When to stop?

[Keyjockey]

I am a new player and I have a question, I cannot get answered.
I have asked many people in game, and no one has been able to answer me.


From what I understand there is heroic 1-20, epic 21-30 and lastly legendary 31+ ...



I heard legendary is not very fun, so I don't plan on playing that, and I have a sort of understanding of the fact that this game is very different from other games in terms of end game... in that is doesn't (?) have an endgame...?
I am just very confused as to how I'm supposed to play the game, and I would like some advice.

So far I love the game and I love dnd in general, and I am in no way trying to be negative or condescending, just trying to get a better understanding of how the game is set up.


I know about reincarnations, and I thought about doing those. Then I heard you can only reincarnate 2 times as a certain class/race, and I don't want to change my character – I want to be a human sorcerer as my only goal, so suddenly changing him to become a halfling rogue is not in the cards for me.
So I thought about reincarnating him three times and then stop at... ?
Where?


I am quite confused about the idea of finishing a character and/or making a character "good" or "done" if there is no end game, and the max level content is in legendary, which (from what I've heard) many people don't play.



So... no matter how I stop my leveling process and finalize my character, will he not just end up being a twink? Like... what is the end goal? Or what are some examples and ideas of an end goal for a character, where I can stop, make him better and do some semblance of end game content? Are there raids and end game content in level 17? 25? Or is it just an endless loop of leveling characters?

 

[DBZ]

Legendary is the best who told u that lied

If we ever get an end game it will be there

Keep 1 main at cap as a sorc farmer start a new toon for all your trs

 

[Phoenicis]

There is an 'End Game' of sorts, High reaper cap raids.

To be successful you need a) good gear, b) a solid build and c) past lives appropriate to the build you are in.

In other games finishing a character means getting to cap, getting the best gear and raiding, Finishing a character is different in DDO, involves many many many past lives, class, racial, iconic and epic. That said, you don't HAVE to get all the past lives to contribute in high reaper cap raids, but it does help.

Then I heard you can only reincarnate 2 times as a certain class/race, and I don't want to change my character – I want to be a human sorcerer as my only goal, so suddenly changing him to become a halfling rogue is not in the cards for me.

This is not -exactly- accurate. For class TRs you only gain benifits for the first three of the same class. You can class reincarnate after that, but would gain no additional bonuses. Same for Race reincarnations, you get three distinct bonuses for the first three racial reincarnations You can racial reincarnate after that, but will gain no further bonuses. Epic reincarnations (Iconic as well) are the same, each 'past life feat' will stack three times.

 

[Epicsoul]

I am a new player and I have a question, I cannot get answered.
I have asked many people in game, and no one has been able to answer me.


From what I understand there is heroic 1-20, epic 21-30 and lastly legendary 31+ ...

I would consider 1-19 heroic, 20-29 epic, and 30+ legendary.

I heard legendary is not very fun, so I don't plan on playing that, and I have a sort of understanding of the fact that this game is very different from other games in terms of end game... in that is doesn't (?) have an endgame...?
I am just very confused as to how I'm supposed to play the game, and I would like some advice.

Hard disagree. I find Legendary to be very fun. I would agree that endgame is not traditional, as reincarnating allows a character to 'start over' with a bit of added power each time.

So far I love the game and I love dnd in general, and I am in no way trying to be negative or condescending, just trying to get a better understanding of how the game is set up.


I know about reincarnations, and I thought about doing those. Then I heard you can only reincarnate 2 times as a certain class/race, and I don't want to change my character – I want to be a human sorcerer as my only goal, so suddenly changing him to become a halfling rogue is not in the cards for me.
So I thought about reincarnating him three times and then stop at... ?
Where?

https://ddowiki.com/page/reincarnation is a great resource for anything DDO, but this is the reincarnation page. It's a complicated system, and you current understanding of it is not correct.

You can TR into a sorcerer as much as you want. However, you will only fain past lives benefits from True Reincarnating as a Sorcerer three times. There's racial past lives as well, and you can play as a sorc for every race if you wanted. But that's still a simple overview, check out the ddowiki.

I am quite confused about the idea of finishing a character and/or making a character "good" or "done" if there is no end game, and the max level content is in legendary, which (from what I've heard) many people don't play.



So... no matter how I stop my leveling process and finalize my character, will he not just end up being a twink? Like... what is the end goal? Or what are some examples and ideas of an end goal for a character, where I can stop, make him better and do some semblance of end game content? Are there raids and end game content in level 17? 25? Or is it just an endless loop of leveling characters?

The raid scene in DDO is almost exclusive at level cap (which is 34 at the moment). I enjoy raiding very much, as you'll find some of the game's best gear in raids, and it's also fun to complete with 11 other people. But what classifies as end game will depend on the player and the goals. Some will continue to reincarnate until they get every past life (small incremental power creep that's permanent on a character), but there's also reaper mode, raids, gearing, Epic Destinies, etc.

 

[Solarpower]

The most general process is :
Level up to 30 (20) - Reincarnate - Level up to 30 (20) - Reincarnate - Level up to 30 (20) - Reincarnate - ... - repeat till you'll get bored or/and when you'll get all the bonuses Reincarnation can give you.

DDO is more about playing in different builds then the "end game", new content can come out at any level. You may park your character on the max level and use in only for raiding for example, but what are you going to do if the next 3-4 adventure packs/expansions will be for levels 3-5 ?

 

[norriskwondo]

I just got my first characters up to legendary. I find legendary quite fun, as long as you have adequate equipment for them, and careful of your character builds. You get a but load of resources in some of the legendary maps. Definitely get at least one of your characters in legendary, and maybe have one do heroic, and then swap them out periodically.

 

[rabidfox]

My tactic is level to cap, run some reapers (at whatever difficulty the party I'm in can handle) & raids for a few days/weeks, TR and repeat. It lets one build up some reaper points nicely, get a stash of gear at cap, and slowly build past lives too.

 

[Dythan]

DDO is very much about the journey, not the destination. Take a character all the way to 30+, think about the kind of toon you want to play next, farm a bit of gear for it at cap, then reincarnate and do the journey again. So much content at every level break, you can do mostly new adventures for 3-4 lives.

 

[Dandonk]

I heard legendary is not very fun

I like running new builds up through levels. But I also like playing a while at cap (legendary). Both have their charms, and when I feel bored with one part, I do the other.

Legendary, especially on reaper difficulty, does demand more from the character in terms of build, gear, and so on. So some build that perform well while levelling, may not necessarily do as well at cap. But I urge you to try it out before completely dismissing it. If you don't like it, hey, that's fair. But you won't know 'till you try

in that is doesn't (?) have an endgame...?

Well, we do, kinda. There's high skull reaper questing, raids (on reaper if you can find a good enough group for it).... and yes, there's the True Reincarnation part, starting over again with some extra bonuses.

I know about reincarnations, and I thought about doing those. Then I heard you can only reincarnate 2 times as a certain class/race, and I don't want to change my character – I want to be a human sorcerer as my only goal, so suddenly changing him to become a halfling rogue is not in the cards for me.
So I thought about reincarnating him three times and then stop at... ?

To be a good sorcerer, or anything really, you don't need all the past lives. But getting some will definitely help. Wizard will get you spell penetration, favored soul some of that as well plus a bit of spell points, and a few others.

Look at the wiki https://ddowiki.com/page/Past_Life_Feats under free feats, to see what might help you. And which you can skip

I am quite confused about the idea of finishing a character and/or making a character "good" or "done" if there is no end game, and the max level content is in legendary, which (from what I've heard) many people don't play.

Some people are insane (like me), and take "finishing" a character to mean getting every single past life and then finding a good gear setup. Other people are more sane and just get enough past lives (or even none) and outfit a character to do well in raids and quests at cap. There are many ways to play this game, thankfully.

There are generally many people at cap on my server (Orien), though I will admit that in my EU play time, lately it's been somewhat slow. But it goes up and down, nothing unusual in that.

Like... what is the end goal? Or what are some examples and ideas of an end goal for a character, where I can stop, make him better and do some semblance of end game content? Are there raids and end game content in level 17? 25? Or is it just an endless loop of leveling characters?

I have two main characters, with all past lives. They're at cap, doing raids as well as high reaper questing. I also have a healer at cap, who has just two past lives - he's fine for healing a raid. And another alt, a ranged attacker with about a dozen more or less random past lives, also at cap doing raids,

The end goal for me, and I hope for most people, is having fun. But I agree that for most, including me, some sort of goal or progression helps keeping things fun. So yeah, I do reincarnations on my mains (even after they have all past lives and get no further benefit) just to try out new builds. And then I try them out in legendary, to see how they do and farm some of the newest gear.

So... yeah, for some people, there's just an endless loop. But if you find you like the game at cap (like I do), then you can mix it up and have fun there too.

In any case... welcome to DDO! Whatever you do, I hope you have fun while here

 

[Oliphant]

For me Legendary is the best part of it, really the closest thing you will find to a static community on DDO.

 

[Keyjockey]

Okay, thanks everyone for the great help.
It seems I have been misinformed about legendary, and it sounds very interesting.

When you talk about reincarnating, are you talking about true reincarnation or epic reincarnation?
I assume it is automatically epic if I am level 34?

Is it best to reincarnate at level cap or before? And is epic or true best?

 

[Farlino]

I know about reincarnations, and I thought about doing those. Then I heard you can only reincarnate 2 times as a certain class/race,

NO!!!
You can reincarnate as often as you want as whatever you want. BUT after 3 reincarnations of the SAME Race or Class (independent of each other) you don't get the past-life feat reward for THAT SAME reincarnation the 4th time and more.

So 3 times Sorcerer reincarnations give you a past-life feat each. You can keep on reincarnating as sorcerer BUT won't get any feats as rewards for that since 3 is the max for those feats.
The same holds for race: after the 3rd reincarnation as that race you don't get any more past-life feats when you reincarnate as that race.
In essence reincarnation is a way to build you character different (better?) from the previous version AND you get a bonus past-life feat. With 15 classes you can get 15* 3 past-life feats and with 15 basic races you can get the same.

Play your character as you like. Most important: have fun.
Try out different builds on the other servers (also for DDO points bonus from First Time Favor). Maybe you will like another caster type also. Try out a shooter build and a melee build. Each build has its advantages and disadvantages but all are about equal in power (depending situation).

Tips: Check the wiki for info on everything you need to know. Join a guild where guildmates can help you find specific item drops or explain something.

 

[Nebless]

When to stop?​

My stop point is when I've played through all the content I want to. I don't plan on reincarnating, just playing and enjoying myself working through the content.

If I want to start over, that's what alts are for.

 

[Lacci]

When you talk about reincarnating, are you talking about true reincarnation or epic reincarnation?
I assume it is automatically epic if I am level 34?

Is it best to reincarnate at level cap or before? And is epic or true best?

There are three types of reincarnation (four if you include iconics) and each type will give you a certain past life feat as a bonus for your next lives. All these feats are free and stack up three times.
So in your example, you could do three heroic reincarnations as a Sorcerer and get three Sorcerer past life feats (each will give you +1 DC to evocation spells and +20 SP and they will stack). Then you could do three racial reincarnations as a human, which will give you three human racial past life feats (first time will give you +1 to the haggle skill, second one will give you +1 wisdom, third one will give you +1 racial action point that you can spend in your racial enhancement tree)
Each of these reincarnations will set you back from lvl 20+ to 1.
Then there are epic past life feats. Epic past life feats are done at lvl 30+ and will set you back to 20.
There are currently 18 epic past life feats and each one can be acquired (and will stack) three times. So there is plenty to do if you want to board the TR train Even if you want to stay as a human sorcerer.
Check the wiki page to see which past life feats are useful for your playstyle/your character:
https://ddowiki.com/page/Reincarnation

What I usually do is I level a character up to 34 and do an epic reincarnation first, get my epic past life feat, it will set me back to lvl 20, then I immediately do a heroic or racial reincarnation, get that feat and the toon is set back to lvl. 1. I´ll level that toon up to 34 again and repeat the whole process.
If you do a heroic reincarnation at lvl 30+ you basically waste an epic past life feat.

 

[Br4d]

My best advice is to play your Sorceror and have fun. At some point you may decide to give up all of the power they have accumulated for a small past life benefit. This will start you over again at 1 or 15 if you choose to make an Iconic character. The vets on the forum will tell you that it's all about the journey and they're right however if you do not play a lot you're probably better off just playing the Sorc and having fun.

My guess is that the comments you got about Legendary content are from fairly casual players who are not grinding their characters power levels. For Casual players Legendary content is almost unbelievably hard compared to Epics, which is fairly hard compared to Heroics. People on the power grind cannot relate to casual players at all and they don't understand what the differences are for casuals at those levels.

Just have fun. At some point you may decide to hop on the TR train and start accumulating power, however this is a major commitment and cannot really be done in a haphazard way. Also it won't matter if you are not comfortable with movement and the realtime aspects of play that DDO offers. You can have a lot of past lives and still not be able to compete at endgame. It just is what it is.

 

[Seppi Pearlsmith]

Reincarnating 3 times as a Sorceror (heroic true reincarnation) will result in a much better sorecror so if you want to play a sorceror I would advise do 3 sorceror past lives. The play some Epic and reincarnate there (epic reincarnation) coz again, that will make your sorcerer stornger. Also, racial reincarnation will help too.
There is an endgame with legendary reaper raiding but you probably want to do that with a stronger sorcerer. You dont have to but +3DC, +9% crit chance of elemental spells, + a lot of extra survivabily would help a lot.
I like legendary play btw, the people who told you it is bad probably those who don't know the game very well.

 

[Lacci]

Also, if it´s a really new character, you most likely only had to spend 28 points on your attributes at character creation. Reincarnating a couple of times will bring that up to 36 points (I think on the 3rd or 4th life).

 

[woq]

Never take anyones' word at face value in this game or community. Everyone plays differently and in different contexts and there is so much out there to play and enjoy... and not enjoy.

I'd say you and those around you make the game. Whether it is leveling through the early points as fast as possible, or going to max difficulty and struggling through after many attempts over a long period of time with a static group, or roleplaying your way through and reading every line and studying every detail.

It is up to you. Some people here have had closing in on 20 years to make the game what it is to them and cultivate their own social circles to match it. It is up to you to find out what you would like for it to be for you.

 

[TrinityTurtle]

Here's the thing. With ddo, it's all personal waht is good or not. I adore legendary content and running around like a mad turtle, other people don't. I like reaper, other people don't. I like one and done questing to the top earning favor perks and free ddo points to buy crap without money, other people have set high xp fast leveling options. I despite slayers, Ifind it boring, but it's a really popular option.
My point being, YOU decide when it's time to stop. When you're not having fun with the life (or game) anymore.. Don't look to us, because while we can debate it til the end of time, none of us can tell what you will enjoy until you try it out.

 

[Archest]

legendary is the next level above epic. you resurrect in epic and heroic for past life benefits eventually there will be a level 40 cap and another resurrection benefit.
in the mean time you acquire legendary equipment.

and resurrection benefits epics level 20-30 and heroic 1-20
until you reach completionist...which you wont do unless you have a subscription or purchase all the content available to purchase and even then follow up with every new opportunity that enters the game causing you to lose completionist benefits.