Friday 9 October 2009

DDO: The turbo favour Barb

Store points for the DDO item shop can be purchased or earned by favour.

There's a one off payout per server that roughly translates to get an alt to 50 favour on every server. (You can delete it afterwards if you like).

You also get a payment of 25 Turbine Points for every 100 favour earned.

You can earn this payment multiple times by zerging a new character to 100 favour then deleting it.

This is a look at a build designed to do that fast.

Race: Dwarf. Dwarves get enhancement bonuses to axe damage which is probably the most useful early game enhancement. Other useful enhancements include various saving throw bonuses, axe hit chance, Constitution and combat adjustments against certain creatures. It's a good collection.

Also starting with +2 Con and -2 Cha is useful.

Stats: 18 Strength, 18 Con, 10 Dex, rest leave at base. Hit stuff, don't die, nuff said.

Skills: Jump, Balance and Swim. All of these save time in the very early game. Later Swim becomes redundant when you get an item allowing underwater action but you'll be deleting the character before that and there's a lot of water on Korthos Island.

Feat: Toughness or Weapon Focus: Slashing. Toughness is nice because it allows you to pump the hit points with enhancements making a big difference in the early game.


So what are the strengths of the build?

1) Movement

Innate 10% move bonus, stacking +35% Sprint ability usable 5 times a rest and Expeditious Retreat from your Anger's Boots twice per day once you've done Redemption. This is a very very fast character.

2) Very high early game damage.

You're optimised for Great Axe and guess what the big weapon pushed at you in the early game is? That's right.

3) Burst damage

Many early instances only really have one nasty fight. Rage once per day is perfect for that.

Weaknesses

Worse saves and armour than some of the other options like Paladin. Tempting to play him like a zerging maniac in groups which might annoy others if you can't control yourself.

Strategy: skip The Grotto, then group if you can. If you can't find groups then zerg Korthos on normal, grabbing a cleric hireling as soon as you can.

You are looking for fast groups doing Elite instances where possible. Hard is ok. If they're doing Normal it won't be quicker to do it with them than it would solo.

You're zerging straight to the objective in your quest window. No point worrying about optionals, experience or chests. Just zerg straight there then finish out.

Keep an eye on your Favour count. It's quite easy with a character like this to lose track and grind to about 110 favour without noticing!

I can finish running one of these in an evening.

PS: take the Feather Fall cloak from the Redemption quest. Speeds up Misery's Peak quite a bit.

Update: you can now start at level 4 after you've ground out 1000 favour on a server (or buy this facility in the cash shop). It will be much quicker doing Turbo Favour Barbs if you start them at level 4.

3 comments:

  1. Interesting strategy! A high risk of burnout I imagine, any tips for avoiding this, or is it just a matter of head-down and grind it out?

    Although, instantly turning everything in a five mile radius into hamburger when you flex your eyebrows probably doesn't get boring that quickly.

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  2. I think to avoid the burnout thing you need to see it as a minigame in itself.

    If you play Solitaire do you think "not another hand! I've done this already"

    Same with the grossly overpowered and superfast low level barb.

    Run around at 200 miles an hour being uber and murdering everything if it's fun but don't grind it. Play it because that's what you feel like doing.

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  3. Trying this out with my brother. We zerged through all of Korthos on hard in an hour and a half. I'm lovingly dubbing a pair of these "The Meat Grinder."

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