Guys I am a bit confused with what I am meant to be doing when it comes to upgrade paths

[PersonalC0ffee]

I am playing pure wizard. Grim and wand only. Thing is I have only ever found a unique grim and no unique wand. I'm on the quest to visit the watcher.

I have upgraded my common wand to fine 1, my light armor to fine 1, and my common elements grim to fine 1 because the unique I did find, I didn't particularly care for and I have no unique wand but I needed to upgrade to deal with some of the areas around.

I noticed standard non unique gear can not be legendary, so the absolute best gear are uniques.

Am I messing up here? Did I screw my save file?

I have not smashed or sold ANY unique.

Also bonus question, do the uniques you get from premium version, exist elsewhere in the game? I feel they are a bit cheaty at this level and I want to sell or smash them but considering they may not appear later I might not do that.

[Tea Lady]

As long as you are breaking items down and not selling them you should have a decent amount of stuff to upgrade as long as you are exploring a lot, as well.

I am using a pistol, for example, and when I found a unique it wasn't a big deal to upgrade it as well and breakdown my old pistol. You can get resources from the vendors too if you really need something.

[PersonalC0ffee]

It seems the paradissian ladder is what I'm running low in. Yes I'm breaking down everything but unique.

[Tea Lady]

Originally posted by PersonalC0ffee:

It seems the paradissian ladder is what I'm running low in. Yes I'm breaking down everything but unique.

You can buy it from certain vendors, and they restock every 2-3 days. Not a lot but it adds up and you can get lockpicks this way too.

[Zaris]

No you didn't mess up. From my first mage playthrough experience:
- you want in general weapon and armor as legendary, grimoire doesn't matter for the tier dmg bonus / malus
- legendary tier can only be reached at the end of area 4 / start of endboss dungeon so you have 4 whole areas to find a unique wand, armor
- buy all adra versions from vendors, they sell maybe 6-8 each area and you want to use them to upgrade them into the next tier after you upgraded all your current gear
- deluxe heavy armor in the chest with 1% essense per attack dmg is overpowered, you should use them even on a mage (essense malus doesn't matter because grimoir + perk reduces skill costs down to 20% later on and you do 1000-2000 dmg with ice pillar)
- explore the whole map systematically to get as much upgrade stuff from chests as possible so you don't need to break down items, you will swim in materials
- don't ever upgrade grimoires, because you change them anyway, little spoiler what you can buy / find:

- elemental grimoire (start)
- greater elemental (vendor area1, loot)
- rime / frost with meteor/ice pillar (vendor area2, loot)
- unique with ice pillar / meteor together (from quest dwarf temple area4)
- items:
-- uniques: break them down to adra, like said above, if you have enough adra for the current armor, weapon upgrades then merge the adra to the next tier
-- non uniques: to keep it simple, break down tier 1 and sell every tier 2-4 item so you have always enough money to buy all adra, potiions, maybe new grimoires or even unique items from some vendors
-> i did that and ended up with 400k money, armor / weapon tier 5 and could upgrade my stuff quite early

Mage specific:
- cast spells only from grimoire or you won't get its cooldown / ressourcen reduce effect,later on ~74% ressource / 55% cooldown
- best early spells are fireball (1 pts), chain lightning (2) then ice pillar (1 pts) and meteor (0pts) and for fun vortex (quite strong but didn#t really needed it)
- like said above you can also wear the essence absorb armor from deluxe which should make the game way easier on top the 30% dmg reduction instead robes with 8%, together with shield spell = invincible
- push wand dmg by skilling 50% wand dmg bonus, 20% crit chance from ranger tree with gloves / boots / rings / amulet with crit chance / crit dmg bonus and go for ~5 might, 5 perception, 5 int, 5 constitution (int can even be left 0 because of the ressource reduction), you will end up with ~50-55% crit chance, 90-100% crit dmg
- push survival by skilling 45% hp bonus from warrior (i had >500 hp at the end)

Companions:
- third companion is most likely your best friend with many buffs like cooldown reduce, heal, temporary health for survial

[archonsod]

Originally posted by PersonalC0ffee:

I am playing pure wizard. Grim and wand only. Thing is I have only ever found a unique grim and no unique wand. I'm on the quest to visit the watcher.

You won't. First unique wand is in the second map (Minoletta's Conduit, you can buy it from a merchant there). There's a couple of unique grimoires on the first map though.

I noticed standard non unique gear can not be legendary, so the absolute best gear are uniques.

Yeah, but you won't be able to get any gear to legendary until the final map to begin with.

Am I messing up here? Did I screw my save file?

Nope. As a general rule you should get enough upgrade materials just from exploring the map, looting chests and breaking down irrelevant weapons. The only thing you're limited with (and even then, largely due to cost more than anything else) is Adra.
Thing is Adra is only used to move up a tier, and you'll find with the non-unique equipment that happens anyway as you move through the maps. So as a general rule of thumb it's fine to upgrade any non-unique to the +3 version within it's tier, it's just not worth upgrading it to the next tier since that spends Adra, and it's easy enough to simply buy the higher tier version when needed.

Also bonus question, do the uniques you get from premium version, exist elsewhere in the game?

There are no uniques from the premium version, just two different skins for companions.

[PersonalC0ffee]

Doesn't upgrading the grimoire help with cooldown and damage of spells?

[PersonalC0ffee]

Originally posted by archonsod:

There are no uniques from the premium version, just two different skins for companions.

Then what are the Obsidian Order and Engwithan boots and greaves clothing from? Because they were in my chest when I got to camp.

[Arden]

You already received some good advice with one exception. Sell all common loot because you can buy upgrade materials from the vendors for less than what you get from breaking it up. Uniques are for breaking because adra does not replenish at vendors.

Also you should get the scavenger perk asap. It will make it more efficient to upgrade your gear. Even more so if you like to try different playstyles.

[mike_hanna211]

Originally posted by PersonalC0ffee:

Doesn't upgrading the grimoire help with cooldown and damage of spells?

I think grimoires give you essence and cooldown reductions. I don't believe it increases the damage of the spells cast.

[PersonalC0ffee]

Originally posted by Arden:

You already received some good advice with one exception. Sell all common loot because you can buy upgrade materials from the vendors for less than what you get from breaking it up. Uniques are for breaking because adra does not replenish at vendors.

Also you should get the scavenger perk asap. It will make it more efficient to upgrade your gear. Even more so if you like to try different playstyles.

Scavenger perk? I heard don't sell anything, break it all down. So which is it?

Originally posted by mike_hanna211:

Originally posted by PersonalC0ffee:

Doesn't upgrading the grimoire help with cooldown and damage of spells?

I think grimoires give you essence and cooldown reductions. I don't believe it increases the damage of the spells cast.

Yes but that's pretty useful. So only wand damage increases the damage of the spell or is that what rank is for?

[Arden]

Yes, Ranger tree, upgrading materials costs 25% less.

[PersonalC0ffee]

Originally posted by Arden:

Yes, Ranger tree, upgrading materials costs 25% less.

Hmm this breaks my only use Wizard tree goal but damn that is really too good to pass on..

Hold on, you said from less than what you get for breaking it up earlier. What do you mean? Please elaborate here.

[Zaris]

Originally posted by PersonalC0ffee:

Doesn't upgrading the grimoire help with cooldown and damage of spells?

like others said, only your hero level increases spell dmg or specific item bonusses like "+x% fire dmg" and you can even buy tier 4 grimoires of every normal type in the later area. But like said above the most likely best grimoire is a tier 4 or 5 unique one anway.

[PersonalC0ffee]

Originally posted by Arden:

Sell all common loot because you can buy upgrade materials from the vendors for less than what you get from breaking it up.

Arden can you please elaborate here