Bit of a Noob here, some quick questions

[webmetalreese]

I've been playing for about 15 hours without even looking at really how to play I've been just treating it as a typical Hack and Slash, but now I'm at a point where I'm getting dead like all the time.
So I read about the Vigilante build and I figured I'd give it a shot, so I started a new character and went to Fractured Worlds. (Because, in the guide it says to do so and "grab your gear" which I assumed would drop in Fractured Worlds) but it seems the only drops I'm getting as basic white - nothing legendary.
Is it because I'm not max level? Maybe I need to adjust the difficulty? Or was the "grab your gear" meaning you've already gotten it with another character?
Also, I've yet to see a talisman drop - like my entire game not one has dropped. Are there certain areas/stages where they do? What am I missing?

Any help is greatly appreciated. So far I am really enjoying it.

[webmetalreese]

Now I'm just tyring to lvl up legendaries, but the % RMB is pretty low. Any tips? I've been farming collectors residence but I'm getting no love. I also hit Fractured to see - made it to tier 7 and nothing good came out of it just some lvl II junk.

[Venuminostrates]

Put a farming weapon with both luck and especially extraordinary luck in your off hand if you don’t already have one. It works as long as it’s equipped.

Treasure hunts and bounties are great. Found in international room chat (I get 10+ a day if I’m looking for them there).

Secret pumpkin seems to drop legendary weapons the pretty often. You can usually ask in chat and find someone who has pie to burn.

Farming secrets is great too, since they can be looted once per day. I hit both Zagoravia and Motörhead levels for them.

Motörhead monuments of rock are okay. If you find a good one that’s easy and fast to get to and has a lot of champions, let me know.

Best sources definitely legendary gift boxes for weapons (legendary demon powers don’t drop from them though)

[webmetalreese]

Actually I'm getting the Demon Power Legendaries way more often than actualy weapons. I managed to snag a powerstone of luck and slapped it on a "find better item" green and have that in my offHand.
Gift boxes I have been hoarding as I lvl up. Not sure if there is another tier after III (rare) assuming there is.
Quick question on Talismans - got some recipes - am wondering if I use legendary stuff to make them - will they be legendary as well?

[Venuminostrates]

Yeah. Legendary recipes will give you a legendary talisman

[webmetalreese]

I completed the campaign in both vanilla and motorhead. Now the vendors have like stopped completely adding new inventory. Is this standard? I guess now I farm cauldron of chaos/bottomless pit to farm for cards/rares to transmutate...and then what? The game is done, right? Start another character or like challenge myself via bottomless etc? I noticed there are "elite" challenges on all maps now, so I guess there's that.

[Venuminostrates]

First of all... Nice! Congratulations! Queen of the Damned and Gabriel are notorious for being difficult. A lot of people quit the game before getting anywhere close to them.

With regrards to your questions...

Merchant inventories do change. Acaios just put out a recent guide with his findings for GebaN https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1533883029 This should also apply to the the other merchants in game. I've noticed that if I go play the game elsewhere for about half an hour, then the inventory changes.

As for stuff to do:

You completed the campaigns that have the best story, IMO. Challenges are what most people focus on at the point you are at. When I first beat the game, I actually came back to them later after I had made a few good builds.

You might consider doing Fractured Worlds, which isn't the most interesting, but the Fracture itself is basically the Bottomless Pit except that it saves your progress as you go. It keeps scaling in difficulty the higher you climb. It maxes out in difficulty at 279, as opposed to 39 for Bottomless Pit.

The Fracture has monsters from Motorhead. As I'm sure you know, those monsters do not telegraph their attacks as clearly, so expect to die around 20+ stacks of epic. I can make it to 39+ Bottomless without using charm and without dying on a good day, but I cannot play 279+ Fracture without dying even at my best (not to say that it can't be done, but I certainly am not able to do it).

After beating the campaigns for the first time, I focused on perfecting my build, or what I percieved was perfect at the time. What keeps me playing to this day is build experimentation. I love it and can't get enough of it. I've got enough stuff now that I can basically make any build that I can dream up, but I started out by picking one and min/maxing it. I can understand if that doesn't sound interesting to you though lol It's not for everyone.

As for loot farming: I ran all hexes at all times and I prioritized the following in order:
1. Treasure Hunts / Bounties
2. Looting Secrets once a day
3. Cauldron of Chaos at least once a day (including its challenges)
4. Secret Pumpkin at least once a day,
5. Climbing the Fracture doing easier challenges for each map as I went for the extra loot/gold/exp.

Spamming the first 5 or so floors of Bottomless Pit isn't a bad option either.

Monuments of Rock give decent loot. If you find one that is easy for you to beat and close to a map entrance so that you can reset and be near it, that would a good option for loot grinding as well.

Queen of the Damned drops at least 5 cards each time you kill her. If you're going for Motorhead cards, she's your best bet. Gabriel also drops 5 cards but he can't drop anything from the Motorhead worlds.

The Queen can be one shot with a good Ember build (Charge talisman + Singularity Orb + Lucky Rabbit Foot + Swap to Hammer + Activate Ember), but it might be hard for you to do that at this stage unless you've been lucky with your drops and happen to be sitting on a Brute Ember talisman.

[webmetalreese]

Hey thanks for the tips! I actually re-installed Van Helsing - but there's no guitars...I mean seriously, I don't think I can play another ARPG that does not contain guitars. I tried the cauldron this morning before work and got pwnd by the first group, so that's not good.

I'm not sitting on anything special. I've actually never gotten a talisman to work - it just keeps telling me "not enough energy" I've looked up triggers and everything, but they just don't work. For example: Currently equipped a talisman that charges apparantly with "double tap" ok. So I look up double tap and it talks about knowing the rhythm of a weapon and hitting the button again after so many strikes or whatever, but then I got a card drop called "The Trigger" which states that every attack after a roll is considered a double tap. I'm like sweeeet. So I'm at the dummies with a shotgun, rolilng around and attacking. "Not enough energy"

There's no meter so I have no idea if it's charging or what I'm doing wrong.

I'm still considering if I'm actually into it enough for the long grind. I spent so many hours in Diablo 3 grinding gear, but then once I actually got the set - there was nothing to fight with it.

Same thing happened to me in Monster Hunter. I spent over 300 hours grinding and farming and I finally got all the pieces I needed to make a decent set - then everything was easy and boring.

I will go after the queen, she was quite easy with a tome. I seem to be tome built now since I have 3 cards towards tome and I had the yellow hand of the king or something drop which basically throws a ring of fire around me whenever I'm casting. I still don't know what those orbs you collect do though or why they stack to 5. But the cards are pretty good the vortex, the magician, and something evil magic (I'm at work right now, can't check)

I honestly think I really need to just choose a build and go from there. Since the beginning I've been playing with different things, but at this point I really need to upgrade my outfits and whatever weapon I'm using, which means that I simply have to sacrifice some of my rare cards. Demon powers I don't care about, I have a ♥♥♥♥♥ ton of them, but those cards..they are pretty hard to come by. Silver Bullet still hasn't dropped for me yet for example.

[Venuminostrates]

The Arcane Orbs are spent when you use a tome's special attack. It consumes a stack of the Arcane buff and resets your cooldown. So if you had the Arcane buff stacked 5 times, you can use Singularity Orb 6 times in a row with no cooldown between them... Or any mixture of Dimension Wave and Singularity Orb up to 6 times.

If you're farming Queen, then you'll get plenty of cards for upgrading.

I'm guessing "double tap" is split timing. Split timing works on specific weapons. Shotgun, Scythe and Guitar can split time for example. To do it, simply press your basic attack for that weapon right as it comes off cooldown. Do not spam press, as that will disqualify the split timing. You have about .2 seconds to press the button.

Just watch the cooldown on your attack and press the button right after it becomes available. It will take a bunch of these to charge your talisman, so it might be hard to use this in actual battle, but you should be able to do it on the test dummies with no problem. With practice, split timing becomes second nature. I do it all the time on my shotgun. Eventually you get the feel for the rhythm.

This game is in a weird place difficulty wise. 100 stacks of Epic is too hard. It's just death after death after death in the Fracture and even Bottomless (I've made it to 39+ without charm just 4 times in hundreds of attempts). On the other hand, the base game is just too easy with the right build. If you know what you're doing, even Hardcore Hard Mode from scratch can be easy.

15-30 stacks of epic is the sweet spot for the powerful Ember / Gadget builds, but it's hard to find any place with that. Cauldron comes close with its extra stacks of epic (that's why it's so hard), but it's predictible after you've seen all of its variations dozens of times. Fracture spams you with an infinite dungeon to climb, but the drawback is that it will get super tough, essentially forcing you to get really good at the game or run a charm talisman. And when you run charm, it's too easy.

Your other end-game alternative is to do what I do: make builds for the base game or lower stacks of epic. Basically I tune every build I make for Cauldron on Hard Mode. There's a certain freedom of creativity that comes with making builds this way. You don't have to make sacrifices to get the very best transmutations and instead you can focus on cool or unique combinations.

Really it just becomes a "choose your own difficulty and way to play" kind of game.

[webmetalreese]

Ok cool, so the orbs fuel your special attacks, not your overdrive or it must be a combination of both. You probably have to first obtain the orb and then we you use the special it takes away one and some overdrive I'm assuming. I find it quite funny that I don't even know this and I've beaten the game. I'm also assuming the scythe is along the lines of that same system then.

Yeah sorry split timing was what I meant. But I had a shotgun, with that card and was rolling and attacking with basic attack - but nothing was happening. You stated it takes time to charge them up, but how do you know when they are charged? Do they glow or something? I'm not seeing a meter or progress bar or anything. In the descriptioin it will say something like 5 energy per hit 500 cloud of lighting or something like that. I've yet to set one off heh.

Yes, I will farm the queen for a bit and see what happens. If I could get some more cards then i might stand a better chance at continuing to play, maybe start another character and beat all the objectives or whatever. Playing a neverending dungeon for no apparant reason doesn't sound that appealing to me. I might be more inclined to play more if they were coming out with another expansion or even news of a sequel/migration type thing going on, but it looks like they've stopped talking since October. Even the story is a bit 'meh' I can understand why you enjoy it though and I wish I had the same interests. I really really want to like this game and put a couple hundred hours into it, but the small player base, difficulty imbalance, and no news of anything new kind of cripples that for me. I really enjoyed the motorhead expansion. The look and feel are really good. I even like the end bosses. (Except the music - gah - I heard Ace of Spades for the 100th time and remembered why I don't usually listen to Motorhead) I wish it had a bit more though.

Fractured is practically nothing. A simple husk. It's almost like they were "yeah, just throw it out there" type of mood. I've yet to find any decent drops and keep thinking the deeper I go the better the loot will be, but that's not the case.

[webmetalreese]

Attempted to "Farm" the queen last night. Did 5 runs - 4 of which something one - shotted me when she was in her last bub. She has like a hex or something and it just basically kills you. I found that by actually not killing her and just killing the respawning champions I got more gear than by actually killing her. She does drop cards though, but RNG was not my friend - every single one were nothing special - typically 1 pt rogue and bishop cards.

I got frustrated - went into the Cauldron - literally the first group one shots me. There's a giant gargoyle with an actual name, he swoops down - I'm dead. He uses his sonic wave or whatever if I don't jump, I'm dead. I actually tried 3-4 times before F it I'm out.

Hit the Fracture - same thing! Only this time with a scorpion. WTF exit game.

Came back an hour later - figured I would try for the highlander outfit by killing the special mobs for the bounty. Got 3 of them. The other ones - one shot/death - respawn - same thing.

Regardless of what cards I used (I even tried the outfit with the extra card slot and filled completely with Knight cards) My AC was close to 300. None of it mattered.

So basically if I want to really farm, I have to stick to places like Collectors Residence and just keep restarting it over and over because that's about all I can handle.

I'm lvl 48 which means the mobs are lvl 48, I don't do any real damage at all, unless I use the tome and a pt 7 wicked rogue 150% crit damage with Berserk active and another wicked card adding brutality and Enraged. So now I'm basically spamming overdrive potions and blinking all over the map, but as soon as they hit me - I might as well be made of paper.

Without a damn skeleton card you have to kill the skellies twice, even the champions - unless you overkill, but can't do that unless you are dealing massive damage - which I'm not.

I'm definitely at the wall here and lvling up only makes it worse.

This is why I prefer standard RPG styles, so for example in Van Helsing if I ran into this issue I could reset my skill points and add them all to vitality for example and then reset when i got/upgraded to better gear.

So while Victor takes a chance by being different and I applaud it, it hurts itself in the long game overall, which is disappointing. They could have at least allowed us to purchase the different outfits thereby giving me an option to change to something like the tank outfit perhaps. (not that it would help as I've discovered AC means nothing) But at this point, I have no way of obtaining it other than by a drop, which I can't get because I can't kill champions and the low % RNG gives even if I did the chances are quite slim.

Not trying to complain I'm just explaining my experience. What would you suggest? Start over perhaps? I'm sure that I would be able to fly through the story with what I have now gearwise from lvl 1-40. Perhaps I could obtain more drops and increase the chances of finding good cards in that run.

Does the drop rate increase regarding difficulty level? Maybe I should start a hard mode campaign and see if it improves my experience.

[Venuminostrates]

Sorry for the late reply. I've been busy the past couple of days.

Originally posted by webmetalreese:

I really really want to like this game and put a couple hundred hours into it, but the small player base, difficulty imbalance, and no news of anything new kind of cripples that for me.

Luckily you can only have up to four players in a game at once. I play another game called Gauntlet - Slayer Edition which has low population, but I don't really want for other people to play with since it really only takes 1-3 other people anyway. That said, the population is even lower in Victor Vran than it is on Gauntlet.

Haemimont is busy with Surviving Mars right now, and that's really where there focus is going to have to remain. They are a fairly small development team, and Victor Vran was not their typical genre of game design to begin with, although in my opinion they hit a home run with it.

Originally posted by webmetalreese:

Playing a neverending dungeon for no apparant reason doesn't sound that appealing to me.

That's where you and I differ in our opinions. To me, the ultimate test of a game's design is whether or not the core gameplay is fun enough on its own, without any extra features or story on top of it. The easiest way to test that is with some kind of "Endless Mode," where the players experience the gameplay ONLY. I actually seek out games that have some kind of endless mode for this exact reason. It's what orginally brought me to Victor Vran.

That said, The Fracture's infinite dungeon is not fun after a while. It scales too high in difficulty and forces you either to use Charm or get used to dying a lot, which isn't fun in either case. All the same, though, Victor Vran's gameplay would pass the Endless Mode test for me, being fun with or without any other features.

Originally posted by webmetalreese:

Fractured is practically nothing. A simple husk. It's almost like they were "yeah, just throw it out there" type of mood. I've yet to find any decent drops and keep thinking the deeper I go the better the loot will be, but that's not the case.

Gear is completely randomized. It doesn't matter how high you go in the Fracture, it's still just random drops. I'm surprised to hear you say that you're not finding in decent drops. What is decent for you?

All gear has a purpose for me. I sell greys and greens (tier 1) for cash. I use yellows (tier 2) for custom weapons, and I use purples (tier 3) to improve stuff. Purples are actually the worst kind of drop that I can get, since they outlive their usefulness pretty fast.

Originally posted by webmetalreese:

Attempted to "Farm" the queen last night. Did 5 runs - 4 of which something one - shotted me when she was in her last bub. She has like a hex or something and it just basically kills you. I found that by actually not killing her and just killing the respawning champions I got more gear than by actually killing her. She does drop cards though, but RNG was not my friend - every single one were nothing special - typically 1 pt rogue and bishop cards.

I got frustrated - went into the Cauldron - literally the first group one shots me. There's a giant gargoyle with an actual name, he swoops down - I'm dead. He uses his sonic wave or whatever if I don't jump, I'm dead. I actually tried 3-4 times before F it I'm out.

Hit the Fracture - same thing! Only this time with a scorpion. WTF exit game.

Came back an hour later - figured I would try for the highlander outfit by killing the special mobs for the bounty. Got 3 of them. The other ones - one shot/death - respawn - same thing.

Regardless of what cards I used (I even tried the outfit with the extra card slot and filled completely with Knight cards) My AC was close to 300. None of it mattered.

So basically if I want to really farm, I have to stick to places like Collectors Residence and just keep restarting it over and over because that's about all I can handle.

I'm lvl 48 which means the mobs are lvl 48, I don't do any real damage at all, unless I use the tome and a pt 7 wicked rogue 150% crit damage with Berserk active and another wicked card adding brutality and Enraged. So now I'm basically spamming overdrive potions and blinking all over the map, but as soon as they hit me - I might as well be made of paper.

Without a damn skeleton card you have to kill the skellies twice, even the champions - unless you overkill, but can't do that unless you are dealing massive damage - which I'm not.

I'm definitely at the wall here and lvling up only makes it worse.

It sounds like you need to change up your build.

There are a ton of combinations that you can use. One of my favorites is a demon power build using Mikkey's Outift or Hunter's Outfit, a Zealous weapon, a Barbarian Card, and Tower/Obelisk cards to fill in the gaps. Just plain old, cheap as dirt healing potions in both consumable slots. A good damage dealing demon power like Shockwave or Death Machine becomes spammable with such a build, and ignores enemy armor. Put Heartbreaker in your off slot and now everything hits you for 1/2 damage.

You're level 48 currently. I just happen to have a level 51 hardcore hard mode character that has NO LOOT FROM OTHER CHARACTERS on it. So everything that's on it is just what dropped as I played it. I'll upload some gameplay and I'll leave some commentary explaining what I'm doing and link it later in this discussion.

Originally posted by webmetalreese:

This is why I prefer standard RPG styles, so for example in Van Helsing if I ran into this issue I could reset my skill points and add them all to vitality for example and then reset when i got/upgraded to better gear.

So while Victor takes a chance by being different and I applaud it, it hurts itself in the long game overall, which is disappointing. They could have at least allowed us to purchase the different outfits thereby giving me an option to change to something like the tank outfit perhaps. (not that it would help as I've discovered AC means nothing) But at this point, I have no way of obtaining it other than by a drop, which I can't get because I can't kill champions and the low % RNG gives even if I did the chances are quite slim.

Not trying to complain I'm just explaining my experience. What would you suggest? Start over perhaps? I'm sure that I would be able to fly through the story with what I have now gearwise from lvl 1-40. Perhaps I could obtain more drops and increase the chances of finding good cards in that run.

Does the drop rate increase regarding difficulty level? Maybe I should start a hard mode campaign and see if it improves my experience.

You're not alone with preferring standard RPG styles. I think most of the rest of the world is like that too. I prefer a game that has robust complexity with plenty of opportunities to be creative. Victor Vran has the ability to completely customize your playstyle. I don't get that in Helsing as much. It's too predictible and I get bored of playing the same thing over and over. But again, my opinion is in the minority there. Most people prefer that.

If you did all the secrets for each map, you would have every outfit by now. Secrets have the best variety of loot, and they seem to give more talismans for me. But outfits aren't where your trouble lies I think. I have a character that I keep at level 31, and I use nothing on but tower cards or obelisk cards and 1 barbarian card, a cavalier's outfit, aether vials, The Mikkeys revolver, and death machine demon powers. I can play in level 60 games and out kill or keep up with them.

My point is: with the right build, you'll be having the opposite problem with this game: it'll be too easy and you'll be struggling to find ways to challenge yourself

[Venuminostrates]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LSzFGRz_nA&

[webmetalreese]

Thanks man. I truly do appreciate your advice and incorporate it into how I'm playing the game. So far, everything you said has helped me and I'm sincerely appreciative.

Merry Christmas.

[Venuminostrates]

I'm glad I helped! Merry Christmas!

[webmetalreese]

Gear is completely randomized. It doesn't matter how high you go in the Fracture, it's still just random drops. I'm surprised to hear you say that you're not finding in decent drops. What is decent for you?

Decent for me is anything but white items. I just thought it might be the first couple of levels, but the deeper I go the more I realize that it is just random.
Yes, I can sell them. But at this point I find no real need for money. I have something like 500k and the only things I use it on are buying rare cards when shopkeeper has them or spending $$ to try and upgrade into a legendary.

I know I shouldn't care, but honestly the legendarys are so cool. I went to your farming spot in your youtube video. I killed him around 10 times. 2 legendaries dropped for me - Necronomikon (time) and Solo (guitar) I also went around the "world of war?" there were 11 secrets - I had found 9, so I went around and got the rest of them but they all had white drops and some gold. Is it true I can just farm secrets? Will the console guy eyes light up even though I've already found them?

I've decided to start I will just go around and be sure to get all of the secrets - at least in Motorhead - so I can unlock the outfits.

I've also decided to give your build you have in your video a try. I have everything that you have, hopefully it ups my game.

Is there any time where you literally just wade into an army and unleash hell upon them - filling your screen with explosions and OVERKILL CRITICAL messages? Yeah, I'd like that. I was in world of war and swarm after swarm of skellies were approaching, I didn't have skelly card so they kept coming back. I hit the lighting tower DP and whoosh all these numbers flashing on my screen - did a speical with the handguns WHOOOSH everyone dead.
That, to me - is intoxicating. I think that's why I enjoyed D3 so much. With my monk build I would just lay waste to everything in my path.

Is there a way to achieve this in Victor?