Is there a way to affect level scaling?

i’ve been trying farm with my level 71 elementalist and having a rough go. i keep shifting to different maps hoping that the level scaling wouldn’t keep pushing higher level creatures at me, but it keeps pushing higher level creatures at me, and even “regular” mobs are giving me a hard time. well they are sometimes. that’s something im trying to figure out. some mobs i just completely destroy, others give me a really difficult time.

i’m losing exp cuz i’m dying and so it’s taking me forever to level. is there some trick i’m missing here ? it’s pretty painful. progress is very slow. in particular i’m trying to farm reputation but i can’t because i keep dying, A LOT, on the quests and therefore can’t complete them.

(and yes my build has problems, which is why i’m dying. i’ve gotten some help in another thread, that’s why i’m trying to farm gear !)

feel like i’m caught in a bit of a catch-22. just wondering if there’s any particular strategy i should using.

Monsters eventually stop scaling up on Normal/Veteran/Elite. Go visit the dead in starting area around Devil’s Crossing for proof.

ok. so theoretically if i start rolling back in the locations i should be able to farm. i was going to go try steps of torment to see how that was.

from the reading i’ve done you can’t try and scale back too much or certain items will not drop any more. seems like the magic number is 10 over ?

Even then it may be too high for you. Iirc the area levels in the base game can scale up to 75-80 in Normal and it will be higher than that for Elite.

If you’re more than 10 levels above what you’re fighting they won’t drop things like rare crafting mats.

Sounds more like you need to look at your build plan. Post is here so we can have a look at it and give you some advice.

1 Like

well i just tried steps of torment, and it scales above my level too. i was mostly seeing 75+
however, i did much better there than i have in several other areas. BoC for example was too difficult, but in SoT I actually made it 2 levels below the skeleton key gate, which may have been better than i’ve ever done there (there was a shrine there i didn’t have !). i wasn’t crushing everything, just slow and steady, but i gained about 1 1/2 levels before i finally died, and i died because i was trapped. mobs appearing out of thin air to surround you is kind of a gotcha mechanic, but i guess they are ghosts, lol.

i already have a post up, in the game play forum, and the problem seems to be “2nd” line resistances. I’ll go ahead and post it here too, because the link’s not too much space and i’ve made some (minor) changes.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/vNQLLERZ

you can see right away i have low poison and chaos (bad for BoC right ?) - i’m working on it ! :slight_smile: i think i have enough life. however, i’m unsure of my DPS. SoT was slow, but then again the mobs were 3 -5 levels above me, so i feel like i was doing ok.

right now the thing that has me the most confused are the devotions. it’s just overwhelming trying to figure out where all those points should go. when i go through the forums there is a pretty big difference of opinion as to how to assign them. my current thinking is to grab everything that will give me resist reduction.

thanks !

Well you could put some anti-venom salve on your belt to boost poison resist and look at Black Tallow for your amulet/medal and Sanctified Bone for your head as you don’t have any components on those. Both those give you chaos resist.

If you’re like me and a lot of other players your initial instinct will be to hoard the artifacts and augments. If you’ve done this you should be very ready to apply them to every item on your person. Make sure you utilize augments to buff your lower resistances. Having low resistances is a surefire way of getting stuck as the mobs will crush you. Also consider if your build can use health stealing abilities. These can come as skills from a mastery or certain devotion constellations.

I’ve found creating a good build is a bit like sculpting. You have to add and take away bits and pieces until you end up with a polished and fun to play final result.

You should use more components. Black tallow, Aether Soul, Antivenom Salve, Soul Shard, Sanctified Bone are good options. Ideally your resistances would be all capped by your level.

Giant’s Blood should be attached to Blast Shield. Elemental storm attached to Storm Totem (remove the Transmuter “Corrupted Storm” because you don’t deal vitality damage!!!). Wind Devil should have Reckless Tempest on it and Stun Jacks should have Arcane Bomb. Take Quick Jacks Transmuter to 3/3, you need that negative damage modifier as close to 0 as possible.

You also want physical damage converted to lightning from gear and components. So your weapon is bad, and purified salt is bad. Korvaak’s Storm Blade or crafted Adept wand with phys to lightning affix, and amber component.

Your build has low OA so you are getting little value from your crit rating too.

Are you struggling on normal difficulty?

  • 8 tainted brain matter
  • 26 ugdenbloom
  • 7 ancient hearts
    is that hoarding ? i absolutely am hoarding. i’m completely petrified of crafting something and then finding out that i’ve used an ingredient and it’s going to take me a month to find again and that the thing i’ve crafted is not actually as good as i thought it would be. i’ve got a metric ton of the various ingredients. i’ve even started accumulating talisman’s, i think i have about 8 of them now.

well that makes sense, but i would never have thought of it. so i’m a little confused about how affixes apply. if i find a rifle with +lightning and phy->lightning, like i just did, i’m assuming that those stats only count when actually attacking with the rifle. so i would need to stick with a wand and an off-hand, correct ?

trying to get aether resist…

is there a way to force that affix ? crafting is something else i’ll have to go research.

i went back to ancient grove in normal, i had never finished it. ran straight to the end boss and had to drink a health potion once. compare to elite SoT where every single mob took me about 30 seconds. LOL. so, no, normal is not a problem.

now this was AFTER i made all of @idontwannaknow0 suggestions on the devotion attachments.

@medea_fleecestealer pointed out that normal will scale to 75-80 which is what i saw in ancient grove (final boss was 78). also, duh, no resist reductions, so i was completely capped. This raises the question, why am i trying to do elite, shouldn’t i be farming in normal, especially for reputation ? then when i get closer to 80 and have decent gear (decent meaning resists are capped in elite), i go back to elite

ok. bottom line, which is what started this thread. no, i can’t do anything about level scaling, but going back to normal makes life easier. i’m not pround, i’ll stick to normal for a while :wink:

Thanks everyone for the advice ! I gotta a bunch of work to do !

yeah. so the scaling is weird. i went into ancient grove and it was scaling into the 70s, but i also did the necropolis and the monsters were only in the 60s. this is in normal. also i did one of the chthonic rifts and it also was scaled much lower. so there is some method to the madness, but i can’t quite figure it out.

however one thing i forgot about was veteran mode. if i stick to normal and tick that off i will get an exp boost. so i’m going to give that a try.

it also seems to me that the drops are scaling with level, so there shouldn’t be a problem with certain things not dropping. obviously level 81+ items aren’t going to drop, but that’s ok for now.

Just one more thing. Ulzuin’s Chosen is very good, you’d want the first four points into it sooner rather than later.

ok. thx. i’ve found some stun jacks/storm totem oriented build guides and looking at the devotions now.
oops. that’s not a devotion. ok, that will take some siginificant rearranging to get it.

Hi,

Doing much better. Summary:

1 got resists (almost) maxed. i’m still under on a couple, but very close. i’m even over on several of them now, including poison.
2 found a guide, and completely reworked devotions.

I’m pretty sure that the reworked devotions have made a huge difference in my DPS. DPS could still be improved, but it’s quite tolerable. Even though i’m still using the same bad weapon with the same bad add-on, i’m having a much easier time. i can’t run through but my progress is much faster and i really only get held up on heroes, and i die a lot less ( a LOT less).

Thanks very much for everyone’s help !