Hey folks,
Hope everyone is having a good time so far. Finally had some time today to play and I thought I’d do something different by keeping a forum journal of sorts with my new Bleed Wolf Thane (Berserker / Soldier) on Softcore/Veteran. This is a completely fresh character, meaning all blueprints and stashes have been wiped. As of writing this, I’ve hit Level 20 and defeated the Warden.
I decided a while back that I wanted to try and maintain a mostly spoiler-free experience of the new content. So I haven’t dug into the new items in the GT database or done any real theory crafting. That said, I know existing bleed gear and have a general idea of what I wanted to do for early game. As I discover new things, though, the build may of course change significantly.
I’m going to post GT snapshots every 10 levels and give some thoughts. So, follow along and comment if you want (just please don’t spoil the FoA content until I’ve got through it).
If all goes well, we’ll see if it’s worthy of a guide eventually. So here we go!
Level 10
Click: Berserker Snapshot Level 10
Initial vibes: Werewolf looks and feels pretty smooth. Feral Claws have a decent arc of attack. Rip and Tear is interesting. Still getting the hang of it. It’s definitely nice to have a free movement skill right off.
Dual wielding Barrog’s Arm seems the obvious early choice with bonuses to Implements of War. Also, this here is why I wanted I didn’t want to theory craft beforehand. It’s a nice surprise to discover new skills on legacy gears!
Not much else to comment on gear. Poison is hitting pretty hard in the Slith cave. Viloth was actually fairly dangerous. I hit level 10 around the time of beating Milton and turning the quest in.
Level 20
Click: Berserker Snapshot Level 20
Well, so far so good. I decided to try out Brutal Great Axe so I sided with Angrim to craft it at Level 15 and removed the skill point in Implements. Ended up sticking with it until the end of Act 1 but I think you could probably do fine staying DW Barrog Arms all the way through. I also crafted a Ranger Ribbon and did the usual component crafts available at this point. Anti-venom Salve and Wardstone are always early staples.
I one-pointed most of the support skills to rush Leap and try it out. In short, it feels great so far. Warden was an HP sponge (expected with the new boss buffs) but I tanked him fairly easily. Untamed Rage feels like a really strong passive even at one point.
Level 30
Click: Thane Snapshot Level 30
After Act 1, I went straight to the Conclave to pick up the movement rune (I always prefer Charging Bull). I skipped any FG quests and ran through to the Korvan Sands rift, only stopping to pick up the shrine in the Hidden Refuge. Then I farmed up 2x Scorpius Bludgeon and went back to dual wield while starting Soldier skill tree and rushing Blade Arc + Clean Sweep. I also went north into Cairan Docks just to grab that northwest shrine then went back to start Act 2.
Act 2 was mostly a breeze aside from the undead, which I expected to be a pain due to their high bleed resists. Speaking of which, if you’re doing your own Thane wolf, make sure you have bleed resist close to maxed as possible. Skeleton Revenants with reflect start showing up now and hitting them with juiced Blade Arc will sting badly.
For Act 3, I did just enough undead content to hit Respected status with Rovers (to purchase Runestone craft). Then I mostly ran through Broken Hills/Smuggler’s Pass/Gulch without much issue and hit Homestead right around level 30.
Level 40
Click: Thane Snapshot Level 40
After hitting the Homestead rift and turning in Ulgrim’s quest, I went south and did all the Pine Barrens quests and swapped to Mogara’s amulet for +1 Soldier. I then went back and killed Gutworm and his medal now has Bloodfrenzy ranks. Nice.
After that I went back to complete Kalderos’s undead quests. Unfortunately died at Zarthuzellan. I got hit with a double whammy of his shotgun attack and there must have been a reflect mob in there because my HP bar just bottomed out fast. Whelp, lesson learned. Got a bit too cocky with the leap slams. Went back and finished up the Homestead quests and left at Level 40. No issues there. I crushed Ravna and Amalgamation but I was a bit overleveled at this point.
Low cooldown Warcry from Fleshwarped Casque is always a nice quality of life addition and also equipped a Fleshwarped Platemail and crafted a set of Squire boots for the chaos resist. The Level 35 faction gear is unlocked now so I bought some shoulders from Devil’s Crossing. I also swapped out one bludgeon for a new Boneslicer. It’s obviously better as a Zealot weapon now but I will need an axe to pick up the Berserker constellation.
*Note: FoA spoilers from here on out
Level 55
Click: Thane Snapshot Level 55
I breezed through Blood Grove and Darkvale Gate. I skipped most of the Death’s Vigil faction quests (choice doesn’t really matter between them or Kymon’s) but I did kill Bolvar just to test out his damage. Just one direct volley from his guns took me down to about 1/3 health and that’s with around 50% chaos resist. So you definitely want to be careful against him since he’s a bit cracked at the moment. Zaria can be deadly too if you get hit by her chaos shard summons. The rest of the trip to Fort Ikon was uneventful. I killed Lucius and went north into the Necropolis just to pick up two shrines, then went back and started the DLC at level 45.
I took my time and have done full area clears up to finishing off the boss in the World Tear. So far I like the all new enviornments and weather effects. The Kurnhold looks great. The difficulty isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I expected to die several times but I’ve only logged one more death at Gabal’Thunn who has some kind of massive DoT attack. I think I’ve done a good job of keeping resists maxed or close to it, so it could have been worse.
Anyways, I’m getting ready to start the next quest leg which looks like it’s going to take awhile. Not sure I’m a fan of being forced into doing both Forgotten Gods and Malmouth just to progress FoA but it is what it is right now.
Level 70
Click: Thane Snapshot Level 70
Finished up the main FoA questline at Level 63. I died a few more times right at the end stretch: The three Wight bosses, the Herald dude right before the last boss and then died to Beronath’s chaos claw explosion thingy (Clawsplosion?). All in all, not too bad considering it’s new content that I’m not familiar with.
The quest to visit the other DLC areas didn’t take as long as I thought. I basically ignored the side quests and just ran through to get what I needed. I understand why the devs did this. It’s more for the benefit of new or returning players so they’ll engage with the other DLC. I just think it could have been implemented more equally. You only have to go roughly halfway through AoM to get the required materials but for some reason in FG they made us go all the way to the end.
Afterwards, I backtracked to the main game and picked up shrines that I had skipped, did some quests and leveled to 70. Other than re-farming current gear slots, the only change is that I picked up a Lagoth’Ak Bloodbinding which now has a Werewolf bleed mod. Awesome. It’s worth noting that this could be farmed before jumping into FoA but the drop rate is split between this and Voidbinding so you might have to spend several skeleton keys before you get one.
Now it’s time to make the ultimate difficulty jump to stress test this build.
Level 85
Click: Thane Snapshot Level 85
I basically cruised through the first few acts of Ultimate. My resists were in a good place, although I did go back to Veteran briefly and purchased some Kurn resist augments (Wight Powder & Rimethorn Ash) to use over the Death Vigil health augments. Aether and chaos have consistently been the lowest resists (as they usually are for a lot of leveling builds).
I finished out the devotion map and starting boosting more of the defensive skills to get my DA and armor up.
Other than that, there’s not much of note to report. I started to re-farm certain gear pieces around level 80 or so. You’ll notice I crafted a Salvation relic but this was only because I still had not dropped the Juggernaut blueprint at this point (go figure). Ideally, I’d use Jugg as it is always a very good budget relic to carry through to level 100.
Level 100
Click: Thane Level 100
Video: Ascendant Beronath cleared
Well, here we are. After level 85, I mostly started grinding faction rep, clearing monster totems for blueprints, and farming up max level versions of gear. Barrowholm and the Witch God factions were priority as they have the most valuable augments.
The build as you see it here is now able to farm ultimate easily, and I’ve started trying out ascendant mode. I was able to take out ascended Beronath on 2nd attempt (posted vid below).
I think the build feels like it’s in a pretty good spot as a budget setup. Bleed DoTs can now hit well over 1 million on the test dummies. Which brings me to the next important point: Reflect Resist. Even with 83% bleed resist and 37% reflect from devotions, I still died several times to reflect mobs. Adding the Mogdrogen’s Boon augment from Kurn seems to have done the trick for now by adding another 25%.
So now it’s time to assemble some of the new bleed sets and formulate an end game build. I’m also going to play around with skill points and see if I can optimize DPS a bit more.
Stay tuned!
