Basic builds & gameplay tips

Lamar

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I would like a bit more information on companions in that section. A brief summary that they can be recruited and will accompany you throughout the games as you see fit. I played my first character, a rogue, to level 10 before I knew about them and found I could recruit Grissenda. Provide links to the quests the recruit then

And thank you for putting this together.

Now we just need @Kakost to share his optimized quest list.
 
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Neponde

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I would like a bit more information on companions in that section.
What kind of info are you looking for?

I added wiki links to the companions, and their quests, in the writeups. Good suggestion

On discord, it was suggested to add an 'optimal' companion for each build, which I'll be doing over the next day or two as well.
 

Lamar

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What kind of info are you looking for?
Something like this at the beginning of the section.

Companions are npcs you can recruit to your team and add to your party.
Unlike mercenaries that you can hire for gold:
1. When they "die" they don't leave your party, and they'll resurrect with half health when free of enemies
2. When in your party you can equip and train them and they'll level up with you
3. You can only have one companion at a time, but you can have a companion and hire a mercenary and/or a summon
4. You can switch companions by dismissing one and inviting another into your party
5. Dismissed companions will always be on your team and when dismissed they will return to their home and wait for you there in case you want to invite them back to your party

I added wiki links to the companions, and their quests, in the writeups. Good suggestion
Excellent
 
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Kakost

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Now we just need @Kakost to share his optimized quest list.
Oh damn, I know which quests to do by "instinct", but actually name them...

Let me see, you start with "Goblin hunting", obviously, and "Gather Ingredients". Super easy, and with those you'll get to lvl 2. Then just accept but do not do "Flesh is Weak" and the one to rescue Teram. If some small XP is still needed, you can ask questions about the Three to the cleric to gain some XP and get there.

Move south map immediately after lvl 2, then west map to Kingsbridge, just run from the orcs, dont worry about them. Accept but do not do all the quests on Kingsbrigde: "Messenger-Something" (with that Horton scumbag guy), "Missing Girl" and the one from the wizard also robbed by Adaon, the "Initiate's End" and the one from the warriors (to find an Orc attack plan).

Oh yes, if you happen to find any Red Flowers, be sure to pick them (there's usually 2 in the way here)

(Sorry, I'll look all the names later on).

Oh yes, be sure to have Int 1 in order to save 100 gp (not absolutely indispensable, but nice to have).

Move to the south map, Inori Desert, go around the plato in the middle of the map, always avoiding critters, and go straight to New Garand. (There's also another plant you can find here which I forgot the name, try getting them if you know where they spawn)

Again, accept all quests there: Where is my Sword (if you have Int 1 he will tell you where is the Magistrate's house), the Medallion of the Spice trader girl, the quest with Gilmor to get spider sacs and I guess this is it.

Be careful to NOT get lvl 3 at this point. Go to the Magistrate's house and that will dump you into the Unkown Dungeon. At lvl 2, all bandits will be lvl 2, so it's actually the easiest time to do it, unless much much further later on.

There are a few combinations of skills that make this part a lot easier - Fireball 1 + Lightning 1 for Elementalist, Bash 1 for Warrior, Stab + Invisibility 1 for Assassin Rogue, Trap 1 for Archer Rogue, Sacred Fire for Cleric and many many others, so be sure to choose properly for that (the first 2 guards are the main problem here).

Forget the skeletons guarding the chest and the Minotaur by now.

Escape, talk to the guy at the pier to accept "Message in a Bottle", go back to New Garand, recruit Adaon, go back into the Unkown Dungeon and loot the chest where the skeletons were, and tell Adaon to wait just outside the cage where the Minotaur is. Open the cage and lure the Minotaur to Adaon (be sure to make Adaon be somewhat distant to leave you enough time to run).

So, while the Minotaur and Adaon share a friendly argument, go into the cage and loot.

Leave, go back to the Magistrate's house and get the Mysterious Key. That will get you to lvl 3 with pretty decent items for the early game.

You should also probably have 1000 gp to buy your first slot at the bank (after selling useless items).

After that you can finally rest.

Now, exit New Garand by the East into New Garand Farms, move south until you find Horton and his thugs, kill them and move north to South Bluemist river. Before crossing the river move East to find the guy that asks you to save his friend from orc enslavers.

Move fully north, back into Lannegar. With the red flower, complete the second stage of gathering ingredients, now accept to escort that loser guy to the map in the East. Get him there, make him pay you the full 250 gp, accept the quests about Mirmeks, talk to Grissenda and enter the Tolassian tomb. Just go straight to where her ring is, take it and leave. Get all items back from Adaon and tell him to go home. Give the ring to Griss and recruit and equip her. Get back into the tomb to get Tolassian Tome (if your Awa+Int/2 is terrible, you may do it later)

Move north, smash some mirmeks' eggs, move back to Lannegar in the East, rescue the lost miner Teram if you havent already, go Southeast to find a loreseeker staring at a Tolassian Tomb, accept his quest, enter the Tomb, get the book he wants and the Tolassian Tome.

By now you'll definitely have lvl 4. Go back to the Captain of Lannegar and accept "Head Hunting". Do it. Yeah, it aint gonna be easy, so you'll have to know how to do it (lure imps away to leave boss alone etc). Each class has a few tricks to make this quest feasible (Bash with warrior, opening with a stealth stab for rogue and many others).
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After that, you go back to Kingsbridge to do the quests there. Finish "Dont Shoot the Messenger" immediately and give the diary to the Loreseeker. Go into the Bandit Hideout and free the girl, go kill the specters to the south to complete the "Initiate's End", go into Deadwoods to the West to take the second jornal, get back into Kingsbriedge and deliver it, and now go south of the city across the river and move East to go into Urz-something (the orcs lair), go the easiest southern route, free Niur and go out, dont waste time with no essentials (Int 1 highly recommended), get back to Kingsbridge, sleep if you must, head East to the road between Lannegar and New Garand, deliver Niur and continue south to New Garand Farms in order to complete 2 quests there (Dark Presence and the one to rescue the Loreseeker). That part will be hard (you'll probably be lvl 5 by now), so you may need to rest between each one of the bosses. Lure minions away from the boss from "Dark Presence", finish both quests, take the Tolassian Tome, you'll probably be lvl 6 right now.

Get out of the tomb, head East to do "Message in a Bottle", finish it and head back to Lannegar to deliver Luminescent Fungi you found on the Bandits Hideout. Head West all the way to Rhoneis, do "Coyote Hunt" and that one to kill the druid (I forgot the name). Accept the one to give a Minos horn to some presumptuous lord, head West to Jabal, help the slaves escape and Mercia reputation be damned (but pay the fine later on).

Go farm a bit with extreme care at the Maze (dont push too much and bravely run at the first sight of trouble), until you get 1 Minos horn. No need to keep there once you find one, leave immediately.

On your way, you'll probably already have enough spider glands for Gilmor; head back to New Garand. On your way, passing over the Inori, get the medallion for the spice trader chick but dont give it back yet.

Get on New Garand, give the glands to Gilmor, head to the swears, get the copper coin (take a look at the path to take on wiki so you dont die to the traps), take the quest from Kardagis, go where there are a bunch of ghouls to take the Sword, if you cant kill them all yet, just lure them to Griss and while they are at her, loot the sword and run like the wind (even with Elementalist you can do that, no need for Invisibility or Sprint).

Go back into Inori at night and complete the Thieves Guild quest.

Now you may want to recruit Hirge. I recommend having Awa 2, but if you dont you must take Adaon (sucks, I know). Get in Izarus, take Hirge's medallion, get out.

By now you should be lvl 7/8, so now you head to Castle Storm (I dont remember by memory the exact path, sorry) to complete "Those in Need", if you have balanced traits you can have the best outcome with traits checks, easily.

By now you'll probably have close to 40 rep with Varsilia, very very soon some crazy knight will challenge you to a duel, defeat and spare one and now it's time for a few Town Hall quests to get to rep 40.

Get back to New Garand, talk to Latimer and accept his quest, briefly recruit Hirge (or keep her if you prefer her over Griss), deliver the Sword to the noble by the temple and talk to Hirge to start "3 vs 11", now go back to Kingsbridge briefly if you want Griss back (by now you should probably have the Orcs Battle plans, so take the chance to deliver them), head back to Lannegar, if you have a Perfect Wolf Skin take it with you, go East, find the Varannari group to the south and deliver the Perfect Wolf skin to them to complete "Best Hunter in the World", go north into the Mage's guild tower, accept "Easy Job", head to the map to the North, cross the North River and to the East close to the river you'll find the plants you need, afterwards head west, kill a few white wolves to collect a White wolf skin, enter the cave to the west, if you're lucky you'll get a few "Living Ice" to the other Mage's guild quest (unlikely to find 3 in a single runby; I just buy 3 whenever I find a "Shady Figure" random encounter - just be careful if he says "I sell MAGICAL items", cuz that one will kill you), head to the resting place of Latimer's boy.

Deliver the flowers for the "Easy Job", get to Kingsbridge to deliver the White Wolf skin and a Ruby to the mage (just be careful to NOT show up with Adaon to him before finishing this quest), get back to New Garand and finish Latimer's quest.

Now it's only a matter of choosing which "Tome of Necromancy" you find "easier" to grab. I personally prefer Irazur, but I also heard convincing arguments for taking the one from the Mausoleum.

Take whichever you wish, head strait to Mercia's capital (the name slipped from my head), go to the Golden Hand's library, give the tome, buy both the Agi+1 gloves at least for yourself (if not for both you and Griss/Hirge) and the Per+1 ring for yourself.

Head straight to New Garand, give the medallion to the Spice trader girl, finish 3 vs 11 with easy.

Now you are lvl 9, you can go to Kingsbridge and do Fort Assault and congratulations, Early game is over and you're now into the mid game.

All this can be accomplished in 2-3 hours of game.

Now, Im sure I missed a lot of stuff and switched the proper sequence on others, please forgive me, Im (trying to) doing it all from memory (I just remembered that I forgot Mad Wizard).

To truly make it right I would have to play and take notes at the same time, which I probably wont have time to do. But I'll try to do someday
 
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Lamar

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Wow, thanks for the write up. My best time to lvl 6 is about 3.5 hours. So I'll see if I can improve with your list

BTW If you give the medallion to spice trader Jethro you can gain access to Grey Library where you can find an ancient tome and Of Ghosts and Spectors which you can turn in back at the Great Library later to get back to friendly if desired. You can read the book there was well to find out what the tower is located so don't need 2 minatour horns. And now you have access to both libraries. Three verses Eleven will take a bit more effort/gold but the merchandise in the Grey Library is quite helpful for most classes.
 

Neponde

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To truly make it right I would have to play and take notes at the same time, which I probably wont have time to do. But I'll try to do someday
You may want to save that in a file somewhere, and create a thread "early game level guide" or something. Its going to get buried in this thread eventually, and hardly anyone will find it. Would be a shame for that.

Also:
1) Added optimal companion suggestions on each build.
 

Kakost

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06/12/2022
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375
Wow, thanks for the write up. My best time to lvl 6 is about 3.5 hours. So I'll see if I can improve with your list

BTW If you give the medallion to spice trader Jethro you can gain access to Grey Library where you can find an ancient tome and Of Ghosts and Spectors which you can turn in back at the Great Library later to get back to friendly if desired. You can read the book there was well to find out what the tower is located so don't need 2 minatour horns. And now you have access to both libraries. Three verses Eleven will take a bit more effort/gold but the merchandise in the Grey Library is quite helpful for most classes.
I know that. Yes, giving it to Jethro is the easiest way in into the Grey Library, but the reason I don't do it is because I want better rep with Varsilia (to get to 40 as fast as possible) and to do 3 vs 11 as easily as possible. Without the spice trader, you need to either get 10 fire salts (something I can never do without actively farming A LOT) or paying 1000 to Kardagis if you already did her quest (the easiest alternative).

However, Kardagis is only an alternative if you already did Latimer's quest, otherwise you'd have to do Kardagis and Gilmor, which is NOT an alternative to me.

But in truth, like I said, my issue is with the rep. Also, I'll want to take all the 3 books anyway regardless (plus the one inside the Grey Library), so since Im going to do it anyway, I might as well do it now, gain access to the Grey Library, get the other tome there (yes thank you, I forgot to include that), get back to New Garand and give the tome to the Loreseekers and the medallion to the girl and complete 3 vs 11, all at once, so that's why I do it in this way, because I can condense several quests with a single stroke (thus optimizing my time).

There are a few orders that I placed wrongly, like I said, I'd have to play and take notes, and a few things Im absolutely sure Im forgetting (like the Tome from the Grey Library, thanks for that), but it's more or less that. (Another example is "Mad Wizard" which I only remembered by the end, and you need the mace from the "Initiate's End" for that because it's silver, so you give the silver knife you find on the corpse to Adaon and keep the Mace for yourself... I did that one at lvl 6 if Im not mistaken, but now I don't remember exactly at which point)

After all that, the next steps would be to complete the quests to enter the Icemist from the Mages' guild enclaves, do that one from Lady Xidar, pay the fines from Mercia and start Mercia's quests, and finally go to Icemist and get the Amulet of Dark Whispers dangerously at lvl 12/13 (once again, get in/get out, no dungeon crawling, no fighting the Lich in there).

In here, to get the Amulet, I recommend to start buying a dozen or a dozen and half mid hp and mana potions before doing it. Gold will still be short, but such a small amount is doable. Then always strive to keep that bare minimum, which will increase over time (jumping from 10 potions to 20, than to 30, 50, 100).

You could start Cold Trait, but I absolutely do NOT recommend going for that afterwards so soon however.

After that you enter the "mid game limbo", and it gets a bit harder to choose directions. You can go to New Anthur and do the "Frog Princess" quest and the missing actor, and after that I don't remember by memory. Mid game is a bit harder, and there will be some parts upon which farming will be unavoidable, at least a little (to hunt for items or quest itens).

(Actually, scratch that, the Frog Princess may be a bit too hard at lvl 13).

You can assault a certain pirate bank...

Goddamit, I forgot about Tremadans tower...

See what I mean about trying to do things by memory only?

Yeah, I have to play and take notes, no other way around.

I guess I'll do that, even thou it may take some extra time, but I believe it would be immensely helpful as a guide.

Also, there may be a few distinctions to be made according to class. For example, Fort Assault aint gonna be as easily for Rogue Assassin, while it's a piece of cake for Elementalist. The Maze is harder for Warriors and Clerics, but super easy for Assassin, Mages in general and Archer Rogue. A get in/get out quest such as the one to get the Amulet of Dark Whispers is much harder for Elementalist than for any other class/build (I still did it at lvl 12 thou, but I almost died).
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You may want to save that in a file somewhere, and create a thread "early game level guide" or something. Its going to get buried in this thread eventually, and hardly anyone will find it. Would be a shame for that.

Also:
1) Added optimal companion suggestions on each build.
That's a great idea
 

Neponde

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@Lamar, I added a link to the wiki site on companions in the subheading intro. They cover all that info and more there. Thanks for the suggestion.
 

Neponde

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Here is what I'm thinking.

I don't think I will write comprehensive guides for the builds. There are a some of those around already, and a forum search will reveal them. I also do really want to keep this as a "starting point" for players, and keep the spirit of the game, namely, exploration.

But I think there is room for more gameplay tips, and a leveling guide (of sorts). Here is my considered layout.

Early game (up to and including Tower)
-early
-mid
- late

Mid-game (Shards of Fate)
-early
-mid
-late

End-game
-pre final quest
-final quest
-postgame


For each of these, list towns/areas that have appropriate quests, areas that are good to farm in (for xp or gold). It might not be a bad idea to name "easily missed" quests as well. (This guy, for example, or this guy are easily missed, and help with varannari rep. As is this one, which gives an amazing light weapon)

I think this gives a good balance of "look here if stuck" without (again) destroying the element of exploring on your own.

Any feedback, or suggestions there?
 

Kakost

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375
I wish some of the ADMs would pinpoint this thread at the top, this thread is a keeper.
 

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