So how can I finally become a Dragon?

Katsuragi

I just hit 68 and everything's so slow! Slow XP, slow gold...

My usual route is Ulangi -> Xhaiden -> Actar -> Sirrocians -> Arachnoi -> Polyargos (generally only ~3 of them are available out of the lot) for gold, and for fast XP I can easily cut a swath through Manara gnolls. Since I blaze through them a lot faster the experience gain is actually better than other places I've been told to go (Moghedu, Dun, Azdun).

Just a few more levels and Moghedu will take the top position, since the XP is decent and the gold is also decent. But in the meantime it's a struggle.  I want to get off Mr. Gnoll's Wild Ride.

Cobault

Katsuragi said:

I just hit 68 and everything's so slow! Slow XP, slow gold...

My usual route is Ulangi -> Xhaiden -> Actar -> Sirrocians -> Arachnoi -> Polyargos (generally only ~3 of them are available out of the lot) for gold, and for fast XP I can easily cut a swath through Manara gnolls. Since I blaze through them a lot faster the experience gain is actually better than other places I've been told to go (Moghedu, Dun, Azdun).

Just a few more levels and Moghedu will take the top position, since the XP is decent and the gold is also decent. But in the meantime it's a struggle.  I want to get off Mr. Gnoll's Wild Ride.

Yeahhhhhh... stay outta Moghedu.

Katsuragi

Oh, I don't know, I can take out the normal rank-and-file ones pretty easily, and even the keepers I can chip away at for ~2% a kill. But it's more trouble than it's worth in my opinion.

Sena

I recommend Phereklos for xp. The denizens give somewhat lower xp for how much health they have, compared to other areas (except the jellyfish, the jellyfish are great), but there are a lot of denizens and they respawn quickly, so by the time you clear it a lot will probably have respawned already. There's also almost never anyone bashing there, so you can just bash constantly with very little downtime spent moving to new areas or waiting for respawns. And there's nothing especially dangerous or affliction-heavy to worry about either, as long as you stay out of the bottom level until you can handle the hydras (or just be careful and squint to be aware of what you're walking into). If you're careful (or if you can afford to use moss/potash liberally), you could probably even use Arash a lot of the time, for faster xp.

Aepas

Kensei said:

Well, I officially give up on bashing to dragon - it's like, impossible with the current state of the BM. I'll just focus on RP and finally learning combat instead, unless I give it one last try with race/trait change, STR-focused Horkval/Xoran or something like that. I'm not changing class so that's my last resort!  

Just a quick question, though: what are those sips of lucky? Can't remember them from before I went into hiatus...  

Xoran is best at everything.

Sarathai

Katsuragi said:

...and for fast XP I can easily cut a swath through Manara gnolls. Since I blaze through them a lot faster the experience gain is actually better than other places I've been told to go (Moghedu, Dun, Azdun).

Manara is stupidly efficient in terms of XP gain. I was still regularly cycling through that place in the mid-70s, even when I had (and used) several other spots as well.

If you're aiming for efficiency, a larger amount of easy to kill, weaker enemies are a better choice than a smaller number of harder ones. Not only will you not have to worry about walking into a stack of them (Keepers in Moghedu are annoying for me if there's two of them at once, and I detest that junction in the basement where they like to pile on with two Keepers, Haedra, and a couple of labourers/demolitionists), if you need to hit and run a room, you often don't need to bother bashing them (and if you need to hit and run an individual denizen, then you probably shouldn't be bashing that denizen in the first place). From the bashing king:

"It's also good to note that good bashing isn't entirely about tankiness though, it's also about damage output speed. A lot of my bashing has been against weaker targets that I can kill very quickly, since speed trumps everything in terms of xp generation. It's a mistake most people make, spending longer to kill something stronger than spending less time killing more things that are smaller for more xp over time. Yes, tankiness is very important, but only to a certain threshold I feel, and not to the exclusion of damage output."

Klendathu

Sarathai said:

Katsuragi said:

...and for fast XP I can easily cut a swath through Manara gnolls. Since I blaze through them a lot faster the experience gain is actually better than other places I've been told to go (Moghedu, Dun, Azdun).

Manara is stupidly efficient in terms of XP gain. I was still regularly cycling through that place in the mid-70s, even when I had (and used) several other spots as well.

If you're aiming for efficiency, a larger amount of easy to kill, weaker enemies are a better choice than a smaller number of harder ones. Not only will you not have to worry about walking into a stack of them (Keepers in Moghedu are annoying for me if there's two of them at once, and I detest that junction in the basement where they like to pile on with two Keepers, Haedra, and a couple of labourers/demolitionists), if you need to hit and run a room, you often don't need to bother bashing them (and if you need to hit and run an individual denizen, then you probably shouldn't be bashing that denizen in the first place). From the bashing king:

"It's also good to note that good bashing isn't entirely about tankiness though, it's also about damage output speed. A lot of my bashing has been against weaker targets that I can kill very quickly, since speed trumps everything in terms of xp generation. It's a mistake most people make, spending longer to kill something stronger than spending less time killing more things that are smaller for more xp over time. Yes, tankiness is very important, but only to a certain threshold I feel, and not to the exclusion of damage output."

So so true, yet people fixate on "this is a level 60 place, therefore people of level 90 shouldn't bash there". Bull. Lawnmower time.

Valaria

Klendathu said:

Sarathai said:

Katsuragi said:

...and for fast XP I can easily cut a swath through Manara gnolls. Since I blaze through them a lot faster the experience gain is actually better than other places I've been told to go (Moghedu, Dun, Azdun).

Manara is stupidly efficient in terms of XP gain. I was still regularly cycling through that place in the mid-70s, even when I had (and used) several other spots as well.

If you're aiming for efficiency, a larger amount of easy to kill, weaker enemies are a better choice than a smaller number of harder ones. Not only will you not have to worry about walking into a stack of them (Keepers in Moghedu are annoying for me if there's two of them at once, and I detest that junction in the basement where they like to pile on with two Keepers, Haedra, and a couple of labourers/demolitionists), if you need to hit and run a room, you often don't need to bother bashing them (and if you need to hit and run an individual denizen, then you probably shouldn't be bashing that denizen in the first place). From the bashing king:

"It's also good to note that good bashing isn't entirely about tankiness though, it's also about damage output speed. A lot of my bashing has been against weaker targets that I can kill very quickly, since speed trumps everything in terms of xp generation. It's a mistake most people make, spending longer to kill something stronger than spending less time killing more things that are smaller for more xp over time. Yes, tankiness is very important, but only to a certain threshold I feel, and not to the exclusion of damage output."

So so true, yet people fixate on "this is a level 60 place, therefore people of level 90 shouldn't bash there". Bull. Lawnmower time.

well that depend on that area if it drop good amount of golds, then experience don't matter at all. It's Lawnmower time.

Austere

Okay lawnmower time is by far the best metaphor for dragon hunting lesser areas I have ever heard. I think Klendathu just won forums.  Can we make lawnmower in game, so I can use the term next time someone cries about me hunting orcs? 

Kensei

So, I saw some earlier post suggesting I could invest in weaponry and try to use that instead to bash as a BM... Is it worth it spending the lessons, and if so what weapon should I try to learn to use to this end? Does it work with Two Arts like it used to work with Chivalry for Knights before the changes? (a +10% bonus I think...)

Nexes

Kensei said:

So, I saw some earlier post suggesting I could invest in weaponry and try to use that instead to bash as a BM... Is it worth it spending the lessons, and if so what weapon should I try to learn to use to this end? Does it work with Two Arts like it used to work with Chivalry for Knights before the changes? (a +10% bonus I think...)

Don't do it. It's not worth the investment just for that.

I have tried with a arty longsword and it wasn't anything special.

Sena

Weaponry should be getting rebalanced any day now, so if you don't already have weaponry, don't learn it for blademaster bashing.

Kensei

Heh, I was waiting in front of Tyrandiel pondering if I should do it or not, but its a good thing I didn't then. On the other hand, I decided to go Xoran and strength and try that out. On the plus side, I kill things MUCH quicker. On the down side, I'm 700 health squishier but I guess its OK, I like the faster kill speed. Left with 300 credits, pondering on getting some defensive arties from now on, might help survive harder areas and combat that I wanna try getting into now.

If anyone has some insight, a friend of mine stopped Aardwolf and wants to try Achaea (did some good job promoting  ). He's interested in playing as a Horkval because he likes the uniquess of an insect race, but he likes to play spellcasters and not rogue/warrior types. I tried to explain he may be at a disadvantage bashing to dragon or in combat with the low intelligence, and he definitely won't score any extra points with Sirens , but he won't listen. I'm not really knowledgeable with casters myself, always been playing non-caster alts over the years, so if anyone can convince me otherwise so I can give him at least some good class options it would be great.   

Sena

-2 int (at worst) isn't going to be crippling for either PvP or bashing. For bashing, the high con is useful, plus the resistances are good for magi (who can't wear armour) and probably nearly equal to armour for alchemists/apostates (for shamans/occultists/sylvans though, horkval resistances are probably going to be noticeably worse than armour).

There's no shortage of rajamala in int classes, and they're even worse than horkvals for bashing.

In Achaea though, there's really very little difference between "spellcasters" and "warriors", and nearly every class uses magic to some extent.

Edit: Class suggestions would need more information, really. Aside from the armour differences I mentioned, horkval could do well enough in any class, so just the race isn't much to base any advice on.

Edit 2: Actually, if he'd consider druid to be caster-ish enough (I'd say they're pretty magical, even if it's more nature magic and animal spirits than throwing lightning and fireballs), they use strength rather than int, so that would be a good choice for horkval.

Kensei

Yeah, and its the other way around when spellcasters sometimes use weapons and venoms, too, if I'm not mistaken...  But yeah, the aforementioned classes are the ones I was referring to mostly, the ones that rely mainly on spells to do stuff. Although I am kinda confused sometimes, cause I tend to think spells need equilibrium but some need balance instead and I heard some "caster" classes pick up nimble instead of quick-witted!   (I guess this nerfs bashing speed?) Btw, since these classes (apostates/magi/alchemists) are not dependent on weapons for bashing they are more normalized than what I've encountered with Knights vs BM, right? That could help in picking one for flavor instead of efficiency cause he likes min-maxing!  

Sena

I'd consider the primary caster classes to be magi, alchemist, apostate, shaman, occultist, and possibly druid/sylvan. Shaman and druid use nimble for bashing, the rest of them use quick-witted for bashing. Alchemists, shamans, and druids use nimble for PvP, and possibly apostates (evileye uses balance, but I'm not sure how important that is for apostate combat) and occultists (for tarot, again I'm not sure how important it is since the domination changes) as well.

All of them except druid use intelligence as their offensive bashing stat. Int is especially important in bashing for magi (they need a lot of mana, and stoneskin/diamondskin scale somewhat with intelligence) and shamans (they burn through willpower pretty quickly).

Kensei said:

Btw, since these classes (apostates/magi/alchemists) are not dependent on weapons for bashing they are more normalized than what I've encountered with Knights vs BM, right?

I'm not really sure what you mean.

Kensei

Ah, this is very insightful. But having both nimble for pvp and quickwitted for pve might be suicide!  So shaman/druid nimble and magi/sylvan quickwitted are more straightforward choices then.

What I meant was, with the big changes that happened to bashing while I was away, I assumed that magic hunting attacks (I think all are a single hit?) have less variables involved when trying to normalize hunting dmg than the ones used by classes with weapons (more attacks, hit/miss issues, faster/slower weapons, more/less base weapon dmg etc.), so I assumed all have similar dps output.

Sena

All classes except knights/serpents/bards (and artied priests/jesters) have nearly identical DPS. Once weaponry is fixed, serpents and bards might be brought down as well, but I'm not really sure since it seems the "keep DPS the same for every class" idea has already been abandoned judging from how knights have been balanced (which leaves them with higher DPS than everyone else, even though they're also better than everyone at everything else).

It's true that magic classes mostly don't have a chance to miss while bashing (magi and sylvans do as newbies, when they're using stonefist, and I'm not sure if sylvan's thornrend can miss or not), but that's true of other classes too (blademaster, sentinel, priest, possibly jester?), and most classes will almost never miss once they trans the relevant skills.

Cobault

Sena said:

All classes except knights/serpents/bards (and artied priests/jesters) have nearly identical DPS. Once weaponry is fixed, serpents and bards might be brought down as well, but I'm not really sure since it seems the "keep DPS the same for every class" idea has already been abandoned judging from how knights have been balanced (which leaves them with higher DPS than everyone else, even though they're also better than everyone at everything else).

It's true that magic classes mostly don't have a chance to miss while bashing (magi and sylvans do as newbies, when they're using stonefist, and I'm not sure if sylvan's thornrend can miss or not), but that's true of other classes too (blademaster, sentinel, priest, possibly jester?), and most classes will almost never miss once they trans the relevant skills.

Dunno why they'd mess with Serpent hunting... I mean, it's better than it used to be, but it's still not really THAT great. Not like people are standing there, "Best hunting class?" --  "Oh, man, Serpent. Hands down, Serpent. Just stand there and garrote a couple hundred times, unless you have a bunch of strength, which isn't a typical Serpent stat to have lots of."

On the real though, this game has catered to Knight everything since... Hell, I started playing 7.5 years ago. Yeah, they get the occasional nerf just like everyone else, but usually, things seem to casually fall in their favor rather than against it.

Kensei

Cobault said:

Just stand there and garrote a couple hundred times, unless you have a bunch of strength, which isn't a typical Serpent stat to have lots of."

On the real though, this game has catered to Knight everything since... Hell, I started playing 7.5 years ago. Yeah, they get the occasional nerf just like everyone else, but usually, things seem to casually fall in their favor rather than against it.

I am not really certain about this but I thought serpents now needed dexterity instead for garrote damage?

And yes, Knights have to be tanky and I agree, but more bashing damage, too, than the glass-cannon-like classes too, I don't think it is a good idea for balance purposes.  
 

Sena

Strength has nothing to do with garrote. And artied serpent (with lash and +dex) does have the second best DPS in the game (second only to artied priest (mace and +str), which isn't that much better), they're far stronger than most other classes.

Klendathu

Kensei said:

But having both nimble for pvp and quickwitted for pve might be suicide!

You can't have both nimble and quick witted, they're mutually exclusive traits.

Cobault

Sena said:

Strength has nothing to do with garrote. And artied serpent (with lash and +dex) does have the second best DPS in the game (second only to artied priest (mace and +str), which isn't that much better), they're far stronger than most other classes.

Oh, did it get changed while I was asleep?

The damage garrote did relied heavily on strength back in the day. Highly possible that's been changed. (I know this because it was something I tested. You know, back when you had to secrete before each bite, wipe the dirk before each dstab, hypnosis was theft, and it was amazing, etc.)

I do know a common misconception people have is that dexterity makes garrote faster. That is without question not true.

Sena

You missed some huge changes then. Dexterity does make garrote faster now (and dstab, and phase), though it may just be against denizens, and it's overpowered now.

It hasn't depended on strength (either for PvP or bashing) in at least 6 years.

Cobault

...I have already issued myself over this. The only thing whip-wise that dexterity affects is flay. It is also not overpowered, by a substantial margin when compared to other abilities. Again, people are getting these things that they heard from someone that they heard from someone else that they heard while standing at Minia rumors going into circulation.

Dex does indeed affect phase recovery. Strength contributes to backstab... I can go on and on of what does/doesn't increase what. But Dexterity does not increase garrote speed. There's a reason you can buy a lash or a whip in the artie shop, still.  (That, or an admin from not even a week ago was wrong >_>)

Sena

Announce posts and forum posts from admin disagree with you, as well as extensive testing from multiple players. Dexterity reduces garrote balance against denizens by roughly 6% (7% when garrote is below a certain balance time, not sure what the cutoff is) per point of dexterity above 12.

Cobault

...I have no clue where you're getting your credentials. I haven't seen nor heard any multiple players with extensive testing of any kind lately, nor have I read any announce posts that specified dexterity changed garrote, etc, nor have I read any posts, not including the most recent claiming that I'm wrong.

Also, literally, an admin has confirmed my side of this argument with me already. Like... play Serpent, then get at me about how what works what way. Link me a lil somethin somethin so I can at least see what you're reading and whom posted it. Because at the moment, you literally just confirmed my previous post. You've just heard it from someone that heard it from someone, etc... You spec pure Dexterity thinking that garbage information and see how far you go hunting with like 9 or 10 constitution and no arties to buffer the damage.

Sena

As for whether or not it's overpowered, it isn't any more (I realised I never actually rechecked after weapon stats were changed), fully artied serpent is only slightly stronger than other classes.

For reference, fully artied DPS for most classes (alchemist, apostate, blademaster, druid, magi, monk, occultist, sentinel, shaman, sylvan) is around 320. Fully artied serpent was, until recently, 447. Now it's only 341.

Sena

From announce 4161:

- The damage against denizens done by Garrote in Subterfuge will scale with the user's skill in Subterfuge and the damage stat on the whip, but the damage will not be modified by any racial statistics. Instead, the balance cost of the attack will be modified by the user's dexterity (similar to dexterity's effect on Doublestab balance times). Higher dexterity = faster attacks.

This was back in July.

Cobault said:

Like... play Serpent, then get at me about how what works what way.

I've been playing serpent for 10 years now, and have tested all of this myself.

Cobault

So, a post from almost 7 months ago, before the weapon stat changes, etc.

10 years of alleged testing. When, actually, Serpent garrote DAMAGE getting a contribution from Strength wasn't even a full 3 years ago, so I can't trust the "decade of testing."

And your statistics are all based on fully artied Serpents hunting, which I may know a total of 3 of, which led to your conclusion of Serpent hunting being "OP"


..I'm so done in this thread.