Soulbound weapons... WTH ? (heavy spoilers)

[lonelornfr]

I'd hate to come and whine about the expansion whithout saying that i'm loving it first. So here we go, i love the white march, i'm having a blast, gj Obsidian !

 

Now on the subject that bothers me : soulbound weapons and more specifcally the extremely annoying requirements to level them up. Let's get into the details.

 

St Ydwen's redeemer :

 

1st requirement is dealing 500 dmg to spirit, easy enough there's plenty of them.

2nd requirement is killing 50 vessels, that's where i'll most likely stay stuck. 50 vessels is a lot since you will most likely have cleared the low level areas when you find it. On top of it, the weapon has a proc that instantly destroy the vessel you're attacking, if you kill it like this it wont count and there's a pretty huge chance that you will get a proc when fighting stuff like dargul and fampyrs with high HP.

 

 

Nightshrood :

 

1st requirement is to proc the weapon 13 times, easy.

2nd requirement is to kill 13 humans, that's a lot more tricky if you've already cleared stuff like defiance bay, raedric's hold and dryford ruins. Also note that a lot of humans kills wont count against the requirement. If you kill assassins in defiance bay with it, it doesnt count (i'm pretty sure most of them were humans). The guards at the entrance of the new high level zone (forgot the name) wont count either. I had to finish the requirement by killing civilians...

3rd is killing 3 Cean Gwla, that's where i'm at and hopefully i'll be able to finish it in Caed Nua

 

 

Stormcaller :

 

1st requirement is to inflict 500 electrical damages, easy

2nd requirement is to kill 10 druids (ogre druids wont count), i dont even know where to find that many of them. I killed 3 in stormwall and i think 1 somewhere in the white march, but 10 of them ? Where the hell do i find 10 druid to kill ?

 

 

Greenstone staff i havent had that much trouble with it and i havent found the last soulbound weapon, so cant talk about it atm.

 

 

 

TL:DR The requirements to level soulbound weapons up are mostly a huge headache in a game where the "ennemy ressource" is finite.

[Troupial]

The weapon that you are missing is an estoc that requires you to visit three places around Dyrwood to upgrade-- basically the only one you can fully upgrade without killing anything.

 

And I agree, OP. Like you I'm really satisfied with what they've done with the expansion but I think the way they handled the soulbound weapon upgrades by requiring to "kill x of y" was a bit excessive given that many of us are playing on a continued save where all the enemies have been cleared out in the first place.

 

You can cheese a few of them though. If you attack one of your party members you can get the "inflict x damage" or "proc y debuff" requirements easily. I tried creating a bunch of lvl 1 human druids to see if I could kill two birds with one stone but apparently killing player characters doesn't count for the weapons. If I could find a way to get in combat I'd try out summoning blights/spirits/etc. see if that works.

[Mechalibur]

It seems like these were maybe intended to be picked up around the mid-levels, and then upgraded gradually as you get to max level. Unfortunately, a lot of us are doing White Marches at level 12, and picking the items up very late into our careers, leaving very few enemies we can utilize to get the upgrades.

 

One solution could be adding some respawning enemies in certain zones that allow for upgrading. For example, Esternwood could have respawning skeletons for Ydwen's Redeemer, and Stormgorge could have respawning druids for Stormcaller. I don't think anything like this would break the game, especially if there were some system that stopped respawned enemies from dropping loot.

[Katarack21]

They're fixing this in the next patch; if you've already killed all the creatures of a type, you will be able to upgrade it by killing 25 of anything or something like that.

[AndreaColombo]

St Ydwen's Redeemer not counting destroyed Vessels against its 50-kill target has been confirmed by QA as a bug and is being looked at by the dev team.

 

As for killing Druids, that's a pretty steep requirement but in Act III there's a quest that requires you to kill more than that. I'm sure there are more druids scattered around the game world but the quest in Act III is the only "safe bet" I know.

[Katarack21]

QA has also confirmed that not counting the kills is a problem that has occurred with other soulbound weapons besides the Redeemer.

[Killyox]

Erm... maybe White March part 2 is to continue weapon upgrades?

 

HArd to stay, I started a fresh game for WM

[lonelornfr]

As for killing Druids, that's a pretty steep requirement but in Act III there's a quest that requires you to kill more than that. I'm sure there are more druids scattered around the game world but the quest in Act III is the only "safe bet" I know.

 

I forgot about that quest. Thanks for pointing it out, i have yet to do act 3.

 

As for getting the soulbound weapons "too late", i started a fresh game when the expansion was realeased, and i went to the white marsh as soon as i could (i think i was level 5). But then i had to back out of Durgans Battery because i was getting my ass kicked, the average mob there is like lv9-10 and they come in large groups. By the time i acquired the weapons, i was like level 8 or 9, and from that point i had already killed a lot of stuff.

 

So in short, unless you know exactly what you're doing and you rush those weapons, you're going to have a hard time leveling them up.

 

On a side note, i now finished nightshroud and the soublound staff. Nightshroud is a pretty nice weapon for my offtank (i'm using a priest). The staff however is so bad in my opinion, it's beyond any kind of redemption. For a monk it's laughably bad, my fists hit 3 times as hard and even if you want a meleeing caster, there are so much better weapons around.

Edited August 29, 2015 by lonelornfr

[AndreaColombo]

For St Ydwen's redeemer, you can use meta-knowledge to save the Lighthouse quest in Ondra's Gift (deal damage to Spirits) and either Heritage Hill or levels 6 and 8 of Od Nua (kill Vessels.) The other requirement is fairly easy to "cheat"

 

I do not know how the staff is when fully unlocked, but in general soulbound weapons appear to be well done: They are powerful, but not necessarily a no-brainer. For example, even after fixing the "steal attack speed" mod bug, Tidefall with white-forge refinement is probably going to be a lot better than St Ydwen's Redeemer for DPS unless you're attacking Vessels.

[rheingold]

St Ydwen's Redeemer not counting destroyed Vessels against its 50-kill target has been confirmed by QA as a bug and is being looked at by the dev team.

 

As for killing Druids, that's a pretty steep requirement but in Act III there's a quest that requires you to kill more than that. I'm sure there are more druids scattered around the game world but the quest in Act III is the only "safe bet" I know.

The problem with waiting for that quest is that you are pretty much finished the game by then. And if you are looking for some Druids to kill before then you'll struggle. It's not helped by the fact that some opponents who clearly are druids(they shapeshift and use the same spells) are not recognized as druids by the weapon requirements. Thinking particularly about the twin elms "clansman". So yeah, it's ridiculously difficult to find enough Druids for around 99 percent of the game. Really hope Obs look at this. I do like what they have done with the soul bound weapons, just in practice it's not great at the moment.

[lumpkin]

Looks like you guys answered my question too... Just finished WM after starting with level 12 characters. So there's nothing left in any part of the game world that I haven't done, except jump back down the hole and end the main game again.

I guess basically save the leveling of the soulbound weapons for WM2?

[abaris]

Btw, since this is the spolier section anyway - can anyone tell me where to find St Ydwen's redeemer and Stormcaller?

[AndreaColombo]

Btw, since this is the spolier section anyway - can anyone tell me where to find St Ydwen's redeemer and Stormcaller?

 

The sword is in the northern portion of the Durgan's Battery map, basically in between the Battery and Galvino's place. You'll have to fight a bunch of mercenaries, and one of them will drop it.

 

Stormcaller is split in twain. One half, a silver arrow, is stuck in a dying wolf in the southeast portion of Russetwood; the other half is on top of a tower that sits next to Durgan's Battery.

Edited September 19, 2015 by AndreaColombo

[abaris]

 

Btw, since this is the spolier section anyway - can anyone tell me where to find St Ydwen's redeemer and Stormcaller?

 

The sword is in the northern portion of the Durgan's Battery map, basically in between the Battery and Galvino's place. You'll have to fight a bunch of mercenaries, and one of them will drop it.

 

Stormcaller is split in twain. One half, a silver arrow, is stuck in a dying wolf in the southeast portion of Russetwood; the other half is on top of a tower that sits next to Durgan's Battery.

 

 

Is this supposed to be that group of mercenaries that goes with the bounty quest in Stalwart? If so, I never ran into them. I combed the map repeatedly and they never crop up. Come to think of it, I never ran into any group of mercenaries on the Battery map.

[AndreaColombo]

No, the bounty guys are south of the tower where you can find Stormcaller and won't drop any soulbound weapon (though they should definitely appear if you got the task from Tealdor in Stalwart.

 

For the bandits to appear in the spot marked with a red X in the map below, you need to have at least received the "Regrets Worth Trading" quest from Okrun in Stalwart.

 

 

[gkathellar]

Twin Elms is crawling with druids. They're practically an infestation.

 

Clear 'em out, I say.

[LaSpeakeasi]

I just tell myself:

 

1) Most of them are not that good anyways. They seldom fit the class they are soul bound to. So it's not a huge loss if I couldn't unlock them.

2) We still have another expansion on the way. So maybe I'll complete them there.

[Luma Akasha]

The bow is pretty great. I took Hiravias out of the party to give some one else some face time. I kept wondering who was casting those massive lightning strikes. Sagani procs that thing constantly.

[Oralaina]

The bow is pretty great. I took Hiravias out of the party to give some one else some face time. I kept wondering who was casting those massive lightning strikes. Sagani procs that thing constantly.

 

Yeah.  I have it on my pc, an elf ranger, and she is literally hell-lightning on wheels.  I have the other soulbound weapons as well, but Stormcaller is the best by far, followed a ways behind by St Ydwen's Redeemer.  The others are better than some of the similar weapons (well, don't know about Nightshroud yet - just got it and bound it to my rogue then finished the Battery, she's just barely started on the first of the bind processes) - though I really have to look into how good some of the others would be with Durgan steel and enchants....