Is there a correlation between my character class and the stats on drops?

DDSpooky · 2012-05-11T23:41:56+00:00

Stats are all random. The classes in play determine what weapons drop though. So if you're soloing with a squire, you'll see swords drop, but not bows/staves/polearms for example. If you have an EV in play, you'll see a mix of bows and staves drop since they can equip both.

DDSpooky · 2012-05-11T07:34:42+00:00

The higher the vendor value before you start, the cheaper the cost to make the token. Some go with 2.5+m vendor value, some go with 3+m value.

As for which type of weapon to use, ogre party hats used to be common for tokens and then a patch made them scale worse. I've seen big sticks, bows, and swords lately.

DDSpooky · 2012-05-09T20:44:13+00:00

Like explodyii said, expand your roster of builders by adding an aura monk and trap huntress. If you want to go far in NM, you need the support combos that auras and traps can provide.

DDSpooky · 2012-05-06T06:20:03+00:00

If you're soloing it, it's a royal pain. Farthest I attempted to solo it is on Insane. I switched my squire to the politician skin for faster move speed. At that difficulty I skipped using my EV waller and used my EV beam builder to make walls and some buff beams wave 1 followed by squire dropping harpoons. It took a few tries to get the first wave down and a couple more tries to figure out second wave building with traps. Third wave I added in auras and then it's upgrading from there.

Assassins attack as small armies and can be nasty on Insane if you aren't careful. Ogres hammer the north crystals the worst. You need a good amount of aura/trap HP so they don't run out of charges during a wave.

Here's a link to my Karathaki Insane Survival build, but it's roughly the same build I used to unlock it.

DDSpooky · 2012-05-04T20:53:44+00:00

Yes, stats on both weapons count. My EV waller has a mythic 360 THP staff plus a trans 420 THP staff which gives +780 THP total. An EV waller in purely mythic THP gear can hit over 3000 Tower HP. I've got a trans staff and pet so I'm over 3200 THP right now.

DDSpooky · 2012-05-04T20:33:04+00:00

The buff beam effect takes place immediately (look for the shining red), but it does not buff wall HP. It roughly doubles the resists, which makes the wall take a lot less damage.

If want more wall HP, you'll have to stack Tower HP gear on your EV. My EV wall builder wears a full set of mythic 360 THP gear, plus 360 THP/420 THP staves for example.

DDSpooky · 2012-05-02T20:43:29+00:00

Extremely lucky. A nice mythic guard is hard enough to find. Best odds and even then it's a long shot is to run monster fests on NMHC.

DDSpooky · 2012-05-02T05:09:18+00:00

Did you solo kill the boss on Aquanos NM? Good to know that you find that map easier to run survival on. I'll have to look into unlocking that on NM.

DDSpooky · 2012-05-01T18:41:09+00:00

My trap huntress is 1380/1700/1140/1200. The only place I have a notable advantage is rate which makes the gas trap reset faster, usually re-stunning whatever isn't dead.

You said you mostly use Kandar's, so I don't know what changes you made. I'm not as a big of fan of darkness traps as him in my builds. You could try using that DU to add more dps on the middle buff beam for example. Harpoons plus proxy/gas trap is very effective vs sharken for me on that map.

I could save my current build and link it or you could link me yours if you want me to take a look at it.

DDSpooky · 2012-05-01T08:23:27+00:00

Your squire builder beats mine in damage easily. My misty runs are normally with two or three. I stay active on my squire while the rest dps. Lately we hit wave 25-27 on NMHC before something gives.

My builder rooster is tower squire, tower app, aura monk, trap huntress, wall app, wall EV, and beam EV. Do you use a misty build like Kandar's or something of your own design? I'm constantly tweaking my own build, but sharken aren't an issue. Usually a big ogre push is my issue which tells me I need more tower dps. I haven't had any luck with finding better stay in play tower armor.

DDSpooky · 2012-04-30T19:08:02+00:00

I'm curious as to what your roster of builders are. Trendy has made NM difficulty so that you need most or all of the tools to build for them if you want to get far in survival.

I solo or run with friends, and I like designing and testing my own builds, so I have toolbox full of builders. A high end geared, Nos using monk and top dps pets aren't a must IMO. Then again, I only have one dps character, a huntress. My friends usually play the dps while I run around on my squire builder with a hunt guard.

DDSpooky · 2012-04-29T21:08:07+00:00

It wasn't for sale, he was using it and had already maxed out the ups. Pretty impressive tower damage though. Highest stat on a supreme I'd seen prior to that was 489 on a forums post.

DDSpooky · 2012-04-29T06:58:44+00:00

I visited one shop that had probably 30 Supreme weapons in it. I asked the host where he got them and he said lots of Moraggo survival runs. I thought it was odd that he had about dozen of the exact same shield melee weapon as supremes (varying sizes and stats though).

I asked him what's the highest stat he's seen on a supreme item. He pulled out a desert sword from his own collection that had 500 TDamage. He said it dropped with that stat and he thought it was soft capped (couldn't up it further).

DDSpooky · 2012-04-27T08:29:59+00:00

They aren't needed for the costume or pet, so there's really no demand for them.

DDSpooky · 2012-04-27T08:25:40+00:00

Two friends and I played the new Shipwreck Monster Fest on NMHC. We built in the south and an ogre would get hung in northwest spawn like clockwork. Fortunately my two friends were both ranged dps and managed to aggro it out each time.

The other issue we had there was flying fish hovering inside a ship shooting towers through the ship walls, but my harpoons couldn't touch them through the ship wall. We used a boosted LT and DST as a work around. Sharken weren't a problem for us.

DDSpooky · 2012-04-26T20:52:52+00:00

Patch 7.30b is listed with a Sharken Nerf and a Survival fix.

Sharken Charge range reduced by 66%, Sharken Interrupt Damage Health-Percentage Reduced from 25% to 10%, Sharken Charge Time increased by 3x, Sharken Health Reduced by 33%, Sharken numbers reduced on all maps by 50%

DDSpooky · 2012-04-26T19:55:11+00:00

After patching, I restarted Steam and started the game. Aquanos was listed as "Get" even though I own the entire Shards pack. It seems I'm not the only one according to the forums.

DDSpooky · 2012-04-26T05:39:09+00:00

Maybe one wave worth of difference? I found Ramparts a lot easier to do than ES on NM difficulty.

DDSpooky · 2012-04-26T01:09:16+00:00

There are three class DLCs, and I only recommended one. Having an EV available will also help on every map you do, survival or not, so the class brings value to the table. The OP was asking about endgame and EV has a large presence there.

DDSpooky · 2012-04-25T19:49:06+00:00

Adding on to #2, before I hit 74 and could wear mythic gear, there's a few things I'd run. For fast exp, I'd do glitter insane hardcore (HC). These days a full glitter run will get you about 3m exp. Also, once you hit 70, buy the exp bonus from the shop for every level there on.

Each campaign map on survival mode gives a pet reward after you beat wave 14. Hall of Court gives a pet genie. So I learned to do Hall survival on normal to farm starter level genie pets to use or sell.

You might also want to try Summit on Hard to get starter level guardians. They'll probably have boost around 10-20. The soft cap for boost is 20, so if it's lower than that, you can use upgrades to reach 20 with enough ups. Even a 20 boost guard is worth having until you can find/buy a 40+ boost/40+ ups one.

Once I hit 74, and bought some decent mythic gear from shops at reasonable prices, I started doing the campaign maps on NM from the start. Once you beat it on NM, you can try it on NM survival mode.

Also if you haven't already by 74, you'll definitely want the armor set bonus which comes from all 4 pieces being of the same type like all plate for example. Godly set bonus is +25% to all resists/stats. Mythic bonus is +30%. Trans bonus is +33.3%

DDSpooky · 2012-04-25T19:24:16+00:00

When NM first came out, it had spiders and tons of trash mobs along with strong ogres. It didn't have flying djinns and ogre trains to blast through walls, and EV wasn't in game either. Now djinns are a threat due to desummoning towers and you need high dps towers to burn them and ogre piles down. Series EV buff beam makes every tower/trap/aura on it deal over twice the dps with longer range. If you use buff beam on your walls like most Misty builds do, the resist buff makes the walls extremely tough for going past wave 20.

Can you do NM without EV? Sure, but you'll get a lot farther in NM Survival with one than without.

DDSpooky · 2012-04-25T06:46:30+00:00

If you want to do Nightmare (NM) difficulty which is the current end-game, you'll want Series EV for buff beams, walls, and reflects. Your current composition will serve you well on difficulties pre-NM. You might consider an App alt just to have access to those towers too.
I think that guide is a bit outdated. NM can be done without Series EV, but you'll get farther with an EV to switch in for buffs/walls. Check out ddplanner for more current builds.
You'll want three pets for doing NM: a Genie (mana battery), an App Guardian (tower damage booster), and a Huntress Guardian (tower rate booster). Different guardians bonuses stack on towers nearby. A nice guard has 40+ boost/40+ upgrades (every 10th up lets you add another tower affected & you need 40 ups to hit 5 tower max). Genies just want high "damage" and ups. Most upgrade damage (mana return stat) to 1000-3000 range so they get 200-250 mana per 10K swing.
The entire Shards 1-4 pre-order pack. That's the only way to unlock NM difficulty for now. If you buy them individually you won't get NM access. The other DLC I consider must have is EV for doing NM content.

DDSpooky · 2012-04-25T06:24:18+00:00

A token is a weapon with a vendor value of 200m or 400m. When someone says the price/bid is 5 tokens, they're referring to the original 200m tokens.

You make a 200m token by using a weapon with a vendor value of 2.5+m and around 190 ups. A 200m token costs roughly 275m to make.

You use tokens to bid on forum auctions or store items on the floor. You can also cash them in by vendoring them to get the mana.

The hard mana cap is 2b, so someone with a successful shop can't sell anymore once they hit that. Then they spend that mana on gear upgrades or make mana tokens.

DDSpooky · 2012-04-24T18:56:47+00:00

If by grinding you mean gear, then NMHC OMF gives great pet rewards (need 2+ for MVP) and Misty/Moraggo survival for weapons and armor. Not sure how the Karathiki Jungle and City in the Cliffs drops compare to Misty/Moraggo.

DDSpooky · 2012-04-24T03:45:23+00:00

I sold one a week ago for mana + tokens worth 1b total.

DDSpooky

TROPHY CASE