A few questions...

[Falstyr]

Hi there,

In the past I played TL, but never got really far. Real life interference and other games that caught my interest. Now that Steam has a sale, combined with D3 losing my interest, it was time to give some games in my backlog a try. At the moment my Destroyer is lvl 38-40 and running around the earlier levels of the shadowvault. His gear isn't great, but wading through hordes of opponents is still easy, fast and fun. Just a quick Dash (1point only) to move around the battlefield quickly followed up by Devestate and the many passives and it is rock solid so far.

1. My skills weren't greatly distributed. Therefore Ordrok gave me some trouble. After installing the re-spec mod I bought the potion and distributed the points as I had in mind. Instead of maxing out Slash it was Devestate and that made the fight really simple. However... Is there a way to farm Ordrok? At the moment I start a game and like to start with one or two farm runs before resuming my delve in the Shadowvault. It seems each visit to Ordrok is futile since he won't be there.

2. As a dual wielding Destroyer is block from the passive useful? At the moment I have it close to maxed and seems to work out just fine. My real question is. How does it stack together with that Etherial Guardian thing. The first skill you learn from that tree which gives a certain amount of block change when active. That would increase the amount of block from 20% to a potential 45%. However is that worth it when I also have Frost Shield maxed out with its increased defence to everything?

3. I'd also like to have an active aura on the side. There is the obvious Thorn aura. It doesn't seem to give a lot of damage returned to attacker thus making it less interesting. Or is this not the case? At the moment I'm drawn more towards that other aura which gives 20+ reducting in attack speed and what not to anyone that gets near you. Combine that with the Devestate which lowers damage done and armor it would be a great supplement to one another.

[dreamrider]

Those questions which I am qualified to answer:

1. Ordrak - only way to farm Ordrak is to start a new character and run through the campaign. Ordrak and the other super-bosses (Overseer, Krag, etc) only appear once. On the other hand, you can do better on loot whoring by taking the excess of money that you are making in the SV, and gambling upon every return to town. Do a search on 'Gambler' or 'gambling' for techniques to make it pay off better. Just one tip now: drop a cheap socketed item into the pet's pack before gambling, so you can see the sockets when you run your cursor over them.

2. Bock and Parry is always useful, at least until you get the combined total of the blocking up to 50%, the max. Block & Parry stops that percent of hits of all types including Red Lightning, no matter how heavy, from ever touching you. Defense Attribute multiplies armor value, and all resistances, by (1 +0.xx), where xx is the current Defense Attribute value including all Defense bonuses. The resulting armor value is subtracted from each physical damage hit, and each resistance result is subtracted from any matching elemental hit. Conventional wisdom is that +Block is more valuable than Def adds, unless they are huge. I say get both, but favor Block if you have to make a choice, until you are reliably entering virtually every contact combat with ~50% Block.

3. Don't know auras.

4. My own thought: Many things that don't seem worth it to bother with at Normal (which is generally thought of as a 'training' difficulty even by the devs) become important/essential at Hard and Very Hard.

dreamrider

[Falstyr]

Can't remember ever seeing a difficulty check box at char creation. No idea which difficulty I'm playing at right now.

[dreamrider]

Its the box that appears on the upper left after you confirm your pet name. It lists Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard. There is also a check box at the bottom of the pop down list for selecting Hard Core mode (permanent death; start over). BTW, if you want to play HC, you must check the box BEFORE selecting your difficulty - as soon as you select difficulty the window closes.

dreamrider

[Falstyr]

Seems my Destroyer is a normal mode char. Is there a mod to bump him up a notch? Then I'll make a new HC Destroyer on the side

[Falstyr]

Created a VHHC Destroyer. Currently lvl 10-ish and beat the Overseer. Decided to have a glance in the Shadowvault and everything was leveled to my character. Was suprised seeing that they were at lvl34 with my other Destroyer.

1. Is it so that they adjust according to the character you enter the floors with?
2. Is it worth doing the Shadowvault before or Ordrok or only afterwards as "endgame" content?
3. Does the Shadowvault even have an end boss? Or is it just endless floors to reach lvl 100 and aiming for complete sets as part of the "end game"?
4. If I were to do the Shadowvault till the destroyer is a high lvl. Does it mean that each boss from the regular quest line up to Ordrok gain additional abilities to match the challenge of the higher level? Or will they just hit harder?

ty for your time answering the questions btw.

[zekrom]

1.yes

2.its your choice entirely but if you level a lot in the shadow vault and then go to the story dungeon, itll be a walk in the park coz in the story dungeon monsters and bosses DO NOT adjust to your level. so it takes out all the fun and challenge.

3.nope. no end boss. the real task is after you reach level 100 and cant level up anymore. the monsters' level goes up every floor so you WILL die at some point but you can keep going to know your limit.

4.same as 2. therell be absolutely no difference in monsters' levels whether u go into main dungeon at lvl 10 or lvl 100. i actually saw a video of a lvl 100 destroyer killing ordrak(always lvl 30) in 13 secs.

about the thorns aura....i dont know much about it but entropic is definitely better as it blends in very well with the other skills.
like...shadow armor 10+block &parry 9 = 49% block, frost shield = 54% damage reduction, entropic aura = enemies move,attack,cast almost 40% slower.
summary--> enemies move,attack 2/5 times slower;and then they miss half the time ;and then u take only 46% damage when they do hit(oh and frost shield also freezes them sometimes)

so basically, destroyer has a really magnificent defensive build.

[Falstyr]

Sounds cool. At the moment I've already noticed you can outlevel the regular dungeon excluding the shadowvault. Simply do the extra side dungeons from the disconnected areas in the mine. Managed to go to Ordrak at lvl 38 and simply outlevel him. So it seems you need to do a lot of things to NOT overpower the bosses it seems.

1. So now that I know which skills I'd like for my destroyer. How to figure out in which order to distribute the skills. Playing on normal/hard doesnt really matter. But playing on VHHC I've gone with the defensive skills first. However I lack proper dps then to kill the enemies fast enough. Any suggestions?
2. With my normal Destroyer I'm currently on lvl5 of the Shadowvault. There is one achievement that talks about delving to floor 50 and 100. Do the Vault's floors add up to the Ordrok floors? Or do I have to keep going to 50/100 in the Shadowvault as well?
3. When using the town portal there is fair amount of space left to unlock more portals. So far I haven't seen any portals in the Shadowvault. Will I eventually come across any if I go deeper? Would sound logical though. Don't really fancy having to go through all floors to get back to where I was last

[dreamrider]

No Waygates in the Shadow vault. So be careful to NOT drop a teleport spell on any return to the campaign dungeon after you reach SV 6-7. Unless you don't mind grinding down through those floors again. (I did this once to get back down to SV floor 52 and beyond - boring couple of days.)

BTW, for this reason I recommend doing your early character leveling using a few map scrolls rather than buffing down to SV 10, then losing all that downward progress to finish the campaign. Don't worry about challenge though. If you don't have a tele-portal, or an unfulfilled Quest holding open the state of the SV, when you return to it again at the end of the campaign, even the top floors of the SV will re-set according to your current character level. ...of course, you may not WANT that! <grin>.

dreamrider

[Falstyr]

sorry to keep you guys bothered with questions...

On top of the earlier ones I have started to do the gambling bit. But also the vendor sells nicely colored set items. These Gorgon items, for example, are lvl 8 one visit while lvl 28 in a later visit. Do these items level up with your character? Or do they "level up" depending on how lucky you are when to encounter them?

Also... Did anyone feel as if they were playing Final Fantasy when hearing the music while going through the dwarf areas?

[Arkham]

These Gorgon items, for example, are lvl 8 one visit while lvl 28 in a later visit. Do these items level up with your character? Or do they "level up" depending on how lucky you are when to encounter them?

Do the level 28 versions have the word "epic" in their title?
There are different, higher-level versions of a lot of the earlier items, usually appended with the word Epic before the normal title (i.e. Gorgon Boots vs Epic Gorgon Boots or whatever).

[dreamrider]

Ark,
I think that the highest level of a regular items is 27. I think all itmes level 28 and above are Epics, and should say so.

That having been said, the inventories of the merchants do get completely re-generated upon your avatars next visit to town, using your current character level as a basis, as long as you have been away from town for more than about 30 seconds.

dreamrider

[zekrom]

Sounds cool. At the moment I've already noticed you can outlevel the regular dungeon excluding the shadowvault. Simply do the extra side dungeons from the disconnected areas in the mine. Managed to go to Ordrak at lvl 38 and simply outlevel him. So it seems you need to do a lot of things to NOT overpower the bosses it seems.

1. So now that I know which skills I'd like for my destroyer. How to figure out in which order to distribute the skills. Playing on normal/hard doesnt really matter. But playing on VHHC I've gone with the defensive skills first. However I lack proper dps then to kill the enemies fast enough. Any suggestions?
2. With my normal Destroyer I'm currently on lvl5 of the Shadowvault. There is one achievement that talks about delving to floor 50 and 100. Do the Vault's floors add up to the Ordrok floors? Or do I have to keep going to 50/100 in the Shadowvault as well?
3. When using the town portal there is fair amount of space left to unlock more portals. So far I haven't seen any portals in the Shadowvault. Will I eventually come across any if I go deeper? Would sound logical though. Don't really fancy having to go through all floors to get back to where I was last

as the regular dungeon has a storyline, the monsters are always at the same level and its nobody's fault. so of course u can always outlevel them. as i said above, ordrak can be defeated in less than 15 seconds with lvl 100 destroyer.

1.use yer brain and figure it out yerself!! defensive first is fine in VHHC. use slash more as it takes both weapons into account and hence deals more damage(take mana potions if mana not enough).
2.vault floors are seperate.
3.dream answered this.