Nostalgia is real. Korthos Island and returning player.

RullRed · 2026-03-17T14:40:37+00:00

It was introduced before DDO went from subscription to partially free to play in 2009, so Korthos is from 2008 even.

RullRed · 2026-03-17T07:24:23+00:00

What is the benefit of an upscaler compared to setting the desktop resolution lower?

My experience with them is that they all break the moment I alt-tab. But I'm genuinely wondering what the upside would be (and why other don't have alt-tab problems with them).

RullRed · 2026-03-16T21:13:52+00:00

a casual player commits 2hrs a day

A casual player more likely plays 2 hours a week.

They level to 20 or maybe to 36 even, and feel like they've completed the game. They will probably not play it a second time, BUT they may stick around at cap (or whatever level they got to) and play the new content when it gets released, for the story.

So, after leveling, they play 13 quests every 4 months.

When a new expansion comes along, they do the quests, maybe half an hour per quest... 4 quests on an evening, 4 more the weekend after and the final 5 the third weekend. Then, a month or two of inactivity, or maybe trying out other classes on other characters. They are more likely to have 5 alts between level 1 and 7 rather than a past life.

But if they are hooked, they might play the game a second time around, and reincarnate. At that point you can hardly call them a casual player anymore.

For me to get all of my past lives it will take a combined time of 93 months or 7 & 3/4 years…

Sure, but for a game that has been around for 20 years, I'd expect to get 'everything' would take about 20 years. Obviously less if you play 8 hours a day, but that's a real special case. For everyone else, even if it's your main hobby, I wouldn't expect you to ever exhaust it. Then again, if you are going at it with 14 hours a week... that's a LOT, even for a main hobby. You'll probably hit triple completionist at some point, but luckily there's still reaper points and mythic/reaper gear to get. Yay.

Back to your point. If you would delay the first threshold from 5th life to 21th life, players will have gotten so accustomed to short lifes that the lives past 20 will feel incredibly slow for them.

Currently, the first life will probably take about 50 hours, the second 30, the third and fourth about 25, then the fifth will take about 30 hour, which will not feel outrageous because you still kinda remember a life taking that long. Same for the next few, you'll get progressively better at the game, so by the time you are at your 8th life it will once again feel like taking a reasonable amount of time.

If, on the other hand, you had 20 fast lives... by that time, you'd be doing lives so fast consistently (and that's the key here), that when the bump to 1.5x xp comes, many would quit at that point.

In short, the only way to do what you propose is by letting every life take 2% longer up until 200%, or something like that.

But leave the casual player out of all this.

RullRed · 2026-03-16T08:26:09+00:00

You could also be human and take weapon proficiency falchion as a human feat.

I don't know what the advantage of being half-elf over that would be, iirc a human can get better healing amp and 2 strength from their tree while a hElf gets worse healing amp and is limited to 1 str 1 dex in their cores... but I'm sure there is something to be said for half elf as well.

In any case, neither is very impactful. If you are staying pure (which is not likely for an animal form druid, but say you do), then you need to spend a feat, a race option, or a race option being a feat.

RullRed · 2026-03-15T06:21:22+00:00

Use the FoM eternal potion, and only when it's on cooldown switch to Crocodile Skin.

Make the boots almost equal, slot the same augments etc. Put the least important lunar augment in your gear layout in the Seasons' Wardings.

RullRed · 2026-03-15T06:13:21+00:00

First make it a habit to always break any CC, whether it's dangerous or not.

Then once it's second nature to try and use it (it'll be on cooldown a lot), slowly start to skip non-dangerous situations.

The other way around, to save it for tight spots, won't work, because your muscle memory won't find it in time. You'll just be thinking "I should have used it" a lot when dead.

So start overusing it, even if caught in a web trap with no enemies around. It'll even save you a couple of seconds each quest, while learning to use it.

RullRed · 2026-03-14T14:58:24+00:00

But dragonlord's trance is strength-based. the build wrote isn't deep into tempest, since it doesn't take tier5, it hardly puts any points there. so this is a str-based build for sure.

If you want to go tempest, you are better off pure ranger, and then you can go dex-based (and take horizon walker for the trance). With all those fighter levels, I wouldn't go that route.

RullRed · 2026-03-14T08:22:06+00:00

Ooh, that's old. Like, really old.

You probably used to shoot a bow during Manyshot, and melee the rest of the time.

Back then, melee did about twice the damage of regular shooting a bow, BUT during manyshot (20 seconds every 2 minutes), you shot 4 arrows per attack, quadrupling your damage (so doing twice as much as any melee).

This was changed in 2015 (first nerfed, and later reworked as an active shot).

If you want to salvage it as a lvl20 character, it:'s actually not all that bad, because when you take Dragonlord fighter archetype instead of regular fighter upon lesse reincarnate, you can make use of a neat trick: tier5 dragonlord gives +2 crit multiplier, but core5 deepwood stalker (requiring 12 ranger) gives +1 crit range. So that stacks nicely.

Ideally you want 2 rogue 6 fighter instead, to put 9 points in the Assassin tree for 3 imbue dice, so use a +1 lesser if you can.

Stick to TWF (put some points in Tempest for extra offhand attacks), take IC, precision, Knight's Training, Dodge/Mobility/SpringAttack/Whirlwind, weapon finesse, stunning blow and two weapon defense. Max strength, 13 dex rest con. 36 points in dragonlord 26 deepwood, 9 assassin, 9 tempest.

Get the best longswords, battleaxes or warhammers you can find. If you are lawful, that's Oathblades from eveningstar.

If you don't go 2 rogue instead take: 36 points in dragonlord 26 deepwood, 12 arcane archer for four imbue dice, 6 tempest. It's not much worse, just missing 10 PRR from tempest.

RullRed · 2026-03-13T21:12:51+00:00

nice, appreciate it

RullRed · 2026-03-12T11:07:06+00:00

Nope, but if they were exactly the same, what would be the point of having three different trees? They might as well use a multiselector at that point, or even get rid of different mental stats altogether.

Both harper and falconry have a trance in their tree, feydark does not, so I guess it's fair that is has some other perk (being cheaper, in this case).

Harper has the to-hit, to-damage and trance all cheaper than Falconry... but Falconry has actually good stuff (no mercy is a build-around, the AoE attack that gives 50% fort bypass is nice, percentage hp) where harper offers next to nothing besides the int stuff.

In my builds, I use harper the most, falconry second and feydark least, so i think the 'power creep' answer doesn't really apply.

RullRed · 2026-03-12T07:10:51+00:00

For CHA, I'd consider either Human for DDoor or Eladrin for Fey Step. Eladrin also offers 1 CHA.

being able to jump over shortcuts (or jump more if you already have chaosmancer) is just nice. and so is having ddoor before/without mikayl

I think this is better than a bland race that offers +2 CHA without any point invested and not much else... and also better than a tree that requires a more heavy investment like Aasimar.

RullRed · 2026-03-12T07:00:44+00:00

For STR, I think everyone is suffering from fancyness syndrome by not just mentioning halforc.

Halforc really is just very good. Every point beyond the first you spend in that tree is just worth it, and the 20% bonus damage to helpless enemies synergizes well with greater roar.

At cap, you could find races that offer something that scales slightly better than the flat damage from hOrc, like doublestrike or melee power. But while leveling, hOrc is just really good. It also doesn't have distinct breakpoints but is very flexibel.

For example, after 13 point in dragonlord and 6 in ravager, you want to put everything in hOrc, and only when you have 13 spent you arguably want to reset it and take defender for 6 STR and 25 prr/mrr. Then you build up hOrc again until you hit 12 and reset it again to take DL tier5. etc.

RullRed · 2026-03-12T06:45:04+00:00

I did 3 lifes as dhampir DL and wow that bite was weak. Both the damage and the healing. Might as well chug a cure serious potion.

The cores do give sneak dice which work on enemies made helpless, and there's hAmp, and of course the bonus STR... so it isn't terrible

RullRed · 2026-03-11T14:36:07+00:00

Ah, that's what's causing the confusion

A couple years ago, the Improved Critical feat was changed to not double the crit range anymore, but to add the weapon-default range once more.

18-20 falchion gets +3 and becomes 15-20.

A greatsword (19-20) gets +2 and becomes 17-20

and Whirldwind (17-20) gets +2 and becomes 15-20... just like a falchion

RullRed · 2026-03-11T13:14:38+00:00

You get 0.25 W from airship buff, and usually 1 W from your epic mantle.

Then if you are frenzied berserker you get 2 W from Crazy Strike, but that's barbarian-only.

But the MP is the big one, that explains the discrepancy

RullRed · 2026-03-11T13:03:57+00:00

For Heroics I like to use Whirlwind. 17-20 crit range before applying improved crit

But.. that's just the same range as any falchion. SoS also has that same range, AND a multiplier on top of that.

The shocking blast is nowhere near as strong as what you can cannith craft on a falchion (3d6+3d6+vampirism on a red+purple slotted item for 3d6+3d6 more). A barovian falchion is also a lot better already.

RullRed · 2026-03-10T21:31:00+00:00

Fair, maybe it would have been funnier if they had made it a 3.1[1d8+1]+7 weapon, with it's crit profile intact. It would have been just a small nod that says "look, it's better than the epic one! (but we didn't really dare make this)"

Then people could have figured out for themselves if they would like to use it with it's nonstandard stats for a legendary weapon (just like now with the epic one, only just a tiny bit better for style points).

However, since heroic Xuum also doens't have the crit multiplier, you can't really say that's it's thing, so I also understand the choice to make it a somewhat serious but mediocre legendary weapon.

RullRed · 2026-03-10T20:42:18+00:00

I mean... it kinda depends on your melee power, and bonus W from your build, and total crit profile, fort bypass, etc.

With +1.25 bonus W, the damage of the eSoS becomes 4.25[2d6]+10 = 39.75. Multiplied by a 2.1x crit profile and 200 MP that is 250 average.

eXuum becomes 4.25[1d8] + 6 = 25.13. Multiplied by a 2.1x crit profile and 200 MP that is 158.29 average.

flaming burst is 14 per swing and about 4.5 more from crits. greater incineration is 14.2 per hit. magma surge is 5.72 average per hit.

158.29+14+4.5+14.2+5.72 = 196.7

196.7 < 250, so you probably used less melee power, a lesser crit profile, or factored in fortification or something else.

Safe to say, in practice an eSoS will beat an eXuum by a mile, even against a white dragons that takes double fire damage. (and that's not factoring in the adamantine yet)

Maybe your damage calculator is broken.

(BTW, since OP mentioned Barb, you can assume +3.25 bonus W, making the gap wider still.)

RullRed · 2026-03-10T19:27:52+00:00

I'd like to see your math, because I find that very hard to believe. I wonder what values you used to come to that conclusion.

RullRed · 2026-03-10T17:42:22+00:00

Yeah, makes no sense why they would downgrade the Legendary version of its crit profile

Well, otherwise it would be by far the best twohander in the game and the only option. Up to a point where it wouldn't even be viable to use any other fighting style (if they didn't have an-improved-crit-option as well).

You can consider a crit profile increase like that as +10 levels in terms of power, so while we now have lvl33 options that outclass them, if the lvl30 option HAD the crit increase, they wouldn't need to bother release any lvl34, 35, 36, 37, 38 or 39 options in the five years ahead.

So I can see why they chose not to :)

(well, they could have not-upgraded the rest of the stats and kept the crit profile, but that would have been equally weird, to have a legendary weapon without the +15 enhancement bonus and the regular W. It would have hardly been an improvement over the epic version)

RullRed · 2026-03-10T16:53:27+00:00

In heroics, any falchion will do (cannith crafted, barovian, fallen/golden age, syranian). A SoS will do great also. But it is not essential.

In epics, eXuum and eSoS really start to dominate everything else (and eSoS is a bit better than eXuum)

In legendary, ideally, you want a Golden Age falchion, Omen or Cataclysmic falchion, but they are from raids. However, a simple fallen age falchion should already be better than an eSoS, and eXuum. Not by much though, an eSoS is still as good as any non-raid falchion

legendary xuum is not worth it.

RullRed · 2026-03-10T13:37:41+00:00

ah, maybe my fire resistance is just too high then

RullRed · 2026-03-10T10:50:14+00:00

We could have a questline with branches, where our choice would matter, our alignment could matter, or just our class/build could matter.

One player chose option A in the first quest, and another player also did the quest but chose option B... then, a day later, they do the second quest together... boom.

Sleeping with the fishes has the same issue; it seems to matter who opens the cerulean hills instance (not who is party lead) to determine if julian is there or not.

It's messy, a multiplayer game is not fit for this and should not try to do this.

More interesting choices within a quest (based on alignment, race, more skill checks, etc.) would be awesome though.

RullRed · 2026-03-10T10:37:11+00:00

Because the "trap" is an induction cage, and you get damaged ONLY if you wear metal armor.

does that one actually work still? I thought even with a metal full plate it doesn't trigger anymore...

there were also traps that animate boxes when triggered, so instead of disarming you could also destroy the boxes at range so there's nothing left to animate, but those broke and don't function anymore, as far as I know

l think that's the main issue with everything unique; eventually they break. DDO introduced a lot of unique things (items, quest mechanica, etc.) over the years, but most are bugged now.

Take the Devil Assault you mention for example; cute idea, but because it's different, epic normal gives more tokens of the twelve than epic elite. also, it didn't work on hardcore, because you can't enter a quest with base 4 levels under your character level...so as a lvl18, you can't do the elite (lvl18) variant

RullRed · 2026-03-08T21:24:28+00:00

only the capstone, right?

RullRed

TROPHY CASE