For those of you that have been following our new show, Faction Wars: A New World Podcast, I mentioned on our most recent episode that I am starting a new character on a No Death Run. I don’t know why I hate myself, but I do. So, with optimism in my eyes, I created this absolute monster; Let me introduce you to itsHorpsHusband.
Her red hair and purple mustache glint in the sun in just the perfect way as she jogs across the fields of Aeternum. With this hell-spawn in tow, we set out on our No Death Run. But what does that mean?
I have a few goals with this character, all without dying:
- Beat the main story questline
- Reach Level 60
- Get all trade skills to 200 INCLUDING FISHING
If I die I delete the character and start over. I’m also doing this without any friends on my server, no company to have top tier gear funneled to me, and I will not be playing as a tank or healer to buff my way through every fight.
In my first 15 hours, here is how we’re doing:
Player Level – 28
Weapon Mastery – Hatchet 10 / Bow 9
Attribute Skew – STR 15, DEX 115, INT 5, FOC 5, CON 43
Gathering Skills – Logging 74, Gathering 88, Mining 81, Skinning 75, Fishing 8 (fuck)
Refining Skills – Smelting 98, Weaving 65, Woodworking 89, Stonecutting 49, Leatherworking 73
Crafting Skills – Weaponsmithing 26, Armoring 32, Engineering 68, Jewelcrafting 28, Arcana 8, Cooking 63, Furnishing 0 (fuck)
Summary of the shit-show so far:
Deciding on a good weapon combo for solo play was super important early. I play Life Staff on my main, so I don’t have a great depth of knowledge around other builds because I’m too stupid to retain information around the 1 weapon I use, let alone all 12. I had originally planned on running bow/spear for the ranged abilities with bow + CC of spear and both primary scaling with DEX so that I could invest more points into CON. I realized pretty quickly however that having the same damage type on both weapons can get me into sticky situations pretty easily, so I quickly pivoted from spear to hatchet. Even though the damage scaling is secondary on DEX, it’s easy enough to find DEX/STR gear, so I wasn’t too worried about it. Plus I get the added benefit of pretty strong self-sustain with the Berserk Tree on Hatchet. Here’s a break down of my Weapon Mastery trees so far:
I made it through the early story missions fairly easily up to getting the Azoth Staff. We only had 1 scare early on where I walked into a wolf den that had a few more wolves than I was expecting. Luckily we were able to run out of there and jump off a cliff quickly to avoid an early death around level 5. After getting my Azoth Staff (post 1.1 update) I then have to clear 3 corrupted breaches. I don’t know if you remember what it’s like to go into a corrupted breach at level 26 by yourself, but it’s not fun. The tentacle took out 2/3rd’s of my health before I even started taking corruption damage. I promise you’ve never seen a toon dodge cancel faster in your life. At that point I knew I needed to put on my best “I’m just a noob pls help” face and find a level 60 in the area to do the heavy lifting. It didn’t take long to find the absolute legend EmberredAbyss who cleared out a bunch of corrupted zones for me with ease. We’ve now made it to the point where I have to do Amrine. My plan is to over level a bit more (targeting the 32ish range) and see if we can’t get a solid group through LFG to carry me. If you’re on US West Yggdrasil and want to help out the cause, feel free to add me as a friend at “itsHorpsHusband“. I’ll try and post an update every week so you can follow along with my journey to NOT DIE!
