I did several regular hardcore / selffound runs over the years. Still an exhilarating experience as this game is definitely not forgiving! Did it with Spirit / Dream (phyiscal/vitality, melee), Runes / Defense (elemental, melee), and just now Spirit / Storm (cold / lightning, ranged). Overall, good video. Many good points touched upon. Basically you can categorize 3 main points: class selection, itemization and monster knowledge. Class selection - both masteries need to complement each other and negate the weaknesses of the other. Itemization, find things to not die and do enough damage yourself. Monster knowledge: which enemies can oneshot you? I would like to add a few things to your video: In addition to vitality resistance, stack up some poison resistance and try to max pierce resistance. Archers are the single most dangerous mob type, that doubly goes for Grand Archers in Hades, and poison is a very common element type to go against so it helps a lot having those. Late normal you probably also want to stack some stun resist, and possibly life and energy leech resists. The other ones are uncommon enough that they don't matter too much. Armor < Defensive Ability. While armor certainly helps, having completed an Oracle shotgunner run with a max armor of 320ish but an defensive ability of 1170 taught me it's better to not get crit by melee weapons if you get hit. Anything that cannot rely on Squall to reliably debuff enemy aim, you still want some tough armor however. Route progression: I like to farm Nessus until level 8, Tegea caves until lvl 11 and Megara until lvl 13 most of the time. It's usually when I can powerlevel to mastery lvl 32 and unlock whatever skill I need, for example Dream's Trance of Wrath which will easily carry until the end of act 2. Act 2, farm Sais until lvl 25 - 26, especially if you use mods like Xmax it'll drop a lot of good things there. Act 2 Telkine until lvl 30. Monotonous but again, potentially good rewards. Act 3, Great Wall waypoint to Chang'an has great gear than can be dropped for melee classes, including Exoctic MI shields from spiders - pair one with the Agais of Athene and you'll be set with resistances for a good while. Act 4, Soronis, if you can survive it. Great place to farm MIs with very high pierce resistance. Act 5, Heuneburg to Troll camp with Xmax has the highest monster density in the game, I think. Very dangerous but with how electrum farming works, a high level character running max xmax on normal difficulty with full curses will rack up hundreds of thousands of electrum in a very short time. These in turn can be spent at the beginning of legendary for some early Eternal Embers orbs and hopefully some juicy endgame drops (I got lucky and a got a Dream Whisperer staff that carried me through the endgame). Valhalla can be a decent farming spot for MIs. The mansion itself isn't too dangerous, contrary to the outside. Items: Find a Silver Heart artifact formula! I cannot stress how much easier this thing makes both Hades and Eternal Embers. As much of both acts deal with demon and undead enemy types, the flat 100 damage reduction against either will apply before anything else, so it's much, MUCH easier to survice against Machae or the endless undead in egypt. A Silver Heart + a lvl 6 spirit aura makes the undead in EE egypt do... maybe 5 damage per hit? It's a night and day difference and an absolute life saver. € There are two artifacts that have % life leech on them - Soul Shiver and Elemental Rage. Both are worth seeking out. Soul Shiver is available as early as act 2 normal and is a massive damage and survivability boost for most classes.
Weapon swapping between each attack can vastly increase your attack speed- very useful with throwing weapon and shield. As a Champion, this lets you ignore all the points you´d spend on dual wield and just stand within the safey of the battle standard and briar ward. A fun glitch occurs too if you cast a spell while cueing up more attacks than the animations can keep up with.. works nicely for refresh and ancestral horn etc etc(assign alternate weapon swap bind to scroll down :)
@@LughSamildanach Commendable. As for "old game engine", it seems they missed some patch work with Eternal Embers though:) My next character will be named Glitch Bitch. Champion Glitch Bitch. You make awesome job breathing life into this series by the way. Can only help TQ2 once it come out 🙏👍 Good luck and have fun!
Okay so here are some questions, HC or HC SSF in mind: :D 1. Since you put over half your attributes into hp how do you get your attributes for gear? You just use your class mastery lvl and gear + attributes to get to the desired attributes? 2. Your recommended classes: do you only recommend the combination of these for HC or you can probably make it work with other classes as long as you pair it up with one of these? (Heard from someone that they almost always pair up with Nature which is an idea I really like for example) 3. You mentioned Vitality resistance. Apart from it is there any resistance you recommend? 4. What do you think is more important armour or physical resistance, or a good mixture? 5. You mentioned exp grinding. If you only playing HC/SSF HC without the curses challenge but want to increase the exp you getting even more do you think the areas you mentioned are relatively safe places to exp farm with the curses as well? 6. Regarding recommended gear: correct me if I'm wrong but of course apart from the weapons and such regardless of what build you are doing going for things like redfist, stonebinder can hardly go wrong right? It's rare that those items wouldn't be optimal for HC/SSF HC. I also have probably near endless amount of different build related questions :D I've tried to check out guides and for some I have an idea for others I don't really. There's also a problem of most build guides are not made with HC or SSF HC in mind so they are kind of useless for me.
>1. Since you put over half your attributes into hp how do you get your attributes for gear? You just use your class mastery lvl and gear + attributes to get to the desired attributes? Yeah, that's another reason I like Rune and Defence so much. They have two skills, Armor Handling and Runeword: Feather. They reduce STR requirements by 60% for weapons and 30% for Shields and Armor. Funnily this can stack to give you something like 97% STR reduction on shields. Makes gearing very easy. 2. Your recommended classes: do you only recommend the combination of these for HC or you can probably make it work with other classes as long as you pair it up with one of these? (Heard from someone that they almost always pair up with Nature which is an idea I really like for example) You can make literally any combo work, the ones I listed are just the most useful for not dying. Nature does work well because it gives you a lot of bonus health, plus pets for cheese. 3. You mentioned Vitality resistance. Apart from it is there any resistance you recommend? Physical or Pierce would be the next best. That's most of the damage you take. 4. What do you think is more important armour or physical resistance, or a good mixture? Depends on the class choices. Phys res is better on characters with lower armor, like INT users, but armor works better for classes with more of it like Defence. Overall phys res is better. 5. You mentioned exp grinding. If you only playing HC/SSF HC without the curses challenge but want to increase the exp you getting even more do you think the areas you mentioned are relatively safe places to exp farm with the curses as well? The egypt one is very safe, but definitely be careful with the curses outside of that. Like the poison spitting guys in The North area I mentioned. You'll die real quick. 6. Regarding recommended gear: correct me if I'm wrong but of course apart from the weapons and such regardless of what build you are doing going for things like redfist, stonebinder can hardly go wrong right? It's rare that those items wouldn't be optimal for HC/SSF HC. Yeah redfists and stonebinder are very hard to say no to. Some characters wont have the stats for them though. You can definitely find other options, legendary chest pieces especially can beat out redfist and stonebinders aren't always the best choice as some classes don't get equivalent benefits from the extra levels. Part of the reason I recommend saving money and electrum for legendary items, especially the eternal embers/ragnarok items, is that they can give you items good enough to match stonebinders and redfist. The main reason I recommend those two in particular is that they are things you can guarantee AND they're good enough for the whole game, they don't have to absolute best in slot pieces, just good enough.
Yeah toxeus will probably just 1 shot you, especially if it's the super rare version that randomly appears out in the world. You could probably cheese him with overleveling or pets.
Concussive blow is good, but I never plan around it unless I'm doing a non HC character and have some specific weapon I want to import onto the character. Works really well with shield passives that attack with your main weapon too...and yeah att speed is of course best with it. I wouldn't plan for the skill though, just if you happen to find a decent club or axe. All of Adrenaline and passives I only ever 1 point until I have nothing else. Defensive reaction though is okay to dump more into if you want. It's good. 1 point is good for Phalanx, yes, but more is not a bad thing. It's very, very good for boss damage once you learn to position them properly. Remember that you can buff them, so casting Rally for the speed and damage reflection onto them is great. Also, their damage doubles for epic and tripples for legendary. Quick recovery is typically a 1 point until later. It's best used when you're taking lots of hits very quickly. I.e. when you're surrounded by a lot of enemies. It can significantly reduce the damage you take. Perfect Block is okay for a panic button. Like if you need another second or two for potion. But if I'm honest, I forget it's there most of the time. You can time it against boss enemies big obvious hits and negate it, that's fun. Shield charge is more useful than it seems. Though yes I mostly use it to travel distance, it also works decent as a stun. Don't forget it applies a hit of your main weapon too, so if you're slugging it out with a boss, there's no reason to not use it. All shield attacks do this btw, except for I think Batter. Speaking of Batter, I almost never use this skill outside of starting early on with Def, or if I have no other auto attack, like you said. I don't find it worth the effort beyond that. Colossus is just too good. Saves your life and is good for damage. I also use it regularly to run large distances as it gives you a big movespeed boost. >What do you think about my assessments above? You're pretty spot on. Defence isn't a complicated class, but the more you play it the more you find you can get out of it. It's deceptively powerful. I'd put it top 3 best in the game behind Neidan (1) and Rune (2). Could argue Dream or Hunting though. >Would you ever go with defense if you know you are not going to use a shield It'll never be as good as with a shield, but yeah you can make it work. There's even a Set and a few Epics/Legendary items that are meant for shieldless. Hunting is good to pair. But without a shield, I see Def as just a weaker Nature, more or less. >My question is how would you build a Slayer? Going spear is the best option? Yeah you pretty much have to go for a spear or bow. You just get so much attack speed that anything faster isn't getting the most out of the skills, plus the spear passives. You can make throwing work, but there are just better options for that. Rune+Hunting especially, it's VERY strong. If you still want to try and make War+Hunt work with throwing, then just avoid attack speed elsewhere, focus more on raw damage or effects that apply on hit. Dual Einherjar Hammers could work, but you have to remember that a lot of the power from Hunting comes from buffing Pierce damage, of which the hammers don't do. Hunting is sadly the most limiting class in the game for weapon diversity.
By the way what speed do you usually play at? I play fast but I think my new strategy will be when SBC farming or farming in general ima swap to very fast :D
Continuing with my endless questions :D Where do you farm Redfist usually? Tried to look around Atlantis to determine where are the most easily accessible Aegippans and so far it seems that right at the very beggining after you exit the door :D
Two locations, one is right when you leave Gadir, all the way to the Necropolis. That's probably the most dense area. The other is the Atlas Mountains waypoint, because you can also check the shop for tinkerer items at the same time. It's a hard farm, can take a long time sadly.
So my story character finished normal and is in epic. I went with champion (nature/warfare) and she is facerolling pretty much. If I can get the hardcore legend achivment I think its going to be with her. One thing I like about it is that I use wolves for the strength of the pack buff and the nymph for added protection and as cannon fodder and I don't rely on them to do dmg. This means a lot of points saved since for now I'm kind of good with 2 wolves and I don't need the nymph to be tanky at all. It also means that with the gear I'm really free to get whatever I need and I don't need to search for bonus pet dmg jewelry which I may or may not find or if I do find it may leave my character with shittier attributes / hp because they don't have those prefixes. These are things I somewhat dislike about my ritualist (nature/dream) because she relies on the pets to do dmg and that requires points and specific gear. She is doing okay in legendary act 2 right now, but I do prefer my champion for sure. I still love nature with the heart of oak, refresh, strength of the pack, the plague debuff, overgrowth - all extremly useful for HC, but maybe I prefer my pets to be there as cannon fodder, to boost my survivabilty and dmg rather than be there to actually do dmg (a.k.a a pet build).
Nice work! Good luck. War+Nat is my fav pet build, I have a guy that runs cooldown for 100% uptime on the Warfare ghosts. It's easily the strongest build I've ever made, so much so that I'd say it's probably TOO strong in how quickly it clears because there is very little for myself to do. Let me know if you end up getting Hardcore Legend, I'd love to see your character at the end.
And another one :D Prophet build problems D: (Storm/Dream) I tried following a steam guide related to this and for a while the electrical burn dot and distort reality means you are facerolling everything. However after a while it starts to fall off at least that is what I feel. I also really want to use Trance of Convalesence instead of Trance of Wrath because of the added survivability for HC. But if I go with Trance of Convalesence then I start to 2nd guess if electrical burn dmg is worth it at all at that point. So maybe going cold dmg? Problem with that is that the Dream tree then doesn't provide much sync with the Storm tree. Still going with this I was thinking of the following: - Maxed Storm mastery - Maxed Dream mastery - Fully maxed ice shard - 1 Point Whisp with Maxed out Eye of the storm - 1 Point Squall with Maxed out Obscured Visibility - 1 Point Storm nimbus with Maxed out Heart of the Frost - Maxed out Trance of Convalesence - 1 Point summon nightmare with maxed out hypnotic gaze - 1 Point distory reality 1 point temporal rift for CC However this is a lvl 53 character according to the calculator. I was thinking maybe maxing out whisp, nightmare so they don't die that easily and squall for a larger radius. But mabye I should stick with electrical and lighting.. D: What do you think? (I know I should've sticked with Nature builds :D) Also I wanted to ask: do you accept donations? You helped me so much and I wanted to thank you somehow.
I think the build is fine and will come together with better gear. Sadly one of the ways titan quest works is that Mage/Spell caster classes are just simply not as good as physical on average. It's harder to scale your damage with them in comparison because it's easier to just find a higher damage sword, bow, throwing etc. Once your magic damage skills are maxed, there's really not a lot you can do other than keep increasing INT. (which is yet another reason I love Rune. Rune weapon can give you absolutely insane INT.)...sure eventually the best casters can compete with the best melee, but it takes a lot of end game gear, lots of recharge, big stacking numbers. Just keep pumping your skills. Really try to get +4 to hit the caps if you haven't, that really adds a lot. All you can do after that is hope for better gear. It's just the nature of casters in TQ. Also for the Trance, I'd max two of them. Convalescence is obviously very strong for hardcore. (fun build is to combine that with Neidans Aura of Tranquility and get a stupid amount of damage absorbtion. Can be VERY tanky.) But Max Wrath as well and swap to it whenever you feel safe enough/are farming etc. I dunno how far you are into the character, but maybe you could try Storm/Rune in the future. It would be more dangerous to play HC, but I think you'd get a stronger end game and more damage over all. Or maybe swap from Ice Shard based to Psionic, it probably scales damage higher if you focus on just getting a good staff instead. I love TQ, man, such fun to think about builds like this. >Also I wanted to ask: do you accept donations? You helped me so much and I wanted to thank you somehow. That's very kind of you, but honestly mate, I just play TQ for fun, to relax after work. I genuinely enjoy thinking/talking about the game. I wouldn't want to accept any kind of payment. Thanks so much though!
One other thing I'd recommend, just take some time and look through tq-db.net Sometimes I'll just go through the monster infrequent or epic items and find some random item that completely changes my build around.
@@LughSamildanach Yeah I often check out the item website. Wish some of the MIs would drop more often though. I don't mind farming its just the most optimal MI farming can be a bit soul draining at times D:
@@LughSamildanach I felt that way about eldritch bow. I found 2 today after concerted farming as opposed to leveling up another character. The golden scarab (for the +1 all skills forced bonus) charm can be quite frustrating. The spawn point just north of the palm gate rebirth fountain at Memphis is a great farming location.
I'm also doing a story walkthrough at the moment where I listen to everything and search everything. It has been a while since I focused on the story and wanted to re-experience it. One thing I noticed is that.. maybe its just luck but I got a lot of items like what you used in your SSF HC 8 curse, meaning those hale green items and the like. Which made me think: did you full clear the game or just focused on the important quests and farmed items, lvls where it was most optimal?
I did a story walk through back when Eternal Embers first released. Really enjoyed it. I also did a sort of roleplay as the guy from the EE trailer. I always had to use a spear, shield and typical spartan helmet. Quite fun. As for my playthrough, I did every quest and side area, many more than once. But yeah probably 80% of the playthrough was optimal farming. Surprisingly Hale isn't that rare, which is nice.
Here's a fun one (I swear I'm running out of questions soon.. in martial arts class they nicknamed me Columbo becauase I always have 1 more question D: ): This one is actually partly your fault because you enticed me too much with dropping hints :D So I know that your fav mastery is defense, and that ranking wise you would go with: 1. Neidan 2. Rune 3. Defense/Dream/Hunting What would be your overall ranking/tier list (whichever you prefer) for SSF HC regarding masteries? Also if you have time and is interesting enough: I would also love to hear your rankings/tier list regarding combinations, classes as well :D
@@LughSamildanach Also just a warning that you said a list of your favorite combos, so I'll probably end up asking your opinion on the ones you will leave out. Pls no hate :D
1. When farming for stuff like SBC, I still don't really know if exiting the game to restart the seed does anything or is it just a myth? For sure when you get skellies in the labyrinth you got that seed, but does the seed also really affect the drop chances as well? Do you restart the game every now and then if for example SBC doesn't seem to drop? I believe seeds do actually affect the drop rate, but I've never had a seed bad enough to stop farming. You will eventually get it. But if it feels bad for you, go ahead and get a new seed. It doesn't take very long to get a new one. 2. One more question regarding Toxeus: when you are going through those 2 areas where he can spawn do you try to be extra careful or you just breeze through as usual and if he ambushes thats just bad luck? He's so crazy rare that I literally never even think about him. Seriously he's not an issue. 3. Since the Nature mastery is my favourite and there's a possibility that I'll attach it to every character I play. My version of that is defence XD I love it so much...and yeah I agree with your choices here. Those are the most useful skills, everything else is kinda secondary. >One thing I don't really understand in a lot of the guides I'm seeing with Nature in them is that they put 1 point into Maul and max out Survival Instinct. Survival instinct is most useful in normal when they wolves die all the time in Hades or Ragnarok etc. It is good, though, on all difficulties. Can make them very hard to kill. But yeah I agree once you get to legendary they're don't die much anyway. You only need one point in maul for the health reduction. 6% is a LOT for just 1 skill point, especially considering maxing it out to 12 points only gives 13%. Better to put the points elsewhere until later. >So for me Survival Instinct is a 1 point wonder until I reach a point where I really don't know what else to put my points in so at that point I'll probably max it out. I agree. >Another thing I don't understand in guides is the usage of Regrowth. Again you have pots for yourself, you can quickly summon 2 wolves if need be and as I said since they are hardly dying this skill again feels like very wasteful. Regrowth doesn't really do much beyond normal for most builds. It's also more useful when you're using other pets from other masteries like the Lich or the Warfare soldiers. I have an endgame nature/warfare character that uses it. Not to say it's useless, it can save your life or prevent time wasted on pet cooldowns by keeping them alive. It's another skill I'll only max out when I have nothing else to put the points into. I could also see myself using it a lot on Cursed hardcore, where giving yourself a few more seconds to stand there and do damage is very valuable.
A lot of the guides floating around are from the early version of the game. It’s been rebalanced quite a bit since then. In the early days you could cap resists and recharge at 100%, not the current 80% maximum.
Which one can get more tankier/safer for HC in your opinion: conqueror or champion? I'm thinking of trying out conqueror next if my champion meets a bitter end. I'd guess that overall conqueror with defense's high hp, maxed out colossus form combined with maxed out flag, the lowered requirements letting you put more points into hp will outshine the hp you get from heart of oak. My other problem with heart of oak is that it can be removed which can lead to a quick death for sure :/
@@MrSarky1992 :P maybe just a little... ...but hey, not my fault Def is so good. Some developer must have looked at a shield and went "YES. THIS is how you'll do high tier damage AND tank." Completely balanced.
Apart from simple experience how do you know what MIs are worth going for drop chance wise? You mentioned spending a lot of time getting a Bloodborn Visor, while stuff like Myrmidon's Sting drops like candy (its probably not super good but i like them). Stonebinder I guess is in the middle. The problem with the database is that the loot table only shows the bosses that may drop the MI but 90% of the time thats not how you are going to farm for an MI. :/
What kind of thresholds do you have for progressing through the game up until the very end of legendary in SSF HC? For example: you don't start act 4 on normal before aquiring 3500 hp. Or you don't start legendary without having 80% vit res. etc If you don't have exact numbers, do you have some estimates? Thank you very much
Honestly not many thresholds. I like to have at least 50% vit res in regular hardcore and 80% in cursed by the time I start act 3. I also like to be around level 30 when starting act 3, as well. I try to be level 10 or 11 before fighting the cyclops. I don't ever leave an act without getting every relic/charm that I need, unless there's an easy to get quest reward for skills/stats, then I'll grab that and go back to farming relics/charms. But yeah after normal difficulty, I play instinctively. I just play until I feel like I'm nearly dying too often, or can't kill as fast as I want, then I just grind more. Simple really.
hey thx for the great video. i wanna do greece lightning achievement but it seems impossible how can i finish normal-epic-legendary less than an hour lol.. that means i need to do speedrun i guess..
If you don't know your way through the maps of the world good enough, you're not going to get the achievement. Also, if you don't have items good enough for epic and legendary, don't bother. 20 hours is way more than enough. You can do it in less than 10 if you know how. Firstly, start a new character at level 40 Ragnarok. That lets you skip most of normal difficulty. Also put lots of powerful items in your stash from other characters. Items you swap out as you level up. Then just run. Don't fight many monsters. Don't do side quests. Use masteries that are good for movement. Defence has both a dash in Shield Charge and Colossus which makes you run faster. If you get a lot of cooldown items you can have colossus active all the time. Use nature to reduce cooldowns and give movespeed. Use Storm for Lightning Dash which has no cooldown. Just run through the game, it's that simple. If you need to level up, use the good grinding areas. If you don't know enough about TQ to know good areas for grinding, then you shouldn't be doing this achievement anyway. I might make a video on this.
@@LughSamildanach heyy thank you for sharing some advices.. im actually really old TQ player i was played this game first time in 2008 and played some time to time.. now i started playing again almost a month ago i finished normal difficulty with rog/warfare aka assassin character now im playing epic diff for items and %100 compeltion of course.. tho im a kinda %100 completion achievement guy so i wanted to do all achivements in the steam but i need more experience + knowledge about other classes and more grinding areas just like you said i guess.. also im really enjoying playing assassin but its sometimes really pain in the ass because im one shotting ppl but they are one shotting me too LOL.. if u do video about that achievement that would be really good.. cuz other achievements seems to be done in time with grind but that one specifically require more knowledge and stuff.. so if u do a video about that i would be appreciate. as a person enjoys TQ these days i appreciate your videos i just discover you one or two days ago thx again !!
@@LughSamildanach No, offense mate, but you even play it ? Playing build with defense or neidan and reflecting builds in tq for me is simply braindead, small interaction in fights, abusing broken mechanics in old game that rly uninteresting.
@@przemek193 I gave the first guy a reply worth the comment he made. Don't read into it that much. But to answer, I dislike Grim Dawn because the world is uninteresting...and the characters too. I care for none of it. None of it grabbed me the same way the TQ world and characters do. Why would I play a game if I don't enjoy the setting or like the characters or story? And if I want a grim, dark, brooding, muddy, filthy post apocalypse shithole world, I'll play a Diablo 1 or 2...and they have better characters too. Hell, PoE as well.
I did several regular hardcore / selffound runs over the years. Still an exhilarating experience as this game is definitely not forgiving! Did it with Spirit / Dream (phyiscal/vitality, melee), Runes / Defense (elemental, melee), and just now Spirit / Storm (cold / lightning, ranged).
Overall, good video. Many good points touched upon. Basically you can categorize 3 main points: class selection, itemization and monster knowledge. Class selection - both masteries need to complement each other and negate the weaknesses of the other. Itemization, find things to not die and do enough damage yourself. Monster knowledge: which enemies can oneshot you?
I would like to add a few things to your video:
In addition to vitality resistance, stack up some poison resistance and try to max pierce resistance. Archers are the single most dangerous mob type, that doubly goes for Grand Archers in Hades, and poison is a very common element type to go against so it helps a lot having those.
Late normal you probably also want to stack some stun resist, and possibly life and energy leech resists. The other ones are uncommon enough that they don't matter too much.
Armor < Defensive Ability. While armor certainly helps, having completed an Oracle shotgunner run with a max armor of 320ish but an defensive ability of 1170 taught me it's better to not get crit by melee weapons if you get hit. Anything that cannot rely on Squall to reliably debuff enemy aim, you still want some tough armor however.
Route progression: I like to farm Nessus until level 8, Tegea caves until lvl 11 and Megara until lvl 13 most of the time. It's usually when I can powerlevel to mastery lvl 32 and unlock whatever skill I need, for example Dream's Trance of Wrath which will easily carry until the end of act 2.
Act 2, farm Sais until lvl 25 - 26, especially if you use mods like Xmax it'll drop a lot of good things there. Act 2 Telkine until lvl 30. Monotonous but again, potentially good rewards.
Act 3, Great Wall waypoint to Chang'an has great gear than can be dropped for melee classes, including Exoctic MI shields from spiders - pair one with the Agais of Athene and you'll be set with resistances for a good while.
Act 4, Soronis, if you can survive it. Great place to farm MIs with very high pierce resistance.
Act 5, Heuneburg to Troll camp with Xmax has the highest monster density in the game, I think. Very dangerous but with how electrum farming works, a high level character running max xmax on normal difficulty with full curses will rack up hundreds of thousands of electrum in a very short time. These in turn can be spent at the beginning of legendary for some early Eternal Embers orbs and hopefully some juicy endgame drops (I got lucky and a got a Dream Whisperer staff that carried me through the endgame).
Valhalla can be a decent farming spot for MIs. The mansion itself isn't too dangerous, contrary to the outside.
Items:
Find a Silver Heart artifact formula! I cannot stress how much easier this thing makes both Hades and Eternal Embers. As much of both acts deal with demon and undead enemy types, the flat 100 damage reduction against either will apply before anything else, so it's much, MUCH easier to survice against Machae or the endless undead in egypt. A Silver Heart + a lvl 6 spirit aura makes the undead in EE egypt do... maybe 5 damage per hit? It's a night and day difference and an absolute life saver.
€ There are two artifacts that have % life leech on them - Soul Shiver and Elemental Rage. Both are worth seeking out. Soul Shiver is available as early as act 2 normal and is a massive damage and survivability boost for most classes.
Absolutly perfect, bro. Thanx for a tips.
Awesome video! subbed and liked!
Hey thanks very much!
Weapon swapping between each attack can vastly increase your attack speed- very useful with throwing weapon and shield. As a Champion, this lets you ignore all the points you´d spend on dual wield and just stand within the safey of the battle standard and briar ward.
A fun glitch occurs too if you cast a spell while cueing up more attacks than the animations can keep up with.. works nicely for refresh and ancestral horn etc etc(assign alternate weapon swap bind to scroll down :)
Yeah screwing with the old game engine can be fun, I just personally don't like using glitches or bugs much.
@@LughSamildanach Commendable. As for "old game engine", it seems they missed some patch work with Eternal Embers though:) My next character will be named Glitch Bitch. Champion Glitch Bitch.
You make awesome job breathing life into this series by the way. Can only help TQ2 once it come out 🙏👍 Good luck and have fun!
@@asdf-bm4df Cheers. Thanks for watching! And good luck with your character :)
@@LughSamildanach I’ll try not to screw up any ladder games and stick to single player😌
Awesome content again!
@Elvis-is-king-l3s Hey thanks very much!
Okay so here are some questions, HC or HC SSF in mind: :D
1. Since you put over half your attributes into hp how do you get your attributes for
gear? You just use your class mastery lvl and gear + attributes to get to the desired attributes?
2. Your recommended classes: do you only recommend the combination of these for HC or you can
probably make it work with other classes as long as you pair it up with one of these? (Heard from someone
that they almost always pair up with Nature which is an idea I really like for example)
3. You mentioned Vitality resistance. Apart from it is there any resistance you recommend?
4. What do you think is more important armour or physical resistance, or a good mixture?
5. You mentioned exp grinding. If you only playing HC/SSF HC without the curses challenge but want to
increase the exp you getting even more do you think the areas you mentioned are relatively safe places
to exp farm with the curses as well?
6. Regarding recommended gear: correct me if I'm wrong but of course apart from the weapons and such regardless of what build you are doing going for things like redfist, stonebinder can hardly go wrong right? It's rare that those items wouldn't be optimal for HC/SSF HC.
I also have probably near endless amount of different build related questions :D I've tried to check out guides and for some I have an idea for others I don't really. There's also a problem of most build guides are not made with HC or SSF HC in mind so they are kind of useless for me.
>1. Since you put over half your attributes into hp how do you get your attributes for
gear? You just use your class mastery lvl and gear + attributes to get to the desired attributes?
Yeah, that's another reason I like Rune and Defence so much. They have two skills, Armor Handling and Runeword: Feather. They reduce STR requirements by 60% for weapons and 30% for Shields and Armor. Funnily this can stack to give you something like 97% STR reduction on shields. Makes gearing very easy.
2. Your recommended classes: do you only recommend the combination of these for HC or you can
probably make it work with other classes as long as you pair it up with one of these? (Heard from someone
that they almost always pair up with Nature which is an idea I really like for example)
You can make literally any combo work, the ones I listed are just the most useful for not dying. Nature does work well because it gives you a lot of bonus health, plus pets for cheese.
3. You mentioned Vitality resistance. Apart from it is there any resistance you recommend?
Physical or Pierce would be the next best. That's most of the damage you take.
4. What do you think is more important armour or physical resistance, or a good mixture?
Depends on the class choices. Phys res is better on characters with lower armor, like INT users, but armor works better for classes with more of it like Defence. Overall phys res is better.
5. You mentioned exp grinding. If you only playing HC/SSF HC without the curses challenge but want to
increase the exp you getting even more do you think the areas you mentioned are relatively safe places
to exp farm with the curses as well?
The egypt one is very safe, but definitely be careful with the curses outside of that. Like the poison spitting guys in The North area I mentioned. You'll die real quick.
6. Regarding recommended gear: correct me if I'm wrong but of course apart from the weapons and such regardless of what build you are doing going for things like redfist, stonebinder can hardly go wrong right? It's rare that those items wouldn't be optimal for HC/SSF HC.
Yeah redfists and stonebinder are very hard to say no to. Some characters wont have the stats for them though. You can definitely find other options, legendary chest pieces especially can beat out redfist and stonebinders aren't always the best choice as some classes don't get equivalent benefits from the extra levels. Part of the reason I recommend saving money and electrum for legendary items, especially the eternal embers/ragnarok items, is that they can give you items good enough to match stonebinders and redfist. The main reason I recommend those two in particular is that they are things you can guarantee AND they're good enough for the whole game, they don't have to absolute best in slot pieces, just good enough.
I had no idea about the rings for fire, and (cold+lightning) shields. I never read the entire descriptions before.
Yeah they're quite strong, the fire one especially. Basically negates the need for fire res entitely.
Thank you so much for doing this!
Yeah toxeus will probably just 1 shot you, especially if it's the super rare version that randomly appears out in the world. You could probably cheese him with overleveling or pets.
Concussive blow is good, but I never plan around it unless I'm doing a non HC character and have some specific weapon I want to import onto the character. Works really well with shield passives that attack with your main weapon too...and yeah att speed is of course best with it. I wouldn't plan for the skill though, just if you happen to find a decent club or axe.
All of Adrenaline and passives I only ever 1 point until I have nothing else. Defensive reaction though is okay to dump more into if you want. It's good.
1 point is good for Phalanx, yes, but more is not a bad thing. It's very, very good for boss damage once you learn to position them properly. Remember that you can buff them, so casting Rally for the speed and damage reflection onto them is great. Also, their damage doubles for epic and tripples for legendary.
Quick recovery is typically a 1 point until later. It's best used when you're taking lots of hits very quickly. I.e. when you're surrounded by a lot of enemies. It can significantly reduce the damage you take.
Perfect Block is okay for a panic button. Like if you need another second or two for potion. But if I'm honest, I forget it's there most of the time. You can time it against boss enemies big obvious hits and negate it, that's fun.
Shield charge is more useful than it seems. Though yes I mostly use it to travel distance, it also works decent as a stun. Don't forget it applies a hit of your main weapon too, so if you're slugging it out with a boss, there's no reason to not use it. All shield attacks do this btw, except for I think Batter.
Speaking of Batter, I almost never use this skill outside of starting early on with Def, or if I have no other auto attack, like you said. I don't find it worth the effort beyond that.
Colossus is just too good. Saves your life and is good for damage. I also use it regularly to run large distances as it gives you a big movespeed boost.
>What do you think about my assessments above?
You're pretty spot on. Defence isn't a complicated class, but the more you play it the more you find you can get out of it. It's deceptively powerful. I'd put it top 3 best in the game behind Neidan (1) and Rune (2). Could argue Dream or Hunting though.
>Would you ever go with defense if you know you are not going to use a shield
It'll never be as good as with a shield, but yeah you can make it work. There's even a Set and a few Epics/Legendary items that are meant for shieldless. Hunting is good to pair. But without a shield, I see Def as just a weaker Nature, more or less.
>My question is how would you build a Slayer? Going spear is the best option?
Yeah you pretty much have to go for a spear or bow. You just get so much attack speed that anything faster isn't getting the most out of the skills, plus the spear passives. You can make throwing work, but there are just better options for that. Rune+Hunting especially, it's VERY strong. If you still want to try and make War+Hunt work with throwing, then just avoid attack speed elsewhere, focus more on raw damage or effects that apply on hit. Dual Einherjar Hammers could work, but you have to remember that a lot of the power from Hunting comes from buffing Pierce damage, of which the hammers don't do. Hunting is sadly the most limiting class in the game for weapon diversity.
@@LughSamildanach Always appriciate your anwers so much
@@MrSarky1992 Could try farming Sand Queen Masika or the Manticore for Neith's Will. It's not too hard to find.
@@LughSamildanach UA-cam seems to be deleting my messages or idk. Made a donation to teamtrees in your honor :D
@@MrSarky1992 Thanks so much, means a lot. :)
Good video!
Thank you!
Very helpful video
By the way what speed do you usually play at? I play fast but I think my new strategy will be when SBC farming or farming in general ima swap to very fast :D
Very fast the whole time. I never change it.
Continuing with my endless questions :D
Where do you farm Redfist usually? Tried to look around Atlantis to determine where are the most easily accessible Aegippans and so far it seems that right at the very beggining after you exit the door :D
Two locations, one is right when you leave Gadir, all the way to the Necropolis. That's probably the most dense area. The other is the Atlas Mountains waypoint, because you can also check the shop for tinkerer items at the same time. It's a hard farm, can take a long time sadly.
@@LughSamildanach Honestly it was a lot easier than SBC :D Maybe just my luck..
So my story character finished normal and is in epic. I went with champion (nature/warfare) and she is facerolling pretty much. If I can get the hardcore legend achivment I think its going to be with her. One thing I like about it is that I use wolves for the strength of the pack buff and the nymph for added protection and as cannon fodder and I don't rely on them to do dmg. This means a lot of points saved since for now I'm kind of good with 2 wolves and I don't need the nymph to be tanky at all. It also means that with the gear I'm really free to get whatever I need and I don't need to search for bonus pet dmg jewelry which I may or may not find or if I do find it may leave my character with shittier attributes / hp because they don't have those prefixes. These are things I somewhat dislike about my ritualist (nature/dream) because she relies on the pets to do dmg and that requires points and specific gear. She is doing okay in legendary act 2 right now, but I do prefer my champion for sure.
I still love nature with the heart of oak, refresh, strength of the pack, the plague debuff, overgrowth - all extremly useful for HC, but maybe I prefer my pets to be there as cannon fodder, to boost my survivabilty and dmg rather than be there to actually do dmg (a.k.a a pet build).
Nice work! Good luck. War+Nat is my fav pet build, I have a guy that runs cooldown for 100% uptime on the Warfare ghosts. It's easily the strongest build I've ever made, so much so that I'd say it's probably TOO strong in how quickly it clears because there is very little for myself to do.
Let me know if you end up getting Hardcore Legend, I'd love to see your character at the end.
@@LughSamildanach Aaand I just ripped with the Ritualist :D Yaoguai got me with his Gore. Oh well
@@MrSarky1992 RIP in peace
@@LughSamildanach :D man I'm not even sad. Love this game
And another one :D
Prophet build problems D: (Storm/Dream)
I tried following a steam guide related to this and for a while the electrical burn dot and distort reality means you are facerolling everything.
However after a while it starts to fall off at least that is what I feel. I also really want to use Trance of Convalesence instead of Trance of Wrath because of the added survivability for HC. But if I go with Trance of Convalesence then I start to 2nd guess if electrical burn dmg is worth it at all at that point. So maybe going cold dmg? Problem with that is that the Dream tree then doesn't provide much sync with the Storm tree. Still going with this I was thinking of the following:
- Maxed Storm mastery
- Maxed Dream mastery
- Fully maxed ice shard
- 1 Point Whisp with Maxed out Eye of the storm
- 1 Point Squall with Maxed out Obscured Visibility
- 1 Point Storm nimbus with Maxed out Heart of the Frost
- Maxed out Trance of Convalesence
- 1 Point summon nightmare with maxed out hypnotic gaze
- 1 Point distory reality 1 point temporal rift for CC
However this is a lvl 53 character according to the calculator. I was thinking maybe maxing out whisp, nightmare so they don't die that easily and squall for a larger radius.
But mabye I should stick with electrical and lighting.. D:
What do you think? (I know I should've sticked with Nature builds :D)
Also I wanted to ask: do you accept donations? You helped me so much and I wanted to thank you somehow.
I think the build is fine and will come together with better gear. Sadly one of the ways titan quest works is that Mage/Spell caster classes are just simply not as good as physical on average. It's harder to scale your damage with them in comparison because it's easier to just find a higher damage sword, bow, throwing etc. Once your magic damage skills are maxed, there's really not a lot you can do other than keep increasing INT. (which is yet another reason I love Rune. Rune weapon can give you absolutely insane INT.)...sure eventually the best casters can compete with the best melee, but it takes a lot of end game gear, lots of recharge, big stacking numbers.
Just keep pumping your skills. Really try to get +4 to hit the caps if you haven't, that really adds a lot. All you can do after that is hope for better gear. It's just the nature of casters in TQ.
Also for the Trance, I'd max two of them. Convalescence is obviously very strong for hardcore. (fun build is to combine that with Neidans Aura of Tranquility and get a stupid amount of damage absorbtion. Can be VERY tanky.) But Max Wrath as well and swap to it whenever you feel safe enough/are farming etc.
I dunno how far you are into the character, but maybe you could try Storm/Rune in the future. It would be more dangerous to play HC, but I think you'd get a stronger end game and more damage over all. Or maybe swap from Ice Shard based to Psionic, it probably scales damage higher if you focus on just getting a good staff instead. I love TQ, man, such fun to think about builds like this.
>Also I wanted to ask: do you accept donations? You helped me so much and I wanted to thank you somehow.
That's very kind of you, but honestly mate, I just play TQ for fun, to relax after work. I genuinely enjoy thinking/talking about the game. I wouldn't want to accept any kind of payment. Thanks so much though!
One other thing I'd recommend, just take some time and look through tq-db.net
Sometimes I'll just go through the monster infrequent or epic items and find some random item that completely changes my build around.
@@LughSamildanach Yeah I often check out the item website. Wish some of the MIs would drop more often though. I don't mind farming its just the most optimal MI farming can be a bit soul draining at times D:
@@MrSarky1992 God isn't that the truth? Never, ever try farming for a Bloodborn Visor. It took me literal months of daily farming to get just 1.
@@LughSamildanach I felt that way about eldritch bow. I found 2 today after concerted farming as opposed to leveling up another character.
The golden scarab (for the +1 all skills forced bonus) charm can be quite frustrating. The spawn point just north of the palm gate rebirth fountain at Memphis is a great farming location.
I'm also doing a story walkthrough at the moment where I listen to everything and search everything. It has been a while since I focused on the story and wanted to re-experience it. One thing I noticed is that.. maybe its just luck but I got a lot of items like what you used in your SSF HC 8 curse, meaning those hale green items and the like. Which made me think: did you full clear the game or just focused on the important quests and farmed items, lvls where it was most optimal?
I did a story walk through back when Eternal Embers first released. Really enjoyed it. I also did a sort of roleplay as the guy from the EE trailer. I always had to use a spear, shield and typical spartan helmet. Quite fun.
As for my playthrough, I did every quest and side area, many more than once. But yeah probably 80% of the playthrough was optimal farming. Surprisingly Hale isn't that rare, which is nice.
Here's a fun one (I swear I'm running out of questions soon.. in martial arts class they nicknamed me Columbo becauase I always have 1 more question D: ):
This one is actually partly your fault because you enticed me too much with dropping hints :D
So I know that your fav mastery is defense, and that ranking wise you would go with:
1. Neidan
2. Rune
3. Defense/Dream/Hunting
What would be your overall ranking/tier list (whichever you prefer) for SSF HC regarding masteries?
Also if you have time and is interesting enough: I would also love to hear your rankings/tier list regarding combinations, classes as well :D
I'll probably make a quick video on this topic. Ranking them for HC SSF, maybe list my favorite combos too.
@@LughSamildanach love ya ❤
@@LughSamildanach Also just a warning that you said a list of your favorite combos, so I'll probably end up asking your opinion on the ones you will leave out. Pls no hate :D
Some more pls no hate D:
1. When farming for stuff like SBC, I still don't really know if exiting the game to restart the seed does anything or is it just a myth? For sure when you get skellies in the labyrinth you got that seed, but does the seed also really affect the drop chances as well? Do you restart the game every now and then if for example SBC doesn't seem to drop?
I believe seeds do actually affect the drop rate, but I've never had a seed bad enough to stop farming. You will eventually get it. But if it feels bad for you, go ahead and get a new seed. It doesn't take very long to get a new one.
2. One more question regarding Toxeus: when you are going through those 2 areas where he can spawn do you try to be extra careful or you just breeze through as usual and if he ambushes thats just bad luck?
He's so crazy rare that I literally never even think about him. Seriously he's not an issue.
3. Since the Nature mastery is my favourite and there's a possibility that I'll attach it to every character I play.
My version of that is defence XD I love it so much...and yeah I agree with your choices here. Those are the most useful skills, everything else is kinda secondary.
>One thing I don't really understand in a lot of the guides I'm seeing with Nature in them is that they put 1 point into Maul and max out Survival Instinct.
Survival instinct is most useful in normal when they wolves die all the time in Hades or Ragnarok etc. It is good, though, on all difficulties. Can make them very hard to kill. But yeah I agree once you get to legendary they're don't die much anyway. You only need one point in maul for the health reduction. 6% is a LOT for just 1 skill point, especially considering maxing it out to 12 points only gives 13%. Better to put the points elsewhere until later.
>So for me Survival Instinct is a 1 point wonder until I reach a point where I really don't know what else to put my points in so at that point I'll probably max it out.
I agree.
>Another thing I don't understand in guides is the usage of Regrowth. Again you have pots for yourself, you can quickly summon 2 wolves if need be and as I said since they are hardly dying this skill again feels like very wasteful.
Regrowth doesn't really do much beyond normal for most builds. It's also more useful when you're using other pets from other masteries like the Lich or the Warfare soldiers. I have an endgame nature/warfare character that uses it. Not to say it's useless, it can save your life or prevent time wasted on pet cooldowns by keeping them alive. It's another skill I'll only max out when I have nothing else to put the points into. I could also see myself using it a lot on Cursed hardcore, where giving yourself a few more seconds to stand there and do damage is very valuable.
A lot of the guides floating around are from the early version of the game. It’s been rebalanced quite a bit since then.
In the early days you could cap resists and recharge at 100%, not the current 80% maximum.
Which one can get more tankier/safer for HC in your opinion: conqueror or champion? I'm thinking of trying out conqueror next if my champion meets a bitter end. I'd guess that overall conqueror with defense's high hp, maxed out colossus form combined with maxed out flag, the lowered requirements letting you put more points into hp will outshine the hp you get from heart of oak. My other problem with heart of oak is that it can be removed which can lead to a quick death for sure :/
Conquerer. Defence is generally just better than Nature. Especially as you get more gear. Colossus makes a great panic button too.
@@LughSamildanach THAT SOUNDS LIKE SOMEONE IS TRYING TO CONVERT ME INTO A DEFENSE FAN 😄❤
@@MrSarky1992 :P maybe just a little...
...but hey, not my fault Def is so good. Some developer must have looked at a shield and went "YES. THIS is how you'll do high tier damage AND tank." Completely balanced.
Apart from simple experience how do you know what MIs are worth going for drop chance wise?
You mentioned spending a lot of time getting a Bloodborn Visor, while stuff like Myrmidon's Sting drops like candy (its probably not super good but i like them). Stonebinder I guess is in the middle.
The problem with the database is that the loot table only shows the bosses that may drop the MI but 90% of the time thats not how you are going to farm for an MI. :/
What kind of thresholds do you have for progressing through the game up until the very end of legendary in SSF HC?
For example: you don't start act 4 on normal before aquiring 3500 hp. Or you don't start legendary without having 80% vit res. etc
If you don't have exact numbers, do you have some estimates?
Thank you very much
Honestly not many thresholds.
I like to have at least 50% vit res in regular hardcore and 80% in cursed by the time I start act 3.
I also like to be around level 30 when starting act 3, as well.
I try to be level 10 or 11 before fighting the cyclops.
I don't ever leave an act without getting every relic/charm that I need, unless there's an easy to get quest reward for skills/stats, then I'll grab that and go back to farming relics/charms.
But yeah after normal difficulty, I play instinctively. I just play until I feel like I'm nearly dying too often, or can't kill as fast as I want, then I just grind more. Simple really.
hey thx for the great video. i wanna do greece lightning achievement but it seems impossible how can i finish normal-epic-legendary less than an hour lol.. that means i need to do speedrun i guess..
If you don't know your way through the maps of the world good enough, you're not going to get the achievement. Also, if you don't have items good enough for epic and legendary, don't bother.
20 hours is way more than enough. You can do it in less than 10 if you know how. Firstly, start a new character at level 40 Ragnarok. That lets you skip most of normal difficulty. Also put lots of powerful items in your stash from other characters. Items you swap out as you level up.
Then just run. Don't fight many monsters. Don't do side quests. Use masteries that are good for movement. Defence has both a dash in Shield Charge and Colossus which makes you run faster. If you get a lot of cooldown items you can have colossus active all the time. Use nature to reduce cooldowns and give movespeed. Use Storm for Lightning Dash which has no cooldown.
Just run through the game, it's that simple. If you need to level up, use the good grinding areas. If you don't know enough about TQ to know good areas for grinding, then you shouldn't be doing this achievement anyway.
I might make a video on this.
@@LughSamildanach heyy thank you for sharing some advices.. im actually really old TQ player i was played this game first time in 2008 and played some time to time.. now i started playing again almost a month ago i finished normal difficulty with rog/warfare aka assassin character now im playing epic diff for items and %100 compeltion of course.. tho im a kinda %100 completion achievement guy so i wanted to do all achivements in the steam but i need more experience + knowledge about other classes and more grinding areas just like you said i guess.. also im really enjoying playing assassin but its sometimes really pain in the ass because im one shotting ppl but they are one shotting me too LOL.. if u do video about that achievement that would be really good.. cuz other achievements seems to be done in time with grind but that one specifically require more knowledge and stuff.. so if u do a video about that i would be appreciate. as a person enjoys TQ these days i appreciate your videos i just discover you one or two days ago thx again !!
your list for relic completion bonus is not working , can you update please
Thank you! All done.
Nhân vật nào công thủ mạnh nhất.
a boar ended my run just before ambrossos 😂
Sorry to hear. Go again!
Step 1: get Grim Dawn instead.
Step 2: have fun
@@nopens Grim Yawn is uninteresting.
@@LughSamildanach No, offense mate, but you even play it ? Playing build with defense or neidan and reflecting builds in tq for me is simply braindead, small interaction in fights, abusing broken mechanics in old game that rly uninteresting.
@@przemek193 I gave the first guy a reply worth the comment he made. Don't read into it that much.
But to answer, I dislike Grim Dawn because the world is uninteresting...and the characters too. I care for none of it. None of it grabbed me the same way the TQ world and characters do. Why would I play a game if I don't enjoy the setting or like the characters or story?
And if I want a grim, dark, brooding, muddy, filthy post apocalypse shithole world, I'll play a Diablo 1 or 2...and they have better characters too. Hell, PoE as well.