Levels 50-67
- Beat Loggy, ez pz.
- Realized that exploring every nook and cranny is a slog since I have played through campaign questing 100’s of times and it’s all coming back to me. I remembered I can skip past a lot of mobs. Will farm a couple factions to completion later for their augments.
- Realized upon beating Loggy I unlocked elite and ultimate. Ran into elite to speed run some of act 1 and 2 just to grab more devotion points without leveling too quickly. I want my powers to boost me ASAP. I don’t consider this spoiling a pure playthrough since I’m not trying to recreate a “new player who doesn’t know anything”'s experience. Tricks that I remember I can use or that I learn from the forum are fairplay. My plan for this character is to 100% Normal with full exploration, rush through elite, and fully explore ultimate just to see how all content feels on ultimate.
- Think to myself that after finishing a few characters, my futures characters should start in ultimate. Will try this after I complete blueprints and have a full set of mandates and whatnot.
- Again, this isn’t a challenge run, just trying to put some restrictions that I think will enhance my experience playing the game. I can already feel the pull of sharing gear between characters and I haven’t even finished one yet! But I’m having fun doing ssf for this character and next build I’ll probably pick something that isn’t as gear-dependent and maintain ssf. I’m thinking this mad lee build.
- I’ve died 4 more times while reaching lvl 67. Once to Ilgorr the Eternal’s new sunder attack on normal. Twice to the stunjacks pit boss in four hills on Elite while doing devotion shrines. Underestimated the potency of shotgun stuns on me lol, and once again to standing in ground damage while reading items in my inventory. None of this felt remotely unfair, and the tension I’ve felt fighting since putting on faction gear was Loxmere jumpscaring the shit out of me and Shar’Zul from Bastion of Chaos, forgot how much fire he can spawn at once and almost died twice in a single fight.
- This has been a great first experience as a person playing a very sub-par leveling build and tossing the rust off. I definitely started feeling the pain of not having all my gear to support my build and put in a bit more effort to rectify that.
This is where I left off:
I think Normal is pretty darn well-tuned now. Not a challenge if you build synergistically, probably kills newbies way more often than forum-goers imagine. The average player doesn’t know how to build characters. They spread skill points poorly, don’t gear well, don’t realize the power of components and faction shops, etc. Sunder is neat because it can really sneak up on you if you’re new and bossing lazily.