Hi all! Eryola, lvl50 high duelist here. I thought I might write a guide for the class to help people understand the duelist better and be more efficient at playing it. Hope it helps some of you guys, maybe even if you are not a duelist 
If any questions remain... don't hesitate to ask here.
1) What is a Duelist and why play it?
2) What are the differences to Sentinel and Warlord
3) Stats
4) Gear
5) Skills
6) Duelist gameplay
7) Zones
8) Additional Info/Tips
9) Version history and copyright notice
1) What is a Duelist and why play it?
The Duelist is one of the specializations a Supporter class can become at lvl 6. The other 2 are Sentinel and Warlord. The Duelist is the most direct healer of the 3 and generally the best "I NEED heals NOW!" class. If you want to play an efficient healer for your group, that is very good at quick and direct heals and has access to a group heal spell, you can't go wrong with duelist. What a duelist is not: A good soloer (You really need a dps class for this. While we CAN solo stuff, even 3 chevs, it's INCREDIBLY slow and terribly xp inefficient. It's good for killing a lower lvl named you stumbled upon by accident, but absolutely not useable to gain experience.), a tank (you can and will draw a lot of aggro... so you will end up tanking quite a bit and survive it, but you lack the tools to generate constant aggro to keep the mobs on you, so you will lose aggro to DDs when actually trying to tank), a dps class (even when going fully for dps stats, you simply lack the abilities to do good dmg... you will end up as a bad healer AND a bad DD)
2) What are the differences to Sentinel and Warlord
Advantages over Sentinel: Our main heal "Patch" has one second casttime and no delay, which makes our heal land quicker on the target than everything the sentinel can offer. Three of our spells (Patch, Triage and Stim) can be cast while running at full speed, which the sentinel simply can't do. Overall our hps over the duration of the fight will be higher than the sentinel, especially if the whole group takes damage, since the sentinel has no group heal and our Triage becomes incredibly efficient when it hits 3 or more targets.
Disadvantages compared to Sentinel: We have no Heals over Time. Our Patch sometimes, especially early, can't keep up with the damage a single target might recieve. The sentinel is the better single-target tank healer and more mana efficient at that job. We run out of sta VERY quickly compared to a sentinel when we have to spam our fast heal. Sentinels can offtank for a short time, since they have a taunt skill and have 5 more maximum armor weight at max level.
Advantages over Warlord: We don't have to click buttons constantly. The warlord has to keep up all his songs for maximum efficieny, even when everyone is resting, the warlord player is still expected to keep spamming his Sta-Regen song. The Warlord has his group-hitpoint regen song, which is too small to be a "real group heal" (it helps nonetheless though) and they only have the same First Aid spell we have, plus a 20 sec cooldown heal, which creates huge gaps in their healing. We simply heal for more and faster. The same "we can run, while they can't, while healing" applies here too.
Disadvantages compared to Warlord: 3 words: STAM REGEN SONG... that alone is worth it to take a warlord into a group. Sta regen song makes your tanks hold aggro better, your DDs do more damage and your other healers help not run out of stamina... it simply is the best buff in the game. Their other songs are great buffs too... the heal song might not be a massive group heal, but constantly having it up makes a very noticeable difference in heals that are suddenly not needed to be cast. Group +hit song helps with the dps output of the DDs and tanks absolutely hate missing their threat skills. Everyone loves the +haste song too... whatever you do, you do it faster (except maybe our patch, which is at speedcap anyway ) And they can CC with a single target fear and later an AoE fear... mobs that can't attack you, don't need to be healed against...
3) Stats
(UPDATE 28.02.2023: After getting an "execute" spell at lvl34, you can also consider to focus on adding some extra damage output, but if it is worth to reduce your survivability to add damage to essentially only one skill is up to you. This guide focuses on being a group healer that survives the hardest of pulls and leaves the damage to the DDs in the group. If you want to add more damage, simply go for more flanking, 1h/2h weapon dmg and a weapon with a DMG positional)
This section has a base explanation of all the stats ingame and what to focus on.
Stats in the order in which they appear in your character window:
AC: stands for Armor Class. The higher it is, the more -any- damage you receive will be reduced, up to a cap of 50% dmg reduced. You can see when you hit this cap when the ABS (absorbed) damage on something hitting you is the same number as the damage taken. ("An examples Auto-Attack hits YOU for 10. (10 ABS)") The number in the blue shield ("100%") goes down when your gear is damaged from taking hits and dying, which will reduce your overall active AC ("143/220"). This a very good stat for us, since we generate a lot of aggro and need to survive or the group will die.
Armor Weight: This is the maximum weight your armor can have without suffering penalties. This increases with level and only armor you wear has any weight. Your inventory is weightless. You should balance your gear to get the maximum amount of stats and AC while still staying below or at best: at your armor weight maximum. There are no items, buffs or debuffs that affect this. Going over your armor weight maximum is not recommended, since you will massively lose other stats, most noticeably movement and haste, when overweight.
Movement: This is your base movement speed outside of combat. This can only be increased with the warden out-of-combat buff "Lay of the Land" and the buff you can get from a green Ember-Butterfly-Thingy (you can see them glow at night, just run over them to grab them). Very nice stat, but impossible to get...
Combat Mov.: Your movement speed with your weapons drawn. Since you will only be doing some small steps to readjust your position while in combat, this stat really doesn't matter at all. If you have to run longer distances or run away from monsters: PUT YOUR WEAPONS AWAY. No amount of combat movement stat makes up for the speed difference. Useless stat.
Haste: This influences your skill execution speed (can't be faster than 1 second), your recast cooldowns and your autoattack speed. It does not reduce global cooldown. It updates constantly, so having a lot of +haste while starting a cooldown and losing some of it while the skill is still on cooldown is no advantage. Other way around too: if you increase your haste while something is on cooldown already, you will reduce the cooldown by a nice chunk. Good stat worth getting. It caps at 100 btw.
SafeFall: This is... well, it's a stat I guess? I never died to falling damage so far. There is one drop in the game (in Undercroft) which kills you, but safefall likely won't prevent that either and it can be avoided by simply clicking the rope there instead of jumping down like a clown. It is very hard to get, since like only one ring and a high level belt has it on it, but this is a good thing: This stat is completely useless.
HealthRegen: The higher this value is, the more hitpoints you regenerate naturally while OUT OF COMBAT. Yup, combat completely disables this stat. This stat is important if you a) solo and b) are not a supporter class. As a duelist you will always want to heal instead of waiting for hitpoints to regenerate, since your stamina regenerates A LOT faster than your HP. Useless stat.
Stamina Regen: Higher stat = more stamina regen out of AND IN COMBAT. While you will regenerate sta a lot faster out of combat, this is still noticeable in combat too. This is a very useful stat and should be one of your main stats to go for.
Healing: Each point here adds 1% more to your healing bonus. So having 100 here (which is not the cap btw) means you heal twice as much as someone with 0, with the same skill at the same level for the same stamina spent. BEST STAT FOR A DUELIST. Focus on getting this as high as possible.
Resilience: Each point here adds 1% chance to not die when hit by fatal damage. Since you will just stay at 0 health and the next hit will check for another resilience save and usually in these situations hits come in quite fast and this stat is very hard to get a lot of... it's useless. It's a bonus that might save you once every few days, but absolutely not worth gearing for.
Avoid: 1 = 1% chance to completly avoid any damage of a single attack. Good stat to have, but hard to get. Try getting as much as you can of it, but don't lose other, more important stats for it. Seems to have an internal cooldown of 2 secs to be able to trigger, so loses effectivity when attacked by lots of mobs.
Block: 1 = 1% chance to block a percentage of incoming damage on an attack. Block efficiency is on your weapon, which means only 2h staves for us. Nigh-impossible stat to get for us and less useful than avoid. Can be safely ignored. Seems to have the 2 sec timer too.
Parry: 1 = 1% chance to parry an incoming attack, reducing the damage it does and opens the chance to riposte. Additionally the parried attack gets an automatic disadvantage (2 rolls made, worse one is taken). We can get this on some staves and while it reduces damage, it is not that noticeable. Not worth focusing on. Seems to have the 2 sec timer too.
Riposte: 1 = 1% chance to riposte AFTER A SUCCESSFUL PARRY. Does quite a lot of bonus damage compared to a regular attack, but a) we don't reach the required amount of parry (that's defender territory), b) we don't do good damage, even with a nice bonus it would still be quite little for us and c) we don't want to get hit in the first place. Useless stat for us.
Hit: Increases your chance to hit your enemies (reduces "MISS" rate), reduces the chance for a glancing blow, increases chance for a heavy hit and a crit. According to AdricLives (GM, discord community meeting 16.02.2023) the base hit rating, not your positional, adds heavy hit and crit chance to your heals. We are not a dps class and since you will need a lot of this stat to notice a difference at all (it goes up to 1000+, something like 10 is like not noticeable at all), it still is not that great. Another advantage this gives us is missing less of your debuffs (the attack has to hit for the debuff to work on enemies). See it as a bonus on gear, but don't focus on it. If you can choose between HIT and Combat Movement for example, sure take HIT, but otherwise ignore.
Penetration: Increase the % your damage ignores enemies armor. We are not dps. Completely useless for us.
Flanking: Increase the positional bonus on your weapon. For example a weapon that has +5 DMG from the back on it will go to +5 (+10) DMG with 10 flanking stat, increasing your damage output by 15% from the back position. Main stat for a DPS class, useless for us.
1h Weapons: increases your 1h weapon damage by x%. Useless.
2h Weapons: increases your 2h weapon damage by x%. Useless.
Ranged Weapons: increases your ranged weapon damage by x%. Useless.
Mental: increases your mental damage output. This stat doesn't exist ingame yet.
Chemical: increases your chemical damage output. This stat doesn't exist ingame yet.
Ember: increases your ember damage output. This stat doesn't exist ingame yet.
RESIST:
Physical: Reduces incoming physical dmg by x%. Can go above 100, but you will always take a minimum of 1 dmg from a successful attack. Very, VERY good stat, since 95% of the damage you will see ingame is physical. This is something to focus on, since this together with AC will make you very tanky.
Mental: I can't think of anything atm that actually does mental damage... useless stat.
Chemical: This resist is rarely used. Some spiders do pure chemical damage and the "Venom Strike" all spiders use is chemical damage too. Quite useful in the 44+ Ember Vein. Other stats are more important though, but this is a "nice to have".
Ember: All Ashen mobs do ember damage, autoattacks and AoE, so you will encounter this in like every Ember Vein. Same as with chemical resist: Nice to have, other things more important.
Physical/Mental/Chemical/Ember/Movement Debuff: All of those are wasted stats, you will never need to focus on any of those resists up to lvl50.
Confuse: This is the annoying "swap your movement keys" ability the Bats have. Since it's rare, you don't have to focus on getting it and in group fights you aren't pulling, which means: You stand still and don't care about it anyway.
Daze: This is the really annoying "can't cast anything" (autoattacks and moving still work) bears use for example. Of all the behaviour resists, this one is the most useful, since the daze tends to be long and getting hit by it in the wrong moment can cause a person to not be healed enough and die. Useful stat, especially on earrings since the "good" earrings are hard to get and you most likely will wear resist-only earrings.
Stun: You stand still with a "zzz" above your head and can't do anything (effectively a mezz), seen on Snatchscales for example. This is the second most useful behaviour resist. But you should be rarely hit by this anyway, since the mobs tend to use it on their main target and then switch targets to avoid waking up the sleeping one (tanks HATE this). Sometimes getting hit with this and -not- resisting it will actually save your life, since the mobs will stop attacking you, if they have other targets available.
4) Gear
(Sorry if this does not list ALL possible items, there are too many and FAR too many useless ones to list. I hope I caught the most important ones though.)
The main concept when gearing a duelist is the priority: +healing > +sta regen > +phys res > +haste > +AC >>> everything else. This comes from my motto:"As long as my heals are big enough to counter the incoming damage, as long as my sta regen is high enough to keep on healing and as long as I survive when drawing aggro... the group will survive!"
+healing is absolute priority, since we want to get our +heal so high, that we can essentially spam Patch to keep people alive. This is a lot safer than having to wait on the interruptable 2sec casttime of First Aid and it's 10sec cooldown. If your Patch can't keep up with the damage mobs deal to your target, you fail as a healer. Also, since it has an effect on every heal, this gives a HUGE overall bonus to Triage. My Triage hits for 60 on all group members on a regular basis, non heavy, non crit... that is a 360 heal, 1 sec casttime. This also transforms First Aid in kind of a removable spell... you don't want to wait -that- long until the full spell actually hits the target without creating overheal (without reagents), but if you can, you have a gigantic heal for cheap sta cost. Don't overdo it with "absolute priority" in an idiotic way though... an item with +8 sta and +10 healing is still better than one with +12 healing only. But if you can go +10 healing or +10 sta, always the healing. You always have time to regenerate between fights and unless it is a catastrophic pull you should not run out of sta. This will become even less of a problem with Stim at lvl30 and/or a warlord in the group.
+sta regen: this is the second best stat, since if the pull is a lot of mobs or the puller decides "no, we don't need any sta breaks here", this will keep giving you back mana even during the fight... be aware though that using an ability pauses the sta regen, while the skill is being cast (cast bar), so spamming Patch is less efficient for stamina not only because the ability itself is less efficient, but also since you will be getting those forced sta regen delays from constantly casting something. If your mana is running low, try stop casting Patch and use First Aid instead (+cheap Screen). Less, but bigger heals = more time to actually use the +sta regen stat.
+phys res (and avoid, parry, and if available in addition: chem dmg resist and ember dmg resist): like 95% of the mobs in the game do physical damage. You will get hit... a LOT... we are the masters of drawing completely random and chaotic aggro with our massive healing output. This will help you survive more than anything else and it will still be fully active, even when your armor is nearly completely broken. It's also a good idea to carry some +phys res potions around and use them, when you know there will be adds incoming. ...you will be tanking them, mark my words...
+haste is good, but not great, it won't help us with the cast times of our most important spells (Patch, Triage, Stim), since you can't go below 1 sec casttime, but it will reduce our cooldowns on Triage, Stim (= more stamina faster! This is hidden stamina regen for us!), Screen, First Aid, Disengage...
AC is always something to look for. This will also reduce chemical and ember damage received, which are damage types you usually not have a big resistance against. You are not a damage dealer. Repeat after me! "I AM NOT A DAMAGE DEALER." You will pick the high AC, no extra stats or 1 resilience armor and not the low AC extra flanking one! You are closer to a tank than a damage dealer. Getting low AC, but Flanking/Pen gear (and that gear always has lower AC for practically the same weight) will not make you do more damage... it will get you (and as a consequence: your group) killed and get you an annoying bag recovery! Also be sure to watch your AC % in your character screen and on the tiny blue shield on your nameplate from time to time when you did tank a lot, died a lot or especially after releasing when dead. You don't want to be running around in paper armor or you will die again... go repair if it drops too low!
All the other stats are useless for a Duelist. Sure, if you can choose between +3 and +5 combat movement, take the +5, but I wouldn't trade 1 healing for +10 combat movement... or flanking... or pen... or xyz.
Weight slots:
Helmet: This is a tricky one, since you have some items available with weight and some with 0 weight in this slot. I recommend a crafted (outfitter) 0 weight hood. (Mine for exampleis was: 3 phys debuff res, 7 daze res, 4 confuse res, 3 stun res, 4 parry, 6 AC, 0 weight) Helmets tend to have slightly better AC to weight ratios than most other items, but if you factor in the "0 weight hood + other item" vs. "helmet + empty slot" for the same weight, usually the hood wins. Update 04.04.2023: A new BiS has surfaced:"Mask of the Awakened" (lvl25, +10 mental debuff resists, +8 sta regen, 9AC, 0 weight; named "Awakened Nocturne" in Forgotten Depths) this is the ONLY sta regen helmet in the game!
Shoulders (2): Clearly there is only one item for this slot. "Chithorn's Pauldron" times two. Lvl 20 required, +4 phys res, +6 phys debuff res, 50 AC, 10 weight. Drops off named spider "Chithorn" in spider cave/tunnel in Meadowlands. These are the red shoulders everyone (except DDs) seem to be wearing. Really the best item for this slot up to lvl50.
Cuirass: This slot comes usually with a lot of AC for a big chunk of weight. Crafted ones are good, but there are some dropped ones that can replace all your other gear with overall AC increasing. Go for maximum AC here, since there aren't any Duelist useful stats in this slot. Early on you can easily leave this slot empty.
Vambrace (2): Clearly crafted ones, since starting at lvl20 (I believe) outfitters can create Imbued Leather Vambraces that give you AC and some minor stats for only 1 weight each. Use a full set of these + the greaves to balance any extra 1-3 weight you might have open. No useful Duelist stats here, go for max AC. If you have too much open weight, you can also use a crafted metal one or two of them for like 4 weight each and extra AC here. Something to mention here are "Kaet's Bracer" (no lvl, +2 flanking, 6 AC, 0 weight; named Smuggler "Smuggler Kaet" in CV1; Only 0 weight item in this slot!) which can always be used to fill up a slot for 0 weight, so you should always keep 2 of them to balance your weight max.
Faulds: Big AC for big weight here too. An early one to use would be Knave's Faulds (35AC for 10 weight, drops off Knave of Harts, named 4(!) chev Deer in Newhaven Valley) which are also the lightest ones available for balancing the weight you have available. No useful stats to be found for a Duelist here and usually worse AC to weight ratio than a cuirass. Can be left empty most of the time.
Greaves (2): see vambrace explanation
No Weight Slots:
Earrings (2): This slot SUCKS. You most likely will only be able to wear resist gear, since the Devs never intended to have any real stat items in this slot. When choosing resists, go for the item with the most Daze > Stun > Confuse resist (in that order of priority). There are 2 very good drop earrings though: "Wolf Fang Earring" (lvl10, 2 1h weap dmg, 2 2h weap dmg, 2 phys resist; drops off named wolf "Fang" in Meadowlands wolf/spider tunnel) and "Stolen Ruby Earring" (lvl30, 6 phys dmg res, 6 chem dmg res, 6 ember dmg res; drops off named racoon "Bandit" in Redshore). Both of these are INCREDIBLY RARE, EVERYONE will roll for it, everyone will be pissed, group will dissolve, world chat will be flooded with accusations why class x rolled on it when class y needs it so much more, Elloa (community manager GM) will tell ppl not to start a witch hunt and to keep this out of world chat, ppl will put other ppl on the blocklist and the winner will most likely sell the item to a high level player for like 50g anyway instead of using it themselves. (Btw: if you have a Wolf Fang Earring or Stolen Ruby Earring... I'll pay 50g for them, hell even 70g for the Ruby one. Serious offer. Got my 2 Ruby ones for 70g each, thx ) Another useful earring has finally surfaced: "Shrunken Skull Earring" (lvl20, +4 chemical dmg resists, +7 physical debuff resists) while this one is BY FAR not as good as the other 2 (chemical dmg is much more rare than physical one) it is at least a useful stat and not some status resist crap, so it is worth wearing if you can find one... and there is the problem: The only info I got for how to get it was a "hmm.... out of a chest... in Stronghold... maybe", so maybe there isn't even a named that drops it, which makes it even harder to get than the other two )
Necklace: Crafted ones are good here, but there are also a few good dropped ones. You can get +Healing and +Sta regen in this slot (for lvl 20 for example:"Lesser Imbued Highlands Copper Sparkling Topaz Necklace" with +5 sta regen, + 6 healing, 1 avoid and 3 other stats). Dropped would be for example "Witch's Amulet" (no lvl, +4 sta regen; named human in Smuggler camp on the top of the mountain north-east side of the zone in Newhaven Valley... can't remember the name, sry), "Stolen Emerald Necklace" (off the same racoon above, +12 healing, +5 hit), "Necklace of the Woods" (lvl25, +12 healing, +12 stun resist; named ant "Queen, Ant" in Redshore, rare drop), "Stolen Necklace" (lvl10, +8 healing, +2 haste; uncommon rat "Pack Rat" in Dryfoot, rare drop), "Necklace of Judgement" (lvl40, +14 sta regen, +14 healing; named human "Executioner, Voltaire Korinth" in Redshore Freehold, not that uncommon, when you level there you will have it sooner or later), "Fancy Stolen Necklace" (lvl20, +10 healing, +4 haste; uncommon "Pack Rat" in Dryfoot Stronghold, rare drop), "Necklace of the Watery Deep" (lvl25, +30 sta regen, -15 haste; uncommon "Watery Mire" in Forgotten Depths as a rare drop; might be a strange choice, but can work... you'll lose healing in this slot though, so not really a great choice)
Back: This slot probably has the hardest choice what to pick... you can either go with "Nothing" or "Nothing", maybe you can even upgrade to "Nothing"... yes, not a single damn cape exists in the game, neither dropped nor crafted.
Chest: This is a good crafted slot with +sta regen and +healing to go for. Drops would be: "Fungal Bear Tunic" (lvl30, +37 health regen, +12 healing, 17 AC; named special-graphic white bear "Lumbering Ancient Bear" in Redshore), "Spindled Shirt" (lvl36, +8 sta regen, +6 chem dmg resist, +10 healing; named white spider "Spindler" in Redshore Ridge), "Misha's Tunic" (no lvl, +7 health regen, +3 healing, 8 AC; named special-graphic white bear, 4(!) chev, "Ancient Bear, Misha" in Newhaven Valley, very good, quite easy to get with a full group, early item), "Silkweave Shirt" (lvl15, +4 sta regen, +10 healing, 12 AC; named spider "Weaver" in Meadowlands Spider EV)
Hands: "Queen's Red Gloves" (lvl10, +8 healing, 5 AC; named 4(!) chev deer "Queen of Harts" in Northreach) will stay with you until lvl30 when it gets replaced by crafted gloves (12 healing, 5 ranged dmg, 3 2h weap dmg, 5 pen, 5 AC; "Greater Imbued Frontier Jute Gloves") these can be upgraded to +13 healing with an Unstable Flux at lvl40. Or you can go for "Ambling Mitts" (lvl30, +3 parry, +12 healing, 10 AC; named treant "Ambling Mangrove" in Redshore, which seems to be bugged, since often he doesn't drop any special item at all). "Warm Gloves" (lvl36, +14 healing, +5 ranged dmg, 6 AC; uncommon mob "Freehold Lookout" in Redshore Freehold, random drop, will drop as this if the Lookout is <=lvl39; if the Lookout is lvl40+, it will drop as "Flexible Warm Gloves" -lvl40, +16 healing, +6 ranged dmg, 10 AC- instead)
Ring (2): "Stolen Ring" (lvl10, +5 hit, +8 healing; uncommon rat "Pack Rat" in Dryfoot, rare drop), "Fancy Stolen Ring" (lvl20, +10 healing, +5 hit; uncommon rat "Pack Rat" in Dryfoot Stronghold), "Smoldering Ring" (lvl30, +12 healing, +5 hit, +5 ranged dmg; named slagjack "Darkforge" in Forgotten Depths), the quest ring in Meadowlands for killing the named Raider leader "Gerrin" (quest auto-opens as soon as you kill him) is great too... "Brookhollow Ring" (lvl20, +10 healing, +7 hit), this slot also has some strong crafted alternatives "Greater Imbued Outlands Iron Brilliant Cassiterite Ring" (lvl30, +8 healing, +1 haste and 6(!) other stats you don't really care about on it), upgrading this one to 40 is a waste of a flux though, neither healing nor haste increases. Current BiS would be "Sovereign's Decree" (lvl40, +5 flanking, +14 healing; nigh-impossible to get since the mob that drops it hasn't been implemented yet -most likely Exile King- and you can ONLY get it out of chests in Redshore Freehold Ledge atm). An alternative might be:"Glistening Ring" (lvl20, +14 healing, -4 flanking; uncommon "Dewy Mistcrawler" in Meadowlands) ...I spent 60 hours there so far and only have ONE.
Ember Stone: You don't really have a choice here. None of these drop, you have to finish a quest in Meadowlands for the first one with 100 charge on it. (SPOILERS INC: follow the road west when zoning in from Northreach and talk to the guy by the fire, give him 5(!) silver, do that quest, just have to run to a few spots, no fighting.) The other quest is part of "Acolyte's Ambition" (SPOILERS!: Get the quest in the academy in Newhaven City. Find at least one statue in CV2 in Northreach, quest reward does NOT increase if you get 2 or 3 of them, pointless to get the others. Go back to Newhaven, get told to find the "Origin of the Message". The object you are looking for is in the (stone) fortress in Northeast Dryfoot. Enter from the south (up the biiiig slope), and stay on the left hand side. there will be 2 stone arches behind each other, you have to go through them and down a small slope. Turn left and click the item that is buried in the pile of rubble there. WARNING: you have to click the text like 6 or 7 times to progress so be sure to have no mobs hitting you. This whole area is like 3chev around lvl18-20(? not sure) and has archers in it, be sure to bring a group. After clicking that and returning to Newhaven, the NPC will auto-upgrade your stone to 150 max capacity "Roughly Cut Ember Stone". -- The upgrade to 200 starts in southwest Dryfoot at a named Marauder (friendly) nearly at the zone wall under a tree called "Runty", the quest is called "Runty's Revenge" and is self explanatory.
Waist: "Stalker's Chain Belt" (lvl10, 8 sta regen, 1 AC; random drop off normal mob "Dread Stalker" in Meadowlands Wolf tunnel. Drops quite often and will get you to like lvl40, when the phys res on crafted (7 on "Major Imbued Pristine Thick Leather Belt") starts outshining the +8 sta regen, but if you choose so, you can keep it all the way to 50 too.
Legs: A good slot to get +healing and +phys res from. Crafted are really near unbeatable here "Greater Imbued Frontier Jute Trousers" (lvl30, +3 chem dmg res, +3 health regen, +7 healing, +6 phys dmg res, +2 avoid, 12 AC) not really worth upgrading to 40 with a flux, recipe will only gain 1 health regen at 40.
Feet: "Wolfskin Threads" (lvl40, +4 avoid, +8 phys dmg resist, +12 movement debuff resist, 12 AC; off named human "Handler Finla" in Redshore Freehold), mainly go for +avoid in this slot, even "Lily's Boots" (no lvl, +1 avoid, 4 AC; named deer "Lily" in Newhaven Valley) are better than a lot of the later drops... that one avoid can save your butt later or at least save you a heal every blue moon, but stuff like combat movement is completely useless. This slot becomes nice at lvl30 iirc, when you can start crafting boots with phys res and avoid.
Primary Main Hand: A Duelist should be always using a 1h weapon and an offhand accessory. The only reason to ever go 2h is: you want to solo, which is not recommended anyway. But by using a 2h, you sacrifice the mighty bonuses an offhand can give you for just some minor extra damage, which might not even be a lot in a group, since our 2h staffs have +30 hit positional from the front, which is weak. There are no specific healer mainhand weapons so you should take a SWORD or a HATCHET as your weapon of choice, preferably one with +haste and/or +parry, which are kinda the only useful stats we can get out of the mainhand. Why sword or hatchet? These have a dmg positional from the back. It might not be much, but if you can choose and all choices are kinda bad, I'll take the one that sucks a little less. Hit positionals are very weak and you don't want to use a Mace, because the front positional will mess up your healing and place you in about every frontal cone AoE the tank can find for you. You also don't want to stand at the side, like the game wants you to with the enhanced armor dmg rate there (+5 side, +3 back, these are +% btw), since armor break is quite useless and it is a lot easier to heal from the back. Also some mobs have 180 degree frontal AoEs, which still hit you, if you are one millimeter too close to the front while standing at the side. Notable rare items include "Sword of the Guard" (lvl40, +9 hit, +7 parry, +6 haste, 5d5+5, 3s; named human "Quartermaster, Jonas Milship" Redshore Freehold, rare drop) and there actually exists A SINGLE 2h weapon with +healing on it: "Fetching Stick" (lvl40, +14 parry, +14 healing, +12 movement debuff resistance, 9d3+10, 5s; named human "Handler Finla" Redshore Freehold, rare drop)... but if you have any of these or just a crafted one (get one with good dmg and lots of haste, for example:"Major Imbued Northern Cobalt Hatchet" - lvl40, +2 hit, +4 pen, +7 1h weapon dmg, +10 haste, 5d6+5, 5s) doesn't really make that much of a difference. Update 04.04.2023: Now there clearly exists a BiS weapon:"Cabal Prophet Sword" (lvl30, +8 1h weap dmg, +8 healing, +8 ember dmg resist, 6d4+3, 3s delay; named 4 chev(!) "Cabal Alchemist" in Forgotten Depths; ONLY 1h weapon with a +healing bonus on it!), in case you don't have this one or actually want to do some dmg/be able to defend yourself against low lvl mobs:"Shaded Blade" (lvl46, +10 1h weap dmg, +10 pen, +10 haste, 9d5+6, 3s delay; named "Dimeye" in lvl45+ EV) is the best choice.
Primary Off Hand: For the offhand Duelists can choose between "scepters" (+healing, can't be crafted) and "banners" (+sta regen...and sometimes only crap stats, crafted ones all suck). Which means: If you can choose between scepters and banners: Which scepter would you equip? (This is afaik currently a complete list of all scepters in game) "Glowing Rod" (lvl15, +12 healing, +10 mental debuff resists; named rat "Cleaner" in Aquifier), "Horned Gemstone Scepter" (lvl20, +15 healing, +5 mental debuff resist, +10 daze resists; named basi, "Shale" in Dryfoot Basilisk Ember Vein, quite rare drop, can't be really camped, but since the whole dungeon is a circle, you will end up killing everything in there anyway, be sure to get this one!), "Shining Stone Scepter" (lvl30, +17 healing, +8 mental debuff resist, +12 daze resist, +12 stun resist; off ??? in Grimstone Canyon, only seen it linked like twice, no idea what it drops off), "Dewdrop Scepter" (lvl36, +18 healing, +20 mental debuff resist, +8 hit; named mandrake "Brambles" in s***hole cave... *cough* pardon me... "Misty Cave" in Redshore Ridge. When you fight for the first time in there, you will know why we call it that way This mob is nearly impossible to get to spawn in a planned way and the scepter is the damn rare drop, you will most likely have to skip this one, since afaik I have the only one on the server), "Rod of Revenge" (lvl38, +20 healing, +20 mental debuff resists, +20 ember debuff resists; from the quest "The Fight for the Freehold", starts in Fort, Redshore. Might have prerequisite starting in camp close to Dryfoot zone in Redshore, group and lvl 38-40 required to do quest, be sure to get this one, since the higher and the lower one are unrealistic to get and you have to grind in Freehold A LOT anyway), "Sovereign's Resolve" (lvl40, +22 healing, +22 mental debuff resists, +5 combat movement; another impossible to get item... drops off chests in Freehold Ledge ONLY, mob to drop it hasn't been implemented yet, most likely Exile King too), "Dimlight Scepter" (lvl46, +22 healing, +15 mental debuff resists, +5 resilience; named cragscale "Dimeye" in Redshore Freehold Ember Veins A - entrance in Redshore Ridge, despite the name. This is his uncommon drop... if your group hunts in there, you will have one before you are lvl46)
Secondary Main Hand: No really good stats to be had here for a Duelist, since you should be using a HEAVY crossbow here. The reason it has to be heavy is: normal is 0-14 range and heavy is 5-18 range. While the min range sucks for healing, with the normal crossbow you might as well spit at the mob... you will stand inside all AoEs, can't pull because the mobs see you before you can attack them and have a lower dmg dice. Get the one with the highest damage dice and maybe some haste on it. Crafted one will do perfectly fine, since you only use it on 2 occasions: a) when you are pulling (which should normally not be your job, but sometimes you are the only person that actually has a ranged weapon on them) and b) when you try to stand outside of an AoE that does heavy damage and/or silences you, so you can continue healing/not run out of sta. You are NOT using this constantly, since it will take quite a few bolts then and you lose the big bonuses from your offhand scepter! A named drop that might be worth mentioning is: "Medicine" (heavy crossbow, lvl20, 4d7+4, +5 sta regen; off "Plaguebringer" named spider in Meadowlands tunnel/spider cave)
Secondary Off Hand: Bolts are to be placed here... and since we are not going to waste Fluxes on pointless stuff, we are not using any imbued ones, but just the regular store-bought ones, which also happen to be the same ones dropping off mobs, which makes them stack nicely and often auto-refill for the rare occasions you actually use them.
Light: Yes, there are actually items with stats for this slot. They are drop only though. In order of lvl (this is afaik a complete list): "Smuggler Lookout Torch" (lvl2, +3 combat move; drops off "Smuggler Lookout" uncommon mob in Newhaven Valley as a rare drop), "Guiding Light" (lvl10, +5 hit; named emberfly "Stalactite" in Northreach Emberfly Ember Vein; THIS IS BEST IN SLOT FOR A DUELIST), "Exile Patrol Torch" (lvl25, +25 health regen, +3 combat move; off "Exile Patrol" uncommon mob in Redshore as rare drop), "Freehold Patrol Torch" (lvl36, +30 health regen, +4 combat move; off "Freehold Patrol" under lvl40 in Redshore Freehold as a uncommon drop), "Fine Freehold Patrol Torch" (lvl40, +35 health regen, +5 combat move; off "Freehold Patrol" lvl40+ in Redshore Freehold as a uncommon(lol?) drop; these will drop so often everyone will have one in your group before you can even think about heading to the next zone)
Tool (4): Be sure to get imbued ones and make sure to kill all the Smuggler/Exile Woodsman... they can drop tools with gathering speed and sometimes even the recipes for the tools (for example:"Woodsman's Skinning Knife" no lvl, +19%; these get worse compared to the crafted ones at higher level though), they can also drop some rare materials that are hard to get otherwise (for example: currently, Feb 2023, the Woodsman are the ONLY source of Poplar Wood, there are no other spawns ingame).Tool progression crafted should be: "Minor Imbued Newhaven Copper x" (no lvl, +19% speed), "Lesser Imbued Flatlands Tin x" (lvl10, +24% speed), "Imbued Highlands Zink Solid x" (lvl20, +48% speed), "Greater Imbued Gold Sturdy x" (lvl30, +74% speed), "Major Imbued Northern Zink Sharp x" (lvl40, +80% speed), sadly this is best in slot since the higher metals (Cobalt for lvl40) only add durability but have LESS +gathering speed, which makes them COMPLETELY pointless... if you have problems with your tools breaking, just take one more with you. Gathering speed is >>>>>>>>>> durability. And you can equip up to 4 tools at the same time, even the same type, if you have only one gathering profession for example. Update 04.04.2023: Since the last update tool progression is linear: get the highest lvl imbued tool you can equip... best metal + highest flux + highest lvl wood = best tool for your level. BiS is atm +75% gathering speed on a lvl40 cobalt tool.
Consumable items:
You should have on your quickbar:
1) Small (or better) crafted physical resist potions. Pop one of these when you have adds incoming, as you will be tanking them most likely.
2) Crafted hitpoint potions of the highest level you can use. When sta is running low -> heal the other groupmembers, drink a potion yourself. Additionally: Hitpoint potions don't generate aggro. So if you are tanking something you don't want to tank and take damage, it might be better to pop a health pot and give the tank time to get the mob off you, instead of healing yourself and generating extra aggro.
3) Crafted food. This is the least important thing, since you can also heal yourself out of combat to regenerate a lot faster. If you want to place something else on the bar, use it on this slot.
4) Crafted tea or store bought juice (from the vendor in Newhaven City for sta regen + haste). Important, always keep it running when fighting.
Reagent slots:
1) Salve for your first aid
2) Ichor for your patch
3) next level higher salve OR empty slot to collect other reagents to trade/sell
4) next level higher ichor OR empty slot to collect other reagents to trade/sell
Augments on equipment slots:
Augments are useable items (stackable) that are crafted by players and give a bonus to an equipped item either for a certain amount of time (armor) or a certain number of attacks (weapons). I will only list those ones, that are actually really useful to a duelist. There are more types, like 2h weapon dicemod that could be used too, but are more of a waste of resources on a duelist. Dying does not remove these from items.
(be warned: augmenting items SOULBINDS them = you can't give/sell them to other players anymore. You can still sell them to NPCs/destroy them though. You might want to avoid binding very rare, valuable items. It is generally safe though to bind crafted items, since fluxes are comparably easy to get.)
Chest: outfitter crafted, either +healing or +sta regen
Legs: outfitter crafted, either +healing or +sta regen (same item as chest)
Gloves: armorsmith crafted, +healing
Belt: tinkerer crafted, +haste or +phys res
You can not place them onto your quickslots, which means they will take up inventory space, if you decide to use them. This will also kinda suck, if you die and drop your bag... abandoning the bag will make you lose your remaining augments = don't carry around too many.
5) Skills
Assailing Strike (1): A direct damage attack with a dmg bonus and a threat-less damage to armor attack added on top of it. Becomes very cheap at 5% sta later on in the game. Will be on your bar a lot of the time. Actually removing armor from the mobs isn't a high priority though, since mobs usually die a lot quicker than you can remove a substantial amount of armor from them though and it removes not a lot from the 3 chevs. Additionally DDs get quite a bit of penetration, which bypasses armor and lessens the effects of armor destruction even more. But it's a nice skill to spend some sta on if you are full and healing is easy.
Strike (1): This is just a regular auto-attack with a -tiny- damage bonus. Use it the first few levels, when you have nothing else available, but as soon as you have more skills than skill-slots, this one will be the first to go. Never gets an upgrade and just exists so low lvl ppl have something to spend their sta on.
First Aid (2): Your first heal. 2 sec casttime, slows you by 60% while casting, 10sec recast. Big, sta-efficient single target heal. Uses "Salve" as a reagent for extra healing. This ability also produces extra healing if your target is low on hitpoints. That effect seems to start at <50% and scales up, so you might end up with the same post-heal hitpoints on a tank, if you heal him at 50 or at 30. If you can afford to wait with your heals ( = only one mob attacking, no adds, no dmg spikes etc.) or have to conserve stamina you should let your tank drop to as low hitpoints as safely possible before landing the First Aid on him. You can always have this on the bar.
Screen (4): A buff that absorbs part of the next 2 physical(!) hits (won't remove a charge for avoids/misses, it has to do dmg) for a maximum of 20sec. Starts at +50 phys res, goes up to +75 at lvl44. Can't target yourself. Does not stack with Guts (Berserker) and Protect (Knight). Stacks with every other source of phys res, including potions. Useful spell. Can be used to prevent damage spikes, avoid aggro when a puller comes back badly damaged and you don't want to start healing immediately to give the tank time to build up aggro and to buy some time for first aid to be cast or be available again (warlords have to use this tactic a lot). Will often be on your bar. This spell is also a good indicator that when it is up and a mob attacks the protected player and he -still- loses a lot of hitpoints without the spell losing charges, that the mob is NOT doing physical dmg and chemical or ember dmg instead (Ashen mobs for example). When the target has really low hp and you can't reach -very- high levels of phys res a patch is prefered to this spell though. Additionally you should use it on hard hitting, slow attacking, single targets only... if you cast it on a 3chev + 2 1chev pull for example, the 2 1 chev mobs might eat the buff first and the 3 chev hits the tank for full dmg, wasting the spell.
Patch (6): The second heal you get. Single target, less sta efficient and heals for a smaller amount than First Aid (at all levels and with reagents), but 1 sec cast time, no recast time and does not slow you down while moving(!). This can and should be spammed to keep ppl alive, when you NEED that heal NOW. Should be ALWAYS on your bar. Most likely the best heal ingame. Can be made even better by using Ichor reagents (increases healing done).
Combined Strike (8): A regular attack with no modifier, that adds a DoT on your target which ticks for a fixed amount of damage every 5 secs for a total of 20 secs. Attack has to land for the DoT to be applied. DoT can be partially (reduced duration = less ticks) or fully resisted even on a hit. This is our main spell for soloing and it is ok in groups too if you fight 3 chevs and the mobs don't die before it runs out. Reaches minimum sta cost at lvl48 with 5%. Useful spell, will be on your bar often.
Disengage (10): Cast a minus threat AoE, point-blank style (around you). Does no damage (Hits for 0). Hits a maximum of 5 targets. Very cheap to cast at 5% sta and reduces a lot of aggro. Reduces even more additional aggro if you are the person on top of the hate list of the target ( = when the mob is actively aggro on YOU as the main target). Can save your butt, especially if you overaggro some untanked adds with Triage. Not always on my bar, since I don't always try to avoid aggro, but in dangerous zones it can help keep the aggro away from you. Good spell with a long recast.
Weak Point (14): Basic attack with bonus damage that leaves a phys res debuff on the enemy for 15 secs (-35 at 16 to -55 at 46). Attack has to connect AND DO DAMAGE for the debuff to work. Debuff can be partially (reduced duration) and fully resisted. Now this spell sounds really great on paper, doesn't it? Who doesn't want to do 55% more damage? Now here's the catch: You can't reduce the phys res below 0. If a mob starts at 0 already, it's just an attack with a little bit of enhanced damage and the debuff is a waste of screen estate. If the mob has a measly 25% resist, like some shield carrying humans seem to have, even lvl1 would be more than enough already to fully remove the resist. The biggest 2 uses this spell has are: When attacking red con mobs, this debuff actually makes the mob hitable for the lower player (so a lvl40 mob can be debuffed by a lvl40 duelist for example which enables a lvl20 berserker to hit it AT ALL... otherwise he would only get 0 dmg attacks) and to counteract phys resist buffs mobs use. So for example if a mob casts a +50% phys res buff, using this spell would (more than) completely negate the buff when cast at lvl46. This has it's own set of problems though... if the mob is red to YOU, you most likely won't be able to hit/dmg the mob, which makes the debuff impossible to land. The second problem is with the buff using higher level mobs: They have that much phys res and so high buffs (+100 phys resist spider self-buff anyone?), that they will get over 100 phys res and (UPDATE 23.02.2023 Info from AdricLives, community meeting in discord) when they are yellow or red to you, their built in physical resist is applied after the check for 100 phys res. So: If you are lvl45 and try to hit a lvl46 mob (yellow) for example and that mob uses a +100 phys res buff, the game checks: base phys res + 100 = more than 100 -> sets phys res to 99 and THEN adds the yellow phys res, which puts him above 100 again, which leads to the mob not getting hit for the 1 minimum, but will give you a "YOUR Weak-Point RESISTS examplemob for 0." which makes the attack not "hit" at all and therefore the debuff will not be applied. Which leads to the conclusion: You can safely use this ability on white and below mobs if they have any form of physical resist to remove. If the mobs you are fighting are yellow or red though, you have to check if their buffs take them above 100 phys res at which point you can take the ability of the bar and replace it with something that is not resisted every time when it would be needed. I used this spell in my lower levels really much, since I thought it was great, but since I did a lot of tests on it, I only put it on my bar in very specific situations.
Serration (18): Applied to an allied target (including yourself). Adds a buff that lasts for 40 seconds maximum or a maximum of 10 triggers, whichever comes first. Every time the buffed person attacks with an auto attack (or an attack that specifies it counts as an auto-attack, Sentinels have one for example) it will trigger once and an additional attack for 3 (lvl16) to 9 (lvl46) damage will be triggered that places a debuff that will trigger the same damage again when 4 seconds have passed, if it doesn't get overwritten by itself in that time.This extra damage generates threat for the person buffed, not you (it's negligible though anyway). (This seems to have been a display bug, shows you as the source now) Very cheap at 5% sta. -Theoretically- the best way to use this spell would be to cast it on someone with a 5sec delay 2h weapon, let it trigger a few charges twice, then the person switches to dual wield and burns through the remaining charges shortly before they fade. -Practically- using it this way will make it fade away with like 6 charges left, since it only triggers of autoattacks and ppl don't really watch for that buff or it isn't even worth messing up skill rotations just to get the few extra triggers. So the best way to use it is: Give it to the dual wielder in the group and watch him burn through charges... record I have seen is all 10 charges gone in like 10 seconds. Since it is a very cheap spell and adds very much guaranteed damage (you can damage mobs that con red to you with it, if they are within lvl range of your buff target) it is a great spell to use if you have a dual wielder in the group. I usually don't bother with it if I only have 2h users, bow users or weapon switchers in my group. The best target to give it to is a follow-through + fury berserker... the record mentioned is from one of those. Can also be used on yourself if you solo and have a <3sec weapon. The debuff on the mob stacks. The buff on the player doesn't (if you have 2 duelists in group). Update 04.04.2023: Further testing has shown me: Maybe the ideal weapon is a 4sec one... even with a little bit of haste the proc triggers twice before getting refreshed (logically it shouldn't, but it does though, according to the combat log). The absolute max dmg you can get out of the skill is when you have a 3sec weapon and switch between 2 targets after each autoattack, so you use up all charges AND have each charge dmg twice (at lvl46: 9 * 10 * 2 = 180 dmg for 5% sta, not reduced by armor, lol), but this is so situational and prevents you from doing anything else which makes it unrealistic in normal fights. What you can do though is: use a 3sec weapon and alternate between auto-attack and using an ability to delay the next auto-attack to after the second proc trigger, squeezes out some extra dmg while still using up all charges.
Triage (22): The ONLY group heal in the game (I don't count warlord heal song as a "group heal" but rather as a regeneration effect, since the ticks are too small to counteract any real AoE dmg from mobs). 1sec cast, 10sec cooldown, VERY sta efficient. On par with First Aid / Patch for 2 targets and a huge effectivity boost if healing 3 targets or more. Has the best sta to heal ratio possible when healing the full group. In the (extremely unlikely) case of every single heal critting in a full group, you could get up to 700+ heal total for 12% sta at lvl46... this is far, far, FAR above anything any other heal can produce at maximum. Can be cast while running at full speed and does not need a target (it is a Point Blank AoE effect around you). Disadvantage: Since overheal seems to produce aggro, this is one of the best area taunts in the game too... if you have several mobs incoming and you have to use this a few times, you can expect to tank the last few mobs until the end of the fight, unless the tank uses a forced enrage ability. Nonetheless: This is a GREAT ability, I highly recommend to always have this spell on your bar, with the exception of when being solo (patch is better then)
Hemorrhaging Strike (26): Let me explain it... it is an attack with bonus damage that leaves a debuff on the mob for 40sec, which when triggered before it fades does a little bit of damage and leaves a debuff on the mob for 20sec, which when triggered before it fades does medium damage and leaves a debuff on the mob for 10secs, which when triggered before it fades does good damage. Got it? Nope? Thought so... essentially it is an attack that requires the target to be hit additional times to trigger several stages of a debuff for extra damage. The first debuff has a 20% chance to trigger when hit, the second a 15% one and the third a 10% one. These chances do not change when leveling the skill. The initial attack has to hit and do damage for the first debuff to land. This one can be partially (reduced duration) or fully resisted (no debuff at all). The additional triggers of the debuff always hit and land for max duration, since the mob internally casts it on itself (shows aggro generated, but for whom... no idea?). Additional triggers will have the format "Examplemob's Minor(Major/Massive) Hemorrhaging HITS Examplemob for x. (x THR)". (This seems to have been a display bug, shows you as the source now) Funny thing is: if you are very lucky, one attack can trigger multiple or even all debuffs at once. This spell actually does somewhat ok damage, if you can get all stages to trigger. Full group with dual wielders in it? Sure, go for it, it will most of the time trigger all stages. Soloing or duoing? Don't try it, too much sta for too little gain. I have this on my bar sometimes, but when I have to do intensive healing, I don't use it, since it is quite expensive sta-wise (Will go down to 9% at lvl50... quite a waste when comparing damage to a DD class, but better than having full sta and not doing anything).
Stim (30): Targetable (including yourself), 1sec cast, 2min cooldown, 5% sta cost, sta instant-refill. Starts at 2d4+20 at lvl30, goes up to 2d4+30 at lvl46. Can be cast while running at full speed. Do I need to say anything? GREAT ability, ALWAYS have it on the bar, no exceptions. Will save your butt and the group a ton of times, when you otherwise would have been out of sta. Can also be used to give the tank some extra sta to make him be able to generate extra threat to keep the mobs on him or give a Berserker an extra round of WHAM-BIG-AOE when needed, but most of the time, in harder content, I try too keep it in reserve for unexpected adds or to quickly get a freshly rezzed player back into action again during a fight (second healer? could you please help me again? Warlord... take this stim and fire up your sta song again! Tank... yes, I know you just rezzed, can you please taunt this mob anyway? Practically you have far too little stim for everyone who could benefit from it)
Flourish (34, book learned): An execute ability. This means when the mob goes below 50%, you will do additional damage when using this ability. The lower the mob's hitpoints go, the higher the additional damage will be. 20sec cooldown, so be sure to not fire it too early or you waste a lot of additional damage (ideally when the mob hits 20% or less). On very high hitpoint mobs and/or in a very low dmg group / when solo, you might be able to execute the same mob several times. This is definitely an ability worth farming the book for: Even if you are completely focused on defense, you will start seeing triple digit hits on this ability later on. To get the book needed you have to kill "Forsaken, Grimstone Supporter" (uncommon, 3 chev, lvl~34, human exile type mob) in Grimstone Canyon or "Forsaken, Snatchscale Supporter" (uncommon, 3 chev, lvl~34, walking lizard) in Redshore Ridge at Snatchscale Village (is on my map). --- Added 09.03.2023: After testing the ability for a while... if you use a "survival" build like described in this guide, you will most likely not have the dmg stats to really get much out of this ability. On high level mobs my Flourish hits for like 80-100... I'd rather mem Haemorrhaging Strike, since dmg at lvl46: basedmg + 28, debuff1: 16, debuff2: 28, debuff3: 46 = basedmg + 118 if all debuffs trigger, which they do in a group. And since they are debuff based, they are fixed damage and don't get eaten by armor. Sure Flourish might crit sometimes for more, but you also glance and the average damage is lower. Additionally HS is even slightly cheaper than Flourish and not dependent on the mobs hitpoint level or any special timing. Overall this is an overhyped ability that is, at least for our build, only useful when soloing (you can't get HS to trigger enough).
Upper Hand (38, book learned): A combat aura that adds +5 to 1h, 2h and ranged. This translates to more damage for the whole group. Definitely worth using if you can spare the ability slot. To get the book you have to kill "Forsaken, Freehold Supporter" in Redshore Freehold. These are random spawns in the lower lvl area of the zone (houses/tents + stonehenge and the forests to the sides of them on my map), anywhere a 3chev can spawn. The higher level mobs beyond the arena aren't able to spawn as Forsaken it seems (not 100% sure) and the ledge has no Forsaken either (same, not 100% sure).
Amputate (42, book learned): A 5% sta cost attack skill that reduces the healing output of the mob it is cast upon and also completely disables its natural healing. 35sec duration, 30sec cooldown, which enables us to keep it up constantly on a single mob (assuming no resists and mob is white or lower). Well... in 99% of cases this is just going to be a normal attack that doesn't really do anything special. Since it also has the longer cooldown, it's not even that good as a regular attack (assailing strike is better, slightly more dmg and only 10sec cooldown + armor dmg). There are only 3 occasions when you really want to use this ability: 1) You have a mob that actually casts noticeable heals. This is the least likely, since such a mob doesn't exist in the game at the moment, but maybe in the future... 2) You are solo or in a -terrible- group and your dps output is so weak, it is a good idea to prevent the natural healing of the mob so this doesn't take forever and a day. 3) You just want to go full blast on dmg and want to have as many attack skills on the bar as possible (in this case this ability is at least better than Strike). And as you have just read the description you can guess what my recommendation is... keep this junk off your bar, you need your slots for better things. To get the book you have to kill "Forsaken, Cragscale Supporter" in the lvl45+ EV(!). These are random spawns on any 3chev location in the whole EV.
What skills do I currently have on my bar at 50?
Weak Point (using it in the 45+ EV atm, some mobs there buff a very annoying +75 phys res buff)
Serration (I have a Berserker in group)
Disengage (the zone I am currently in has some mobs I -really- don't want to tank)
Stim (do you even need to ask?)
First Aid (has been there since I got it, but I rarely use it... patch is faster = safer to use)
Patch (my main heal, not replaceable in any situation)
Triage (I group 99,9% of the time)
Screen (saves some mana on heals with the 100+ hits some of these mobs do)
What is replaceable?
Weak Point can easily be replaced by Flourish, Hemorraging Strike, Combined Strike or even Assailing Strike if you prefer any of these.
Serration can be removed if solo or in a small group and replaced with another attack ability.
Disengage can be replaced with a 3rd attack ability, if you don't care about aggro.
6) Duelist gameplay
In a group:
You do not have a set rotation as a duelist. You will use abilities on a priority list (from highest to lowest, autoattack should be on):
Make sure noone dies by healing them! (Priority: Yourself, Tank, other healers, DDs; unless one single target is taking A LOT of damage, if you have spread out damage, even if only slight damage on a second person -> use Triage) The reason for this order is: If you die, the others will die really soon after, especially if you are the only healer or if the second healer is freshly rezzed or for any other reason out of sta too (healers tend to run out of sta at the same time most often), additionally since your gearing is towards defense too, you might be able to survive a few hits too, while getting the tank back up. The tank can't rezz you with salts while being attacked. --- The tank has more mitigation than everyone else. Having the tank die means there will be suddenly more dmg incoming in a bad situation already. --- Having 2 healers alive means you have twice the mana regeneration in the group, even more than that if the other one is a warlord, so you can heal for a much longer time. --- And lastly... DDs. Sure it is annoying if a DD dies, but it usually does not threaten group survival. Tank + (2) Heal = stable enough to fight nearly forever. If a DD dies, you have enough time to rezz him up and still not run out of stamina. It will slow down your xp gain, but it is far less dangerous than having someone else die. --- This order of course depends on a lot of other factors, so this is just a general advice. Do you have a mob that does HUGE dmg? Make sure the tank gets heals first... the other healer might keep the tank alive, while without a tank it might just be a matter of 1-2 hits per person. Do you have a mob that does random big AoEs and little single target dmg? Keep the other healer alive or you might not be able to keep up with the group damage. Is the last mob at 3% health? Keep the damn DD alive... he might be able to finish the mob and rezz you all after, instead of a slow, painful wipe with only classes that deal little damage. Single target attacker with everyone low hp? Keep the tank at high hp levels and don't waste sta on anyone else, if the tank keeps the aggro and there is no danger of an AoE or adds, it doesn't matter if everyone else has just one hp, you can wait for the tank to have enough hp to be able to safely cast a Triage.
Make sure to have enough sta left to be able to continue healing. If you are running very low, switch to sta save mode by going for big First Aid heals (+reagent) instead of Patch. Riskier, but better than not being able to heal at all. If needed: turn off autoattack (unless you are the one being attacked) and might even step back and sit down... it's not a lot, barely noticeable, but it is more +sta regen and it sure does help more in surviving the fight than your puny melee autoattack. This should be very rare though and might even draw you bonus aggro.
Rezz dead people. Don't rezz them into mobs that cast AoEs (this will just lower their max hp from dying again) If you have someone damaged and one person dead: Triage will heal and rezz for you.
Top off people's hitpoints. More hp = safety cushion... a sudden 3 chev add that charges into the group will usually take more than one hit to kill someone that is full hp, even with very little AC, which gives the tank time to grab the add or someone to CC it. This saves you from unneccessary surprise deaths.
Cast your buffs (Serration mainly, food and drink buffs should preferably be refreshed outside of combat, but if you have a pause in heals needed during an easy fight... sure go ahead, refresh that drink, you never know when a random 3 chev add shows up and then you don't have the time to refresh it anymore).
Cast your debuffs (Weak Point for example, reason why these have lower priority: they can be resisted while Serration is guaranteed damage)
Cast direct damage attacks to stop you from going full stamina in combat. Make sure, you always stay in the 80-90% stamina range if possible. Too high and you will waste regenerated stamina into nothingness, drop too low and you might not have enough reserves to be able to heal through a surprise add. It is ok for DDs to drop down to 0 sta... this is even more efficient for them, since they don't need a reserve (except maybe to CC) and burning through the DD sta means the fight is shorter = earlier out of combat regeneration = faster overall stamina regeneration. But as a Duelist you don't want to do that! If you drop down to 5%, even with all the mobs dead, a random roamer might be able to pose a significant problem. Never drop down to low sta if you can prevent it in any way! DD sta is what keeps getting the group fast xp, your sta is what keeps the group alive!
Solo:
TL;DR: Don't.
Detailed version:
Remove triage, disengage and screen from your bar, they are useless.
Get yourself a 2h staff with the best dmg output you can get. Dmg dice > stats! Staff is a lot better for soloing than the sword/hatchet, since staves give you +30 hit from the front and solo you will have 99% front attacks.You might also think about using a 1h mace, since the +20 pen from the front might balance the higher dmg dice of the staff with the (nearly useless) hit modifier. You have to test if your mobs have enough armor to make a mace worth using to get the offhand bonuses still or if the raw damage from a staff is better damage overall. 28.02.2023: 1h mace was nerfed to have +hit from the front only, same bonus as 2h staff. Definitely use a 2h weapon now.
Now you have 2 available tactics:
a) BURN! This version is "get as much damage into the mob as quick as possible". Meaning you should have all possible dmg skills (except maybe strike, which is terribly bad) on your bar and spam them on cooldown. This tactic is used to remove 1 chev mobs as quickly as possible and get back into out-of-combat sta regeneration. Fast fight with all sta gone + out of combat sta regen = faster than slow, long fight where you preserve sta.
b) Sustain. This version is: Keep combined strike active on the mob, keep autoattacking and heal yourself, preferably with First Aid, since it is more sta efficient. This fighting style is very slow, but it allows you to solo 3 chev mobs and some nameds. Generally you can say: If your mana % stays above the hp % of the mob, you will win that fight. If you are not grossly outmatched, you might even notice early enough if it is "not gonna be enough" and you still have time to get away to get the mob to leash, with you spamming Patch whilst running.
Overall though, the best idea is: Go grab yourself a striker class and duo with them. You will be their sustain, so they have no problems with hitpoints/hitpoint recovery and they will provide the damage for you. Together with a striker, preferably killing 2 chevs, you will gain like TEN TIMES the amount of xp each of you would get solo.
And whenever you can... go for group content with 3+ ppl. My personal preference is: tank + 2 healer + 3 DD
7) Zones
In this section I will give you a general overview of all zones and their connections, with fully explored maps (dungeons don't have maps). I'm not going to add a "at lvl x you should head to camp y" since you can effectively level on all mobs within your level range and usually you will just have to take what group is available. I will by far not mark all locations, but only the best and most used camps. So if someone says "meet us at bunnies", you know where to run to. There are of course a lot more mobs you could kill for xp in all zones, but these ones are the best. The maps are in the order in which you should visit the zones.
Just some additional infos before I start:
To enter an Ember Vein, you need to find the entrance first. This is the spikes coming out of the ground with the lightning hitting it. Watch for the lightning in the sky to find it from a distance.
All mobs in Ember Veins can go Ashen upon death. Which means they die, giving you xp, but no loot and immediately respawn as a half-health Ashen variant of themselves (these do EMBER damage, all of them). When you kill them you get xp again, can loot them and if they are green or above they refill your Ember Stone. Make sure you think about that possibility when pulling... those 2 3chevs might in reality be 4 3chevs without a break in-between if both respawn as Ashen.
CV1 in Newhaven Valley and CV2 in Northreach both are tunnels... you can enter on either side and move through to the other entrance. They have no connection to each other though.
The Aquifier has a higher and a lower lvl rotation which are seperate from each other. The way going up leads to the lower level one.
The Undercroft has 3 areas: a one chev solo area, a 2chev duo area and to get to the 3chev group area, you have to go down that long staircase with the drop at the bottom, DO NOT JUMP, click the rope... the drop is -really- deep. To get back up, click the rope again.
Dryfoot Stronghold (not mapped), Redshore Ridge and Redshore Freehold are actually considered "outdoor dungeons".
Please forgive me for my excellent MS Paint skills...
8) Additional Info/Tips
This is just a completely random collection of facts/ideas that might be worth mentioning, it is not even sorted by when you are going to need it level wise and mixes up high level advice with absolute beginner advice:
The Eye of Ibax (most call it Blupiter, the blue planet in the sky) is always north.
The sun follows the same cycle it does on earth, you can use it together with /time to navigate too.
When you are at an Ember fire, it will show you that Ember fire in blue on your ingame map, you can navigate from there.
To actually become a Duelist, you have to be level 6 Supporter, take a quest from the Duelist trainer in Newhaven and finish that quest.
If you need the Ichor to get your promotion from Supporter to Duelist in the lvl 6 quest, remember that rats are only up during the day and emberflies only during the night. Don't waste your time by searching for the wrong type of mob.
The Ichor does not always drop. You might have to kill a few rats or emberflies to get it. (afaik you can also complete the step just by having the thing in your inventory, you don't actually have to loot it, if a friend/guildy just hands you some)
Most mobs seem to cast Hamstring or another form of annoying snare on you when you try to run away from them... it may be a tinfoil hat theory, but running sideways seems to reduce this effect for me.
Humans use a green icon runspeed buff when you first aggro them, but after that is gone, they slow down and run with their weapons drawn (still nearly as fast as you though) I survived HUGE mispulls/adds by just kiting like 5 mobs around my group in a circle and regenerating sta (and waiting for Stim to come back up) and drive-by rezzing/healing them with Patch and Triage, killing them one-by-one with all except one focusing on me, because of our huge heal-aggro. This can, outdoors especially, on flat ground (mobs always run at the same speed, while you slow down when moving up a hill, causing them to catch you) save you from quite an annoying jog back to your bags. This does not work well on animals, they usually run faster than you. And Archers or mobs that root really mess this tactic up, but it is nice, when it works. The "miracle" happened.
Generally the Duelist is VERY good at running somewhere, since with our patch-while-running-at-full-speed system we can just run through stuff and keep occasionally healing while continuing where we want to go until the mob is pulled far enough away to reset.
If a 1 chev wolf aggroes you: don't run... they run faster than you, constantly snare you and have an absolutely HUGE follow range. It seems they were placed just to be annoying. It is usually faster, even for a duelist, to kill a 1chev wolf than to try outrun it.
Never keep Rezz-Salts on your bar. You can either hand them over to a DD/Tank or sell them at the vendor. Any direct heal is a rezz when cast on someone unconscious. Triage effectively is an AREA-REZZ too. You will never need salts on your Duelist.
You can use reagents for 2 spells: First Aid (Salve) and Patch (Ichor). Both give +base healed amount and are worth activating (by clicking the small checkmark above your reagent or using the corresponding shift-5 -> shift-8 keys) when you need that extra amount of heal (big dmg inc from a named, running low on sta and need the extra oomph), just don't forget to turn them off again.
You get a higher type of your reagent usually at the 2 before next full 10 level mark (so 18, 28 etc.), since that is the first time you should be hunting the corresponding mob (mob lvl20, lvl30 etc.). They will no longer be red to you. You can still use up your old reagents, even if you have new ones already. Actually since there are only 2 reagents for each class, you can either use the 2 remaining slots for another level of your own reagents or as empty slots to collect reagents for another class to trade or sell at an NPC.
Salve drops off Deer and Bears mainly. Sometimes you will also get a lot of them in chests (like 50-120).
Ichor drops off Rats, Emberflies and Ants mainly. Same here with the chests.
Btw chests: Chests always drop loot that is dropable in the current region and have a chance to drop rare loot from nameds too. Actually some items can ONLY be gotten from chests that way, since there is no mob currently ingame that drops that piece of loot, but it is in the base droptable for the level range/zone.
Random, solo 1 chev rats that stand around in the middle of nowhere (also in dungeons) are placeholders for chests. KILL THEM! You might not spawn a chest there, but some parts of a zone are linked, sometimes the entire zone is. If you kill that rat there, you have a chance to spawn, 10-20min later, depending on the zone, a new rat or a chest -somewhere- else in the local area/zone.
Ant hills behave exactly like chests: they drop 2 random loots off the chest loot table (read: EVERYTHING the zone has to offer at that level, including named rare drops). So if you come across an item you have never seen before, chances are very high someone got it out of an ant hill (or a chest)
Ant hills spawn little down1chev adds for as long as they are aggro on something. The ant hills themselves don't do any skills or anything, but the small ants keep attacking and they snare, root, stun etc. and they give no xp or loot. Destroying ant hills is still very much worth it as a group though.
The Rat's Nest in CV1 and Grimstone Canyon is essentially another version of ant hill. It has exactly the same drop/spawn behaviour, just with different graphics.
The game tries to force us to move around and tries to prevent you from camping named mobs. So placeholders are often spread across an ENTIRE ZONE (very often intentionally placed at the farthest possible away spots to make it extra annoying). If you want to farm a specific mob, you essentially have to check the whole zone for mobs that are of the same type and aren't spawning there usually. Sometimes they are even mixed into some more mobs of the same type, just with one additional now short distance roaming there. If you try the sit-down-at-spawn-and-wait EverQuest tactic, you will most likely NEVER see a named, even if you wait for hours. If that thing you suspect is a placeholder has not respawned in 20 mins: don't waste any more time, go search somewhere else in the zone.
Nameds tend to have 3+, up to 7 or 8 placeholder locations.
Same with chests: they have lots of possible locations and only some of them will be up or have a rat in its place. Don't camp a single spot waiting for a chest to reappear: it won't. Keep moving and killing rats.
There simply aren't dropping enough tea leaves for anyone to always keep tea active and the town one is expensive and worse than the crafted one. To get A LOT of tea easily: create a lvl1 striker (DD class), let him learn the hunter profession and provisioner (at lvl6 hunter) and butcher HUNDREDS of lvl1 deer right next to the newbie spawn spot. As you gain a few levels and use one of the weapons that drops there, you can nearly one-shot these. Stay at the lvl1 spot, no need to go higher, just makes the mobs have more hitpoints. Skin each deer you kill. After a few hours you will have A TON each of: deer leaves, carcasses and low level salves for your First Aid spell. Craft the leaves into tea leaves into tea, the carcasses into meat into cooked meat and hand those together with the salves to your Duelist. If you did it long enough, your main Duelist will now have -hundreds- of food items, tea and spell reagents for First Aid. This will carry you at least until level30 without having to worry about how to get sta regen. You can always heal with First Aid with a reagent, which makes you more effective at healing too and you can always go back and get more easily. Overall this method saves a lot more time than trying to hunt that single deer you saw while running through Meadowlands, which won't drop one of the higher level leaves for you anyway... if your main even is a hunter.
Btw tradeskills: You can get your first gathering skill right at the start, first house, by doing a quest there. To get your second skill, you have to get the first one to lvl6 (there is a quest for that in Newhaven Valley too, shortly before you enter Newhaven City). To get your third skill, you have to have BOTH your first and your second skill at lvl12. Just buy it at a trainer then.
Buying tradeskills at a trainer: you don't NEED to have a gathering or crafting skill. You can mix and match as you like. 3 gathering or 3 crafting skills is also possible. Just buy them at a trainer. (It might not be that useful though for your first char, you really should get a gathering skill as your first skill!)
A tradeskill can be at maximum 10 levels above your adventuring level. Example: A lvl5 character can get all of his tradeskills to lvl15 maximum. After that he will get no more tradeskill experience until he raises his class level. Sorry to spoil your bubble, that "I'm going to get all 3 gathering skills on my main and just get the crafting skills on my 2 other chars, so I can do everything myself." is not going to work. unless you never plan to craft anything above lvl10... or you plan to level all of your chars to lvl40 minimum (can't recommend that ) Try to get skills that work good together for you, for example: Tinkerer really sucks without Prospector or Woodworker really needs the Forester. Don't try to do everything. (In case you are interested: I started as Hunter -> Provisioner -> Forester, to be able to cook and craft potions on my Duelist. I later switched away from Hunter to Woodworker, since hunting sucks as a duelist. The plan to add normal node spawns has not been implemented yet for hunter, so you have to KILL animals for every carcass you want. Which is either TERRIBLY slow as a duelist or you have to do it while grouping and compete with like 3 other hunters in the group making leveling it awfully difficult. I really recommend against getting hunter on your duelist -at the moment-.) Hunting nodes (dead animals) have been implemented. Hunting is now increasable without having to kill mobs too.
You can delete a tradeskill by opening the "j" menu and right clicking the tab. You will lose all progress, but can learn a different one then.
Same goes for a subclass: You are currently a Warlord or a Sentinel but are currently thinking "damn... that Duelist stuff sounds really nice...". You can right click a subclass to unlearn it. You keep your main level, but have to relevel the new subclass again from lvl6. Don't worry though, you will be getting xp quickly, since you are killing lvl(high) mobs with your lvl(low) subclass and get experience for (high lvl mob). Additionally the sublasses gain bonus xp, so you will eventually completely catch up to your main class.
What I really recommend against is unlearning the main class. This will drop you TO LEVEL 1! It is more effective to start a new character than to switch main classes, since you will basically lose EVERYTHING except quest progression and bank expansions.
Btw characters: There is a shared bank in Newhaven City (and only there). It's in the same room as your regular bank on the other side. Called "Newhaven Bank". You can place your stuff in there and take it out with a different char from the same account. You really should use the other 2 chars slots too and at least use them for storage space, which is always needed. in the same room you might notice a "Lost and Found" box too. That one is usually empty. It's just an emergency system that if something vanishes during a trade for example or a GM wants to return an item to you, you will find it in there.
All the "Private Stash" across the world are the same chest. What you put in in Newhaven Valley, you can take out (only on the same character) in Newhaven City, Northreach, Meadowlands etc.
To repair you have to click one of the anvils everywhere in settlements. This costs coins.
To craft you have to click one of the alchemy looking green bottles everywhere in settlements. This is the same container for ALL professions.
The mobs strength and the experience you get for it is based on 2 factors: the number of chevrons next to it's picture - 1 chev = solo mob, 2 chev = mob for a small group (2-4 ppl), 3 chev = mob for a full group (5-6ppl), 4 chev = special mob for a full group (6 ppl) - usually a lot harder than regular mobs and will always drop at least 2-3 special items, there also exist 1 downward chev mobs = swarm mob that spawns out of an ant hill or rat nest - worth NO xp and does not drop loot. And the second factor is it's level compared to yours, which is indicated by the color of the chevrons: gray = 11+ lvl below you, worth NO xp; green = 10-5 lvls below you, very bad xp; light blue = 3-4 lvls below you = weak xp; blue = 1-2 lvls below you, good xp; white = exactly the same lvl as you, good xp; yellow = 1-2 lvls above you, harder to kill, but good xp; orange = 3-4 lvls above you, very hard to kill, small xp penalty; red = 5+ lvls above you, impossible to kill (literally... you can't hit them), bad xp
There are only 5 4chevs mobs in the game: Misha and Knave of Harts in Newhaven Valley, Queen of Harts in Northreach, War Chief Korrin in Dryfoot Stronghold and Cabal Alchemist in Forgotten Depths.
Lvl difference to the mob has more influence than just xp gained: gray mobs will have an automatic disadvantage when attacking you (roll twice, take worse result). Yellow mobs gain resist bonuses against you - debuffs you use on them will last a shorter duration, this includes dots. And orange/red mobs gain massive bonuses against you: lots of resists, their attacks ignore your defenses incl. phys resist, they nearly always heavy hit or crit you and when they are 5+ lvls above you they will be completely invincible (except when debuffed -by someone higher lvl that can hit them- with Weak Point)... "Your Auto-Attack RESISTS ARedMob for 0." DO NOT TRY TO FIGHT RED MOBS. Exp will suck even if you are able to win (you get reduced xp for reds, even though their base xp is higher)
G.E.L. might help you if the mobs are too high in lvl for you. This stands for "Group Elevated Level" which means: everyone in a group will fight like the highest lvl person, up to 5 lvls higher than your original level. This does not give you higher ability levels or increase your stats, but it removes the level based disadvantages. Maybe this is better to understand with an example: You are lvl 30 and try to kill a lvl33 mob which will be orange to you... it will kick your butt, since you barely dmg it, it often hits you heavy or crit, your debuffs last a lot shorter etc. Now you join a group with a lvl33 player in it. The GEL will increase you to 33 for as long as that player is in range of you. The mob is still orange to your base level, but since you are GELed to lvl33 because of the other guy, you will fight against it as if it were white to you (the GEL icon on the mobs info will show as white now if you enabled it) and you will have full debuff duration, no hit penalties and take far less damage. Use GEL to your advantage! Group up and stay together. And invite lower level ppl that are within the extended lvl range of the mobs, they need the xp and will be able to fight at full efficiency!
The first person to attack a mob and -do damage- to it will have looting rights to the mob and will gain xp for defeating it. You can see if you/your group has loot rights if there is a small bag icon next to the mobs nameplate. A crossed out bag icon means: someone else has looting rights/xp for this mob if it is killed now before resetting. A dice icon next to the nameplate means: there is loot on the corpse that is currently being rolled for. This system can be very easily abus... *cough* "creatively played with" to powerlevel someone. Let the person leave the group, the person attacks the mob first, gets looting rights (look at bag icon) and now if the group kills that mob, the single person will receive the full xp for killing that yellow 3 chevron mob...
If you drop to below 0 hp and noone rezzes you within 180 seconds, you will drop your bag at the location of death and you will respawn at one of the "things hang from a tree and everything turns black and white" locations (hallow). Not having your bag makes it impossible for you to loot/roll on loot. There are exceptions: You can win and loot reagents that are in your reagent bar. Your item bar is also safe, you can loot potions to there. And your gathering bag is completely safe too. If you win a flux, DROP IT IN THE GATHERING BAG, even if you have to take something else out for it. So if the corpse is unrecoverable you won't lose it. If you can't recover the corpse or just don't want to: you can forfeit your bag by clicking the icon on top of your open bag. Doing this will make you lose ALL the items in the REGULAR bag and all the money you had on you. (So be sure to always place your coins into the bank, they are safe there.) Dying a second time won't create any more new bags. Just the one stays up until you either recover or destroy it. If your char has no items in his regular bag AND no money on it, you won't create a bag upon death, since there is nothing to drop. Dying and releasing/having the timer run out does a big hit to your armor durability... you don't want to have that drop too low. Go repair.
Fluxes... orange crystals that drop off animals only (no humans, except the slagjacks... which are deeply ember corrupted) as a rare drop. Need to be used for making Imbued items in player crafting. Flux progression is: Viscious (lvl1), Thick (lvl10), Dense (lvl20), Solid (lvl30), Unstable (lvl40), not implemented yet (lvl50). Be sure to roll need on those if you are in a group. Everyone needs them and you don't want to be the only one rolling Greed and automatically losing it. If you are unsure, just ask when you join the group or if one drops. Even if you are not tradeskilling yourself, you will want those, since most crafters do a "my mats, your flux + tip" type of deal on items often.
Your crafter needs to have at least the level of the items to be able to use them in crafting. Example: A lvl14 woodworker won't be able to use a Dense Flux (lvl20) since his profession level is to low, even though you can place it into the recipe and see what item it would create.
There are no "hell levels" in Embers Adrift. All the levels take somewhat more exp than the previous one, but there are no randomly mixed-in levels that are far slower to complete than the next one.
Jumping costs you 10% of your sta each time you jump. In combat this is a good way to quickly and completely pointlessly waste all your sta... just avoid jumping. Especially when you are pulling: Jumping that fence looks cool - is stupid.
You can do "/help" ingame to see a list of all chat commands.
There is one command, that is actually a mob drop (and it's tradeable): the "/flex" emote drops off War Chief Korrin in Dryfoot Stronghold (rare).
With "/who" you see who is in your zone, with "/who all" you see everyone on the server (list cuts off at 100 ppl).
Some zones are on the same actual physical server btw. So if you are in Spider EV in Meadowlands, don't be surprised to see lvl44+ sometimes on the /who list for example. The Freehold EV is on the same server. Another example would be Auqifier and Undercroft, they share a server too.
Rebinding your keys might be a good idea too. I have mine set up to: WASD movement, Q autoattack, E swap weapons, R pull/sheate weapon, T torch, F assist, Shift-F mob assist, I inventory and gathering bag, B char stats; this keeps all keys close together so you don't have to constantly change your hand position while fighting. And I have Patch + Screen + mob assist + autorun + ability cancel on mouse buttons. Also you should probably move the UI elements for your char, your group, your target (which also shows what that mob is currently attacking) and your defensive target more to the center of the screen and closer together.
And don't forget to set Options -> Graphics: Exposure Adjustment to -1,00 to get rid of the completely black nighttime and while you are in there, switch Vegetation Density to "very low"... looks bad, but you might want to be able to actually see the mushrooms and ores etc. that you try to gather.
Lvl34 ability books drop off 3 chev human exiles in Grimstone Canyon. The mobs are called:"Forsaken, Grimstone [baseclass]" so "Supporter" for Warlord/Duelist/Sentinel, "Striker" for Berserker/Brigand/Warden and "Defender" for Marshall/Juggernaut/Knight. Additional source that was found:"Forsaken, Snatchscale [baseclass]" in Redshore Ridge (Snatchscale Village, walking lizards)
Lvl38 ability books drop off "Forsaken, Freehold [baseclass]" in Redshore Freehold. These are random spawns in the lower lvl area of the zone (houses/tents + stonehenge and the forests to the sides of them on my map), anywhere a 3chev can spawn. The higher level mobs beyond the arena aren't able to spawn as Forsaken it seems (not 100% sure) and the ledge has no Forsaken either (same, not 100% sure).
Lvl42 ability books drop off "Forsaken, Cragscale [baseclass]" in the lvl45+ EV(!). These are random spawns on any 3chev location in the whole EV.
And finally: If you find a -great- tactic, ability, camp or item in the game and write a guide about it: Expect to get it nerfed like 3 weeks later!
9) Version history and copyright notice
07.04.2023 updated drop locations for lvl38 and lvl42 ability books.
04.04.2023 Replaced Zone Connection map and Redshore map to add Forgotten Depths dungeon. Added info about Rats Nests existing in Grimstone Canyon. Added items to vambrace, helmet, neck, ring, 1h and offhand. Updated lvl38 ability info and drop location. Added small info about hunting nodes existing now. Added orange to con colors. Added fluxes dropping off slagjacks as only "humans". Changed tool progression. Changed description of Serration and Hemorrhaging Strike. Added a small section about GEL. Oh... and I'm lvl50 High Duelist now.
09.03.2023 Added additional drop location for lvl34 skills. Added 1 earring, 2 scepters and 1 necklace as possible equip choices. Added some additional thoughts about Flourish.
28.02.2023 Added new ability info (34/38/42). Added chances for Hemorrhaging Strike to trigger. Added intro info about this guide being a mainly survival based guide. Added drop info for lvl34 ability. Added a map for Grimstone Canyon, a zone connection map and updated the map for Dryfoot. Added threat reduction info to Disengage. Removed 1h mace from solo weapon choices again after positional nerf.
23.02.2023 Added info from AdricLives about phys resist cap on yellow/red mobs. First Aid description updated and mentioned that heal potions don't generate aggro. Added 1h mace to solo weapon choices. Added a ring slot option.
16.02.2023 Added info from AdricLives about HIT boosting heavy hits and crit on heals. Added mob info for Silkweave Shirt.
15.02.2023 initial guide release
Embers Adrift and all content related to it are (c) Stormhaven Studios LLC. This is a fan-made guide and you may use the information provided in it as you wish in any of your own projects (wikis, map collections, loot databases etc.) as long as you mention this document as the source.
If any questions remain... don't hesitate to ask here.1) What is a Duelist and why play it?
2) What are the differences to Sentinel and Warlord
3) Stats
4) Gear
5) Skills
6) Duelist gameplay
7) Zones
8) Additional Info/Tips
9) Version history and copyright notice
1) What is a Duelist and why play it?
The Duelist is one of the specializations a Supporter class can become at lvl 6. The other 2 are Sentinel and Warlord. The Duelist is the most direct healer of the 3 and generally the best "I NEED heals NOW!" class. If you want to play an efficient healer for your group, that is very good at quick and direct heals and has access to a group heal spell, you can't go wrong with duelist. What a duelist is not: A good soloer (You really need a dps class for this. While we CAN solo stuff, even 3 chevs, it's INCREDIBLY slow and terribly xp inefficient. It's good for killing a lower lvl named you stumbled upon by accident, but absolutely not useable to gain experience.), a tank (you can and will draw a lot of aggro... so you will end up tanking quite a bit and survive it, but you lack the tools to generate constant aggro to keep the mobs on you, so you will lose aggro to DDs when actually trying to tank), a dps class (even when going fully for dps stats, you simply lack the abilities to do good dmg... you will end up as a bad healer AND a bad DD)
2) What are the differences to Sentinel and Warlord
Advantages over Sentinel: Our main heal "Patch" has one second casttime and no delay, which makes our heal land quicker on the target than everything the sentinel can offer. Three of our spells (Patch, Triage and Stim) can be cast while running at full speed, which the sentinel simply can't do. Overall our hps over the duration of the fight will be higher than the sentinel, especially if the whole group takes damage, since the sentinel has no group heal and our Triage becomes incredibly efficient when it hits 3 or more targets.
Disadvantages compared to Sentinel: We have no Heals over Time. Our Patch sometimes, especially early, can't keep up with the damage a single target might recieve. The sentinel is the better single-target tank healer and more mana efficient at that job. We run out of sta VERY quickly compared to a sentinel when we have to spam our fast heal. Sentinels can offtank for a short time, since they have a taunt skill and have 5 more maximum armor weight at max level.
Advantages over Warlord: We don't have to click buttons constantly. The warlord has to keep up all his songs for maximum efficieny, even when everyone is resting, the warlord player is still expected to keep spamming his Sta-Regen song. The Warlord has his group-hitpoint regen song, which is too small to be a "real group heal" (it helps nonetheless though) and they only have the same First Aid spell we have, plus a 20 sec cooldown heal, which creates huge gaps in their healing. We simply heal for more and faster. The same "we can run, while they can't, while healing" applies here too.
Disadvantages compared to Warlord: 3 words: STAM REGEN SONG... that alone is worth it to take a warlord into a group. Sta regen song makes your tanks hold aggro better, your DDs do more damage and your other healers help not run out of stamina... it simply is the best buff in the game. Their other songs are great buffs too... the heal song might not be a massive group heal, but constantly having it up makes a very noticeable difference in heals that are suddenly not needed to be cast. Group +hit song helps with the dps output of the DDs and tanks absolutely hate missing their threat skills. Everyone loves the +haste song too... whatever you do, you do it faster (except maybe our patch, which is at speedcap anyway
) And they can CC with a single target fear and later an AoE fear... mobs that can't attack you, don't need to be healed against...3) Stats
(UPDATE 28.02.2023: After getting an "execute" spell at lvl34, you can also consider to focus on adding some extra damage output, but if it is worth to reduce your survivability to add damage to essentially only one skill is up to you. This guide focuses on being a group healer that survives the hardest of pulls and leaves the damage to the DDs in the group. If you want to add more damage, simply go for more flanking, 1h/2h weapon dmg and a weapon with a DMG positional)
This section has a base explanation of all the stats ingame and what to focus on.
Stats in the order in which they appear in your character window:
AC: stands for Armor Class. The higher it is, the more -any- damage you receive will be reduced, up to a cap of 50% dmg reduced. You can see when you hit this cap when the ABS (absorbed) damage on something hitting you is the same number as the damage taken. ("An examples Auto-Attack hits YOU for 10. (10 ABS)") The number in the blue shield ("100%") goes down when your gear is damaged from taking hits and dying, which will reduce your overall active AC ("143/220"). This a very good stat for us, since we generate a lot of aggro and need to survive or the group will die.
Armor Weight: This is the maximum weight your armor can have without suffering penalties. This increases with level and only armor you wear has any weight. Your inventory is weightless. You should balance your gear to get the maximum amount of stats and AC while still staying below or at best: at your armor weight maximum. There are no items, buffs or debuffs that affect this. Going over your armor weight maximum is not recommended, since you will massively lose other stats, most noticeably movement and haste, when overweight.
Movement: This is your base movement speed outside of combat. This can only be increased with the warden out-of-combat buff "Lay of the Land" and the buff you can get from a green Ember-Butterfly-Thingy (you can see them glow at night, just run over them to grab them). Very nice stat, but impossible to get...
Combat Mov.: Your movement speed with your weapons drawn. Since you will only be doing some small steps to readjust your position while in combat, this stat really doesn't matter at all. If you have to run longer distances or run away from monsters: PUT YOUR WEAPONS AWAY. No amount of combat movement stat makes up for the speed difference. Useless stat.
Haste: This influences your skill execution speed (can't be faster than 1 second), your recast cooldowns and your autoattack speed. It does not reduce global cooldown. It updates constantly, so having a lot of +haste while starting a cooldown and losing some of it while the skill is still on cooldown is no advantage. Other way around too: if you increase your haste while something is on cooldown already, you will reduce the cooldown by a nice chunk. Good stat worth getting. It caps at 100 btw.
SafeFall: This is... well, it's a stat I guess? I never died to falling damage so far. There is one drop in the game (in Undercroft) which kills you, but safefall likely won't prevent that either and it can be avoided by simply clicking the rope there instead of jumping down like a clown. It is very hard to get, since like only one ring and a high level belt has it on it, but this is a good thing: This stat is completely useless.
HealthRegen: The higher this value is, the more hitpoints you regenerate naturally while OUT OF COMBAT. Yup, combat completely disables this stat. This stat is important if you a) solo and b) are not a supporter class. As a duelist you will always want to heal instead of waiting for hitpoints to regenerate, since your stamina regenerates A LOT faster than your HP. Useless stat.
Stamina Regen: Higher stat = more stamina regen out of AND IN COMBAT. While you will regenerate sta a lot faster out of combat, this is still noticeable in combat too. This is a very useful stat and should be one of your main stats to go for.
Healing: Each point here adds 1% more to your healing bonus. So having 100 here (which is not the cap btw) means you heal twice as much as someone with 0, with the same skill at the same level for the same stamina spent. BEST STAT FOR A DUELIST. Focus on getting this as high as possible.
Resilience: Each point here adds 1% chance to not die when hit by fatal damage. Since you will just stay at 0 health and the next hit will check for another resilience save and usually in these situations hits come in quite fast and this stat is very hard to get a lot of... it's useless. It's a bonus that might save you once every few days, but absolutely not worth gearing for.
Avoid: 1 = 1% chance to completly avoid any damage of a single attack. Good stat to have, but hard to get. Try getting as much as you can of it, but don't lose other, more important stats for it. Seems to have an internal cooldown of 2 secs to be able to trigger, so loses effectivity when attacked by lots of mobs.
Block: 1 = 1% chance to block a percentage of incoming damage on an attack. Block efficiency is on your weapon, which means only 2h staves for us. Nigh-impossible stat to get for us and less useful than avoid. Can be safely ignored. Seems to have the 2 sec timer too.
Parry: 1 = 1% chance to parry an incoming attack, reducing the damage it does and opens the chance to riposte. Additionally the parried attack gets an automatic disadvantage (2 rolls made, worse one is taken). We can get this on some staves and while it reduces damage, it is not that noticeable. Not worth focusing on. Seems to have the 2 sec timer too.
Riposte: 1 = 1% chance to riposte AFTER A SUCCESSFUL PARRY. Does quite a lot of bonus damage compared to a regular attack, but a) we don't reach the required amount of parry (that's defender territory), b) we don't do good damage, even with a nice bonus it would still be quite little for us and c) we don't want to get hit in the first place. Useless stat for us.
Hit: Increases your chance to hit your enemies (reduces "MISS" rate), reduces the chance for a glancing blow, increases chance for a heavy hit and a crit. According to AdricLives (GM, discord community meeting 16.02.2023) the base hit rating, not your positional, adds heavy hit and crit chance to your heals. We are not a dps class and since you will need a lot of this stat to notice a difference at all (it goes up to 1000+, something like 10 is like not noticeable at all), it still is not that great. Another advantage this gives us is missing less of your debuffs (the attack has to hit for the debuff to work on enemies). See it as a bonus on gear, but don't focus on it. If you can choose between HIT and Combat Movement for example, sure take HIT, but otherwise ignore.
Penetration: Increase the % your damage ignores enemies armor. We are not dps. Completely useless for us.
Flanking: Increase the positional bonus on your weapon. For example a weapon that has +5 DMG from the back on it will go to +5 (+10) DMG with 10 flanking stat, increasing your damage output by 15% from the back position. Main stat for a DPS class, useless for us.
1h Weapons: increases your 1h weapon damage by x%. Useless.
2h Weapons: increases your 2h weapon damage by x%. Useless.
Ranged Weapons: increases your ranged weapon damage by x%. Useless.
Mental: increases your mental damage output. This stat doesn't exist ingame yet.
Chemical: increases your chemical damage output. This stat doesn't exist ingame yet.
Ember: increases your ember damage output. This stat doesn't exist ingame yet.
RESIST:
Physical: Reduces incoming physical dmg by x%. Can go above 100, but you will always take a minimum of 1 dmg from a successful attack. Very, VERY good stat, since 95% of the damage you will see ingame is physical. This is something to focus on, since this together with AC will make you very tanky.
Mental: I can't think of anything atm that actually does mental damage... useless stat.
Chemical: This resist is rarely used. Some spiders do pure chemical damage and the "Venom Strike" all spiders use is chemical damage too. Quite useful in the 44+ Ember Vein. Other stats are more important though, but this is a "nice to have".
Ember: All Ashen mobs do ember damage, autoattacks and AoE, so you will encounter this in like every Ember Vein. Same as with chemical resist: Nice to have, other things more important.
Physical/Mental/Chemical/Ember/Movement Debuff: All of those are wasted stats, you will never need to focus on any of those resists up to lvl50.
Confuse: This is the annoying "swap your movement keys" ability the Bats have. Since it's rare, you don't have to focus on getting it and in group fights you aren't pulling, which means: You stand still and don't care about it anyway.
Daze: This is the really annoying "can't cast anything" (autoattacks and moving still work) bears use for example. Of all the behaviour resists, this one is the most useful, since the daze tends to be long and getting hit by it in the wrong moment can cause a person to not be healed enough and die. Useful stat, especially on earrings since the "good" earrings are hard to get and you most likely will wear resist-only earrings.
Stun: You stand still with a "zzz" above your head and can't do anything (effectively a mezz), seen on Snatchscales for example. This is the second most useful behaviour resist. But you should be rarely hit by this anyway, since the mobs tend to use it on their main target and then switch targets to avoid waking up the sleeping one (tanks HATE this). Sometimes getting hit with this and -not- resisting it will actually save your life, since the mobs will stop attacking you, if they have other targets available.
4) Gear
(Sorry if this does not list ALL possible items, there are too many and FAR too many useless ones to list. I hope I caught the most important ones though.)
The main concept when gearing a duelist is the priority: +healing > +sta regen > +phys res > +haste > +AC >>> everything else. This comes from my motto:"As long as my heals are big enough to counter the incoming damage, as long as my sta regen is high enough to keep on healing and as long as I survive when drawing aggro... the group will survive!"
+healing is absolute priority, since we want to get our +heal so high, that we can essentially spam Patch to keep people alive. This is a lot safer than having to wait on the interruptable 2sec casttime of First Aid and it's 10sec cooldown. If your Patch can't keep up with the damage mobs deal to your target, you fail as a healer. Also, since it has an effect on every heal, this gives a HUGE overall bonus to Triage. My Triage hits for 60 on all group members on a regular basis, non heavy, non crit... that is a 360 heal, 1 sec casttime. This also transforms First Aid in kind of a removable spell... you don't want to wait -that- long until the full spell actually hits the target without creating overheal (without reagents), but if you can, you have a gigantic heal for cheap sta cost. Don't overdo it with "absolute priority" in an idiotic way though... an item with +8 sta and +10 healing is still better than one with +12 healing only. But if you can go +10 healing or +10 sta, always the healing. You always have time to regenerate between fights and unless it is a catastrophic pull you should not run out of sta. This will become even less of a problem with Stim at lvl30 and/or a warlord in the group.
+sta regen: this is the second best stat, since if the pull is a lot of mobs or the puller decides "no, we don't need any sta breaks here", this will keep giving you back mana even during the fight... be aware though that using an ability pauses the sta regen, while the skill is being cast (cast bar), so spamming Patch is less efficient for stamina not only because the ability itself is less efficient, but also since you will be getting those forced sta regen delays from constantly casting something. If your mana is running low, try stop casting Patch and use First Aid instead (+cheap Screen). Less, but bigger heals = more time to actually use the +sta regen stat.
+phys res (and avoid, parry, and if available in addition: chem dmg resist and ember dmg resist): like 95% of the mobs in the game do physical damage. You will get hit... a LOT... we are the masters of drawing completely random and chaotic aggro with our massive healing output. This will help you survive more than anything else and it will still be fully active, even when your armor is nearly completely broken. It's also a good idea to carry some +phys res potions around and use them, when you know there will be adds incoming. ...you will be tanking them, mark my words...
+haste is good, but not great, it won't help us with the cast times of our most important spells (Patch, Triage, Stim), since you can't go below 1 sec casttime, but it will reduce our cooldowns on Triage, Stim (= more stamina faster! This is hidden stamina regen for us!), Screen, First Aid, Disengage...
AC is always something to look for. This will also reduce chemical and ember damage received, which are damage types you usually not have a big resistance against. You are not a damage dealer. Repeat after me! "I AM NOT A DAMAGE DEALER." You will pick the high AC, no extra stats or 1 resilience armor and not the low AC extra flanking one! You are closer to a tank than a damage dealer. Getting low AC, but Flanking/Pen gear (and that gear always has lower AC for practically the same weight) will not make you do more damage... it will get you (and as a consequence: your group) killed and get you an annoying bag recovery! Also be sure to watch your AC % in your character screen and on the tiny blue shield on your nameplate from time to time when you did tank a lot, died a lot or especially after releasing when dead. You don't want to be running around in paper armor or you will die again... go repair if it drops too low!
All the other stats are useless for a Duelist. Sure, if you can choose between +3 and +5 combat movement, take the +5, but I wouldn't trade 1 healing for +10 combat movement... or flanking... or pen... or xyz.
Weight slots:
Helmet: This is a tricky one, since you have some items available with weight and some with 0 weight in this slot. I recommend a crafted (outfitter) 0 weight hood. (Mine for example
Shoulders (2): Clearly there is only one item for this slot. "Chithorn's Pauldron" times two. Lvl 20 required, +4 phys res, +6 phys debuff res, 50 AC, 10 weight. Drops off named spider "Chithorn" in spider cave/tunnel in Meadowlands. These are the red shoulders everyone (except DDs) seem to be wearing. Really the best item for this slot up to lvl50.
Cuirass: This slot comes usually with a lot of AC for a big chunk of weight. Crafted ones are good, but there are some dropped ones that can replace all your other gear with overall AC increasing. Go for maximum AC here, since there aren't any Duelist useful stats in this slot. Early on you can easily leave this slot empty.
Vambrace (2): Clearly crafted ones, since starting at lvl20 (I believe) outfitters can create Imbued Leather Vambraces that give you AC and some minor stats for only 1 weight each. Use a full set of these + the greaves to balance any extra 1-3 weight you might have open. No useful Duelist stats here, go for max AC. If you have too much open weight, you can also use a crafted metal one or two of them for like 4 weight each and extra AC here. Something to mention here are "Kaet's Bracer" (no lvl, +2 flanking, 6 AC, 0 weight; named Smuggler "Smuggler Kaet" in CV1; Only 0 weight item in this slot!) which can always be used to fill up a slot for 0 weight, so you should always keep 2 of them to balance your weight max.
Faulds: Big AC for big weight here too. An early one to use would be Knave's Faulds (35AC for 10 weight, drops off Knave of Harts, named 4(!) chev Deer in Newhaven Valley) which are also the lightest ones available for balancing the weight you have available. No useful stats to be found for a Duelist here and usually worse AC to weight ratio than a cuirass. Can be left empty most of the time.
Greaves (2): see vambrace explanation
No Weight Slots:
Earrings (2): This slot SUCKS. You most likely will only be able to wear resist gear, since the Devs never intended to have any real stat items in this slot. When choosing resists, go for the item with the most Daze > Stun > Confuse resist (in that order of priority). There are 2 very good drop earrings though: "Wolf Fang Earring" (lvl10, 2 1h weap dmg, 2 2h weap dmg, 2 phys resist; drops off named wolf "Fang" in Meadowlands wolf/spider tunnel) and "Stolen Ruby Earring" (lvl30, 6 phys dmg res, 6 chem dmg res, 6 ember dmg res; drops off named racoon "Bandit" in Redshore). Both of these are INCREDIBLY RARE, EVERYONE will roll for it, everyone will be pissed, group will dissolve, world chat will be flooded with accusations why class x rolled on it when class y needs it so much more, Elloa (community manager GM) will tell ppl not to start a witch hunt and to keep this out of world chat, ppl will put other ppl on the blocklist and the winner will most likely sell the item to a high level player for like 50g anyway instead of using it themselves. (
) Another useful earring has finally surfaced: "Shrunken Skull Earring" (lvl20, +4 chemical dmg resists, +7 physical debuff resists) while this one is BY FAR not as good as the other 2 (chemical dmg is much more rare than physical one) it is at least a useful stat and not some status resist crap, so it is worth wearing if you can find one... and there is the problem: The only info I got for how to get it was a "hmm.... out of a chest... in Stronghold... maybe", so maybe there isn't even a named that drops it, which makes it even harder to get than the other two )Necklace: Crafted ones are good here, but there are also a few good dropped ones. You can get +Healing and +Sta regen in this slot (for lvl 20 for example:"Lesser Imbued Highlands Copper Sparkling Topaz Necklace" with +5 sta regen, + 6 healing, 1 avoid and 3 other stats). Dropped would be for example "Witch's Amulet" (no lvl, +4 sta regen; named human in Smuggler camp on the top of the mountain north-east side of the zone in Newhaven Valley... can't remember the name, sry), "Stolen Emerald Necklace" (off the same racoon above, +12 healing, +5 hit), "Necklace of the Woods" (lvl25, +12 healing, +12 stun resist; named ant "Queen, Ant" in Redshore, rare drop), "Stolen Necklace" (lvl10, +8 healing, +2 haste; uncommon rat "Pack Rat" in Dryfoot, rare drop), "Necklace of Judgement" (lvl40, +14 sta regen, +14 healing; named human "Executioner, Voltaire Korinth" in Redshore Freehold, not that uncommon, when you level there you will have it sooner or later), "Fancy Stolen Necklace" (lvl20, +10 healing, +4 haste; uncommon "Pack Rat" in Dryfoot Stronghold, rare drop), "Necklace of the Watery Deep" (lvl25, +30 sta regen, -15 haste; uncommon "Watery Mire" in Forgotten Depths as a rare drop; might be a strange choice, but can work... you'll lose healing in this slot though, so not really a great choice)
Back: This slot probably has the hardest choice what to pick... you can either go with "Nothing" or "Nothing", maybe you can even upgrade to "Nothing"... yes, not a single damn cape exists in the game, neither dropped nor crafted.
Chest: This is a good crafted slot with +sta regen and +healing to go for. Drops would be: "Fungal Bear Tunic" (lvl30, +37 health regen, +12 healing, 17 AC; named special-graphic white bear "Lumbering Ancient Bear" in Redshore), "Spindled Shirt" (lvl36, +8 sta regen, +6 chem dmg resist, +10 healing; named white spider "Spindler" in Redshore Ridge), "Misha's Tunic" (no lvl, +7 health regen, +3 healing, 8 AC; named special-graphic white bear, 4(!) chev, "Ancient Bear, Misha" in Newhaven Valley, very good, quite easy to get with a full group, early item), "Silkweave Shirt" (lvl15, +4 sta regen, +10 healing, 12 AC; named spider "Weaver" in Meadowlands Spider EV)
Hands: "Queen's Red Gloves" (lvl10, +8 healing, 5 AC; named 4(!) chev deer "Queen of Harts" in Northreach) will stay with you until lvl30 when it gets replaced by crafted gloves (12 healing, 5 ranged dmg, 3 2h weap dmg, 5 pen, 5 AC; "Greater Imbued Frontier Jute Gloves") these can be upgraded to +13 healing with an Unstable Flux at lvl40. Or you can go for "Ambling Mitts" (lvl30, +3 parry, +12 healing, 10 AC; named treant "Ambling Mangrove" in Redshore, which seems to be bugged, since often he doesn't drop any special item at all). "Warm Gloves" (lvl36, +14 healing, +5 ranged dmg, 6 AC; uncommon mob "Freehold Lookout" in Redshore Freehold, random drop, will drop as this if the Lookout is <=lvl39; if the Lookout is lvl40+, it will drop as "Flexible Warm Gloves" -lvl40, +16 healing, +6 ranged dmg, 10 AC- instead)
Ring (2): "Stolen Ring" (lvl10, +5 hit, +8 healing; uncommon rat "Pack Rat" in Dryfoot, rare drop), "Fancy Stolen Ring" (lvl20, +10 healing, +5 hit; uncommon rat "Pack Rat" in Dryfoot Stronghold), "Smoldering Ring" (lvl30, +12 healing, +5 hit, +5 ranged dmg; named slagjack "Darkforge" in Forgotten Depths), the quest ring in Meadowlands for killing the named Raider leader "Gerrin" (quest auto-opens as soon as you kill him) is great too... "Brookhollow Ring" (lvl20, +10 healing, +7 hit), this slot also has some strong crafted alternatives "Greater Imbued Outlands Iron Brilliant Cassiterite Ring" (lvl30, +8 healing, +1 haste and 6(!) other stats you don't really care about on it), upgrading this one to 40 is a waste of a flux though, neither healing nor haste increases. Current BiS would be "Sovereign's Decree" (lvl40, +5 flanking, +14 healing; nigh-impossible to get since the mob that drops it hasn't been implemented yet -most likely Exile King- and you can ONLY get it out of chests in Redshore Freehold Ledge atm). An alternative might be:"Glistening Ring" (lvl20, +14 healing, -4 flanking; uncommon "Dewy Mistcrawler" in Meadowlands) ...I spent 60 hours there so far and only have ONE.
Ember Stone: You don't really have a choice here. None of these drop, you have to finish a quest in Meadowlands for the first one with 100 charge on it. (SPOILERS INC: follow the road west when zoning in from Northreach and talk to the guy by the fire, give him 5(!) silver, do that quest, just have to run to a few spots, no fighting.) The other quest is part of "Acolyte's Ambition" (SPOILERS!: Get the quest in the academy in Newhaven City. Find at least one statue in CV2 in Northreach, quest reward does NOT increase if you get 2 or 3 of them, pointless to get the others. Go back to Newhaven, get told to find the "Origin of the Message". The object you are looking for is in the (stone) fortress in Northeast Dryfoot. Enter from the south (up the biiiig slope), and stay on the left hand side. there will be 2 stone arches behind each other, you have to go through them and down a small slope. Turn left and click the item that is buried in the pile of rubble there. WARNING: you have to click the text like 6 or 7 times to progress so be sure to have no mobs hitting you. This whole area is like 3chev around lvl18-20(? not sure) and has archers in it, be sure to bring a group. After clicking that and returning to Newhaven, the NPC will auto-upgrade your stone to 150 max capacity "Roughly Cut Ember Stone". -- The upgrade to 200 starts in southwest Dryfoot at a named Marauder (friendly) nearly at the zone wall under a tree called "Runty", the quest is called "Runty's Revenge" and is self explanatory.
Waist: "Stalker's Chain Belt" (lvl10, 8 sta regen, 1 AC; random drop off normal mob "Dread Stalker" in Meadowlands Wolf tunnel. Drops quite often and will get you to like lvl40, when the phys res on crafted (7 on "Major Imbued Pristine Thick Leather Belt") starts outshining the +8 sta regen, but if you choose so, you can keep it all the way to 50 too.
Legs: A good slot to get +healing and +phys res from. Crafted are really near unbeatable here "Greater Imbued Frontier Jute Trousers" (lvl30, +3 chem dmg res, +3 health regen, +7 healing, +6 phys dmg res, +2 avoid, 12 AC) not really worth upgrading to 40 with a flux, recipe will only gain 1 health regen at 40.
Feet: "Wolfskin Threads" (lvl40, +4 avoid, +8 phys dmg resist, +12 movement debuff resist, 12 AC; off named human "Handler Finla" in Redshore Freehold), mainly go for +avoid in this slot, even "Lily's Boots" (no lvl, +1 avoid, 4 AC; named deer "Lily" in Newhaven Valley) are better than a lot of the later drops... that one avoid can save your butt later or at least save you a heal every blue moon, but stuff like combat movement is completely useless. This slot becomes nice at lvl30 iirc, when you can start crafting boots with phys res and avoid.
Primary Main Hand: A Duelist should be always using a 1h weapon and an offhand accessory. The only reason to ever go 2h is: you want to solo, which is not recommended anyway. But by using a 2h, you sacrifice the mighty bonuses an offhand can give you for just some minor extra damage, which might not even be a lot in a group, since our 2h staffs have +30 hit positional from the front, which is weak. There are no specific healer mainhand weapons so you should take a SWORD or a HATCHET as your weapon of choice, preferably one with +haste and/or +parry, which are kinda the only useful stats we can get out of the mainhand. Why sword or hatchet? These have a dmg positional from the back. It might not be much, but if you can choose and all choices are kinda bad, I'll take the one that sucks a little less. Hit positionals are very weak and you don't want to use a Mace, because the front positional will mess up your healing and place you in about every frontal cone AoE the tank can find for you. You also don't want to stand at the side, like the game wants you to with the enhanced armor dmg rate there (+5 side, +3 back, these are +% btw), since armor break is quite useless and it is a lot easier to heal from the back. Also some mobs have 180 degree frontal AoEs, which still hit you, if you are one millimeter too close to the front while standing at the side. Notable rare items include "Sword of the Guard" (lvl40, +9 hit, +7 parry, +6 haste, 5d5+5, 3s; named human "Quartermaster, Jonas Milship" Redshore Freehold, rare drop) and there actually exists A SINGLE 2h weapon with +healing on it: "Fetching Stick" (lvl40, +14 parry, +14 healing, +12 movement debuff resistance, 9d3+10, 5s; named human "Handler Finla" Redshore Freehold, rare drop)... but if you have any of these or just a crafted one (get one with good dmg and lots of haste, for example:"Major Imbued Northern Cobalt Hatchet" - lvl40, +2 hit, +4 pen, +7 1h weapon dmg, +10 haste, 5d6+5, 5s) doesn't really make that much of a difference. Update 04.04.2023: Now there clearly exists a BiS weapon:"Cabal Prophet Sword" (lvl30, +8 1h weap dmg, +8 healing, +8 ember dmg resist, 6d4+3, 3s delay; named 4 chev(!) "Cabal Alchemist" in Forgotten Depths; ONLY 1h weapon with a +healing bonus on it!), in case you don't have this one or actually want to do some dmg/be able to defend yourself against low lvl mobs:"Shaded Blade" (lvl46, +10 1h weap dmg, +10 pen, +10 haste, 9d5+6, 3s delay; named "Dimeye" in lvl45+ EV) is the best choice.
Primary Off Hand: For the offhand Duelists can choose between "scepters" (+healing, can't be crafted) and "banners" (+sta regen...and sometimes only crap stats, crafted ones all suck). Which means: If you can choose between scepters and banners: Which scepter would you equip?
(This is afaik currently a complete list of all scepters in game) "Glowing Rod" (lvl15, +12 healing, +10 mental debuff resists; named rat "Cleaner" in Aquifier), "Horned Gemstone Scepter" (lvl20, +15 healing, +5 mental debuff resist, +10 daze resists; named basi, "Shale" in Dryfoot Basilisk Ember Vein, quite rare drop, can't be really camped, but since the whole dungeon is a circle, you will end up killing everything in there anyway, be sure to get this one!), "Shining Stone Scepter" (lvl30, +17 healing, +8 mental debuff resist, +12 daze resist, +12 stun resist; off ??? in Grimstone Canyon, only seen it linked like twice, no idea what it drops off), "Dewdrop Scepter" (lvl36, +18 healing, +20 mental debuff resist, +8 hit; named mandrake "Brambles" in s***hole cave... *cough* pardon me... "Misty Cave" in Redshore Ridge. When you fight for the first time in there, you will know why we call it that way This mob is nearly impossible to get to spawn in a planned way and the scepter is the damn rare drop, you will most likely have to skip this one, since afaik I have the only one on the server), "Rod of Revenge" (lvl38, +20 healing, +20 mental debuff resists, +20 ember debuff resists; from the quest "The Fight for the Freehold", starts in Fort, Redshore. Might have prerequisite starting in camp close to Dryfoot zone in Redshore, group and lvl 38-40 required to do quest, be sure to get this one, since the higher and the lower one are unrealistic to get and you have to grind in Freehold A LOT anyway), "Sovereign's Resolve" (lvl40, +22 healing, +22 mental debuff resists, +5 combat movement; another impossible to get item... drops off chests in Freehold Ledge ONLY, mob to drop it hasn't been implemented yet, most likely Exile King too), "Dimlight Scepter" (lvl46, +22 healing, +15 mental debuff resists, +5 resilience; named cragscale "Dimeye" in Redshore Freehold Ember Veins A - entrance in Redshore Ridge, despite the name. This is his uncommon drop... if your group hunts in there, you will have one before you are lvl46)Secondary Main Hand: No really good stats to be had here for a Duelist, since you should be using a HEAVY crossbow here. The reason it has to be heavy is: normal is 0-14 range and heavy is 5-18 range. While the min range sucks for healing, with the normal crossbow you might as well spit at the mob... you will stand inside all AoEs, can't pull because the mobs see you before you can attack them and have a lower dmg dice. Get the one with the highest damage dice and maybe some haste on it. Crafted one will do perfectly fine, since you only use it on 2 occasions: a) when you are pulling (which should normally not be your job, but sometimes you are the only person that actually has a ranged weapon on them) and b) when you try to stand outside of an AoE that does heavy damage and/or silences you, so you can continue healing/not run out of sta. You are NOT using this constantly, since it will take quite a few bolts then and you lose the big bonuses from your offhand scepter! A named drop that might be worth mentioning is: "Medicine" (heavy crossbow, lvl20, 4d7+4, +5 sta regen; off "Plaguebringer" named spider in Meadowlands tunnel/spider cave)
Secondary Off Hand: Bolts are to be placed here... and since we are not going to waste Fluxes on pointless stuff, we are not using any imbued ones, but just the regular store-bought ones, which also happen to be the same ones dropping off mobs, which makes them stack nicely and often auto-refill for the rare occasions you actually use them.
Light: Yes, there are actually items with stats for this slot. They are drop only though. In order of lvl (this is afaik a complete list): "Smuggler Lookout Torch" (lvl2, +3 combat move; drops off "Smuggler Lookout" uncommon mob in Newhaven Valley as a rare drop), "Guiding Light" (lvl10, +5 hit; named emberfly "Stalactite" in Northreach Emberfly Ember Vein; THIS IS BEST IN SLOT FOR A DUELIST), "Exile Patrol Torch" (lvl25, +25 health regen, +3 combat move; off "Exile Patrol" uncommon mob in Redshore as rare drop), "Freehold Patrol Torch" (lvl36, +30 health regen, +4 combat move; off "Freehold Patrol" under lvl40 in Redshore Freehold as a uncommon drop), "Fine Freehold Patrol Torch" (lvl40, +35 health regen, +5 combat move; off "Freehold Patrol" lvl40+ in Redshore Freehold as a uncommon(lol?) drop; these will drop so often everyone will have one in your group before you can even think about heading to the next zone)
Tool (4): Be sure to get imbued ones and make sure to kill all the Smuggler/Exile Woodsman... they can drop tools with gathering speed and sometimes even the recipes for the tools (for example:"Woodsman's Skinning Knife" no lvl, +19%; these get worse compared to the crafted ones at higher level though), they can also drop some rare materials that are hard to get otherwise (for example: currently, Feb 2023, the Woodsman are the ONLY source of Poplar Wood, there are no other spawns ingame).
Consumable items:
You should have on your quickbar:
1) Small (or better) crafted physical resist potions. Pop one of these when you have adds incoming, as you will be tanking them most likely.
2) Crafted hitpoint potions of the highest level you can use. When sta is running low -> heal the other groupmembers, drink a potion yourself. Additionally: Hitpoint potions don't generate aggro. So if you are tanking something you don't want to tank and take damage, it might be better to pop a health pot and give the tank time to get the mob off you, instead of healing yourself and generating extra aggro.
3) Crafted food. This is the least important thing, since you can also heal yourself out of combat to regenerate a lot faster. If you want to place something else on the bar, use it on this slot.
4) Crafted tea or store bought juice (from the vendor in Newhaven City for sta regen + haste). Important, always keep it running when fighting.
Reagent slots:
1) Salve for your first aid
2) Ichor for your patch
3) next level higher salve OR empty slot to collect other reagents to trade/sell
4) next level higher ichor OR empty slot to collect other reagents to trade/sell
Augments on equipment slots:
Augments are useable items (stackable) that are crafted by players and give a bonus to an equipped item either for a certain amount of time (armor) or a certain number of attacks (weapons). I will only list those ones, that are actually really useful to a duelist. There are more types, like 2h weapon dicemod that could be used too, but are more of a waste of resources on a duelist. Dying does not remove these from items.
(be warned: augmenting items SOULBINDS them = you can't give/sell them to other players anymore. You can still sell them to NPCs/destroy them though. You might want to avoid binding very rare, valuable items. It is generally safe though to bind crafted items, since fluxes are comparably easy to get.)
Chest: outfitter crafted, either +healing or +sta regen
Legs: outfitter crafted, either +healing or +sta regen (same item as chest)
Gloves: armorsmith crafted, +healing
Belt: tinkerer crafted, +haste or +phys res
You can not place them onto your quickslots, which means they will take up inventory space, if you decide to use them. This will also kinda suck, if you die and drop your bag... abandoning the bag will make you lose your remaining augments = don't carry around too many.
5) Skills
Assailing Strike (1): A direct damage attack with a dmg bonus and a threat-less damage to armor attack added on top of it. Becomes very cheap at 5% sta later on in the game. Will be on your bar a lot of the time. Actually removing armor from the mobs isn't a high priority though, since mobs usually die a lot quicker than you can remove a substantial amount of armor from them though and it removes not a lot from the 3 chevs. Additionally DDs get quite a bit of penetration, which bypasses armor and lessens the effects of armor destruction even more. But it's a nice skill to spend some sta on if you are full and healing is easy.
Strike (1): This is just a regular auto-attack with a -tiny- damage bonus. Use it the first few levels, when you have nothing else available, but as soon as you have more skills than skill-slots, this one will be the first to go. Never gets an upgrade and just exists so low lvl ppl have something to spend their sta on.
First Aid (2): Your first heal. 2 sec casttime, slows you by 60% while casting, 10sec recast. Big, sta-efficient single target heal. Uses "Salve" as a reagent for extra healing. This ability also produces extra healing if your target is low on hitpoints. That effect seems to start at <50% and scales up, so you might end up with the same post-heal hitpoints on a tank, if you heal him at 50 or at 30. If you can afford to wait with your heals ( = only one mob attacking, no adds, no dmg spikes etc.) or have to conserve stamina you should let your tank drop to as low hitpoints as safely possible before landing the First Aid on him. You can always have this on the bar.
Screen (4): A buff that absorbs part of the next 2 physical(!) hits (won't remove a charge for avoids/misses, it has to do dmg) for a maximum of 20sec. Starts at +50 phys res, goes up to +75 at lvl44. Can't target yourself. Does not stack with Guts (Berserker) and Protect (Knight). Stacks with every other source of phys res, including potions. Useful spell. Can be used to prevent damage spikes, avoid aggro when a puller comes back badly damaged and you don't want to start healing immediately to give the tank time to build up aggro and to buy some time for first aid to be cast or be available again (warlords have to use this tactic a lot). Will often be on your bar. This spell is also a good indicator that when it is up and a mob attacks the protected player and he -still- loses a lot of hitpoints without the spell losing charges, that the mob is NOT doing physical dmg and chemical or ember dmg instead (Ashen mobs for example). When the target has really low hp and you can't reach -very- high levels of phys res a patch is prefered to this spell though. Additionally you should use it on hard hitting, slow attacking, single targets only... if you cast it on a 3chev + 2 1chev pull for example, the 2 1 chev mobs might eat the buff first and the 3 chev hits the tank for full dmg, wasting the spell.
Patch (6): The second heal you get. Single target, less sta efficient and heals for a smaller amount than First Aid (at all levels and with reagents), but 1 sec cast time, no recast time and does not slow you down while moving(!). This can and should be spammed to keep ppl alive, when you NEED that heal NOW. Should be ALWAYS on your bar. Most likely the best heal ingame. Can be made even better by using Ichor reagents (increases healing done).
Combined Strike (8): A regular attack with no modifier, that adds a DoT on your target which ticks for a fixed amount of damage every 5 secs for a total of 20 secs. Attack has to land for the DoT to be applied. DoT can be partially (reduced duration = less ticks) or fully resisted even on a hit. This is our main spell for soloing and it is ok in groups too if you fight 3 chevs and the mobs don't die before it runs out. Reaches minimum sta cost at lvl48 with 5%. Useful spell, will be on your bar often.
Disengage (10): Cast a minus threat AoE, point-blank style (around you). Does no damage (Hits for 0). Hits a maximum of 5 targets. Very cheap to cast at 5% sta and reduces a lot of aggro. Reduces even more additional aggro if you are the person on top of the hate list of the target ( = when the mob is actively aggro on YOU as the main target). Can save your butt, especially if you overaggro some untanked adds with Triage. Not always on my bar, since I don't always try to avoid aggro, but in dangerous zones it can help keep the aggro away from you. Good spell with a long recast.
Weak Point (14): Basic attack with bonus damage that leaves a phys res debuff on the enemy for 15 secs (-35 at 16 to -55 at 46). Attack has to connect AND DO DAMAGE for the debuff to work. Debuff can be partially (reduced duration) and fully resisted. Now this spell sounds really great on paper, doesn't it? Who doesn't want to do 55% more damage? Now here's the catch: You can't reduce the phys res below 0. If a mob starts at 0 already, it's just an attack with a little bit of enhanced damage and the debuff is a waste of screen estate. If the mob has a measly 25% resist, like some shield carrying humans seem to have, even lvl1 would be more than enough already to fully remove the resist. The biggest 2 uses this spell has are: When attacking red con mobs, this debuff actually makes the mob hitable for the lower player (so a lvl40 mob can be debuffed by a lvl40 duelist for example which enables a lvl20 berserker to hit it AT ALL... otherwise he would only get 0 dmg attacks) and to counteract phys resist buffs mobs use. So for example if a mob casts a +50% phys res buff, using this spell would (more than) completely negate the buff when cast at lvl46. This has it's own set of problems though... if the mob is red to YOU, you most likely won't be able to hit/dmg the mob, which makes the debuff impossible to land. The second problem is with the buff using higher level mobs: They have that much phys res and so high buffs (+100 phys resist spider self-buff anyone?), that they will get over 100 phys res and (UPDATE 23.02.2023 Info from AdricLives, community meeting in discord) when they are yellow or red to you, their built in physical resist is applied after the check for 100 phys res. So: If you are lvl45 and try to hit a lvl46 mob (yellow) for example and that mob uses a +100 phys res buff, the game checks: base phys res + 100 = more than 100 -> sets phys res to 99 and THEN adds the yellow phys res, which puts him above 100 again, which leads to the mob not getting hit for the 1 minimum, but will give you a "YOUR Weak-Point RESISTS examplemob for 0." which makes the attack not "hit" at all and therefore the debuff will not be applied. Which leads to the conclusion: You can safely use this ability on white and below mobs if they have any form of physical resist to remove. If the mobs you are fighting are yellow or red though, you have to check if their buffs take them above 100 phys res at which point you can take the ability of the bar and replace it with something that is not resisted every time when it would be needed. I used this spell in my lower levels really much, since I thought it was great, but since I did a lot of tests on it, I only put it on my bar in very specific situations.
Serration (18): Applied to an allied target (including yourself). Adds a buff that lasts for 40 seconds maximum or a maximum of 10 triggers, whichever comes first. Every time the buffed person attacks with an auto attack (or an attack that specifies it counts as an auto-attack, Sentinels have one for example) it will trigger once and an additional attack for 3 (lvl16) to 9 (lvl46) damage will be triggered that places a debuff that will trigger the same damage again when 4 seconds have passed, if it doesn't get overwritten by itself in that time.
Triage (22): The ONLY group heal in the game (I don't count warlord heal song as a "group heal" but rather as a regeneration effect, since the ticks are too small to counteract any real AoE dmg from mobs). 1sec cast, 10sec cooldown, VERY sta efficient. On par with First Aid / Patch for 2 targets and a huge effectivity boost if healing 3 targets or more. Has the best sta to heal ratio possible when healing the full group. In the (extremely unlikely) case of every single heal critting in a full group, you could get up to 700+ heal total for 12% sta at lvl46... this is far, far, FAR above anything any other heal can produce at maximum. Can be cast while running at full speed and does not need a target (it is a Point Blank AoE effect around you). Disadvantage: Since overheal seems to produce aggro, this is one of the best area taunts in the game too... if you have several mobs incoming and you have to use this a few times, you can expect to tank the last few mobs until the end of the fight, unless the tank uses a forced enrage ability. Nonetheless: This is a GREAT ability, I highly recommend to always have this spell on your bar, with the exception of when being solo (patch is better then)
Hemorrhaging Strike (26): Let me explain it... it is an attack with bonus damage that leaves a debuff on the mob for 40sec, which when triggered before it fades does a little bit of damage and leaves a debuff on the mob for 20sec, which when triggered before it fades does medium damage and leaves a debuff on the mob for 10secs, which when triggered before it fades does good damage. Got it? Nope? Thought so... essentially it is an attack that requires the target to be hit additional times to trigger several stages of a debuff for extra damage. The first debuff has a 20% chance to trigger when hit, the second a 15% one and the third a 10% one. These chances do not change when leveling the skill. The initial attack has to hit and do damage for the first debuff to land. This one can be partially (reduced duration) or fully resisted (no debuff at all). The additional triggers of the debuff always hit and land for max duration
Stim (30): Targetable (including yourself), 1sec cast, 2min cooldown, 5% sta cost, sta instant-refill. Starts at 2d4+20 at lvl30, goes up to 2d4+30 at lvl46. Can be cast while running at full speed. Do I need to say anything? GREAT ability, ALWAYS have it on the bar, no exceptions. Will save your butt and the group a ton of times, when you otherwise would have been out of sta. Can also be used to give the tank some extra sta to make him be able to generate extra threat to keep the mobs on him or give a Berserker an extra round of WHAM-BIG-AOE when needed, but most of the time, in harder content, I try too keep it in reserve for unexpected adds or to quickly get a freshly rezzed player back into action again during a fight (second healer? could you please help me again? Warlord... take this stim and fire up your sta song again! Tank... yes, I know you just rezzed, can you please taunt this mob anyway? Practically you have far too little stim for everyone who could benefit from it)
Flourish (34, book learned): An execute ability. This means when the mob goes below 50%, you will do additional damage when using this ability. The lower the mob's hitpoints go, the higher the additional damage will be. 20sec cooldown, so be sure to not fire it too early or you waste a lot of additional damage (ideally when the mob hits 20% or less). On very high hitpoint mobs and/or in a very low dmg group / when solo, you might be able to execute the same mob several times. This is definitely an ability worth farming the book for: Even if you are completely focused on defense, you will start seeing triple digit hits on this ability later on. To get the book needed you have to kill "Forsaken, Grimstone Supporter" (uncommon, 3 chev, lvl~34, human exile type mob) in Grimstone Canyon or "Forsaken, Snatchscale Supporter" (uncommon, 3 chev, lvl~34, walking lizard) in Redshore Ridge at Snatchscale Village (is on my map). --- Added 09.03.2023: After testing the ability for a while... if you use a "survival" build like described in this guide, you will most likely not have the dmg stats to really get much out of this ability. On high level mobs my Flourish hits for like 80-100... I'd rather mem Haemorrhaging Strike, since dmg at lvl46: basedmg + 28, debuff1: 16, debuff2: 28, debuff3: 46 = basedmg + 118 if all debuffs trigger, which they do in a group. And since they are debuff based, they are fixed damage and don't get eaten by armor. Sure Flourish might crit sometimes for more, but you also glance and the average damage is lower. Additionally HS is even slightly cheaper than Flourish and not dependent on the mobs hitpoint level or any special timing. Overall this is an overhyped ability that is, at least for our build, only useful when soloing (you can't get HS to trigger enough).
Upper Hand (38, book learned): A combat aura that adds +5 to 1h, 2h and ranged. This translates to more damage for the whole group. Definitely worth using if you can spare the ability slot. To get the book you have to kill "Forsaken, Freehold Supporter" in Redshore Freehold. These are random spawns in the lower lvl area of the zone (houses/tents + stonehenge and the forests to the sides of them on my map), anywhere a 3chev can spawn. The higher level mobs beyond the arena aren't able to spawn as Forsaken it seems (not 100% sure) and the ledge has no Forsaken either (same, not 100% sure).
Amputate (42, book learned): A 5% sta cost attack skill that reduces the healing output of the mob it is cast upon and also completely disables its natural healing. 35sec duration, 30sec cooldown, which enables us to keep it up constantly on a single mob (assuming no resists and mob is white or lower). Well... in 99% of cases this is just going to be a normal attack that doesn't really do anything special. Since it also has the longer cooldown, it's not even that good as a regular attack (assailing strike is better, slightly more dmg and only 10sec cooldown + armor dmg). There are only 3 occasions when you really want to use this ability: 1) You have a mob that actually casts noticeable heals. This is the least likely, since such a mob doesn't exist in the game at the moment, but maybe in the future... 2) You are solo or in a -terrible- group and your dps output is so weak, it is a good idea to prevent the natural healing of the mob so this doesn't take forever and a day. 3) You just want to go full blast on dmg and want to have as many attack skills on the bar as possible (in this case this ability is at least better than Strike). And as you have just read the description you can guess what my recommendation is... keep this junk off your bar, you need your slots for better things. To get the book you have to kill "Forsaken, Cragscale Supporter" in the lvl45+ EV(!). These are random spawns on any 3chev location in the whole EV.
What skills do I currently have on my bar at 50?
Weak Point (using it in the 45+ EV atm, some mobs there buff a very annoying +75 phys res buff)
Serration (I have a Berserker in group)
Disengage (the zone I am currently in has some mobs I -really- don't want to tank)
Stim (do you even need to ask?)
First Aid (has been there since I got it, but I rarely use it... patch is faster = safer to use)
Patch (my main heal, not replaceable in any situation)
Triage (I group 99,9% of the time)
Screen (saves some mana on heals with the 100+ hits some of these mobs do)
What is replaceable?
Weak Point can easily be replaced by Flourish, Hemorraging Strike, Combined Strike or even Assailing Strike if you prefer any of these.
Serration can be removed if solo or in a small group and replaced with another attack ability.
Disengage can be replaced with a 3rd attack ability, if you don't care about aggro.
6) Duelist gameplay
In a group:
You do not have a set rotation as a duelist. You will use abilities on a priority list (from highest to lowest, autoattack should be on):
Make sure noone dies by healing them! (Priority: Yourself, Tank, other healers, DDs; unless one single target is taking A LOT of damage, if you have spread out damage, even if only slight damage on a second person -> use Triage) The reason for this order is: If you die, the others will die really soon after, especially if you are the only healer or if the second healer is freshly rezzed or for any other reason out of sta too (healers tend to run out of sta at the same time most often), additionally since your gearing is towards defense too, you might be able to survive a few hits too, while getting the tank back up. The tank can't rezz you with salts while being attacked. --- The tank has more mitigation than everyone else. Having the tank die means there will be suddenly more dmg incoming in a bad situation already. --- Having 2 healers alive means you have twice the mana regeneration in the group, even more than that if the other one is a warlord, so you can heal for a much longer time. --- And lastly... DDs. Sure it is annoying if a DD dies, but it usually does not threaten group survival. Tank + (2) Heal = stable enough to fight nearly forever. If a DD dies, you have enough time to rezz him up and still not run out of stamina. It will slow down your xp gain, but it is far less dangerous than having someone else die. --- This order of course depends on a lot of other factors, so this is just a general advice. Do you have a mob that does HUGE dmg? Make sure the tank gets heals first... the other healer might keep the tank alive, while without a tank it might just be a matter of 1-2 hits per person. Do you have a mob that does random big AoEs and little single target dmg? Keep the other healer alive or you might not be able to keep up with the group damage. Is the last mob at 3% health? Keep the damn DD alive... he might be able to finish the mob and rezz you all after, instead of a slow, painful wipe with only classes that deal little damage. Single target attacker with everyone low hp? Keep the tank at high hp levels and don't waste sta on anyone else, if the tank keeps the aggro and there is no danger of an AoE or adds, it doesn't matter if everyone else has just one hp, you can wait for the tank to have enough hp to be able to safely cast a Triage.
Make sure to have enough sta left to be able to continue healing. If you are running very low, switch to sta save mode by going for big First Aid heals (+reagent) instead of Patch. Riskier, but better than not being able to heal at all. If needed: turn off autoattack (unless you are the one being attacked) and might even step back and sit down... it's not a lot, barely noticeable, but it is more +sta regen and it sure does help more in surviving the fight than your puny melee autoattack. This should be very rare though and might even draw you bonus aggro.
Rezz dead people. Don't rezz them into mobs that cast AoEs (this will just lower their max hp from dying again) If you have someone damaged and one person dead: Triage will heal and rezz for you.
Top off people's hitpoints. More hp = safety cushion... a sudden 3 chev add that charges into the group will usually take more than one hit to kill someone that is full hp, even with very little AC, which gives the tank time to grab the add or someone to CC it. This saves you from unneccessary surprise deaths.
Cast your buffs (Serration mainly, food and drink buffs should preferably be refreshed outside of combat, but if you have a pause in heals needed during an easy fight... sure go ahead, refresh that drink, you never know when a random 3 chev add shows up and then you don't have the time to refresh it anymore).
Cast your debuffs (Weak Point for example, reason why these have lower priority: they can be resisted while Serration is guaranteed damage)
Cast direct damage attacks to stop you from going full stamina in combat. Make sure, you always stay in the 80-90% stamina range if possible. Too high and you will waste regenerated stamina into nothingness, drop too low and you might not have enough reserves to be able to heal through a surprise add. It is ok for DDs to drop down to 0 sta... this is even more efficient for them, since they don't need a reserve (except maybe to CC) and burning through the DD sta means the fight is shorter = earlier out of combat regeneration = faster overall stamina regeneration. But as a Duelist you don't want to do that! If you drop down to 5%, even with all the mobs dead, a random roamer might be able to pose a significant problem. Never drop down to low sta if you can prevent it in any way! DD sta is what keeps getting the group fast xp, your sta is what keeps the group alive!
Solo:
TL;DR: Don't.
Detailed version:
Remove triage, disengage and screen from your bar, they are useless.
Get yourself a 2h staff with the best dmg output you can get. Dmg dice > stats! Staff is a lot better for soloing than the sword/hatchet, since staves give you +30 hit from the front and solo you will have 99% front attacks.
Now you have 2 available tactics:
a) BURN! This version is "get as much damage into the mob as quick as possible". Meaning you should have all possible dmg skills (except maybe strike, which is terribly bad) on your bar and spam them on cooldown. This tactic is used to remove 1 chev mobs as quickly as possible and get back into out-of-combat sta regeneration. Fast fight with all sta gone + out of combat sta regen = faster than slow, long fight where you preserve sta.
b) Sustain. This version is: Keep combined strike active on the mob, keep autoattacking and heal yourself, preferably with First Aid, since it is more sta efficient. This fighting style is very slow, but it allows you to solo 3 chev mobs and some nameds. Generally you can say: If your mana % stays above the hp % of the mob, you will win that fight. If you are not grossly outmatched, you might even notice early enough if it is "not gonna be enough" and you still have time to get away to get the mob to leash, with you spamming Patch whilst running.
Overall though, the best idea is: Go grab yourself a striker class and duo with them. You will be their sustain, so they have no problems with hitpoints/hitpoint recovery and they will provide the damage for you. Together with a striker, preferably killing 2 chevs, you will gain like TEN TIMES the amount of xp each of you would get solo.
And whenever you can... go for group content with 3+ ppl. My personal preference is: tank + 2 healer + 3 DD
7) Zones
In this section I will give you a general overview of all zones and their connections, with fully explored maps (dungeons don't have maps). I'm not going to add a "at lvl x you should head to camp y" since you can effectively level on all mobs within your level range and usually you will just have to take what group is available. I will by far not mark all locations, but only the best and most used camps. So if someone says "meet us at bunnies", you know where to run to. There are of course a lot more mobs you could kill for xp in all zones, but these ones are the best. The maps are in the order in which you should visit the zones.
Just some additional infos before I start:
To enter an Ember Vein, you need to find the entrance first. This is the spikes coming out of the ground with the lightning hitting it. Watch for the lightning in the sky to find it from a distance.
All mobs in Ember Veins can go Ashen upon death. Which means they die, giving you xp, but no loot and immediately respawn as a half-health Ashen variant of themselves (these do EMBER damage, all of them). When you kill them you get xp again, can loot them and if they are green or above they refill your Ember Stone. Make sure you think about that possibility when pulling... those 2 3chevs might in reality be 4 3chevs without a break in-between if both respawn as Ashen.
CV1 in Newhaven Valley and CV2 in Northreach both are tunnels... you can enter on either side and move through to the other entrance. They have no connection to each other though.
The Aquifier has a higher and a lower lvl rotation which are seperate from each other. The way going up leads to the lower level one.
The Undercroft has 3 areas: a one chev solo area, a 2chev duo area and to get to the 3chev group area, you have to go down that long staircase with the drop at the bottom, DO NOT JUMP, click the rope... the drop is -really- deep. To get back up, click the rope again.
Dryfoot Stronghold (not mapped), Redshore Ridge and Redshore Freehold are actually considered "outdoor dungeons".
Please forgive me for my excellent MS Paint skills...
8) Additional Info/Tips
This is just a completely random collection of facts/ideas that might be worth mentioning, it is not even sorted by when you are going to need it level wise and mixes up high level advice with absolute beginner advice:
The Eye of Ibax (most call it Blupiter, the blue planet in the sky) is always north.
The sun follows the same cycle it does on earth, you can use it together with /time to navigate too.
When you are at an Ember fire, it will show you that Ember fire in blue on your ingame map, you can navigate from there.
To actually become a Duelist, you have to be level 6 Supporter, take a quest from the Duelist trainer in Newhaven and finish that quest.
If you need the Ichor to get your promotion from Supporter to Duelist in the lvl 6 quest, remember that rats are only up during the day and emberflies only during the night. Don't waste your time by searching for the wrong type of mob.
The Ichor does not always drop. You might have to kill a few rats or emberflies to get it. (afaik you can also complete the step just by having the thing in your inventory, you don't actually have to loot it, if a friend/guildy just hands you some)
Most mobs seem to cast Hamstring or another form of annoying snare on you when you try to run away from them... it may be a tinfoil hat theory, but running sideways seems to reduce this effect for me.
Humans use a green icon runspeed buff when you first aggro them, but after that is gone, they slow down and run with their weapons drawn (still nearly as fast as you though) I survived HUGE mispulls/adds by just kiting like 5 mobs around my group in a circle and regenerating sta (and waiting for Stim to come back up) and drive-by rezzing/healing them with Patch and Triage, killing them one-by-one with all except one focusing on me, because of our huge heal-aggro. This can, outdoors especially, on flat ground (mobs always run at the same speed, while you slow down when moving up a hill, causing them to catch you) save you from quite an annoying jog back to your bags. This does not work well on animals, they usually run faster than you. And Archers or mobs that root really mess this tactic up, but it is nice, when it works. The "miracle" happened.
Generally the Duelist is VERY good at running somewhere, since with our patch-while-running-at-full-speed system we can just run through stuff and keep occasionally healing while continuing where we want to go until the mob is pulled far enough away to reset.
If a 1 chev wolf aggroes you: don't run... they run faster than you, constantly snare you and have an absolutely HUGE follow range. It seems they were placed just to be annoying. It is usually faster, even for a duelist, to kill a 1chev wolf than to try outrun it.
Never keep Rezz-Salts on your bar. You can either hand them over to a DD/Tank or sell them at the vendor. Any direct heal is a rezz when cast on someone unconscious. Triage effectively is an AREA-REZZ too. You will never need salts on your Duelist.
You can use reagents for 2 spells: First Aid (Salve) and Patch (Ichor). Both give +base healed amount and are worth activating (by clicking the small checkmark above your reagent or using the corresponding shift-5 -> shift-8 keys) when you need that extra amount of heal (big dmg inc from a named, running low on sta and need the extra oomph), just don't forget to turn them off again.
You get a higher type of your reagent usually at the 2 before next full 10 level mark (so 18, 28 etc.), since that is the first time you should be hunting the corresponding mob (mob lvl20, lvl30 etc.). They will no longer be red to you. You can still use up your old reagents, even if you have new ones already. Actually since there are only 2 reagents for each class, you can either use the 2 remaining slots for another level of your own reagents or as empty slots to collect reagents for another class to trade or sell at an NPC.
Salve drops off Deer and Bears mainly. Sometimes you will also get a lot of them in chests (like 50-120).
Ichor drops off Rats, Emberflies and Ants mainly. Same here with the chests.
Btw chests: Chests always drop loot that is dropable in the current region and have a chance to drop rare loot from nameds too. Actually some items can ONLY be gotten from chests that way, since there is no mob currently ingame that drops that piece of loot, but it is in the base droptable for the level range/zone.
Random, solo 1 chev rats that stand around in the middle of nowhere (also in dungeons) are placeholders for chests. KILL THEM! You might not spawn a chest there, but some parts of a zone are linked, sometimes the entire zone is. If you kill that rat there, you have a chance to spawn, 10-20min later, depending on the zone, a new rat or a chest -somewhere- else in the local area/zone.
Ant hills behave exactly like chests: they drop 2 random loots off the chest loot table (read: EVERYTHING the zone has to offer at that level, including named rare drops). So if you come across an item you have never seen before, chances are very high someone got it out of an ant hill (or a chest)
Ant hills spawn little down1chev adds for as long as they are aggro on something. The ant hills themselves don't do any skills or anything, but the small ants keep attacking and they snare, root, stun etc. and they give no xp or loot. Destroying ant hills is still very much worth it as a group though.
The Rat's Nest in CV1 and Grimstone Canyon is essentially another version of ant hill. It has exactly the same drop/spawn behaviour, just with different graphics.
The game tries to force us to move around and tries to prevent you from camping named mobs. So placeholders are often spread across an ENTIRE ZONE (very often intentionally placed at the farthest possible away spots to make it extra annoying). If you want to farm a specific mob, you essentially have to check the whole zone for mobs that are of the same type and aren't spawning there usually. Sometimes they are even mixed into some more mobs of the same type, just with one additional now short distance roaming there. If you try the sit-down-at-spawn-and-wait EverQuest tactic, you will most likely NEVER see a named, even if you wait for hours. If that thing you suspect is a placeholder has not respawned in 20 mins: don't waste any more time, go search somewhere else in the zone.
Nameds tend to have 3+, up to 7 or 8 placeholder locations.
Same with chests: they have lots of possible locations and only some of them will be up or have a rat in its place. Don't camp a single spot waiting for a chest to reappear: it won't. Keep moving and killing rats.
There simply aren't dropping enough tea leaves for anyone to always keep tea active and the town one is expensive and worse than the crafted one. To get A LOT of tea easily: create a lvl1 striker (DD class), let him learn the hunter profession and provisioner (at lvl6 hunter) and butcher HUNDREDS of lvl1 deer right next to the newbie spawn spot. As you gain a few levels and use one of the weapons that drops there, you can nearly one-shot these. Stay at the lvl1 spot, no need to go higher, just makes the mobs have more hitpoints. Skin each deer you kill. After a few hours you will have A TON each of: deer leaves, carcasses and low level salves for your First Aid spell. Craft the leaves into tea leaves into tea, the carcasses into meat into cooked meat and hand those together with the salves to your Duelist. If you did it long enough, your main Duelist will now have -hundreds- of food items, tea and spell reagents for First Aid. This will carry you at least until level30 without having to worry about how to get sta regen. You can always heal with First Aid with a reagent, which makes you more effective at healing too and you can always go back and get more easily. Overall this method saves a lot more time than trying to hunt that single deer you saw while running through Meadowlands, which won't drop one of the higher level leaves for you anyway... if your main even is a hunter.
Btw tradeskills: You can get your first gathering skill right at the start, first house, by doing a quest there. To get your second skill, you have to get the first one to lvl6 (there is a quest for that in Newhaven Valley too, shortly before you enter Newhaven City). To get your third skill, you have to have BOTH your first and your second skill at lvl12. Just buy it at a trainer then.
Buying tradeskills at a trainer: you don't NEED to have a gathering or crafting skill. You can mix and match as you like. 3 gathering or 3 crafting skills is also possible. Just buy them at a trainer. (It might not be that useful though for your first char, you really should get a gathering skill as your first skill!)
A tradeskill can be at maximum 10 levels above your adventuring level. Example: A lvl5 character can get all of his tradeskills to lvl15 maximum. After that he will get no more tradeskill experience until he raises his class level. Sorry to spoil your bubble, that "I'm going to get all 3 gathering skills on my main and just get the crafting skills on my 2 other chars, so I can do everything myself." is not going to work. unless you never plan to craft anything above lvl10... or you plan to level all of your chars to lvl40 minimum (can't recommend that
) Try to get skills that work good together for you, for example: Tinkerer really sucks without Prospector or Woodworker really needs the Forester. Don't try to do everything. (In case you are interested: I started as Hunter -> Provisioner -> Forester, to be able to cook and craft potions on my Duelist. I later switched away from Hunter to WoodworkerYou can delete a tradeskill by opening the "j" menu and right clicking the tab. You will lose all progress, but can learn a different one then.
Same goes for a subclass: You are currently a Warlord or a Sentinel but are currently thinking "damn... that Duelist stuff sounds really nice...". You can right click a subclass to unlearn it. You keep your main level, but have to relevel the new subclass again from lvl6. Don't worry though, you will be getting xp quickly, since you are killing lvl(high) mobs with your lvl(low) subclass and get experience for (high lvl mob). Additionally the sublasses gain bonus xp, so you will eventually completely catch up to your main class.
What I really recommend against is unlearning the main class. This will drop you TO LEVEL 1! It is more effective to start a new character than to switch main classes, since you will basically lose EVERYTHING except quest progression and bank expansions.
Btw characters: There is a shared bank in Newhaven City (and only there). It's in the same room as your regular bank on the other side. Called "Newhaven Bank". You can place your stuff in there and take it out with a different char from the same account. You really should use the other 2 chars slots too and at least use them for storage space, which is always needed. in the same room you might notice a "Lost and Found" box too. That one is usually empty. It's just an emergency system that if something vanishes during a trade for example or a GM wants to return an item to you, you will find it in there.
All the "Private Stash" across the world are the same chest. What you put in in Newhaven Valley, you can take out (only on the same character) in Newhaven City, Northreach, Meadowlands etc.
To repair you have to click one of the anvils everywhere in settlements. This costs coins.
To craft you have to click one of the alchemy looking green bottles everywhere in settlements. This is the same container for ALL professions.
The mobs strength and the experience you get for it is based on 2 factors: the number of chevrons next to it's picture - 1 chev = solo mob, 2 chev = mob for a small group (2-4 ppl), 3 chev = mob for a full group (5-6ppl), 4 chev = special mob for a full group (6 ppl) - usually a lot harder than regular mobs and will always drop at least 2-3 special items, there also exist 1 downward chev mobs = swarm mob that spawns out of an ant hill or rat nest - worth NO xp and does not drop loot. And the second factor is it's level compared to yours, which is indicated by the color of the chevrons: gray = 11+ lvl below you, worth NO xp; green = 10-5 lvls below you, very bad xp; light blue = 3-4 lvls below you = weak xp; blue = 1-2 lvls below you, good xp; white = exactly the same lvl as you, good xp; yellow = 1-2 lvls above you, harder to kill, but good xp; orange = 3-4 lvls above you, very hard to kill, small xp penalty; red = 5+ lvls above you, impossible to kill (literally... you can't hit them), bad xp
There are only 5 4chevs mobs in the game: Misha and Knave of Harts in Newhaven Valley, Queen of Harts in Northreach, War Chief Korrin in Dryfoot Stronghold and Cabal Alchemist in Forgotten Depths.
Lvl difference to the mob has more influence than just xp gained: gray mobs will have an automatic disadvantage when attacking you (roll twice, take worse result). Yellow mobs gain resist bonuses against you - debuffs you use on them will last a shorter duration, this includes dots. And orange/red mobs gain massive bonuses against you: lots of resists, their attacks ignore your defenses incl. phys resist, they nearly always heavy hit or crit you and when they are 5+ lvls above you they will be completely invincible (except when debuffed -by someone higher lvl that can hit them- with Weak Point)... "Your Auto-Attack RESISTS ARedMob for 0." DO NOT TRY TO FIGHT RED MOBS. Exp will suck even if you are able to win (you get reduced xp for reds, even though their base xp is higher)
G.E.L. might help you if the mobs are too high in lvl for you. This stands for "Group Elevated Level" which means: everyone in a group will fight like the highest lvl person, up to 5 lvls higher than your original level. This does not give you higher ability levels or increase your stats, but it removes the level based disadvantages. Maybe this is better to understand with an example: You are lvl 30 and try to kill a lvl33 mob which will be orange to you... it will kick your butt, since you barely dmg it, it often hits you heavy or crit, your debuffs last a lot shorter etc. Now you join a group with a lvl33 player in it. The GEL will increase you to 33 for as long as that player is in range of you. The mob is still orange to your base level, but since you are GELed to lvl33 because of the other guy, you will fight against it as if it were white to you (the GEL icon on the mobs info will show as white now if you enabled it) and you will have full debuff duration, no hit penalties and take far less damage. Use GEL to your advantage! Group up and stay together. And invite lower level ppl that are within the extended lvl range of the mobs, they need the xp and will be able to fight at full efficiency!
The first person to attack a mob and -do damage- to it will have looting rights to the mob and will gain xp for defeating it. You can see if you/your group has loot rights if there is a small bag icon next to the mobs nameplate. A crossed out bag icon means: someone else has looting rights/xp for this mob if it is killed now before resetting. A dice icon next to the nameplate means: there is loot on the corpse that is currently being rolled for. This system can be very easily abus... *cough* "creatively played with" to powerlevel someone. Let the person leave the group, the person attacks the mob first, gets looting rights (look at bag icon) and now if the group kills that mob, the single person will receive the full xp for killing that yellow 3 chevron mob...
If you drop to below 0 hp and noone rezzes you within 180 seconds, you will drop your bag at the location of death and you will respawn at one of the "things hang from a tree and everything turns black and white" locations (hallow). Not having your bag makes it impossible for you to loot/roll on loot. There are exceptions: You can win and loot reagents that are in your reagent bar. Your item bar is also safe, you can loot potions to there. And your gathering bag is completely safe too. If you win a flux, DROP IT IN THE GATHERING BAG, even if you have to take something else out for it. So if the corpse is unrecoverable you won't lose it. If you can't recover the corpse or just don't want to: you can forfeit your bag by clicking the icon on top of your open bag. Doing this will make you lose ALL the items in the REGULAR bag and all the money you had on you. (So be sure to always place your coins into the bank, they are safe there.) Dying a second time won't create any more new bags. Just the one stays up until you either recover or destroy it. If your char has no items in his regular bag AND no money on it, you won't create a bag upon death, since there is nothing to drop. Dying and releasing/having the timer run out does a big hit to your armor durability... you don't want to have that drop too low. Go repair.
Fluxes... orange crystals that drop off animals only (no humans, except the slagjacks... which are deeply ember corrupted) as a rare drop. Need to be used for making Imbued items in player crafting. Flux progression is: Viscious (lvl1), Thick (lvl10), Dense (lvl20), Solid (lvl30), Unstable (lvl40), not implemented yet (lvl50). Be sure to roll need on those if you are in a group. Everyone needs them and you don't want to be the only one rolling Greed and automatically losing it. If you are unsure, just ask when you join the group or if one drops. Even if you are not tradeskilling yourself, you will want those, since most crafters do a "my mats, your flux + tip" type of deal on items often.
Your crafter needs to have at least the level of the items to be able to use them in crafting. Example: A lvl14 woodworker won't be able to use a Dense Flux (lvl20) since his profession level is to low, even though you can place it into the recipe and see what item it would create.
There are no "hell levels" in Embers Adrift. All the levels take somewhat more exp than the previous one, but there are no randomly mixed-in levels that are far slower to complete than the next one.
Jumping costs you 10% of your sta each time you jump. In combat this is a good way to quickly and completely pointlessly waste all your sta... just avoid jumping. Especially when you are pulling: Jumping that fence looks cool - is stupid.
You can do "/help" ingame to see a list of all chat commands.
There is one command, that is actually a mob drop (and it's tradeable): the "/flex" emote drops off War Chief Korrin in Dryfoot Stronghold (rare).
With "/who" you see who is in your zone, with "/who all" you see everyone on the server (list cuts off at 100 ppl).
Some zones are on the same actual physical server btw. So if you are in Spider EV in Meadowlands, don't be surprised to see lvl44+ sometimes on the /who list for example. The Freehold EV is on the same server. Another example would be Auqifier and Undercroft, they share a server too.
Rebinding your keys might be a good idea too. I have mine set up to: WASD movement, Q autoattack, E swap weapons, R pull/sheate weapon, T torch, F assist, Shift-F mob assist, I inventory and gathering bag, B char stats; this keeps all keys close together so you don't have to constantly change your hand position while fighting. And I have Patch + Screen + mob assist + autorun + ability cancel on mouse buttons. Also you should probably move the UI elements for your char, your group, your target (which also shows what that mob is currently attacking) and your defensive target more to the center of the screen and closer together.
And don't forget to set Options -> Graphics: Exposure Adjustment to -1,00 to get rid of the completely black nighttime and while you are in there, switch Vegetation Density to "very low"... looks bad, but you might want to be able to actually see the mushrooms and ores etc. that you try to gather.
Lvl34 ability books drop off 3 chev human exiles in Grimstone Canyon. The mobs are called:"Forsaken, Grimstone [baseclass]" so "Supporter" for Warlord/Duelist/Sentinel, "Striker" for Berserker/Brigand/Warden and "Defender" for Marshall/Juggernaut/Knight. Additional source that was found:"Forsaken, Snatchscale [baseclass]" in Redshore Ridge (Snatchscale Village, walking lizards)
Lvl38 ability books drop off "Forsaken, Freehold [baseclass]" in Redshore Freehold. These are random spawns in the lower lvl area of the zone (houses/tents + stonehenge and the forests to the sides of them on my map), anywhere a 3chev can spawn. The higher level mobs beyond the arena aren't able to spawn as Forsaken it seems (not 100% sure) and the ledge has no Forsaken either (same, not 100% sure).
Lvl42 ability books drop off "Forsaken, Cragscale [baseclass]" in the lvl45+ EV(!). These are random spawns on any 3chev location in the whole EV.
And finally: If you find a -great- tactic, ability, camp or item in the game and write a guide about it: Expect to get it nerfed like 3 weeks later!
9) Version history and copyright notice
07.04.2023 updated drop locations for lvl38 and lvl42 ability books.
04.04.2023 Replaced Zone Connection map and Redshore map to add Forgotten Depths dungeon. Added info about Rats Nests existing in Grimstone Canyon. Added items to vambrace, helmet, neck, ring, 1h and offhand. Updated lvl38 ability info and drop location. Added small info about hunting nodes existing now. Added orange to con colors. Added fluxes dropping off slagjacks as only "humans". Changed tool progression. Changed description of Serration and Hemorrhaging Strike. Added a small section about GEL. Oh... and I'm lvl50 High Duelist now.
09.03.2023 Added additional drop location for lvl34 skills. Added 1 earring, 2 scepters and 1 necklace as possible equip choices. Added some additional thoughts about Flourish.
28.02.2023 Added new ability info (34/38/42). Added chances for Hemorrhaging Strike to trigger. Added intro info about this guide being a mainly survival based guide. Added drop info for lvl34 ability. Added a map for Grimstone Canyon, a zone connection map and updated the map for Dryfoot. Added threat reduction info to Disengage. Removed 1h mace from solo weapon choices again after positional nerf.
23.02.2023 Added info from AdricLives about phys resist cap on yellow/red mobs. First Aid description updated and mentioned that heal potions don't generate aggro. Added 1h mace to solo weapon choices. Added a ring slot option.
16.02.2023 Added info from AdricLives about HIT boosting heavy hits and crit on heals. Added mob info for Silkweave Shirt.
15.02.2023 initial guide release
Embers Adrift and all content related to it are (c) Stormhaven Studios LLC. This is a fan-made guide and you may use the information provided in it as you wish in any of your own projects (wikis, map collections, loot databases etc.) as long as you mention this document as the source.
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