Purchasing Difficulty Merits

[Lord Commander Dante]

So how exactly is this going to work?
Say i want to purchase a Difficulty Merit for a brand new character, how this will effect all the previous constellation points i will miss from previous difficulties? Including special rewards from npcs like talent/attribute points and so on?

[Matthew]

You automatically get the previous difficulty rewards (bonus skills/attributes).

The map has been redesigned to have all devotion shrines in one playthrough.

You won't miss anything from skipping the previous difficulties.

[Lord Commander Dante]

Originally posted by Matthew:

You automatically get the previous difficulty rewards (bonus skills/attributes).

The map has been redesigned to have all devotion shrines in one playthrough.

You won't miss anything from skipping the previous difficulties.

:OOO
This is amazing! Was this been confirmed?
So whats the point in doing the two previous difficulties now? I see no reason what so ever

[Koubo]

I dont remember where you find this item. Wana do a new character in hight difficulty

[Matthew]

Well, you still start with negative resists and ultimate enemies, even level 1 enemies, are going to be more difficult. I suspect many players won't want to deal with the handicaps of starting on ultimate.

If I had to guess, I'd say most people will do two playthroughs. Either veteran + ultimate or elite + ultimate. Three is almost too much with the amount of content. By the time you finish veteran you are already going to be 70-ish or more making elite rather pointless.

I'm going straight ultimate though

[Lord Commander Dante]

Originally posted by Matthew:

I'm going straight ultimate though :cozykcdknight:

Same here buddy.
I just hope they dont intend us to have loot from previous characters at this point because as ive mentioned on my previous thread, im gonna delete all my loot once ill get these tokens and transfer them to my new characters. So i wont be able to rely on previous drops to help my new toons on Ultimate

[Matthew]

I don't know. You may want to hold off on completely deleting your saves then. The difficulty tokens apparently have a cost. Something like 100,000 iron bits. And I think you need to get them from a character which already has unlocked ultimate.

XP potions will also help with doing ultimate from low level. And those are 40k each.

[powbam]

Originally posted by Matthew:

I don't know. You may want to hold off on completely deleting your saves then. The difficulty tokens apparently have a cost. Something like 100,000 iron bits. And I think you need to get them from a character which already has unlocked ultimate.

XP potions will also help with doing ultimate from low level. And those are 40k each.

Yup. You need to have characters that have already made it to Elite/Ultimate. They are also the ones that would be purchasing these items for the new characters. It is also worth noting that if you wish to access these items immediately with the new character you're gunna need Crucible to get to the stash otherwise you will have to wait until you can access the inner prison in DC.

Originally posted by Lord Commander Dante:

I just hope they dont intend us to have loot from previous characters

They intend you to approach it however you wish.

Originally posted by Koubo:

I dont remember where you find this item. Wana do a new character in hight difficulty

You don't remember because it isn't available yet. It is coming with the new expansion later this month (Mar. 27th).

[Matthew]

It is also possible to just delete your stash and smithy and such. You get the "new game" feeling, but you can keep a high level character around for the utility it provides.

In any case, I suggest creating a back-up of your save folder elsewhere. Even if you do plan on just straight-up deleting everything, it just makes sense to have a copy of 500 hours of work backed up just in case.

[MedeaFleecestealer]

Seems I need to post this yet again. From the 7th December stream:

"So the reason I'm opening up this guy today, notice he's on normal difficulty, nothing substantial, he's level 2, got a mastery to select, there's Oathkeeper, got 3 skill points, I've already spent his attribute points, but oh look. In my inventory are two new items we're going to be introducing with the Forgotten Gods expansion. What are these items you might ask? They are Merits, similar to the Crucible, you now get to use these items in the main campaign. What they do is allow you to unlock higher difficulties on your new characters. So I've got a Champion's Merit that unlocks Elite and I've got the Saviour's Merit that unlocks Ultimate. And that means you immediately get access to new difficulties, you immediately get all of the attribute and skill point rewards that any quest on lower difficulties would have given you which means you don't have to go back to Normal, you don't have to go back to Elite, if you want to start on Ultimate you will immediately get those points. You will immediately get all of the inventory bags which you would have unlocked and you immediately get all of the riftgates on the lower difficulties. Boom! 4 more attribute points, 7 skill points. Just like that. Now if I go to the main menu and click this little thing here, oh look I'm level 2 going into Ultimate difficulty!

Thewordbearer : will we need to go to lower difficulties to get devo shrines?

And that is the other thing that comes with these tokens. In Forgotten Gods we are not only enabling every single shrine that is in the world on every difficulty in the game, we're going to be adding new shrines to the world in places you haven't before had shrines. And that means, if you go straight to Ultimate difficulty you will be able to get all 55 devotion points in one single playthrough. On top of that, with the upcoming patch we will be buffing the bonuses from Warrants, from Mandates and Writs so you can get your reputations up faster on your alts than ever before.

anathema2741 : how is the level scaling on ultimate at level 2?

Well, let's take a look. Now I will warn you that anyone who's going to play like this? It's going to be hard. I would describe this as almost playing on players 8 in Diablo 2 back in the old days, but you'll notice these enemies are actually scaled to my level. We've gone ahead and through Elite and Ultimate difficulties and updated these guys so they scale from one all the way up to max level. And yes, they hurt. They give a lot more XP, but they hurt. You're going to get all the attribute and skill points like I said and you're going to need them because this stuff is way harder than what you're used to. I will point out, if you look at my resistances, they are in fact altered by the difficulty scaling.

Now where do you get these tokens you might ask next. And the answer to that is in the Forgotten Gods new quest hub. As soon as you unlock the new quest content in the upcoming expansion you'll be to go right over to a vendor and buy as many of these as you want for every single one of your characters that you're going to roll."

As powbam said to get in at that low a level you'll need to access the stash in Crucible, otherwise you'll have to do the first quest of the campaign to unlock the prison gates.

Also bear in mind if you're thinking of wiping stuff that, although all current shrines have been enabled on the higher difficulties and also more have been added so you can get 55 devotion points in one playthrough, the cleansing ingredients for some remain the same. So for the East March one for example you're still going to need Tainted Brain matter and a Mistborn Talisman to cleanse it on Ultimate difficulty.

[Koubo]

Originally posted by powbam:

Originally posted by Matthew:

I don't know. You may want to hold off on completely deleting your saves then. The difficulty tokens apparently have a cost. Something like 100,000 iron bits. And I think you need to get them from a character which already has unlocked ultimate.

XP potions will also help with doing ultimate from low level. And those are 40k each.

Yup. You need to have characters that have already made it to Elite/Ultimate. They are also the ones that would be purchasing these items for the new characters. It is also worth noting that if you wish to access these items immediately with the new character you're gunna need Crucible to get to the stash otherwise you will have to wait until you can access the inner prison in DC.

Originally posted by Lord Commander Dante:

I just hope they dont intend us to have loot from previous characters

They intend you to approach it however you wish.

Originally posted by Koubo:

I dont remember where you find this item. Wana do a new character in hight difficulty

You don't remember because it isn't available yet. It is coming with the new expansion later this month (Mar. 27th).

I know it in the next expension. I just dont remember if they say how it works. need to be prepared :)

[RodHull]

Originally posted by Lord Commander Dante:

Originally posted by Matthew:

You automatically get the previous difficulty rewards (bonus skills/attributes).

The map has been redesigned to have all devotion shrines in one playthrough.

You won't miss anything from skipping the previous difficulties.

:OOO
This is amazing! Was this been confirmed?
So whats the point in doing the two previous difficulties now? I see no reason what so ever

When Zantai showed ultimate at level 1 it took forever to kill 1 zombie, if your into a pure efficiency style of levelling I suspect (though impossible to say till ive played it) that starting on elite with lokarrs armour and potions will be the optimal way to play. Get to level 75 asap and then apply augments and such to get your resists high enough to tackle ultimate.

Remember maxing out your resists on ultimate with no access to augments or decent items till you hit 70+ will be extremely hard.

[Lord Commander Dante]

Originally posted by RodHull:

Originally posted by Lord Commander Dante:

:OOO
This is amazing! Was this been confirmed?
So whats the point in doing the two previous difficulties now? I see no reason what so ever

When Zantai showed ultimate at level 1 it took forever to kill 1 zombie, if your into a pure efficiency style of levelling I suspect (though impossible to say till ive played it) that starting on elite with lokarrs armour and potions will be the optimal way to play. Get to level 75 asap and then apply augments and such to get your resists high enough to tackle ultimate.

Remember maxing out your resists on ultimate with no access to augments or decent items till you hit 70+ will be extremely hard.

Hard but not impossible.

[RodHull]

Originally posted by Lord Commander Dante:

Originally posted by RodHull:

When Zantai showed ultimate at level 1 it took forever to kill 1 zombie, if your into a pure efficiency style of levelling I suspect (though impossible to say till ive played it) that starting on elite with lokarrs armour and potions will be the optimal way to play. Get to level 75 asap and then apply augments and such to get your resists high enough to tackle ultimate.

Remember maxing out your resists on ultimate with no access to augments or decent items till you hit 70+ will be extremely hard.

Hard but not impossible.

No not impossible, but not time efficient either. And I'm all about time efficient in games like this

[Matthew]

I'm quite sure pumping AoE skills will still kill relatively quickly on ultimate. You can't look at swinging a dagger at level 1 as an accurate reference... that isn't quick even on normal.

Starting on elite will likely be quicker, but only due to running out of (early) quests on ultimate. Probably won't need to do all of elite either... just rush to Loghorrean absorbing the quest xp along the way, then go to and max out on ultimate. With xp potions of course.

I suppose it depends on how soon you want to hit 94 on ultimate. It is rather overkill for the base game, and elite Log ~> ult Log will probably get you close to 94 before AoM/FG difficulty spike.

All of this just speculation for fun of course. Personally, I don't care much about an hour here or there and more care about the convenience of only needing to do quests/shrines once and feel complete. If that means running something like Bastion of Chaos a couple times to make up lost xp's, whatever, I usually do some farming runs on ultimate characters anyway before retiring them.

[RodHull]

Originally posted by Matthew:

I'm quite sure pumping AoE skills will still kill relatively quickly on ultimate. You can't look at swinging a dagger at level 1 as an accurate reference... that isn't quick even on normal.

Starting on elite will likely be quicker, but only due to running out of (early) quests on ultimate. Probably won't need to do all of elite either... just rush to Loghorrean absorbing the quest xp along the way, then go to and max out on ultimate. With xp potions of course.

I suppose it depends on how soon you want to hit 94 on ultimate. It is rather overkill for the base game, and elite Log ~> ult Log will probably get you close to 94 before AoM/FG difficulty spike.

All of this just speculation for fun of course. Personally, I don't care much about an hour here or there and more care about the convenience of only needing to do quests/shrines once and feel complete. If that means running something like Bastion of Chaos a couple times to make up lost xp's, whatever, I usually do some farming runs on ultimate characters anyway before retiring them.

Yeah thats the plan rush elite to get to 70 which with lokarrs and potions shouldnt take long (possibly even before log) then switch to ult