Hunting in Imperian

Bathan

While grinding through the sacrifice portion of the last event I began to realize how futile it was getting Champion anywhere other than Demon's Pass. While Demon's Pass would reliably kill me (because I wouldn't pay attention and shadowy demons would wreck me) I still got way, way more gold, XP and Champion XP than I would in Vorrak, Zh'serun, Erorag, et cetera. I complained a bit on Burt and Bellatores, but decided that I wouldn't bother looking into the situation until after the event was over. Having had some time to myself now, I decided to go through most of the mid to high tier bashing areas and see how they stacked up against Demon's Pass, an area which will soon be altered in some form or fashion, if only cosmetically.

Bathan is a clever Templar most of the time with a level 2 artifact claymore. He averages 28.6 DPS, before crits. At 102 he crits a lot. His resists are as follows:

Damage Type    Armour    Resists
Cutting        56%       48%
Blunt          56%       43%
Magickal       10%       49%
Fire           0%        53%
Cold           0%        43%
Poison         0%        37%
Asphyxiation   0%        25%
Electricity    0%        37%
Psychic        0%        25%

Resistance modifiers for cutting damage:
Armour: 56% (note: armour only protects against a portion of damage)
Surcoat: 15%
Toughness: 10%
Earthshield: 15%
Evasion Skill: 20%

Resistance modifiers for blunt damage:
Armour: 56% (note: armour only protects against a portion of damage)
Surcoat: 15%
Earthshield: 15%
Evasion Skill: 20%

What follows is the gold, time and experience numbers along with other specific information about the area:

VORRAK MINES

EXPERIENCE: .46% (at 102)
GOLD: 2210g
TIME TO CLEAR: About 10 minutes to clear
TURN-INS: None
QUESTS: A key can be used to unlock a chest containing 1000 gold.
CONSIDERATIONS: It is easy to block off Vorrak to people who do not have the Atlas travel page.
RESPAWN TIME: Vorrak has a staggered respawn time. I don't know the exact numbers, but orcs respawn first, and then a while after, ogres.
DIFFICULTY: Low

CAANAE SEWERS
EXPERIENCE: .57%
GOLD: 2198
TIME TO CLEAR: About 15 minutes.
TURN-INS: None
QUESTS: None
CONSIDERATIONS: A ratting pet can net you an extra bit of gold if you bring one. As a Knight, I get a free ratting pet, essentially.
RESPAWN TIME: 30 to 45 minutes?
DIFFICULTY: Low

GONGEN STRONGHOLD

EXPERIENCE: 1.05
GOLD: 5574
TIME TO CLEAR: About 15 minutes
TURN-INS: None
QUESTS: None
CONSIDERATIONS: Unlike a lot of bashing areas, you have to pay attention here or get railed by assassins.
RESPAWN TIME: Unsure
DIFFICULTY: High

ERORAG

EXPERIENCE: .39%
GOLD: 810
TIME TO CLEAR: 10 minutes
TURN-INS: None
QUESTS: None
CONSIDERATIONS: The gold and experience in this including killing Chur.
RESPAWN TIME: 30 to 45 minutes. 30 minutes on Chur.
DIFFICULTY: Without Chur, low. With chur, low if you have high HP and kite him.

ISLE OF LLUS

EXPERIENCE: .55%
GOLD: 1864
TIME TO CLEAR: Llus is really never actually cleared. It respawns by the time you finish the circuit.
TURN-INS: None
QUESTS: None
CONSIDERATIONS: Llus is great if you have an Atlas travel page.If you don't, it's a chore and a half to get to. While the respawns are great, the gold is pretty middling and there is the possibility of walking into clots of 4 - 5 aggro mobs.
RESPAWN TIME: Incredibly short
DIFFICULTY: Medium, circumstantially. Generally low.

TEMPLE OF MENANON

EXPERIENCE: .54%
GOLD: 2532
TIME TO CLEAR: 15 to 20 minutes
TURN-INS: None
QUESTS: None
CONSIDERATIONS: These estimates include killing the wandering young priests, who are just irritating to deal with. If you hit them and they escape, they can potentially show up and concuss/prone you. Priests can sap and absolve.
RESPAWN TIME: Unsure
DIFFICULTY: Medium

EOR'GAHL

EXPERIENCE: .29%
GOLD: 1278
TIME TO CLEAR: 8 to 10 minutes
TURN-INS: None
QUESTS: None
CONSIDERATIONS: This count includes killing necromancers and seagulls, not undead lions which were not available when I did this.
RESPAWN TIME: Unsure.
DIFFICULTY: Low.

ZH'SERUN

EXPERIENCE: .40%
GOLD: 747
TIME TO CLEAR: 15 to 20 minutes
TURN-INS: None
QUESTS: None
CONSIDERATIONS: All of the mobs can be targetted with undead, which is nice. Mobs can team, but if you're not squishy it's absolutely not a problem.
RESPAWN TIME: Unsure.
DIFFICULTY: Low.

IAAT

EXPERIENCE: .38%
GOLD: 1344
TIME TO CLEAR: 20+ minutes
TURN-INS: Beaks and horns can be turned in, I don't know where.
QUESTS: None.
CONSIDERATIONS: I feel like there's more here for gold, but I'm not a good quester so womp womp. This area is frankly a headache. Most of the NPCs are aggressive, do a bunch of damage, offer pretty subpar XP and gold. No real value in terms of farming achievements. Just no real reason to bash here unless hidden turn-ins and quests make it a lot better.
RESPAWN TIME: Unsure.
DIFFICULTY: Hard.

NECROPOLIS

EXPERIENCE: .59%
GOLD: 2779
TIME TO CLEAR: 15 to 20 minutes
TURN-INS: None
QUESTS: None
CONSIDERATIONS: Again, I'm sure there are quests here I don't know. Most things aggro, but are spaced as one to two mobs per room. Avoid the few rooms of giant clots, or have OP prowling. Great for farming undead chivs. Avasyu will probably release pure rape from here soon.
RESPAWN TIME: Unsure.
DIFFICULTY: Medium.

SKEGDALD

EXPERIENCE: .97%
GOLD: 1301
TIME TO CLEAR: 20+ minutes
TURN-INS: None
QUESTS: A couple that don't reward gold
CONSIDERATIONS: A pain in the **** to try and do. Most of the ogres hit for like, 110 a pop through my resistances so I have to kind of kite them around. Ravens and wolves hit hard too.
RESPAWN TIME: Unsure
DIFFICULTY: Hard.

DEMON'S PASS

Demon's Pass is harder to calculate. If I bash the area alone, and don't die (doable if I pay attention) I have a constant stream of mobs. I literally cannot bash it out. I don't even move. I sit there, refresh revelation and healing and go to town. If shadowy demons show up, I disable triggers, walk out of the room, heal, go back in, kill it specifically, get back to business. Each demon is turned into an NPC for 40 gold. Demons will drop anywhere from 90 to 105 gold. Experience is about .01 to .02% per demon.

Given, this area can be hard alone if you get an unfortunate draw of demons. However, with two aspects, it's a cake walk and is still five and six times better than hunting any other area alone in terms of gold. I have made, in strong mode, 18K in an hour bashing Demon's Pass by myself. Yes, that's in an hour. The other areas take anywhere from 10 to 25 minutes to clear. The problem is that Demon's Pass, unless being contested, has just that many mobs. You can eternally grind it until other people chase you out.

Bathan

NAGIRI:

EXPERIENCE:  .66
GOLD: 2954
TIME TO CLEAR: 15 minutes
TURN-INS: None
QUESTS: None
CONSIDERATIONS: Not much to it. This includes killing the two named mobs.
RESPAWN TIME: 30 to 45 minutes.
DIFFICULTY: Low.

Based on this information, it's probably obvious that I don't know how to quest.

My question is, why bash anything other than Demon's Pass?

Delrayne

With the basically infinite respawns on corpse pick up, which I love by the way, there really isn't another area worth it in my opinion. Other people may cry for a different experience in bashing areas, but the fact that people, outside of lowbies, pretty much only bash DP sort of makes any point they make moot. I stick by the philosophy that bashing is already just a chore/grindfest why make it any more of a headache to deal with?

Apoloc

I'm a big fan of the new DP, but with 'prowling' Im also a fan of Gongen and Necropolis.  Without prowling it would be strictly Demon's Pass for me.

Scourge/Vorrak used to be a good destination, then map pages came out that let people skip Scourge, Scourge was sort of like the appetizer for Vorrak.  I don't like the way it is now.

Gurn

Dunno what happened with Iaat when Bathan hunted it, but I just hunted and got a bit over 5k. Also, does anyone know where the stupid beaks and horns get turned in?

Cadeyrn

Gurn said:

Dunno what happened with Iaat when Bathan hunted it, but I just hunted and got a bit over 5k. Also, does anyone know where the stupid beaks and horns get turned in?

Pretty sure its an NPC in Tayar.

Lionas

There is an NPC outside of Tayar that also takes corpses, intended for nonmagick folks. I just don't know who it is.

Mercer

Frelyre?  He takes corpses of various cougars

Apoloc

There is an NPC in that little town with the Overseers and Slaves.  The area is Iaat Valley, the man you're looking for is in a hut, those beaks horns etc are involved in: He assisted the camp of Fjiern with the destruction of Tayar's magickal shield.

Edit: I can never find the 3rd thing that guy asks for, the tail of a feline miscreant.

Ziat

Yeah, Iaat doesn't seem right. The area is pretty good regarding experience and the gold is somewhat higher. (Used to be like 35k before gold drop got reduced)

The person who takes Iaat corpses gives 20 gold per corpse. He only takes it from AM which I hate. 

Jeremy Saunders

I am working on some ideas to make areas like DP more interesting. I like the idea of having tons of mobs for people to bash. However, I would like to make it more interesting.

For example. You bash away in DP killing the demons. Kill enough demons and several high end demons are released. Kill enough high end demons and a major boss appears. Kill the major boss and get some cool rewards.

Bathan

That's an awesome idea, and reminds me of the Public Quest systems from Guild Wars II and WAR Online.

I would primarily recommend making the other areas better though, so that all of the Aspect population is not fighting each other to bash the only lucrative area in the game.

Khizan

I like the idea, but PLEASE make it at least somewhat feasible to solo these things, or at least to keep bashing the area after they spawn by avoiding them. I don't particularly want to be solo bashing and find that I've spawned a large teaming clot that drives me out of the area.

Jeremy Saunders

Yeah, I would like to expand it into several areas.

Apoloc

What's the chances of uh, rehabbing certain areas as opposed to creating new areas?  By the sounds of DP that seems to be the idea. but there are several areas that are relatively useless.

Ex: Northern Breach.

Juran

Khizan said:

I like the idea, but PLEASE make it at least somewhat feasible to solo these things, or at least to keep bashing the area after they spawn by avoiding them. I don't particularly want to be solo bashing and find that I've spawned a large teaming clot that drives me out of the area.

Absolutely not. I want them to have a slight chance to spawn every kill after a certain threshold of demons have been killed, and when spawned shout globally across the entire game - giving everyone in the game an opportunity to mobilize an attack force to slay them. People attacking the boss should be free PvP, and there should be some dynamic reward for getting the final blow to your team.

Abigail

As a level 75 mage, I don't find it too difficult to hunt Demon's Pass. I just target the demons that are in rooms by themselves and back away for a bit if another wanders in.

Cadeyrn

Abigail said:

As a level 75 mage, I don't find it too difficult to hunt Demon's Pass. I just target the demons that are in rooms by themselves and back away for a bit if another wanders in.

That's a horribly inefficient way to hunt. My brain hurts to think about it.

Apoloc

Yeah, it might not be too hard doing it that way, probably because it would take literal hours to clear it.  

Cadeyrn

If you hunt creepers you'll make better experience from being able to kill them faster, and you'll make gold by selling the corpses to me.

Delrayne

@Caderyn or Carrick

Abigail

Cadeyrn said:

That's a horribly inefficient way to hunt. My brain hurts to think about it.

But it's actually a lot more fun than "kill everything, move to the next room, repeat for five hours"! I like bashing areas where I can actually do things other than spam my bash alias. It makes bashing actually tolerable.

Cadeyrn said:

If you hunt creepers you'll make better experience from being able to kill them faster, and you'll make gold by selling the corpses to me.

I die to creepers and you're a filthy demoner anyway. (

Cadeyrn

If you're bashing inefficiently, you're wasting your time.

Literally.

Jeremy Saunders

Well, unless you chat or script or read or whatever else at the same time.

Khizan

If you're constantly moving in and out and changing targets, you're probably not doing that, though.

Though, frankly, as long as you're having fun while playing a game a certain way, you're not wasting your time playing it that way.

Delrayne

Abigail said:

Cadeyrn said:

That's a horribly inefficient way to hunt. My brain hurts to think about it.

But it's actually a lot more fun than "kill everything, move to the next room, repeat for five hours"! I like bashing areas where I can actually do things other than spam my bash alias. It makes bashing actually tolerable.

Cadeyrn said:

If you hunt creepers you'll make better experience from being able to kill them faster, and you'll make gold by selling the corpses to me.

I die to creepers and you're a filthy demoner anyway. (

Delrayne use to sell all his creeper corpses to @Cadeyrn when he was still Ithaquan. At some point your character might come to the realization of "Hey, these creepers just aren't carrying the same amount of gold they use to. I know, some people like to use creepers for bone! Where is that filthy demoner Cadeyrn he'll buy em for sure!"

Abigail

Yeah, and then my character is going to come to the realization of "Hey, that filthy demoner Cadeyrn is going to turn these creeper corpses into necromantic bone to smith weapons and armor to kill us with! I'll just feed 'em to the humgii."

Veratyr

Evasion gives 20% reduction to physical, at trans? Wow.

Abigail

Why a clever knight? Why not Dexterous?

Kryss

Clever has higher INT.

Bathan

My primary statpack is clever because IRL I'm not very clever and I roleplay to escape.