12-27-2020, 02:32 AM
Hey there, currently I’ve been levelling my 3’rd warrior in the past 6 years and this time I decided to change stuff around. Since level 1 I challenged myself to never equip a shield while playing as semi-purist, now I’m pretty close to max level. To my surprise wielding a 2-hand weapon is not only viable way to level up but in some cases it is even faster than the regular 1-hand/shield warrior build.
Before I start here’s a video I made from my last levelling sessions, there I display in action many of the techniques I used while slaughtering true the caves:
First lets address the elephant in the room, no shield, really? Wielding a shield/blocking is one of the strongest utilities in the warriors arsenal. The disappointing part is that when you cast a spell your block chance is set to 0%. If you want to level optimally with any class abusing Chain Lighting(CL) is the way to go but then your blocking from your shield won’t be that useful. We can conclude that in an optimal scenario the warriors shield will mostly useful for the additional prefixes/suffixes with a small blocking utility benefit.
The next question is can we sacrifice that shield for potentially faster levelling
experience – the answer is at least slightly yes. The casual 2-hand warrior build will suffer a lot in the first 30-35levels, mostly because you’ll need quality gear to compensate your loss of your offhand, but when your reach hell/caves it surely is an improvement. Note that you don’t need perfect gear while levelling, not at all, specially if you are skilled player. Now imagine that you are leveling as a caster warrior with Dreamflange(DF), now reimagine the same deal but you have the utility to axe down any monster with resistance. The DF warrior surely is the most optimal way to level , but there are two things that might be on your way. After level 45 or so caves will start to generate a lot more of the unwanted type of monsters (Obsidians,Malestorms…) rather than Dogs & Magmas that die easily to CL, thus your XP farming will get a lot slower. And second – it’s boring as fuck.
A 2-hand weapon will surpass your 1-hand weapons in the following way:
Since you are levelling you’re not max level, aka your character damage is not maxed also. Therefore the increased damage from a 2-hand weapon will help your reach the chance to 1-2 shot your enemy which is actually a huge deal. After you reach that breakpoint you’ll be able to count the shots & predict exactly how much swings you need to kill your opponent. That might save just ~1 sec. per shot but try count how many shots you make as a warrior – a lot !
The “item-swapping” technique:
This technique goes quite well with 2-hand builds you can see a demonstration of that in the displayed video. What you’ll basically do is change pieces of gear in mid-combat, the idea is to do it while walking since then you can do it for “free”- not costing any additional time.
It is potentially very strong technique, imagine you are levelling as normal you just killed some monsters and it’s time to heal up but your mana is too low. What you can do is equip DF and get 80 mana & heal for free. Every time you fill up your mana/health to max any items that increase them will grand you the additional benefit without repercussions. Let’s check this example, every time you enter caves you’ll normally start with full inventory of potions, in this case 28 Full Mana Potions. Your current mana is 250, so that translates to total 7000 mana points. If you use the swap DF each time you have low mana you can increase your mana pool by 80 for each potion you have , so ideally you can get up to almost 9000 mana. The more potions you have the more value you get. In addition the +30 to magic suffix from DF will drastically increase your spell to hit % and since you are warrior you’ll normally find it at deficient.
The idea with a 2-hand levelling build is to get benefit from both your main weapon as a pure damage dealer & your other weapon of choice, normally that will be DF.
Route Overview:
Your build will vary depending on your levelling routine, the most common are:
1) Early Caves -> Mid Catacombs
2) Early Caves -> Mid Caves
3) Early Hell -> Mid Caves
Early Caves -> Mid Catacombs
The 1’st choice is optimal for levels 34-42*, the monsters won’t award that much XP after a while but you can kill a ton of them quite fast. Additional benefit is that you don’t need good gear to farm there, quite the contrary. This route will allow you to abuse CL as much as possible, for a warrior build you’ll want a King’s Sword of Speed(KSoS) since most of the monsters will be animals. A 2-hand build here has neither too much positives nor negatives in comparison to a regular build, just because monsters have very little HP.
I’ve found that Flame Wave is actually pretty good in Catacombs. The most annoying monsters there: Familiar & Winged – Demon are immune to lighting and you’ll face them pretty commonly. The struggle is that they occupy 2 map tiles instead of 1 and so killing them with a Fireball(FB) can be hard. Flame Wave can destroy whole rooms, even more if casted properly. In addition the Guardian spell can also be used when there are few mobs you don’t want to kill manually, just cast it and teleport away.
Early Caves -> Mid Caves -> Late Caves
This is the router the warrior shines the most in comparison to the other 2 classes. You’ll normally level there from 43-50lvl. At the beginning the monsters variations will be good for CL farming, thou after a while that won’t be the case. Eventually you’ll get a lot of Blood Claws, Malestorms, Obsidians… mixed in various of ways, spells won’t be that efficient anymore and this will be perfect time to get your hands bloody. I’ve found that an axe performs slightly better than a 2-hand sword since there won’t be a lot of beasts that you would want to kill in melee - only Pit Beasts can be a problem, monsters like Obsidians won’t die in 1 crit even if you have a sword. Around 200 armor & 400 health will be sufficient till level 45 or so, after that you’ll need a bit more. The main idea that you must follow is to stack and then CL the exposed type of monsters, then melee down the other types. Here you can have a choice between aiming for higher spell hit % and use FB a little more or aim for more melee dmg/over all starts. I personally started using The Protector as a swapping alternative, the 40 armour suit me well when jumping true unexplored walls, or casting near enemies as a whole, it’s technically something like a shield. In addition the healing charges compensate some mana(since I’m not using DF anymore). The coolest thing is that when you have a staff with charges you can use that as hotkey utility, just quickly unequipt & equip the staff in your inventory, the given spell will pop up.
Early Hell -> Mid Caves
At 45*-50 level you can choose to enter hell from town and then climb up to the caves. Normally in this levels CL will perform a lot better. Both Lava Maws & Guardians will die fairly easily and 2-hand sword will do miracles over all. The main problem here will be your gear since you’ll need both higher armour/health and some additional spell to hit %. In the budget scenario you’ll equip a plain Awesome Plate with maxed base armour and prefix, but even then you’ll need good quality jewellery. Since this router is item dependent it’s mostly avoided by newer players, but it’s a good alternative if have some juicy stashed gear.
With everything said levelling with challenge is a lot better way to play the game, you’ll just enjoy it more. In addition you’ll become better at the game over all, using different techniques, timings, etc., the stronger you get the less items will play a role in your performance.
Before I start here’s a video I made from my last levelling sessions, there I display in action many of the techniques I used while slaughtering true the caves:
First lets address the elephant in the room, no shield, really? Wielding a shield/blocking is one of the strongest utilities in the warriors arsenal. The disappointing part is that when you cast a spell your block chance is set to 0%. If you want to level optimally with any class abusing Chain Lighting(CL) is the way to go but then your blocking from your shield won’t be that useful. We can conclude that in an optimal scenario the warriors shield will mostly useful for the additional prefixes/suffixes with a small blocking utility benefit.
The next question is can we sacrifice that shield for potentially faster levelling
experience – the answer is at least slightly yes. The casual 2-hand warrior build will suffer a lot in the first 30-35levels, mostly because you’ll need quality gear to compensate your loss of your offhand, but when your reach hell/caves it surely is an improvement. Note that you don’t need perfect gear while levelling, not at all, specially if you are skilled player. Now imagine that you are leveling as a caster warrior with Dreamflange(DF), now reimagine the same deal but you have the utility to axe down any monster with resistance. The DF warrior surely is the most optimal way to level , but there are two things that might be on your way. After level 45 or so caves will start to generate a lot more of the unwanted type of monsters (Obsidians,Malestorms…) rather than Dogs & Magmas that die easily to CL, thus your XP farming will get a lot slower. And second – it’s boring as fuck.
A 2-hand weapon will surpass your 1-hand weapons in the following way:
Since you are levelling you’re not max level, aka your character damage is not maxed also. Therefore the increased damage from a 2-hand weapon will help your reach the chance to 1-2 shot your enemy which is actually a huge deal. After you reach that breakpoint you’ll be able to count the shots & predict exactly how much swings you need to kill your opponent. That might save just ~1 sec. per shot but try count how many shots you make as a warrior – a lot !
The “item-swapping” technique:
This technique goes quite well with 2-hand builds you can see a demonstration of that in the displayed video. What you’ll basically do is change pieces of gear in mid-combat, the idea is to do it while walking since then you can do it for “free”- not costing any additional time.
It is potentially very strong technique, imagine you are levelling as normal you just killed some monsters and it’s time to heal up but your mana is too low. What you can do is equip DF and get 80 mana & heal for free. Every time you fill up your mana/health to max any items that increase them will grand you the additional benefit without repercussions. Let’s check this example, every time you enter caves you’ll normally start with full inventory of potions, in this case 28 Full Mana Potions. Your current mana is 250, so that translates to total 7000 mana points. If you use the swap DF each time you have low mana you can increase your mana pool by 80 for each potion you have , so ideally you can get up to almost 9000 mana. The more potions you have the more value you get. In addition the +30 to magic suffix from DF will drastically increase your spell to hit % and since you are warrior you’ll normally find it at deficient.
The idea with a 2-hand levelling build is to get benefit from both your main weapon as a pure damage dealer & your other weapon of choice, normally that will be DF.
Route Overview:
Your build will vary depending on your levelling routine, the most common are:
1) Early Caves -> Mid Catacombs
2) Early Caves -> Mid Caves
3) Early Hell -> Mid Caves
Early Caves -> Mid Catacombs
The 1’st choice is optimal for levels 34-42*, the monsters won’t award that much XP after a while but you can kill a ton of them quite fast. Additional benefit is that you don’t need good gear to farm there, quite the contrary. This route will allow you to abuse CL as much as possible, for a warrior build you’ll want a King’s Sword of Speed(KSoS) since most of the monsters will be animals. A 2-hand build here has neither too much positives nor negatives in comparison to a regular build, just because monsters have very little HP.
I’ve found that Flame Wave is actually pretty good in Catacombs. The most annoying monsters there: Familiar & Winged – Demon are immune to lighting and you’ll face them pretty commonly. The struggle is that they occupy 2 map tiles instead of 1 and so killing them with a Fireball(FB) can be hard. Flame Wave can destroy whole rooms, even more if casted properly. In addition the Guardian spell can also be used when there are few mobs you don’t want to kill manually, just cast it and teleport away.
Early Caves -> Mid Caves -> Late Caves
This is the router the warrior shines the most in comparison to the other 2 classes. You’ll normally level there from 43-50lvl. At the beginning the monsters variations will be good for CL farming, thou after a while that won’t be the case. Eventually you’ll get a lot of Blood Claws, Malestorms, Obsidians… mixed in various of ways, spells won’t be that efficient anymore and this will be perfect time to get your hands bloody. I’ve found that an axe performs slightly better than a 2-hand sword since there won’t be a lot of beasts that you would want to kill in melee - only Pit Beasts can be a problem, monsters like Obsidians won’t die in 1 crit even if you have a sword. Around 200 armor & 400 health will be sufficient till level 45 or so, after that you’ll need a bit more. The main idea that you must follow is to stack and then CL the exposed type of monsters, then melee down the other types. Here you can have a choice between aiming for higher spell hit % and use FB a little more or aim for more melee dmg/over all starts. I personally started using The Protector as a swapping alternative, the 40 armour suit me well when jumping true unexplored walls, or casting near enemies as a whole, it’s technically something like a shield. In addition the healing charges compensate some mana(since I’m not using DF anymore). The coolest thing is that when you have a staff with charges you can use that as hotkey utility, just quickly unequipt & equip the staff in your inventory, the given spell will pop up.
Early Hell -> Mid Caves
At 45*-50 level you can choose to enter hell from town and then climb up to the caves. Normally in this levels CL will perform a lot better. Both Lava Maws & Guardians will die fairly easily and 2-hand sword will do miracles over all. The main problem here will be your gear since you’ll need both higher armour/health and some additional spell to hit %. In the budget scenario you’ll equip a plain Awesome Plate with maxed base armour and prefix, but even then you’ll need good quality jewellery. Since this router is item dependent it’s mostly avoided by newer players, but it’s a good alternative if have some juicy stashed gear.
With everything said levelling with challenge is a lot better way to play the game, you’ll just enjoy it more. In addition you’ll become better at the game over all, using different techniques, timings, etc., the stronger you get the less items will play a role in your performance.