Early game: the importance of build? And killing revenants?

[By-Tor And The Snow Cat]

Your favorite newb is back with more stupid questions! Are you not entertained?

So, I've read a lot about builds, but all such guides only seem useful for someone at level 200 or more. I'm on the fourth mission at this point, and I'm wondering whether build is terribly important at this point. Should I be focusing on raising the stats specific to my favorite weapons at such an early stage, or should I be spreading them out? My favorite weapons are the kusarigama, uchigatana, and spear, so if you want to offer build advice, please keep that in mind. Anyway, it seems to me that if I'm this early in the game, it's more important to increase my life, ki, and living weapon stats than slowly raising my normal weapon stats.

How important is it to kill revenants, and how important is glory? I haven't been bothering with revenants at all, but perhaps this is a mistake on my part. Similarly, how important is it to do twilight missions?

Last question: I notice that all pieces of armor have a three little helmet silhouette-looking icons in a verticle line next to them in their descriptions. Some pieces have one icon filled, some two, and some three. What does this signify?

As always, thank you to everyone who offers advice and happy hunting.

[Recjawjind]

You can purchase respec books from the blacksmith (and later on another npc), so dont stress your build just yet. You can experiment and try out different things, just build what you feel like building, and if it doesnt work out for you, the books arent terribly expencife, but the price tripples every time you buy it, up to 1m. I can highly recommand leveling body and skill, since you get lots of HP from body and lots of damage for all 3 of your weapon choises from skill. Glory isnt terribly important, itll be another currency later on, of which you only get scraps in the beginning, so no need to stress that. But if you see a revenant wearing some rare gear, or a weapon of your liking, i would say kill him and try to get your hands on that stuff. What the revenant has depends on what the player had when he died, so you can get amazing gear earlier than you normally would. Twilight missions give you some great crafting and reforging resources, so if you see one at a level at which youre confident youll succeed, go for it.

[Witcher]

Early in the game, it's best to spend stat points on the skills that contribute most to your primary weapon of choice, and gradually invest points in Spirit, Ninja & Magic to unlock your preferred Guardian Spirit and dojos. Imho, it's better to focus on one primary weapon b/c you will be spreading your skill points thin.

Killing revenants is good for farming purple items in early stage of game and glory points when you unlock TeaHouse. Glory points can also be earned by joining a clan and visiting/helping other players in co-op to buy skins, etc.

I believe you are referring to the weight icons on armor pieces - 1 is Light, 2 is Med and 3 is Heavy.

[Zamus]

No, builds are not important in NG, if you want to up your damage just use one of the common sets like WotW, Red demon, Crossed sickles.

And yes you are right, utility stats are way more important than stats you raise for damage scaling, if said utility stat is also a damage scaling stat then even better, in particular I like Ki because it allows you to be more aggresive and less chance of overextend yourself and run out of ki.

Killing revenants isn't terribly important, but is always good, it never hurts to summon a revenant in your way that uses the weapon you like and kill it, glory is somewhat important, mostly is used to unlock the skins, but you can also buy some good usable items and even rare materials which can come handy, plus once you unlock clans, you rank up based on how much glory you gather and the higher you rank on your clan the bettter the bonuses it provides.

Twilight missions are absolutelly important, especially if you do not co-op, first completition of each twilight mission on each difficulty rewards umbracite, umbracite is absolutelly amaizing when you start to reforge gear and will ease up a lot the process, it's always nice to start stacking up.

That icons mean the armor class, a single icon is light, 2 icons is medium and 3 icons is heavy, those give you a rough idea of how heavy they will be and how much damage reduction it will provide and in the case for 1 of the clans it will provide you with a damage buff per each piece of heavy armor you are wearing.

[By-Tor And The Snow Cat]

Great info, everyone. Thank you for answering.

[Mazzle Dazzle]

Even on normal game, I periodically forge gear for purples and reforge certain stats(Attack up Spirit or something like that) for the buffs I want. I sometimes run low on cash but I only really do it every 20 levels so I never run out.
As for stats, I basically put 10 in everything and then 15 in dex and magic for dojo veteran. Then i put 34 in spirit because someone said it allows you to have all of the passives somewhere. I'm around level 75 and have respeced twice. I can barely even play the game as the game craps its pants when I walk into areas with fire and I still have been stumbling through the game.

[Halfpint]

All of my gear in the early game has come from killing revenants. Seems like the early missions are saturated with players wearing the Warrior of the West set that have gotten it from killing revenants themselves.