CR 337 —Taking it to the Nth Metal Degree in DCUO

I'm continuing my daily grind in DCUO and playing with Team Spode on Sunday nights. There are still a few pieces of gear I need to buy to complete my set for this expansion, but for the most part I'm just going with the flow.  In other words, I log in, I do my dailies, and I log out.  

However, lately I've been a bit more focused on raising my artifacts, and I can already see the results.  Last Sunday Team Spode hit their usual raids and group instances, and my DPS was up! After thinking about that a bit, the only thing I can really attribute to that being up was that I was able to raise the level of two of my three trinkets. Being able to keep up with Spode in DPS despite him outpacing me by 75-100 Skill Points is kind of encouraging.

I'm using a sorcery build that's highly focused on amplifying my fury pet's damage and building supercharge, and I've been pretty happy with the results. (You know how I love my pet classes in MMOs.) The real power has come from coupling the Fury Pet with the Source Shard Artifact's Godwave Strength skill.  When that happens, my Fury becomes super charged and lands a huge series of hits, with one of those in particular hitting over 100k.

Me-wow!

Taking a big chunk of time off from playing DCUO (what's a 3-4 year break anyway?) got me a fair bit behind the rest of Team Spode, and especially when it comes to leveling trinkets and skill points.  The only way to level trinkets is to power them up with something called Nth Metal. The first 80 levels of a trinket kind of sail by, but when your trinket gets above level 120, things slow waaaaaaay down, and it's easy to tell that this is one of DCUO's major monetization legs for the game.

So, let's break down the ways to get Nth metal.

1- Probably the number one thing you can do when you log into DCUO daily is hit that stupid Vault instance that's been in game forever.  At the end of the run, you'll typically receive a rarer piece of Nth metal worth a bunch of trinket exp.  

2- If you have Nth metal detectors and know you're going to play the game for at least an hour, pop it and for the next hour your Nth metal finds will be up and you can also get your hands on Nth metal caches that can contain 3 pieces of Nth metal each.  You'll typically find anywhere between 3 and 6 Nth metal caches per hour with an Nth metal detector running.

3- Just play the game. Nth metal naturally drops from mobs that you outright defeat (not the mobs where you have to click on them to capture them), so farming "defeatable mobs" is your best bet for farming.

4- Buy booster packs of Nth metal in the store. Yup, it's pay to win, but if you want to drop $100 on Nth metal, you certainly can and will (if you're hungry for artifact exp).  

5- Buy Nth metal caches off of players in the auction house. Um, this is super not worth it . . . gonna be honest. The metal to money ratio is pretty bad. One cache for 2-4 million game cash? I'd rather spend my in game money in other ways, but to each their own.

So my Soul Shard artifact is currently at level 150.  When I get it up to level 160, 25% of the time, using a superpower will instantly refresh my Godwave Strength ability from the shard, and my DPS will jump . . . and it'll be awesome and fun. I can't wait for that to happen. When it does, I might just make Lord Spode jealous of my DPS once again.

Soul Shard at level 150

One thing is for sure . . . no way I'm dropping $100 real cash on Nth metal.  It's the farming life for me.

. . . or perhaps if I really want to DPS, maybe switch builds to Munitions Skill instead of Sorcery?  Nah, I love my Fury pet too much.

Happy Dueling