I currently have a lvl 20 Fighter and have solo'd the entire time- mostly on Extreme or Insane (when I have the gold for the extra health potions) when I figured out you can change the difficulty settings. Algor the Cold on Insane was a mistake as it cost me over 70 health potions fyi. My question is will I be able to continue this all the way through or will it get too difficult to solo at higher levels??

Also for those that do solo- what is the preferred set up? I have 5300hp, 2100+ attack rating, 5000+ defense using dual weild (100+min to 200+max dam each). Obviously this works for now but is there a better set up? Should I change change my stats? Use a 2h weapon? And I am playing around with which "AoE" spells to use. I currently keep Heal Self, Roo, Gym Freak, Swivel, Acidic Blight (?), the appropriate Resist buff, Butcher, and Soul Rend handy, and switch between Stomp, Gaseous Blast, Cleave, Shadow Lighting, Ring of Fire, and Unnerving Shout. I can't really get a grasp as to which one helps me out the most. Any suggestions from experience?

Sorry the post got a little long....

Oh and I do all my play on a lap top with no external mouse....

Running the dungeons on insane probably won't cause any problems, as long as you can keep up with pots and you keep your gear current. Some of the bosses might pose a problem since you will be encountering them for the first time (plus, certain bosses are just tougher overall), but you can always lower the difficulty until you get comfortable with what works against a particular boss before returing to insane.

*by the way, if you do start having trouble with gold, farming bosses on insane in a full group will give you the chance to catch up with costs.

Your set-up sounds pretty good. You have the right idea with attack rating, and you might be able to sacrifice some endurance for strength (which is what most lvl 100 DPS fighters do), depending on the situation. Shields can be a big help against bosses- the bigger the block chance the better. In my opinion, the biggest benefit of 2h'ers becomes available at level 35 with the skill "Awesome Cleavage." Since you'd be doing more damage per shot, this upgrade to "Cleave" can be very effective at "clearing the path." But all in all, it's mostly a question of preference...except that skills with weapon-based cooldowns (e.g. holy roller, soul rend) benefit from generally faster 1h'ers.

For skills, especially in the next 10 levels, when more skills are available and when current skills are stronger, I would get rid of Heal Self. It's basically just a health pot with a long cooldown- the skill slot could be much better used. Also, Butcher is the poor man's Holy Roller :P The latter skill is more effective, since it can put you right next to those pesky ranged mobs in a hurry-even when wading through other mobs.

The mage skills (including gas blast) lose most of their effectiveness for non-mages at about your level. Ring of Fire and gaseous blast can be useful at Algor for crowd control, but they're not necessary. Since your stat set-up is pure fighter, all of those spells will do minimal damage relative to their potential.

Cool, thanks for the info. I have found Gas Blast and RoF to be pretty useless. I used Gas Blast more because of the cooldown and mana. RoF pretty much wipes me out, luckily it doesn't take long to regen 400 mana.

I hear people talk about farming bosses, but I haven't put much thought in to how it works. Do you just Waypoint yourself at the entrance and reset the dungeon? Seems like the way to do it.

And yes I realize Heal Self is pretty weak but it saves a couple hundred gold per level for now.

Oh, sorry forgot to bring this up.

So you say I should give up *some* endurance for the offensive stats because I'm going to get beat down anyway and I should spend more time concentrating on killing quickly?

I shouldn't have sold that 1000+ def sheild with 18 block... oh well... I go look for another one. Yippee!!!

I hear people talk about farming bosses, but I haven't put much thought in to how it works. Do you just Waypoint yourself at the entrance and reset the dungeon? Seems like the way to do it.

That is exactly the way to do it. :)

Alien covered pretty much everything in his post already. Giving up some END to get more STR helps you cause more damage over a shorter period of time, and will help you kill and level quicker, as well as save on potions.

Speaking just from my own experience, I soloed my fighter up far above 40, before I started grouping with people, and I still do lots of solo grinding because I enjoy it, and I've found that it helps to specialize. That way, you can get together gear and buffs that all boost one single element, and that will help you cause more damage.

If you're ever on World 4, one of my Khazzes might have a shield laying around by the way. I think I have one in an inventory somewhere...

very good stat set up for a newbie, your attack rating is right about where you need it to be, and like eighter said, you can sacrifice some of your endurance with str, try to do it with gear tho. For me, when playing fighter, I used my base stats for agil and end, and leave it to my gear to cover my str needs. The majority of fighter gear you find will have str, so it shouldn't be much of an issue, if you do need some more gear, find a group farming algor. Or if you happen to see me on, i'll run you through a couple boss runs. I don't really have much else to do.

Ditch the mage skills, RoF and shad lightning and ditch butcher as well, replace butcher with Holy Roller light eighter suggested. For the other two use cleave for aoe and soul rend. Well i guess that leaves an empty space. You can use average bmi to boost your health, and put more points from end into str. Or you can put another buff in there, retribtion, a resist if you are fighting magic users, or divine ascendancy to increase your damage with cleave and soulrend.

I suggest that you try to find gear that has + to divine damage, or at least +divine damage to weapon attack, especially if you choose to use divine ascendancy

Thanks for all the info. I'll go test it out.

The name is Amuna btw.

Just an update. I took the suggestions and found out Holy Roller and Soul Rend, Acid Blight, and which ever Resist is relevant to the zone to be the only active spells I really use (edit: and 1h swivel, duh.). Cleave and Gas Blast are some what useful on fodder, and like you guys said RoF and the other mage skills are useless especially since one cast takes up all my mana.

I dropped END quite a bit and at level 28 only have 4500hp but my STR is over 220 and I'm now dual weilding 1000+ atk on both weapons (I have to change set up to add more HP when I solo Vegrim on Insane since one blast will kill me with less than 5000 hp). The Widower sucks as I only make like 5k gold after paying for pots while I can make up to 40k gold on Vegrim each run... well for a little while longer at least.

So for any fighter reading this wanting to solo take the suggestions here as they seem to work nicely. I'm now using less than 20 pots per dungeon lvl on insane- obviously the gnome more than makes up for the cost of the pots. Holy Roller is the bomb in dealing with Pukers and Archers even though they are a pain in the rump!! The other trick I've learned (I'm a slow study) is to pull the mobs back in to the room you were just in for crowd control. It sucks when you're chasing a Mystic or Haunt through a dungeon and you run from room to room gathering more monsties.

Any posse's out there that run HDoL? I'ld like to take a run at it some time with an experienced group. I solo'd the first floor on Formidable and it was a waste of my time and money.

Hope the next newb fighter gets some use out of this thread as Eighter, Khaz, and Cysira had some good experience to share.