Swordsmen who are currently struggling to find a suitable wep might find this useful. Last night I decided to test just how effective the Soulseeker actually is in gathering keys for Dreadhorn then solo'ing the boss.
I was actually quite taken aback by the results.
Its worth taking into account I have 100 tactics/anat and 81 DI on my suit which comes from conjurer's trinket, 19/22 brace/ring and 20 on gauntlets of nobility.
Started by gathering 2 Fangs in the cave, no problems there obv. Embraced honour and dumped Spite and Guile at the very top of the swamp area using a confusion pot. With those two safely out of the way I focused next on Irk.
Soulseeker was amazing against Irk. Was doing lovely damage and by the time pefection was achieved was doing 70+ with freequent crits of 120-140. Very quickly I had dispatched about 11 Irks and had the 2 brains I wanted.
Moved on to the spiders at this point which isn't particularly challenging. In Vamp form as long as you single them out you never get in trouble. Because I had gained a good bit of honour from all the Irks I decided to play it ultra safe. Embraced honour and took Irk up to join Spite and Guile at the top of the swamp, again using a confustion pot. This meant I could run into the spiders and drag one out to kill at a time. To be honest, tanking them both at once isn't overly difficult but if you get a bad run with the RNG you can get in trouble and with the new changes to Magic Reflection etc, I prefer to just make sure I never die rather than take unecesary risks. Plus, looting 2 spiders at once is a pain when they just keep constantly respawning....
Anyhoo, within a very short space of time the spiders had given me the two eyes and silk that I needed and along with my briar and cotton I had already picked up I was ready to challenge Dreadhorn twice. I didn't time it but I would say this took no more than 20 minutes from entering the swamp area.
Up until this point the Soulseeker performed flawlessly.
I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive before going in partly because I had never tried this with this weapon and partly because I haven't solo'd dreadhorn since I changed my temp and had to drop healing...
The end result was amazing. Ploughed through the dreadhorn in about 20 minutes. Using Consecrete Weap + Enemy of One I found that I very rarely got into any trouble. At perfection I was doing 70 damage which isn't big dmg against Dread however the consistent speed meant that I was very rarely ever swinging less than 1.25. I used confidence to heal and evade if I ever got to about half hp (which was not often).
Following my first successful attempt I dumped my loot and went back in for seconds, this time even better results, finished off in about 15 minutes.
To summarise, the soulseeker with consecrete weapon and EoO was awesome both for collecting keys and solo'ing the boss. The key is the speed. The fact that you rarely ever drop below max swing speed means that you are leeching back hps at a fantastic rate.
I have an axe (two handed) with almost godly mods on it but I would say I felt more comfortable with the soulseeker in my hand than I ever did in all the times I used the axe.
The axe is as follows:
HLL, HML, HSL, HLD all > 45 and has SSI 30. It is a 3s two handed weapon. But with DH curse, and when you take damage, your stam drops and you can often grind to a near halt and need to rely on Divine Fury to take you back up. This can cause big problems.
With the soulseeker you will NEVER grind to a halt and always be leeching back substantial amounts of HPs.
After my DH experience last night I went and did some balrons with Soulseeker and out of about 20 spawned 2 paras. Killed them both quite easily with a little running involved.
So before spending 20-50m on a weapon or burning countless runics, it might be worth considering the soulseeker as a viable option.
This has turned out to be way more long winded than I had intended but I hope some of you find it useful!
