Project Gorgon: Seeing this year in 80/80 vision

I now have two combat skills (Animal Handling and Knife Fighting) leveled to over 80 in Project Gorgon! Eighty is the current level "soft" cap. (I talked about synergy levels in a previous post -- this is how you get beyond the soft cap.)

So, I always knew I wanted to level Animal Handling. That's a no-brainer for me. I've loved the "beastlord" class since I played it back in Everquest. Knife Fighting just helped bring it full circle. I had no idea when I began this journey that Stingite the Raksasha would have a bee sidekick named Buzz Tightrear and focus on a poison knife / backstab build, but here I am!

Backstabbin' the Trolls FOR LIFE!

Had the necromancer class been easier to unlock, I probably would have gone down that skill path. I mean . . . I "am" the Friendly Necromancer after all.

Anyway, post-soft cap the game becomes a hunt for the perfect Gear and the perfect mods for your play style. It's easy enough to get a set of level 80 equipment, but it's something special to get it with the correct mods.

A couple days ago I handed my guild leader 30ish gems for creating animal handling / knife fighting gear and a few stacks of materials. He went to work and crafted me a pretty nice set of "purple" gear for my class, but to be honest, the mods that came out on it were all wrong. I'm a poison build and it didn't really emphasize that.

To overcome this you either need to keep crafting gear until you get exactly what you want (or close to what you want) or you use the power of transmutation to change mods on your gear.

The Item Workbench is where the magic happens!

Remember waaaaaay back when? You know, allll the way back when I was saying I had joined a guild and my guild leader ran me out to the middle of the desert to train like four months ago?  I rarely touched the Transmutation skill after I had gotten it.  guess what: It's now important. I need tons of quality phlogiston to change out my mods. It's rare. It's valuable. The only way to produce it yourself is to level Transmutation and "deconstruct" high level magic items into this special dust.

These are the kinds of concerns I'll have in Project Gorgon from now on. How can I get my gear to a state that it rocks?  How can I further tweak and play with my build?  How can I find 360k to level the next skill to 80? You know what question would be fun to ask during 2020? How do I level my character to 90!!! I will have my hopes set on seeing that come true this year.

Luckily, I'm still having fun with Project Gorgon! There's still an abundance of things to do and I'm always finding myself broke from spending money on new skills. The never-ending quest for money is real for me.

Happy Dueling!