Best ways to level/gear up between story quests?

[Nihilum]

I'e played this game to completion enough times to have a rough idea of what I need in terms of level and gear for each quest, but I still feel that I'm spending more time than I should gaining levels and sourcing gear. More often than not, I just go delving 20-30 strata below ground beneath Grit Gate and while that does occasionally yield powerful gear, it's also rife with powerful enemies, and without Techscanning I can't reliably get good gadgets from stores.

So I'm stuck with a random assortment of gizmos, lucky to have anything better than steel gear because if I do find it, it's prohibitively heavy unless I get the Slender or Willowy mods, which comes down to hoping a merchant has those in stock. Historic Sites and side quests like Raising Indrix are good for getting some stuff, but are also only one off deals.

Any idea what I could be doing in between story quests to better my character?

[glass zebra]

After Golgotha raiding Goatfolk villages is pretty good for carbide gear (which is also lighter than steel on body armour). Carbide weapons also have a pretty decent weight to value ratio (even the non-dagger ones), so that makes buying most random gizmos realistic unless you went super low on ego.
Later on Goatfolk haunts mostly take over that target. They have less enemies and seem rarer, but have better gear. Both of those are imo the best sources for 2h weapons (traders hardly ever sell them).

Sultan dungeons have unique gear, which might or might not be useful, but is at least interesting and can provide boni on slots you might not see much use for until later on (like face, floating slot or arm). Depending on the faction rolled, you might also get some gear from the factions, but that is pretty rare for the lower tier sites I'd say. Higher tier ones can have really good loot from humanoid cultists. If you are a true kin, you probably want to go there anyway for the credit.

Random ruins might or might not have good gear (or no gear at all). They are fairly random, but can occasionally contain a relic item. Flaming tar pits often have really good artefacts and a lot of them. Flower fields can have some "encounter" things that can provide rather OP gear (like tier 6+) just sitting around some corpses. I got ogre ape corpses (and therefor the gear) and crysteel weapons there already.


All of that is just for gear, but steel is the only keyword you said gear/tier wise, so I have no idea when you have issues leveling up (tier 3/level 15 I guess?). I frankly go from main quest POI to main quest POI most of the time and do the random encounter pop-ups (I always get wayfaring: Jungle, since that is a big part of the map) and sultan dungeon if I get them early enough. That brings you to "average" level with the enemies.

Rainbow woods have close to infinite XP (and infinite money) and if you have some self-powering ranged weapon and flying, all you need is to hold down F to get XP. You get 0 gear there, but the infinite money can be given to Sixshrew for gear. Grave moss fields also have close to infinite XP, but take some set-up with fertilisation.

[Nihilum]

Thanks. I mentioned Steel because that's what most of my armour is. I usually end up with a Fullerite weapon from Rising Indrix or the CVK from Bethesda Susa, other than that, I'm currently using an overloaded laser pistol and the Scoped Masterwork Chain Pistol you can get from completing Golgotha. I guess my question for that is "Where do I consistently get Tier 5+ gear?"

[glass zebra]

There is a bit of gap between steel and the next stuff. Some armor pieces go from tier 1 to tier 3 directly and there is no "bronze armour" and no "folded carbide" armour. All carbide pieces except the breast plate are also really rare. Many people probably never saw carbide gauntlets or boots once (when I find them, I always think "wait, is this a new item? Oh no.. those are just super rare"). After carbide there is also fullerite, which is just so heavy that only super strength boosting characters can realistically carry them and with crysteel armour starts to get much lighter, but also adds resistance instead of just AV and also gets better with the DV penalty so.. around steel/carbide are some changes with armor progression.


The Tier5+ stuff has a gear "issue", because the tier 5 part of the main quest is Omnoporch/assault/rainbow wood. You don't really get any gear from the Omonoporch (or the surrounding area), you mostly get fullerite gear from the assault (though a lot) and Rainbow woods again give no gear at all.. so tier5+ is mostly Sixshrew for gear inside the quest line until you enter the Tombs. You might get eigen rifles/pistols from the assault, but I think you can end up with the gunners not spawning or their gear exploding.

The game gets more open/fuzzy after tier 4 with locations to choose. There is basically nothing for the main quest in the deep jungle and the lake+palladium reef is mostly "you wake up here" and you have to do nothing inside of them, so you are not really taken by the hand through those places and would need to explore by choice. Wiki zone map indicates the north western part of the deep jungle should be end of tier 4 and the western part of the lake should be tier 5. Seems like that are the appropriate part, but nothing really sends you there. I think I got CVKs from the goatfolk haunts already, but probably the ones further south east. The deep jungles also seem to have quite a lot of drakes and dynamic turret tinkers. If you have disarm, you can get reaaaaally good ranged weapons and bits there.

I honestly have very little experience in those regions (just started looking at the deep jungle more) apart from entering some ruins/sultan dungeons there, but the reef hermits seem to have pretty nice gear (if you are willing to raid neutrals) and the ruins in the later areas of the game seem to be more special than in the earlier parts. I found random sultan cults and legendaries and some nice chests there pretty often. They both have special dangers of course. Clairvoyance helps a lot, but is honestly a bit annoying in the deep jungle because it reduces your lag tuber loot a lot unless you manually comb the screens.


I might actually be in the same boat as you, but more with carbide. I think I mostly skip from tier 4 to 6 for non-weapons and get some gear from the tombs. I often end the game in modded tier 6/7 items. Later sultan dungeons and traders might really be the biggest source for me before the tombs. Since my last char found a lot of those dynamic turret tinkerers, I might visit the deep jungle more often. Sadly 204.98 has made disarming psychal fleshgun turrets impossible (might be a bug).

Baroque ruins are also a thing, but higher then the early tombs I think.

[Nihilum]

Thanks again for your advice. I felt the same about the Deep Jungle and Lake Hinnom. Hopefully one of the two final quests will send us there but they feel pretty barren as is. I'm probably going to keep going with diving under Grit Gate, making the jump to ruins and baroque ruins later on.

[glass zebra]

I mean you kinda have to go through there for a bit when heading for the Moonstair, but that area is very close to Yd Freehold and the recoming is also often pretty close to the Freehold itself. I started playing the game not too long after the reef got added (I think) and when playing that I was a bit surprised that there is no quest in it (there actually is with the Landing Pods, but that is a side quest you might not even get). So far it looked like a pretty good place to explore gear wise (with even unique gear like the Kaleidoslug stuff), but the fact that I forgot to even mention it in my first post probably speaks for itself.

It seems great, but you have to decide yourself to go there. Not sure if that is a symptom of "later game development and content addition". I have no idea if development process changed a bit around that time. It might also simply be "the players should feel less anxious and more confident/knowledgeable by now. Let them be more free in their decisions".

[glass zebra]

I also forgot the ogre apes. Ogre ape gear is almost as special as kaleidoslug gear and similar in the source. They are somewhat common, but don't drop their corpses all the time. A good source for fire/cold resistance, which can be very strong if you go for freeze/thermal grenade spam and can also grant quite a lot of hp and has AV pretty much like metal amour. The deep jungle can probably equip most of your slots with apes, goats and turret tinkerers now that I think of it.

[Dr.Desty Nova]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

I started playing the game not too long after the reef got added (I think) and when playing that I was a bit surprised that there is no quest in i

RIP Deathland.

For what it's worth, before the reef, the deep jungle and the moon stairs there was just didly squat. No town, no unique biome, no npc, no quest. Just high level monsters and loot.
It was a place holder where you went to test yourself against chrome pyramid and leering stalker with your metametal gear xd