I finally picked up AoM, and have a few questions. Some of these might be about the transition from patch 1.0.7 to 1.1.9, rather than being specific to AoM, I’m not sure.
Do I understand correctly that all devotion shrines are now present in all difficulties, such that there’s no longer a compelling reason to start new characters in Crucible for a few devotion points to start out? Or is the new shrine situation specific to FG, and for me they’ll still be the same as ever?
The font the game uses has changed (mastery names and “Devotion” on the skills page, and monster names in combat, for example). Is there a way to switch it back from this Gothic-looking font to the normal font the game used before, or is this just the way it is now? I didn’t see anything about the font in the options menu, though I did see that I could turn off the new (to me) monster health bar thing. Which seems OK at first glance, but good to know if I change my mind.
Am I correct in thinking that AoM faction reputations are balanced around three playthroughs, just like most vanilla factions, such that my level 85 characters need to hibernate for a while until I can run one of my low level characters through AoM enough to get mandates for everyone? On the plus side, the lower level characters are much easier to adjust to the new devotion setups…
Is “all physique” still a valid rule of thumb for stat points (aside from edge cases like pierce blademaster, where cunning was always viable - he’s one of my hibernating 85s anyway)? Or do people tend to do mixed distributions these days?
Any words of warning/advice for someone heading into AoM for the first time?
No. Even with Ashes added there are still more shrines on Normal than there are in Elite and Ultimate: 33 in Normal while the other 2 difficulties have 20 each. Even with Forgotten Gods, only Ultimate difficulty has enough shrines to get them all in the one playthrough if you skip difficulties: 59 while Elite has 51 and Normal 47. You can find the list of them here:
Bear in mind that with Ashes the max devotion points you can have increases from 50 in the base game only to 55.
Not sure if this would allow you to switch it back or whether it just offers alternatives:
Yes, why wouldn’t they be?
Still mainly physique with only enough cunning or spirit to equip items. There are some builds that use more, but that’s still the general rule.
Well, it’s an expansion, so initially everyone had their main characters at 85 and would have preferred to just do one playthrough… Yeah, I know, that’s not how these types of games work.
Thank you very much for that Devotion shrine list; bookmarked!
Poison resistance should not be a problem. The character who had just finished veteran when I burned out last time I played was my poison witch hunter. Her aether resistance is worryingly low (as is so often the case) but everything else is in good shape, especially poison.
Attribute point reset potions were also introduced in AoM, so if you go full physique and decide to switch things up to see how it feels, you’ll be able to do that now with the new potion
So, Barrowholm kind of threw me for a loop. Are there any types of characters who just can’t afford not to use Barrowholm augments/gear? I see that Ravager’s Breath is better than Outcast’s Venom for acid/poison characters, but it looks like the difference is fairly small. And I guess my vitality/chaos Conjurer might care about Reaver’s Hunger, once I start playing him again…
I’m leaning towards always slaughtering the creepy cannibals with every character, and making do with other options like Outcast’s Venom for the acid/poison example. But I am not an expert at this game (also, a bit rusty…) and don’t want to shoot myself in the foot here. Especially since my impression from poking around build threads is that going friendly with Barrowholm is a much more common choice than I would have expected - makes me think I might be missing an important detail.
Allying with Barroholm is needed at least for 1 character to unlock all of their legendary blueprint. The reasons why people choose to join up with them due to their questline give a secret superboss to fight that drop +1 all skill helm at the cost of 1 nemesis.
About the augment for weapon, the Coven offers alternative that you can use for Acid or Vitality augment, the armor augment their offer are bleed, vitality, and %health. The bleed and vitality resist augment can be swapped for the malmouth one that offer both, while the % health is useful for squishy class like Mage Hunter. For a pet build, most of the time better to ally with them too to get the DA and Health weapon augment.
Also if you go hostile, you get another boss to farm a helm from Namadea’s Horns
Get Forgotten Gods too, and crucible. Then you can get Reaper pants in there instead of killing their nemesis in main game, they drop like candy once you get pretty far into the shattered realm. Also the helm mentioned above can drop.
Ravager helmets can only be farmed in main game though.
Thanks, good to know. For some reason at first grimtools was only showing me the blue level 75 Ravager helms, which aren’t all that exciting. But yeah, the purple level 94 versions look like useful gear options to know about. So I have to figure out if any of my characters will someday be able to take down a superboss, and if so, which character that would be? Never tried taking on Mogdrogen in vanilla, and I really doubt any of my characters could do it anyway. From what I’m reading, Ravager is a more difficult superboss, too.
I do have Crucible (and a large selection of nemesis shoulders, as a result). I don’t really see the appeal of FG to be honest. As I understand it SR is just another endless loot pinata, just like Crucible but different. And FG doesn’t add more levels, and the new mastery doesn’t seem that exciting to me. Shrug.
No but more items, more devotions, more fun areas to explore and farm, more dungeons. And more skill points, more attribute points, movment skill augments to put in medal, … , two more superbosses.
Shattered Realm is more chill than crucible. It also feels more rewarding to push higher and higher shards with your char than just beating a timer in crucible.
But even without the oathkeeper mastery, and shattered realm - I think Forgotten Gods is a must have.
FInally, it will be much easier to get help with your builds because most of the active players have forgotten gods.
I don’t know if the attribute changes also happened in base game and in AoM. People play FG these days so hard to answer your question.
Are there any types of characters who just can’t afford not to use Barrowholm augments/gear? I see that Ravager’s Breath is better than Outcast’s Venom for acid/poison characters, but it looks like the difference is fairly small. And I guess my vitality/chaos Conjurer might care about Reaver’s Hunger, once I start playing him again…