The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 14: Refining and Mote Grind Madness

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!


Because the site was on a short holiday break, this diary will not cover the latest weekly progress but some aspects of what happened over the last few weeks.


Care about a video? Not only did I forget to mention that I’ve completed the Mote grind recently, I’ve also accidentally recorded the second part of it and well, why not share it then? It took me about 2h20m to get from 54 Motes to 100 in Drowned Shore, but I speeded up the footage by 16x and added fancy sound. Have fun with it!

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex4_ZE8cWGU” https=”yes”]

I was actually surprised it didn’t take longer (I made shorter stints on my way up to 54), but the Water Weapons are probably the easiest to get. The HEs in the other areas take way longer to complete or are not as well populated. If you have the time, I’d highly recommend doing the full grind at once, because to be most efficient you need to be tracking spawn timers for a bit. I also completed Aquatic Elf Abduction whenever possible and got a good amount of Motes from this minor HE as well.

The double refinement event during the Winter Festival paid off quite nicely for me. I was able to get the Rod up to level 99 with the Rank 5s I bought in preparation and also refined each and every enchantment so that I will be able to get them to level 8 whenever I can afford a GMoP and a level 7 reagent. Why not just buy the next rank? Because it’s more expensive.

You get so many RPs for Artifacts that I think it might not even be insanely tough to max out on Mythics eventually. Not in a week of course, but over time. It’s another story with Artifact gear. If you don’t have a Leadership army to produce Resonance Stones for you, the only true source of RPs are Dragon Hoard’s, campaign keys and dragon runs. DHs and keys are capped and dragon runs do not net nearly enough. The market knows and RPs for Artifact gear are five times as expensive as other RPs. I was hoping to get at least one piece to Epic during the double event, but best I could do was Rank 32 on my Drowned Orb. So unlike the Artifacts I don’t see a lowbie getting even one legendary in any reasonable amount of time.

I’m glad I was wrong about Tiamat. People are still doing it, but they wait for the Hoard to be at 100% (thanks for the poke in the comments). I’m starting to mix in a run more frequently, because I need the Favor’s for the boons and the Cult Pack for my space problems.

See you next week!


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
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 12: Gear Progression
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 13: First Dungeon Runs And Bag Space Money Grab


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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.