PoTA Teir 2

contributed by Unleashed

Selecting a Side

Before you can do anything, you will first need to get a group to kill the sentry guarding the t2 area. This is more or less identical to killing sentries you did earlier for access and into the order and chaos side. The t2 area is more or less identical to the t1 area, but directly above it.

You will now have to make a sacrifice of your blood and some animal fat to either the order or chaos side. (Note: You will need 3 Clumps of Animal Fat that drop frequently from random mobs to do this) Essentially this comes down to choosing between going Order or Chaos. Here is what your choice will affect:

  • - You will become KoS (Kill on Sight) on the opposite side after completing the next quest.
  • - Your set bonuses will be *SLIGHTLY* different. For example, I believe the difference in t3 is something like +5 str, dex, int, +5% accuracy for chaos vs. +5 con, wis, vit, +100 ac for order for the 2 piece set bonus. Personally think the Chaos one is better but it's relatively insignificant.
  • - You will only be offered t2 trials (more on these later) from your side.
  • - You will only be able to dedicate yourself to a god on your side (more on this later).
  • - You gain extra faction for certain faction kill quests and less for others depending on your side. In other words, some targets are order, some are chaos, and you'll get more faction for killing targets of your side. May sound confusing but honestly this is very insignificant as this is a poor and unnecessary way of gaining faction.
  • - Your mount will be either a Nightmare if Chaos or a Pegacorn if Order. Same stats, much different graphics obviously.
  • - You have a different vault kill quest and sister's trial, though note that you can help on these quests regardless of affiliation. Of note here is that the Sister's trial is extremely difficult, but the Order side is generally considered easier.
  • - You are only able to activate the rift to kill the chicken on the opposite side. So if you go Chaos, you can only activate the rift to damage the Order chicken. Since these are 12 man raids and only 1 person has to activate the rift, you only need 1 person of the opposite side with the ability to activate the rift to do the chickens. (More on this later)

Your choice will NOT have an affect on the following:

  • - Base stats of your armor (only set bonuses different, and only the first 2 for t3; the last, and best bonus is the same regardless of side) and cost, materials, etc. to build your armor.
  • - Ability to farm slivers, souls, offerings from mobs. They all come from the same mobs and quests at the same rate regardless of side.
  • - Ability to assist on t1 trials. You can still help with trials that take place on the opposite side, but you are KOS over there so care must be taken. For the most part, we have the ability to avoid these problems for most trials.

Farm 100 Souls

You will now be asked to harvest and offer 100 souls of the opposite side. For chaos, this means you must kill 100 mobs on the order side of the pantheon and vice versa for order.

In general, the easiest and quickest way to accomplish this is to group with a psi, pull a xerklin from the ramp just off the middle area with Ini-Herat, wait for it to spawn peons, taking care not to stun or counter its spell, then mez the xerklin and kill the peons. You will get souls for each peon kill, then can release the xerklin, which is back at full health and will attempt to spawn more peons when below 50%. It's dull and sadly peons do not give EXP but this is for the most part the quickest way to farm 100 souls.

After collecting 100 souls, approach the little sacrificial bowl thing in front of your t2 avatar (Kaerellun or Alurad) and place your souls down. Go through all the dialogue thats offered. One of the options you click is necessary to collect slivers as a reward from KDQ quests which you will need to build your armor. You will be explained (poorly) on how to make your armor but I'll explain in detail here.

Note that after turning in your souls quest you can FINALLY pick up your t1 chest piece from Ini-Herat.


Building Your T2 Armor

Upgrading your t1 armor piece to t2 essentially requires 2 things: Enough faction to be offered the piece by your t2 avatar, and an appropriate number of corresponding sealers. You will need 5 sealers each for the boots and gloves, 7 each for shoulders and helm, 9 for the legs, and 12 for the chest. This comes to 45 sealers total. Sounds simple, but it's a bit more complicated than it sounds. Also note that when you upgrade your armor (from t1 to t2, or t2 to t3) you will lose anything socketed in it. I wouldn't bother socketing anything in t1 or t2 armor unless its something cheap that you don't mind losing, unless you have a bunch of money lying around to retrieve it before upgrading… which, by the way, you will need a fair amount of to make your armor.


Gaining T2 Faction

I don't have the exact amount of faction needed to max your faction, but it's in the neighborhood of 27k or so. T2 has a variety of ways in which you can gain faction and I'll outline each of them and discuss how efficient each method is.


Money

You can straight up offer money in return for t2 faction. In short, don't do it. It doesn't give you much and it's not worth it as faction isn't terribly hard to get and you'll want your money to make your armor and fill its augs.


T2 Trials

You can take trials that are basically the same as their t1 counterparts from the same place as the t1 trials. You can repeat these trials once per day I believe. These ARE separate from the t1 trials despite their similarities, meaning helping someone on a t1 trial will NOT give you credit or faction. Nor will someone helping you do your trial get credit as a t1 trial. I don't have the exact amount of faction you gain per trial as I went chaos and the chaos trials all suck. However one advantage to going Order is that you can solo the Valus trial with the godwalk bug. Invis and godwalk to the back of the chaos t2 side after taking the trial then simple select anything as you will never spawn a mob if you choose wrong.


Farming Souls

Souls will drop similar to the ones you needed for the quest to get to t2, but from different mobs. The souls basically can drop from any SoD (KDQ) mob. They are automatically added to your inventory, no looting required and are worth 30 faction each. Might not sound like much but the key here is that you need to go to SoD anyway to get slivers, so you'll be getting two things done at once.

A sorc thats kiting in SoD can easily gain a bunch of souls for himself/herself and anyone in their group.


Diplomacy

Another solid way of getting faction. Very highly recommended because t3 faction is a lot harder to get, but diplomacy remains its potency. In t2 you can parley one avatar on your side per day (Every 20 hours actually… you will see a message saying something like 'You receive Scarred Belt' or some crap like that when it resets and you can parley again. Make sure to do the lvl 50 parley) and will receive 600 faction for completing it. As a lvl 50 parley, you must be at least lvl 45 to access the parley. There is also a 2000 outsider presence requirement, but if you kept up with your gear, this shouldn't be a problem as you need 2500 to push levers by 10.

Of note here is that diplo in POTA is a LOT harder than civic parleys. There are a lot of strategies that work here but you do need a solid set of cards that work well together and you need certain answer cards for some of the really nasty cards that the NPCs like to use in POTA. Attempting at lvl 45 without a good deck will likely result in loss; however it's certainly possible to win with the right deck. POTA diplo will easily get you to lvl 50 so once you hit 45 it may be worthwhile to either take time to build a good POTA deck or ask for advice on building one.

Faction Requirements

Beginning at 4600 Dynamic, and exactly every 4000 faction after that (finally ending at 24600 Dynamic) is when the pieces are unlocked. The pieces are unlocked in the following order: Boots, Gloves, Shoulders, Helm, Legs, Chest. They will be offered in your t2 avatar's merchant wares and require sealers to purchase which I will discuss now.


Gathering Sealers

Sealers are crafted items which require 3 pieces: A purchased item from your avatar, something called a cord, created from slivers and echoes, and finally a harvestable resource. You require 1 of each for every sealer to be crafted.

Energy Sealer

This is simply a bought item from your avatar that becomes available roughly around the time your first piece of armor is available from faction. They cost 10g each, which means your cost for these alone will come to 4.5 plat for t2. Ouch!

Cords

This is the most complex item to make. Each cord is composed of 100 slivers and 1 echo. Note that there are t2 slivers and t3 echoes. t3 slivers won't become available until you finish t2 faction, but t3 echoes come from the same place as t2 echoes.

Slivers

Slivers come as a reward from KDQ quests once you unlock t2 and go through the dialogue. You should now notice them in the rewards along with the crates. The primary method of getting this is through SoD quests, but you can get them for the repeatable BoD quests as well, though only at a t1 SoD rate. Here are the amount of slivers you get:

  • T1 collects/names: 10/11
  • T2 collects/names: 13/14
  • T3 collects/names: 16/17
  • T4 collects/names: 24/25

Quick Breakdown of SoD

Note: Also see KDQ Quests

Since SoD is a major part of your POTA armor, I'll give a quick breakdown of SoD. There are four tiers of SoD as broken down by faction you have as follows:

  • T1: 0 faction
  • T2: 500 faction
  • T3: 3000 faction
  • T4: 11000 faction
  • Max Faction: 27.5k (unsure if thats exact)

Every quest can be reset once per 20 hours by a skill to be repeated. This skill requires an item bought in the tent in the middle for 1 plat but can be sold for 1 plat and rebought when needed if money is tight.

As you first unlock each tier, you are offered 5 collect quests. These simply require you to kill a certain mob and collect 10 of an item it drops. It will always drop 1 or 2 of them per group.

After you complete each collects quest at least once, you will unlock the named quests. These are basically a named version of each of the mobs you just killed. Some are vastly different from the regular mob and have certain strategies required to kill them. Those of us who have done this before are now quite familiar with this so feel free to ask any of us for help.

Note that since everyone in the group gets credit for the names, they are generally the most efficient method of gathering slivers and gaining KDQ faction. Naturally you still have to do the collects to unlock them, and chilling while a sorc kites is always good too Smiley

Anyway, you'll need 4500 slivers total to completely upgrade your t2 armor, so you're gonna spend quite some time in SoD.


Echoes and Harvestable Mats

T2 requires 1 t6 Ultra Rare mat per combine. The requirements depend on the type of crafter you have making your sealers (note that regardless of your crafter type, you can make sealers for any adventuring class):

  • Outfitter- Mature Steelweave Bale
  • Blacksmith- Wyrmsteel Ore
  • Artificer- Ancient Timber

Echoes come from two places: harvesting surplus bonuses and from crates as rewards from KDQ quests. They come rather rarely from crates so that is an unreliable source. Echoes come as a surplus bonus ONLY from mining; hence it is quite common to use Wyrmsteel Ore for your t2 sealers and a blacksmith since you need to mine or assist someone mining (you get way more echoes in groups) in order to get echoes anyway. Because of this, ores are usually more abundant and cheaper on the AH as well. Also, since t2 echoes are generally easier to get than t3 echoes (both come from the same place), people further along on their pota armor may have surplus t2 echoes so ask around!


Crafting Sealers

To get the crafting quest, you must get POTA access and do the crafting quest line inside POTA. Doing so will result give you recipes to make the POTA things. Obviously you don't need to make your own sealers; we have crafters of more less all types who can do the combine for you.

The combine can sometimes be difficult depending your level, gear, stats, luck, etc. and since there's a decent amount of resources devoted into them (especially at t3), you may want to take every measure possible (i.e. diplo buffs, potions, etc.) on your first combine until you are comfortable you can safely make them.


Cost Overview

Tier 2:

  • 45 Sealers: 4.5 plat
  • 4500 Slivers: Lots of SoD grinding.
  • 45 T6 Rares: Decent amount of harvesting
  • 45 Echoes of Resonant Energy: Group mining, or surplus from other people
  • Max Faction: Diplo, SoD grinding, kiting, abusing t2 trials

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