Welcome to a new project, experiment, challenge or whatever you wanna call it. Normally experiencing the content with well-geared toons, I figured it would be quite interesting to approach the game from the perspective of a casual player. How does it feel having only the stuff you actually farm and build up a character without the help of your mains? How long does it take until you are geared enough for T1/T2 and where do you get all the RPs from? Welcome to the Lowbie Diaries, it should be fun!

*** UPDATE: Additional comments that developed from a lively discussion about the direction and goals of the project as well as the general approach can be found here. ***

Fri 05/08

I started the day off with a dragon run and (wtf!) got a Golden Belt of Puissance out of it. Felt lucky. Alongside the RP that’s 380k AH value, not too shabby. I bought a Greater Belt of Constitution as well as two Gemmed Adamant Rings of Piercing and my first Rank 7. Item level: 1,712!

I also tried PVP GG and well, I have no business in being there. We lost miserably and I ended up with 0/7/6. No more PVP until geared.

The rest of the session was pretty basic, did the daily ToS and the first quest of Elemental Evil as well as dailies in Sharandar to get the Fey Blessing asap. Worth mentioning was the daily Skirmish Dread Ring. I ended up in a group with full blues and one green Artifact Weapon at best. It took us more than 15 minutes to beat the Skirmish and people were actually dying. A true display of the lowbie life.

Sat 05/09

I looked into some ACT logs, because I thought the main culprit of my low DPS might be Armor Penetration, but no, I’m just undergeared. It’s also funny how you start to really go after trash loot, profession nodes and Identification Scrolls. Every RP counts.

I have to remind myself to group up for Witch Fen every day. The Shard of Feytouched sells for 6k, which is really not bad for the time invested. Doing Dailies in Sharandar I realized that I can’t beat all mobs alone and have to be careful not to pull too much. Got enough currency to get my first Fey Blessing. Yay!

Sun 05/10

Shard of Feytouched has halved in value. Damn! I might do Celadine in the future, because I need pets! Started a Dragon Hoard Enchantment from the ToD campaign. I know they are capped, but that shouldn’t affect this character too much.

I finished the introductory quests of Elemental Evil and moved on to Spinward Rise to start the road to my Elemental Fire Main Hand. Questing was not a big deal outside Heroic Encounters although I felt kind of squishy. But this is solo-able while the 70+ campaign areas are most certainly not.

Mon 05/11

Couldn’t do Spinward Rise today because of lag. It’s already pretty annoying for my other chars, but as lowbie you simply die. I totally missed that Greater Marks went through the roof during x2 weekend and should have run more Dread Ring lairs the last days. You really have to be aware of such things, because 35k for a Greater Mark of Union is a lot.

Tue 05/12

The Dread Ring Lair was supposed to give Greater Marks of Power today and since they are still at 25k, I decided to get some runs in. Or I planned to get some runs in until I realized that you don’t actually get a Greater Mark, but only a chance for a Greater Mark. That’s another viable option to raid AD down the drain. I got lucky though and managed to get one on my second run.

A huge development was that I realized I’m able to beat the epic Kessell skirmish, which drops 20 Seals of the Elements. So that’s actually a way to get T1 gear without doing dungeons. Queue takes forever though.

Concluding the first week of lowbie play (I might not be able to touch the char until Monday) I also pondered what would realistically by achievable in a reasonable time and the truth is that I will have trouble to exceed 2.3k item level. I think this might be the ceiling. The Personalized Adamant Rings are placeholders for the blue Gemmed Adamant Rings I already own, that’s why I didn’t fill the second defensive socket. I’m also aiming for R7s and not R8s.

After that, the next step in the progression would be additional Artifacts and an Augment, but AD-wise that’s well out of reach. Another area of concern is the Neck piece, because for a Greater you either need 250k Black Ice, which would be a pain even if I had the ZEN Pick, or run Tiamat, which is impossible right now. So this stuff might not be feasible within such a project, we’ll see.

So long!

The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 1: Setting Up The Char

We are always looking for people that contribute to this blog. For more information check this out or visit the forum.