The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 20: Here Comes the Grind

Welcome to a new project, experiment, challenge or whatever you wanna call it. Normally experiencing the content with well-geared toons, I figured it would be quite interesting to approach the game from the perspective of a casual player. How does it feel starting from scratch and build up a character without the help of your mains? How long does it take until you are geared enough for the latest endgame content? Welcome to the Lowbie Diaries, it should be fun!


Lowbie on Striped Owlbear
Lowbie on Striped Owlbear

The lowbie has an epic mount! I did that Raptr point giveaway and actually got the Owlbear a day before expiration. Phew! Coming from a 50% one it really feels like lightspeed and although it’s not really progression relevant (at least not until Module 9) and there’s tons of other stuff to put your AD into, the convenience upgrade makes it hard to not go for a mount as first major investment of the game. It also fixes a minor gameplay related issue. If you happen to run dragons with the big boys, they sometimes kill them so fast that you need the speed to keep up.

Otherwise the lowbie has hit the full grind now. The campaigns, minus the two Tiamat boons, are done, and all farmable gear is acquired. So everything that’s left is getting AD and RP. My regular session starts with circling the campaigns for a good hour to be able to forge keys, getting XP for overflow rewards and some gold and then do dungeons and dragon runs.

The worst thing is that after hitting epic on Artifact Gear, there is no longer any sense of progression. RPs for Artifacts and Enchantments drop everywhere and in case you get really impatient there’s tons of bot support on the Auction House. Artifact Gear though you have to fully grind yourself and since an account like this doesn’t come with an army of leadership zombies, there are limited ways to gain RPs for the gear. Even without the bots the discrepancy between Artifact Gear and other refining would be amazing. Artifacts need like twice as much RP, but all four of them feel easier to level than one piece of gear.

It’s funny that even at my item level slightly above 2,700, you don’t really have something to strive for in PVE. Granted, I’m still not in a guild, which takes away quite a lot of additional grind endgame, but right now I’m already able to contribute and complete any content on a decent level. For my build it mainly means being able to survive and outheal certain situations and hits on my own while providing buffs for the party. I rarely die in epic Demogorgon and although I still don’t get picked up for T2s as much, I feel like I’m more of an asset than liability. Not having that one dungeon that you haven’t beaten yet and need to gear up first to master takes away a lot of incentive to go out there every day and do the same stuff over and over again.

The amount of AD I’m able to get per day varies, but normally a session nets me about 25k of rough AD. An active player that invests more time in a character is able to get enough salvage to feed a second char. I have in fact leveled a second character slot up to the invocation quest, but I’m hardly ever transferring salvage over. Even if I have surplus, it’s going to be needed for a day on which I can’t play or don’t hit the cap.

What I did though is setting up two additional VIP accounts for the lowbie. The numbers say you should be able to renew the subscription after 10-15 day solely by reselling the drops and the rest can be used for the main. I’m pretty sure it’s nothing PWE likes, but the way they set up the game players hardly have a choice.

See you next week!


The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 15: Campaign And Gold Issues
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 16: Finishing Campaigns And Gear Goal Update
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 17: Tiamat Loot Luck And Epic Demogorgon
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 18: VIP Benefits And Other Convenience Tweaks
The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 19: Professions, Companion And Mount Goals


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j0Shi

j0Shi plays the Neverwinter MMORPG since the open BETA in 2013 and is a regular contributor to the blog and the whole UN:Project. Originally a Guardian Fighter, he has built up ALTs of all classes and plays on BIS/near-BIS level.