If you're new to the game and have got your feet we a bit, you might want to give the "insane" difficulty level a try in the noobie area. This works great with a fighter character, and I haven't tried other classes enought to speak for them, but I'd imagine it'd work well enough for them too.

Insane difficulty gives mobs +150% health and +80% to damage - and yields +150% loot (which appears to affect both loot quality and quantity).

The thing with the noobie area is that the mobs there are very weak, so increasing their damage doesn't do much for them (you almost have to be blatantly suicidal to die in noobland), and increasing their health just makes them take a bit longer to kill.

Take advantage of the fact that insane mode pretty much only jacks up your loot intake in the noobie areas.

For the little bit of extra (killing) time you end up getting much more gold, way more sellable junk (I only loot greens and up, not that many grays drop on insane mode) and much nicer usable gear (you should get some nice yellows).

You might even want to reset instances (right-click on your portrait in the upper left hand corner and select it from the menu) a few times, do the repeatable quest (slay 25 rats, 750g per completion), and run thru the bosses' lair a few times (only get quest credit once, but he's always there after a reset for the smackdown).

If you do all of this, you can end up with a nice pile of gold to buy skills or gear with once you hit town, and you'll have much nicer gear for when you hit Agernon and mobs are much less forgiving.

You can continue insane mode once you hit town and Agernon, but I personally toggle between normal mode (fast xp, weak loot) and insane mode (great loot, slower xp) depending on what I feel like at the moment.

Insane mode is much more truly insane outside of the noobie area. But if you're a bit more geared up from doing the noob areas on insane, it's doable.

As an example, I ended up restarting a few times yesterday trying to figure out which type of character I wanted. I ended up going with a fighter and a plan to dual wield fast (ludicrous speed) weapons.

I quickly ramped up to insane diff and found it to be a cakewalk in the noobie lands, and the loot was piling up so fast that it was a good thing waypoint scrolls were also dropping consistently. I reset instances a few times, did the rat quest at least 10 times, etc, etc, and finally stopped the abuse once I hit level 7. I ended up leaving the noob lands with around 25k in gold, piles of extra potions and waypoint scrolls, mostly yellow or nice blue gear, and put a few lvl 8 yellow upgrades in the bank.

And I applaud you for this:) It seems like so many just jump into Town without even doing anything in Dew Valley and have no clue as where the are supposed to go next.

HooZa for Zaroom!!!! noob extraordinar!!!

Gary

Nice hint! Cleared Dew Valley yesterday on insane and got lots of goldies!

wish I had seen this earlier... well I may backtrack and clear Dew Valley atleast once agian (already lvl 7) and may clear Agernon lvl 1 several times agian

Well... This IS a good guide I must say, nice work.

But at the same time I must say I have never been short on gold, even at the start and I have atm around 1,5 million at lvl 35 (No i do not buy every skill possible). Lots of people do not sign up as member until they have tried it out and are therefore past the noob area. They have no use of purple until they sign up, so...

Now this might sound like I dont like your way of thinking and guide, but that is not the case. Not at all. This is good work as I said to start with. I was just stating some points. ok?

As a noob, I read your post and tried this out last night. I am a Mage and only lvl 3 when I started. I boosted up to Insane! and had a little trouble taking on monsters. Went through a few more pots but nothing major. Thing is, I started to get better loot drops so I was able to increase my gear and thus my defense rating and was able to survive better because of the better gear. If not for this post I would have had no clue that you could increase the difficulty. Thanks!

Great guide buddy, you make some points that i wish i had known of back when i was a noobling. I will be looking forward to your future guides. ; ) maybe you will find a usefull way to do something else. and you can ask other people around here i am usually not so nice to noobs or anyone for that manner. good job.

I just started about a week ago and I would agree.

The game is easy enough, so why not go "Insane".

No you won't level as fast, but you will get more stuff and imo, it makes the game more fun.

It's pretty much just leveling time vs loot.

Personal preference more than any real advantage.

I just started playing yesterday and I actually did exactly what you have here (great minds think alike huh?). I took this strategy one step further though. What I'm doing is going through each dungeon on Normal, then once I finish it, I ramp it back up to Insane and clear it again for the reasons above.

Some other things I've done is to return to the Dew Dungeon area, after I've left it, to stock up. No matter how easy the mobs are to beat, the game will drop items around your general level. So, going back to the easier area, and then ramping it up to Insane, allows you easy access to better gear so that the dungeon you're working on is a lot easier.

One last thing for noobs: accept EVERY quest you can as soon as you're able (and once you've completed one, renew it if you can). For the most part you'll fulfill quest related objectives while you're leveling or harvesting loot, so you might as well rack up what change you can on the side. If you're going for two different quests, but both have the same goals (such as killing a certain mob), then fulfilling the goal once (ie killing one mob) will count for both quests(two birds with one stone ).

Hope I helped some of you!

I did the rat quest...turned it in...and reset. The rat quest was not available after that...what did I do wrong?

umm, nice tip
ill surely take it into consideration when i finish the dl and start playing ^^

How do you go from normal mode to insane mode? Can it be done solo or only in a group?

There is no need to reset an instance. It seems to take a minute to take affect. If you do it in the middle of a fight it will not change the difficulty for that mob.

Oh Gee, I wish I had known that I wondered why I wasn't getting any new ones. Oh well, I guess i will just have to make sure I do all the quests with my new toon after the build comes out.

Great tip! I did all the quests in Dew forest (a few of the repeatable quests more than once cause i didnt notice it was same quest lol) but wish i had done this! Also will help out good bit once i finally get the girlfriend playing this game lol beable to boost her up a good bit right from the get go

Stromgarde

Thanks for this. This is my first MMO, which means I've been spending everything I get on health potion. Thanks to your post I've had a great way to be able to buy more and live longer. Posts like this make getting started a hell of a lot easier. You rule.

Although this is still a decent suggestion the latest patch made Dew Valley much more difficult that it was previously. Think this was due to most people using zero health pots throughout. On insane you use a lot of pots now. Not sure if it is still profitable on insane for new players.

HEHE Ripper I think you missed the "new players" in my post. For those that have multiple multiple multiple (hell how many do you have now?) characters that know how it is still profitable.

Thanks a bunch! I just started yesterday, and will probably start up a new character tonight using this gameplan. I'm also pretty sure I'll do the "normal once, then insane once" for every subsequent dungeon as long as possible.

Now, to find an appropriate way to build my ranger.

I tend to be the devil's advocate in many things and in this case I am going to plead the case of "all insane, (almost) all the time," for myself at least.

There is one significant benefit to running early stuff (and later) on insane - experience. Not experience POINTS, but real experience in fighting effectively and efficient management of health and mana. You learn very quickly what doesn't work (because your "butt" gets waxed) and from that you learn better techniques.

I started out trying to use no pots, since the only penalty is death (which is not permanent outside of HDOL, I think) and if you use the WP scrolls judiciously, you won't lose much ground. Then I tried to go farther each time, learning all the way what works on what monsters and how to stretch my HP and Mana to the limit.

But then I also thrive on challenge and I work better against a deadline or seemingly unreachable goals. So the more I got my "clock cleaned," the more determined I was to smoke the critters the next time.

Later on as I moved up the levels, keeping the best gear I found and reading F-series' attributes guide for adding points, I started to notice I was getting noticeably stronger. I noticed I was handling battles better and needed to gulp pots less and was getting more loot. I also found that if I tried the boss on insane a couple of times, maybe even killing him, if I switched to normal for the boss only - it was almost a freakin' cakewalk.

I firmly believe it has made me a better fighter and I believe I handle things better than many others the same level as me (or higher.) I have grouped with players a couple of levels higher that seemed to have a harder time with the monsters, despite more HP/Mana and better gear.

As I said, this is what has worked for me. That being said, I am only Level 42 with CatWynd (higher on PTS!)

Your mileage may vary.

Oh I agree with your point too Nunja, don't get me wrong. I was just talking about the general advice that running Dew Valley in particular on insane is generally not the best way to up your stats and get a good base of gold for when you get to townston. You'll most likely, especially as a mage, spend all your ching on pots..and wp scrolls are 100g each to boot!

To each their own...just didn't want to see our "freshmen" get slaughtered by a little overzealousness is all. They're not all as tough-skinned as you old man. lol.

Tec I agree it is not the best way to get your character started out. But running Dew Valley on insane does help with the money issue's that revolve around lower level toons.

And especially since they made Dew Valley so freakin easy that it holds no other benefit now. Insane is basically like Dew Valley used to be except that you get much better drops.
Last time through I hit Rattle at somewhere between 3 and 5 without a reset and beat him. The way Dew Valley was originally set-up this would not have happened because it was at least a little challenging.

Anyway rambling of an old fart....

Gary

lol... noticed the mage comment...:) My mage still has like 10 of her noobisaur pots left from running Dew. Never bought a pot the whole time just picked up all the pots and WP scrolls...

Tec I agree it is not the best way to get your character started out. But running Dew Valley on insane does help with the money issue's that revolve around lower level toons.

And especially since they made Dew Valley so freakin easy that it holds no other benefit now. Insane is basically like Dew Valley used to be except that you get much better drops.
Last time through I hit Rattle at somewhere between 3 and 5 without a reset and beat him. The way Dew Valley was originally set-up this would not have happened because it was at least a little challenging.

Anyway rambling of an old fart....

Gary

lol... noticed the mage comment...:) My mage still has like 10 of her noobisaur pots left from running Dew. Never bought a pot the whole time just picked up all the pots and WP scrolls...

Alright, alright, I'm stupid I get it.....geez.

Lol, j/k. But I'm still right about the other stuff that I forgot I was right about...I think....I'm right about something dammit!

...where's by beer........

not stoopid just beerfuddled:)... and where's my Jaagerbomb??? at least i'm not under-age like some you slip em too:)

Gary

not stoopid just beerfuddled:)... and where's my Jaagerbomb??? at least i'm not under-age like some you slip em too:)

Gary