The Exile's Path

Day 10-11 (04-05.2016)

Dembinishing
Oh, if I had known that this annoying thing scales with high-level experience, I wouldn't have been so surprised by the small number of level 100 characters in the game. As it turns out, to overcome the last few dozen levels, you don't just need to farm three or four times more experience than before – considering the scaling, it becomes tens or hundreds of times more difficult and unimaginable than I even thought.
The only way out, as I mentioned before, is to play with card dungeons. As it turns out, there are a total of fifteen difficulty levels for them, ranging from 68 to 82. Even then, at levels 90+, you'll get an incredibly small amount of experience, and a single death penalty will negate hundreds of hours of gameplay. Another problem is that a character, no matter what level, cannot instantly unlock high-level cards, but only level 68, and then there is some chance of getting level 69, then 70 in the next one, and so on, with a decreasing probability. My record for these one and a half days is the fourth (i.e., level 71), and I haven't made any further progress. However, there is a positive side: when in a group, only one person needs to have a card for all allies to be able to enter the same dungeon, so I will most likely switch to party farming completely; it seems that soloing this challenge will be difficult even with 24 hours of free time per day.
But completely by chance, I got this very rare treasure map, which even veterans don't often find:

And indeed – two huge rooms, packed to the brim with rare and legendary items. This is cheating!, I thought, filling my inventory with items. Here, for example, is a top-tier armor for a warrior (and I got two of them):

There were all sorts of items, and of course, not a single one for my class. It's so obvious that I wasn't even surprised. I'll just keep running around in outdated level 60 gear.


***
By the way, I had to redo some skills and abilities. I found out that passive skills in the game can still be changed for special spheres, which are given for main quests (which no longer exist) and sometimes drop during gameplay. I spent almost all of them, boosted my damage, and maxed out my shield, including the ability to reset HP to increase resistance to all damage and immunity to chaos and poison. Now I really have only one heal point, lol, but at least I finally have an impenetrable magic shield, which I'm very happy about. Now I mainly face a lack of reagents, good items, and the right skills, mainly because I rushed to the end-game too quickly; I should have spent a couple of months getting used to it like normal people, oh well.
Anyway, I reached level 80, which was VERY difficult. If these nasty high-level cards dropped, it wouldn't have been so hard; otherwise, it's hopeless, as all the locations are too weak for my Sorceress, oh well. If the RNG continues to be against me, I'll look for a good party for twenty-hour runs, hmm....


Summary: Day 10-11
Playtime: ~30 hours (93 hours total)
Character level: 80
Experience gained: ~860,000,000
Highest dungeon: Tier 4 (71)