A Guide to Chaos Descending

Discussion in 'Tips, Tricks, FAQs, and New Player Discussion' started by Hurtsbad, Jan 17, 2019.

  1. Hurtsbad Member

    This is a guide intended for beginning or returning players trying to get caught up in the Chaos Descending Expansion. The goal for this guide is to make you at least competitive enough to not hold your group back in T1 and T2 heroic zones, and get you ready to raid if that is your desire. If you are a Roleplayer, carry on! And move along. There is nothing to see here. :) (I joke of course)

    If you don't agree with the things I say, feel free to write your own guide! Surely no one has to do any thing they don't want to do.

    Before we start there are two simple truths to the game now.

    First:

    I hate to say it but you need plat and you wont make any, probably ever. Later when you are all geared up you may make some selling loot rights, and you can always have a trickle from selling crafting materials and such. But don't expect to ever have enough.

    If I am wrong, prove me wrong, and tell me how you did it. I will happily stand corrected.

    This means you pretty much have to sell a Krono to get going. Or consult some one else on how to get plat. Either way, you need plat to get going. About a million. Get some. If you can't/won't do this, feel free to ignore this whole post.

    Second:

    Learn and accept this fact, almost all jewelry in all T1 and T2 heroic zones, except for end boss T2 loot is inferior to Master Crafted. This is truth. Once you are on your way from following this guide, do not upgrade a piece from a Heroic zone loot drop unless it is an increase in potency after you infuse it. Of course this rule can bend a tad. But it is a great rule of thumb in almost all cases.

    There. Now that you have come to terms with those two truths lets get going.

    You will need INFUSERS. You probably have tons in your bank. Use those first. All of them. Start with the smallest bonus you have, for every color, and use it until you can't any more, and work your way up to the top. Get Celestial Potency infusers. These are damn expensive. If you have a TON of plat, feel free to buy em. Otherwise, spam solo zones and Salvage all the loot. Frankly, salvage any loot that is below 60 resolve. Transmute the rest. If you don't have these skills, get them. Just do it. You can get a Celestial Infuser per solo zone. Do this.

    FIRST ADVICE:

    Once you are on your way into the Timeline you will zone into the Library. Directly ahead of you is a desk with a quest starter and a chest on the floor. Open the chest and take ALL of the loot. Then Unadorn every piece. You are going to end up with a lot of great adornments, including Glory, Championship, Juxt and Witness V and a new Blue Rune.. The gear itself is equal or inferior to Expert or Raid gear from PoP. Equip if it you want, it wont be on long. Now feel free to engage the Timeline and have some fun learning the new spread! PoP gear is certainly good enough to get you through the Timeline. I did the whole thing without equipping a single piece of gear.

    Open up your Merc and start him leveling. Open up your mount and start him leveling. /Claim the new mount and familiar if you got one.

    Do NOT use your bonus infusers yet or the leveling potions or any thing really until you have a plan.

    Finally before we get going a word on Stats. The only things you need to worry about work themselves out in this order:

    Potency: Assume there is a heroic zone"Tier" of potency of 75k where you are ineffective until you reach it. You simply cannot get this high enough.
    Fervor: As much as you can possibly get. Always.
    Resolve: Not incredibly important yet. HERE is a link to a thread about resolve requirements. I will address this topic in a few.
    Crit Bonus: You will be starved for CB and once you got your resolve and Potency it actually moves up the list of priority. Aim for 5k, or as high as possible.

    Nothing else really matters. It all comes with gear.

    Finally finally, hold onto your Mythical Epic and Tome as long as you can. Only take em off if you are desperate to hit a resolve tier for raiding. I am raiding T2 and still have my Tome equipped.


    Step One:

    Remake your PoP tome. Get two imbued stones and craft it again. Then infuse it. From this point on lets assume that you are using ALL available infusers and plat when I say "infuse". Once it is made go reforge it and put all of the AB mod into Potency. This should push it up to 4700+ potency.

    Step Two:

    Master Crafted gear is better than almost ALL T1 and T2 heroic gear. I know I already said it but a lot of people have a very hard time accepting this and are happy to settle for a piece with 3200 potency. This is bad.

    Find a crafter and get a whole set of PURIFIED MC gear. Armor, Cloak/belt, weapons and jewelry. Go for Hit Points on the armor for now, and Ability Mod on every piece of jewelery. Find out what the required rares are and go harvest and refine them. You can google how to refine. Do it.

    Here is the secret. You MUST MUST experiment on your gear. Not just once, experiment it to max. This will take literal hours. But you MUST do it.

    BEFORE you experiment, infuse each piece fully. The experiments will apply themselves to the Infused stats, thus yielding higher final stats.

    Then start experimenting.

    Armor: You don't need to go crazy Experimenting on the armor. One or two rounds if you want. You will upgrade it almost instantly once you get into T1 zones. T1 armor is just about even to MC armor and you need it to get T2, so focus on that.

    Every thing else you MUST experiment to max. The title is Visionary. Experiment until it is there. Put your first experimentation into CB then the rest into Potency. Again, AFTER you infuse it all. If you are lucky when you are done experimenting each piece will be 3850+ potency or so.

    Now Reforge the gear:

    Here is where the magic happens. Reforge all of your Jewelry, turning all of the AB mod into Potency. This will push the gear up to 4500+.

    That is where you will stay with your gear until you get Heroic armor drops, and T2 final boss drops. Don't believe me? Try fully infusing and reforging any piece of loot you get before that. If you can't beat the potency, don't equip it. I had a Mastercrafted wrist piece that I did not upgrade until I finally looted a piece off a T1 raid boss.

    But what about Resolve??

    Once you finish your timeline you will get a sweet off hand. Level it, and level your epic, to max. To do so, put on your harvesting gear and get to work. Harvest Golden Flecks, Needlescale Hides and Arborian Wedge. Then have a crafter mass produce it all into Master Crafted weapons. Then break them down into Greater Weapon Essences. It takes 500 GWE to fully level a CD weapon. Start with your new Off Hand. This will get you well past T2 resolve. (Along with your MC gear) While you are in zones, get a Ranged. Go for a T2 ranged and fully level that. This, T2 armor and Boss Loot will get you to Raid resolve if you have not gotten there already. .

    Voila!

    You are well on your way. The rest you will figure out as you go.

    To summarize:

    1. Do not settle for T1 heroic gear, or even T2 heroic unless it's from the last boss.
    2. Get purified Master Crafted gear and fully infuse and experiment on it then reforge the AB mod into Potency.
    3. Harvest or buy rares and have them made into MC weapons to break down into GWE to level your weapons.
    4. Do not replace a piece of MC gear unless it is a potency upgrade.

    Do all this, and you will at least be competent in Heroic groups and be able to finish zones and weeklies and get even better gear.

    Oh and do all of the Achievements that you can. Open your journal and hit the Achievement tab and browse. Some of them give nice rewards.

    Hope you find that helpful!

    Hurts
  2. Feara Well-Known Member

    Thank you, Hurtsbad... don't it :D,

    I have recently returned to the game and am working thru some previous expansions. I will "bookmark" this thread for future use.
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  3. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    ALWAYS harvest your own rares, refine your own rares, craft your own gear or commission it from a player crafter rather than buying from the broker, and experiment on your own gear. Never, ever buy crafted gear from the broker unless it's priced well under the price of the rares needed to make it. There's a good guide to experimentation on the wiki.

    I completely agree with the need to infuse, infuse, infuse. the wiki also has a comprehensive guide to Equipment Infusing.

    I dispute the absolute need to spend real money to buy Krono. yes, if you are impatient, and have deep pockets, go for it.

    Seriously, rares are literally just laying around on the ground in overland zones, get thee out and harvest! You can most certainly make tons of plat on the broker by harvesting your hiney off and selling rares you don't need. Sometimes even the regular raws will sell, check your local broker for prices to see if it's worth putting the common raws up. There's quite a bit of gear that can boost your harvesting skills, and Vegarlson is pretty easy to harvest without catching aggro.

    You can also make money selling loot rights in Auction channel for the NO-TRADE collection shinies from even solo instances (the overland NO-TRADE shinies don't sell well). From your own completed collections, you can often sell collection rewards with more than 40 Resolve for fairly good prices on the broker. Heroic instance shinies from PoP and CD sell very well on the broker. Shinies from older zones are not currently selling well on the broker.

    When you have amassed enough money, look for Krono you can buy on the broker VERY CHEAP, then reprice it higher and sell it, making a profit. This requires you to check the price of Krono every day or so, and write down the price range and how many pages of Krono are on the broker. You will probably notice that towards the end of a month and into the first few days of the next, people are scrambling to buy Krono, the cheap ones fly out of the broker, and people then buy more expensive ones to renew subscriptions. So, mid-month, after the Krono have stacked up on the broker again and the price is driven down well below what Krono sell for during the subscription renewal scramble, you will get some relatively cheap Krono available. Then all you need is to put the Krono back on the broker for the prices that are selling at the end of the month., and wait patiently.

    You can totally pull yourself up by your boostraps, without spending real money to buy Krono. It requires a minimum of effort to get out and harvest/run solo instances, and you have to have a little patience if you're flipping Krono. You only have to spend real money if you have no ability to wait for a little delayed gratification.
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  4. Zeddicious Well-Known Member

    Great write up!

    Couple of things I'd like to add as a reminder:

    Profession Spells - a crafter can create expert level spells, which is what you'll want versus being fully decked out in the proper gear casting apprentice spells. Master spell drops - well, don't hold your breath.

    Ascension Spells - depending on the "level" of expansion you picked up, there will be some Ascension level boosts included in the package. In addition to those boosts, there's a series of quests offered by Yun Li (sp) in Sundered Frontier who will offer a set of Ascension boost books too (also known as the panda quests).
    As much as i'd like to offer a clear cut way to maximize these books, I can't. So do your due diligence and figure out what your main ascension's going to be, and your secondary / etc.
    Today's crafters can create journeyman, expert and grandmaster spells pretty easily (without having a special drop). Adept, Master and the rest (ancient / celestial) will require a special component (illegible scroll / etc)

    Epic Spells -
    After completing the CD signature line, you'll be rewarded with 2 of your class's Epic spells. Upgrade these with a crafter who has the Awakened Abilities recipe book. The Greater Planar fragments are a bit difficult to come by, so level them up as far as you can with whatever's available on-hand. (Lessers and Superiors can get you up to master(?) if I recall). This especially holds true with Necromancers, Shadowknights, Defilers, Conjurers and Rangers. Getting their pet(s) to ancient is a substantial boost to their abilities.

    Now - all of the upgrades listed here can be had with a boatload of plat, as well as a boatload of real cash via in-game research. So depending on how soon / fast you're wanting to hit end-game stuff - that's the equation.

    Oh, and one last thing: install and learn how to use Advanced Combat Tracker (ACT). Yeah, its a dps parsing tool and most folks hate it - but wait! there's more!
    With ACT, you'll be able to synchronize (surge) your ascension spells with your group for added dps bonuses! No sense in just casting those long a** spells all willy nilly, is there? You'll also be able to keep track of where you're really supposed to be in an encounter.... should I stay close to the mob.. stay far away... /shrug who knows, I'll just loiter around and wait for that one-shot to let me take a dirt nap. No! Your group mates will share specific triggers for encounters and the nice computer lady will tell you things like "JOUST" - or "STAY CLOSE" whenever its necessary! Unlike mine, which randomly says "goat".
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  5. Hurtsbad Member



    Good adds! Forgot about that stuff. :)
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  6. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    Very good write up, thank you for spending the time to do this. Excellent additions Sigrdrifa and Zeddicus, thank you both for taking time to write these up.
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  7. Denon Active Member

    Nice writeup - I would add doing the Days of Summer quest series.
    This all works great for running solo's and everything until you want to start grouping.

    I also took a break and really did not play the last 2 expansions. I did all of the things above, so 68K Pot now, however my Fervor is just below 100. So DPS in T1 groups is sub par compared to everyone else.

    What Fervor should we have for T1 groups?
    If its above 100, any guides for a returning player to get Fervor ?
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  8. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    The wiki has a good writeup on the Days of Summer quests, also known as the Travels of Yun'Zi or the Panda quests.

    Basically, you take a wizard spire to Sundered Frontier. On the Spire Island, near where the spire drops you, you will find Yun'Zi. His quests involve you going to a low level zone and finding various named Points of Interest. You only need to do these quests on one toon, all the other toons on that account will have the same unlocks.

    Yun'Zi's most attractive reward offerings (purchasable for the impressive price of 0 copper once you have done the quests) are some cyan adorns, the Divine Attribute Boosts, and Ascension boosts.

    First, loot helmets from Tishan's Lock Box and strip the white POT adorns and use them in all the slots that will take them. Then continue boosting POT:
    • AA lines and Ascension Forms were changed with this xpac to replace Potency buffs with Fervor, so carefully reevaluate your AA.
    • Orange adorns that confer POT.
    • Potency Infusers (you can use infusers from from Thalumbra forward, many can be crafted, and some from common raws such as fish, the others you get by using the Tradedskill Prestige ability to salvage trash loot for Salvaged Infuser Fragments, which are then crafted into good infusers)
    • Deity Infusing (aka plat infusing)
    • Infuse your weapons with Weapon Essences (+100 xp to weapon level) and/or Greater Weapon Essences (+1,000 xp to weapon level).... this raises Resolve and POT.
    Fervor multiplies the total spell/CA values after all other formulas have been applied. The hard cap is 230. There are a number of items that convey Fervor:
    • Blue Adorns
      • Celestial Rune of Greater Mysteries (+70 Fervor)
      • Celestial Rune of Mysteries (+55 Fervor)
      • Celestial Rune of Embers (+25 Fervor)
      • Celestial Rune: Warlord's Puissance (+25 Fervor plus assorted other effects)
      • Celestial Rune of Reactionary Strike (15% chance for +5.5 Fervor -- as well as other effects -- on hostile ability cast)
      • Foundation of Excitement (+4 Fervor, with 2 other runes from Aspect of Paixao, either white or orange. Reward from collection "Secrets of Guk")
    • Orange Adorns
      • Rune of the Enigma (+15 Fervor, other effects) -- Ethereal
      • Planar Mastery class orange runes (+5 Fervor, other effects) -- Ethereal
      • Celestial Rune: Symphony of the Void (+7 Fervor to profession spells, plus other effects)
      • Rune of the Celestial (+2% chance for +150 Fervor on hostile ability cast, plus other effects)
      • Aspect of Paixao set of three runes, either white or orange, Ascension of Love, Firmament of Passion, and Foundation of Excitement (+4 Fervor)
      • Rune of Witness [#] -- you can only have one Witness rune
        • Celestial Rune of Witness [VII] (+19.2 Fervor, plus other effects)
        • Rune of Witness [VI] (+13.2 Fervor, plus other effects)
        • Rune of Witness [V] (+11 Fervor)
        • Rune of Witness [IV] (+10 Fervor, Proving Grounds, plus other effects)
        • Rune of Witness [III] (+9 Fervor, Proving Grounds, plus other effects)
        • Rune of Witness [II] (+7 Fervor, Proving Grounds, plus other effects)
        • Rune of Witness (+4 Fervor, Proving Grounds, plus other effects)
    • Green Adorns
      • Amethyst of the All-Mother (+4 to +5 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 110)
      • Eye of the Elder Orb (+4 to +5 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 110)
      • Pearl of the Deep (+4 to +5 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 110 CD raid drop)
      • Spiritstone of the Mud King (+3.5 to +4.5 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 110 CD raid drop)
      • Spiritstone of the Precipice (+3.5 to +4.5 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 110 CD raid drop)
      • Spiritstone of the Wilder (+2.5 to +3.5 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 110 CD heroic drop)
      • Spiritstone the Fiend (+2.5 to +3.5 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 110 CD heroic drop)
      • Molten Spiritstone (+1.5 to +2.5 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 110 CD solo drop)
      • Stormbringer's Spiritstone (+1.5 to +2.5 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 110 CD solo drop)
      • Insidious Spitestone (+1 to +1.3 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 100 reward from collection "Fragments of Hate")
      • Master Control Core (+0.5 to +0.6 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 100, crafted from Emergency Protocol Blueprints)
      • Plane Touched Spiritstone (+0.5 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 100)
      • Spirit Stone of Ghiosk (+0.4 to +0.5 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 100 crafted from KA raid drop, Clan Bloody Tooth Spirit Stones)
      • Spirit Stone of Et'Kalysh (+0.2 to +0.3 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 100 crafted from KA raid drop, Clan Bloody Tooth Spirit Stones)
      • Spirit Stone of Glox (+0.1 to +0.2 Fervor, plus other effects, lvl 100 crafted from KA raid drop, Clan Bloody Tooth Spirit Stones)
    • Cyan Adorns
      • One Handed Rune: Greater Undying Power (+0.5 Fervor and +50 POT, lvl 100)
      • One Handed Rune: Undying Power (+0.3 Fervor and +35 POT, lvl 100)
      • One Handed Rune: Lesser Undying Power (+0.2 Fervor and +25 POT, lvl 100)
      • Two Handed Rune: Greater Undying Power (+1 Fervor and +100 POT, lvl 100)
      • Two Handed Rune: Undying Power (+0.6 Fervor and +70 POT, lvl 100)
      • Two Handed Rune: Lesser Undying Power (+0.4 Fervor and +50 POT, lvl 100)
    • Temporary Adorns for Neck Slot
      • Discord's Puissance (+0.5 Fervor for 1 hr)
      • Extended Discord's Puissance (+0.5 Fervor for 4 hrs)
      • Maintained Discord's Puissance (+0.5 Fervor for 8 hrs)
    • Mount Gear
      • Elysian Saddle of Fervor (+1.3 Fervor)
      • Chronicler's Saddle of Fervor (+1 Fervor)
      • Academic's Saddle of Fervor (+0.8 Fervor)
      • Student's Saddle of Fervor (+0.6 Fervor)
    • Rewards from Return to Guk collection "Malevolor Trophies"
      • Staff of Plagues (+70 Fervor plus other effects, 110 2H staff)
      • The Dar's Embrace (+70 Fervor plus other effects, 110 2H staff)
      • Ykesha's Maw (+70 Fervor plus other effects, 110 2H sword)
      • Blade of Shadowed Strife (+35 Fervor plus other effects, 110 dagger)
      • SHield of the Ancient (+35 Fervor plus other effects, 110 tower shield)
      • The Tyrant's Dark Blade (+35 Fervor plus other effects, 110 dagger)
    • Other
      • Epic 2.0, Mythical (+35 Fervor plus other effects)
      • Epic 2.0, Fabled (+25 Fervor plus other effects)
      • Tome of the Ascended (+10 Fervor, charm)
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  9. Denon Active Member

    Nice List - Thanks Sigrdrifa .... going to try to start working on finding some of those adornments.
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  10. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    Sigrdrifa, I might have to challenge your "most attractive" choices as I find the prestige house that you can purchase also for 0 copper at the end of the questlines the most attractive, perhaps we can share and say yours is the most attractive for adventuring, my choice is the most attractive for a crafter/decorator *smiles snarkily and cheesy*

    Nice write up add Sigrdrifa and nice call Denon, I think all of us but you forgot about poor Yun Zi.
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  11. Seefar Well-Known Member

    Could you expand upon that? How does one 'remake a PoP tome'? What is a PoP tome anyway? (Is it the Tome of the Ascended you get when you reach level 15 in all four ascension skills?)

    That's very interesting. Might I ask how you know this is the case? I had assumed that experimentation applied a bonus to gear that would grow as the base values grew; it would be a bit of a blow to find that I've spent all that time making my stuff 'Visionary' and then spending a fortune in plat to infuse it, only to find that I really ought to go back and do it all again 'the right way'. (Sucky, sucky, sucky game mechanic, or what?)

    PS you don't have to experiment on stuff yourself; if you're on Halls of Fate I'll happily do it for you, for a reasonabubble fee... I'll also (again for a fee, but much, much less than you'd pay on the broker) make you any infusers you may need, because I got lucky and scored the recipe for making those, and you may not be so lucky...
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  12. Mercychalice Well-Known Member

    Special note about the Guk weapons someone listed earlier, in the items-with-fervor list: All of these weapons are Greater Relic, and 35 Resolve. You will not be able to wear them, AND the blue rune you are rewarded when you finish kills of all the Heroic nameds. You will need to choose between the weapon and the rune, and I'd choose the rune. It's got 55 (iirc) Fervor, instead of the 35 you get from the weapon. And, at any rate, Guk….Yuck....
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  13. Mercychalice Well-Known Member


    Yes Seefar, it is the Tome of the Ascended, but the crafted version you get from when you finished the Tradeskill timeline from the POP crating line. And yes, experimenting works best if you infuse first, because the stat pool to draw from is larger than base stats.
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  14. Meneltel Well-Known Member

    Bah, more like a job than a game for fun. *slips off into the shadows grumbling hatefully*
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  15. Seefar Well-Known Member

    Tell me about it. I've just discovered that once you infuse a nitem, it becomes attuned to you. So, so much for my plans to offer experimentation services to others (I won't be able to experiment on things that are attuned to them).

    Sucky, sucky, SUCKY game mechanic.
  16. Seefar Well-Known Member

    I did some testing to try to determine whether the 'experiment after testing' hypothesis was valid... here are my thoughts.

    Firstly, some observations:

    Infusing only affects potency and stamina, so if you want to boost other stats than these by experimentation, there's no difference, it doesn't matter which way round you do it.

    The stat boosts from infusing are very random; you may get a lot of boosts, you may only get a few, and it's also random whether you get a stamina or a potency boost. Without being able to duplicate exactly the same sequence of boosts, it's really not possible to do a meaningful comparison.

    The results I got from my testing (on two bows) were as follows:

    (1) After experimentation then infusion (deity only):
    POT: 824.8
    STA: 2669

    (2) After infusion (deity only) then experimentation:
    POT: 829.3
    STA: 2962

    In conclusion, these results appear to indicate that there is a benefit to infusing first, then experimenting afterwards (which I personally think is a pity for reasons I've given in previous posts above). The potency benefit here is very marginal (0.005%); the stamina boost more noticeable (~11%). Of course there's no way of knowing how much the RNG influence on the infusion process affected this.

    Here's hoping you find this of interest.
    Cheers!
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  17. Gubba Bump Member

    What about the infusers for AB Mod and CB?
  18. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    There's a thorough article over at the wiki discussing Equipment Infusing, and it lists I think all of the known infusers, explains about infusing the various layers and so forth.

    There are three infusing layers: Deity, which takes plat infusion and Loyalty infusers; Physical, which uses dropped and crafted infusers; and Bonus, which uses infusers you get from certain achievements, as Beta testing rewards, etc. You can infuse on all three layers, they each have different caps.

    All of the layers can infuse STA, POT, ABMod, and/or CB. You will only get ABMod and/or CB on items that have that stat already.
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  19. Seefar Well-Known Member

    My bad... thanks for cluing me in.

    /thinks: this is all far, far too complicated.
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  20. Rarkevan Active Member

    This.

    Imma just going to run around the world and explore. See some pretty sights, and if I get slain, oh well :)