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[Seriyu]

Alrighty, noted. I'll hold off initially and see how it goes. Thanks!

Game's taking forever to download but I might be able to get on tonight.

EDIT: Nope. Oh well, tomarrow. Looking at a Dwarf Fighter named Seriyu, if the name is available.

[Metalax]

Note for the favour per quest, you can actually get more than the triple base favour that elite gets you but you have to complete the quest on epic hard for +1 favour or epic elite for +2. Small amounts, and not all quests have an epic option, but it adds up if you are near to one of the patron reward points. Epic normal is bugged at this point and only gives you the base favour, which will reduce your total favour if you previously completed it on heroic hard or elite.

As sergius said buying any quantity of points permenantly sets you to  premium status for +2 char slots per server, no lower level gold cap on chars(there is an absolute maximum limit of 4,294,967pp 2gp 9sp 5cp, ie 32bit unsigned int, per character. free chars limit is increased to this when they have hit level 13), removal of the few chat restrictions free players are under, and most importantly unlocks you from only being able to post one item on the auction house at a time. If you are only going to make one purchase, it may be a good idea to hold off as therre are quite often double bonus points sales on the points packages, buy a package then.

If you are just going with TP's you get from favour the most important adventure packs to get would likely be Ruins of Gianthold and the The Vale of Twilight packs. Gianthold fits in at the point that f2p quests start dieing out, the vale will then get you up to 20 and gives access to greensteel crafting, although that has dropped in importance a bit since the regular crafting has become available. The vale also gives access to the subterranean beneath the market for another set of quests.

Other packs that would be good to get include, The Vault of Night for some very nice loot and house Kundarak favour which lets you unlock additional pages in your bank storage. Delera's Tomb, a very nice series that has an end reward a trinket that gives you a boost to xp along with other functions as long as it is worn. The Dreaming Dark and The Devils of Shavarath are two of the better endgame packs. The low level packs are generally all good packs but you will already have enough free quests to pass the recommended levels for them where you earn significant xp, they are still good if you are wanting to build up favour for more TP's/patron rewards though.

The adventure packs regularly go on sale so never buy at full price. I tend to hold off on the 20% deals as well as every so often they do big sales at 30%-50% off.

Also if you do decide to favour grind, the first character bonus TP milestones apply to the first character on each server, so you will want to get at least one char up to 100 favour on each server.

edit:

I got myself a McDwarfy

Melsum McDwarf Rogue at yer service. (erm level 1 and I'm relearning how to play haven't played in a few years)

Ashol McDwarf, Mage, at your service.

Toss me an invite, I'm level 3 and aiming for Pale Master.

guild invites sent through the mail

[Sergius]

Note that most of the restrictions on Free accounts are intended more as an anti-spam/farming/whatever measure than an incentive to pay (for example the reason the gold cap is removed gradually as you play a character).

I don't remember if Favor is total per account or per character (I think it's per char), you'll gain most of your FP early I think so making at least one toon to replay over and over to get enough points for one thing could be a good idea (also, a lot of the early quests are quick and nice and fun and soloable, they increasingly become more "epic" {in scale, not in difficulty setting}).

Re: actual store purchases: most things are permanent unlocks across servers. Usually only item buying is per character and repeatable. Note that whatever you unlock with FPs is for one server only, so if you play on more than one, you have to repeat the process again.

But since Bay12 and my other regular guild (I joined The Unrepentant, which is a cool kinda clan that plays nearly every MMO out there) are both in Sarlona I really don't play the other servers much, usually only to create a character to test stuff I guess.

[Aklyon]

Also, for Favor and difficulty levels: If you play on a harder difficulty after normal on a quest, then you get the favor you missed from only being on normal, not an entire new chunk of FP. Like if one gives you 8 favor on elite, but 4 on normal, you get the other 4 favor added if you finish elite, not 8 favor in addition to the 4 favor you have.

[palsch]

Oh, while I am here, note that you get some things for free just for getting enough favour. 32point builds are a long way off, but drow is fairly early and is sort of like a toned down version of 32 point build. I would strongly recommend saving your points and just trying it out with the options that you have, you can delete your character if you don't like it and get the character slot back, the items and experience go poof but otherwise you don't really loose anything.

For reference, I had hit Drow within about two weeks of playing (IIRC). A year and half later I'm almost up to unlocking 32 point builds on my main, although I did take a few multi-month breaks (I'd guess about 7-9 months seriously playing). The free content of the last couple of patches should be enough to push me over.

As for deleting characters, that's fine. But I'd recommend choosing a number of builds and trying them on different servers. As Metalax said, you get big TP bonuses for the first bits of favour on each server, and combining this with trying new builds is sensible. Especially as it gives you permission to try wild things and horribly break the character. Disposable characters are lots of fun that way.

Right now I want to get to 1750 favour for the 32 point builds, along with getting the 50 Cannith favour to access that shop and stock up on Marks. That will let me reduce the minimum level on crafted items, making my already stupidly powerful low level gear truly OP. The Cannith favour is tough because I have to use free challenge tokens, but I've got enough stocked up from before that I can join PUGs with people who own the challenge pack without many problems.

Once I manage them and polish off my last bit of Greensteel (a second Lit2 DA - the recipe for reference, although I'm down to the last 10 large ingredients...) I'm probably going to TR Kosoth.

I don't remember if Favor is total per account or per character (I think it's per char), you'll gain most of your FP early I think so making at least one toon to replay over and over to get enough points for one thing could be a good idea (also, a lot of the early quests are quick and nice and fun and soloable, they increasingly become more "epic" {in scale, not in difficulty setting}).

All the totals are per character.

You can farm the first 100 favour in under an hour with a dedicated group and a little knowledge. That's not a great rate of return though. I've farmed the early quests a little (initial bonuses on each server, a few alts) and while not burned out on them they do lose a little charm after a while.

Late game has some fantastic favour rewards from quests that also give great character benefits (xp/loot). I'd only actually favour farm on alts if I didn't have a character I wanted to advance in a way that didn't require TP. Right now I'd quite like to put a few past lives on Kosoth, a very long term project I should be able to manage with my current adventure packs and unlocks. Also a project I'd expect to rake in massive amounts of TP.

Re: actual store purchases: most things are permanent unlocks across servers. Usually only item buying is per character and repeatable. Note that whatever you unlock with FPs is for one server only, so if you play on more than one, you have to repeat the process again.

I'd be careful about that first part. Most of the storage upgrades are character locked. Only the shared bank slots and shared platinum bank are unlocked for the entire account. Other bank upgrades and the extra inventory bag are only for a single character.

[Seriyu]

Wait for sales, got it. I did get my 500 points for signing up, so that's nice. I'll wait until I see a sale for Vale, not that I can afford it with just 500 yet.

So all of this P2P stuff can be unlocked through playing the game, admittantly for ages? Or just most of it?

EDIT: Also, question, so if I just do the hardest mode I can find, I won't lose any favor right? It's designed so that if you do it on casual, then do it on easy, you'll get the same points as if you just did it on easy?

[palsch]

Wait for sales, got it. I did get my 500 points for signing up, so that's nice. I'll wait until I see a sale for Vale, not that I can afford it with just 500 yet.

So all of this P2P stuff can be unlocked through playing the game, admittantly for ages? Or just most of it?

Most, in that there are those few F2P restrictions that can't be removed without paying. There are also delays for certain things. A few bits and pieces are rolled out for VIP (subscriber) only first and the new expansion content is cash purchase only until August or so.

Right now, buying all the adventure packs currently for sale would cost 18,340 TP, undiscounted. Another 1495 for the challenge pack (technically f2p with one token per day, so very optional I guess). 595 for each character slot. 1,995 for the half blood bundle (HOrk and HElf). 795 for warforged. 995 each for artificer and monk. 1,495 for shared bank. 495 for shared plat bank. Ignore all bank upgrades as VIP have to pay for them as well.

Assuming you buy two character slots (mimicking the 4 you get for going premium) I make that 26,800 total TP, undiscounted. If you wanted to favour farm all that you would need to earn 107,200. That's the equivalent of making 3 100 favour runs every day for just over a year. Before taking into account new releases, any additional purchases or discounts.

I personally went for the premium option. I bought a mid-sized TP pack when there was a 50% boost on it. Used that to buy a few core packs (VON and Vale when half off). Had (and still have) and enjoyable game even with a substantial percentage locked away.

If you are considering a purchase to go premium, going VIP for a month might be worthwhile. It's $14.99, you get 500 free TP and unlock premium. You also have a month's access to all content and can instantly open things on elite. If you get up to mid/high levels first you could rapidly favour farm all low/mid content you don't otherwise own, grab any useful items from packs you don't own, etc, then drop back down to premium with a nice favour and gear boost.

There was at least one guy I remember who bought all the adventure packs on a F2P account, although this was over a year ago (can't find the thread now) and the game was notably cheaper. The least grindy method I've seen of buying everything (again, when it was far cheaper to do so) involved playing 28 separate characters up to mid/late game, buying content as you go.

[Leonon]

Artificer can be unlocked without using Turbine Points by gaining House Cannith favor, though that requires 650 TP to unlock the adventure pack and a lvl 20 character to run the dungeons. That guide needs an update too, it only covers stuff up to lvl 15.

[RAM]

There are some things that cannot be bought by favour alone:
 Open hard or elite difficulty initially.(subscription only)(Note that this can, I believe, be acquired by true resurrecting, but that requires hitting level 20 first, and can be mimicked by having someone who has this ability unlock the quest for you.)
Login priority(shouldn't be an issue)
chat limits(I am not sure what the limits are...)
Auction limits(one item at a time hurts, but you can still sell stuff in person((and not pay an exorbitant auctioning fee)), and there is a trade chat channel dedicated to this...)
Mail limit(not sure what the mail limits are, but if you are mailing stuff between your characters then this could be a sincere hassle.)
Gold storage.(not a problem if you give all your gold to your guildies...)
Idle Logout Timer(You can't really go A.F.K. on a free account without logging off, but it is easy enough to log back in again...)
Buyback history(I haven't had cause to use this much, and only subscribers get an upgrade. Just be mindful of what you sell and it shouldn't be an issue. If you are not mindful of what you sell, then the subscriber boost won't save you...)
compendium/forum write-access(Umm, I don't know or care myself...)
Beta priority(doesn't bother me, but I have always been a bit behind the times...)
in-game-support(only really for subscribers, but hey, you can ask the community for help in most instances...)

Note that if you get a subscription for a month, then end it, you will lose access to any characters that use races or classes that you have lost access to, so be sure to get all the items off of that warforged monk before you lose access to warforged or monk...

[The Fool]

I decided to give this a go. I'm Beldan McMachine the Warforged Fighter. It's hilarious to plow through quests solo on Elite.

I'm only level 2 now, but I'll be online tomorrow.

EDIT: Races feel like a bit of a rip-off, but then again I'm now a literal killing machine. I still have 200 some points for maps, but I'm probably too far behind in levels right now.

[Kaelem Gaen]

(Warforged should be cheaper than Drow, or free2play they're a fucking Core race in the table top version of Eberron...  <rant />)


Any idea if buying something using the TP Point cards from Target (which probably are more expensive than buying direct I know) get you into premium as well? Or did it change to having to have been VIP at least once?

[Metalax]

Purchasing points through the store has always been enough to make you premium, but I'm not entirely sure about points cards. I'd expect that they would give you it though. May be a good idea to do a search on the ddo forums.

[Aklyon]

Points cards are valid. I used them last year.

[Metalax]

Just as a note, there is currently a +20% bonus to xp for heroic dificulty quests until july 8th. The servers have also just come back up after a hotfix for a couple of issues.

edit: and it just broke the airship buffs. Everything that was previously there has gone, however in order to make up for it all airship amenities have been reduced to 1 tp in the store and a coupon code, SHIP01, that gives you 900 points off of airship amenities has been issued, useable 5 times per account.

edit2: but the store seems to be broken and is throwing errors when placing the order foir the buffs. So temporarily we have no airship buffs.

[The Fool]

I'm surprised how long some of the quests are. Without an outrageous number of potions a fighter can get owned just from the shear length of the quest rather than the difficulty. I'm nearing level 4 now.

If possible can someone send me a guild invite? I'm Beldan McMachine.