Quote (Denied @ May 6 2012 06:47am)
as i said in my first post
"i don't want to buy things from player shops/get handouts if at all possible"
Hate to say it, but this mentality is just not very good for this type of game. I understand wanting to work for your own progression and gear, but the issue you will run into is that this game relies so heavily on RNG that it is can be extremely difficult, time consuming, and boring to find every single piece of gear you might want (as you have already started to experience in ES).
As an example, a good core of characters to have for running upper-echelon survival would be something like this:
Trap Huntress
Aura Monk
Wall EV
Buff Beam EV
Tower Count/Squire
or
Active (hybridish) Count/Squire
DPS (barb, hunt, monk even)
Granted, you do not
need to have all of these characters, but this is the kind of thing you're shooting for. In order to gear these characters appropriately you are looking at 7 different sets of gear that are all somewhat unique to their respective builder. The trap hunt needs somewhat even tower stats across the board, favoring, if anything tdmg, thp, tspeed. The aura monk will require somewhat even tower stats across the board favoring thp, trange. Wall EV - an entire set of gear that can max out on thp, other stats don't matter. Buff Beam EV - somewhat even across the board, favoring tdmg, tspeed. Tower count - tower stats heavily favoring tdmg, tspeed. Active count - good tower stats favoring tdmg
and good hero hp, cast rate and resists. DPS char - good hero stats favoring hero dmg, hero hp, cast rate, good resists. Considering these facts, it takes a considerable amount of farming time to come up with all these respective gear sets.
Now, yes, it is entirely possible to grind out the farming slowly moving your way up all on your own, but buying things in shops is part of the game. It's how you combat the RNG. Statistically, you could farm for days on end and not find a single useful piece of gear because of how random the stat distributions can be. If you think about it, you still farmed for it yourself because you had to come up with the money somehow. My advice is to acquire (via shop) a strong enough set of gear for your squire that you can easily farm insane GC (for powerleveling around 800/1200/500/500 ought to make it easy) and then work towards making more characters and farming your own gear. The nightmare difficulty ramp is steep at the beginning but starts to plateau a bit once you can clear ES and alch labs and then begin doing misty.
I guess what it comes down to is that this game is a huge grind fest, especially if you aren't accepting any sort of outside help. My best advice would be to try and tag along in public insane GC games for leveling and keep farming ES/alch labs for mana/loot. It will take a while but that's the pathway available to you.
Lastly, I figure you'll say no to this but I'll offer anyway: I would be down to help augment your current squire gear if you are interested, I'm sure I have plenty of pieces that would be upgrades for you that I would not miss. Either that or you're welcome to hop into a snoozefest mana farm that would probably net you more mana than you have had to date. Whatever you decide, good luck.
This post was edited by Darkrift on May 6 2012 04:28pm