| ESRB:Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited Guide: Ten Tips For Survival
MMORPG.com Dungeons and Dragons Online Correspondent Ben Walker writes these ten tips for survival in Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online.
By Ben Walker on June 11, 2009
If you're a fan of small groups and solo content or if you're just starting off into Dungeons and Dragons Online, you might be suffering a varying amount of frustration. Here are ten tips for surviving in X'endrik:
Pick up everything!
Grab that gold, check those mushrooms, and pick up that pack! It's an expensive world, and you'll need all the cash you can get. A lot of your income will of course be from completing missions and trading loot, but sometimes you'll notice your coffers looking slightly bare. Make full use of your storage to collect every treasure bag and item you can, then put aside some time to go and hand in your treasure to those that seek it, and sell anything you don't need. The more money you have the more help you can give yourself.
Find that vendor!
There are several important vendors dotted around; potion vendors who are a useful source of buffs such as extra wisdom, health, strength and intelligence, and brokers (look for the blue dots for brokers) who sell quality specialised items; weaponry, clothing etc. Be aware that these brokers also buy valid specialised items for more than regular vendors do. If you are rewarded high value specialised loot and need some quick coin, sell it to the correct broker.
Hired help.
Mercenaries are available for hire. Hireling vendors will sell you a single use merc of your choice which you can summon and control in mission. Fighters, Wizards, Clerics, Magicians of varying levels are available to help create a more balanced party should you want to play alone or in a personal group. Note that you cannot hire a mercenary that is higher than your own level and that some mercenaries can be intentionally difficult to control. However, should a merc be killed in the line of duty, simply pick up the soul stone and recover at a shrine as you would any other party member.
Keep your options open.
To save space or to earn quick coin, it's often easy to pop into an inn and sell everything you don't currently have equipped. However, you might want to keep some choice items reserved for future use. Some quests will require you to adapt to them, different enemies, elements and traps can be countered with a different suit of armour, a robe, a sword or even a pair of boots.
Don't forget, all X'endrik residents have access to a bank account. If you don't quite trust yourself with a prized possession, pop into the bank or visit a banker character to drop off items as needed.
Tailor yourself to your mission.
It's tempting to just ignore the quest back-story and just click yes until that 'quest bestowed' sound rings out, but you may be missing out on important clues to the mission that lies ahead; enemy type being the most important. For instance, you may be proud of that +2 flaming axe, but against level 7 fire elementals it's not so hot. Worse still, some enemies can damage your weapons very quickly if your character cannot save against it...suddenly finding yourself with a broken weapon mid quest can be a cause for restarting if you cannot repair. It's worth keeping a cheap club standing by for circumstances such as this, especially when dealing with ghasts and slimes.Wizards and Sorcerers, if you have limited spell space don't forget to prepare the spells you'll need first. Most if not all damage spells will work in any mission, but a physical barrier may require a spell to overcome. A good rule is to always keep feather fall, underwater ability and an intelligence boost handy.
It helps to keep different cloaks/armour standing by too. If a quest involves undead monsters a cloak/piece of armour that reduces undead can be useful.
Prepare yourself
Ideally when entering a mission you want everything you need at your fingertips. There are two methods you can use to respond more quickly to threats or urgent requirements. First are the toolbars, of which you can add more.
Click the box with the arrow to add another toolbar to the game window.Organise your needed items in new toolbars such as different weapons for different enemies, health potions and buff potions, and spells. This can be a life saver when suddenly put into quick combat.
The other method is keyboard shortcuts: Go to the options panel, click the key mapping button on the right, and scroll down to the shortcut bar section.
;)
Here you can map keys or key combinations to your most used items, for example: your health potions are in Shortcut Bar 1 slot 8, and you want to access them quickly by pressing CTRL + H, click Shortcut Bar 1 slot 8 as shown in the image and assign the key you want.
Experiment with both to see which you prefer.
Take your time!
You may recall an old adage 'slow and steady wins the race'. Well, in an actual race that makes no sense, but here it applies quite well. Often the idea of running straight through a quest to get the XP seems quite attractive, but you'll be missing a trick or two. Each mission gives bonuses for the work you do.
Killing monsters: Stop and wipe them out, check every room and corner to get an aggression bonus.
Not killing monsters: If you prefer to be discreet....so be it. You get a bonus too! This requires you to keep the kill count low or to none...so be really discreet.Disarming traps: disarming a certain amount of traps rather than going through/around gives you a bonus.
Secrets: If you get those messages telling you the air has changed...it means that there is a secret door nearby (or someone needs to lay off the beans), do a quick search to discover them.
Breakables: Break it all! Barrels, vases, pots, smash it to bits! Do it enough and you'll get a reward, plus personal satisfaction...
Bonuses will stack so each new bonus will increase the total score and not the base score which really starts to add up!
It's also prudent not to rush into every situation, unless of course you know the quest like the back of your hand. A sudden trap, ambush or closing gate could easily cut you off from your party and a level restart due to death means an XP hit.
Déjà Vu
If you find you're stuck, be it lack of XP or a quest you can't complete, go and do some quests again. Revisit some earlier quests, complete them and get XP, loot or coin all over again. Might sound dull, but Turbine has thought of that, allowing you to crank up the difficulty level if you wish. Going from Normal to Hard to Elite increases the level by one each time, so a level two quest on elite will be a level four equivalent. With higher levels brings increased dangers but also higher rewards, including favour with the various alliances.
Repeat too often though and the available XP for each quest will take a nose dive.
Hammer time.
If you really want that +3 haggling ring, or have 100 string beads you can't be bothered to take to the harbour, take a visit to an auctioneer. If you want it, someone will have it. If you have it, chances are someone out there will want it. Auctions take a commission of course, but if you're willing to wait, the payoff may be much better than buying from a broker or simply discarding what you don't want to carry around.
First contact.
Don't forget, if you're at an early level, everybody you see around you was also there at one point. Behind each character is a human being, and if they are indeed human, it won't hurt to ask for help. Ask politely, and ask only once. If you start to hound people you may get reported, and even more importantly...they won't like you very much.People at the same level as you are in the same boat as you. So start a party and reach out to people. You'll be able to complete that nagging quest and more importantly, you might make some new friends. The core of every MMORPG is about co-operation and friendship. So don't be a stranger for too long.
Stradden , good write up. Now I quit that game a little while back because of lack of end-game content and the game devolving into something that does not resemble the spirit of D&D at all. Now, with F2P model they have in fact throw out the window all remnants of D&D the game had (i.e. buying your way to upper levels instead of earning it, specifically purchase of leveling runes). But I digress.
The single most important thing for SURVIVAL in DDO is to know and read D&D. Understand the rules of the game and their complexities. If you do not know D&D, you'll almost assuredly bound to have gimped characters. Withut a doubt, the number one "tip" is to be extremelly careful and thoughtful at the time you create your character and customize your toon's stats. Make no mistake about it, unlike many other games, DDO (and D&D) unforgiving when it comes to stats. It's the difference between landing every spell or whiffing it and wasting mana. So, that said, take as your task/homework to troll the build forums before you create your character. Ask questions, most folks are very helpful and will guide you through the starting stats process. But take the time or else it'll be paifully obvious that you messed up your toon permanently (unless you reroll of course).
Peace.
Its unfortunate but games where you can fail during character creation, i.e. games where you must choose stats and/or skills before even playing the game and knowing what should be where, are broken. Its total fail design. I know this was a big part of D&D and I assume they wanted to stay true to the character generation of the pen and paper, but for computer games this is foolish design. Why would I play a game where I could be at a disadvantage from the get go without even having played? You can see how games do not go this route anymore. If they do you would be wise to steer clear.
I remember way back, players telling me in Everquest "I got to lvl 20 but then I rerolled because I screwed up my character stats during creation". That is a thing of the past, as it should be.
all good and mostly right, but unfortunetly, the first contact part only works if you already found a party cause the community isn't very talkative in the general chat
And the alternative is the cookie cutter classes of all other MMO', no thank you , I find those epic fail, because everyone is basically the same with the exception of gear. DDO allows true customization of chacracters, and while sure you can create a total gimp, its pretty hard to make a completely unusable character. Many long time players spend their time trying out new builds, and get great enjoyment from making interesting class combo's.
Games of logic?
A Wizard type of character logically wouldn't have Strength as a primary attribute. If a person places their starting points in Str then they are defying logic. If there's a logical explanation why someone would do something like this it could be maybe they are purposely building a character that's going to be a Combat Mage.
Just 'cs McDonalds has Billions Served does not mean everyone is eating there. In a sense, claiming "games do not go this route anymore" isn't any different then saying "the current fad for casual games is X". I suppose the point being made is there's a need to cater to the lowest denominator as a means to make environments more accessible, but in no way should this mean a complete abstention of open ended dynamics should be pursued when such caters to skilled players. And in relation to catering to the "noob" DDO has character templates which removes the guess work a new player might experiance.
Hey Arko,
Hope your adventures in Argo keep going unabashed in spite of Turbine latest antic. I mostly agree with you, and to be fair, Turbine DOES provide very decent templates out the door (no need to customize ability stats at all). Eventually, you'll want to tweak your character or try new things, that's when you REALLY, REALLY need to now what you're doing. Even though a gimped toon is not entirely unusable, soon enough you'll have a really hard time finding groups once your toon's name gets in someone's Do-Not-Group with list. Though being a douchebag will get you blacklisted a lot faster :) So, in conclusion, you can boild down the above 10 tips down to two:
1. Know your D&D
2. Don't be a douche.
Peace.
Gimped is a frequent misnomer that's thrown around without any factual bearing. Some players will claim if you have 1 point less in Armor Class that the character is gimped, other's might claim that if a character as 10 hitpoints less then them its gimped.
The most important factor about your character is that it compliments your playstyle. Just becuase you seek an environment or wish to faciiltate success different then others doesn't mean you're gimped.
My point here is that if you make a character that others are going to claim is gimped you should experiance yourself with how the character can perform. Once you learn to capitalize upon your character's strenghts or weaknesses any chance that someone is going to say "Gimped!!" will be greatly reduced. A great player could play the worst build with a reasonable degree of success and unless they told others how the character was built they might never suspect it was a gimp.
What I really like about DDO is being able to make a character that compliments my playstyle. I use a pure classed Sorcerer that's spec'd for Fire/Cold, with some Acid Damage (Melf's Acid Arrow rocks!), and it exclusively wears armor and attacks with weapons. You would not be able to make a character like this in other games and would end up being forced to stand still in robes and spaming a single attack, or two attacks if you're lucky.
The diversity and character dynamics in DDO warrants reason for EVERYONE to play it. What ever you do, don't bother with claims of being gimped until you understand how YOU want to play the game...
looking forward to trying this again when it goes f2p, btw has it gone f2p yet?
Though I am interested in seing Cryptics Never winternights mmo, now that will be interesting!
Gimped is a frequent misnomer that's thrown around without any factual bearing. Some players will claim if you have 1 point less in Armor Class that the character is gimped, other's might claim that if a character as 10 hitpoints less then them its gimped.
The most important factor about your character is that it compliments your playstyle. Just becuase you seek an environment or wish to faciiltate success different then others doesn't mean you're gimped.
My point here is that if you make a character that others are going to claim is gimped you should experiance yourself with how the character can perform. Once you learn to capitalize upon your character's strenghts or weaknesses any chance that someone is going to say "Gimped!!" will be greatly reduced. A great player could play the worst build with a reasonable degree of success and unless they told others how the character was built they might never suspect it was a gimp.
What I really like about DDO is being able to make a character that compliments my playstyle. I use a pure classed Sorcerer that's spec'd for Fire/Cold, with some Acid Damage (Melf's Acid Arrow rocks!), and it exclusively wears armor and attacks with weapons. You would not be able to make a character like this in other games and would end up being forced to stand still in robes and spaming a single attack, or two attacks if you're lucky.
The diversity and character dynamics in DDO warrants reason for EVERYONE to play it. What ever you do, don't bother with claims of being gimped until you understand how YOU want to play the game...
Mindspat,
I agree with what you say to a large extent. One of the beauties of D&D is the ability to truly customize your character (down to the combat level). Now, when the group's wizard doesn't have high enough INT to knock a rune or the sorc keeps dying and running out of mana frequently, or when a barb doesn't make a dent to Arri or Suul it's not a matter of playstyle. It's a matter of your toon not being able to be effective. My favorite toons are casters, I've capped several with different emphasis with each othem. I love my 28-pt build sorc the best. even with a - 1 DC and 200 less mana than a min-max drow he is extremelly versatile and more than once has been the main healer (UMD, both clerics down) in part 4 of the Shroud. Some people would scoff at anyone with a 28pt- build and let's not even get into the nonsense argument that casters are "useless". When I say gimp ... I mean truly ineffective and unviable characters.
Peace.
Some good comments there, thankyou. I think a future guide into solid character creation might not go amiss.
Thanks again.
We're about to cross into semantics...
I bet we've seen multiple situations where we either suspected that it the faults of failure were either due to a gimped build, unequiped character and/or a player who simply didn't know how to play. If a Sorcerer contiously runs out of spell points that very well is a playstyle issue. Arritekos and Sullumedes (sp, on both) each have DR and if players were using wrong weapons their dmg is going to be extremely innefective regardless of their character attributes or the players skill level; skill level should identify they need X, Y or Z weapons.
Oh yeah, I'm right there with you. My main is a 28pt Elf Sorcerer which most players are going to come out of the gate to lable as gimed. Believe it or not this Sorc has an unbuffed AC of 50 which absolutely supports my playstyle. The character is like yours, the DC isn't as great as a 32 pt Drow but it's a fricken awesome to play. What i hear most about my character being gimped is when I make it clear I've not had Finger of Death nor Phantasmal Killer as selected spells for well over a year nor do I intend on picking them up - some people find this impossible to believe.
In the most realistic example of making a character gimp let's use a Dwarven Barbarian as an example:
Max out Charisma and Wisdom then dump the rest of the starting attribute points in Intelligence. Keep the Strenght, Constitution and Dexertiy as low as possible when making it. yeah, a Dwarven Barbarian like that would be the epitome of GIMP!
hehe
I'm sure you'll agree though, people throw around "gimp" as if it were common slang; "like", "really", "hell'a", "noob", "n-word", etc...
The runes allow free to play characters to advance beyond a certain level. To level above this point, they must first earn the experience and then buy the rune. There is no buying levels.
The devs have clarified this.
Nice list, as a player thinking about returning (have a lvl4 rogue) from a long absence its nice to have some good pointers into getting back into the game with. Now i just need to decide whether to stick with my rogue or try something new