[PC] Newly returned Cleric - Lost in... progress ?.

diggot

SO... suddenly my L80 is L20, ok.. deal with it. Got my gear upgraded to purple gear at the Adv-token trader
and set off to re-learn to play my cleric.. then i get told by a veteran cleric that it's all changed and i need
to upgrade my mount and my companions, and i need to have the correct enchants for both, and the correct
combination of companions to get the most out of my cleric.. both dps and heal - and i was told to head to Avernus asap.

So... with no access to guide, i skipped upgrading my mount and companions until i actually know what to do.

With my 22k ilvl i headed out to the closest area to my ilvl i could find, Icewind Dale... and been doing dailys for 2 days
and not getting anywhere in terms of upgrading my gear. Also ran 2 random dungeons and a skirmish.
I then activated the quest from Knox which took me to Avernus and i unlocked both Avernus and Fallen campaign,
but when i went to Avernus, there's no quests... at all. And i can't find quests for Fallen either.

So now.. i'm stuck, don't know how to progress, don't know how to get better gear faster..
If there's one thing i hate in mmo's, it's the game telling me how fast i can grind rep or upgrade my gear to a certain lvl.
Yes i understand that raidgear should take a while, but upgrading from ilvl 22k isn't raidgear.... really.

arazith07

There should be a slew of guides online and on youtube, be sure to only look at M20 and 21 guides (level 80 to 20 change didn't change any builds). Best way to up your item level is with AD, in which you should max out your daily rAD through refining (mostly through the queue system), then make any additional through market interactions. A lot of your stats will come from companions and mounts, for your actual gear though, play through the adventurers to get up to where you can grind in Avernus (both the Vallenhaus map and Avernus itself), which is where you will find a lot of your mid to late game armor.

plasticbat

For "Decent into Avernus", bring up the campaign window.
Start the campaign.
Go to "Vallenhas Estate" in the "Sword Coast" map to start the intro quest.
If you already did that, did you bring up the campaign window and click "Souls in need"?

mentinmindmaker

Make sure you farm enough RAD to convert your 100k daily to AD.

Most of the stuff you need cannot be farmed but need to be purchased with AD.

greywynd

Grind. Grind. And then grind some more.

armadeonx

The Avernus/Vallenhas gear they are referring to comes from Juma bags. To get these you will need to farm Chaotic Writings from the heroic encounters and (when you unlock it) Insurgencies. You also get some for completing tasks, especially the weeklies.

You use these to buy the Juma Bags from Juma the Curious who is in a cage outside - on the side of the main castle building.
The bags he gives you contain random items that include some good armour pieces and (if you're lucky) mounts & companions. You need 100 writings per bag.

For generally better luck/rng you should open the bags in a non-laggy zone, such as a guild stronghold. Certainly not in the Avernus map.

As a healing based cleric you will need to focus your companion choices on those that provide Outgoing Healing, Power and Critical Chance. For defence, your best option is Awareness with Defence coming in second place. Getting a Cauldron mount from the Auction House would be a decent choice as it's bonus provides Awareness.

You can get decent shirts & pants from the seal trader to start off, better ones come from hunts but you won't want to do that just yet.

Edit: make sure you follow @plasticbat 's advice on getting the campaign started. When in doubt, always check the campaign window to see if anything needs clicking.

diggot

Thanks. Found a bunch of quests in Vallenhas that wasn't there yesterday, farmed repeatables like mad
and unlocked the 2nd map, time to grind some more. Also working on IWD.
But how long until i actually get to upgrade from 22k ilvl ?. Avernus is ranked for higher ilvl.

hexngone

Two other things to keep in mind.
As others have said you need more AD to purchase items. When mod 21 was released each of the former sub-70 areas was set to 'almost finished'. There are generally 2 quests to do in each area to complete it and the reward is decent AD (over 250k total) so worth the time. See the Adventures category of your Journal 4th tab for these.
The second thing is to visit Sybilla (where Knox used to be on the RH aisle of the Temple) weekly to get quests in the old campaign areas. So ... when you are doing Icewind Dale, for example, you are also earning currency/points for Sybilla that can later be used to buy needed items in her store. It is a slow process, but every bit helps.

mithmyrr

You didn't mention having done this, so another bit of advice is go to the adventure path tab of the campaign window, and make sure to do the leveling adventures at the bottom. If you had completed those zones before, it should be fast, and if not will still be easy, and you will get a bag, epic mount and companion, and even a rare collar.

Also, go into the Adventurer's Guild (where the Trade of Blades used to) and talk to Knox, he may have some quick quests from the new leveling as well, and a bag full of gear. (Do not open that bag until you have a LOT of bag space,)

tribbulater

As others have said, big chunks of IL now come from having upgraded companions and mounts. So you want to get 10 of each as high as you can, aim for at least purple/epic.

Mount collars add a big chunk of IL but are expensive, maybe farm skirmishes hoping for some drops.

You can get to 25k IL easily just by buying the green 1100-ish IL stuff from AH, for pennies. Just put 1100 in the "item level" search filter, click on "usable by me", and search head, armor etc. for super cheap items.

Complete the new adventure and campaign rewards (Vellosk, Ebon Downs etc) for good rewards and AD (mount collar, large bags, etc).

If you complete the Dwarven King adventure you get a set of Dusk Armor which is 1175 IL with decent stats.

Joining a guild with 3 guild boons adds another 3,000 IL, and getting the pieces of companion gear that are over 900 IL helps as well (rare pieces from Stardock, you can get them on AH, 30k AD ish).

All those together should get you to around 32k IL or so, which will open up new option for you in daily runs and areas.

rockster

Don't forget that the companion powers you have slotted at any given time will award IL, but the lower the level a companion is, the lower the IL from the powers also. So make sure those powers you end-up using in your loadouts are attached to companions who are at max rank. Find the companion powers you want to use the most then rank-up those companions first. You can buy companion upgrade tokens from the auction House for AD. If I remember right I saw the biggest single jumps in my IL happen when I was upgrading companions to mythic. Years ago it used to be enchantments were what gave you a lot of your IL but now not at all and companions, mounts and mount collars are the new enchantments.

diggot

Thanks for the repllies. I completed all leveling adventures and currently farming to
upgrade all Fallen/Avernus and Icewind campaigns. I'm really aggravated over how the
game is telling me how fast i can progress by SEVERELY limiting the currency i can farm
to upgrade the campaigns.

I guess the devs hides their inability to produce content fast enough so they hide that
behind limiting our progress-speed instead.

Unless it's directly tied to endgame (like Molten Core was for WoW) , then i don't see any
excuses for restricting the rate of progress for players, it should be up to US how fast
we want to progress ... NOT the devs by placing stupid speedbumps .

greywynd

Until Mod 21 ripped several zones out of the game, each campaign was engineered to take about a month to get through.

plasticbat

diggot said:

Thanks for the repllies. I completed all leveling adventures and currently farming to
upgrade all Fallen/Avernus and Icewind campaigns. I'm really aggravated over how the
game is telling me how fast i can progress by SEVERELY limiting the currency i can farm
to upgrade the campaigns.

I guess the devs hides their inability to produce content fast enough so they hide that
behind limiting our progress-speed instead.

Unless it's directly tied to endgame (like Molten Core was for WoW) , then i don't see any
excuses for restricting the rate of progress for players, it should be up to US how fast
we want to progress ... NOT the devs by placing stupid speedbumps .

Do multiple campaign/adventures at the same time? If one is blocked, go to another one .. and another one ... and another one.

diggot

plasticbat said:

Do multiple campaign/adventures at the same time? If one is blocked, go to another one .. and another one ... and another one.

I'm doing 3 campaigns at the same time right now and i'm blocked for progress on all 3 ..

greywynd

Then start another.

franciscoperola

After finishing the leveling, the average player will have equipment level 20 to 22K, but the leveling, in practice, continues in Adventures, as these are the ones that provide rewards capable of raising the character's level.
But before starting the Adventures you must do the quests from Minsk, which is next to the tree, and provides good equipment.
Campaigns are practically useless to increase the level of equipment, except for the two most difficult ones, which are not within the reach of most players.
So, what you need to do is the Adventures, and start with The Dwarven King which provides, in addition to AD, equipment at level 1175. Continue with The Maze Engine and then do Acquisitions Incorporated which, in addition to AD, gives lvl 1200 gear, enough to reach 30K gear tier.
And then you should move on to the easier ones but also the more time-consuming ones, like Undermountain and Elemental Epic Adventures, and when you finish them you'll be at level 32K.
Mod 21 is still very poorly understood and, for that very reason, I'm making two guides for beginning players, and I'm going to post them soon on this same forum, in the Guides section.

greywynd

The Seals you get from leveling allow you to buy decent gear to start the campaigns with.