The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 12: Gear Progression

Welcome to a new project, experiment, challenge or whatever you wanna call it. Normally experiencing the content with well-geared toons, I figured it would be quite interesting to approach the game from the perspective of a casual player. How does it feel starting from scratch and build up a character without the help of your mains? How long does it take until you are geared enough for the latest endgame content? Welcome to the Lowbie Diaries, it should be fun!

This week I said I’d talk a bit about my gear choices and goals and I’ve set up the lowbie char at our Character Manager. I thought I should be aiming for 2.5k item level and after building it up I coincidentally ended up at exactly 2,500. It should even be a tad more as I plan to slot armor kits as well for a minor stat boost (probably Life Steal and Stamina Gain). Don’t think it’ll be more than minors, because the kits have hardcoded costs and paying 150k+ for a single one is quite an investment for a lowbie, especially since you need a new one for every single piece of armor and jewelry. Other than that, I’m pretty satisfied with the build and stats. I was aiming more towards control and survivability and see how it goes. I nearly hit the ArPen cap and chose an Augment over Bondings, because it is able to generate more HP and is cheaper. The only thing the char is missing is Life Steal. I’m going to be able to get to 7-8% with the ToD boon, but you would really like to get over 10%. As MoF however, which is DoT heavy, it might not matter as much.

This is where I the Stronghold boons would come into play, but as I’ve said I don’t feel as good about joining a guild with a time-limited project. For the same reason I haven’t checked whether Dragonflight gear would be an upgrade. If any guild leader doesn’t care, please comment, e-mail (admin@nwo-uncensored.com) or send me a PM on the forum and we can talk about it.

Speaking of the augment, you might notice it’s the one coming from the Extra Life charity and I did indeed donate 15$ to get it. After running with VIP that’s the second time I flew over the F2P barrier, but it’s for a good cause and I actually don’t think there’s a cheaper way to get one. You don’t have to punish me, because I already did as I accidentally bought a Blood Ruby from the Trade Bar store… there go my bars. The pet comes with two defensive slots, which is perfect for the build, and it does not have ring slots, which are by far the heaviest investment when it comes to SCA Companion gear.

I want to complete the gear before attempting T2 and epic Demogorgon. I’m already completing normal Demo for Seals of the Protector as well as other Mod 8 Skirmishes and HEs for Ichor. Besides the Dusk gear I currently feature blue Alliance Assault arms and feet and completed the Drowcraft underwear yesterday. Have 20 Motes of Water as well and this is something I really need to be intensifying this week. Not sure however how much time I have with the holidays approaching. The only hefty investment in the build is the Valindra and the Earth Artifact and as long as I don’t have them I will keep my Halloween Artifact and the Lantern as replacements. I tried to get into premade VTs with my current 2.3k item level, but no luck so far.

Caer Konig
Caer Konig

In other news I’m amazed how fast you can progress through the campaigns nowadays. The tweaks they did to Sharandar absolutely paid off although the bottleneck are still the Sparks. But at least the older campaigns do not require fancy boon consumables and will be completed eventually. Especially Icewind Dale with the additional Demon Hunter quest is now like a two-week completion if you invest in a few campaign boosts as well. Therefore progress is looking solid and I think completing epic Demo in a reasonable amount of time might actually be possible.

See you next week!


The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 7: Happy 4th Of Sigh
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 8: Summertime
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 9: Restart
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 10: Double XP & 50% Sales
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 11: Campaigns, Motes, So Much To Do


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j0Shi

j0Shi plays the Neverwinter MMORPG since the open BETA in 2013 and is a regular contributor to the blog and the whole UN:Project. Originally a Guardian Fighter, he has built up ALTs of all classes and plays on BIS/near-BIS level.

One thought on “The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 12: Gear Progression

  • December 16, 2015 at 2:24 am
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    VT is so easy, I never ask for ilvl to run it

    I would say instead of waiting for someone to pick you up for VT, make the party 🙂

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