Tips for Survivor

Thanks for the info.

as noted above, there are two main ways to get the max survivor title...you can farm it or play through the game.

Factions does give much better xp per quest on an overall scale, so if you want to play through the game I would suggest getting to the Factions side and start there, then NF.

My Mes has done the max title this way, just stopping at Unwaking Waters and one of the gate missions in NF. Up to about 1.7M xp by just playing the game and capping skills.

Another option is to farm the title. HM boxing is still a good bet, just watch for lag and use scrolls for an xp boost.

There are also other threads on guru that talk about farming the Jade Brotherhood or other areas that also provide good xp.

Best tip of all is to just RUN if you start to get hammered on.

Do you think I should do all the missions in NM or should I try HM?

without eotn and no more hfffing, fastest, way to get leg survior is to play through factions, and vanquish your way through the quests.

i have a auto pilot vanquish build if you need. litteraly autopilot. flag heros way ahead of you, they aggro, and kill, you walk behind getting xp and no aggro.

other then that, while doing missions, and HMing through the mandatory quests, and capping skills as you fight towards each new mission town, you can get leg survivor in a few days.

How confident are you? If you think u can take HM go for it, if not dont. I personally wouldnt do some HM areas, but others I would go for it np.

Aside from Factions, I would also take your character to NF, if you have that chapter. Many of the quests there also give good xp (not quite on par with Canthan quests, but some of them not too far off) and the missions, up to a point, are easy enough for a Survivor to....well, survive .
The blessings from the shrines in NF also helps to a degree as they increase the amount of xp gained from critters (of the type you have the blessing for) you kill along the way. When in an area where the critters are say 22 or higher, the blessing + an xp scroll can add up.

I have two char's who gained LS through normal gaming, a combination of targetting high xp quests (this included completing ALL Canthan quests) and missions in both NF and Cantha, as well skill capping wherever I could. Both char's also did the Augury Rock mission for the 50k xp bonus (one char was a Propecies ele, did all the missions leading up to and including the required Desert missions, the other was a Rit who used the AR mission to ascend). All was done in NM - personally, I wouldn't attempt HM for a Survivor, but those two were the 1st char's I'd attempted survivor on, so didn't want to push my luck

It was hardly the fastest way, but for me it was more fun/satisfying gaining the title through standard gameplay rather than HFFF (was still an option then) or boxing.

However you end up going for it - good luck and have fun.

Playing through the game can be a bit risky if you're a warrior. I went crazy on my ranger and got her through every single quest and mission in Prophecies without unlocking any other chapters. After that, I did the same for Factions and eventually Nightfall. I ended up pugging my way through all of Prophecies and Factions without heroes, but having heroes should shorten it considerably for you. Just think of it as playing through the game on Hardcore (Diablo II reference) mode. I did everything on NM but no elite areas (Fissure of WoE, Underworld, etc). By the time I got my Legendary Survivor, I was in Vabbi in some obscure quests prior to Dzagonur Bastion. It took about 125 hours to get to that point.

Becareful though. If you try playing through the game and your character dies due to unexpected spike or lag, it just... well, really sucks. 50+ hours of playtime up in smokes, you see.

I'm sure you know the jist of most common things to do - cap skills whenever possible, be sure to get high exp quests (titan quests and many in Cantha). Using exp scrolls on some of the factions missions help, considering the amount of monsters you will be slaying.

If you choose to do quests, be sure to do your research (I know, it ruins the surprise) to make sure that the quest doesn't screw you over (particularly the ones in NF). I particularly remember this one quest, called "One Man's Dream," spawned a level 28 flame djinn boss which wiped my party out in about 3 seconds since the party members were so close together when it was activated. That was one of my attempts with about 900k exp. I really hope you choose to go through the storyline. Good luck.

I would say the best way for Survivor is to get someone to power level you. Any other way and there's a risk of mistake and dying. But if you don't want to, you could use this build to solo melee mobs like trolls and vermins.
[build prof=warri/monk axemas=11+1+2 streng=11+3 healin=8][cyclone axe][triple chop][whirlwind attack][optional][Balthazar's Spirit][Dolyak Signet][vigorous spirit][live vicariously][/build]
[[Flail] for a permanent increase in attack speed.
[[Executioner's Strike] to take down a single target faster.
[[Dismember] to take down a single target faster.
[[Bonetti's Defense] for energy management.
[[Disrupting Chop] or other interrupts when facing a boss in the middle of a group with healings (ex. Healing Sig).
[[Purge Conditions] for faster recovery times. (primarily when fighting vermin)
[[Counterattack] for faster takedowns on a single target, while maintaining energy.
[[Balanced Stance] for easier mob grouping without Dolyak's movement penalty against vermin or other knockdown-heavy areas.

Just to reitterate what has been said, the NF and Factions quests will give you a huge boost. I got LS on a P/Mo so I did make things rather easy for myself.

Once you get to HzH you can just keep vanquishing (with Scrolls) Ferndale, or if your Luxon no doubt there is an option that side, but with the increased Faction and XP you'll be getting it should be relatively fast and you'll earn a fair whack to your Alliance Tag too.

with nice team and so on its possible to do the survivor "normalway" (meaning just not to die while fighting your way through the games), but i find it extremely risky. HFFF was really failproof, you can die in kilroys due to massive lags, which wont allow you to stand up in the time limit. Standard ways of getting exp - same risk of dying of lags, moreover risk of stupid spikes (died once when bout 14 giants each with giant stomp came) - nothing you can do about. If you rly want the title, consider buying GWEN, reduces the risk of starting the fifth character to do the survivor to minimum

poasiods mentions doing research on the area and the quests prior to doing them, and I would like to point out that this is probably one of the most important things you can do so that you know ahead of time where pop-ups are. Make sure you've gone through the areas with non-survivors before you take a survivor through the area so that you know where mobs and bosses spawn.

I agree with other posters that Canthan quests will level you up the fastest, and scrolls and capping elites always help, particularly if you can catch a double xp weekend. I would avoid solo-farming myself--too many things can go wrong too fast--with the exception of solo-farming the first 10 wurms outside Boreal station in HM (if you get EotN at some point). Those particular wurms have no ranged attacks.

When you get your heroes, set up your monks' skill bars and hot-key their heal spells to target you--I had protective spirit and healing breeze hot-keyed on Dunkoro to heal me. You absolutely have to know how to flag heroes, and you have to know how to use a longbow to pull enemies. I would actually flag another tank into the mob first to let the enemies aggro on to them, then hit them with AoE damaging skills. Also, spend the money for the best rune of vigor and survivor insignias that you can afford, and use a weapon with a fortitude mod. Others may have different opinions on that--I found that the extra 30 points from the weapon mod did make a difference in a few rare cases where I got spiked hard. Also, I have a monk secondary on my survivor and have a couple self heals. I leave the serious AoE damage to my ele heroes.

Don't park yourself at the edge of a map--if you get blocked in by enemies, you won't be able to move to get out of danger. This happened to me in a vanquish over the weekend--my LS had made it to 1.7million xp when we hit the mandragor pop-ups in Mehtani keys and triggered not one but two mobs, including no less than 7 stoneflesh mandragors. I was at the edge of the sea, got blocked by a couple of imps, and then got blasted by the stoneflesh ones so hard I had no time to map out.

You could vanquish Plains of Jarin repeatedly in HM once you have level 20 heroes since the monster skillset there is not too intimidating. You just have to be careful in particular to pull the spider groups on the plains, the iboga group, the termite groups in the river, and the stormseeds around the one stormseed boss.

I agree with Evil Neato that running a survivor is nerve-wracking, especially as you get really close to the LS title. Even after getting the title it was still a bit nerve-wracking because you want to go as long as possible without dying. I was almost relieved when she died this weekend because now I don't have to worry about when that first death is going to happen anymore.