Defiant gear for a returning 55 mage?Follow

The Living Legacy promo items were a box containing three pieces of Defiant armor for your level range, a defiant weapon appropriate to your character type, some "increased xp" potions, a book with five charges of PoK Gate and five of some other potion I don't remember. Since defiant armor is droppable until you attune it, it makes sense to have your highest level character claim it (assuming we're not talking about a 50 level gap between who wants it and who claims it, of course). At lvl 55, you'll most likely get Intricate Defiant.

The cost for Defiant on Pover is around 1-5k per piece but if you're patient you'll find deals. Legs and chest pieces are rarer and are typically in the low five digit range. Prices for Elaborate (the top stuff) tends to be higher for chest/legs but around the same for the rest. So many people are high level that the market is glutted with that stuff and not much low-mid level defiant.

Point worth noting -- when you claim your armor, it won't duplicate pieces you already have. So it's worth it to spend a little buying the gloves, boots, bracers, etc and raise your chances for a chest or leg item. Also, take note that there's several versions of the wrist items (wristguard, wristband, wristwrap) which all have slightly different focus effects. Owning a wristguard won't stop the game from giving you a wristwrap. Still, the more slots you can fill cheaply from the bazaar, the better chance you get of saving yourself from having to buy an expensive item.

I can't help you much for plat. I hear the S. Ro Sand giants are decent money these days but I haven't tried them. If you want to hunt for it, pick an older zone around lvl 50ish. Older zones have weaker mobs but the armor is a random (and rare) global drop dependant upon mob level. Mobs drop chest/leg pieces when they are near the cusp of a new tier of defiant. So if mobs at lvl 61+ drop elaborate, the ones around 57-60 will drop the chest/leg bits. So I've heard, anyway.

Finally, if you're returning, check out the Silverwing quests. You can get some pretty nice non-visible slot items from them which, at mid to higher levels, include some special stats such as mana regen, health regen, +attack, etc.



Edited, Aug 30th 2008 6:13pm by Jophiel

A returning 55 mage with old gear should visit scout Madu in Goru'kar Mesa (Crescent Reach stone in PoK zones you into Blightfire Moors, then just head north to Goru'kar Mesa). You will make several thousand plat in the few hours it takes to do his quest and get a free set of level 45 req. armor.

The defiant stuff is way better (but if you are dressed in PoP planar or earlier it will likely be huge upgrades). A further advantage is that the trash mobs you kill to do most stages of these quests drop vendor items (like shiny bear teeth) that sell for 25p or more with the common drops off the named around 75+ to to vendors if you don't want to baz them (and there are vendors in the zone to sell too). So, by the time you complete the set (a few hours over a few visits if unlucky on the named spawns) you will have a bankroll to buy the cheap defiant sets and then claim your freebie.

Of course, if you have a stash of plat or some now ultra-rare item to sell you could skip that entirely. I mention it in case you are coming back plat-poor.

The elite sand giants in Ro are not half bad, I did the two quests given in South Ro dealing with the giants (one is to kill 15, the other is to kill the two named that spawn in South Ro and North Ro, here's one ).

Those two named can take some time to spawn, patience is required. Ofcourse, as long as they don't spawn, you get to kill more giants so more money. With vendors in South and North Ro, you can keep it up for a very long time before you're too encumbered. It took me three days to spawn both named giants, but I only did get about 2k out of it. Naturally, a lvl 50 or so paladin won't be killing giants as fast as a mage.

I did the scout Madu quests easily enough at lvl 47 or so, but at that level I was unable to kill the named bear and wolf, it should be a walk in the park at lvl 55.

Intricate Defiant gear sells for over 5k a piece on Stromm. Or so I found it to be everytime I check the bazaar, it's costly but it is definitely good gear.

Forgot to say: if you farm the giants, you will get the occasional defiant drop too, just a lower lvl, ornate I believe. Defiant weapons too, but those don't really sell for all that much, definitely compared to the gear.

Edited, Aug 31st 2008 2:16pm by Zieveraar