Stuck on almost everything

Hi all, i'm quite a veteran player, even though i stopped a lot after Dark legacy (disappointed unfortunately), but i wanted to give another shot to the game.

The problem is that so far i've learned that to improve you need shiny dust from gems.. millions of it and.. i can't even do infernal since i have not enough dmg and crits, and given that, the problem is that you don't get enought high rarity stones.. so how can i improve?
Are there any maps where the drop rate is high for gems? I can't do blood chests since i have no stats nor time enough to enter in a guild due to work rn.. is there any solution? Because if i have to play in normal after years of farming is not the greatest thing.. Thank you in advance!

 

I was in the same situation and my steps were as follows(for mage):

• get high level items and enchants from new moon event - go as donor and you find carry, also the witch seeker set isn't half bad
• get high level items and uniques from chests in spiky valley, Cloak of Heroes is great
• Sargon Amulet is great and easy to get, kill him 10 times for achievement
• find carry for Q5 for balor ring, got mine in 2 runs
• abuse brigavik portals: boots, adornment and ring are great
• get 4+ attack speed, Starlight or Kraken is ok
  
• I assume you have some pets, use them for either crit or atk speed: green raptor, jabax

After about 1 year of casual farming, I'm also busy with uni, I can solo 3 blood chests without much issues. Hope this helps!
EDIT: i still have mostly royal gems, except a few trapezoid onyx

 

You have hit some fundamental points: it all depends on gems, runes, jewels. And by the amount of glyphs and especially gold that are indispensable for transferring enchantments and crumbling runes and gems. The equipment is the least of the problems in fact.

What @emeric80 suggests may be correct, but for almost everything you need a carry in order to do it efficiently: little time and great results don't mix here. If you have work, a busy life and little time to play then you are the perfect user that the producer of this game is looking for: one who could spend real money to buy the millions of powder needed to get a decent boost.

Find someone to help you in the game, and go as far as you can in the time available to you - it's the best thing you can do.

 

Thanks to both of you for asnwering. About the class i'm a ranger btw, i do have some equipment as brigavik e balor rings.. it's just the dust that is a problem and as i'm learning, asking around, the only way is to be carried (i hate it) or shop (i hate it). Between the two, obviously, i'll try being carried, but i feel terrible to block other's farming.. well, let's see where i can reach.. thank you very much for the advices

 

TLDR; gems aren't as important as you think, at least in comparison to Wisdom, Runes and Jewels, so you can wait to upgrade gems for now

Consider farming this priority (highest to lowest):

1. Wisdom -- build your stats in approximately this order
   1. crit ... max this first, exclusive of everything else
   2. weapon attack speed (one-handed or two-handed, depending on your preference, though leaning toward one-handed because you'll get more speed from the weapon, plus a choice of offense or defense from the off-hand item)
   3. weapon damage
   4. general damage
   5. hp (mix this in earlier if you're feeling extra squishy)
   6. hp regeneration
   7. resources (again, might start this a bit earlier, but don't max it right away)
   8. armor
   9. resistance
   10. resource regen from weapon
   11. block
2. Runes ... you can't predict what you'll drop, but as you can, upgrade in this order
   1. wisdom runes
   2. crit runes (includes winter solstice runes, but you have to wait for a few opportunities a year to build those)
   3. damage
   4. HP
   5. HP regen
   6. attack speed (maybe prioritize ahead of HP, maybe even damage)
   7. armor
   8. resource
   9. resource regen
3. gear enchantments + glyps of power ... try to avoid the temptation to do any transferring until you're level 100 and have some decent Infernal (level 120) and higher gear
4. Jewels ... these are essentially event-only items, so be patient; they are also very expensive in both resources (same dust as you'll use on gems) and gold
5. Gems ... yeah pretty much last in line, though you'll you won't have many jewels to upgrade, so you'll be doing a mix of gems & jewels as you go along; runes an jewels are just sooo much more important early on; primarily replace you lower level gems with higher level gems of the same type as you drop the better stuff; upgrading gems can happen later to eke out those last bits of end-game strength

Resources are very precious. Gold, which used to be used mainly for gambling, is now a bottleneck. As are shiny dust (ground up gems and duplicate jewels), rune dust, and to an extent even glyphs (ground up gear used to upgrade other gear by transferring enchantments).

Who drops what?

• Bosses give decent wisdom drops plus can drop gems and rarely runes (potentially Parallel World Bloodshed, I believe; I've never dropped one)
• Guardian and up (green, blue, purple mobs) can drop wisdom, gems, gear, and most importantly runes (normal mobs don't drop runes)
• Normal mobs can drop wisdom, gems, even gear, but at a much lower probability rate ... run past these whenever possible (unless you're running a daily task or an official request that asks you to kill X number of mob type Y)

Where to farm?

• Any boss you're mostly comfortable beating without burning too much essence (that won't be Parallel World for you for now; probably not until you're farming fairly easily at Merciless in Natural World scaling dungeons)
• The Great Desert (because you can farm special mobs and the Sentinel pretty much nonstop due to the re-spawn rate on this map), Temple Sector (runes, especially when you can run on Merciless; don't go Bloodshed), Tegan's Sanctuary (not a favorite of mine, but does have a fairly high number of Guardian+ special mobs)

General tips / notes:

• As stated earlier, try to not waste glyphs on enchantment transfers early on; until you've got at least several million in the bank, try to melt gear rather than sell it (though you'll have to sell some anyway because Gold is involved in everything [as you already stated you don't want to buy Andermant to use in place of gold], and selling gear is the primary wealth generation method) ... for reference sake, I had been farming Great Desert on Infernal 3 and moving into Infernal 4 (the old tiers) for several months prior to Dark Legacy when gear drops were nearly a factor of 10 better, so had several hundred million glyphs stocked up and could afford to sell virtually every junk gear drop since; however, now that transferring 4 enchantments at a time on higher end legendary / unique gear costs in the range of 1 million glyphs every time, even my 300M stack has dwindled by more than 100M despite the fact that I'm way undergeared still in comparison to true end-game toons
• As a returning player, you've probably got all locker and backpack storage rows opened up; if not, absolutely scrimp and save every Andermant drop to spend on those upgrades; always open backpack slots in groups of three using the special offer at the Shop
• Run every Moon event, both Full Moon and New Moon, to get the gem of enhancement / rune of enhancement at the end of the progress bar; hang onto the gems of enhancement for now (until you're you have Brilliant Imperial gems, probably years down the road); stock up the runes of enhancement as well, until you are ready to upgrade extraordinary (purple) runes to legendary (orange) grade
• You may decide to spend your event Draken on runes at Gnob's shop, either as starter runes to fill in the gaps in your trinkets, or as junk to grind for rune dust to upgrade you existing runes ... I'm not recommending this, but reminding you that it's an option
• As for what constitutes "junk" runes: Anything more than 5 of the same kind; any resistance rune; block runes; probably materi runes (though you might want to keep a set of these on the side in case you decide to grind for materi at some point [I don't bother with that currency pesonally]); runs of insight; if you chiefly play solo, you can grind the group-specific runes as well (or hang onto them in case you find a group of players you want to run with in the future, just don't upgrade them for now)

 

Thank you very much, very detailed and will be useful

 

What is CARRIED???

 

When your lower level and/or otherwise weaker toon joins with one or more stronger players at higher difficulty levels so you get the potential benefit of dropping higher level and/or higher quantity of equipment, gems, runes, wisdom, etc. that you wouldn't be able to obtain on your own.

 

CARRIED, is what the game has turned into ever since the HERO event was brought in.. and honestly I can't stand players that want to be carried.. we veterans had to solo farm most of what we have now, and I think everyone should have to do the same.. this is why I don't help players.. they just want a free ride for better gear.. I look at it this way.. if your below lvl 100 then you don't belong in Merci, or Bloodshed mode..unless your running solo.. these days in DSO.. no one wants to do the work for themselves..

 

Carrying came with dark legacy because the levelling process is so tedious without it, rising hero had nothing to do with it and is actually one of the few things that can aid players to level faster

 

Welcome back! As you may have heard, playing often in groups will be one way to speed up your character's development, either in events or just pw maps in general. Higher lvl maps do give better drops, so you can even consider using lockpicks to open the cheaper 5key chests for some more drops ^^