No, there’s not really crafting in Tower of Frost! But I did run Tower of Frost on Sunday’s livestream, and since it was the last night of the 50% bonus Cannith crafting XP weekend, I did some crafting afterwards.
ToF is always a good time. I hadn’t run it in ages, though, and it showed. It’s ALMOST impossible to get lost in there, but hey, challenge accepted! I managed to not get SUPER lost, but there were definitely moments when I wished I had a few Bigby’s Hands in my inventory instead of keeping them all in my shared bank.
Now THERE’S something I’d do if I were ever in charge of DDO for a day – make your bank space, shared bank, and TR cache available from wherever you happened to be. And then I would max out my shared bank space to store my Bigby’s, XP/mana/renown/slayer pots, extra Cannith boots – all the stuff that’s useful to multiple toons, so whoever needed it could access it, when they needed it.
I could go on about things I’d do if I were in charge of DDO for a day, but it’d take me far longer than a day to write it all down. Let’s just say it’d start with DRETCH COSMETIC PET and go from there. 😉
I decided to do epic hard because my weekends have been busy of late and I’m tired by the time Sunday night rolls around. It was mostly laughably easy for Even, though, so I think if I run it again for the stream, I’ll definitely go for EE. She’s done it solo before, but it got a bit tedious, especially the hedge maze and the optional summoned demon, who on EE is basically just a massive bag of HPs.
I say this every time I run ToF, but someday I’m going to remember the trick to the story puzzle. Note to self: Set all three scenes to the SAME story. I always end up trying to do all three scenes and then going nuts figuring out why the guy still won’t let me through. LOL
Sadly, no named loot was to be had. But at least Even got lots of stuff to decon, and she can always run it again – despite his assurances otherwise, she doubts Theobald will keep his promise to pay his rent on a timely basis, so she’s pretty sure she’ll have to go back in there and straighten him out from time to time.
Even’s crafting level was sonething like 204 when she started her crafting binge. She chugged a 75% XP pot and deconned all the lootgen she pulled from ToF, then set to work making ML shards – easiest way I’ve found to get crafting XP quickly. By the time I logged off Sunday, my crafting level had increased to 291… and I’d gone through around 23,000 essences.
My approach: Wait for crafting bonus weekends, use 35% crafting success boosters, and then just keep crafting the highest ML shard that you have at least a 25-30% chance to make. That means upping the ML you’re attempting every few tries as you level up, but the XPs really start piling on even though you’ll fail on more shards than you make.
And make sure you stock up on success boosters – guess who ran out and ended up buying some from the store ’cause she was too lazy to run to House C for more?
(Yes, I was too lazy to make the pixels that comprise Even-the-pally “run” to another area. That’s just sad.)
When I’m binge crafting, I like to move my essences and success boosters to my inventory so I can keep tabs on them. I also just discovered that you should also move your dissolvers out of your bank into inventory as well – if you do, you’ll get a small amount of plat for some of the items you decon. But if your dissolvers are in the bank, you get squat.
After a bit of experimenting, I think I figured out how to calculate the amount of plat you’ll get for an item, or if you’ll get any at all. Many items have a plus sign followed by a number in the upper right corner of the examination window. Pretty much all of the armor and weapons I’ve checked has this number; most clothing items don’t, and jewelry seems to be hit or miss, haven’t noticed a pattern there so far.
If your item has such a number, you’ll get plat for deconning it (provided your dissolvers are in your inventory and not in your bank). Otherwise, no plat.
The formula* for the amount of plat you get is 60 multiplied by the listed value – the number after the plus sign. This is NOT the same as the item’s enhancement bonus. So if an item’s listed value is +6, you’ll get 360 plat from deconning it; +10, you’ll get 600; etc.
* – Tonight I found ONE case that didn’t follow the formula. Didn’t take notice what the item was, or its listed value, but I got 760 plat for deconning it. Since 760 is not evenly divisible by 60, not sure what was going on there.
If an item has no listed value, such as most clothing and various jewelry items, you get no plat for deconning it, regardless of where your dissolvers are stashed.
This got a lot longer than I intended. Maybe I should work up a separate post on just crafting!
Streamin’ with Even is live every Sunday night at 11 pm Eastern time on the official DDOstream! The show is also hosted on my own Twitch channel, but if you’re watching live and want to chat, DDOStream is the place to be. Videos are archived on my YouTube channel and/or on DDOStream’s YouTube. I’m usually on Thelanis, usually/often/sometimes on Evennote, and usually have room, so feel free to send me a tell if you’d like to join! I’m also definitely open to suggestions on what to run next. You can send ingame mail to Evennote on Thelanis, or email me at evennote (at) gmail dot com. Thanks for reading and/or watching! 🙂
Even Now 