The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 43: Tackling Events Like Portobello

Lowbie Diaries BannerWelcome to a 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!


Since Portobello went by on PC recently, I’d like to talk a little about tackling such events. This is not only relevant for the lowbie life, but also for alts you’d like to participate with. I’m not sure about you guys, but I personally tend to always find myself at the tail end of events with way too much stuff still on my to-do list. That’s why planning ahead is key especially if you can only spend so much time on a character.

Plan Ahead

Portobello is such a great example because it runs for four weeks. You think that you have tons of time to get the items you want only to realize that you run out of days at the end. This is an issue for all types of events however in which you can buy stuff for special currency.

First of all you should figure out what items you want to get from events, what they cost and how much currency you can get per day. It also doesn’t hurt if you can at least approximately foresee how many days or hours you’ll be able to spend on the event. With this information you are able to calculate the amount of currency you need to make per session to achieve your goal.

Let’s say you want to get a new character through the Portobello campaign. It’s 400 Adventuring Accreditation and there’s no daily cap. So if you can participate in 15 of the 28 event days, that’s about 27 per session, or running a trial 6-7 times. If that’s an ok workload, you’re all good. Otherwise you need to adjust your goals.

Play the Event Right from the Start

With your rough plan ready, make sure to play events right from the start. Nothing is more frustrating than falling behind and having to grind through the last days. With every scheduled session you miss, there’s at least more repetition ahead on other days. That’s also why I would be very conservative and decisive with setting my goals. It doesn’t hurt to aim lower and adjust in case you’re faster than thought.

That’s especially true for accounts that feature many alts. Don’t forget that stuff tends to get boring fast. So while bringing a lot of characters through the same set of quests every day might seem feasible, it can get annoying rather quick and might prevent you from keeping pace. Few events feature mandatory stuff and come back regularly. Normally there shouldn’t be any reason to rush.

For my lowbie for example, I aimed at getting 200 Adventuring Accreditation with doing two skirmishes and some quests in the “Burrow Dawn Inn” at the start of each session. It turned out really well and the amount of repetition was just right to not get frustrated. I comfortably hit the goal and will be able to finish the campaign at the next run of the event.

That’s it for today. See you next time!


The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 38: Gearing Up
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 39: Dread Ring on One Weekend
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 40: To Lowbie, or Not to Be
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 41: Farming the River District
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 42: How to Adjust to Changes as a Lowbie


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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.