Beginner Guide to “Saves” in DDO

Saves in Dungeons and Dragons Online are a crucial point of every character. In DDO there are 3 forms of saves; Fortitude, Reflex and Will, each protecting you from a different form of danger. While saves sound simplistic, they are actually a massive portion of how your character will survive throughout your experience in Dungeons and Dragons Online.

What does each save do?
-Fortitude: Protects you from most abilities that directly affect your characters health, this includes a majority of instant death spells, poisons and diseases

-Reflex: This determines how agile your character is, how likely it will be to negate a trip, a trap or even a powerful Area of Effect (AoE) spell that would otherwise damage/kill you

-Will: Non-damaging spell resistance. Majority of the time will is used when your character is attempting to save vs being held, hypnotized, or controlled in some way via a spell

How do you increase your saves?
There are many ways to increase your saves depending on what build, class or even stat priority you’re going for, following are a handful of ways you can increase each save:

Stats:
Each save is based directly correlated to an individual stat from the beginning, no matter what class you are. The stat correlations are as follows:
Fortitude: CON
Reflex: DEX
Will: WIS

Meaning the more CON you have, the more Fortitude save you will gain; as CON directly modifies Fortitude, same goes for DEX to Reflex, and WIS to Will saves.

As your saves are mainly based on these stats, changes in class, feats, equipment and buffs can effect your saves as well. Following are the in-depth details of how to change your save modifiers etc:

Feats:
-Fortitude: Constitution is your main stat modifier for Fortitude, however there are ways to increase fortitude utilizing other stats – such as Tough Tincture, which will allow you to utilize your Intelligence modifier instead of Constitution to increase your fortitude save. The feat Great Fortitude, will also increase your Fortitude saves by +2

-Reflex: Dexterity is your main stat modifier for Reflex, but with that being said, just like fortitude you can utilize other stats by selecting the Insightful Reflexes feat, using your INT instead of DEX to increase your reflex save. The feat Lightning Reflexes, will also increase your Reflex saves by +2

-Will: Wisdom is your main stat modifier for Will, but utilizing Liquid Courage your Will saves will be increased using your INT modifier instead of DEX (just like the prior options.) The feat Iron Will, will also increase your Will saves by +2

**NOTE Liquid Courage, and Tough Tincture can NOT be taken at the same time, you must choose one or the other as an Alchemist**

Luck of Heroes is a no pre-req feat that will increase all of your saves by +1, this feat is actually completely replaceable in a build once you have achieved Completionist through True Reincarnating your character once in every class *This does take a VERY long time for someone who is new to the game* as Completionist gives you +2 to all ability scores, meaning that your modifier for Fortitude, Reflex, and Will will all increase by +1, doing exactly what Luck of Heroes does, but better.

Monks gain stances, and as they level the effectiveness of the stances increase. While in Water Stance, a monk gains a bonus to their Wisdom stat, as well as increased dodge AND a bonus to all of their saves, stacking

Paladins starting at level 2, gain Divine Grace, a passive feat that increases all of your saves by a margin equal to your CHA modifier, it has a cap so you can’t endlessly gain saves from your CHA based on your Paladin level i.e. at 2 levels of Paladin would at best grant a max of +8 to saves (which is still a massive amount for 2 levels in my opinion)

Warlocks gain a Pact Feat starting at level 1, later in levels this feat will grant you a passive increase to your a specific save based on the pact you have chosen.
– Fiend: Fortitude
–Fey: Reflex
–Great Old One: Will
–Celestial: Reflex
–Abyss: Fortitude
–Carceri Storm: Will

Equipment:
In Dungeons and Dragons Online every quest will give you equipment as you play it, the higher level you get the better the equipment you will gain. There are several types of bonuses equipment grant to increase saves, they are as follows:
– Resistance Bonus
– Insight Bonus
– Quality Bonus
**Insight and Quality bonus aren’t exclusive to just saves, many items have these bonuses increasing stats, PRR, MRR etc.**

Buffs/Spells:
There are buffs and spells across multiple different classes that will provide a benefit to saves, most of them stacking but be sure to read the type of bonus the spell provides so that you aren’t overlapping your Resistance Bonus from equipment with a Resistance Bonus from a spell, as 2 bonuses of the same type will not stack; an list of spells for example are:
-Prayer (Luck)
-Nightshield (Resistance)
-Bless/Aid, Mass (vs fear specifically) (Morale)
-Magic Circle Against Evil (Resistance)
-Recitation (Luck)
-Stalwart Pact (on Proc) (Luck)
-Holy Aura (Sacred)
-Greater Heroism/Heroism (Morale)
-Quicksilver Potion/Haste (Stacking)


While a lot of this information can be daunting to someone learning the game for the first time, it is important to know and will better your character in the long run. If you have any questions about saves, or have a suggestion on what I should post about next in detail. Please feel free to message me personally through the contact option in the Menu.
– Dan, DDO Savant

Source: https://ddowiki.com/