A small tweak

Sanna

Aerek said:

With a strider and a good crew of 3, hunting -difficult- monsters, I can clear about 100k an hour. Split 3 ways, that's 33k, and the XP is pretty good. Sure, Dragons and artefacted folks can do better, but if you're a level 70 with just enough Seafaring to fire a weapon? Sea monster hunting is literally some of the best XP and gold you can find, and unless it's a sea hag, not very dangerous to you, as an individual. (Just to the ship, which the captain and other crew deals with.)

The change is pretty obviously intended to stop people from grinding the tiny monsters that present no danger to a seastrider for hours on end. If you want to make money hunting monsters, you can, you just have to actually go fight real monsters instead of anchoring in the kiddie pools.

For anybody under 85, 33k an hour is insane.

Tahquil

Okay! So let's start with the most cheapest method you can use to get into monster hunting.

Sea Marque: 5000g
Trans Seafaring: 1736 lessons = 290cr x7000g = 2,030,000g

Windcutter: 2,500,000g
Bottle of booze: 100g

Crewmates: 16x 500g = 8,000g
Shipmates: 15x 3000g = 15,000g
Tokens: 62x 250g (enough for 2 sinkings)= 15,500g
Provisions Common: (crates of 1000)10x 85g = 850g
Crew wages = 20,000g

Thrower arm: 180,000g
Ammo 250 wardiscs: 5x 13750g = 68750g
Figurehead: 10,000g
Spyglass: 500g
Ship axe: 1210g

TOTAL : 4,854,910

Honestly ship axe isn't even required. Use this guide, make sure you have hullgird and a measure of weapon knowledge and you can solo the kiddy pools and you can take down 34 monsters (I think I did the calculations right.) . Hell, you can even take on the Tapoa pools but I haven't collected enough data on those. 

Just be willing to do some work and use strategy tailored to each sea monster instead of just sitting there and unloading into them.

Tahquil

Now, Let's have a look at what you put up and strip out all the useless shit.

Anaria said:

Marque of Seaworthiness: 5000
Trans Seafaring: 1736 lessons / 290 credits at current market price: 2,030,000

Sea Strider: 5,000,000
Ballista: 295,000
Onager: 495,000
Arm: 180,000
Figurehead: 20,000
Bait Tank: 100,000 If your fishing, buy enough bait to last your session and hold onto it.
Beacon: 50,000 Not necessary until you have a few ships under your belt and are letting other people use them. But like if they are leaving ships in obscure locations you might want to rethink your captains.
Captain's Trunk: 25,000 Pure convenience/luxury item for the rich and famous
Desk(without maps): 75,000 After a bit of experience you get to know where stuff is unless you have 0 sense of direction. Since you can't trade it in I'd say it's another convenience item that quickly loses value.
Bell: 100,000 optional. If you're penny pinching you're not going to get this.. Unless you seriously want to dive. Then you'd probably get this instead of all the weapons
Crane: 100,000  Optional
Mariner's Sextant: 35,000  Hahhahahhaha. No.

Flag: 500
Emblazon: 2,500
Boggle of Champgne: 100
Ship's Axe: 1,210
Lead Line: 1,785 
Spyglass: 500
Buckets and Rope: *Variable
Deep Sea Fishing Pole: 1,000
250 Deep Sea Bait from Denizen Shop: 68,750 13,750 - Jesus we're not trying to encourage people going on a 6-8 hour afk fishing spree. 50 will be enough for you to dip a pool for a couple of hours or when you're anchored up and repairing between monster fights

40 Shipmates: 120,000
60 Cremates: 30,000
6 Swashbucklers: 30,000
50 Crates of 1000 Fine Provisions:  17,000 Common is okay. Fine is if like if your crew is on the verge of mutiny. Also you lose all provisions if sunk so 10-20 crates is enough.
106 Token Stores: 26,500
Ship Strongbox: 25,000* (suggested starting amount, obviously highly variable)
Recommended Bank Account to cover Salvage: 100,000 (debatable, you can get by with a bit less)
500 Ballista Darts: 218,000 You can definitely go with less with this I mean this is about 70 kiddy monsters
500 Wardiscs: 137,500  And this is another 70!
50 Flares (any colour): 11,100
50 Spider Shot: 26,000
50 Star Shot: 19,850


Not going to do the maths but you can see you don't have to fully outfit your Strider from the get go. There is stuff you don't need to put on at first or even at all so it's about  picking, choosing and prioritising what to get, how much and when.

Anaria

I really think you missed the point...

But before anyone reads Tahquil's version and decides to invest in a windcutter as a cheaper method, I would encourage you to borrow one and try it out first. There is good reason why almost every ship on the seamonster rankings list is either a strider or a galley.

Grandue

What is the best weapon layout for a strider if you focus on sea monster hunting? Is the ballista better than the arm?

Elowin

The arm has a very short range. You can kite with a ballista, but you're going to be taking damage if you use a thrower.

Anaria

Grandue said:

What is the best weapon layout for a strider if you focus on sea monster hunting? Is the ballista better than the arm?

The ballista darts have longer range and that is a consideration if you are hunting the bigger monsters by dancing around. In terms of damage, darts and wardiscs do the same, and wardiscs are cheaper. Personally I'd suggest having both an arm and a ballista for the versatility and to stand a better chance against player threats. 

Keep in mind that if you go with two of the same weapon type, they will "interfere" with each other when firing and increase the aim time.

Czanthria

Here are some suggestions that I have.  Please note, I did not looking at what you 'can' do, but what has actually been done.

FACTS - Let's look at some known FACTS -

No one is going to do anything, if there isn't a personal purpose or goal behind what they are doing.

No one is going to partake in any activity for very long that costs them more than they make, either in status (rankings, crew experience gain) or reward (gold, personal experience gain).

Regardless of who owns the ship, there are ammunition and maintenance costs.  Just as with bashing there are elixir and herb costs.

Seamonster hunting has been available to us since 25 Phaestian 703 (a bit earlier, but this is based on the announce post date)

ASSUMPTIONS - Now for some ASSUMPTIONS -

It took a year to get acclimated with seamonster hunting.  Thus monster hunting has been active for 3 years.

@Anaria is not the norm.  She is to seamonster hunting, what Penwize is to bashing.  No other ship comes close to her time investment to be where she is in seamonster rankings.

Routine maintenance of ships verses cost of elixirs and herbs to bash are equal. (remember, I'm calling this an assumption, don't get sidetracked in a debate about this).

To maintain a 6 seamonster an hour kill rate, most captains will need a second crewmember.  Note I say most!  Not all.  Outside of the kiddy pool, two is optimum to maintain a 6 seamonster an hour kill rate for any length of time.

LET'S LOOK AT #2 in the seamonster rankings.

The Incomprehensibly Inconceivable, captained by Artanis has been hunting seamonsters since the beginning.  It has 123 kills with a 250 avg for seamonster level.  Let's average his trophies at 8.5k per, since he hunts in the kiddy pool and in the midrange waters mostly, as well as sometimes in the deep end of the abyss.  That's 1,045,500 in gold over a period of 3 years.  Averaging 348,500 gold every twelve RL days.  Remembering to split with your fellow crew member drops that to 174,250 every 12 days.

174,250 for 41 monsters (123 monsters divided by 3).  41 monsters divided by the optimum of 6 per hour = 6.8 hours.  Let's just round that to 7 hours. 

Grand TOTAL is 24,893 an hour (steady hunting in optimum conditions), no ammo or maintainence costs are considered.  This is less than a dragon grinding away at the optimum bashing areas hour upon hour.

What I've tried to show you is best case scenario, so that you have an honest comparison.

The kiddy pool can be ground away at, but it's going to soon bore most people to tears.  Same as with bashing areas over and over.  Captains are going to venture out of the kiddy pool for increased gold and mostly challenge.  This is still very new to all of us.

SUGGESTIONS -

Kiddy pool seamonster spawn times were increased by two.  Request a change of spawn times to meet in the middle of old and new.  As it is now, you must sail around 75% of your sail time in ratio to the kill time, to train others.  They are going to quit from boredom, before they are comfortable attacking sea monsters.

Remove personal experience gain from kiddy pool monsters.  The true experience to be gained in the kiddie pool is practical experience in preparation for the bigger hunting grounds.

Leave trophies in the kiddy pool at 7k, to allow the training of others to properly offset the time investment and the maintenance costs for the ship owner, regardless of who the owner is, personal or organizational. 

Like with mining and the 100,000 commodity honours line.  Add an honours line for the nastiest sea creatures, such as "Sarapis crewed during the slaying at sea of 100 Sea Hags."  That is an accomplishment that means something to other sailors.

Kiet

Everyone who isn't for some reason adverse to doing the bigger monsters seems to be fine with this change. Why isn't 'do harder monsters' an acceptable solution? We train newbies on the medium+ monsters all the time.

Shirszae

Anaria said:

Grandue said:

What is the best weapon layout for a strider if you focus on sea monster hunting? Is the ballista better than the arm?

Keep in mind that if you go with two of the same weapon type, they will "interfere" with each other when firing and increase the aim time.

Weapons interfere with each other regardless of them being the same type or not. I have an arm and a ballista, and everytime Elowin fires the arm I get a few additional seconds on the ballista before it shoots.

@Kiet I honestly think it is because the gains for the medium+ monsters are not really worth the increased risks. Specially on the consideration that you require darts to survive, which are double the costs of wardiscs.

Kiet

Well then that's an issue of increasing medium+ rewards, as I've stated! They're not really that bad though since you get a lot of your ammo back.

Aegoth

Czanthria said:

@Anaria is not the norm.  She is to seamonster hunting, what Penwize is to bashing.  No other ship comes close to her time investment to be where she is in seamonster rankings.

YEa... if @Penwize bashed Manara Gnolls 24/7, that'd be accurate

Aerek

Grandue said:

What is the best weapon layout for a strider if you focus on sea monster hunting? Is the ballista better than the arm?

For pure monster hunting at the expense of ship v ship, I'd get 2x ballista, 1x onager. When you have a crew with you, it's hard to stay within arm range of anything worth hunting (level 285+) because they punish you for getting too close. Having 2 people on ballistas is a huge boost to your DPS, just because they're always in range instead of having your thrower man just sitting around waiting for a close pass. The onager's good for debuffing depending on the monster, and long-range flare stuns when you get into trouble.

Skye

I don't think I use anything but starshots/flares tbh. The spidershot was good in theory but at least a third to half the time the ammo is wasted because the monster chooses to do like, a sail damage attack or something. And then they hit you again before you can get another shot off.

Anaria

Aegoth said:

Czanthria said:

@Anaria is not the norm.  She is to seamonster hunting, what Penwize is to bashing.  No other ship comes close to her time investment to be where she is in seamonster rankings.

YEa... if @Penwize bashed Manara Gnolls 24/7, that'd be accurate

After a certain point, everything is a Manara Gnoll. How is bashing the weak seamonsters any different than a dragon powering through some high gold drop area that presents virtually no challenge? Except that the dragon makes more money and risks nothing, and the only investment the dragon had to make was the time it took to bash up to dragon. Sure, there might be riskier areas for better drops the dragon can bash, but the same is true of seamonsters. 

I wish the "seamonster rankings" had never been added and I would opt-out of it if I could. Lately it feels like the entire playerbase is blaming me personally for the price of credits being insane simply because I work harder than most and put my nose to the grind stone. I'm earning maybe 5-8 credits more per play cycle than I was before this activity was put in and that represents hours and hours of work. I can't help but feel that if there was a similar ranking system for other money making methods it might throw some illumination on the real motivations behind some of the view points I've seen expressed in these economy-related threads.

Saeva

I'm pretty sure without "rankings seamonsters" the admin could still look at the numbers and decide for themselves, as they did, if they believe the spawn rate is correct or improper.

Take a friend and hunt bigger monsters. It's great gold.

Skye

I didn't hear of anyone blaming you for buying credits, but apparently now we know! 

The difference between grinding seamonsters and doing say... Tenwat is that the seamonsters are instanced. So long as you're in the appropriate zone, you're guaranteed a sea monster (and 6k gold) will spawn for you. The wealth of Tenwat is distributed amongst any number of dragons or higher levelled bashers. If it's bashed out then tough luck, come back later or wait for the respawn and hope Sarathai or someone else doesn't wake up. So you can't even begin to compare the gold generation for seamonsters vs bashing, they're apples and oranges. 

And no, after a certain point not everything is a Manara Gnoll. There are things that dragons regularly bash and still risk getting eaten.  Damek and Miingruan still wreck people from time to time and so do Delos guards. And those are just level-appropriate bashing areas, not high risk free PK zones. 

Edit: I wouldn't, for example, go and bash Actar as a dragon. The gold is beautifully simple and easy to get, being the wonder of any level 30-60 player. Neither would I bash Dun Swamp even though that got me through most of 70 and 80 and be all MMM JUST AS GOOD AS VERTANI. Because I hated that crap when I was bashing to dragon. >_>

Anaria

Skye said:

The difference between grinding seamonsters and doing say... Tenwat is that the seamonsters are instanced. So long as you're in the appropriate zone, you're guaranteed a sea monster (and 6k gold) will spawn for you. The wealth of Tenwat is distributed amongst any number of dragons or higher levelled bashers. If it's bashed out then tough luck, come back later or wait for the respawn and hope Sarathai or someone else doesn't wake up. 

While respawn time for land based mobs my arguably be slightly longer(?), it is worth pointing out that only one sea monster can be active in a zone at any given time. So if other people are in your zone, you either have to wait your turn, or fight them for the monster, or go to another zone. If more than two ships are in a zone, that is going to be an extremely long wait.

Kiet

"Slightly" longer? lol

There's a lot less ships doing seamonsters than there are people bashing. If anyone has a vested interest in this thread, it's probably the people who hunted a ton of small seamonsters and now find it slightly hindered.

Ahmet

Kiet said:

"Slightly" longer? lol

There's a lot less ships doing seamonsters than there are people bashing.

And there's a lot fewer people hunting Prin than there are UW/Annwyn/Tenwat.

Anaria

Kiet said:

There's a lot less ships doing seamonsters than there are people bashing.

In the higher level zones I am sure that is true. I am rarely alone in the lower level zones.

Penwize

Anaria said:

After a certain point, everything is a Manara Gnoll. How is bashing the weak seamonsters any different than a dragon powering through some high gold drop area that presents virtually no challenge? Except that the dragon makes more money and risks nothing, and the only investment the dragon had to make was the time it took to bash up to dragon. Sure, there might be riskier areas for better drops the dragon can bash, but the same is true of seamonsters. 

I wish the "seamonster rankings" had never been added and I would opt-out of it if I could. Lately it feels like the entire playerbase is blaming me personally for the price of credits being insane simply because I work harder than most and put my nose to the grind stone. I'm earning maybe 5-8 credits more per play cycle than I was before this activity was put in and that represents hours and hours of work. I can't help but feel that if there was a similar ranking system for other money making methods it might throw some illumination on the real motivations behind some of the view points I've seen expressed in these economy-related threads.

Hey, someone knows how I felt a while back when everyone kept saying I was ruining the game!

Although, I do have to disagree with everything being a Manara gnoll.  Even at my level and my experience with hunting, I'll still occasionally catch a bad break from somewhere I'm hunting.  Sometimes that's my fault for trying new things, sometimes that's just the area beating me at my own game.

Ahmet

Penwize said:

Anaria said:

After a certain point, everything is a Manara Gnoll. How is bashing the weak seamonsters any different than a dragon powering through some high gold drop area that presents virtually no challenge? Except that the dragon makes more money and risks nothing, and the only investment the dragon had to make was the time it took to bash up to dragon. Sure, there might be riskier areas for better drops the dragon can bash, but the same is true of seamonsters. 

I wish the "seamonster rankings" had never been added and I would opt-out of it if I could. Lately it feels like the entire playerbase is blaming me personally for the price of credits being insane simply because I work harder than most and put my nose to the grind stone. I'm earning maybe 5-8 credits more per play cycle than I was before this activity was put in and that represents hours and hours of work. I can't help but feel that if there was a similar ranking system for other money making methods it might throw some illumination on the real motivations behind some of the view points I've seen expressed in these economy-related threads.

Hey, someone knows how I felt a while back when everyone kept saying I was ruining the game!

Although, I do have to disagree with everything being a Manara gnoll.  Even at my level and my experience with hunting, I'll still occasionally catch a bad break from somewhere I'm hunting.  Sometimes that's my fault for trying new things, sometimes that's just the area beating me at my own game.

*cough*septacean*cough*

Kiet

Ahmet said:

Kiet said:

"Slightly" longer? lol

There's a lot less ships doing seamonsters than there are people bashing.

And there's a lot fewer people hunting Prin than there are UW/Annwyn/Tenwat.

And I see prin dsights constantly, so!

Also, unlike mainland, you get to sink the people who come try to take your stuff!

Skye

How many active seamonster hunting ships are there vs landbashers? How many of them are drop-anchor solos? There are at least two or three kiddy pools that I know of and I know the Mhaldor boat squad likes bigger prey. The only one who *has* no choice in the matter of targets is Tahquil because she sails a cutter and even she prefers bigger stuff if she can get it on an org Strider. And as I said, if you're waiting out spawns you can always fish while waiting, further augmenting your income.

You're literally comparing a whole lot of options compared to the 100+ dragons and dragon hopefuls competing for like 6 or 7 level appropriate bashing areas, not all of which drop talismans and two of them are free-PK. 

Ahmet

Kiet said:

Ahmet said:

Kiet said:

"Slightly" longer? lol

There's a lot less ships doing seamonsters than there are people bashing.

And there's a lot fewer people hunting Prin than there are UW/Annwyn/Tenwat.

And I see prin dsights constantly, so!

I very rarely see anyone but Penwize and mayyyyybe Klendathu dying on Prin.

But maybe that's just me.

Penwize

Anaria said:

Kiet said:

There's a lot less ships doing seamonsters than there are people bashing.

In the higher level zones I am sure that is true. I am rarely alone in the lower level zones.

If that's honestly the case, you might be doing something wrong there.  Since the changes to bashing, most hunting areas have more than enough to supply almost everyone, and there's almost always going to be somewhere alive and ready for you to bash.  Maybe not the popular areas everyone knows about, but a little exploring and trial/error will go a long way there.  It did for me.

Kiet

Ahmet said:

Kiet said:

Ahmet said:

Kiet said:

"Slightly" longer? lol

There's a lot less ships doing seamonsters than there are people bashing.

And there's a lot fewer people hunting Prin than there are UW/Annwyn/Tenwat.

And I see prin dsights constantly, so!

I very rarely see anyone but Penwize and mayyyyybe Klendathu dying on Prin.

But maybe that's just me.

If Penwize and Klen are getting owned on Prin then it's pretty clear that not everything turns into a gnoll bashing, no?

Tahquil

Skye said:

The only one who *has* no choice in the matter of targets is Tahquil because she sails a cutter and even she prefers bigger stuff if she can get it on an org Strider. 

Hey man, I wouldn't say I have no choice. I've gone boldly into battle against sea hags on my cutter before.

Aerek

And by Tecton, we will kill one, yet.