I'm genuinely overwhelmed. So, what is new, what to do?

I decided to log back in after a long time. A looooong time.

And when I entered the game, plus the bonus code I received... I was legitimately overwhelmed. So much new stuff, new UI, new items. So many new terms. "Legacy Gear" and stuff like this was one of the things where I was unsure... "Should I just upgrade my equipment now?"

I need help right now, just some general explanation what has changed in the past year. xD

Thank you in advance!

 

I recommend you start with the patch notes and maintenance and go back to the last you remember and read from there to current. That is the fastest way to inform you.

 

Legacy gear? Must be some really old stuff. I'd probably keep it since IIRC if you use equipment refiners on it, the stats are random. (Unless your legacy gear is absolute trash and you don't mind it being re-rolled.) I'd just wear it while farming new stuff.

Edit: And if your Legacy Gear is anywhere below the cap level, don't waste your time re-rolling. Upgrading lower leveled items to a higher level not only costs more but gives you less bang for your buck (you can't reach the same maximum values.)

Probably best to ask specific questions if you have any; otherwise, as TwillShadow said above, better to read patchnotes.

 

I recommend you focus on:

• Leveling up to 55 ... don't worry about Parallel World or crafting for now
• Pay attention to the new Wisdom tree

1. The game has become ever more offense oriented, so put points in general damage (middle row, far left column) first ... and not in the weapon-specific damage options (middle column, bottom two rows)
2. I also like the option which gives you higher HP recovery on final blow (same group as general damage)
3. Depending on how much inventory space you've opened up, when you reach the right Wisdom level, consider adding the portable smelter to melt gear into glyphs of power while in dungeon & wilderness maps

​

• Do the monthly moon events to get attack speed runes

1. Full moon is semi-manageable even for mid-level toons, but don't stress over completing it until your toon is stronger

• Depending on your character, the Bloodmoon weapons might be a reasonable early choice which you'll likely replace much later with a Parallel World unique weapon

​

1. New moon is more of a grind; many players only get to the first attack speed rune then stop

• The gear isn't critical for most end-game builds, but feel free to experiment along the way to Level 55

​

Other notes:

• PVP is now "gearless" ... meaning any enchantments and/or special features of your gear are disabled during arena play ... however, the base stats of your gear do have an impact on your toon strength in the arena, so expect to be bullied by players who have T10 gear (dropped from the new Infernal 7 difficulty mode)

• Crafting has become more complicated and expensive, but also critical to end-game status, as well as mid-game survivability ... but only for consummables ... there are now 3 more types of consummables beyond potions:

1. HP potions do drop, but not frequently, and the healing spheres drop much less frequently from mobs you kill, so you'll want to either buy (with gold) or craft (with ingredients that you have to harvest) a supply
   1. Consummable crafting materials (plants, catalysts, miscellaneous ingredients) can be found in Scaling Natural (Normal) World dungeons ... SNDs are essentially the same as normal dungeons, but at higher difficulty levels (Painful, Excruciating, Fatal, Infernal 1, Infernal 2 .... Infernal 7) ... if you enter a natural world map at any difficulty level above Normal, you'll see little icons in the heads-up map display showing nearby crafting material you can harvest by simply clicking on them ... and waiting for a second or two animation to play out
   2. When you enter an SND, you'll get a new generic side-quest to kill all the mobs in the dungeon ... use this to guide you to all the mobs, wipe them out, which will then cause a Sentinel to spawn, along with a couple dozen fairly weak mobs ... look for the red skull icon on the heads-up map ... kill the Sentinel and get not only the gear (s)he drops, but also more crafting materials (catalysts), keys of prowess (see more notes below) and a special reward chest will also appear ... that contains mostly generic gear, but rarely may also contain a Wisdom drop buff rune

​

• Mob types:

1. Regular mobs are the weakest
2. Special mobs have one or more special powers (speed buff, spell debuff, poison spitting or other elemental attacks, teleportation, HP regeneration, etc.) and always drop some gear and coins and perhaps wisdom, gems, essence
3. Champion mobs are a bit stronger than special mobs, have special powers and certain drops ... and can count toward Daily Challenge goals
4. Sentinels appear in SNDs as noted above, are even stronger, tend to drop slightly better gear
5. Bosses have their own rooms within certain maps ... you can choose the level of difficulty while entering a Boss room, but have to have an increasing number of Keys of Prowess (again, obtained from killing Sentinels) ... so, enter a Boss room on Normal without any keys; use one key to enter on Painful mode; use two keys to enter on Excruciating mode, etc. NOTE: In addition to keys, to enter a room on Infernal 4 or higher modes, you'll also need Fragments of Infernal Passage, special keys you'll not have to worry about for quite some time ... Bosses tend to be even more powerful, tend to shrug off stunning attacks more quickly, have a short immunity to stuns after each successful stun, might have minions, etc. Drops are slightly better (potentially ... the drop quality everywhere is much more unpredictable now, with desirable items [e.g., Parallel World unique weapons and gear] increasingly rare and subject to a wide spread on randomly generated values, so often useless even when they drop), can contain catalysts for crafting consummables and/or a wide variety of crafting cores required for more complicated crafting techniques which, again, you don't need to worry about until you're at Level 55

​

• Gear

1. Have base statistics
2. Have separate enchantment statistics
   1. When you get to crafting at Level 55, you'll want to play close attention to the type of enchantments each type of gear might have ... read the character type specific sub-forums for suggestions on what you particular toon should look for eventually
   2. For offensive gear, go for "increased x on this item" instead of "increase x" enchantments ... for example, "increased damage % on this item" on weapons yields more damage output than the more general "increased damage %" enchantment
   3. Gem slots
   • there are three types of defensive gems: Armor, HP, Resistance ... and now only 2 types of offensive gems: Damage, critical rate ... attack speed gems have been removed from the game
   • put rubies (damage) gems in your weapon, and onyx (critical rate) gems in your weapon adornment
   • there are now more levels of gems, some of which you have to have special ingredients to craft ... don't worry for now
   • There are special "gems" called Jewels which go into those same slots; they typically have a maximum limit on how many you equip ... you might run across one or two in events, but worry about those when you get to them

   ​

1. Rune slots

• the Attack Speed runes from the Moon events, the Wisdom drop buff runes from the Sentinel chests, and miscellaneous other runes you'll get from other events go into these slots

​

I've just scratched the surface, but need to sleep, so will stop and let you digest and research further on the forum as TwiliShadow suggested.

Have fun

 

Thanks for all the help already. Read through your entire post @dkarl and I'm sure I have to find myself into it first. Just to ask, what are those moon phases you're talking about?

I'm a level 35 Dragon Knight, currently doing a lot of quests and leveling up.

I guess specific questions that would come to my mind:
- How can I get my equipment on par with my level? I'm currently running around with mixed gear between 28 and 33, but I would love to get it up to 35 so I can farm more efficiently.
- What does item level mean? I saw this and I'm pretty sure that didn't exist a while back. I would assume there is now a way to level up equipment to higher tiers?
- Obviously, what would be the best way to farm for general resources for crafting, purchasing, etc?
- Got 34k Andermant right now. Two tabs of inventory are already unlocked, as well as one full block of my locker. So unsure whether I would need more inventory space or not. What should one spend it for? Or should I rather wait till level 55?

 

Yay dont even try to start. You find only dissapontment disrespect from dev team nonsense grind unbalance

 

Don't worry about the mixed-level mess of your equipment. Depending on how lucky you are, you may end up with a different set of natural world unique items for every 5 levels (expansions over the years have come in 5-level increments to go along with a new "continent" of maps) ... or you may end up finding something with great statistics that you can hang onto for 10+ levels.

Equipment has both an item level and a difficulty tier associated with it.

When looking at gear icons as equipped on your paper doll, you'll see a white-type-faced number in the upper left- or right-hand corner of the icon. This tells you the experience level your toon needs to have achieved before you can actually wear it. (There's a caveat here: You can increase the Item Level of weapons and gear through the use of glyphs of power, which I'll explain later.) In your case, your equipment is between 28 and 33, so less than your experience level. If you pick up an item dropped from a mob that's at Item Level 36, you won't be able to equip it until you level up from 35 to 36. Pretty basic stuff .

You can use Glyps of Power to increase the Item Level of a piece of equipment. When mobs drop junk equipment for you, go to the smith in any urban area and either Sell it for coins or Melt it for glyps. When you have enough glyphs, you can upgrade the item level by clicking on the Item Level number in the icon of equipped items, or asking the blacksmith to Upgrade an item for you.

TIP: There's now a currency bag near the top left corner of the games screen (look for the yellow icon that looks kind of like a sack of flour). Click on that to drop down a list of various currencies: Coins, glyphs, realm fragments (more on that later), etc.​

The difficulty tier is displayed as a Roman Numeral (I, II, III, etc.) in the lower left corner of the equipment icon. You don't see that on any of your gear because it's all tier 0 - stuff you found playing Normal difficulty.

When you click on a dungeon entrance arrow, a window will pop up showing you what to expect in that dungeon; a brief narrative at the top, a difficulty selection slide across the middle of the window, a list of possible special items you might drop on the lower left, Difficulty Modification information (hover over the icons to get more information) in the bottom middle, and the ENTER button on the bottom right. However, the display I just described only applies when you've "conquered" an entire 5-level group of maps (completed all of the main story quests for that area), and if you've used that difficulty slider in the middle to choose anything above Normal.

Click on the travel stone in whatever city you're in (on the mini-map it will be noted as a wheel-like icon ... when you approach it on the main display it will look like a pillar about twice the size of a toon), to bring up the world map (by the way, you can now fast travel for free to any Urban Area / city you've already discovered by clicking on the location's icon on the world map; you still have to pay a fee in gold to fast travel to a dungeon via the world map). As you're Level 35 in experience, you've conquered the entire left continent: Grimmag, Willusxhire Silfmoor, Shorfolk, Teganswall. You've most likely completed the Norselands quests as well. So, when you click on a dungeon entrance in any of those areas (EDIT: I wrote that too quickly; the Grimmag and Willuxshire starter areas don't have difficulty options; you'll first encounter that in Silfmoor) and move the difficulty slider, you'll see the details change at the bottom of the dungeon entrance splash window and the Enter button will be enabled. However, if you try to enter a dungeon for an area that you haven't yet completed and move the difficulty slider past Normal, the Enter button will be disabled with a warning about not having satisfied the requirements.

All that preamble leads back to the tiering. When you enter a dungeon on a difficulty level above Normal, items you drop will have a tier value noted on their icon and near the top of their description in the popup window when you hover your mouse cursor over them.

The Tier indicates the relative strength of the item. Generally speaking, a Tier 1 item is better than a item dropped on Normal, and a Tier 2 item (dropped chiefly on Excruciating difficulty, though you can randomly drop an item +/- one tier above the difficulty level you're playing at the moment) is better than a Tier 1 item. You'll see this reflected in the base and enchantment stats.

Note, however, that the PRNG (psuedo-random number generator) in DSO is very cruel ... you may drop items with anywhere from 0% to well over 100% of the max value for the given Tier, so a Tier 2 item might actually have rolled horrible statistics and be weaker than a Tier 1 item.

This leads me to another tip: In order to see more complete statistics on your equipment in that popup window, go to the Settings and choose Advanced View for the Equipment tooltip options on the first tab of the settings window.

Don't think about it for now, but eventually you can do a variety of different types of crafting, including increasing the Tier of an item. But that requires cores you get from various Bosses, lots of gold, and not something you want to waste resources on until you're already at the maximum experience level (currently 55, but there's apparently a content expansion coming "soon" which may increase the level cap to 60.

TIP: In order to see more complete statistics on your equipment in that popup window, go to the Settings and choose Advanced View for the Equipment tooltip options on the first tab of the settings window.​

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Returning to your other questions:

Farming is a personal choice. Some people like to seek out the Boss in the area they've just completed and farm him/her/them until the player's eyes are bleeding. Some will farm via the difficulty slider (you're likely to have a hard time surviving in just Painful at this point). Some will just farm the same map over and over and over again. Higher level toons will farm in Parallel World (you most likely don't yet have access to the City of Cardhun in the middle of the world map ... new players can't get access until they hit level 50 on their first toon). Players with lower than level cap (55) tend to just keep on playing through the quests until they hit Level 55, so without intentionally farming.

For you, I'd recommend a bit of most options: Farm Sigrismar the Boss in the special room within the Eternal Watch dungeon, go back to the Silfmoor area and farm chiefly Prison of Souls and Rootrock Cavern on Painful difficulty, and keep moving forward in the general quest-lines into Helios/Atlantis and beyond.

TIP: Look at the Compendium tab of your Journal. Starting from Act I - The Cult of Nefertari, click on each chapter to find out if you've completed everything. Even if you have apparently completed a given chapter, you might want to go all the way back to Grimmag and click on every single NPC in the urban area to see if there are any main or side-quest lines you haven't completed. Do them all, even if they only give you a few anders / coins / experience. Some quests are dependent on other quests, and BP has reworked the story line several times since you last played.

This is especially critical for crafting, which now has it's own quest line. Start with NPC Matthew Allthings in Kingshill. You won't be able to combine gems above the first three gem levels until you've made it through at least the first few of those crafting quests. Note that most of that crafting quest line will send you to specific dungeons to kill mobs and/or collect items ... the instructions don't state so explicitly, but you have to enter those dungeons in Painful or higher difficulty in order to satisfy the quests. Also, the quest line has several experience level requirements: You won't be able to complete the entire series (there are actually two related crafting quest lines) until you reach level 55.​

Inventory and andermant usage: Short answer ... you will eventually need to open every single slot in your locker and your backpack, so don't spend anders on anything but inventory expansion until they're both fully enabled. Locker space is cheaper on a per slot basis, but you'll want backpack space desperately at times when you're in the middle of a dungeon run, so try to be disciplined and save up to open backpack space mostly, opening up locker rows now and then when you've accumulated too much stuff in your backpack which you're not actively using.

TIP: After the first row expansion in the backpack, save up until you have enough to get the 3-row Inventory Expansion offer in the Shop. This is one of the few (maybe only?) item BP offers at a discount compared to single unit purchase.
​

Oh, you asked about the "moon phases." Those two events, New Moon and Full Moon, run essentially every month (sometimes one or the other will run twice in the same calendar month, or skip one month). When you log into a toon, look at the icons that drop down on the left. One or more are usually shortcuts to descriptions of currently running events. Or click on the Event icon (looks like a trophy) at the right end of the row of icons at the top center of your game window (or just press the E key on your keyboard) to pop up the event window. BP is trying to add a few more monthly events (Desert of Essence, Stellar Gold), but they aren't particularly well-liked, so their future is uncertain. For both New Moon and Full Moon (again, I personally play mostly the Full Moon, but I recommend you try each of them), you have to buy entrance passes from NPC Thabo (he is now present in every city) using Realm Fragments which drop randomly from mobs. BP has nerfed the drop rate of the realm fragments, so it may take awhile for you to build up a usable supply. Each of those two moon events has an active phase when the event itself is running, but you can also enter those special dungeons when the event isn't running in order to farm for materials within the dungeons which you'll need later for the events. The Full Moon event has a bit of a preamble now: You have to run through various quests in the "daytime" (non-event) mode, then in the "nighttime" (active event) mode and back and forth over a couple of months before you can run the full event. It's been awhile since I started a new toon, so I'm not 100% certain, but I think you'll discover the first of those preamble events is already in your Journal window --> Quests tab.

Have you made it this far in my thread? I'll stop now, let you breathe