Hey guys, name’s Xaeris. I’ve been around the mud since V1, very early during inception. I’ve been around the block and I’m a traditional number cruncher and min/max’er. So, now to the body of things: You’ve hit 201. You’re 7x. What do you do now?!?
Step 1 – Stats.
Your first tier, you’re probably going to hit SH with about 600-700 stats. Maybe more. This means that you have quite a bit of work to do. You can have a total of 1725 stats at T0, with an additional 25 stats every tier. This means at t9 you’ll be able to have 1950 stats. What does this mean? You should know by now that stats do the bulk of the heavy lifting of being a character on Aard. Before we get to maxxing stats, we want to quickly review what each stat does:
- Strength – This gives you Damroll (DR). It also improves carrying capacity.
- Dexterity – This gives you Hitroll (HR). It also impacts Dodge (your primary avoidance of attacks).
- Intelligence – Affects a large selection of spells (Mage and Psi mostly). Increases effectiveness of practices
- Wisdom – Affects a large selection of spells (Paladin and Cleric mostly). Increases the practices gained (Not relevant at 201!). Also impacts damage reduction of Sanctuary, both through the spell and the Aura
- Constitution – Affects the HP gained at levels (Not relevant anymore). Reduces the amount of physical damage you take.
- Luck – Fun! Does all the things. Bonus stats, increased proc rates, bonus stats via spellups, bonus stats via powerup’ing (Puping).
Now, the max stat at 201 is 600 (including spells and gear). Gear and spells are limited to 200 + 5 for a class bonus, and 200+10 for your pclass stat. For eg – PPsi has a max of 205 to all stats and 210 for Int. This means you want to train your stats that you want to max to 395/390.
How to determine what stats you want
Regardless of your class, you will want Luck. Luck at 600 stats gives a +6 bonus qp when you complete a quest. It’s not 100% triggered, but when it does, that’s really helpful. So then it becomes a combination of the other stats. A good baseline is found below:
Cleric – Wis, Luck and Con. This helps make you tankier, able to soak damage and do decent output on your damage. The rest can be spread but a decent Str and Dex allow you to supplement spellcasting with good weapon damage. Int can be a dumpstat here, but if you’re looking to do any dispelling (mobs, players in PK), Int is critical
Psi – Int, Wis and Con. Int and Wis maximize your spells, (You can actually get away with 350 wis, but I prefer 395 to do enchanting – See Below). Str is a dumpstat if you’re Psi as a Navigator (great for first time 201’s to avoid certain areas).
Warrior – Str, Con and Dex. Gotta land those hits, and gotta soak. Int is your dumpstat.
Thief – Str, Dex and Con. Same thing above, don’t want to die. Int is again a dumpstat.
Ranger – Int, Wis and Con. Maximize spelldamage, survive more.
Mage – Int, Str and Con. All the spelldamage. Dex and Str are less important, but help with damage output.
Paladin – All the stats. Sadly, Paladin best performs with high Str, Dex, Int, Wis and Con. Luck is hard to dump as a stat.
The best way to build, is look at these suggestions, and look at what your math would be. Say you’re a PThief, and you want to max Str, Dex and Luck to start. This means 390+395+395 = 1180, so you have 545 to assign to the other stats. I’d recommend a 200 Wis and Con, leaving you with 145 int. You can play with these (consider a free rebuild after you’ve maxxed stats). Potential (a high qp investment, not recommended until you have Aard gear and Wishes out the wazoo) will help with this, but is not recommended for low tiers.
Step 2 – Gear
You’re now 201, what do you do? You need gear. Eqsearch is your friend. Watch the market for cheap 201 gear. This will be updated at some point (We can start compiling good items).
What are you looking for in gear? You will want to max stats first, so ensuring you’re getting 200 from your gears + spells (You can check via the Stats command). Once there, you want to look for Damroll and Hitroll. Hitroll is only good until 1200, where it’s soft capped (You can function with a lot less but 1200 is needed for any 201 PK). Damroll just increases your melee weapon damage.
Buy yourself a 201 Aard aura, Breastplate, Gloves, Bracers and weapons. These have some of the best DR/HR options and best damage at 201. 201 weapons also are really good to tpenchant (Spend tp to increase the hr/dr of the weapon to 1/2 the weapon’s level – so a 201 can have 100 HR/DR before enchants). NOTE: DO NOT ENCHANT YOUR 201 WEAPONS BEFORE FINISHING WITH TPENCHANTING. I cannot stress this enough. If one of HR/DR goes over 100, you cannot get it. Ie, you enchant your weapon with +6 dr. Now you tpenchant, you’ll be capped at 100dr/94hr. This is bad.
Step 3: Where and How to Pup
Step 4: Epics
Step 5: Enchanting
As a PRanger I’ve focused on Wis/Con & Luck because all of the Ranger spells I’ve looked at are affected by those and not INT according to help files. I haven’t played that long, so maybe there’s hidden bonuses for INT?