Today was a bit of a different day in terms of activities. While I did the standard Chaos Dungeons and dailies, I started to progress other aspects of growth such as my Adventure Tome. I pretty much hit a point where it’s clear that the end game for me isn’t doing high end content just because my guild pretty much died off (and I was promoted to guild leader without my consent). But I can still make progress on other activities without feeling like I’m missing out.
To start, my Glavier finished up her level 50 Knowledge Transfer and I pretty much tested her out in the lowest level Chaos Dungeons. It went pretty smooth but I suspect as she improves her item level that style might require me to invest more tinkering. Later on, I decided to use her for dailies that I normally don’t do like Tooki, Blackfang’s Den and the other pirate island just to make some progress in those areas for the rep and rewards.
Then I switched over to my Artillerist because I’m really pushing two of the Punika daily quests alongside the Azure Wind Island. My Punika island quest progress (not the daily stuff) pretty much was halted because I lacked an emote from Azure Wind Island. In turn, I have one of my bi-frost setup there so I can inch closer. Right now, I think I’m two days away before claiming the two rewards which are the emote and Giant’s Heart. Both will be incredibly useful once I get them. Also, I’m trying to farm one of the Chaos Dungeon bosses for the legendary Rage skill rune. It might be a while before I get to see that thing. Along the way, I did Lagoon Island for my daily Adventure Isle as the boss drops an epic Wealth skill rune. I figure that’s another one that will force me to farm for a while. But it’ll be worth the effort.
I did some moderate stuff with my Gunslinger. With all the alts I’m running, I’m thinking I might have a rotation for Chaos Dungeons where I do a select number per day. That way certain alts will get their rest bonus. The ones I’m trying to progress like my Sorceress and Gunlancer, I pretty much will need to run the highest until they can get into the next tier of content. One thing that I discovered was that my Sorceress cannot do the highest level Feiton Chaos Dungeons because she’s only at 1060 and the highest ones require 1080. I thought that she just needed 1060. So this was a huge drag as the materials for getting to that 1080 mark are going to be pretty infuriating. Even with mat funneling, I’ll have problems because of the failure rates and need for Leapstones and the other higher level materials.
I did notice that some of the honing materials can be obtained through life skills. With the guild weekly stuff reset, I might commit a character to a zone for fishing. The only downside when I looked was that the cost for those materials are pretty high. But I might have been examining the Tier 3 stuff.
One thing I decided was to stop doing the dailies on Yorn. The two I was working on basically drove me nuts. So I figured that it might just be better for my Gunlancer to move on to Feiton. With that I got him over to Kajala so that at least he can continue doing Chaos Dungeons while working on other dailies. I’ll still need to push him through the rest of the Feiton quests but I’m not going to rush him the way I rushed my Artillerist through. The same motivation isn’t there just because there’s no more Feiton Pass at the moment. In addition, I think I finished up the Gravis reputation dailies. In turn, I started my Gunlancer on the Atropos since the merchant you can obtain is useful and I simply need more Island Souls.
I might start moving my Shadowhunter to Yorn too just to get her going rather than having her stagnate in Rohendel. But I figure that one character per major continent per day is enough, besides lower level characters. I mean we’ll see. I think my Shadowhunter ended up finishing the Panda Island daily reputation. So there’s not much of a need to stick around Rohendel outside of continuing the dailies, which aren’t useful for her. Also, I don’t think it’s productive of me to have her run Rohendel Chaos Dungeons, even though I can funnel all those materials to my Tier 1 alts. But I think outside of my Gunslinger and/or Glavier, there’s no clear reason to rush any of them with so many alt projects going around.
One cool thing I stumbled across was Isteri Island. Only my Artillerist was capable of doing it because of his ilvl. But it gave some nice honing materials as well as an epic Protection skill rune. I had completely forgotten about the skill rune so it was a nice surprise. Also, I might a tiny bit of progress with Nineveh and her Rapport quest. I might have one last thing to do there but it’s in the work. I’m rather taken aback by her long, painful Rapport grind though.
After taking a break, I later came back and started leveling my Berserker again. The big difference in how I’m playing my Berserker is that I’m going super slow to work on the Adventure Tome. I can’t remember what triggered it but I started to get obsessed with at least getting through Rethramis since I was near to grabbing the Bored emote. From there I read on how to handle most of the rest except for the Collectibles. I think the epic final collectible seemed far too painful to farm so I just bought that and the remaining collectibles.
That said, doing the Adventure Tome while leveling a new character actually makes the process a little more interesting. I’m too accustomed to the usual leveling process. But at this stage, some of those Adventure Tome rewards are too good to pass up. And I don’t see myself taking a powerful alt to redo a bunch of stuff (although I did some of the harder aspects on my sorceress). But the prize at the end of the tunnel was my first Ignea token.
Right now, I’m heavily eyeballing the Purify skill rune and Greater Skill Point Potion. As far as I know, the only way to obtain that Purify skill rune is through Ignea tokens. And since my main is an Artillerist, having that Purify skill to use with my Energy Shield is pretty huge. Also, getting another +6 skills points will be massive.
On top of that, getting a Relic Rapport item through the Adventure Tome felt great. There’s some really high end Rapport grinds that a Relic would greatly simplify like Nia or Nineveh. Looking through the rewards for completing certain zones, you begin to realize at the end game how critical it is to push when you can and I figured that doing it while leveling a Berserker would kill two birds with one stone.
It does make leveling a ton slower but I think it’s worth it at this stage. If anything the lower level content that I’ve already completed numerous times makes doing Adventure Tome completion worth the effort since I’m not in any huge pressure to get to the end game with yet another alt.
Part of the motivation besides the rewards is just the necessity of it all. I came across a few quests that scared me in showing some emotes as being part of a multi-choice answer. Since there are a few key emotes tucked away behind the Adventure Tome, I determined that it’s worth picking those up sooner rather than later in case I’m forced to go through a huge quest chain as I did with a few songs and emotes before. I don’t think any were mandatory but I’m not taking anymore chances not after running into a few road blocks already.
At any rate, I enjoy this different form of progress. I think the people from my guild just wanted to push ilvl to do more end game content. So when they finally got to the point where they were ready, the game had passed them up as well as the guild just slowly dying off. I guess the 2nd guild leader figured I was the only person truly active and put the title onto me. Wish he didn’t but at least I should be able to manage the weekly stuff.