Purple Lizard

Heh, for some reason I decided to play the console version of this again and decided to peek at the forums. It's definitely fun in its own right with all the brokenness you can do with it, but takes much longer as you can't hack a balance file to speed up experience gains. Anyways, I had no mount for this build because I was too lazy to get one. Instead I just had 150% run speed.

Even modded, it's still viable to use without breaking the game... sorta. The spread really only becomes rampant post modding if you: a) Repeatedly chain-cast on everything that moves until it spreads to everything beyond the screen and b) Keep running the map to keep enemies spawning and getting infected. If you use it once in awhile to soften up large groups and then finish them off with other Combat Arts, you SHOULD be ok. I think. It's been awhile since I played the 360 version.

Well, it's not so much that I didn't factor in RPH (I have other builds reliant on it). It's moreso I didn't care about regen penalty at all for this build. I made my piggy Dryad gobble as many runes as she could which upped survivability by a lot. Before Acute mind is fully modded, there was a lot of kiting/vining while animus kills. I do agree that TL/DW is not wholly necessary, but on the other hand, DWing Tinworas has benefits beyond the extra forge slot (+Combat Art, +Casting Speed, and -regen), and I was fine on defense as to not need a shield. Plus TL gave me mod points to mod Forest Flight and Dust Devil so I can't say I regret the choice at all. If I were to replace it though, I'd probably replace it with Shield Lore. I play pretty much exclusively on PC now so I'd probably try to work Alchemy in there somewhere. I've thought of trying out this build on PC add-on one day and seeing how I would have to adapt, but for the time being, I'm having too much fun with the Darting Assault Dryad (who can still utilize TV/EL boosted by Acute Mind combo). And yes, you never really need more than 1 rune for Viperish Disease.

I'll bet those demons socketed 99% deathblow to themselves too R.I.P. your Dryad, Gogo

I usually just put on a movie in the background on my other computer. Or tv.

As many levels as I want? It all depends on the path you take and if you can keep the disease going. The more damage it does, the less leeway you have in running around, so I usually have it at around Combat Art levels 1-10 or so when I'm running it. The path I like to take is to start at the portal at Badawi since there are plenty of small scarabs there, make my way a bit west until I hit the ridge, then start curving southwards, go around the oasis then veer east, take that all the way east and follow the top of the plateau south of khorum to get the scorpions and beasts, then once I start hitting sand people, I loop northwards (east of Khorum) and start making my way up, then eventually westwards back to Badawi. Repeat ad nauseum. The important thing to do is to cast it often when you first start your run to spread it to as many groups as possible. You can ease up once you start seeing all the pretty green lights in the distance indicating the disease has spread far beyond your control. And keep moving. And don't enter any towns... that causes it to stop. Many times I've accidentally disabled it by walking into Badawi by accident. Oh, and I also have an experience suit equipped. I think I have it up to 250ish% experience. Most of that was due to Enhanced Perception modifiers, and I was lucky to get a 2* shrunken dragon head that has an Enhanced Perception experience modifier and deathblow

I'd have to double check, but I believe it does exceed 200. At twice your character level, the scorpion will almost never die. I think at one point, I saw him standing in the middle of the maelstrom's tornado in Niob and didn't even flinch. I think in your case, you can put points into stamina instead, though more HP certainly never hurt. If you're going pure caster, you can mod acute mind to lower regen times (can't remember if it scales by Combat Art level or not). I think the roughest time for me was when I had Bark and Golden Glade Touch modded, but not acute mind yet, and I still hadn't invested runes into bark or Golden Glade Touch on account of building moribund first. I spent most of the time tangling and running in circles while animus killed everything. It comes down to balance. The longer you play with her, you'll get more of a feel for what you need. Once you reach around lvl100 and all your nature stuff is fully modded, you'll be a walking death machine

Gogo: I eventually retired my second build at around lvl150ish, I think with no deaths in niob Bear in mind though that build was on console, where I had access to both Viperish Disease, RPH, high level jewelry socketed to much lower armor, and deathblow with spells. Oh, and having access to 6 relic slots was nice too. And being able to eat ungodly high amounts of runes. I probably could take it higher, but I don't know if I could go back to it now. Despite being depraved of alchemy and blacksmith, it's just so stupid easy to attain godhood on console that I eventually got bored with it. Ever since I switched to PC though, my console version has been gathering dust. I may try rebuilding this one day on the add-on, but right now I'm having too much fun with the darting assault + magic staff combo. Cloud: Shield Lore + Constitution is a fine replacement for Tactics and DW. I chose dual wield simply because I wanted the socketables, and tactics lore let me mod forest flight and dust devil. What Combat Arts do you plan on relying on? I honestly don't remember having too much trouble with regen times sticking with the 1vit/1sta build, except for the mandatory cooldown of acute mind. Tangled vines and edaphic lances both have long-ish animations even with casting speed, so you have a bit of leeway with the time. And even if you aren't able to insta-cast back to back, animus more than often will kill whatever stragglers were left behind. Pure physicals, like orcs, also took additional reflect damage. I think if I had kept going, I probably would have switched to 2vit/1sta because I needed the HP. My goldenglade healed more HP than my max HP

Hmm, do you get this same effect without life leech active? Otherwise, I always assumed this was just a part of life leech, as I believe I have gotten this effect using Shadow Warrior's Frenzied Rampage as well.

I personally agree with theory 4, as this is not the first game I've seen these same exact speculations crop up. There's something about the mere possibility that something may increase your luck to get that infinity plus one sword with a .01% chance to drop that gives people a sense of hope. *glares at the goo king sword* Besides, if the RNG gods are against you, NO amount of twinking will get you what you want.

And hope the inherent natural real life bad luck factor doesn't come to play... there are just some days where the RNG works completely against your favor

I think at this point I was farming 2* scorpion heads in silver/gold (whichever was dropping me the highest level heads I could actually equip. I was just using tangled vines + moribund animus. After killing it, there are some loot crates in the corner of the room that have a decent haul as well. For runes, kobold hunting should suffice. You could hunt Nameless Guardians as well, but I found the scorpion boss to be so much faster. Oh, and having high level bark and GGT helped too

Should be able to. I just joined someone's platinum campaign last night, did a few story/side quests for him, then quit. Now I can access Platinum campaign if I do continue game. If I just keep going with that and beat Platinum, I will unlock Niob, and have access to all the difficulties beneath it despite never having beaten gold or silver.

I know what you mean. I have going through the light campaign down to a routine now

I don't know about ps3, but in 360, it's Create Game->Quick Match. Then you can see all available servers running that you toggle between with LT/RT. Remember to find a campaign game, not free world. cool found a gold game. Not many happening right now so I do save game and then I can do my own capaign on gold? Activate a quest first. Don't know if it has to be sidequest or one of the main quest points. Then activate a save monolith. Then do leave game (don't hit save game). now from the main screen, you should havve the continue campaign option, but in gold.