Budget Venomancer Builds

Build: Pure Mag

Ignore rank, and give little regard to typical lvl 80-89 and pve gear.

Get second hand already refined/ imbued tt90 gear.

Aim for tt or lunar /S1/S3/S3 path

You may not see a budget for S3 at the moment, but you make a lot faster coin at 100+, and this path is upgradeable, as well as account stash-able.

Ok, let's go through the basics for Arcane, this is minimal budget;

Weapon; purple divine quests are mostly, if not all, soloable for veno and the cheapest way you can get a decent wep, yes, these are bound but practically free; at 70 you can get Sakyamuni's light, at 89 a Requiem Blade. for PvE you really need nothing more until endgame, although if you want to keep an at level wep through 8x (and I would much rather recommend this) the Ancient Arbor line is now cheap enough it should be accesible to even casual f2p players, that's Grief's Breath for 70, Endless Ambiguity for 80 and Wraith Conqueror for 90. These are green TT weps so you can sell them at any point of the chain to at least recoup part of the cost.

Armor; Keep mostly to blue stars, quest rewards or molders with good add ons. The one item that is an absolute must is Sleeves of Sea Captain which are well worth it and cheap enough, with the cost now being close to negligible. Avoid any of the TT green stuff prior to 90 since it's mostly terminal (TT90 gold) and not really that much superior to the available at level alternatives, the one exception perhaps being feet as you get a nice speed boost and good 8x boots are a PITA to find. For 90+ TT green is pretty much a minimum standard however, and this is what you want to invest your NW income into. Keep in mind you don't have to own a full set by the time you hit 90, although mostly you would want to make farming this a priority so you'll catch up by 95. Early Morai stuff is kind of a plan B alternative.

Ornies; Wild Mane Mantle (yes, I'm cereal) until 95, an Elite Leather afterwards. Sky Demon's Pearl for neck at 87. Belt is quest rewards all the way, you should be going OHT up until endgame. For rings the attendance rewards from school master are your best choice, if you can't get those then blue stars with good add ons, OHT being best for 94+. Remember -chan is generally overpriced as a thing of principle so you may not want to budget for that until 98 blue stars which are dirt cheap. For tome just stick to good old Retribution's Flame.

As for build, pure mag is not the best budget choice, as you'll want to keep all your refines under +3 and you'll be sharding flawless. In general terms you want at least 3k hp for lvl 80 and 4k hp for lvl 90. The savings you get for stating some vit early on more than offset the negligible cost of restating to pure mag at 100+and if you shard full garnets you should be able to keep better than nominal LA phys def while minimizing aggro issues with your pet.

For endgame the budget choice is TT vana, you do pay extra for the ability to trade your gear. Yes, you'll be pretty much shooting yourself in the foot if you later on decide to go rank so this one is tricky, although I will say this, most of the endgame crowd tend to underestimate how difficult getting G16 vana is even now, as manufacturing costs do add up quite substantially for a budget player and maxing your crafting skills is not all that cheaper unless you're a no lifer. Add to that it will still take months of NW farming for your average 9x player to get all the necessary raps/cannies. And you also have to budget for skills and, in the near future, pet upgrades...

Edit;Lol- just re-read this and realized I forgot the hat, I would recomend the TT80 green Drumer's Hat. The reason is its fully farmable to any veno in single mode and gets a nice extra bit of phys. In fact you can do this for neck and belt also, although I wouldn't try more than 1 item outside of 2x.

A build something like this could work well.
lvl 80: http://pwcalc.com/6ee31bf1970024e5

This build for lvls 80-90
The choice between TT and gold or NPC gear is pretty much up to you though.
The TT gear can be resold for a steady value, the gold gear can vary a bit more, and NPC gear tends not to sell any more, but is free to get.
The weapon is one of the things you should definately get, since it can be upgraded cheaply ish at lvl 90, and both the lvl 80 version and lvl 90 version are more than acceptable.
Pay attention to sleeves of the sea captain, since they shouldn't be more than 100k premade, the rings, which are free, and pirate king's seal, which should be cheap as well (maybe 100k ish)?

Upgrading to lvl 90: http://pwcalc.com/e20698eb572579a1

(for lvls 90-100)
It doesn't really matter getting all this as soon as you hit lvl 90, just at some point probably before 95.
This is for a vit-hybrid build (lots of points into vit), but it's important to get above around 5k hp as soon as you can, it makes things a lot easier. If you're squadding a lot to do FCC runs, or BH runs, your gear doesn't really matter as long as you can survive any AoEs, accidental aggro, and looks decent when people check your gear.
You still have plenty of magic left for damage anyway, easily enough to heal pets when tanking, etc.
Refining the gear to +3 isn't usually too expensive, and you can do with just mirages if you have some (I had plenty from doing quests and getting the celestones as rewards).

With this gear, and with a decent pet, say glacial walker, or something along those lines, you will probably have plenty of money left over to upgrade skills (venomous scarab, ironwood, amp and pet heal are your musts) I'm sure others will add other skills as "musts" but in reality, those will do you fine.

Getting spare cash: you can do TT solo modes with your pet tanking, or farm mobs for mat drops. Cougaret master at arms aren't bad for colored glue (http://www.pwdatabase.com/pwi/mob/7057)
Farming herbs/mats can rake in money (try heaven/hell once you're 90+, until then south east of archo in sanctuary is a good place for high level mats that sell well).
Unfortunately this involves investing in a pickaxe which should be refined to +12 for better, faster farming.

side note: my build is far from perfect, and don't feel compelled to follow any of my advice

budget endgame: pure mag, 3rd cast nv, warsong lock void, frost/lunar/cube neck(after cog farming), morai shards, refined +7 with refine services in worldchat

MANray_ - Sanctuary wrote: »

The problem is this is budget. I recently farmed myself an Inocent Reverie as the soul edge for a Heaven-Inferno Ravager. Given the trouble and loss of income (as opoosed to having employed that time just farming DQs) it was actually cheaper/easier to get the TT99 mats, including the gold ones. As a contrast I've got a +3'd Wraith Conqueror sharded with a perfect saphire I've been unable to sell despite repeatedly offering it for as low as 500k, which is what I got it for unrefined and unsharded. Also, a golden TT99 mag sword is far from the cheapest way of getting a mag wep to vana, and I wouldn't have gone this route myself if I hadn't gotten started before NW, when I assumed G13 was the best case scenario I would be able to do by the time I was able to make lvl 100. Budget means minimal resources and/or investing on gear that can be resold. The thing is that if you avoid PvP G15 morai remains the logical budget choice, although for reasons that escape me most of the people that avoid even NW out of principle are determined to make G16 endgame.
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the problem with aspiring to stay within a budget is that you handicap yourself, and your investments in "budget" gear grow, but aren't nearly as effective as higher aspirations.

money flows a lot more at 100+ where the only goal is gear improvement, and not a combination of gearing to level and leveling.

if you handicap yourself with morai gear, you have excluded yourself from what is now the best farming instance in game, NW.

you are better off anticipating upgrades and fitting your budget build to accomidate future upgrades.

even at the low end, you should be able to scrape together 50 tokens a weekend, which comes out to 250 cannies a week.

combine that with BH's which will pay out probably 5m a week on average, it really doesnt take that much time to come up with enough to make g16 nirvana armor, and not that much more time to do the weapon.

i would think the goal is constant improvement, and dumping whatever extra coin you have into substandard gear will leave you in an impossible situation.

you may be upgrading slower than people that can more easily afford it, but at least try to stay on the right path

SashaGray - Heavens Tear wrote: »

if you handicap yourself with morai gear, you have excluded yourself from what is now the best farming instance in game, NW.

I was with you right up to this point. No: you're not excluded from NW, and it's not the best farming instance. I did make ~62m coin off it the last time I was there, but the previous 2 times I only made ~11m ea, and I totaled over 130m for that day. Not everyone has those time slots available to play, and it's limited to 2 events per week. It's also highly inconsistent. You could likewise say that SoT or Abaddon is the best farming instance because it's possible to make over 120m in a ~20 minute run there. You'll also be ignoring the card bosses in other instances, the ~7million you could make just soloing the last boss in Lunar, trophy mode runs (last I checked that was ~18m an hour), the potential rewards from AEU and so on. There's even people who still farm TT for decent profit (there's a mat from it worth over 100m). Yes though: Morai gear is a horrible option.

SashaGray - Heavens Tear wrote: »

you may be upgrading slower than people that can more easily afford it, but at least try to stay on the right path

In Sanct Divine Aegis goes for 7-8 mil. Let's say you get a really bad deal on Wraith Conquerer and buy it for 2 mil, you still save around 10 mil compared to a Heaven-Inferno Ravager and the TT green wep is not a terminal investment, you can sell it. I do realize you may be speaking out of principle, and fair enough you do make a good point, but black and white numbers don't lie. it would be a terrible idea for a player on a budget to go the Ashura line of weapons.

And on your projected income, you're assuming a player that's logging in 5 days a week and actually getting a BH run on each try, which simply isn't reality for a lot of people. And I was very clear on this point, much as in saying that G15 is the logical BUDGET choice for a PVE ONLY player. I'm not really getting into some leetist argument on the merits of G15 Morai, as it should be readily apparent to most of us it already is gross overkill in terms of PvE content, and not everyone aspires to be a hyper efficient farmer able to link a weapon and get invited to boring 5-10 minute runs.

I really don't mean to come across as an aggresive poster, but seriously it almost seems out of touch with the reality of average mid-high level players out on the field. It isn't just get to 100+ to farm your gear, which as negligible as the cost of hypers and spots on FCC runs may seem to endgame players, is not that easy to someone working on a main and already getting to 8x drained by the DQ nerf... Even if we pretend this form of leveling is in any way enjoyable or desirable. It's expensive to max your crafting skills and extremely time consuming to farm your molds and badges. Manufacturing services, however valuable to the community, are not cheap either. For someone on a budget the first priority is trying to reach an established position from which to acquire in-game resources more effectively. And at current leveling rates that's usually TT99 if you're lucky enough not to get to 100 in TT90 gear, at which point you'll have to face being unwanted by all the players with ridiculous standards about whom they squad with. But let's say you do manage and get your 5mil a week income and can afford not to use your NW income for other expenses, since you've somehow made it with all the necessary sage/demon skills, appropiate pets, a decent genie, tome etc. For an f2p that means in a month you get the resources you'll need for a single piece of G16 armor, and this is assuming you convert any NW extras into coin for this purpose and are breaking even on operating costs-- thats 5mil a week x 4 =20 mil plus three weekends of NW for 30 mil (that's 250 cannies per weekend at 40k)+ 250 cannies for the G15 step. Half a year for a full G16 armor set. Except it takes 2 months to get your wep at 50 tokens a weekend and considering, for argument's sake, it also takes you a month to farm each of four ornaments... That's still a year away from a full set... And this is running your numbers. A full year of mostly not missing NW nor failing to log in almost daily... And we haven't even begun factoring in refines and imbues, which even if you shard nothing but exclusive Morais does add up to playing times.

This isn't really playing on a budget but slaving away on a time frame that guarantees your endgame gear will be obsolete by the time you get it. What I'm saying is this, set a realistic goal that doesn't require you to give up any semblance of a social life, say R8 or G15 vana with flawless and +5 refines in 4-6 months, and then leisurely work to upgrade the rest of your stuff at whatever pace you get it.

You may even get to enjoy actually playing this game.

TolanSky - Heavens Tear wrote: »

thank you, this looks really helpful b:thanks

EDIT: I suppose I should ask, if I have [Calm Robe: Wraithgate] already due to having gotten it on another character on the same account... does the reference to [Wild Mane Mantle] & [Cape of Elite Leather] still apply? In otherwords, should I still be aiming for those two alternative capes, or would the Calm Robe be sufficient?

I would consider the -6 chan cape to be good enough that you wouldn't need anything else until 100+ endgame, so if you can account stash it by all means this is a good choice.

OHT capes are another option

Desdi - Sanctuary wrote: »

My personal choice is defence over channeling, as the saying goes "A dead DD can't DD".

The greatest impact to survivability for my wiz in Rebirth comes from matk. She who scores the last hit lives to tell. -Has nothing to do with -ch, but demonstrates that defense isn't the only thing that keeps you alive. ps: it's defense; not defence.

Well, by defence I mean anything that increases your survivability. It doesn't necessarily mean just more physical defence or magic resistance but also HP and whatever else. I thought that was quite obvious but I guess my choice of words wasn't good.

ps: it's defense; not defence.

Err, defence is the British spelling of it whilst defense is the American one.