On higher difficulties and New Game + levels you pretty much need to stack the stat "Damage Taken -X%", which can be had from socketables and gear. The best source is "Skull of Limoany" -5% Damage Taken, which you can farm in NG+1 Frosted Hills Phase Beast. You can also farm "Eye of Grell" From the Wellspring Temple boss. It offers -3% Damage Taken. Cap is -75% Damage Taken, and Engineer and Berserker have 25% of it by default.

With the right stats and build, it's possible to make NG+5 Elite trivial. That can take a lot of work, but I just wanted to assure you that it is possible.

Skull of Limoany is better for NG+ players. It gives 5% damage reduction.

I also stack stats (from gear and gems) that give higher amounts of health and mana, and fast regeneration rates for health and mana.

Originally posted by Neon Triangle:

If you want to, you can make a new character and just keep them in New Game, and farm Grell by looping the Wellspring Temple: Only 5 "small" maps are stored in memory (10 if you want to loop the large areas like the Temple Steppes), so just run through the side dungeons to force a loop,

My recollection is that you can toggle back and forth to LAN mode, and when you do, you have the option to repopulate the world.

I don't recall the exact details, but I've used it a few times and seem to recall it being fairly easy to initiate.

Great, so to gain more sustain I have to get a char up to NG+ just to farm some HP, because it is locked to NG1?

What do people usually stay at? I was planning to go NG+5 but it seems that's just a way to get frustrated and lose the motivation to further play.

Originally posted by jstnkr:

Why the hell am I dropping lv44 items on a NG+++ veteran playthrough? Since NG++
I get one-shot from half the enemy attacks and my entire playstyle consists of me spawning adds to tank damage while I cast from as far away as possible. My loot isn't getting any better at all, how am I supposed to get more sustain? Any tips?

https://i.imgur.com/mz6bK3h.png

Vanilla TL2 is pretty broken on common items providing only basic survivability - higher level items give decent Dps and the Stats can be invested to get good damage gains.

For high-Veteran and Elite difficulties - farming a grocery list of rare skulls from Lan Re-Rolls to finally locate the correct Phase Beast maps (complete map - don't leave, save - quit, repeat) either in NG Act_03 or NG+ Act_01 and Act_03 become everything in order to thrive on NG+4 (+5 is just a proof of completing +4).

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1709334997

Originally posted by Neon Triangle:

Not really, in fact I remember people saying that the best version of the Limoany Skull is in NG+3 (gives 15% DR if I recall).

Skull stats do not change in vanilla. Limoany is always -5% Damage Taken.

The best way to get it is phase beast in Frosted Hills in NG+1 because you never out-level it.

Originally posted by Cannonaire:

Skull stats do not change in vanilla. Limoany is always -5% Damage Taken. :died:

The best way to get it is phase beast in Frosted Hills in NG+1 because you never out-level it.

This is proof that my brain has become more broken than this game's armor system. I apologize if I spread any wrong info about this game, but getting casually destroyed by every NG+5 enemy for 50,000 damage (without crits) just because I only relied on shield block clearly had an effect on me.

Either way, steffire3's memory is far superior to mine, including posting a recent guide recalling another player's guide on how defense works in this game (from the now-extinct Runic forums), so It's clear the OP doesn't need to worry too much for proper info.

Can gems have sockets like how they can on the fate games if you modify it

https://youtu.be/EF5KuhUVILg?si=WZsFCRBSLHZW3ikE

Originally posted by Kweeb:

Can gems have sockets like how they can on the fate games if you modify it

Gems with sockets is unavailable in the TL2 editor for mods.
Not certain the game was coded for it either.
As it's not a feature that was spoken of during development pre-2012 among the players in the late Runic Forums.
In those years; if unmodded-Fate, Titan Quest, D-1,2,3, and the early version of Path-of-Exile didn't feature something - chances are the TL developers weren't thinking of it either.

I found the mod page (thanks for showcasing it!) and decided to check the years that this was released:

Originally posted by https://www.nexusmods.com/fate/mods/7:

Last updated
06 November 2024 6:42PM

Original upload
19 December 2021 2:13AM

It's very recent. Very cool feature though.

This is the closest feature modded-TL2 has to getting extra bonuses on Gems without actually adding Sockets to the Gems directly:

Originally posted by HiFive:

I checked the Workshop to see if there was any mod there that is close to what you are asking for. This one is the nearest I could get to your idea.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1612263775&searchtext=gem+sockets