Help on the final boss? I go in with the witch, cleric, Shepard, and pirate, all level 30+. My other characters are not as high.
Spec tank for defensive, spec cleric for focus healing 1 person, equip cleric with 2 Codex of Jabe which equals -12 seconds on cooldowns will help a lot. Keep boss tanked with Shepard, other two dps him continually. When he charges up have Shepard and your pirate run out of his range (if you don't run he one shots you), then go back to tanking him with Shepard. When he disappears, take down the mobs, he'll come back and you repeat what you did earlier. If you can't kill him before he disappears again, you might not have enough dps.
Can we find out how experience is awarded? Obviously there is some exploit that allows one to level quite easily, seemingly with a single character, which would explain the massive differences in levels that one guy had. I tried a few things: If you assume that you have N party members and receive X experience for a battle, it's definitely not N/X to figure it out because having 1 or 4 doesn't seem to make a difference. If you assume that you get X experience from N monsters killed, you would think it to be something like X*N depending on the strength level given to the specific monster, but that doesn't work either. (Checked this by going to the spider boss level and received virtually the same experience whether I killed the boss almost instantly or sat around for 5 minutes killing the little guys. Tried this with every level like this except for the final level, wasn't up for micromanaging that hard at the moment That leaves two other possibilities, one, that there's a normally distributed amount of experience given after each battle, with a standard deviation of X, and thus would explain the differences in experience received between party members. Or Something similar to the above but instead of randomized values it would be based off of a characters "involvement" in a battle. How you would quantify that I have no idea. Any insight into this one?
Each level on the map is worth a certain amount of xp, and the game keeps track of each party members involvement. It's not a perfect algorithm, but it basically takes into account how often you use their specials, deal damage or heal, and deliver a killing blow. It uses these factors to grant bonus xp to those who did the most stuff, 20% extra for the MVP, 14% for the next one down, 7% for the third, and the base amount for the least active member. I think the only way to cheese it would be to send a character into a really easy level over and over and let their AI solo everything while you make a grilled cheese sandwich.
First time posting here, but I felt compelled to post because this is such a great game! My main party consists of knight, barbarian, wizard, cleric. It is a very conventional group. The guys in this party are all 40+. I'm just trying to level up my other guys and gather all the rare Loots in the game. So far I've got: Obsidian soulcrusher - Knight 45dmg Holy blade of m'ir - Knight 40dmg Sanctuary - Cleric 58sp Beacon of the heavens - Cleric 52sp Hammer of the underkings - Barbarian 53dmg Battlegear of the blademaster - Barbarian 34armor leather Pillar of the venom lord - wizard 57sp Frozen doomspike - rogue 52dmg Taizu's hand of justice - monk 48dmg Anyone care to share what they got?
My bard continually gets the worst xp under this formula, which is a bit sad. I guess I can make him carry an egg My cleric usually gets the best xp for some reason.
I think Hammers of the Underkings is plain only Tier 7 available from the store...Armageddon Blades, 60 damage, is the Tier 8. Unless 70 kills is enough for tier 9, which I seriously doubt! This means that after 15 final boss fights and 4-5 arenas over the target score I only have one tier 8 item...for the character I havent leveled.
If there is no way to cheese it, how did Epox get Shepphard to lvl 100? Only think I can think of is last boss, with dual Barbs, Rogue (or cleric to give barb damage buff) and Bard specced for full damage buff and pawn him in 1 minute flat. But that would still take forever to get to 100, no? (Edit, lol and Sheppard is not even in my "master" plan.)
So where exactly is the cap in Brightsone and Doomvale for tier 9 drops? To me it felt like it was ~185 in Brightstone and ~75 in Doomvale. Performing well in Brightstone at ~200, the only difficulty is keeping me from crashes as the fight lasts long. Scored best at 105 in Doomvale with the build below, seems safer farming there due to a lower chance of crashing. Second question: Can you please make the ranged ones' auto attack trigger be affected at a higher range than the melee's auto attack trigger range? Third: Is lvl 100 the maximum? I hope so since the motivation to level the alt's is like nonexistent. Fourth: Does magic power gained through items also adds to the spell's power rather than just the auto attack? Fifth: (not a question): The Monk has always aggro on bosses, even with a knight in your party who casts War Cry. Bug or feature? --- STRATEGIES Tips and Expoits: Exploit #1 Perma-run Doomvale arena and wipe at 0 kills. It rewards you with a random T8 item which you can sell or equip. It also resets the merchant's offers so if you need some items which just won't drop or you might want to mass buy, this is the best way. As a beginner, do this in the first arena when unlocked. Tip#1 When you are fighting the last survivor(s) of a wave, make sure to not unleash all your armory of spells because you might need your cooldowns to be ready once the next wave hits. Tip#2 Give your bard at least one Codex of Jabe for being able to perma-cast Song of Vigor and Song of War(100% uptime is your friend). NPC Tip#1 Slimes (hit hard but move slowly) When they are alone on the battlefield or when there is no other certainly dangerous dude around, you might use a good combination of disable (CC) spells, defensive skills of your tank plus good or increased healing power. Consider Tip#1 while doing so. While having a bunch of enemies, try to kite them around the screen with the one who is the target of the slime so you can keep the rest focused on cutting down the rest of the crowd with a lesser need to cast your cooldowns. NPC Tip#2 Ogres (hit half as hard as a slime but twice as hard as an orc etc...) While most of NPC Tip#1 affects ogres as well, they can be tanked with a) a good defensive-specced tank b) great use of defensive and heal cooldowns or c) perma-CC. Or all of it when there is nothing else to deal with. NPC Tip#3 Bats (random aggro, untauntable through autoattack) While the Monk being a hybrid tank is a nice alternative to a knight being a full-featured tank, he does have problems drawing aggro on them when they haven't already randomly targetted him since they do pretty much damage on casters (don't underestimate them). So if you use him, make sure you have your cooldowns ready when they hit the screen. Even better if you hit all your skills and have them instantly resetted by your bard's Song of Inspiration. Using a knight, you just need to use your War Cry. [Update] 07-02-11 Arena setup: Knight @44 Skills: Intimidate (higher waves seem to require this above cleave), Chivalry, War Cry (bats mostly), Crippling Blows, Fortress. Trinkets: 2x Phasing Lodestone (awesome 40% evasion if they are simply added rather than multiplied. I tested armor and healing trinkets as well, the evasion trinkets seem to work best. Plus, this 40% evasion is way better if you can get to higher levels since you automatically get armor stats.). Rotation: (War Cry,) Intimidate, Shield Wall, War Cry. Tactic: Shield Wall lasts with Fortress until the end of the cooldown of War Cry if cast after an Intimidate. This tactic offers maximum protection as it causes you to have your Shield Wall up all time and when it's not the case to have the enemies feared until resetted through War Cry.). Bard @53 Skills: Song of Vigor, Gusto (on Monk), Song of War, Enduring Hope, Echo of Renewal. Trinkets: 2x Codex of Jabe (better than CD refreshing trinkets because you don't need to spam skills but rather have them ready at time). Rotation: Song of Vigor (perma-up), Song of War (perma-up), Song of Vigor (perma-up). Tactic: Just keep it up, dude. Witch @ 38 Skills: Debilitate (extremely useful on the harder mobs, spares me of kiting away the harder mobs), Piercing Shadow, Horror (IWIN!), Terrifying Presence (screw those archers to hell), Crushing Despair. Trinkets: 2x Azamoth's Cursed Eyeball (they can proc even after a proc so this is crazy awesome for a caster; I had a 5-chain-proc already). Rotation: Drain Life, Debilitate, Horror. Tactic: Cast Debilitate on the enemy (or enemies, if lucky with trinket proc) being most dangeous and which you think distracts you most from handling the rest of the bunch. Use Horror only if absolutely necessary (e.g. in higher waves when there are one-hit-enemies, if your healer/caster/whatever can't be dragged off aggro or if there are just too many whelps... handle it! ), you need it to be ready once upon the arrival of the 80+ kill waves. Monk @50 Skills: Ki Blast, Tiger Claw, 1000 Palms, Dragon Style, Sweep the Leg. Trinkets: 2x Ninja Glove (30% Haste + 15% Crit from Tiger Claw = win) Rotation: Wind Walk (,1000 Psalms). Tactic: With Sweep the Leg, Wind Walk delivers a decent Blizzard alternative, so Wind Walk the enemy once a wave hits to have more time (and and more buttons to press) until they reach your toons. Eventually you might wait a few seconds since archers spawn a few seconds later and bats are not spawned at the same time. Also, try casting 1000 Psalms whenever it's ready (requires to get a target which will fully consume this effect, because there is no need to cast this on a target which would die with less than half of its power). you keep the attack until you encounter an enemy and its cooldown refreshes in the meantime. As a result, you can have 2x 1000 Psalms with a lower cooldown. [Update] 06-02-11 Level guide: [Update] 06-02-11 Replaced the Barbarian with a second rogue for a phase-free speedkill at lower levels. a) Give all your heroes Mystery Eggs. If you are not yet obtaining a nice set of 8, try resetting the merchants offers (and getting free items/gold) through the arena-wipe method as long as you get all 8 and buy them. b) Rush the last boss. Use this setup: Monk @50 Skills: Evasion, Tiger Claw, 1000 Palms (if your Monk dies too often, Spirit Trance helps), Dragon Style, Solar Strikes. Rotation: Wind Walk (,1000 Psalms). Tactic: Tank and kill. Bard @53 Skills: Song of Vigor (perma-up), Gusto (on Monk), Song of War (perma-up), Healing Chords, Echo of Renewal. Rotation: Song of Vigor (perma-up), Song of War (perma-up), Song of Renewal (only when hard damage comes in). Tactic: Just keep it up, dude. No one's gonna die. (2x) Rogue @41 Skills: Expose Weakness, Critical Strikes, Shadow Step, Combat Tactics, Lethality. Rotation: Expose Weakness, Sneak Attack, Shadow Step. Tactic: Before you go crazy with your toons on poor Death Lord, cast Expose Weakness so all your skills are amplified. Don't forget to use the Expose Weakness rotation described below to have enhanced damage spike phases. Barbarian @38 (cut out at lower levels) Skills: Frenzy, Death Wish, Reckless Blow, Precision Strikes, Dismemberment. Rotation: Enrage, (Reckless Blow,) Frenzy (, Reckless Blow). Tactic: Use Reckless Blow after the 5 seconds of Frenzy or before, as it takes extra time and does not profit of the haste effect. Also, try avoiding to cast Enrage when a meteor rain spams the screen. c1) Party rotation with 2 rogues: 0. Bard | Song of Vigor, Song of War 1. Rogue 1 | Expose Weakness 2. All | DPS cooldowns 3. Rogue 2 | Expose Weakness 4. Rogues | Sneak Attack (and, if ready, 1000 Psalms) (he casts his lightning aoe) 0. Bard | Song of Vigor, Song of War 5. Rogue 1 | Expose Weakness 6. All | DPS cooldowns 7. Rogue 2 | Expose Weakness 8. Rogues | Sneak Attack (and, if ready, Wind Walk) Works quite well with lvl 30 toons and T9 weapons, despite i used a monk @35. Hopefully it works with a 30 monk as well. c2) Party rotation with 1 rogue and 1 barbarian: 0. Bard | Song of Vigor, Song of War 1. Rogue | Expose Weakness 2. All | DPS cooldowns (he casts his lightning aoe) 0. Bard | Song of Vigor, Song of War 3. Rogue | Expose Weakness 4. All | DPS cooldowns I guess you need lvl 35 toons and t9 weapons to include the barbarian. PS: Don't forget Song of War. Without it, even Expose Weakness phases are not that effective!
So if I want to get tier 9 equipment, is it fine to get to 51 kills in Arena 3 then suicide? Or do I have to go far beyond 50(crazy well, as you put it)? It is truly frustrating to be able to get to 82 enemies in Arena 3 then have the game crash(just happened to me). MikaMobile, can you please confirm the minimum amount of kills needed to access the tier 9 table so I don't lose the remaining sanity I have left?
@makitango, thanks for the detailed post. My high at the Doomville arena is currently 72 with tier 7 gear and levels around 36/37. I had not thought to use phasing loadstones on the tank. I dont know how I feel about it. Sure it blocks more damage then 2 armor trinkets, but it would seem you would be more vulnerable to getting spiked if you get bad evasion rolls. I'm also thinking about zara's trinket for my knight tank. I use a cleric for my main arena team currently, but I would think zara's would make particular sense with a bard. I like the idea of eyeballs on the witch. @Dann, no the cut off for tier 8 is 115 and 50. The cut off for tier 9 has not been discussed by Mika Mobile yet, other than to say you have to do crazy well.
I guess Mika Mobile doesn't want to share the cutoff level on T9 items since everyone would just stop at a certain number and go die. @ArtNJ: Try them out. They work perfectly well on Shepherd when you hold on to the Intimidate/Shield Wall rotation. And even if you're not! In the meantime, I managed to get to my old ~100 numbers at Doomvale (although at the moment, there are only Obsidian Soulcrushers dropping and no T9 items for my other toons) with a better suited setup. I also added a level guide/setup. Here they are.
A couple comments: Cutoff for T9 in arenas is.... 70 in doomvale, and 140 in brightstone. These numbers were drawn from what we thought was reasonable for most players at fairly high level based on our own testing. If you're destroying these numbers, then grats, your party is a terrifying force. There is no level cap, besides where your patience finally gives way. In theory you could reach level 10000, but for your own sanity you should probably not do that. Armageddon blades are the T9 barbarian weapon. The "exploit" of deliberately dying in arena to get a free item and reset the merchant isn't unknown to us - we figured nobody would bother because the battles right outside of each arena give items from the same loot table as a 0-kill run in the arena. So yea, you can walk into doomvale arena and die... and get something like a T5 item, which is exactly what comes from the levels at the beginning of doomvale, which also yield experience on top of that. If your level is so insane that you don't care about XP anymore than yea, knock yourself out. Regarding Epox high level characters... I think he may have just edited the save file. Edit: couple more questions I missed... +Power items like Kaimani's Bloodstone (+10 magic power) is identical to just having +10 more power on your weapon, and effects powers as such, not just auto-attacks. The auto-attack range for casters has been increased slightly, look for that in a future update (not the first, but the one after). When a normal enemy targets a "tank" (monk or knight) it's essentially stuck to them. So if a monk hits something first, or is simply randomly targeted first, a knight won't pull it off, and vice versa.
Makitango, with your boss killing setup, do you manage to kill him before the first add phase? My current party isn't able to do that yet. From what I can see, the last boss is the best place to farm if you can reduce it to < 2 (maybe < 1) add phases, otherwise the golem seems best to me.
I got 71 or 72 in Doomvale with a level 36/37 party, and I'm pretty mediocre at these games, so I think you succeeded in making T9 sufficiently obtainable. Kind of surprised there isnt a bigger gap between the scores for T8 and 9 though. Doomvale is pretty hard from go, you need to have your crowd control right or you die, period. And if you have your crowd control right, the difference between 50 and 70 is not that big.
