Numerii

The blacksmith runes increase each difficulty level and are % based so therefore they get better with both levels and gear. Run speed rings also increase with level, my 76 platinum shopper can get just short of 11% off of vendors...and sometimes pull something great like +6 all skills with it. Take Speed Lore if you want, it's your character after all, just accept that any benefits that skill will grant your character can easily be replicated with 2-3 sockets or simply as part of your gear. It looks like a great skill on paper, and as you level up, but around 75 or so with plat/niob gear it becomes mostly negligible. I had to experience myself when I first started this game but once I did see it I deleted that character and started over because I basically had 56 points and a skill choice doing nothing for my character.

If your friend meets the level requirement for joining a game online then he can join any difficulty level. Combat Discipline adds damage as well, it's not just for regen reduction to combos. Play however you want though, this game(especially on console) is not as hard as some people make it out to be. Staying focused is probably the most important part of the game. Not keeping an eye on your health is probably the number 1 reason people die in this game.

Ranged Dryad shopper levels up really fast in my experiences. VD Dryad for non-shopper is probably the best for straight leveling though.

Wouldn't really call it a glitch but yeah, just find an online game for whatever difficulty you want to get in(assuming you can meet the level req for said game) and just leave after joining. As long as you stay in Free World you can go back to that difficulty. Might not be a good answer for a character you are leveling, but for a shopper it can work quite well until you are ready to beat a campaign.

In my experiences, as a Shadow Warrior, the attack and defense value boosts are unnecessary. A couple of sockets devoted to -opponents' chance to evade covers your chance to hit along with whatever you have for a weapons lore, str/dex and I believe your CA levels help with some CAs. Regardless, plenty of ways to increase your chance to hit. Keeping Reflective Emanation at max level takes care of your chance to be hit in all but the rarest of occasions. I've always been far more concerned with how much damage I took in with each hit, not how often I got hit. The speed increase is rather negligible, only a 9% increase at 75 points and usually around Plat/Niob I've got my character at 150% run speed through gear/sockets. At best I feel that Speed Lore might save you 2-3 sockets, though if you have a shopper it doesn't even do that much for you because you can find rings off the vendors that combine stats like run speed and -opponents' chance to evade and due to the way the game assigns values those rings with two stats will give you more bang for your buck than using rings with just one stat. If you just don't have anything else to use for your 10th skill pick or you plan to work with a set that has BOTH low run speed increase and few sockets then it might be worth considering though.

Cool, I've always envisioned Denderan as a Polearm kind of guy. I've tried to get some lore/canon on the characters these sets are built after but so far I've only found Armantin, who was a dual-wielder. Lucreti was obviously a Summoner/Astral Lord type of guy since the entire set revolves around that tree. Really wish Ascaron would have put more time and resources into actually breathing some life into these characters.

8 piece Denderan set for the LL bonus would go very well with this build. As DarkKnight suggested I'd drop Combat Reflexes for CD but I have never played Ice and Blood so I wasn't sure if that was considered necessary. Speed Lore I just don't see the point in using since the player will already have a weapon lore boosting it's chance to hit and attack speed, the run speed increase is possibly a reason since the Denderan set doesn't offer much but then again I don't see much of a reason to add anything else to this build so it could just be a filler skill boosted by +skills. Overall, it looks like a solid build with probably 2 skills interchangeable(possibly make an EP/Blacksmith build subbing Toughness and CR for example). The two buffs and a LL Pole should make for a fast-killer who can take some abuse. Ares, if I remember correctly, is the Roman god of war, Mars was the Greek god. I used to read a lot of mythology, Greek and Roman(very similar) were my favorites.

You could list what combos you use if any or just exactly how you go about killing stuff. Also for personal reasons I'd like to know what your take is on having Speed Lore over something else like Combat Discipline as that skill choice kind of left me scratching my head.

Strength is a very overrated stat, easily circumvented by adding runes to Combat Arts via the additional regen reduction from Stamina and stats such as -opponents chance to evade %.

I've always preferred grinding the Orc Cave on my Shadow Warriors simply because they tend to manage the high damage potential of the orc champs very well and with the constant supply of mentor pots being dropped in that cave the xp rate is quite satisfactory. It's a bit tedious but for me, after grinding untold levels in MMOs(especially EQ), I find it very fast and it requires little focus simply because the only thing you have to pay attention to is your health, as opposed to where your character is moving and what's around. In the orc cave you know what's there, you kill it, reset and repeat and the next thing you know you've gained a level.

Make sure you have 3 Ice Relics equipped. Most of his damage is Ice. I usually just kill him without buffs after he strips them the first time. Goldenglade Touch(assuming you've modded it and have it at a high level) along with Divine Protection(again, assuming you've worked on it) should be enough to mitigate the damage he'll be doing and since you're not fooling around re-applying buffs he should be dead before DP runs out

I'd really consider using one armor blacksmith rune on your Dryad. I know that Ancient Bark gives a lot of armor...but that's why you should use a rune. Niob gives right at +25% armor and when you have about 20k or so at your level that's a 5k increase for just a bronze socket. Everything else you are aiming for sounds dead on. I usually shoot for 50% deathblow(this stacks with Soul Hammer's Coup de Grace mod for the Seph, so very easy for that character to get high DB). With a high SP and BFG(modded with the +hit chance gold mod) combined with Ranged Weapons you shouldn't need very much -opponents' chance to evade so play around with it and find out basically the minimum each toon needs. In Niob you can probably get the right amount with just one ring/ammy. The jewelry that adds base damage is a big thing to look out for in Niob too. This is where it usually starts coming in around 15+ and with a shopper you can get it with a second stat. I can usually shop that stat and get most of my deathblow or -% to evade and such taken care of. Pay a lot of attention to the BFG seraphim. Just about every mod besides +skills seems to be covered via mods for that character, one of the reasons why that build is so crazy overpowered.

Best way I can explain it is like this(I'm going to make up some numbers for better understanding): When you open the merchant menu everything for sale will have an Item Level attached to it. That Item Level is based off of your Character Level with a +- of x levels. All of those items will range from 0 stars to 2 stars. With 0 Bargaining it might look like this: 70% chance an item will be 0 stars. 25% chance an item will be 1 star. 5% chance an item will be 2 stars. This type of roll is made every time you reset a merchant for every item they have for sell. Increasing your Bargaining Level will increase the chance that those 1 and 2 stars items are displayed more frequently. Theoretically you could have a high enough Bargaining Skill that every item being sold by a merchant will be a 2 star item. The difficulty determines the values for the stats on the items. If you were to buy a ring in Silver difficutly with +5 Tactics Lore then that same ring in Niob would carry say, +12 Tactics Lore instead. The items' stats stay the same, the values change. I'm not sure about sockets though, you might be able to get more or better sockets for the same piece of armor if you were to purchase it in Niob than Silver. Anyway, that's how the 3 work.

http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9693 That link will lead you to a guide that is probably the best way to go about what you are trying to do. Just be sure to pick up Armor Lore in your build so that you can equip all of that gear as soon as possible.

Swap out the Dual Wield Skill for whatever 2h weapon you prefer. Also keep in mind that this build only uses 9 skills so if you want to incorporate Skeletal Fortification you could pick up Astral Lord Lore as the 10th skill to further increase the damage of the bone tower.