Leveling Concept in CO....

[roland]

You think leveling is easy in CO....?

Think again...

Iceshade is level 25, and I am getting quests 2-3 levels above her level. Soon I may have to grind a few levels, and at this stage it would seem like a monster to do.

I had a chat with Dymentia from Clan Moor. He said he had run out of quests and had to grind out 5 million xp for a few levels. That is a lot, considering villains only give out 100-150 xp each.

So I am trying an experiment. Here is what I am doing...

I deleted Amazon - maybe remake her when Cryptic allows us to buy character slots with Cryptic bucks - and I made a new character named "Speed Quester."

The concept here is to grind as much as possible in the lower levels, so that your character can stay a little above or at least equal with levels. I believe that if you HAVE to grind, it's easier to do it at lower levels.

This character is level 11, and have not even done the Witchcraft ghosttown quests yet.

So far, this is what I have done - and you can experiment with this on an alt when the time comes.

(1) Do not leave the starter zone until level 7. This means doing the public mission of the Qularr over...and over...and over again.

(2)Go to the Desert FIRST. Project Greenskin.

Now, what comes next is very important.

What you want to do here is do all the quest, BUT DO NOT TURN A SINGLE QUEST IN YET. This would require exploring a bit outside of the base before you are "sent" to individuals outside of the base area. Do the ones inside the base, then branch out and do the others. Do not turn these in.

(3) Go to Canada. Do all the quests and turn them in. Canada has a lot of chain quests that you have to complete to get further quests. Do everything up to "Into The Storm"

(4) Back to the Desert. Turn everything in. Start doing any quests unfinished or that might "chain". Then do the final quest that takes you into the radiation vault and kill Gigaton.

This is how I got to 11 without even doing the ghost town yet. Instead of being forced to grind on mobs, I am letting the quests grind for me, then turning them all in when they are done.

I am going to try this concept throughout with Speed Quester and see what happens. I want to get to level 14 before turning in the level 13 quests my trainer's gave me for MC. I'll let you know how it works out.

It may be too late for Iceshade, but I will try a similar concept with her at her level as well.

PS:

Get an AoE skill ASAP. It will work wonders for you :)

So far, Speed Quester is the following:
1- Wrist Bolter
1- Power Gauntlet
5- Invulnerability
8- Micro Munitions
11- Assault Rifle

[Texicon]

Shotgun+killer instinct is quite the combination. I like assualt rifle but in a game where you almost never fight less than 3 henchmen I am starting to shy away from single target abilities.

[Urthh]

loose the assult rifle and get 2 gun mojo. AR is the suck compared to rank 3 mojo.

[roland]

Nah I like Assault Rifle. Especially with Mow Em Down :)


Shotgun+killer instinct is quite the combination. I like assualt rifle but in a game where you almost never fight less than 3 henchmen I am starting to shy away from single target abilities.

If you still like assault rifle, consider this....

Use the assault rifle on Villains as your primary target, then use Micro Munitions. Heck, the way I have her set up now with the endurance gear, I can geta Villain down to half life before even releasing my aoe. :)

Anyway, an update about the leveling strategy which was my intent.

It's actually going really well. It's not "speedy" leveling by any stretch of the means (7 hrs and almost 15). But what is nice is the consistency. I have not even done MC quests yet - or the public mission Hang'Em High.

So when leveling please take this advice. Do NOT turn quests in until your quest log is full. Do quests, and if you do not have anymore in a zone, go back to another zone and do quests there - as many as you can hold in your log. Then turn in quests, and start again in your current zone.

To make it more concrete, I started in Desert, and stocked up on all the quests there. Then I went to Canada, did all the quests there up to Into the Storm - went back to Desert to the Vault (I completed this one instead of Into the Storm). I just ping pong back in forth. But when I am ready to turn in quests, I always turn them into the zone I currently am in, and do the follow ups. Then I go back to the other zone, turn those in and do follow ups.

[Texicon]

I cant say enough about exploring as well. I found a quest the other day in the toxic wastes...was a flashing treasure map. Havent completed it yet either...dang server was down :).

[Ganelon]

What's the advantage of waiting to turn on the quest?

[roland]

What's the advantage of waiting to turn on the quest?

What I am finding is this:

Instead of leveling to 25/26 or so, and having quests 2 levels above me and having to grind it out to "break even" - basically I let the quests do the "grinding" for me.

With Iceshade, I am sort of "stuck" at the moment. Mobs hit harder, quests are tougher. They are do-able, but sooner or later I will seem to run out of quests.

Using this method, what I am doing is using the quests as a "grinder" for me. By waiting to turn in a whole bunch of quests at once, I have gained 1-2 levels just from actually doing the quests, and then another level or so from turning them in.

Another thing that I am going to post to Cryptic is the XP scaling. I know they scaled xp down, but I do not think the devs are aware of how much they scaled it down. For example, citizens that come up to me and give me missions are only worth 2k-3k xp each. That is decent xp when I am level 14/15 - but level 25/26 they are pointless. I don't think they are aware that the citizens missions are not scaling with your level experience wise.

[Ganelon]

I'm going t try this. Thanks!

[Landro]

What I have found too is it really depends on your setup and playstyle. Not really the playstyle, rather remember to use skills. My kills were always kind of slow, but I can survie a lot more then many, ask Balt, He seen me live through a barrage of mobs aggroing me. I kept thinking this seems slow even though the Gadeteer is not a all out DPS machine....I WAS WRONG.

I just discovered last night I can have all my "pets"/bots out at once. So I have an army with me now. Then I actually read the description of the munitions bought and saw the words, "on click", so I clicked them again and they transform into the turret guns. This makes things a lot easier. I have completed all the 1-13/15 quests in Canada and the Desert and curently I am in MC. This area is huge and slows me down drastically. But, all this said, I am doing the level 18+ quests at level 15, now, with little difficulty, as long as I watch adds. I started adding intelligence so my pets are stronger and hit harder.

No, I can't wait to rank them up and get my Toy Weapon Bot.

[roland]

What I have found too is it really depends on your setup and playstyle. Not really the playstyle, rather remember to use skills. My kills were always kind of slow, but I can survie a lot more then many, ask Balt, He seen me live through a barrage of mobs aggroing me. I kept thinking this seems slow even though the Gadeteer is not a all out DPS machine....I WAS WRONG.

I just discovered last night I can have all my "pets"/bots out at once. So I have an army with me now. Then I actually read the description of the munitions bought and saw the words, "on click", so I clicked them again and they transform into the turret guns. This makes things a lot easier. I have completed all the 1-13/15 quests in Canada and the Desert and curently I am in MC. This area is huge and slows me down drastically. But, all this said, I am doing the level 18+ quests at level 15, now, with little difficulty, as long as I watch adds. I started adding intelligence so my pets are stronger and hit harder.

No, I can't wait to rank them up and get my Toy Weapon Bot.

Please note:

I realize that you CAN do quests higher level than you. But, I choose to do every single quest I can find, even ping ponging between canada /desert even before setting foot in MC. This is because I do not want to run out of quests and have to grind 15 million xp from levels 38-40...

PS...that is about 100,000 mobs.

[Landro]

Yeah. I am going back to Desert to see if there are any quest I can get now. Before really starting in the City. There are several areas in each instance and I figure I sdhould be close to one or two of the others.