TOPIC: First time in 15+ years - Advice for a Barb?

Hello!

As the title says, I played a True Dungeon event 15+ years ago and am returning to it this year at GenCon 2023. I am hoping to continue playing for many years to come.

I just finished reading the PHB, and got myself registered for 11:01am Thursday and am hoping to play a Barbarian. I was curious what advice you all might have like, what starter tokens ($100 or less total) you would recommend I get if I plan to play for a while, and any other general "You should know this" things.

Appreciate any advice, and I look forward to seeing people at GenCon!

-Thanks, Ark

Hello, and welcome back!

Endgame put together this guide on how to start a Barbarian without breaking the bank. It’s a few years old at this point, but is still very helpful for low token investment play. Since you mentioned you were in a mixed group, it would probably also be helpful to have a few different weapon and torso choices, depending on class availability, but those can be obtained through the token store websites for very reasonable prices.

Happy hunting!

www.truedungeon.com/forum?view=topic&catid=561&id=250976

Welcome back to the game!

I'd say, first of all, that you don't really need to get any tokens at all. The game is perfectly playable and fun with just your starting ten pack, you don't need to invest more than that into the game. I'm not saying don't do it, my token collection has a ridiculous amount of money sunk into it. I'm just saying don't feel like you need to.

I'm actually going to recommend that if you want to spend $100 you don't spend it on making yourself the best Barbarian you can be. Making your numbers go up is very satisfying, but you should focus on making the game more fun for yourself rather than making your numbers higher. With $100 you can do that in two ways:

1. Become a higher level. There are numerous tokens that will grant your character another level. This will give you a significant power boost no matter what class you wind up playing, so if you go Barbarian but then later decide that Druid actually seems really awesome you can swap to that easily. Higher level grants extra saves, stats, and abilities to every class, and it's the most dramatic change and enhancement to game play experience you can get at below relic level. The tokens that do this are expensive, one of them would pretty much be your budget, but it'll work for any class you might wind up playing.

2. Get more treasure. Treasure is fun to get, it's exciting. Most of the time you'll pull rare items, uncommon items, or sometimes monster bits you can use for transmutes down the line, but you could pull an ultra rare, relic, or even a legendary. The Skinner Box is extremely effective, and it will make your animal brain happy. Treasure enhancers aren't cheap, an UR level that gives you two extra treasure will also wipe out your budget. You can get a rare TE though for a couple bucks that'll at least give you one more treasure, which is nice. You might even find someone to gift you one since you're new, I won't be at GenCon but I always keep a stash of rare TEs to give to new players, and I'm definitely not the only one who does that. I personally don't care as much about treasure, I sold all my TE and used them to get tokens that impact gameplay. I'm in the minority though, most invested players are all treasure all the time.

For buying tokens, the online stores like Trent Tokens or TD Tavern are the most convenient, but you can usually get better deals on the forums or on the discord server. Figure the online stores have a markup of around 10%-15% of what the current value of the token is. Don't buy blind from someone, but in general most players that are higher player level are trustworthy. It's not a huge community and people that are high level have a lot of time and money invested into the game. No one wants to be ostracized for being a liar and a cheat.

Indeed, welcome back!

People above have given some good advice. A couple other things:
1. Trent Tokens offers $10 off your first order with a referral code, like this one:
$10 off Trent Tokens



2. One of the best value tokens for any melee character - Barbarian, (Dwarf) Fighter, Ranger, Monk - is the Belt of the Brave. It often provides a 50%-100% improvement over the base character stats:
www.trenttokens.com/products/belt-of-the-brave-2021-gold?_pos=1&_sid=95a129e22&_ss=r

That token does a lot of heavy lifting and finds its way onto characters at higher difficulty levels.

3. People also mentioned getting more treasure. If someone in your game doesn't have one to give out, I'd highly recommend the Ring of Treasure Finding because it doesn't take up an entire "slot" (characters get two rings/finger slot items:
www.trenttokens.com/products/ring-of-treasure-finding-2022-gold-c21?_pos=1&_sid=bb762c9cf&_ss=r

But most importantly, enjoy the experience! My favorite parts of True Dungeon are the puzzles and physical challenges, and no token can help you with those.

AAckeret wrote: Hello, and welcome back!

Endgame put together this guide on how to start a Barbarian without breaking the bank. It’s a few years old at this point, but is still very helpful for low token investment play. Since you mentioned you were in a mixed group, it would probably also be helpful to have a few different weapon and torso choices, depending on class availability, but those can be obtained through the token store websites for very reasonable prices.

Happy hunting!

www.truedungeon.com/forum?view=topic&catid=561&id=250976

I haven’t updated the forum thread, but I do have a build available where each token shouldn’t be more than a couple dollars:

tdcharactercreator.com/#/character/edit/9e8adb1c-e361-4dd8-bb11-ffc67cdb523f

Overall advice:

1. equip a two handed melee weapon so you get your class damage bonus (+4 to melee damage).

This year there is a rare +1 axe that gives barbarians an additional +1 damage:

tokendb.com/token/1-berserker-carnage-axe/

So with this weapon your Barbarian with no other equipment is +3 to damage from STR, +4 to damage from two handed, +1 to damage from this item = +8 to damage!

2. Don't forget to enter rage once in the dungeon - to do so you need to step up to the DM, and say something like: "I'm using barbarian's rage this combat" and hold out your card so they can mark off the slot on the card indicating you have used Rage. (This adds an additional +4 to melee damage for the room).

3. Token benefits broadly fall into two categories:

a. Things that end up on the party card. These things the DMs already know, and you don't have to communicate about.

Things that go on the party card include unconditional boosts to: HP, AC, STR/DEX/CON/WIS/Saves/to-hit and to-damage.


b. Things that do not end up on the party card. The DMs have no idea about these things and, you have to communicate or adjust on your own.

Conditional things (+3 damage against giants), and things related to your HP (-2 damage from fire).

In particular, for damage mitigation stuff (-2 damage from fire), the DM will often just say: "The Salamander attacks, and it hits, take 6 damage". It will be up to you to clarify if any of that damage is fire damage, and to deduct 2 points of damage from it.

Similarly if you have some situational benefit (+3 damage against giants, +4 to saves vs. charm), you need ask the DM if those factors are in play and/or inform the DM.

Players track their own HP, so if you have something that adjusts damage or HP, like Basic Greaves or Level 5 Barbarian damage resistance, just do the math yourself, don't stop the DM every time you have to make the adjustment.

In my signature are some links to posts suggesting various stats to target for different difficulties.

Gents!

Wow! Thank you so much for the feedback. That was actually more than I was expecting to get, but it's awesome to see a healthy and thriving community here.

I haven’t updated the forum thread, but I do have a build available where each token shouldn’t be more than a couple dollars:

tdcharactercreator.com/#/character/edit/9e8adb1c-e361-4dd8-bb11-ffc67cdb523f

Endgame - I appreciate the advice and build a ton! Also, you posting the link to that build just helped me and my other friends quite a bit in understanding what it could look like. Great stuff, and I'll be honest and say I am likely to do this build, since I think it's a healthy way to go into my first game. If you have any additional changes you can think of, let me know!

2. Get more treasure.

Josh - I appreciate that quite a bit. Definitely helps me to know.

I appreciate all the advice thus far, and will 100% be disseminating this to my other friends joining the run!

I ended up going with your suggested build.

However, I suddenly find myself with slightly more available to me $$ wise.

If there were any items you would recommend for the biggest upgrades, what would you suggest?

2-handed weapon for sure.

I recommend using the TD Character Creator....

tdcharactercreator.com/#/login/
you can also search for Character Gen for True Dungeon app on your phone and it operates much the same as the website I listed above.

When you create a Barbarian character it will auto-filter to what your class can use. Then, you just select each of the slots and choose the tokens you like and look at the Statistics tab to see the overall results of the tokens you chose. When selecting the tokens on each slot I recommend filtering to Rare tokens since your budget is currently $100.

Now that your character is all setup the way you want you can go hunting for those Rare tokens though there is no guarantee that you will find them all.

www.trenttokens.com/
www.tdtavern.com/
www.utakustradecaravan.com/
or here are on the forums

Welcome back. I hope you enjoy playing again.

If the build you adopted is Endgame’s inexpensive build, the Belt of the Brave would be a great and still inexpensive update. And as others have said, it is great for any melee class in case you need to play fighter, dwarf fighter, Paladin, etc.

Depending on what “slightly more” $$ means, there are a couple ways you could go. The biggest one in terms of impact is making your character 5th level. There are multiple ways to do it. A ring of heroism will probably last the longest in your build, but could be ~$150. A ring of fateful heroism is cheaper (~$80), but you cannot wear other rings. Cook’s Hat is in-between price-wise ($125) and not terrible for a barbarian, but takes up 2 IS spots. There are other more expensive options, like token sets and the slotless Totem of Heroism.

In terms of things that are <$50, IS Jasper Ellipsoid would be a good replacement for IS Graphite (or Sapphire) Cube, as would IS kraken Coral Orb. Charm of the Fire Newt is nice. Charm of Good Health and/or Stalker’s Faerie Charm are good too.