Hey guys how's it going Maerarde here, veteran Victor Vran player, have been playing since Early Access and have been streaming on twitch.tv/maerarde (#shamelessselfpromotion). Currently I have 160~ hours played on my main, am level 165 Renown, and am 205/205 normal challenges, 205/205 elite. Also I recently completed all 100% of the achievements. While streaming people have asked me if I could make a guide as it would really help them as a quick reference instead of having to ask me all the time for all the little things.

So here it is, an extensive guide on how to efficiently kick ass in Victor Vran's endgame. I hope you enjoy and/or learn something.

In this guide I will go over: creating a flexible build, crafting badass items, efficiently doing bounties and treasure maps, and farming tips for obtaining materials to craft.

The general idea of this build is a focus on damage, with elements of survivability.

The main way of producing massive damage is critical hits which most items are focused around. The main weapon this build is focused around is the sword but with a few minor changes you can also use other weapons with it. Other good weapons you can use include: Mortar, Lightning Gun, Shotgun and maybe Scythe. Why you base builds around one weapon and not two is because you will generally always have a farming weapon on your offhand and therefore only one slot for a damage weapon. In this game there is no penalty for death so survivability is not crucial, however staying alive is a plus as when you are dead your DPS is zero.

Here is a video version of the build if you want to watch it:









I used to use Vigilante's until very recently but now I use Vanguard's. I really really like vanguard I just could never use it before because it has terrible overdrive gain as the downside. I overcame this downside by putting percent overdrive gain on overkill on one of my destiny cards. This is good with Vanguard's because it increases your maximum overdrive, making the effect more powerful. I tested using two cards with the overdrive gain but it didn't seem to change so I don't think they stack.








I chose to use the lucky rabbit's foot and superior medkit for consumables.
The lucky rabbit's foot is a great offensive consumbable, however innately being a consumable it takes up one of your slots for defence so you will need survivablility from other sources. 5 seconds of free crits is pretty OP if you ask me, which also lets you focus your build on crit damage instead of crit chance which increases your DPS overall. Lucky rabbit's foot, however, is fairly rare so if you don't have this yet I would substitute it out for ambrosia or a health pot.
Superior medkit is a very strong consumable that doesn't cost any gold to use, not that gold is an issue but it is a plus. The main reason is for the negative condition removal: a common way to die, especially when using a melee weapon, is to get dazed by a pull or something and then get dunked. So to stop this the negative condition removal from the medkit is used to instantly remove it and roll to safety. Other uses could be to get rid of weakness (50% decreased damage) or a cripple effect (reduced movement speed) which can both result in death. A downside to the medkit, even in it's final form (Superior which takes 9 medkits to make) has comparatively low healing when you look at it alongside healing pots and ambrosia. However if you have good survivability from other sources, in my case diamond and blademaster, the removing of a negative condition outweighs the increased healing. You can change this slot to healing pots if you either don't have a superior medkit or are using a different weapon as you can't use the blademaster card if you aren't using the sword.








For demon powers it was quite close. I chose diamond and blink, both legendary as that gives the best numbers. Diamond is a great and solid choice, this demon power increases survivability by 1000 times. The downside is that you can't gain overdrive while it is activated, however this isn't much of a downside because you will only activate it when you need it, and when you need it you will likely be taking a lot of damage. When you are taking damage the shield will break faster and when it does break you can start gaining overdrive again to A: put up another one, or B: Blink away. Which brings us to our second demon power slot, where I at this point I choose to use Blink. Blink is a fabulous demon power for many reasons. Firstly it doesn't block overdrive gain which is always good. Secondly, it does damage and applies vulnerability meaning after you use it you get a free crit which can be used with the sword's E for an AOE stun or Q to get a reset. Thirdly, it provides great mobility which you can use to clear maps extremely fast, or to get out of danger, or into fights. I really like Blink. Other options in this slot include Shockwave, Beserker Aura, or maybe Time Bubble.






Main Hand



This is the sword I use most of the time, I'll go over how to craft swords like these in the "Crafting" section. This sword in particular is great for a couple reasons. The high base damage which is a result of the Cursed and damage mod giving +66% flat damage makes it amazing at hitting things very hard. The downside of Cursed is negligible as you get the bulk of your money from selling greens. For the third property I chose crit chance as this helps me crit more often which is core to this build. Overall this is one of the best swords in the game. As I was writing this guide I noticed every weapon in the game has different base damages (even if they are the same item level) and the sword I used to make this sword has slightly lower base damage than some of the other ones. This moment of clarity has allowed me to start making a better sword. However this sword still has the one of the best combinations of mods in the game all maxed out so it is still extremely good, just better ones can be made if you are lucky enough to find a sword with better base damage and the same properties.




Off Hand



Every build needs an offhand like this. Everytime you go to sell your items, first go through to find a Elder [weapon type] of Extraordinary Luck. I'll go over this more in the crafting section but you can put the luck mod on after you find a weapon like this to give it these stats. My one is as good as it gets. The base damage and crit chance does not matter at all as this weapon is not what you are going to use for damage. The base weapon type of your farming weapon matters however as the utility that it offers can be used. for instance a hammer or rapier would offer an escape mechanism. Though I think the best one is hand mortar due to the jump as you can get over a lot of walls in the game with it. This combination of properties is quite rare so just take what you can get but if you find multiple (I haven't yet) then I would choose hand mortar for sure.





For my destiny cards I chose a mix of armor penetration, crit damage, flat damage, and health regeneration. And I chose to use wicked as it has very special mobility modifiers that divine does not offer. I also recently starting using wicked -37% negative conditions which is very good. Two of my wicked cards have 7 seconds of speed on kill (33% movespeed & 33% attackspeed), and due to this effect stacking it gives 14 seconds of speed on a 20 second cooldown. I also use dodge distance which is nice and the last mod I have is fairly irrelevant. The seer is to sustain my double rare wildcards. Blademaster is great survivability with 4%HP/S.

Knowledge is power when it comes to crafting. In order to obtain the best items you will need to understand the crafting mechanics in Victor Vran, which have been clarified in a recent update with the pictures next to the stat to make it easier to know how to upgrade your items. But nonetheless here is a detailed guide on how to craft the best weapons in the game for your character.




For these examples we will mainly use swords as that is what I craft the most.

The final product:



Crafting an excellent damage weapon is a journey. That journey begins with farming. For these examples we will mainly use swords as that is what I craft the most. After you farm as much loot as you want to farm you need to go through your items and pick out the good ones by pressing "S" to favourite them. Just look for good mods like crit damage, crit chance, cursed, damage etc. The weapons with bad mods should be gambled in the transmutation device by putting three of the same rarity in and hitting transmute. If you are low on money you can sell the green ones instead of transmuting. Put the good modded weapons in your stash for when you want to craft a weapon of that type. Below are three easy steps to craft the best weapons in the game.








It is important to note greens innately have less base damage than rares HOWEVER as I have just tested they have similar maximum base damage so if you find a green with higher base damage than other greens it is likely that it will have a high maximum average base damage, though it is harder to check than with a rare weapon. So saving uncommons with good mods is reasonable.

Though swords like this one below are terrible even if they have good mods. Even without calculating the average base damage you can see it is about 15 max damage less than a good sword. So you can safely toss and not craft ones like this.










When you are ready to craft, take out all of the possible weapons of that type and then you need max out all of the base damage on the weapons you think are pretty good by just looking at them and jugding them on their maximum average base damage. If you can't tell if it is good or not right away, don't worry and set it aside with the ones you think are good. Then once you have done that you can get technical to see which weapon is better by calculating the base damages.





When deciding what weapon to craft if you have two with the same item level and modifiers you will need to focus on the base damage. To work out the average base damage of a weapon without a damage modifer all you need to do is add the maximum damage with the minimum damage and divide by two. So a sword that is 30-60 damage would have average base damage worked out by doing (30+60)/2 -> 90/2 -> 45. If your weapons have damage modifiers, especially different values it can be hard to tell which one is better. In order to figure out the base damage of your weapon with one or more damage modifiers is worked out by doing the previous calculation for averaging the damage then you need to reverse the modifier by dividing by the value it was multiplied by. An example is a sword with damage 60-100 and a 34% damage modifer. The calculation would be (averaging) (60+100)/2 -> 160/2 -> 80 then you need to reverse the damage modifier 80/1.34 -> 59.7 so your weapon has base average damage of 59.7. You would then need to check your other weapon the same way and then whichever weapon has higher base damage is the one you want to craft.





In the above picture I didn't know about base damages being different and crafted a sword with very low base damage and so it lost about 10%+ dps which means it is a lot worse than it could be if I had crafted it correctly.
The best average base damage on a weapon I have heard of is 73.5 and my current weapon has base damage 70.1 so it is quite close to the best. Also the crit chance is variable on weapons. For swords: 10 or less crit chance is bad, around 15 is good, and 17 or above is great.











Once you have chosen a weapon to craft you have finished the hard part of crafting. All you need to do now is add on a strong stat then max the stats on the item. The rule of thumb is to add cursed to the weapon as it is the best mod in the game, if your weapon is cursed (+44% damage) and assassin (+22% crit chance) already you have choices. Usually a good choice is to add the other damage stat devestating (+22% damage) or the vicious stat (+88% crit damage). An exception is the lightning gun where the best stats are faster weapon cooldowns and cursed.





Lastly you need to max out the stats by applying your demon powers with lower rarity than legendary. You are able to use your legendary demon powers to upgrade stats, however this is not a good idea as you want to save them for adding on a third mod to your weapons instead.

And voila you are finished with your nigh perfect killing machine of a weapon.















As mentioned in the build section all you need to do is find a rare or uncommon weapon with the mods "Elder [Weapon Type] of Extraordinary Luck" giving it +% EXP and find better items. Then all you need to do is add on the "luck" mod giving +% more items. In the end your item should look like this with maybe a different item type. If you find more than one item type with these properties, choose based on the utility of the weapon.






Crafting legendary weapons is a cost efficient way of making pretty good items. You can craft them in three ways. You can increase their damage, increase their crit, and increase the properties. Rule of thumb is that the best rares if crafted well are better than the best legendaries but there are afew that come close.

The red lightsaber has 90 armor pen and the cursed mod so it seems pretty good. I don't have it yet but it has 3 rare mods worth of stats and the lightsaber ability of deflecting projectilles.

Chicken cannon is ok. It was OP before but was nerfed. The crit damage is nice and the fact it shoots 3 projectiles is awesome. Still not very high damage and long CD on basic attack makes it worse than a rare crafted mortar.

Storm is a great replacement if you don't have a good rare sword yet. Good stats, lowish damage and a nice effect.

Below are the crafting recipes for legends, you can use stones as well and most often increasing the damage is best done with a stone other wise you will need to use three legendary weapons to upgrade it. Crit is fine to use legend cards or stone for. The properties can be upgraded like rare items with non-legendary demon powers.

There are quite a few crafting recipes that aren't about making your weapon better which are incredibly necessary in improving your character. These can include improving your outfit, demon powers, destiny cards and even consumables.





First you want to choose your outfit. Depending on your build you will use a different outfit. I personally use Vanguard's Outfit for my crit build. If you want awesome overdrive gain use the Vigilante's outfit, or if you aren't heavily focused on crit the Adventurer's Outfit is also a great option.
There are three ways to improve your outfit of choice.

Firstly you can improve the armor of your outfit:



Secondly you can improve the property of the outfit:



Thirdly and most importantly is how it looks:










Crafting demon powers is rather simple. All you need to do is look in your inventory for your best (legendary) demon power of the type you want to use then upgrade it with legendary demon powers you don't want. Important to note you want to keep dark mists, beserker aura and meteor as those are using in crafting good weapons.

Example of the different ways to craft a shockwave demon power:










Buying all of the divine and wicked cards in the shop is a good way fuel your collection. We do this so that we can improve the wicked and divine properties of our cards as seen below. When choosing a build you either want to use all divine cards and use the saint legendary card or all wicked cards and the devil legendary card. I chose to use wicked for the speed buff but divine is a good choice as well, it has more armor and you can get armor penetration on the divine properties themselves whereas wicked is on the devil. On divine you can also get crit negation and healing which are both good so if you want a slower but more tanky build choose divine. For instance I would use divine in a hardcore mode (where if you die you lose your character, not currently in the game) as it helps with death prevention but in the current version of the game wicked is better in my opinion as there is not much punishment for death and the speed that wicked offers through the speed on kill and dodge distance is very attractive for fast clears.












Med Kits

To make a good medkit all you need to do is have a lot of medkits. It is fairly well known to make a better medkit you need three of the same type. For instance 3x medkits transmute into a greater medkit and 3x greater medkits transmute into a superior medkit. Each tier is better than the previous one.


Gift Boxes

Always take gift boxes when leveling up and save them to fuse them together and open them when they are purple. You also get gift boxes from renown levels and from bounties and treasure hunts. Three giftboxes of one tier transmute into one of the next tier. A general breakdown of rewards is as follows:

• Common (white): green weapon
  
• Uncommon (green): green/rare weapon
  
• Rare (yellow): rare cards, rare item, (unlikely) legendary weapon
  
• Legendary (purple): either rare/legendary cards or one/two legendary weapons

So as you can see you should wait until you have a legendary giftbox to open it.

Here is an infograph on gift boxes.

This will be a small section that will explain the general idea of how to do Bounties and Treasure Hunts.

To put it simply: Bounties involve slaying epic monsters in the locations specified on the bounty. Treasure hunts require you to find treasure clue locations in locations specified on the treasure hunt.

Some pro tips around doing this content so you can get that epik lewt efficiently:

• You want to go and "hustle" codes off of other players. In order to do this you need to go into other players online games and ask to swap codes with them, you give them everything you have built up so far in exchange for everything they have. Usually using this method you can build 1-3 pages of maps in about half an hour. Obtaining large amounts of maps at once is great so that you can do all of them at once in one run through all the zones.
  
  
• Watch and follow my stream at twitch.tv/maerarde PogChamp. This may seem like selling out and it is, but I do a lot of bounties and treasure hunts on stream so you guys can learn all the locations of champions and treasure clue spawns. Especially the hard ones, it has taken me hours to learn all the champion locations in some areas (I hate you cemetary grounds). So let me share my knowledge so you don't have to go through the same process which can be tedious at times.
  
  
• Make sure you are clearing multiple treasure keys at once if you clear an area then get a couple bounties from global chat that area will light up on your map. Just leave it and continue methodically clearing areas and clear that area in the next batch of treasure keys you get. Efficiency is key (ha ha get it? I'm so funny) when It comes to ARPGs so when you ask yourself "why am I doing what I'm doing?" you can justify that it is the best way to achieve your goals.
  
  
• Check out Burek's reference to every single champion and every single treasure clue location.
  A huge thanks to Burek for this as it really helps to learn and remember all of the locations. Even I have learnt locations from this so I highly recommend it. Here's the link https://www.dropbox.com/sh/grq5uq5vosazxet/AAAiuvNUXxG57wk5HnIuRMEQa?dl=0
  And you can find a link to his youtube channel here for informative videos:
  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXndnPqdEv7usTT-_FlEVYw/videos

Like in any ARPG when you have nothing else to do the best course of action is to farm for epik lewt. When I want to find a new base for a weapon to craft or demon powers to upgrade that weapon I go to certain areas to farm. Some less experienced players might think farming bosses is a good idea. While this might seem like a good plan at first, many bosses aren't very efficient. The last boss, Gabriel takes far too long to kill to be worth it, even if he does drop good loot. However, as I have recently found, Den of the Broodmother gives at least two times the EXP than any other area: skip the whole dungeon and run straight to the boss. Grab the double damage shrine and go to town on that big spider booty. For farming items you need to find a small area with many champions and optionally a lot of easy to kill packs like skeletons. So with this in mind I have three favourite farming spots.

PS: I use sword for more fun but if you have a good hand mortar it can give a faster clear than the sword.






The Collector's Residence is a top tier farming location. It is one of the smallest areas in the game and you can clear in about 30 seconds if you are fast. With 6 champions to drop loot for you, and at least 2 having a random demon power (the collector and the thrall hulk) so that you get many different legendary demon powers it makes for a brilliant spot. A downside is that there isn't many trash mobs to farm EXP. If you need items for crafting this is where you should go. I give it a 8.42/9.






The Ossuary is a fair bit bigger than The Collector's Residence however it has 2 extra champions to compensate with a total of 7. I think it is only slightly less efficient for farming than Collector's Residence. But it has a metric butt-ton of skeletons which are prime for EXP. For that reason I think it may be a better spot to farm items as well as EXP. It is also very linear making it very simple to navigate the route as all you need to do is walk forwards. I give it a 8.69/9.






I recently was touched by the magic of Den of the Broodmother. It has mediocre item farming but has the best EXP farming in the game. Run to the boss, slay boss, grab loot, repeat. You will get (with 162% increased EXP, from both weapons and from hexes) 12 renown levels per hour. THIS IS THE BEST PLACE IN THE GAME FOR EXP. Though if you want loot it is better to go to Ossuary for a 50/50 split of loot and exp efficiency and Collector's for straight epik lewt. I give it a 69/42.




So to recap: Collector's Residence best place for loot. Ossuary has a good split of loot and EXP and has high fun value. Den of the Broodmother best place for EXP.

Quick recap of everything I went over.

Build:

For your build you want to make it flexible and focus on damage. Important things to remember when building is: survivability, armor penetration, and mobility.


Crafting:

Keep an eye on base damages, even if something has the right properties you want it could have low maximum average base damage. Remember to choose properties that are good for the weapon type eg. faster cooldowns for lightning gun, damage or crit damage for sword. Having cursed and crit chance is usually good for the first two properties on most weapons. EXP on your main hand is great in addition to cursed and crit.


Bounties and Treasure Maps:

Efficiency, also watch my steam ( twitch.tv/maerarde ), reference to all champion and treasure map locations: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/grq5uq5vosazxet/AAAiuvNUXxG57wk5HnIuRMEQa?dl=0 (credit to Burek for doing this)


Farming:

Collector's Residence and Den of the Broodmother are the best two I've found. Collector's is pretty god for items, Den is pretty god for EXP.



Thanks for reading my guide, I hope it helps and I look forward to seeing you in my chat when I stream! :)