the goal: get to and kill manus blackstone in the shortest amount of time not requiring lux or help.
this is actually SIGNIFICANTLY easier than it sounds if you are an experienced or decent druid player.
in the beggining:do the standard quests, and kill the 2-3 darkfell guards u see on the beach of fire barrels, then quest more until u get to lv 5, up to this point u should put all ur points into strangling vines. when u get to lv 5,and u should be outside crookback, go to farcrag and do the dunskieg quest. this is an easy 1k xp and 80 gold for when u delete the char, giving the gold to a gold keeper. and btw, i never use a staff in these runs, bc the staff never hits, and it eats ur max energy.
i just realized i need to tell the build, this is a dps hybrid druid.
stats:
50:50 vit:foc
all ur skill points will be put into:
strangling vines
lightning strike
sheild of bark
on with the walk thru:
when u do that quest, go back to crookback and continue doing quests, while u level from the quests, put points into strike up to 3/4
i always kill any high gold drop enemies, but you dont have to for the sake of speed.
also, you should always have auto off, unless its a melee enemy.
i do the declans ring quest for gold and armor ring, which actually has saved over 10 of my runs.
when u get sheild of bark, max it asap, the reason why i dont say max strike for the scryers and jotuns is bc for some reason, its the same time to kill with lv 3-5 strike.
speaking of scryers, the 2* scryers are not very heal intensive, but tarnas is very heal intensive. keep healing.
hagvar is the most dangerous fight in the entire run!!! i have lost half or more of my runs to him due to him evading my vines and strike, or somehow interupting my lv1 natures touch!, just keep healing when u can, and cast dps skills when healing is on cooldown!
if he evades u 3 times, or glitches to always interupt ur heal, you WILL lose.
after that fight, the rest is pretty easy
after u max bark, put points into strike to lv 5.
the grave dust quest is a very unforgiving quest for me, bc the 1* never spawns >.<
the guards are easy, just cast sheild of bark, heal when u need to, they should die unless u get evades, but i never do.i never kill excess enemies like the pennitents etc.
with sheild of bark and ur vit stat, the run thru catacombs should be easy.
if you are lv 15-16, which you prob should be, put all ur points into vines.
now, manus blackstone.
this is easy if u get decent rng, by that i mean, he doesnt evade anything and only casts invocation and eldrich frost.
sub-par rng, 1-2 evades or he casts cosmic sheild
reset run rng: 4 evades or 2 evades and a sheild.
just stay away from himand ull be able to heal off most of what he shoots at u.
if all is done correctly, and optimally, u got a 1.5-2.5 hour run and earned 2.3-2.8k
HOPE THIS HELPS
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if anything wasnt clear feel free to say in the reply section
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