Potions, Potions Everywhere...and not a drop to drink!

Ok. So I'm kind of bored, so I decided to put another tip and trick. This one should be fairly straight forward and a relatively short post unlike my previous ones (no comments from the peanut gallery )

I have found that since HCS has introduced potions into the game, they have made leveling that much easier. We all know that stamina is the hardest thing to come by in the game. Let's face it, FSP and gold can be bought and sold via the AH, or you can do free offers, or you can just outright buy the stuff with cold hard cash. However, stamina is that most precious of commodities that will only regenerate through the process of time (unless you spend FSP on +25 current stamina, if so, please see my post in this section regarding "Spending Habits ... Accounting 101")

With the advent of potions, we have the ability to get buffs that would otherwise cost us our precious stamina ("my own....my....PRECIOUS! BAAHHHH!") What I have found is that by watching the ending auctions, sometimes I can squeeze in on the last 10 seconds or so and outbid the guy (or gal) before me and get a great deal on a potion. There have been times I have picked up Deathwish or Conserve for as little as 150 gold.

So what potions would I recommend to watch for? Conserve is a great potion to use in conjunction with 4x Doubler. I have found that it procs around 10 - 15 times in the 15 minute duration, thus saving us 40 - 60 stamina or allowing us another 10 - 15 attacks with yet another chance to proc Conserve again. If you can get this for a few thousand gold, it's well worth it and will increase your leveling rate.

Animal Magnitism is another one that I like to watch out for for a few thousand gold. The ability to have mobs I just killed come back without me having to move, which saves me stamina, is great and well worth the price.

Deathwish and Wither are also nice ones to look out for, if you can get them for a few thousand each. Insta-death from Deathwish or the reduction of hit points from mobs that are giving you trouble 1 hitting will save your stamina and in the end, help you level up faster to mobs that you can easily 1 hit again.

Berserk is perhaps my favorite potion to snag. There are 2 versions, one at lvl 175 and another at lvl 200. The lvl 200 one typically sells for 15 - 20k, whereas the other you can get "on average" for as low as 6k. Sometimes you can snag a deal on it though and get em for a thousand or two. For me, Berserk potions are critical to my leveling strategy. Why? Because to cast this on myself costs 15 stamina and my max level cast on it is lvl 140. So if I can get one to use, not only do I save the 15 stamina which allows me almost another 4 attacks (using 4x doubler) which equals around 8k xp and 4k gold. But it also extends my damage by an extra 17 damage per attack. Very useful in situations where I am barely 1 hitting the mob and can make or break my 1 hit strategy.

Force shield, shatter armor and sanctuary are nice if you can get em for around 500 - 1000 gold. Unless I'm in an area where I don't have enough damage to 1 hit and not enough armor to survive hits (these types of situations are rare), force shield is more of a "nicecety" vs a "necessity". Shatter armor is nice when it procs to produce more damage on the hit. Whereas Sanctuary is nice if you do get hit, as it gives you 5% increase to your current armor stats (around 50 extra armor for 1000 armor stats).

In my opinion, paying for the doubler potion is just plain and simple a waste. I see it go for 10 - 30k each and every time. But the silly thing is it's only a 3x doubler which lasts for 45 minutes. I have not seen a single occassion where you could not find somebody tripping over themselves to sell 3x doubler for 10 - 20k and it lasts for 2 - 4 hours. Buying the doubler potion, imo, is a complete waste of cash.

If you cast Find Item on yourself, spending a few hundred gold to buy the potion is worth saving the stamina. Spending cash on the Lib potion is probably not a bad idea, but I'm so hooked on my lvl 140 Lib that dropping down to the lvl 100 or 125 for AL just plain scares me However, that being said, if your Lib or AL levels are currently at or around those levels anyways, it would be well worth it to pay a few hundred gold to get the potions and save yourself the stamina.

Well, that's it for me on these. I don't have the cohones to spend the big bucks on the super high end potions yet, so I'm not sure if they are worth it or not

I do hope that these tips and tricks are helping you guys to "round some corners" and gain some extra xp/gold here or there. Feel free to let me know what you think of them. Questions, comments, suggestions, flames (be kind ), all are welcome.

Peace.

Phaithful