New player, having a really hard time grasping some mechanics

[joak]

Hi all,

Been playing for a week or so and overall been enjoying the game.
The very first couple of days it looked a bit chaotic and the lack of guidance was pretty obvious and slightly annoying, however I decided I’ll search bits and pieces here and there and try to understand it a little more every chance I got. That’s how I found the forum and mostly used it for searching rather than straight up spamming with newbie questions.

That said, I’ve been building a wizard around skull shield (Craniucopia) running through floors to progress fast (figured deeper floors has to mean better/rarer equipment and crystals) and using the main weapon slot mostly for improving my drops and slowing/stunning big packs (Steiger’s Fortune (ice)). Using this build I’ve reached level 95 (no ascensions yet) floor 250 at Mythic 1, so it’s been working well.

So, as I was starting to feel that I’m slowly getting a hold of how things work, an Eternal Crimson Blade drops and I’m absolutely baffled by the result of equipping it (main reason for equipping it is the multi attack affix that boosts my skullshield’s dps by a lot)… Weapon appears to be Pierce/Orb (which I’m used to from Steiger’s Fortune) but when playing wizard is casting Charge/WhirlWind ???

Why is this happening? What am I not understanding correctly? So far my understanding was that heroic skills used are determined by the weapon equipped, is that not the case? I am including a picture of my complete build and heroic skills in case i’ve done something wrong there.

Unrelated to avoid multi-posting, I would also like to ask for some tips regarding ascension since I’m pretty close to it:

1. What would be the best Perk to get? After reading them all in Codex, I feel like Treasured sounds pretty good. I’ve seen some people suggesting Dealer however I’m seating on 27M gold so it sounds a strange choice. Accomplished might be interesting for Enslaver or something, and Fortunate also sounds good.
2. I’ve read the exp guide for after ascension and my understanding is that it’s mostly based on using crystals/mythstones to get an OP +Exp equipment. So my question is should I delay ascension until I have the stones to craft such equipment or should I rush ascension regardless?

Thanks in advance to anyone that takes the time to help.

[Golem]

Crimson Blade, Legend/Eternal: Battle Mage Set changes your MH Skills to Charge & Whirlwind. Spell Sword changes MH Skills to Comet & Meteor. Scoundrel changes MH Skills to Quick Attack & Blink Strike. this allows Classes to pretend to be another Class, sort of.

Multi Attack & Extra Attack Chance: these only increase the DPS of MH Primary Skill, like Pierce for Wizard Sword.

as far as Perks go, you don’t really need them, but what they do is increase your Farming ability.

since you are new, and if you are interested in getting all 6 Perks, I would suggest Accomplished and Fortunate for the first 2 Perks, your choice which is first. Accomplished allows you to get Hero Points faster by reducing the requirements for getting Feats by 25%, rounded up I think. Fortune is +200% Gold Find & Luck with +5 yard pick up radius.

I did Accomplished, Fortunate, Enshrined, Dealer, Hunter, and Treasured when I Ascended my Wizard. my choices were based on getting stronger early, then a little loot for improving my Build, then getting lots of Experience.

doing it this way, you don’t really need to worry about Luck & Gold Find on your Build, as you need the space for the 6 Quest Stones to get +200% Exp. and since you need lots of Gold for later Perks, you end up getting the Perks that help the most with getting Gold when you need it.

when I went for my first Perk, my Build was kind of a Farming & Monster killing Build. I tested a bunch of affixes as I was playing, and after I got the first Perk, I worked towards getting the 6 Quest Stones. I saved Treasured for last because I didn’t really need it for getting Perks, unless you really want to find Eternal & Crystal Items.

in the end, it is up to you if you want to Farm for loot to get a head start on getting Perks, or just start Ascending and collect loot as you go along.

lastly, many players have a level 1, 40, and 100 set of Ascending Gears. the level 1 Gears gets you to level 20, which is when you switch to level 40 Gear, then use them to get to level 50, which is when you put on your level 100 Gear. since there are 6 Perks, you will be doing this 6 times. (you get sent back to level 1 when you get a Perk. your Equipment gets put into your inventory bags, and can be used when you get to a Character level half of the Gears level).

[joak]

Thank you for your reply!

Turns out I just read the first half of Battle Mage (Armor and HP effect) and then my brain just skipped the rest. I guess that perfectly explains it all. Thank you for clearing this out for me

In regards to Multi Attack:
I’ve read that the inventory comparison with DPS etc is generally not really accurate, so I’ve been looking in my
Stats tab -> Offense -> when I equip anything.
It appears that when I equip the Crimson Blade my Skullshield DPS gets recalculated from 834K to 2.35M so I thought it was a result of Multi Attack.
Since you’re correcting me that this is not the case, I’m guessing then that it must be the +183% WD (834*2.8=2335)…?

[dickwad]

Accomplished is very handy for completing goals. You will advance quicker. Fortunate or treasured next.

[Golem]

Weapon Damage only applies to the Weapon it is on.

that comparison thing in the lower left of the screen isn’t very accurate, and you are right to check the Stat Page instead.

I don’t know what could have increased the Skullshield DPS so much, based on your MH affixes. even if it was an Eternal Crimson Blade of the Elements, there shouldn’t have been that big a change.

Equality for Beginners

+7.5% DMG & All Regen per Rank of your Max (Codex > Dictionary > Sets)/ Total (Inventory > Item > Set Description) HP/MP %. Harmony: MH (Wizard - Wand) (Warrior - Hammer) (Rogue - Chakram). any floor. Balance: OH (Wizard - Orb) (Warrior - Totem) (Rogue - Vial). any floor. Parity: Chest. past floor 6. Symmetry: Head. past floor 11. Poise: Ring. past floor 16. Unity: Neck. past floor 21. getting all six of these items will give you a ton of HP & MP, a lot of Regen so they stay full, and som…

this post helps explain how to get the most out of Equality Set, and how easy it is to make it ineffective.

for Crystals & Myth Stones at floor 100 and every 100th floor up to 500, you stop finding the lowest CS/MS for each 100th floor, but the Rare & Ultra Rare CS/MS become a little easier to find. so on floor 200+, you stop finding Calcite & Angelite, (and the 2 lowest Myth Stones), and some of the rarer CS & MS start dropping more often.

Mid's - Weaken vs. Effective vs. Ignore Resist - Guide [3.0]

Contents Introduction The Enemy Resistance System (PvE) 2.1 Base Resistance 2.2 Resist, Greatly Resist and Immune Affixes 2.3 Enemy’s Usual Weakness 2.4 Examples Weaken Effective (Mythic) Ignore Resist Analysis and Comparison 6.1 Crystal Weaken (compared to Ignore Resist) 6.2 Effective (compared to Weaken and Ignore Resist) 6.3 Arcane Damage Conclusion (the TLDR Part) 1. Introduction It’s been some time now that I’ve been wondering how Ignore Resist, Weaken and Effective work exactly.…

here is a post to help when you run into monsters that are hard to kill.

[joak]

Thanks again for providing me all that info!

That’s what is currently slightly annoying - if there’s changes that someone a lot more experienced with the game (that you seem to be) cannot easily explain, just imagine how baffling it is for someone playing for a week…

I’ll make sure to give a look to the equality guide. The second one I’ve already read (though I can’t quite grasp everything yet).

I’ve also read about the 5% chance increase for CS/MS per 100 floors, that’s why I’ve been grinding to just reach as far as I can the sooner possible (currently at floor 405 Mythic 1).

I’ve been trying to get Quest Stones to ascend since I reached lvl99 but I don’t have enough Zicron so even if I got the Quest Stones they would be kinda useless. So I’m thinking either I delay my ascension even more or I just ascend to Fortunate Perk and grind all over because those CS/MS are giving me a really hard time so far.

[Golem]

what I did was, choose my first Perk, and as I got the Gold, converted lower Myth Stones to higher Myth Stones. you need 2 Myth Stones to convert to a next higher Myth Stone. I think I ended up doing this for 3 or 4 of them and finding the others. sure, it takes a lot of Gold, which is why I had Gold Find & Luck on my Ascending Build on the way to the first & second Perk. after the second Perk (now I have Fortunate Perk), I can take off Luck & Gold Find and focus on getting Experience.

I guess I didn’t mention it yet, but you can read it on other Posts, but Experience from monsters stops going up at floor 100. that’s why Players going for Perks just farm for Exp. around floor 100-110. why go to a higher floor where the monsters are harder to kill and the monster can kill you easier when the Exp. is the same as the lower floors?

[LK_Stradmore]

@Golem

Experience from monsters stops going up at floor 100.

Huh… You learn something everyday…

[joak]

@Golem

I guess I didn’t mention it yet, but you can read it on other Posts, but Experience from monsters stops going up at floor 100. that’s why Players going for Perks just farm for Exp. around floor 100-110. why go to a higher floor where the monsters are harder to kill and the monster can kill you easier when the Exp. is the same as the lower floors?

Yeah, I’ve already read about the 100 floor exp cap but still it is kinda too easy and gets boring so I crafted some equipment with 4x Quest Stones and a Hunter Ring and I’m just normally playing at lvl300+ at Mythic 3. I still get the exp and I also get better drops.

I bought my first 2 Ascensions (Fortunate → Accomplished) and thinking of getting treasured next. After treasured I’ll probably cool down a bit and take the time to farm better gear, because at this time Dealer sounds pretty useless (sitting on 90M gold), Enshrined could be nice but I find it annoying that shrines don’t show up on map so occasionally I end up finding good shrines after having completely cleared the floor and Hunter I don’t really need as long as I’m using the ring.

[Vinz]

I can give you some tips about the shrine location.The shrine usually located to the top left or top right from where you spawn in the map so it might be good to clear the sides first although in some cases the shrine might also located near the cartograher.

[joak]

Thanks for the tip, I already kind of do this but it doesn’t consistently help.
Cleaning a +% pack size map only to find a +Exp shrine at the end is a slap in the face and has happened to me a good amount of times. Super annoying!

[Neko]

Hey guys, have you notice that whenever you change gears there is always a time lag before the item takes effect? For example is pick up radius, i always change gears after clearing a +% pack size map for easy loot pick up and that’s when i noticed it. Elements, damage and etc does not affect by that. I was wondering if i use nadroji bonus set, enter the floor, then switch to my original build, does nadroji bonus takes effect or not? I mean the enemy rarity should be affected by nadroj right? Then what if i change it after entering the floor?

[Vinz]

I did test changing items with nadroji bonus and swap it back. Im not sure tho but it does not work because the monster only appear when you are at a certain perimeter near its portal. The nadroji bonus affect the portal that spawn the mobs but not the map. But still I need confirmation from others too before my conclusion can be accepted.

[Neko]

better to bookmark this then! i hope we get the answer. have a nice day!