Explain Reincarnation To Me Like I'm Dumb

[Zandafolf]

So I'm a first life lvl 20 warlock, haven't ever done reaper or anything. I have VIP, expansion trove, Sharn, Isles of Dread, and Vecna. Asking for advice on whether it would be smart to reincarnate now or wait till 30.

Looking around at different threads on here and on reddit I quickly lose track of optimization talk and terms that I'm not familiar with. It'll quickly go off the rails when someone's like "ok so first you *sentence that's mostly acronym* and then you slayer potion and then you run with this spreadsheet of set items you haven't farmed yet and then *sentence that's mostly acronym* and then you're 27 and then..."

Slow it down for me please. I don't have the group, past lives, gear trove, or understanding of the game to speedrun my character to cap in a few hours.

 

[Archest]

If your premium you cant open elite or reaper until after your 3rd life. so do 3 at 20 1st. then expand into epics. your VIP, it's not an issue. it takes longer to get the benefits of favor rewards in HC for premium players as well as difficulty lock out. not an issue for VIP, I should add not when your grouping with an opener.
In addition there is the learning curve of feat selection and enhancement tree selecting and then selecting epic enhancement tree and enhancements on them.
Multiclassing do you understand it? how it effects the strengths of the toon which effects play style?
You can explore the heroic enhancement trees you currently have slowing down the selection of the enhancements and understanding what they actually do . selecting a melee attack when your a pure spell castor is pointless, even if your using a sword and board for malee range. unless you back it up but than your multitasking ( not necessary multiclassing) . Eldritch Knight as an example.
If your under this in a knowledge of the game than start there in heroics then expand

 

[saekee]

In general it is a great idea to play ‘at cap’ (level 32) because you get way more reaper ‘xp’ (experience points), better stuff to feed your sentient jewels, and threads of fate from raids (threads allow upgrades and purchases of various stuff—check it out on wiki). There are boosts to first-time reaper xp bonuses too. Also with a capped character you can revisit lower level quests and grab future items for future characters very easily.

For past lives, epic ones are very powerful. So the idea is to go to level 32; reincaranate to 20; go back to 32; reincarnate to 20; then reincarante to 1. You can do reincarnations with iconic lives to 15 and gain two past lives (iconic plus class) as well.

edit: as mentioned in posts after this one, you earn also Tokens of the Twelve and their combinable fragments from older ebberron quests which can be used to buy a heart needed for true reincarnation at 20. Epic reincarnation uses Heart Seeds and Commendations—heart seeds are given when completing an epic/legendary quest with your toon from level 30 whereas Commendations are in the dropdown reward list of epic quests.

 

[Kryxal]

Whatever you do, you'll want 20 Tokens of the Twelve, from older quest end chests. See how the game feels in epics before you decide. Also, how have you not done reaper, no grouping?

 

[Spook]

If this was an alt I would recommend TRing at 20 but a true first lifer probably won’t have the tokens to buy hearts yet. So I recommend going to at least 30 making sure you grab enough tokens along the way.

 

[Archest]

If this was an alt I would recommend TRing at 20 but a true first lifer probably won’t have the tokens to buy hearts yet. So I recommend going to at least 30 making sure you grab enough tokens along the way.

if not just for the 1st time experience you'll get there eventually its faster from 20 - 30 then 1-20.

 

[Zandafolf]

Whatever you do, you'll want 20 Tokens of the Twelve, from older quest end chests. See how the game feels in epics before you decide. Also, how have you not done reaper, no grouping?

I leveled entirely solo. I would like to find a group to run with and farm stuff because I've started to run into a lot of roadblocks in some of the harder content. The other day I made a thread asking about building and gearing and it got me to the point I'm at.

I'm not new to MMO's, just new to DDO specifically.

 

[Dythan]

Server? I run solo mostly, but was a returning gamer from before, with a guild ship. If your not in a guild, I recommend finding one. The buffs provided are a nice boost, and community is what makes MMO worth playing.

On the reincarnation question, I would go to 30+. The power inflation with epic feats and weapons is great. It made my character go from good, to fun to play. Start in epic borderlands, and get a set of lv 21 gear, should be able to rep most slots.

 

[Zandafolf]

Server? I run solo mostly, but was a returning gamer from before, with a guild ship. If your not in a guild, I recommend finding one. The buffs provided are a nice boost, and community is what makes MMO worth playing.

On the reincarnation question, I would go to 30+. The power inflation with epic feats and weapons is great. It made my character go from good, to fun to play. Start in epic borderlands, and get a set of lv 21 gear, should be able to rep most slots.

I currently play on Khyber. There seemed to be mostly groups running high end saga trains that my character couldn't do and probably wouldn't be invited to. There wasn't many groups just randomly doing LFG. I might do another thread.

 

[Tanyajanfel]

The question of reincarnating is always a preferance. Pros and cons.

If you tr (true reincarnate) now, you will get a past life, (probably warlock), starting back at level 1, on a second lifer.

If you tr later, you could have an epic past life, and a warlock past life. But it will take a little more time. You can tr from level 30, back down to level 20 to get one epic past life, and then at 20 you can TR back to level 1, to get a heroic past life, (racial, or class)

If its your first life, I would highly recommenced playing around in epics (20-30) and checking out epic destinies. They offer a lot over versatility to just about any character, and help fill in where is lacking. Its a whole new world.

Depending on your pact on your warlock, Draconic can add a lot of firepower, as well as primal. And thats just to start, other can offer a lot of survivability.

My first trip to epics was a bit rough, on an arti, doing mostly easy difficulty. But it was a lot of fun seeing some of these quests.

In order to TR, you are going to need tokens of the 12, unless you buy a heart from the store. So you are going to be in epics for a few levels. 20 tokens (I believe) which amounts to 20 quests for the most part, although some will give you more then 1. wiki has a good list of those, mostly older epic eberron quests, like von, house d chain, house p, and so on. (also depends on the level difficulty) also, so ok gear you can get from those and craft into level 20 gear relatively easy now.

when you do TR, think about what you want to play as next life. There is a lot of amazing gear in sharn, isle of dread, and vecna. So if you want to farm out some of the level gear, you can go run those level 7 quests on elite, with no problem, and have a better chance of getting gear, then if you were running them on hard, or easy before. Its also a nice way to get to know a quest, and it will be easier to run it at a high difficulty next life.

You can also, not tr, keep the warlock at cap, and play quests for a while. There is a rather extensive list of quests to run, that will keep you busy for some time. You can also start another character, to try something different, and use the warlock to farm some gear for them.

There are a lot of options, and you can do any of them. Recommendation would be, dont be in a hurry to level, (jump into explores with a slayer pot and xp potion.) you will fly by in levels, but not get to play any of the awesome quests. (or find the ones you really dont like, not many in my opinion, but they are out there)


last, yeah, group up, and find a guild, (not on khyber or would help you out) but if its anything like sarlona, group up, and then be honest and say “kinda new, dont know the quest well, or at all” most people either dont care, or are very encouraging. Been playing for a while, but just got out to vecna, and let a few groups know that I had never been out there, had more then a few people happy to lead me through, or show me around.

Again, only play how you want, so if you want to solo everything, do that. I would check out some videos on you tube that have some amazing examples of what is possible solo. Give you something to shoot for. But, if you are struggling with some of the quests, grouping up can help.

 

[Matuse]

You want to go to 32.

1- In order to reincarnate without wasting store points on a reincarnation heart, you will be wanting to do a bunch of epic Eberron content for tokens of the twelve. Twenty of them are needed to buy a reincarnation heart to go back to 1. This is not difficult at all to get in-game, so don't spend points on the heart. Total waste. Until you have everything, points are to be spent on content, the shared bank (you have it while VIP, but if you ever drop VIP it will go away and it's too useful to not have, but just the base 30 slot version is fine), classes, and races - probably in that order.

2- Going from 20-32 will get you a lot more experience with the game as a whole, and you'll earn a bunch more favor to get more store points to buy the shinies. Learning the Epic Destiny system is a lot easier than it was before the revamp, but there's still a lot to it.

3- Higher level means you will be able to more easily obtain and store away items for future lives. Having to re-farm or gear from scratch on a paladin life because all you have is Warlock gear is...sub-optimal.

4- For the time being, you only need to earn 30 -> 32 once. In all future lives (until the level cap goes up enough that SSG discontinues the practice), you will only need to get to 30 and then the game will bump you to 32 automatically. One and done.

5- In general, epic past lives are better than the others. You can pick which life you want so you're not confined by build to take whichever ones you want, each epic life comes with both a passive bonus that is always on, and a stance bonus that you can choose between. The bonuses themselves are also very strong and the passive bonuses are good for ALL builds, where a lot of heroic life bonuses are only good if your current build has the right spells/abilities to take advantage of them. Every possible build can use more elemental damage absorb, every possible build can use more hitpoints. Not everybody finds extra turning attempts or bard songs to be beneficial. Also, more epic past lives means more destiny points to make your future past lives stronger by being able to buy more destiny abilities.

6- At 32 you will have a bigger opportunity to do some raiding if that's your thing. You said you solo'd your way up, and that's perfectly fine (I do it myself), but the raids are a big part of the game at cap, and there's things like threads of fate or the spark of dream that are only obtained via raids.

7- A huge part of 20+ player power are sentient weapons. Being at cap means you can get a jewel and do the quests that drop filigrees to fill the jewels as well as the extra named stuff to feed the jewel and level it up.

 

[axel15810]

If you've never played in epics I'd encourage you to play to 32 in order to experience epics and endgame content. Or atleast level to 30. Maybe do some raids. Once at 30 if you want to heroic TR you can do an epic reincarnation first to go from 30 to 20 to get an epic past lie feat, then immediately do a heroic reincarnation to go from 20 to 1 and get a heroic past life feat as well if you want. You also may want to try and get some reaper points, which are far easier to get at endgame b/c Legendary content gives a huge extra first time bonus to reaper XP. Getting some reaper points will make future reincarnations of any kind easier. It is a permanent power increase to your character. If you can PUG a few R4 legendary sagas you should be able to get 10 reaper points or so with the first time bonus.

This all just depends on what you want to do, some people constantly reincarnate and others like me mostly stay at endgame.

The ddowiki page is really good and thorough on reincarnation if you haven't read it. It will likely answer most of your questions: https://ddowiki.com/page/Reincarnation

 

[LeoLionxxx]

Slow it down for me please

Hopefully short and concise version:

Yes, go from 20 to 30.

In early Epics (20 to 24ish), focus on Content which gives "Tokens of the 12". Collect 20 of those tokens. Past that, enjoy the game normally while you level up.

As you play in Epic, collect the "Commendations of Valor" offered in the end reward lists. You will eventually double click on this stack to purchase "Heart Seeds".

When you reach 30, you will continue to gain XP, but XP above 30 is not lost when you reincarnate. At that LV range swap to collecting "Heart Seeds" from the end reward list.

At any point above 30, you can perform "Epic Reincarnation" and then "Heroic Reincarnation".

- Talk to the Magma Elemental in The Twelve to buy a "Heroic Heart of Wood"*
- Double click on your "Commendations of Valor" stack to buy an "Epic Heart of Wood"

Take these 2 items to the "Life Shaper" in the Hall of Heroes in the Marketplace. Tell her you want to do an Epic Reincarnation and follow the instructions; choose whatever feat looks the best to you and your playstyle.

Close the game and log back in to make sure everything is saved properly.

On the Char selection screens, click "reincarnate". You will then be prompted to level from 1 to 20; just blaze through that, your new build won't matter. When that's done, go to the Life Shaper again and tell her you want to do a "heroic reincarnation". Follow the steps on screen (no choices that time).

Close the game and log back in to make sure everything is saved properly.

On the Char selection screens, click "reincarnate". Now choose whoever new race and class combination you want!

Not as short as I had hoped, but hopefully easy to follow!

---
*You can alternatively choose a "Heroic Heart of Blood" and do a "Racial Reincarnation" to get a different "Past Life Feat" based on your race instead of your class.

 

[Kryxal]

The first racial PL is worth rather less than a single heroic PL (if it's a useful PL), but three racials tend to be a fair bump, +1 to a skill, a stat and an extra racial AP. Later on, it's probably worth doing racials with epics and getting heroics via iconics (which you take 15-30 instead).

 

[C-Dog]

... and then *sentence that's mostly acronym* and then you're 27 and then..."

First, grats on 20!

Then - I feel ya. I remember being new, and the jibberish that is the "veteran's shorthand" for this game. Oy. Maybe in Esperanto, pls - I don't speak that, but at least there are on-line translators, unlike DDO-ese.

This may help, a bit - https://ddowiki.com/page/Glossary (link to "Glossary" in the header at the top of every DDOWiki page).

...
Slow it down for me please. I don't have the group, past lives, gear trove, or understanding of the game to speedrun my character to cap in a few hours.

Before we start, it's important to emphasize that the type(s) of True Reincarnations available are determined solely by your current race, never your next/planned race. You Reincarnate from your actual, current race, not to a theoritically planned race after this one. TR (True Reincarnation) resets you back to "start" - whether you later choose to start as Heroic Race (which starts at Level 1) or Iconic Race (which starts at Level 15) is a decision that is not important at the time of Reincarnation., so you don't even have to have made that decision when you reincarnate (altho' it's strongly recommended not to wait on the new build*).

(* There are known bugs possible if your character is left "in limbo" after a Reincarnation and before starting their new life if the Server is Reset! You want to have your new Build Plan handy and get it done asap - see here.)​

Now, first, there are 2 basic categories for Reincarnation - True Reincarnation and not. A True Reincarnation (TR) re-sets the character back to starting - Level 1 if your next build is a Heroic Races, Level 15 if an Iconic race. TR's include Heroic True Reincarnation*, Racial Reincarnation, and Iconic Reincarnation - that's it. The first 2 TR's (of any type) increase the starting build points for that character - first to 34** (for 2nd life), then to 36* (for 3rd and successive lives); 36 is the max. All True Reincarnations give some sort of Past Life (PL) bonus, and these stack (up to 3 lives each). TR's keep all past bonuses, but reset almost everything else, most significantly your Experience and Favor. 2nd Life is +50% more XP for Heroic to Level 20, 3rd (and successive) lives are +100% more XP, twice the amount vs 1st life. In all 3 of these, you then have to go to 20 (for Heroic/Racial races) or 30 (for Iconic, which start at 15) before you can do any TR again.

(* Note that Heroic Incarnation, for a Class-based Past Life (vs. Racial) was the first and only years, and is often referred to as "TR". Racial Reincarnation is also a form of True Reincarnation and works identically, but they are often distinuished as TR/RR. When someone says "just TR at 20" they (usually) mean either class- or racial- past life. Iconics can only "TR" at 30, via their IR.)​

(** Not for Drow; they go 30 then 32)​

The 2 sub-types of "not True" are Lesser Reincarnations (LR) and Epic Reincarnations (ER). Lesser Reincarnations are always a "rebuild/change of plan" of character to some extent, but without completely resetting back to starting point. LR's keep all Favor and XP, and then the character continues from where ever they were before the LR, but (hopefully, ahem) improved. Epic Reincarnation (ER) resets you back from 30 to 20 (regardless of race, Heroic or Iconic), so you can do that run again, or so you can get the ER PL (Epic Reincarnatin Past Life) bonus and then TR (True Reincarnate*). The in-game mechanics of ER involves rebuilding the character, so there's an option to change things while you do that.

(* Note that the math of Iconic Reincarnation prevents an ER to an IR; Iconics must be Level 30 for their Iconic (True) Reincarnation, so for them, when they're 30 it's a choice of one or the other, never ER followed by TR, which only Heroic Races can do.)​

So...

TR = HR, RR & IR​

not TR = LR and ER​

​

Now, as far as "Which is best first?", the advantage of a quick Heroic/Racial TR (True Reincarnation) at 20 is "more build points", and (probably) an improved build over your first attempt. I would hazard that the (vast) majority of 1st life characters that make 20 are NOT strong enough to go on to 30 and an Epic Reincarnation; the build itself could be stronger, they could have (much!) better gear, and the player themself could be more experienced with the game itself, how to best play their character. 30 might be a real slog.

Otoh, the advantage of pushing on now to 30 is that you don't have to get back to where you already are currently (and with +50% more XP needed for 2nd life), you can farm more gear for your 2nd lives, and ER (Epic Reincarnation, from 30 back to 20) bonuses tend to be a little stronger than Heroic-... altho' they are all small (to start, before they stack up), so that may be a minor consideration. And you can complete Epic Sagas, which offer (a very small selection of) random free +3 Skill tomes - if you're going to 30, those are nice to chase* before you ER. And if you're chasing Reaper XP (RXP), end-game offers the most/quest. So there's that.

(* wait on collecting the tome until you see what the other Sagas offer; there are a dozen or so possible, so see what duplicates are there in later Sagas you finish, and once you see all offerings you can choose the best out of the hands you're dealt.)​

Myself, all things equal I always advise TR at 20 (or see below). Grab the PL bonus, rebuild with 34 points,, enjoy the gear you have and build on that. The only disincentive is the XP, and XP is easy in today's game - you'll be back at 20 before you know it, especially now that you're 1) stronger, by several metrics, and 2) more familiar with the game and quests.

There is a middle ground - play Epic for now, farm a little Epic gear, get enough RXP for Reaper Core enhancements (which work in non-Reaper quests), get a little tougher to solo those higher-Heroic farms, maybe finish a couple of the lower Epic Sagas (maybe twice?), get some experience in Epic and around Eveningstar, and then TR when you're Level 23 or so. Or look down and realize you're well into Level 27, and 30 isn't that far after all.

Either way, haff fun stomin da cassul!
o7

 

[dur]

You want to go to 32.

1- In order to reincarnate without wasting store points on a reincarnation heart, you will be wanting to do a bunch of epic Eberron content for tokens of the twelve. Twenty of them are needed to buy a reincarnation heart to go back to 1. This is not difficult at all to get in-game, so don't spend points on the heart. Total waste. Until you have everything, points are to be spent on content, the shared bank (you have it while VIP, but if you ever drop VIP it will go away and it's too useful to not have, but just the base 30 slot version is fine), classes, and races - probably in that order.

Heart Seeds. Epics drop tons of them. *@ end chest or turn-in. Don't forget: we're at the Heroic/Epic/Legendary stage.

 

[Br4d]

If I were brand new and I had money to spend I would definitely get 2 heroic lives before I did anything else. I'd do this to get to 36 build points and then I'd plan not to heroic reincarnate again until I had several epic lives in the build also.

This involves buying two heroic hearts from the store and probably buying a bunch of XP pots because the heroic grind is the hardest in the game due to increasing XP costs after the first life.

If I was not planning to spend much I'd go to 30 first and farm some Tokens of the Twelve and Heart Seeds, probably 40 Tokens and whatever I could stomach at 30 to do an Epic Past Life alongside the Heroic Past Life and then back to 20 and HPL again.

 

[Scrag]

This involves buying two heroic hearts from the store and probably buying a bunch of XP pots because the heroic grind is the hardest in the game due to increasing XP costs after the first life.

If you throw a lfm up saying farm- pass tokens please (noob) for that one super fast quest that gives tokens. People are understanding and will frequently pass theirs to you, or just help out for no other reason than to help the noob get their second life etc.
(weird outdoor with some water and what looks like bamboo and two gates you can jump over (i think) or shoot with an arrow, and a guy that rides piggy back on an ogre or something)

 

[HoopleHead]

You die.... then you not dead... wash, rinse, repeat, profit

 

[dur]

If I were brand new and I had money to spend I would definitely get 2 heroic lives before I did anything else. I'd do this to get to 36 build points and then I'd plan not to heroic reincarnate again until I had several epic lives in the build also.

This involves buying two heroic hearts from the store and probably buying a bunch of XP pots because the heroic grind is the hardest in the game due to increasing XP costs after the first life.

If I was not planning to spend much I'd go to 30 first and farm some Tokens of the Twelve and Heart Seeds, probably 40 Tokens and whatever I could stomach at 30 to do an Epic Past Life alongside the Heroic Past Life and then back to 20 and HPL again.

Yeah.. I don't wanna spend anymore USD, personally, and I've got enough other toons that can farm Heart Seeds.

It's more a time thing now.