Newbie Questions

Hi everyone.. I'm really sorry to ask something that is probably trivial to all of you, but I have been searching and all the answers seem very old. I just wanted to check in.

I just started playing yesterday and the game seems insanely fun. I'm itching to get out of work and put in more time. My concern is that I already made poor decisions with my first character. Though I don't care, I just want to experience some of the game first.

- I made a shadow
- I'm using cold spells (a wave that shoots forward and a targetable aoe)
- I'm taking +elemental damage / +spell damage / caster nodes

After looking through some information on the website, I am afraid that this is horribly inefficient. It looks like shadow should be more melee/ranged physical based instead? As I said, I just want to at least make it through the game once before worrying too much.

Do all these things work together at least? Assuming those two spells I'm toying with.

- elemental damage
- cold damage
- spell damage
- intelligence/mana/regen etc..

Thank you in advance. Hope to meet some people in game some day.

You made a good choice, a Shadow is well-suited for projectile spells because of easy availability of projectile speed passives which are very important for most such builds. Beating the campaign with spells is also easier and cheaper as progressing with an attack build means getting decent weapons, and those usually have to be bought from other players. On the other hand, caster defenses are currently harder to pull off so it needs extra effort to get a foothold in endgame.

The damage Freeze Pulse does has spell and cold(elemental) properties so all of the bonuses you took work on it, also projectile damage. Just keep in mind taking a bit of damage at the beginning is good as it makes levelling faster, however you should also think of defenses. Having a high life pool is essential, you can't really play without, and a few more defensive layers will help you survive when the game gets harder later on.

And don't beat yourself over the head too much when (not if) you see you won't get very far on your first character, happens to everyone. Get a general feel for the game, read up on game mechanics and plan your following characters in as much detail as possible.

When I first read the post I was thinking cascade, but you are probably right about freezing pulse. If you are using cascade, it is not a projectile so won't benefit from projectile modifiers. Freezing pulse, on the other hand, loves projectile mods.

Oh thank you so much guys, it means a lot. I half expected to get reemed out.

I may have been overthinking it, as I started looking through stats and nodes. I started off super happy, thought I had a good idea going and then I found a weapon with elemental damage on it and I think a skill called elemental hit? That made me think that spells wouldn't benefit from elemental damage.

The spell I started with is definitely freezing pulse. I had put something on it that made it cast 3 instead of 1, but I leveled it too much or something and can't use the lesser projectiles now heh. Lot to learn, I know.

I didn't get to play too long, I'm only level 14 and after watching a few videos I realize I have no clue what to expect. In the short time I played I could only beat the first chapter. Things seemed to go so well, I was just destroying everything up until Merveil? Whoever the final serpent boss was. She killed me a half dozen times before I won and that was the first I had died.

Laptop struggled with that fight too. Might be time to hook the desktop up again (we just moved).

Definitely weird that there is no currency! Or, that it is crafting materials.. still don't quite get that, but not worried about it yet either.

If you can't use LMP (lesser multiple projectiles) it is probably because you don't meet the stat requirements for dexterity. This is a fairly easy fix, you can spec into more dex on the skill tree or look for an item with added dex (amulets are a great source of stats). You can also go buy a fresh copy from the vendor which may be below the level of your current gem. You could also de-lvl the gem by selling it to the vendor with a scouring orb, but that is quite expensive and not recommended.

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Vipermagi wrote:

That, and don't stand in the ice storms ;) That one's more obvious though, haha

A good general rule, don't stand in anything the boss creates! But, then there is dominus bubble fooling everyone the first time ;)

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Vipermagi wrote:

Going strong then :) Merveil has a very simple gearcheck: do you have Cold Resists. Resists are really important, and it's actually surprisingly easy to get at least 50%. The most important factor to remember, especially for Normal, is that vendors can sell you rings with up to 30% to a single Resistance. Invaluable in these early levels!

That, and don't stand in the ice storms ;) That one's more obvious though, haha

I haven't really got too much with resists on it yet. If I need gear or exp, should I logout and then back in again to farm areas or something?

I might have done a little better but once she started putting up storms and tornados I got too laggy to get out of the way. Will definitely have to play on the desktop once things get serious. For now, I'll remain happy playing on the laptop outside on the deck with a beer.

Apparently I don't have anywhere near what I should for survivability. The only thing I saw that I really liked was energy shield, so I stocked up on that for now. I'll definitely keep an eye out for resists from now on.

You don't have to log-out to reset an instance (that shouldn't work actually). You can manually reset any instance by shift+clicking on the entrance and choosing "new". Also, instances reset after a few minutes of no one being in them (8 min?).

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BackwoodsS wrote:

You don't have to log-out to reset an instance (that shouldn't work actually). You can manually reset any instance by shift+clicking on the entrance and choosing "new". Also, instances reset after a few minutes of no one being in them (8 min?).

Oh, man... that is huge. Good to know thank you!
There were a few areas I really enjoyed and would've liked to go back to but I wanted to see the end of the chapter.