So after reading my previous article on the subject of free to play, or Premium accounts, in DDO you’ve decided that you want to go the free to play route or premium account route in DDO. However you’re not sure what is available, what there is to do, and how to make your free to play experience better. That’s where this article comes in. Today we’ll be discussing which quests are free to play, what sort of favor you can get out of them, and how you can roll that favor over into Turbine Points using Free Player and Premium accounts in game.
To begin with here is a chart detailing exactly what quests are available to you for free. Next to each quest is the amount of favor you can gain on the quest by completing it on elite difficulty.
Free to Play Quest Index with Favor Listing
| Quest | Favor | Quest | Favor |
| Level 1 | Level 5 | ||
| The Store House’s Secret | 6 | The Lair of Summoning | 9 |
| Stopping the Sahuagin | 9 | The Depths of Doom | 9 |
| Sacrifices | 9 | The Depths of Discord | 9 |
| Redemption | 9 | Archer Point Defense | 9 |
| Necromancer’s Doom | 6 | Taming the Flame | 15 |
| Heyton’s Rest | 6 | Level 6 | |
| The Collaborator | 12 | Ruined Halls | 12 |
| The Cannith Crystal | 6 | Redwillow’s Ruins | 15 |
| Level 2 | Purge the Heretics | 12 | |
| Walk the Butcher’s Path | 12 | Mirra’s Sleepless Nights | 12 |
| The Sunken Sewer | 9 | Gladewatch Outpost Defense | 12 |
| Stop Hazadill’s Shipment | 6 | The Forgotten Caverns | 12 |
| Stealthy Repossession | 9 | Dead Predators | 12 |
| The Smuggler’s Warehouse | 9 | Caged Trolls | 12 |
| Retrieve the Stolen Goods | 9 | The Bounty Hunter | 15 |
| Recover the Lost Tomb | 9 | Level 7 | |
| Protect Baudry’s Interests | 6 | The Tear of Dhakaan | 21 |
| Missing in Action | 9 | The Pit | 27 |
| Misery’s Peak | 12 | Gwylan’s Stand | 18 |
| The Miller’s Debt | 2 | The Graverobbers | 15 |
| The Kobold’s New Ringleader | 12 | Level 8 | |
| Information is Key | 12 | The Xorian Cipher | 21 |
| Garrison’s Missing Pack | 12 | Stromvauld’s Mine | 15 |
| Durk’s Got a Secret | 12 | Stormcleave Outpost | 18 |
| Defend Haverdasher | 2 | The Paths to Madness | 9 |
| Bring the Light | 6 | Haunted Library | 15 |
| Arachnophobia | 2 | Faithful Departed | 12 |
| Level 3 | Caverns of Korromar | 15 | |
| Where there is Smoke | 9 | Level 9 | |
| The Swiped Signet | 12 | The Church of the Cult | 15 |
| Redfang The Unruled | 9 | Level 10 | |
| The Kobold’s Den: Clan Gnashtooth | 12 | Tempest Spine | 18 |
| The Kobold’s Den: Rescuing Arlos | 12 | Sykro’s Jewel | 15 |
| Kobold Assault | 9 | Reclamation | 15 |
| Home Sweet Sewer | 2 | Level 11 | |
| The Captives | 9 | The Spawn of Whisperdoom | 18 |
| An Explosive Situation | 2 | Made to Order | 18 |
| Ven’s Trail: Ven’s Fate | 9 | The Enemy Within | 24 |
| Ven’s Trail: Clan Tunnelworm | 12 | Dreams of Insanity | 18 |
| Rest for the Restless | 9 | Level 12 | |
| Level 4 | Invaders! | 21 | |
| Proof is in the Poison | 15 | A Relic of the Sovereign Past | 21 |
| Irestone Inlet | 12 | ||
| Freshen the Air | 9 | ||
| The Depths of Despair | 9 | ||
| The Depths of Darkness | 9 | ||
| The Camber of Insanity | 9 | ||
| Number of Quests | 79 | Total Favor Possible | 916 |
| Quest | Favor | Quest | Favor |
| Level 1 | Level 5 | ||
| The Store House’s Secret | 6 | The Lair of Summoning | 9 |
| Stopping the Sahuagin | 9 | The Depths of Doom | 9 |
| Sacrifices | 9 | The Depths of Discord | 9 |
| Redemption | 9 | Archer Point Defense | 9 |
| Necromancer’s Doom | 6 | Taming the Flame | 15 |
| Heyton’s Rest | 6 | Level 6 | |
| The Collaborator | 12 | Ruined Halls | 12 |
| The Cannith Crystal | 6 | Redwillow’s Ruins | 15 |
| Level 2 | Purge the Heretics | 12 | |
| Walk the Butcher’s Path | 12 | Mirra’s Sleepless Nights | 12 |
| The Sunken Sewer | 9 | Gladewatch Outpost Defense | 12 |
| Stop Hazadill’s Shipment | 6 | The Forgotten Caverns | 12 |
| Stealthy Repossession | 9 | Dead Predators | 12 |
| The Smuggler’s Warehouse | 9 | Caged Trolls | 12 |
| Retrieve the Stolen Goods | 9 | The Bounty Hunter | 15 |
| Recover the Lost Tomb | 9 | Level 7 | |
| Protect Baudry’s Interests | 6 | The Tear of Dhakaan | 21 |
| Missing in Action | 9 | The Pit | 27 |
| Misery’s Peak | 12 | Gwylan’s Stand | 18 |
| The Miller’s Debt | 2 | The Graverobbers | 15 |
| The Kobold’s New Ringleader | 12 | Level 8 | |
| Information is Key | 12 | The Xorian Cipher | 21 |
| Garrison’s Missing Pack | 12 | Stromvauld’s Mine | 15 |
| Durk’s Got a Secret | 12 | Stormcleave Outpost | 18 |
| Defend Haverdasher | 2 | The Paths to Madness | 9 |
| Bring the Light | 6 | Haunted Library | 15 |
| Arachnophobia | 2 | Faithful Departed | 12 |
| Level 3 | Caverns of Korromar | 15 | |
| Where there is Smoke | 9 | Level 9 | |
| The Swiped Signet | 12 | The Church of the Cult | 15 |
| Redfang The Unruled | 9 | Level 10 | |
| The Kobold’s Den: Clan Gnashtooth | 12 | Tempest Spine | 18 |
| The Kobold’s Den: Rescuing Arlos | 12 | Sykro’s Jewel | 15 |
| Kobold Assault | 9 | Reclamation | 15 |
| Home Sweet Sewer | 2 | Level 11 | |
| The Captives | 9 | The Spawn of Whisperdoom | 18 |
| An Explosive Situation | 2 | Made to Order | 18 |
| Ven’s Trail: Ven’s Fate | 9 | The Enemy Within | 24 |
| Ven’s Trail: Clan Tunnelworm | 12 | Dreams of Insanity | 18 |
| Rest for the Restless | 9 | Level 12 | |
| Level 4 | Invaders! | 21 | |
| Proof is in the Poison | 15 | A Relic of the Sovereign Past | 21 |
| Irestone Inlet | 12 | ||
| Freshen the Air | 9 | ||
| The Depths of Despair | 9 | ||
| The Depths of Darkness | 9 | ||
| The Camber of Insanity | 9 | ||
| Number of Quests | 79 | Total Favor Possible | 916 |
In general these quests are those that ae “Standalone”, meaning they’re usually not part of a large series or they aren’t tied to a large area outside Stormreach. (EX: Sorrowdusk Isle, Threnal Ruins, etc.) To those new to DDO you might not be familiar with what favor is, and why this is important to you. Favor is a lot like faction standing in other games. Each quest in the game is being presented by one of the factions within Stormreach. Completing a quest for them gives you a certain amount of favor with that faction and when you reach certain milestones of favor with each faction you get certain benefits, and when you reach certain milestones of total favor you receive some benefits as well, like Drow Access, 32 Point builds for new characters, and Favored Soul access. But favor now provides more than just those benefits. Now in module 9 favor is also the mechanic that awards player free Turbine Points in the DDO store. This is important because, as a free to play player, unless you intended to buy adventure packs with your own money you are going to need favor to get free Tubine Points to take any quests over level 12, not to mention you may need to buy leveling sigils if they haven’t dropped as quest rewards for you in time.
There are two kinds of awards that are given out for favor. The first award is for reaching a total favor milestone with one character on a server. Once you’ve reached the milestone with one character on that server you cannot earn that reward again with another character on that server. The second award is a per-character award that is granted for every 100 total favor reached with every character you create.
Favor Milestone Turbine Point Rewards
| Once Per Server | |
| Total Favor | Turbine Points |
| 5 | 50 |
| 25 | 25 |
| 50 | 25 |
| 500 | 50 |
| 1000 | 100 |
| 2000 | 100 |
| 3000 | 100 |
| Once Per Character | |
| Total Favor | Turbine Points |
| Every 100 | 25 |
As you can see from this chart, if you plan to earn as many favor points as possible what you’ll need to plan to do is to make characters on all of the available servers in the game. As you can see from the first chart you can only earn a total of 915 points of favor from free quests. Doing that with one character on one server is going to earn you 150 Turbine Points in Once Per Server awards and 225 Turbine Points in once per character awards for a total of 375 points, though you would be earning points faster if you stopped at 500 favor and moved on to the next sever, at least until you ran out of new servers to make characters on. How much is 375 points? Well The Vale of Twilight, a good area to goto when you are level 12, costs 700 turbine points, and VIP subscriptions get 500 a Turbine Point stipend a month. There are a total of 6 servers available. Let’s say you have a free player account instead of a premium one. That means you have 2 slots per server. If you completely maximize your favor on all six servers on each of your two slots you’ll gain a total of 3,600 Turbine Points. That’s enough to purchase The Vale of Twilight, The Devils of Shavarath, The Ruins of Gianthold, The Reaver’s Reach, and The Restless Isles to give you all the quests you need to reach 20. If you at one point spent money on the game, giving you a premium account, you would gain four slots total meaning using only free quests you could gain a maximum of 6,300 favor, just 4,345 points shy of being able to buy all the adventure packs. Also remember, any adventure packs you purchase are going to give you more quests which mean more possible favor for you to access.
What is all comes down to is how much time you have to spend to actually gain this favor to get the turbine points. To reach that maximum of 6,300 favor you’d have to level up 24 characters to level 12 across all six servers, or by finding high level players willing to run you through all 79 quests, on elite, for each of those 24 characters. If on the other hand you’re happy sticking to the selection of free quests above only intend to buy items to allow you to gain more quests past twelve then you may find a happy medium. Picking up The Vale of Twilight and The Devils of Shavarath will give you quests to get you to 20, and picking up The Reaver’s Reach and The Ruins of Gianthold will expand that quest selection. Just don’t forget to plan to buy some leveling sigils along the way.
Furluge's Depot 
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Thanks for doing this, it’s a great article.
I’ve been playing a week now and really enjoying it so far. A couple of questions.
Re: levelling sigils. These are just quest rewards right? Would it not be easy to solo some short level 2 dungeon over and over until it drops rather than blowing TP on one if you reach level 5 without seeing one drop? Also are they available on the auction house or do we only get them as personal rewards?
In terms of maximising favor should we just run each place on elite once? Is there any benefit (apart from xp and chance of a sigil) to running instances on lower difficulties?
Are there any drawbacks to grouping? Seems to me the easiest way to do this is to roll clerics on each server and form my own parties. Clerics at low level seem to be the main stumbling block.
Thanks again for doing all this hard work. If you’re still on a roll the last thing that would be really useful would be a table of adventure packs with TP to buy and TP available so we can optimise our favor by buying the most rewarding ones first.
Cheers!
To answer your questions Stabs.
1) Leveling sigils are just quest rewards. As Chaosprism below notes the copper sigil is pretty easy to find, silver is a bit harder but not impossible to find, but gold and platinum seem to be where most people hit a wall on finding sigils for free. It might be best to only buy the last two sigils with Turbine Points.
2) You are correct, other than XP (And there is a one time XP bonus for the first time you complete a quest on each level.) and the items you get doing the quest, there isn’t any reward to doing the quest on normal and hard first. However, remember you need to unlock difficulties. To get to elite difficulty you or a party member needs to have completed the quest on hard or elite already.
3) Nope, no drawbacks to grouping. Dungeons and Dragons is balanced around assembling a team of 4-6 players to take on an adventure and DDO is the same way, though concessions have been made to allow some more solo play and teams of fewer than 4 players.
4) Thanks, but I’m not sure what exactly you mean by this last comment. The “True Cost of DDO Unlimited” article has a listing of all the adventure packs with their cost in Turbine Points if that’s what you mean. If not could you email me with the contact form up top and try to explain it a bit more and I’ll see what I can do.
I found copper sigil is pretty common, usually you’ll get one before you get to the end of level 4.
Silver seems a lot rarer and I never saw a gold one drop in quite a few missions as a level 12. (the one I need to get to 13) Seems to me unless you’re very lucky you’ll need to buy gold and platinum sigils.
Grouping IS the name of the game, the drawbacks are the normal things in groups:
1) People NOT doing their job, warriors not fighting, clerics not healing, wizards not casting, rogues not dealing with traps etc
2) sponging instead of contributing, going afk after just entering etc
3) Bad sports, people dropping out midway
4) Abusive , argumentative, arrogant, bossy people
same things groups in any area of life may fail with.
I believe what Stabs was suggesting was something along the lines of a chart with the following type of information:
Quest Pack – Adventure Name – Elite Favor
———- ————– ———–
Total Favor = TP earned vs TP paid for pack
Knowing how much TP you can pull from any given pack compared to the cost of buying the pack itself. “so we can optimise our favor by buying the most rewarding ones first.”
I too am VIP with no plans of changing, but your articles have helped me get a better picture of the mechanics behind the new bits. So thank you very much. I’ve already shortcut’ed your articles so I can refer other people who would benefit from them to come see them.
Glad it helps Dave. Though I hope you check out the site for more than just these two articles. 😉
And I’ll see what I can make for a chart like that.
a bit off subject but if you go VIP and dont have the money to pay for one month, are all of the adventure packs that are included dissappear?
When you are in the VIP subscription think of it as renting the features, where as if you buy them with Turbine Points you’re buying them. So if you have a VIP subscription and your subscription drops you go back to being a Premium account and you lose access to anything Premium accounts don’t have access to that you didn’t already buy with Turbine Points.
thanks for this it is very helpful!
Thanks for writing these articles. As I have limited time to play a monthly sub is often wasting a lot of money so I really like the option of just spending a few dollars now and then to buy some extra content when you want to play.
Free play has certainly got me to play the game and I expect I will buy some of the Modules you suggest once I get up to level 12.
I’m glad you find this helpful. If you look on the forums you can see some good suggestions for what to buy besides the modules mentioned for lower levels.
Just shows me that if I was looking for a free game I went to the wrong place.
I think yahoo games has solitaire, you might want to try that if this isn’t free enough for you.
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I have a 2 nooby questions: your chart “Favor Milestone/Turbine Point Rewards
it says “once per character… but couldn’t you just delete the character after completing all the free quests on elite?
does repeating a quest on elite dif. award any favor? then that would of cause be the easy answer to the above:P
I really don’t want to get VIP cause i play only on weekends, and not very long but your article is very helpfull, thx