Hey there! Pretty new-ish player so I’m looking for sort of Elite focused advice?
So far I’m aware that stacking resistances is extremely useful given the lowered ones all across the board but not much else? Is it simply a level increase along with lowered character resistances?
When it comes to hoarding I have a biiiiit of an issue when it comes to stuffing blues into storage. I’m assuming there’s no real ironclad method on choosing what you should and shouldn’t keep outside personal preference and overall build preferences?
Crafting! Now, I have amassed quite a few blueprints through my first few characters, am I right to not craft unless I’m looking for specifics? Spamming greens to try and get beneficial stats seems to be a pretty drastic waste of resources so I haven’t done it all too often but is that a mistake?
Skills. Now, admittedly my build has turned out pretty well so far and carried me pretty damn well through Veteran. (Though that’s not much of an achievement.) However now that I’m in the mid 60’s and points are becoming more scarce I’m curious, what’s a good way to identify skills that are only worth putting one point into? Always loved arpgs but never been too great at identifying when upgrades start to lose their luster.
Those are just some early questions? If you have any general advice feel free to throw it my way! I’m stubborn and have not looked over guides all too much.
Stacking resistances is important and the best way to reduce incoming damage, yes. This is especially true as you move through Elite and eventually into Ultimate. Elite will generally let you experiment a little as long as your resistances are in order and your build isn’t a complete mess, so take the time to play around with things and see what does or doesn’t work before Ultimate finally puts you through the grinder and tells you if your build is shit or not.
As far as hoarding gear goes, yeah it’s up to you. There’s a few blues I might consider particularly important for holding on to for specific builds and such, but this would require more knowledge of the game and its items and I wouldn’t worry about it just yet. Maybe consider making a mule character if bank space is getting limited for you, or turn to third party tools.
As far as crafting is concerned, I wouldn’t worry about basic gear because as you mentioned it is largely just a resource drain right now. Instead look at crafting relics and components, both of which are hugely beneficial and you should be looking to start putting components in as much as you can heading into Elite, especially to help patch up resistances.
As for skills, it’s probably easiest to just look at builds really. Otherwise the knowledge comes with time. If you want, feel free to post a grimtools/grimcalc link with your current build and we can advise what may or may not be good investments, or if you’d prefer to explore things yourself refunding skill points is fortunately pretty cheap, so feel free to just experiment and play around yourself. It’s also worth keeping in mind that many 1 point wonders that you see in builds are only good because you have a lot of +skills from gear - something you may not have a lot of being self-found on your first character. Generally you’d want to focus on investing heavily into your main skill whilst also picking up helpful utility skills and whichever defensive options your class choices provide you. Good luck.
Crafting can be used while leveling, but you want to craft the yellow recipes. There will be times while leveling you wont get an upgrade for a item slot or 2 for a while. You can then go back to town and craft the yellow recipe for said item slot. No guarantee you will get an upgrade, but more times then not I have after like 5 to 10 tries.
Periodically, and especially after fighting bosses (win or lose), hover over your Offensive Ability and Defensive Ability to check your chance to crit and chance to be crit. If an enemy can crit you, look for ways to increase your DA. If you can’t crit the enemy, look for ways to increase your OA.
In fact, if basic enemies can critically hit you, you should sacrifice resistances in order to raise your DA. Because, if basic enemies are critting you, then the bosses will be getting frequent and severe criticals against you.
And if you cannot crit basic enemies, then you will frequently miss bosses, and possibly suffer from reduced damage when you do hit.