to make shards and then TR and retain a sizable amount of gain then a pure human arty might be they way to go. If that doesn’t seem likely then splashing a few “evasion levels” and choosing dwarf or halfling might be an worth wild race if just to get back into my “normal body” and feel more like Samius for a while.

So what do you know about crafting levels post Arty life?

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Just stole another idea from RaspberryX! Look the werd vomit from my blog! So hot!

Btw werd or werds is how i spell word or words. Deal with it. 😛

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Over the weekend I worked on power leveling Samius up. Getting up early and soloing things, taking shorter breaks to energize up to power through the same content for the 3 or 4 time this life. And I went from 18 to 19.2.

At one point I happened to just finish running though Jeet’s mind, if you can call it a “mind.” And hit the LFM panel, there happened to be a group doing the front half of the IQ on hard, listed as IP-BYOH. So I jumped in and found a fairly pleasant group. The mindless chatter was low and most of the group was a solid.

That said there is a bad egg is every pug, this group was no exception.

This one was a Barb, using that named sword from the Madness chain…. Insanity (+5 Great Sword: Wild Frenzy, Bewildering, Unbalancing, Unwiedly) aka crap. Never spoke and only typed two thing the 2-3 runs I ran with him/her and that was “Hjeals” and “rez”, maybe a thank you. But I don’t remember one of those.

Anyway we did the Shipwrecked Spy and I saw the Barb fall into the pit. He lived through the fall via fair amount of hp. But died right away as he went for the ladder with out healing at all or going into sneak mode.

BTW: If your in a spiked pit, sneaking more often then not will keep you from taking more damage as you make your way out.

The next quest (Dream Conspiracy), I needed ship buffs so I was a min or so late getting started. Once I had saw that people had zerged ahead, no big deal. I step around and start my own buffing and I see a rat run over the bridge towards me and then jump in to the little pit right at the start. Look down and that barb is dieing. It jumps out the pit and runs away from the rat. As it runs past me I punch it once and it stops to fight me. It dies fairly fast, in 4-5 swings.

Mean while that barb finds another rat and its Hps keep falling so I kill that rat too and finish my buffing. It stands there, at 30 hp.

Over mic the leader starts to tell the barb that this is a BYOH group and has been and he needs to drink some pots. When I am done buffing the barb still hasn’t healed any. Felling sorry for my no death bonus I throw it a heal scroll and move on. At some point I think he/she died again. Not sure how as everyone else killed the hell out of that quest until the end fight and I think there was a clr with an aura running the whole time. Not a great Clr as it died twice in another quest later, but an aura was ticking, stand in it with massive HP buffer == win???

So I told all of that to get to here…

Again the leader reminds the group that the group is byoh. Over voice and in text. Lets everyone know if they can’t heal themselves they need to go. And asks everyone if they can handle that. 4 yeps and no reply (aka the Barb). Tries again. Asks another person to try. Tells everyone that if they don’t reply in 10 seconds they will be booted. I counted 30 seconds the hole time standing in the next quest just waiting for the barb to step in. But the leader finally dropped him.

I have to say, that leader tried and tried to get something from that barb.

Over the weekend I joined a few groups that I wanted to drop and run away from and groups that were less then nice. One shroud run I Dced for a min or two in part 2 of a shroud. Got back as they finished part three, so it was a good group speed wise. But they had opened every chest they cold before I could get back.

After dealing with those groups, it was nice to see some one that seemed to care some for others.

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While leveling my fighter I have gotten fairly good at giving my hireling orders. Most of the TR lives that I have done on Samius I can easily handle my own healing. But around 11 or so hams and pots can only do so much and only be helped by having someone near by that can throw a heal.

And after watching some other people struggle to run their hires lately, I thought I would throw out a hint or two.

Think like a hireling: You have 3 main mods to switch between. Kill, defend, and pick nose.

The Kill mod I think most people understand. In this mod the hire will attack what ever target it feels like; controlling what it attacks is a matter of working the agro list. That control of its agro list is not real easy to manipulate, but is doable by standing in the right areas and letting it take a swing or two while you control the mob.

Defend is a little less clear. It means protect its “owner/controller” aka you. And they will use any actions at their disposal to try and do so. This does not mean healbot me like most of us really want it to be.

Picknose, is fairly simple too. Don’t do a thing I don’t tell you to. That means is wont heal you, or party members, itself nothing is nothing.

Stay/follow can also be thought of as a “mode” but I think of it more like a teaching a puppy to heel/come. It might stay where you put it but you don’t really know what kind of trouble it is getting into and half the time it will run to you if it wants too. And if your let it come odds are good it will be in your lap all the time.

Now that you can put yourself into the mind of a hireling; how do you make that work for you?

You have to really watch/know 2 things at any given time, “Were is your hireling?” and “What is it doing?” When you can get that spatial awareness you can toggle modes and give direct orders to the hires to make them fairly helpful party members.

Some basic tips and these are for healbots.

If your hire is in the same room as you and there are hostel mobs you need to have all the mob agro for sure. Or your hire should be invised and on nose picker mod. The last thing you need is to have your healbot empty its blue bar on a room full of trash leaving you with no heals at an important time.

Leave them in cleared rooms and fight in door ways or other choke points. Once you have your spacing down you can set them fairly far back. Far away enough that they won’t attack the trash but close enough that they will run to you anyway and heal you even though they were told to heel. This might be always around a corner or down the hall.

Buff them well. Unless it is wearing a suit of armor that gives a permanent resistance assume it needs one, like if your in a dungeon with lots of fireball throwing mobs get it a fire resistance. Same goes for Blur and other key buffs assume it is full of fail. Invis and nose picker mode are your friends.

Go ahead and assign a quick key for a main heal. I use “y” for their first on demand action. And that is often a heal for healers.

The last big tip is when you call them to you they will try to run to you as quickly as possible and then port to you if they can’t get to you soon enough. Hitting the come here key over and over just slows them down as they will try and repath every time you hit that button. If you want them to come to you jump off something. If you are moving over one height to another when you call they port to you right away. I will often climb a few stairs or jump on a barrel or something then jump off just to summon them right away. After a few tries you will have it down.

Take care of them and they will take care of you.

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I know what your going to say, “You have been working on this for weeks?” And I am going to say, yep! If you know better then you can post something in the comments but I am kinda an AC noob. I have been playing Ddo for a while now, myaccount.turbine.com says my signup date was March 3, 2006. And other then Samius once having a 65 ac when the cap was level 16 (fairly sure the stars happened to align on that one too) the last few months has made me want to better my AC knowledge. It has taken me this long to get things moving.

So here is my planed AC break down for level 20 and beyond…

The dayi turn 20 I have a few things waiting for Samyus
10 base
+16 AC – Cavalry Plate
+2 Alchemical Dodge – Armor and Shield
+8-10 Max Dex – Greater Nimbleness, 3 from Defender PRE,
+ possible 2-3 more from Ap if I can get my dex mod upto fill it
+8 shield – Epic Swashbuckler (Tier 3)
or
+9 shield – random Epic shield i have laying around Like Ward of Undeath

+4 Insight – Superior Parrying from Epic Chimera’s Fang
+5 Protection – Shield_of_Faith from Least Dragonmark of Sentinel
+5 Nat Armor – Epic Chimera’s Crown
+3 AC Dodge bonus – level 16 Bracers of Wind
+1 AC Dodge bonus – level 16 Bracers of Wind (Cannith crafted)
+2 AC Dodge bonus – Trinket/goggle crafting/ upgraded HoGF
+4 Dodge bonus – Superior Defensive Stance
+1 Dodge feat
+5 Combat expertise

+1 Kobold Shaman
+1 Deneith Defender
+1 Kundarak Battlemaster
+1 Haste

For a total of 79 more or less just by leveling to 20 and making epic items I already have or mostly have. I am missing the shard for the Fang right now but as I am making the guild run eTTT every chance I get it is only a matter of time.

Now assuming I get lucky here and there I hope to have my defender ToD set simi quickly. That is another +2. I am willing to grind out a 3 piece Greater Might of the Abishai set for another +3 Profane boost. Thinking Charged Gauntlets, Envenomed Cloak, Boots of Corrosion. Also the guild is just starting to hit up the new epics and I hope to get the Epic Templar’s Bulwark, an epic tower shield with a +11 shield bonus and a 4 max dex base (so getting it to 8 is fairly simple). All that would make my AC 86 self/ship buffed.

If it turns out I don’t need my blue slots on the armor or shield for Greater Nimbleness then making them +7 is possibly 2 more Ac on top of that or 88.

For raiding I like to think I can count on +2 Recitation. Maybe +4 bard and even +2-4 from a Pally aura. So even rolling back to my right away at level 20 AC (79) with some help I can be buffed to 85 easily. And super geared out and buffed at 95ish…

But is that good enough?

Suulomades from VOD is Attack Bonus: 56/62/71 n/h/e so Hard is fairly simple even right away.

Xy’zzy from Hound, doesn’t have her bonuses listed in the wiki. But I have tanked her before and I say compares to Suulomades.

ToD should be fine right away upto Hard and I think I could tank normals while leveling up :).

eChronoscope has a few (mini) bosses, But the main boss is listed as having a BaB of 100. Which means full dps/hate mode it is.

LoB… the wiki has his BaB at 78/82/91/107 n/h/e/epic so hmmm sometimes? So full dps/hate mode most of the time….

Now for epic trash… There is not a lot of information here on their BaB but I am going to guess that an 85 Ac should be fairly solid against most etrash..

Clearly there is lots of wiggle room in AC if your a defender fighter but even a little work can make you a normal tank..

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Do I tweeted that I found an acceptable alcoholic drink and stay trueish to my peleo- diet and I got a few replies wanting both some rough details on what I mean by caveman diet and an update as to how living peleo as been for me. And while I am doing some gear progections for my fighter post level 20 and again with some gear grinding a simple/quick post is in order.

What is peleo?

The idea in a nut shell is we have been around as humans for a long time. And have adapted to our diet over that time. And when we eat things that we don’t have a long history of eating our bodies don’t do such a good job of handling those foods.

So if we look at our fossil records we have a clear history of about 12 thousand years. Those bones give a fairly clear picture of hunting (fishing) and gathering for about the first 10ish thousand years. Our for fathers were leaner, faster, heather then we are today.

Then about 2-3 thousand years ago we started to learn that we could take the seeds of grasses and other thinks that normally would be food for our food and posses it and eat it. And while we started to get sick more often we didn’t go as hungry as often….

Again you can see clear signs of illness when villages learn to farm.

What that means in my diet?

I have cut out as many foods and food stuffs that don’t have a track record of being around for 5-12 thousand years or their modern equivalent. And I follow a rough idea of what we think cave mens diet was, about 40% fruits/veggies/other and about 60% meats. And I try to keep the processed food out. And no grains or legumes.

So a typical Monday -Friday lunch for me is a meat (ie steak) and a side of veggies, like today a few turkey dogs and asparagus.

The big question, does it work?

Well I am not a weight guy. I wouldn’t own a scale if it wasn’t for my wife. I use meaning full things to try a judge my over all heath. So some meaning full results. I had to buy new pants for example. Even wearing shorts under my old pants I and a belt they where too big. I have more energy and find myself doing things like yard work of projects I put into the someday pile into the now pile. Lately I want to buy a petal bike and start riding to and from work. Oh and I had to add about 5 new holes to the belt I bought six months ago.

But for you weight people my office did a 2 month weight loss program where they payed people per pound lost. And in 2 months I dropped 30ish pounds. That was in the second and third month on the diet.

But the main thing is I have really bad migraines, and in the last 2 months or so I have only needed to take my meds twice. Where last year it was everyday some days twice a day.

Why am I so happy about finding something to drink?

Well there is no alcohol in the caveman world and I like to have a drink now and then to relax. Any one that has heard a Ddo Cocktail Hour show can attest, I like to kick back from time to time. So what is this magic drink? Agave Tequila.

I will be happy to answer any questions I can on going Peleo left in the comments.

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Last night I talked Tobril in to running my fighter through elite Sins. It has great xp, very solid loot, lots of chests if you have the time to look for them. But mostly it is a really good place to test my current AC against very high to hit mobs in a quest that are mostly melee attacks. Sure we are not talking epic Lob to hit or anything. But for lvl 18 with no major grinding life it not bad.

So a little update by taking level 18 and third tear of the defender PRE; my AC self buffed is 76. 77 if something does hit and procs my air guard. No gear updates yet. But I will be hunting for my Tod set Asap!

So how did I do?

Not too bad. I was not 95% miss tank guy but I would say in the 60-70% range which is not bad for a 18 in a level 21 quest. I did find that a displacement was very helpful. This run was the first time I felt that I wanted one. Think that says something about were I felt my AC was and is now….

On the plus side (I think) I was the only one that didn’t have an soul stone show up at some point. Although it was real close at one point and Fopo ended up saving me. My barkskin ran out and I lost 5 Ac and my damage intake tripled and I went to neg 9. Fo was able to throw me a cure off a wand and I was able to pot up until he got a heal scroll off in my direction.

I have room now to better things a point or four before getting into epic items. But right now I am just waiting for 20 to hit so I can start a major gear up with epics and some big raiding.

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Not too long ago, I talked about weapons in your golf bag. And the idea of keeping things simple and as light as possible. You don’t “need” banes for every monster type. Where a good general purpose weapon will do nicely.

That said I have a quest or two that I do believe in having gear that I pull out of the bank when I run it. And the top of that short list is Running with the Devils. Yes I am talking about my Glowball killers.

I bring it up for a few reasons. One: because both Trs I am leveling did their Elite Runs over the weekend. Every run had some issues but weapons where not an issue for my boys, even if I had to craft one up for Samyus. Two because I think I have been making my weapons wrong…

Just a quick run down of the different elite devil runs.

The first run was Samyus, Tobril’s (2nd life) wizard, Fopo on his lighting spec Sorc (3x tr), Wife’s Barb (2nd life) And trash hires for heals and rez. This run was the second hardest of the runs I did. Full group but not everyone was gear out for the guest we did it but there were a few deaths…. The comment was made “See why you have such a hard on for this quest!” directed at me. 🙂

Second run we had a few swaps and Tobril had to run. So it was Samius, Fopo (same alt as first run), Wife (her first life Air sorc) Phlor (one of his many Pallys) And hirelings. I knew this run would be a challenge but I honestly thought Samius would carry the day. If the balls took electric damage it would have been a cake walk but as they don’t loosing a stunning dpser was hard. Ending up calling it as the second huge room of balls were just too much.

Third run, as I had a bad taste in my mouth from the failure of the previous night. I got up early and soloed it on Samius. This was by far the easiest of the runs. If the longest. I spent 20 mins slowly beating down the 4 air elementals. I tumble weed in Kansas doesn’t get blown around as much as I did… Went afk with one of the final bosses left to kill, and let the wife come in and finish it.

Lets talk about gear for this quest. One there are 2 items that I know of to help with the massive light damage you will be taking. Shroud of the Abbott and the Epic cloak from the Carnival quests. I say help not stop, not on elite anyway as 20 or 30 off of 100 is still a ton of damage but if your a TR on a elite streak believe me get a shroud of the Abbott it helps a ton. Or two if your able to get a gold seal hireling to suspend your streak and run normal/hard. Gold seals can now be used 2 levels lower then normal hirelings.

Weapons: Cannith crafting is gold here. This is what I made Samyus: +3 Unholy Cold Iron Falchion of Greater Chaotic Outsider Bane. It might be a little over the top but I wanted those balls dead. Samyus I think has a +5 Unholy Cold Iron/maul of Chaotic Outsider Bane. Yes I have two weapons for this quest. One for monk core builds and one for everyone else.

But here is the deal, these are not what I should be using. Neither of these weapons add to my stun Dcs. And they should. So I had to go back and forth from my stunners and dps. Where if I had +x unholy of Stunning +6 (+6 is the best I can craft I think) I would have not had swap issues. Anyway something to think about.

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Cauthey won my little mini contest from my post My best mate is a $%^&

Email me @ samius@ddococktailhour and i will shoot you our code.

I was playing my fighter again last night for all of one quest before running the easy epics (I need bits for items when my fighter is capped) But when that quest is elite litany with Phlor tagging along you can really see the difference between an Ac tank and a dps melee.

To be fair I don’t know how many if any ship buffs Phlor had as he was in the zone from logging off once we finished his sigil and didn’t want to take the time to run to the boat and back again.. I was able to get them all so there might have been a difference there, the travel marks mean I am not far from anything really.

So we are off. The first room is fine. But by the second fight I see huge a difference in our life bars. I am about 450 of 580 and Phlor is at 140 of 450 (numbers are not exact, but close). Running across the spining traps I lag/miss jump and take a hit for 140 ish. So I am near half hp. Phlor uses that blue bar to good effect and heals up, while I clear the weeps and the quell. Eat a ham. Clear to the mini boss. I am at 450ish again so is Phlor.

Knock out the trash mobs, starting with the caster and focus on the Blackbone. I don’t take a lot of damage but some as I swap out of my +4 incite weapon. But I am taking a lot of stat damage and I have to drink restore pots but I can’t seem to keep up on pots alone. Phlor helps out as he is able but when I have taken enough con damage I fall to less then 100 hp I start moving and drinking. Phlor good touches me (I think his last one) and heals the damage but it take 9 or so restore pots to fix all my Hp. Once my Hp is back I turn to face the Bbone we don’t have any issues dropping him before any more big stat damage comes in. Ham and a few restore pots and move on.

The spawn pit is different. I have to tell Phlor it is okay to hide to heal up twice. But I don’t think he does and he drinks pots and keeps going. I intimate as often as it is off timer and keep as much agro as I can. There was a hot streak where my ghost touch disrupter one shotted everything for about two mins.

That trapped fall got Phlor as he turned right when he should have gone left or something like that he said. I jump out in to the trap just as I get a huge lag spike. And just was hanging out just inside the first trap. Turns out I got hit twice for 140 or so before getting freed leaving me with more then 300 hp. And as I didn’t get hit again completing was easy enough.

There is some talk on some of the different my.ddo blogs on how casters are stronger then melee and you all know me I love my casters but this guy is a handful of changes away from my ideal character. If he was and Helf vs human he could have taken one of the dilettante lines to self heal a little faster. Pots, hams and vamp weapons only do so much. Heal, Rez, Restore scrolls would make life a lot easier. Other wise this guy is golden. And was not too bad to gear out while leveling. Now to gear him at end game for the epics/elite raids I have in mind for him…….

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