Runewarden (2h) - artifacts?

Ekin

Hi, I've been poking around a bit and haven't found anything too recent or specific to answer my question(s).

So here's my situation - after a fair hiatus I've come back to IRE and would like some advice on artifacts for my chosen class. I have maybe 4k credits available, so not really that much, but enough for a few fun toys.

1. My thoughts on PVP: I'm not particularly interested in 1v1, and unless something really significant has changed, group combat is a lot of spam x annoying thing, so artifacts aren't much of a factor (unless you're artied to the teeth, I guess). But do tell me if I'm wrong. (Not really a question, but if anyone is keen on discussing it, figure it'd help to number it.)

2. So talk to me about PVE arties. I know Runewarden is really tanky naturally - I was wondering if that would allow me to forgo some defensive artifacts, maybe in favor of utility? Or damage/speed, but that's probably more expensive.

3. I'm almost certainly going to pick up wings unless my class has more travel utility than I thought. (I think it's just the horse rune? Haven't combed through all my skills yet.) Any other neat utility artifacts? Both class-specific and general.

4. I'm going to pick up the no-brainer lessons as well, so that should help me on the way to tri-trans. I'd love some advice on what other skills I might want to pick up. Trans Avoidance looks pretty good?

5. Any specific tradeskills that are handy to have? I like exploring, so I was thinking of picking up either plants or minerals, how are they different? I see there's been a rework to Transmutation, but not knowing how it was previously, I haven't followed that thread too well.

Appreciate your time in reading this!

Minifie

With 4k, trans out class, avoidance, survival, weaponry, tattoos (having so many more tattoo slots is -amazing-), get trample in riding (runies have balanceless vault so a mount is handy), some fitness and philo for skills. 

Should be about 1/2 your 4k there, but it’s a solid investment. With 2k left over, grab wings, crit+Mayan and con+sip combo arties, then a level 1 sword if you have enough left over. This’ll give you good defensive measures, an escape tool, and solid boost in speed and damage on the weapon. 

Nazihk

Skills: If you are mainly interested in PvE, most of Chivalry isn't important. It's pretty damn important for PvP, mind you, but if all you really want to do is PvE you can neglect Chivalry without ever really feeling the loss. If you intend to skip Chivalry, I wouldn't learp past blocking. Clotting is nice but you'll get it in Survival and Survival will be more important.

You'd want Runelore at least to Runeblades. Runeblades are a strictly PvP skill, but they're so good that you want them anyways. I'll assume you trans this, just for convenience and the ability to do totem stuff.

Trans Avoidance is the best bang for your buck as far as damage reduction is concerned and is absolutely worth picking up. Survival is great and useful, you will probably want to trans this as well. The curing is less important in PvE than in PvP, but it's still important and you'll want it if you ever intend to PvP at all. 

Riding is super useful for a knight, and should probably be your next trans skill. Leaping, dashing, and flying are all powerful abilities that this skillset can grant you. 

Weaponry is mostly useless for a knight. You'll want Parry, eventually, but that's 100% PvP and it's only about gifted. Pick it up from house credit sales and the like. Tattoos are nice, but once you get past Canvas you mostly need them for PvP reasons, and stencils have made tattoos much easier to deal with. So this isn't that important either, imo. Nice, but not super important.

PvE Artifacts: Offensively, L1 crit pendant is the artifact with the best bang:buck ratio. An artifact sword or hammer is also a very good choice for this. I personally feel that the sword is a better buy, but if you've got a thing for hammers they're perfectly viable. I would not go above an L2 for the weapon.

Defensively, bracelets, con belt, health regen, health sip. All strong. The armor paragon for damage absorbtion is super good but also super expensive so probably out of your budget. 

Utility:  Wings are great. On your budget, I don't know that I'd get more than that.

Tradeskills: No, not really. Inkmilling lets you ink tattoos faster, but that's about it. They're only about ~100cr each, though, so you can pick ones you find interesting without sacrificing too much.

If I were you, my budget would probably look something like this:

2x No Brainer Lessons is 333 credits worth of lessons, and I assume ~200 credits from leveling to 80. So a budget of about 4533 credits.

Skills: 1450cr
Trans Weaponmastery: 290cr
Trans Runelore:  290cr
Trans Survival: 290cr
Trans Avoidance: 290cr
Trans Riding: 290cr

This is a very bare bones skill selection that assumes you're not doing any serious fighting and that you, accordingly, don't really need anything that doesn't help you kill mobs.

Artifacts: 2750cr
L1 crit pendant: 200cr
L1 weapon: 350cr
L2 bracelets: 700cr
L1 con belt: 400cr
L1 health regen: 300cr
Wings: 800cr

That's 4200cr, which leaves about 333 credits leftover for incidentals or picking up Chivalry or the like. 

Cigol

I am quite new myself, also a 2H runewarden, but if you aren't interested in pvp is there much point in taking Runelore passed Runicarmour or Chivalry passed clotting? I can see fury having use in PvE to mow down something huge, but I don't know if there's anything in end game bashing that you couldn't just war of attrition down.

It feels like the lessons might be better spent on avoidance, for a PvE character.

I took gathering and inkmilling as my trade skills, just because it seems convenient to be able to make my own inks.

Other than that I'm pretty interested to hearing some answers to your other questions, too.

Ekin

@Cigol - That's a good point, I hadn't considered saving lessons that way. Although I should clarify, I don't doubt I'll do group combat eventually, that stuff is usually fun when it isn't just a numbers game. I was just noting that I didn't think group combat required any specific artefact setup.

Thanks for your input on tradeskills, too. Didn't consider inks, but that's not a bad idea. If I cared enough I'd do some crunching on price of common Runelore inks against cost of their reagents...but then I'd be obligated to do that for all the curative stuff too. And I'll probably come to the conclusion that it's more cost efficient to buy the finished product. Might as well pick something I'll enjoy.

@Minifie - Thank you, appreciate the list, covered pretty much everything quite concisely.

@Nazihk - Thank you for your reply as well! Very nicely broken down. I feel like I should clarify (and apologies that my original post made it sound otherwise, but) I'm not averse to some PVP, just no interest in the 1v1 variety - more due to the entry barrier (time being the key here) than apathy. I'll consider holding off on trans Chivalry either way because starting out I won't have much use for it. Didn't realize it gave bows, that doesn't sound very chivalrous.

On warhammer vs bastard, I've determined I'll have to think more about it. Might wait until I'm more familiar with their differences before picking one over the other in a permanent way. Why do you feel the sword is the better pick? I'm personally unfamiliar with what a lot of the skillset does.

In the end, for trans skills, I'll definitely want Runelore and Weaponmastery, with Chivalry as an eventual goal. Avoidance and Survival also seem easy picks, and I really like the suggestion of Riding. Those are some nice movement abilities. For those skills, we'll call it 1.8k, with a small buffer.

For arties, definitely liking the crit pendant, and the wings were a foregone conclusion - that's 1k already. I'm going to wait on the weapon, so L2 bracelets, L1 health regen, sip, and con bring it up to 1.9k. I'll need to drop one to meet budget here, I'm thinking the health regen? I don't know how much regen those actually give. But without the regen it's 1.6k, which leaves me in a good place to pick up the weapon eventually.

Are there arties that should be considered for a character who might get into some group combat? (besides increased enemy slots) I was a mage class in my previous IRE, so best to assume I know nothing except do x annoying vibe.

Caled

For warhammer vs bastard, I recently did some testing of speed and damage in pve, for forged hammer/bastard vs L1 hammer, L1 bastard and L2 bastard.

You can find the thread where I posted the full breakdown, but the summary is essentially:

• forged hammer is better than forged bastard
• L1 bastard is significantly faster than forged bastard, and is good value
• L2 bastard for bashing is neither quicker nor more damaging
• L1 hammer is not measurably faster than forged hammer.

So, buy a L1 bastard if you want to get a cool weapon, the rest are for PVE

Note: I do plan to retest the L2 bastard speed as those results were unexpected so I may have messed something up. Unless diminishing returns kicked in really suddenly at ~3.0s balance.

Antonius

Minifie said:

With 4k, trans out class, avoidance, survival, weaponry, tattoos (having so many more tattoo slots is -amazing-), get trample in riding (runies have balanceless vault so a mount is handy), some fitness and philo for skills. 

Should be about 1/2 your 4k there, but it’s a solid investment. With 2k left over, grab wings, crit+Mayan and con+sip combo arties, then a level 1 sword if you have enough left over. This’ll give you good defensive measures, an escape tool, and solid boost in speed and damage on the weapon. 

Note that these are artefact cart only, so if you're using retirement credits (or credits you've already bought), you'd need to find somebody who is willing to buy them for you from the website in exchange for credits in-game. That may be possible, but I wouldn't necessarily count on it.

Caled

Not to mention, only a few days left for the articart so you'd need to decide quickly.

In my preview post, I said "rest are for PVE."  I meant to say PVP.

Also, I had a look at my testing of the L2 bastard speed, and it was flawed. I'll retest it tomorrow using the same targets that I used for the other weapons (targets that don't knock me off balance and afflict).

Ekin

@Antonius - Thanks for the clarification! I was initially confused but found them after some poking around. Those prices are a real steal, but definitely not something I can afford anyway.

Ought to mention that yes I'm working with retirement credits only.

@Caled - Yes, I've actually seen your post. Because of it, I picked up a warhammer for my current bashing needs. I was a bit concerned seeing that the forged hammer speed was (~0.2s) faster than the L1 bastard, but seeing the L2 speeds would be good.

I look forward to seeing your results!