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I tend to be pretty free about using common components like scavenged plating and polished emeralds. Sometimes I’ll put one on an item as much to mark it as a “do not sell” piece as for the bonus (I usually keep a variety of rings, amulets, and a few alternate armor pieces so I can optimize my resistances). Less common stuff I generally save for crafting/shrines/endgame. A tip for managing them - just dedicate one of your shared stash tabs to components and crafting materials. It beats having smaller stacks of the same thing clogging every character’s bags.
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The advice I followed, which worked well for me, was to wait until the end of Elite and then do SoT and BoC. Not much point spending keys in Veteran, and I wanted to see what’s in there and what the bosses are like before facing them in Ultimate. Definitely read the appropriate sections of the Survival Guide first so you know what resistances you’ll need and what you should watch out for. I haven’t bothered with PV since aether-ground irritates me in the campaign, and PV has some sort of random aether tornados in addition.
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Points in skills can be refunded, points in mastery bars cannot until you get AoM. And costs of skill and devotion refunds start low but can get ludicrously high if you do a lot of them on one character. So if you decide to do a massive respec keeping very little of the original build, it may be worth using a mod. Your specific example is totally reasonable, 20 points is pretty cheap and should get you a good start on your second mastery.
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No, and in this game it isn’t really possible to grind for most specific things. MIs are the only items that drop from specific mobs, and for the most part you don’t care about them while leveling. The one exception I can think of would be a pierce Blademaster wanting to farm a couple of decent Dermapteran Slicers in each difficulty level. But those drop like candy so it’s not hard to find a couple that should work.
But if you’re in a position where you have 2/3 of the Herald’s set, too bad, wait for RNG because there’s absolutely nothing you can do to get that last piece any faster.
If there’s an item slot where you don’t have anything that works, check faction vendors. They have gear at 35, 50, and 70, some of which is good (also don’t forget to look at the blueprints they sell). As I recall a first character won’t unlock the level 35 gear until the mid-40s or so, but once that first character maxes out rep with everyone (end of Elite, with only a small amount of grinding) all your other characters will easily have all the rep they could want thanks to Mandates.
- If you need more, just visit the Black Legion blacksmith like Medea said. There’s always one piece in each of the mines in Act 2 as well. If you’re thinking of those locked treasure chests, I usually do spend a dynamite on them. They drop a blueprint reasonably often, and even if they don’t at worst I’m trading a dynamite for an Ancient Heart or something like that, which is OK.