Hey everyone! I'm a long time player and new to the forums. I am working on a new build and wanted to create a thread to share my discoveries and create opportunity for discussion about it.
I'm going for a level 20 Quick Learner(QL) build to understand if there is any merit to this sort of path. The basic concept is to grind up to level 80 and only increase QL the whole time. Then to build out your character from there. My thoughts are that the excitement of finally being able to choose a fighting style and specialize after level 80 will drive the player to continue the grind and break through to level 100+ wall with some joy left to experience.
Check out my current stats here:
-------- My Current Stats[\b]
Level: 62
Health Points (HP): 58
Action Points (AP): 10
Attack Cost: 5
Attack Chance: 224
Attack Damage: 46-63
Critical hit skill: -4
Block Chance: 134
Damage Resistance: 2
Base Stats[\b]
Max HP: 50
Max AP: 10
Attack Chance: 155
Attack Damage: 19
Block Chance: 66
Skills
Quick Learner: 15
Heavy Armor Proficiency: 1
Level Grinding Location Statistics
Charwood Village
Cabin to Mineshaft (Round-trip)
(Level 50+)
Starting from cabin I clear the way to Charwood village and clear all houses going clockwise until I reach mineshaft. I clear first room of mineshaft and the west room( all but ash ghosts). Then I drop to second floor and clear my way to the western room and clear it. By this time everything outside the mineshaft is respawned and I do a full sweep again before heading back to cabin.
Lord Erwyn
(Level 60+)
Located on the bottom floor of the NE part of Stoutford Castle you will find Lord Erwyn. This quest NPC is worth an impressive 932 experience with quick learner level 15 and will insta respawn after each kill until the quest item to permanently kill him is obtained. If you have enough block chance you can mostly avoid his heavy hitting attacks and make quick work of his relatively low hit points (110). However, there is no treasure rewards and his critical hits are quite deadly. I found this to be quite boring but thought it interesting enough to run some numbers. I managed to kill him once every 10 seconds which included time to heal and save progress every few kills( he sent me to my rest spot once with a nasty crit and I had to start over). I needed to land 3 hits to kill him which required a second turn so if you optimized a build with high attack chance and damage you could probably grind much more xp in 10 minutes than I.
QL: 15
XP: 55,920
Loot Value: N/A
Time: 10m
Lizards
(Level 60+)
Find Colonel Lutarc on the hill just east of the northern gate of Stoutford Castle(the undead side). Accept his challenge and defeat his 5 opponents, when the quest is complete you will receive his medallion. With it in your inventory you will now be attacked by 5 lizards just outside the gate you battled his soldiers at. Use the rope on the left side of gate to open it. You can walk to the dirt road on the map to the north to respawn the lizards without leaving map. The lizards are aggressive and will swarm you but are very easy to kill so this is really a convenient behavior. With 7 damage resistance you will be immune to their attacks and can easily 1-hit kill their 50hp with a damage minimum of 55 to overcome their 5 damage resistance. Each lizard is worth 295 experience with level 15 quick learner for a total of 1475 per respawn. Downside again is there is no gold or loot to gain. My numbers below are without the optimal 55 damage minimum which would have cut them down much quicker with guaranteed 1-hit kills.
QL: 15
XP: 53,395
Loot Value: N/A
Time. 10m
Last edited by Kasi on Fri Apr 25, 2025 5:28 pm, edited 4 times in total.
I would strongly recommend not doing this.
This is a monumental waste of your skill points. Your player is going to be extremely weak.
We have no content targeting a level 80 character right now. But your character is going to be extremely weak at that level. So if you're still looking for a challenge, you'll get one
Kasi said that he is a long term player, so I guess he knows what he does - simply trying a different approach to the game.
The stats can't look good for the level, that's clear. But with QL the leveling should go faster. So we can't value it by just looking at the stats.
Only way to compare it (that I can think of) is taking the real time for playing until the current end of content.
Kasi, you can't really take the time for playing through, but what is your impression? Does it feel slower? Or maybe does it feel even faster because the leveling is more often?
Antison wrote: Thu Apr 24, 2025 9:29 pm
I would strongly recommend not doing this.
This is a monumental waste of your skill points. Your player is going to be extremely weak.
We have no content targeting a level 80 character right now. But your character is going to be extremely weak at that level. So if you're still looking for a challenge, you'll get one
Edit: too late, your stats are already terrible.
Levels take on a different meaning in this regard. You can't measure my power by what level I am but instead you must look at the time & energy spent to achieve them. I'm gaining power slowly at first but this also makes the questing much more challenging. I find myself stuck more often and must grind out 4 or 5 levels to increase my AC or BC in order to fight through some areas. I find the grinding very enjoyable and am excited to reach level 80 so I can begin to plan my specializations. By sacrificing these early levels it's like opting to play on "nightmare" or "hell" difficulty like in Diablo 2. I think this is a fun way to replay the game!
Nut wrote: Fri Apr 25, 2025 6:53 am
Kasi said that he is a long term player, so I guess he knows what he does - simply trying a different approach to the game.
The stats can't look good for the level, that's clear. But with QL the leveling should go faster. So we can't value it by just looking at the stats.
Only way to compare it (that I can think of) is taking the real time for playing until the current end of content.
Kasi, you can't really take the time for playing through, but what is your impression? Does it feel slower? Or maybe does it feel even faster because the leveling is more often?
You nailed it. I'm already level 62 and have been leveling so fast I felt like I'm falling behind on quests. It's been interesting trying to find a good weapon/armor set up without the extra AP from Combat Speed skill. I'm also enjoying my time searching for areas to power level so I can get my stat points. I definitely feel weak but the XP gains are still so good from areas I would normally have abandoned at this level. It really does feel like a higher difficulty setting with XP gains to scale.
Just to give an idea of difficulty I'm currently stuck from finishing the charwood mines and I can't quite make it to remford yet so I'm focusing on getting all other quests complete while I slowly get stronger. I'm after the Amulet of Undead currently because that should help me significantly going forward.
