From 1 to 20 and beyond

Yesterday I realized that I unconsciously was taking my own advice about leveling up in the early stages. From 1 to 20 are a little difficult because you just have to start killing as many maggots as you can and closer to 20 start tackling scorpions.

I went from 1 to 20 without changing weapons, but buying a sharp knife or dagger might improve your capacity to kill monsters faster. One thing that did help was trading monster points for items (and it helps in further quests as well). A couple of characters in Tulimshar, Aidan and Ishi, are responsible for telling you how many points you have and awarding you items for those points. In my case rewards have included a snake skin (difficult to get even at level 50), some iron ore, and shorts (extra basic defense). I equipped the shorts right away giving me a bit more defense against lower level monsters.

At 20 I decided to take the ferry (North) over to Hurnscald. It turns out this is probably exactly what you want to do at this point. I left one of the quests in the mines below Tulmishar undone. In one of my past posts I mentioned one of the quick ways to gain experience was to go to Hurnscald and start killing pinkies for their Antennas. (Not all give up Antennas) Collect 10 and give them to Hinnak (in Hurnscald) for a powerful Scythe. The Scythe does massive damage compared to the Dagger (though it's a slower weapon, but does have better reach).

The next step which I didn't mention before is to do Dougie's Cave Snake lamp quest. I found it a bit difficult at first, I didn't have the vitality to kill a lot of cave snakes without resting. At this point it seemed better to level up, so I went back to the areas around Hurnscald and started killing off Pinkies and Fluffies. Why Fluffies? Both Pinkies and Fluffies are relatively easy to kill with the Scythe, they don't deal you a lot of damage, and they give around 100 experience each much of the time. It's a bit of a balancing act:

• How many slices does it take to kill the monster?
• How much damage does the monster deal back to you?
• What kind of experience reward do you get? (e.g. 154 exp)
• What kind of other reward do you get? (e.g. Cobalt leaves)

Ideally you want to tackle monsters that give you lots of experience but require fewer hits to kill. In my experience it's not the whole story. Killing Squirrels results in relatively low experience, but you often get a variety of coloured leaves which can later be used in dyes.

Back to Doug and the lamp quest. The cave is north of Diamond's cove on the second level of the "bat cave." As I mentioned killing the cave snakes was a bit of a struggle before level 31 (and after I still needed to rest a fair bit). I'm at 19 lamps (the quest calls for 20). At this point just killing cave snakes and spiky mushrooms has raised me up from level 31 to 36. The snakes dropped 13 tongues, 17 cave snake eggs, and 3 jean shorts (better than the shorts I described earlier, Def 4). It's been a long quest. I think this is one of the patience testing quests, especially if you're doing the quest solo. If you don't have patience have someone more powerful assist you on the quest. But realize that if you take a shortcut you may miss out on experience (in my case 5 levels). The quest does result in experience (5k), but compared to the amount I earned from leveling in the cave 5k is small.

Battling cave snakes