Potentially taking on the Ark tonight... Lvl 22 Ironman - Advice

[Aranchersson]

I am nervous about it, lol.
I tried the first little bit... it was super intimidating.
So i read the Wiki first and adjusted my build to suit my desired outcome.

Basically, I'm asking should I take in more resistance...
And should I take more potions - I am tempted to farm at least 100, haha.
OCD has kept me alive this long >_<

Any other tips to survive this... would gross me right out to die at the end of the game. Haha.

 

[Zwackley]

An Ironman facing the Ark?

Hmmm... the Ark is not something to be conquered in a single visit. One should expect incremental progress over the course of several visits and let me explain my rationale.
1. Some of the most useful things for surviving the ark are random drops in the ark. The best of the armor and weapons for surviving the ark may not show up in any one visit to the ark. Or even five visits. And batteries are random drops. You need at least 15 batteries to advance certain milestones in the game, and you may want additional batteries for other uses (powering weapons and using the med centers.)
2. The Ark has several different quest items in it, difficult to get all in a single go.
3. You may want to think about each visit to the Ark in terms of, "Have I gathered something that will help on my next visit?" i.e. A great piece of armor or a great weapon or a quest item or a good stock of batteries, etc.

Other things to think about:
1. Potions that you might not normally think about may have uses. Invisibility. Shock resistance. Fire resistance.
2. Finding the ring of the star traveler in a random drop will do wonders towards your ability to survive hits from the Steel Wizards. (Let's not even talk about Battle Droids!) Your 59 shock resistance is a great start, but you can still get lasered to death pretty quickly.
3. Be ready to switch back and forth armor from when you primarily fighting spiders and when you are fighting enemies that can laser you. The former needs AC. The latter needs shock resistance and spirit resistance. Both explode when you kill them, but it's easier to use fire resistance when fighting spiders than wizards. That's because you can't have great fire resistance easily while having great shock/spirit resistance.
4. If you use the scroll of recall and you robbed Golden Cove Bank earlier in the game, be careful that Golden Cove guards don't kill you after you escape from a deadly situation aboard the Ark. Heck, even the street thieves could kil you if you are weakened.
5. I finished the Ark with the peaceful ending -- but I died A LOT in the arc beforehand. Doing the Ark in Ironman mode seems crazy. Completely cray cray. But I wish you luck. You might want to prepare more first, but still, I wish you luck.

 

[Cuckoorex]

Zwackley gives some good advice. What build are you using (skills, strategies)? You're using Sonnet and not a 2-hander, so I am guessing you skipped 2-hand expert altogether and used more shield-based skills? In any case, going into the Ark, it's helpful to have weapons that do extra shock damage (until you're able to find one of the special EMP weapons in the Ark crates).

A note, too, on the batteries; if you DO have an EMP weapon equipped AND Ancient Batteries in your inventory, there's a chance that one of the batteries will be used up to deliver an EMP Shock which paralyzes the robots and does a lot of shock damage (even to non-robots), BUT you're going to want to maybe stow some away in your bag of holding so you can merge them into Large Batteries later (you need some Large Batteries, as mentioned.

I found the most success hacking away at the robots until their health was very low and then moving away and swapping to a ranged attack for the final blow - it keeps you out fo the range of the explosion that follows when they're killed.

 

[Zwackley]

Here is my character that I used for the peaceful ending. Stats higher than your screen shot but I still died a lot.

 

[RougeRogue]

I would say you need more shock resistance, the steel wizards and droids really do a lot of damage.

I think i run about 90-100

Also dont forget to take an anti rad helmet with you, its usefull in certain areas of the ark.

 

[Atomos]

Consider obtaining the following equipment:
Shield of the storm
Leggings of shadows
Ashen gauntlets
Ring of isolation(if you're willing to take off ring of unlife)

Also: you're using shield and a light weapon, that means you don't have infantry training? You might rely on blood rage skill, but still that's a major risk you're taking here. When you face a serious opponent be sure to use appropiate weapons from this area, and power them with batteries, or else you'll run out of time, and that will be the end.

 

[azd]

my build,level 25 warrior
piece of cake

 

[Aranchersson]

Well, I survived the first floor and used the majority of my 30 potions.
That was pretty hard to clear... biggest thing had to be really careful of getting stunned in a death explosion while fighting multiples.

From a bit of reading it seems I just need to get enough clear to farm up a few weapons with EMP to simplify things... after some more potion farming i guess.

Thank you Zwackley, Cuckoorex, Atomos and Rougerogue... I farmed up enough gear to put me past 100 shock resist... I also swapped out Sonnet for the Adamantite short sword and that really seemed to speed up my kill times. All good advice.

I guess I forgot to post my skill build - to summarize it is a 1h Agi SnS at all times build... I made a point of being consistent in damage output and survivability.

 

[Atomos]

Infantry training skill will not work if you use light weapon. Try using hand weapon(for example adamantite longsword, or paladin longsword), it will work wonders for your resilience . It's not a must though if you reeeeeally like light weapons.

 

[Denzera]

Well, I survived the first floor and used the majority of my 30 potions.
That was pretty hard to clear... biggest thing had to be really careful of getting stunned in a death explosion while fighting multiples.

From a bit of reading it seems I just need to get enough clear to farm up a few weapons with EMP to simplify things... after some more potion farming i guess.

Thank you Zwackley, Cuckoorex, Atomos and Rougerogue... I farmed up enough gear to put me past 100 shock resist... I also swapped out Sonnet for the Adamantite short sword and that really seemed to speed up my kill times. All good advice.

I guess I forgot to post my skill build - to summarize it is a 1h Agi SnS at all times build... I made a point of being consistent in damage output and survivability.

I hope by this point you've either beaten it, or died and got horribly depressed and drank your face off and then felt much better.

But in case you are still on the knife-edge of survival, let me just say:

YOU AIN'T GOT NEARLY ENOUGH POTIONS!

I started running the Sunken Citadel at about lv 20 or so, initially to round out my gear, but then because it's the best place for cash, and I wanted that final $250k skill point from the Visions Altar in the Nivarian Temple. It didn't take long until I could do 3-4 runs of the place (going upstairs + Load to reset the monsters) before filling up on gear, and not even have to use all my Recoveries (but I was using potions of mana on Hirge, and she kept us both in good shape).

By the time I got my money, I had 380 Elixirs of Galade. They just kept piling up.

Once you get a boatload of 'em, though, your guilt about using them in the Ark goes away pretty darn quick. Yeah, you probably want to save Medipacks for when you're in serious trouble, but even averaging one EoG per battle isn't exactly shameful for a non-Rogue.

But yeah, the lesson is: way too many potions is almost enough.