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.

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.

That's why I focused more on Vit/Sta. Acute Mind levels give you far more of an Int boost than regular points. 1-2 points into Int each level up won't really show that much of a difference and makes her no different than other casters. On the other hand, casting Acute Mind gives you Int boosts in the thousands, where the difference in damage is considerably noticeable. Confusedxx: haha yeah. I've actually only completed campaign mode once with my Dryads, and that was in Platinum (I saved glitched up to it) so that I could unlock Niob right away. Now I just spend all my time free worlding Niob.

My strategy for undead when I actually do fight them is acute mind + tangled vines, with animus picking off whatever, otherwise, I just run past all of them . This is mostly due to my laziness though, as I hate fighting undead regardless of the class. Undead potions never seem to want to work for me. I think I remember reading somewhere that disease doesn't work on undead and for some reason doesn't work in the swamp. On the other hand, I've gotten disease to spread to skeletons in high elf territory when starting the disease in kobold territory, so who knows... Well, the best way I can answer this is that shrunken heads affect this build primarily in two ways: the type of animus you summon, and the attributes that come on it, because equipping a head is essentially like equipping another accessory. Having the proper head equipped also increase effectiveness against that same enemy type, but in my experience, the effect is not that noticeable. The only time it really comes into play for me is equipping an insect head to spread disease across the desert faster, or a barbarian head for spreading it in kobold territory. Rare heads summon better monsters, and also have more attributes on them. You really only need the one just for the summon, but you will farm them anyways for the better attributes. For example, a 0 star head summons a spider that goes around biting things, and may only have one attribute on it, like, say, Voodoo Focus + 5 or whatever. On the other hand, a 2* head will summon a Scorpion which attacks like it has dual wield and life leech, and the head itself will give you deathblow, voodoo aspect, and voodoo lower regeneration times. Other attributes I've seen include EP Modifier for experience per kill, max HP, Defense value, and various +skills. Rare heads can ONLY be dropped by story bosses and dragons, so Garganthropod is the only thing that drops a 2* insect head. Nameless guardians I think drop a monster head which summons a tree. The only place I've gotten a 2* Dragon head is the swamp dragon. I think Octomammoth or whatever his name is drops a head that becomes a minotaur but I can't remember. Without any headhunter mods, the best you can really do is have patience. As I mentioned early, just activate the savepoint near the scorpion boss and keep going into free world, killing it, and exiting. My luck varies... sometimes I can get about 2-3 within 30 minutes, and sometimes I'll go on a wicked dry spell and get nothing after an hour. My routine for maximizing chance for a head to drop seems to be a placebo at best, but I normally just make sure totem is on screen, and that I've casted Twisted Torment, and then I let my animus kill it. CV Lore doesn't affect disease's damage, or Animus. Animus's stats are based on its level and mods, which is why it is important to take the elevate mod to put him at much higher levels. As far as I know, Black Curse doesn't benefit too much from it either although I may be wrong. Hence, only CV focus is really important because it allows you to have higher level Animus without penalty. NW certainly does give the impression of providing defense only. I was certainly skeptical about it at first. However, just look at the numbers for Acute Mind the way I have it modded. And that lvl126 Dryad is nowhere near optimized for damage, because of bargaining. With acute mind up, tangled vines can stop large groups and do 6000 damage per second. On large bosses, my typical routine without combat discipline is: TV+BC, Acute Mind, TV+EL, all while my animus is doing about 17000 per hit with his dual wielding scorpion self. With my deathblow at about 70%, each needle does roughly 30,000-50,000 per hit, depending on the boss. In Niob, this combo more or less one-shots most of the bosses/minibosses.

Yeah, the biggest thing you have to accept with this build is that regen times WILL rise. However, unlike other characters who have to chain cast their offensive stuff, the caster Dryad's role early on is more distraction. Your animus, built high enough, can and will deal with everything. While he's a bit fragile early on, pump enough runes into him and fully mod him and he's more than just a meat shield... he's like bringing a cat with you into a colony of mice. Mod him for offense, and aside from a few physically resistant things, he should be able to 1-2 shot normal mobs, maybe even champions. His high level will provide him with all the defense he needs. At one point, I saw miasma drop a tornado on his head, and he didn't even flinch. Also consider spell effects: If you cast twisted vine from afar, it's gonna keep them in place and do DoT. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like the DoT stacks like other spells like frost flare and recasting TV only resets the duration, so the regen isn't really working against you when fighting bosses/minibosses. I started my boss hunting in silver roughly around that level, long before I got acute mind or an effective tangled vines/lances/acute mind/curse combo. My strategy back then consisted of comboing tangled vines with GGT, or tangled vines alone, and letting my little spider deal with the rest. And like I said, don't be afraid to up your ancient bark level. Not dying is your first priority and very few things should be making you even flinch in silver. I can't really say what level heads you'll get in bronze, because I have never played bronze difficulty myself... Oh, and Miasma will be an annoying boss no matter how strong you get. Unfortunately, this is also where Animus can get stupid sometimes, as he will try to hit the tornado itself unless you lead him away and towards the zombies instead. With acute mind + vines fully modded though, I just cast TV as soon as the zombies get summoned and can usually catch the entire group of them. With acute mind up, it does about 6000 damage per second at a relatively low vines level.

You should technically be able to do it now. In silver, even, if Animus is fully modded and you've been diligent about its levels. If you're at level 35, ideally your Animus should be around lvl70. I think around that level, the only boss I couldn't kill with my spider summon was the forest guardian, due to its insane healing. The general strategy that early on for bosses should just be tangled vines while your animus attacks. Or you can just wait until you're at a higher level. My advice would be to just try it, but keep your distance. If it looks like your animus is getting the worst of it, then just leave and try again later.

Sheer determination and grinding With all the time I've already saved by spreading love throughout the desert, I figure I can spend the time grinding bosses for rare heads. I'd rather do that anyways than gimp any of my skills. What I do is just activate the savepoint next to the scorpion, and port to it in free world at various difficulties for various leveled heads. Sometimes if I'm feeling daring, I replace Ancient Bark with sinister predator.

For voodoo, yes, that is my order. For nature, after ancient bark and goldenglade, you have a bit more flexibility. I went twisted vine first because I wanted to get the Area of Effect ASAP, as Animus was already my single target killer. For silver, acute mind isn't really a huge thing, which is why I got lances first, but you can swap that around if you want. Whatever helps you beat silver the quickest, really. Once you reach gold, you can immediately go to free world desert and grind the rest of the way to level 100 for your final nature mod points. Most of the time, you'll be running the desert until you start hallucinating mirages anyways.

Thanks. Regarding EP, I considered doing that, but I'm way to addicted to Experience Gear. At higher levels, regular experience gear just doesn't cut it anymore, while EP Modified experience gear boosted by all skills are giving me about 20-25% more experience per kill as a native bonus, along with slots. Believe me, it certainly isn't for the magic find (doesn't do you much good when your real life luck stat is abysmally low). If I were to take constitution instead, though, I'd leave it at 1 hard point. The whole vit/sta thing wasn't that big of a deal for me though because I'm relying on my animus to do most of my work, regen times aren't nearly as much of a concern at first. At later levels, even with high casting speed, Tangled Vine still has about a 1s animation time, so I can still fast cast it while animus picks everything off. In a combo, Lances have a pretty long animation time, and by the time it finishes, I can already recast the combo or at the very least toss out a quick vine casting. Confusedxx: Just updated my first post.

So, at gogo's request, I am posting a guide to my pure caster Dryad that was originally posted in KarruptedKat's Black Magic Woman thread. First and foremost, I would like to say that I owe many thanks to others for this build. If not for trying out other builds posted on this forum and SIF, I wouldn't have gained an understanding of the game in general. Also many thanks to my wife, who had already built several ranger Dryads prior, and helped me a lot with getting to know the Dryad's Combat Arts, and also helped me farm some useful Dryad gear to save much time, and in general just made the game enjoyable for me in co-op mode. Anyways, without futher ado... Introduction: So as I mentioned earlier, this is going to be a pure caster Dryad. She will rely heavily on Voodoo and Nature aspects. She will not be smacking things around like a Dual Wield Int Staff Dryad, or shooting things like a Ranger Dryad. Yes I'm aware that Dual Wield Int Staffs can be quite powerful in my build, but I don't particularly want to go chasing stuff down and hitting things. Besides, then she wouldn't be a pure caster anymore, would she? I also played her on the 360 version, so I will be taking advantage of Viperish Disease overpoweredness. Call it an exploit, or an oversight, or whatever, but it's there regardless. If you are against using it or are unable to take advantage of it (not sure if it works anymore on PC version), the build still works, it will just take longer. I went ahead and used it because, well, after several other characters doing the grind, having a character build nice and swift was much too appealing. However, if you DO decide to use the disease exploit, be forewarned: it CAN backfire on you if you are not prepared for it. The reason being that it requires you to be constantly running, therefore missing out tons of loot and money that you normally accumulate through normal grinding. As you level, the enemies will level with you, but your gear will remain crappy, and you will have no runes or good accessories. Personally, I already had a level 116 Seraphim sitting around with 300 million and a whole bunch of runes in my hero chest, so I just had her buy some expensive stuff in Niob, put it in my chest, and had my Dryad sell it for money. It also helped that my wife gave me tons of Dryad gear as well. Of course, those may not be options for you, but there are ways around it that I will get into later. Pros: Ridiculously good defense Ridiculously good offense Efficient boss killer If using Disease Exploit, - Will level up faster than ANY character - Can be made to be a quickly built shopper Cons: Offense takes some time to get going. Area of Effect is mediocre compared to other classes. If using Disease Exploit, - Other characters will feel snail's pace compared to how fast she levels up - You may fall behind in resources (money/runes/gear) relative to your level Fair note about this guide: My skill order and masteries order are reflective of my own personal playing style and observations. You don't necessarily have to follow it exactly, but I will explain WHY I chose them in the order I did. Build Order level 2 - Nature Weaver Lore - Needs 5 points ASAP to unlock Voodoo Focus and Nature Focus. Voodoo Lore isn't needed, as neither animus nor disease's damage isn't dependent on it. Nature Lore benefits all those wonderful defensive skills and late game offensive skills. I kept this at level until lvl100 to get all of my Nature mod points ASAP. level 3 - Cabalistic Voodoo Focus - Gives us our main damage buff, disease mods, and black curse, our main debuffer. I kept this at my level to get Moribund Animus's level without penalty as high as possible. level 5 - Nature Weaver Focus - Decreases regen time of nature skills, allows for higher levels of Combat Arts, and also contributes mod points to Nature aspect. I kept this at level until lvl100 to get all of my Nature mod points ASAP, then added whenever I had spare points. level 8 - Enhanced Perception - Gives us a better chance of finding gear, if not to equip, then to sell for money. Also unlocks accessories with Chance to Find Valuables and experience. per Kill modifiers. Keep it at either 1 if you go with Combat Discipline, or 5 if you go with Bargaining later. level 12 - Concentration This is so you can have both Ancient Bark and Moribund Animus up at the same time. The time to take this skill varies depending on what your strategy is. If you are not using disease to mass level, you will want to take this skill at level 2 instead, because you will need your animus to help you out at first. IF you are doing disease runs, though, you can take it around now, or even later if you want, since most of the time you will be running like a crazy woman trying to spread infection and watching the experience roll in. I chose level 12 simply because if you don't have a higher level shopper helping you out, now is a good level to start hunting for runes before levels start getting too unmanageable and you find yourself outclassed by higher level enemies with your crappy gear. Plus you have EP now and hopefully a few EP modifier accessories. level 18 - Combat Reflexes - Needs 5 points to unlock Armor Lore. Reasons for choosing over the others is explained later. You can leave this at 1 point. level 25 - Armor Lore - Lowers regen time, allows for higher level armor without penalty. Vital to any build, although Ms. Caster Dryad can make do with this a bit later than other characters due to Ancient Bark. Take it to 75 to get the mastery and unlock mitigation gear, but no higher. Was my 4th mastery. level 35 - Tactics Lore - Need 5 points in this to unlock Dual Wield. Since we're not using any weapons, we go with Tactics Lore because it has the added bonus of a few mod points in Capricious Hunter if we want to mod Forest Flight or Dust Devil. I personally kept it at 5 points. That gave me two mod points that I dumped into Forest Flight. level 50 - Dual Wield - Can leave this at 1 point. Ms. Caster Dryad won't be going around hitting things anytime soon. The whole point of Dual Wield is to have access to more blacksmithing slots. level 65 - Combat Discipline -OR- Bargaining - This all depends on your overall goal of the character. On my shopper Dryad, I took it much earlier, only to find it not that effective at first. I focused on other masteries first, and since bargaining needs to always stay at your level to be effective, might as well take it later and then catch it up after getting the more important masteries. Combat Discipline is your choice whether to leave at 1 point or get the mastery. I personally got the mastery 5th. Attributes 1-49 Vit-1 50-149 Vit-1 Sta-1 150-200 Vit-1 Sta-2 If you'll notice, I didn't take Constitution in my build. As such, gotta use Vitality to increase max HP. Once we get the extra attribute point, we should start dumping it into Stamina as well to lower regen times. Why? Well, we need another way to lower regen times anyways, especially if we're constantly eating Moribund Animus runes to have a super powered summon or an unbreakable ancient bark. Strength is worthless for her, Acute Mind will boost Int to ridiculous levels, Goldenglade will keep willpower at ridiculous levels. Combat Arts and Modifications This is the key to your super-powered Caster Dryad. I'll include a few numbers from my level 126 shopper dryad for certain skills. Voodoo Viperish Disease (Gangrene->Transmission->Contaminate) - The bronze mod is debatable. I went with gangrene in case I wanted to use it in actual combat. Regardless, it didn't effect my disease runs. Transmission and Contaminate are what make it truly effective. Keep this at Combat Art level 1. Moribund Animus (Malice->Elevation->Fury) - Malice and Fury will make your Animus 1-2 shot everything. Elevation will let you take your Animus to really high levels. Always try to keep Animus's level twice your current level. Animus will make higher regen times on your earlier levels not a big deal since you can hide behind it most of the time. I've seen my Animus stand in the middle of the Miasma's tornado attack and not take any damage. I find the rare insect head (scorpion) to be the best for bosses because of its rapid attacks, while the rare dragon head to be good for mobs due to its speed. On my level 126 shopper, my scorpion is at level 237 and does about 18000 per hit. Black Curse (Porous->Elongate->Expert) - Your main debuffer. Casting it before you begin your magic assault will leave bosses/champions vulnerable to your Animus and the physical damage from Edaphic Lances or Tangled Vines. I found the other skills to be moot. I guess you could mod Twisted Torment for headhunter. Nature Weaver Ancient Bark (Rugged->Divert->Invigorate) - The first step to immortality. Rugged pushes armor values to ridiculous numbers. Invigorate will eventually reach a point where it will eclipse what Constitution master can do for you. Divert is nice as not only are you not taking damage, but you are reflecting a lot of melee damage back. Ancient Bark - 97.5, 58 runes eaten Regen of all combat arts: +29.2% Resistance Bonus: 50,115 Defense Value: +985.9% HP Regen: +1,447/sec Physical Resistance: +4851 Poison Resistance: +3393 Before Ancient Bark: Defense: 1,252 Armor: 10,101 After Ancient Bark: Defense: 10,776 Armor: 102,300 Goldenglade Touch (Flow->Perservere->Dilligence) - Flow and Dilligence will make GGT pretty much chain-castable. Perservere raises Willpower to some pretty high numbers. - Goldenglade - Combat Art level 89.4, 36 runes eaten Cooldown + regen time: 5.7s Duration: 12 sec HP Regeneration - 15,407/sec Before Goldenglade: Willpower - 372 Spell Resistance - 372 After Goldenglade: Willpower - 6048 Spell Resistance - 1,753 As you can see, the combination of Bark and GGT is VERY effective. As long as you keep GGT up at all times, your only goal is to not get one shotted. Because they both give a decent boost to Defense and Spell Resistance, I felt Shield Lore and Spell Resistance as a skill wasn't necessary, hence I went with Combat Reflexes as the primary for Armor Lore. It also makes Constitution unnecessary because max HP totals can be increased via Vitality or forging max HP accessories (they can get into the thousands in Niob), and their combined effects more than eliminates the need for Constitution master. Don't be afraid to eat runes for both of these. The rest of the 3 can be modded depending on whether or not you want to start helping your Animus kill things right away or not. I went with this order simply because Animus was more than effective, and Acute Mind unmodded was still giving me a decent boost. Tangled Vine (Tendrils->Singe->Encroach) - With encroach, you can make this a decent Area of Effect that keeps mobs trapped in place. I went with more damage and fire damage, because I'd rather they die quicker than stay entangled longer, plus my regen times are about 1 - 1.5 seconds, so I can keep chaincasting it anyways before it wears off. It also starts off all of my combos. Edaphic Lances (Thorns->Stings->Singe) - Gold mod is up to you. I think the important mod here is the silver mod, for more damage. Acute Mind (Proficiency->Insight->Easiness) - While you could opt for double insight mods, I like proficiency better to reduce the time between castings. Besides, one insight already gives a significant boost. Easiness is my choice here because I'm not attacking (that and + all skills to dual wield is boosting that anyways) and Tinwora's Curse has an armor lore modifier for casting speed. Acute Mind - Combat Art level 85.9, 28 runes eaten Cooldown + Regen: 31.5s Duration: 19.2s Intelligence + 7209 Regen time -56.6% Before Acute Mind: Int - 493 Spell Intensity - 864 After Acute Mind: Int - 9763 Spell Intensity - 4,229 As you can see, Acute Mind boosts your damage output tremendously. Pair this with a Tangled Vines+Edaphic Lance combo with Black Curse, and you will see why the Dryad has no real need for Ancient Magic. Equipment Weapons Dual Wield 2x Tinwora's Curses as main weapons, 2x Officer Sabers for experience suit. I like the bonuses from Tinwora's better for actual combat. Why? Officer Saber's native bonuses are Faster Survival Bonus and Attack Value. Compare that to Tinwora's, whose native bonuses are +all Combat Arts, -regen time, and and Armor Lore modifier for casting speed, all of them MUCH more useful at the cost of only 1 gold slot, and the bonuses are I think often better than what you can forge onto them unless you already have a high level shopper forging for you. Armor Anything with decent slotting and good native bonuses like +all skills, +all Combat Arts, aspect Nature/Voodoo, spell intensity, casting speed, all channels DM, run speed, etc. I didn't use Dryad set pieces all too often, simply due to my complete lack of luck in finding ones that I like. A few that I did use though were: Chestplate of Time Physical mitigation, 1 gold slot and 2 silver slots Dairwain's Greaves experience per kill, Defense Value, and a silver slot. These were mostly used for my experience suit. Otherwise... Pantaloons of Eternal Flame Run Speed, Defense Value, and 2 silver slots. Shoulders of Flame Vitality, Chance to half Regen times, CC Block chance, 2 silver slots 3rd piece to get the first Eternal Flame bonus, which is fire mitigation, helping to offset Ancient Bark's one weakness. Of course, you want at least 3 Fire relics for the extra fire protection. Strategy Level 1-14 Start off by getting Ancient Bark and Goldenglade ASAP. Disease would be nice too. Spend some time doing some shopping to get some low level slotted equipment, and load them up with BS enhance arts. Use Twisted Torment or Animus to get an early kobold head. Once you get that first kobold head, you can start spreading disease throughout kobold territory even without mods, albeit a bit limited. I think you'll end up having to kite some enemies. Bring Nature Lore up to 5 first, then immediately start dumping point into Voodoo/Nature Focus. You want to get Disease modded ASAP, Ancient Bark fully modded, and Goldenglade should get started. Level 15-65 At this point, you have a choice. If you don't have a solid rune base by now and aren't too comfortable with yoru current armor, you can spend some time killing kobolds the normal way. You should have concentration now, so you can go around with an animus. It might not be effective (yet) without its mods, but it will serve as a nice distraction while you pick things off. Early kobolds still aren't much of a threat, and Ancient Bark + GGT will keep you alive. I've found that insect head summons tend to be the most effective for me. I think you can get one from the spiders in caves, though I personally got mine from Scarabs in the desert, using whatever Animus I currently had, and tossed out a totem for distraction, and used twisted torment. Regardless, you will want an insect head anyways if you want to do desert runs. If you feel you have a solid collection of runes, and you have money/gear waiting for you, or you are just that eager to level up, then now is a good time as any to start spreading your love throughout the desert (make sure you have that insect head). My personal route is I like to start from the teleporter at Badawi, infect the first group of scarabs, then run counter clockwise going past the coast, north of the plateau that separates Khorum and Scorpion temple, and then through sand people territory. Be very careful when going past scorpion territory though and sand people though. If you get careless, you CAN die. Always keep Goldenglade touch up. You will level up fast... VERY fast. Dump your points as you see fit. I personally kept the newly unlocked skills at 1 hard point except for combat reflexes which required 5. The rest I pumped into nature focus/lore and voodoo focus. You may want to stop periodically at intervals to farm for more runes/better equipment. The wild boar is a pretty nice and easy target. If you're Animus is fully modded and you've been keeping up its level, you can start farming some bosses too. I actually just kept the savepoint next to Garganthropod active and kept farming him. Twisted vines kept him in place while my animus smacked him. I was lucky to get a rare insect head from him pretty earlier. I was even luckier to get a level 60 rare dragon head from the dragon boss in the swamp that had an EP modifier for experience per kill, -regen Voodoo, and Aspect voodoo Level 65-100 At level 65, you should have your last skill by now, and desert runs should be starting to slow down a little, due to the desert approaching its silver level cap (which I think is 68). Go ahead and just beat this campaign. It will give you time to farm for more runes/gear/money. Remember to keep your Ancient Bark/Animus/GGT levels up. These will keep you alive and provide you with damage. You probably already have 4 nature Combat Arts fully modded by now. Hopefully one is acute mind. If the other is tangled vine, then you can pretty much take out large groups with the two, with your animus picking up the stragglers. If you did lances instead, you'll have a cannon in the way of bosses, but mobs will take a bit more patience, going with the tangled vine/animus strategy, and hoping your lances hit more than one enemy. Either way, silver shouldn't pose too much opposition, especially with your level 130 animus. Once you unlock gold, repeat the process. Take care that Ancient bark is high enough to shrug off hits. GGT should be able to fully heal you within a second. Level 100+ At level 100, all of your nature Combat Arts should be fully modded, and the 3 important Voodoo Combat Arts will be fully modded. You should have a pretty solid set of equipment by now from farming bosses for rare heads. Hopefully you've been managing your Combat Art levels well. If all has went well, you should be a goddess of war by now. You should be followed by a crazy overpowered ethereal creature that is untouched by all. Bosses should fall in seconds to Acute Mind+Black Curse+Twisted Vine+Edaphic Lances. Anything less than Niob will probably feel boring and unchallenging (Note, that's not to say there still aren't some things in Niob that are capable of giving you a scare if you get complacant or too arrogant). If you don't know what else you should be doing by now, you really haven't been paying attention the past 100 hours. Wandering the desert for hours probably messed with your head or something. Conclusion Pure Caster Dryad is simultaneously one of the strongest and definitely the laziest of all of my characters. The only reason I even had 5 deaths for my shopper was because it was my first Dryad and I was stingy with runes and didn't eat any ancient bark or GGT runes, nor did I fully commit to her because desert running DOES get boring. Once I started eating runes and upping Combat Art levels though, I could literally just walk into Orc Cave and stand there while my animus killed them, as well the orcs killing themselves from reflected damage off ancient bark. I built the second Dryad just see if I could make her even more ridiculously strong since I now have the extra hard points not wasted on bargaining, and combat discipline boosting damage and combo regeneration time being that I'm always comboing anyways. Ancient Bark is already one of the most overpowered defensive skills, but combined with GGT it's just sick. GGT modded is chaincastable and provides a pretty high willpower boost and full heal per second. Fire Relics and Fire mitigation (Either from all channel DM or 3 pieces of Eternal Flame gear) deals with bark's weakness. Acute Mind modded and at high enough Combat Art levels boosts your int wicked numbers? There's something to be said when you can take out all 4 nameless guardians in niob in under 2 minutes without even being concerned about taking damage. Regarding disease, it's only there to quick-level the desert. I imagine that if I were playing it without the disease exploit, I'd still play her the same way, it would just go at the same speed as my other characters and I really don't see myself doing that. I've already built enough legit characters, and it was very refreshing to just be able to speed through levels.

Save glitch is when you join a multiplayer campaign at a higher level than you have unlocked, activate a quest, then a save point, and then exit, you have access to that difficulty even though you never unlocked it. So for example, I built up my Dryad entirely in silver free world. I then join someone else's multiplayer campaign on platinum, trigger a quest, then a save point, the leave. Now, on my main menu, I have the choice to continue a platinum campaign (though it will start me from the very beginning. Now as long as I keep going with it without joining a different difficulty or trying to start a free world, I can just beat it and unlock Niob without having to go through the hassle of beating gold and silver.