Terranite Chest Armor - is it worth it?

Purging of stash

Yesterday I purged a fair amount of junk from my stash and finally coughed up the 500,000 GP, 40 Terranite Ore and 250 coal for the Terranite Chest Armor. Until this point I've stayed away from the Terranite Armor because the cost just seemed too much for the benefit. The Warrior full plate armor has a higher defense, and as a warrior it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

So what changed? How is the terranite armor better? M. Defense goes up significantly by 10 full points, accuracy goes up by 1 point, attack delay goes down by 1 point (good), and damage per second goes up by one point. The armor does appear to have significant benefits, and for a ranger I'm sure it's the cat's meow, but I still have to put the armor to the torture test between a couple of terranites or against fallens and skeletons. The normal warrior armor is pretty solid against a couple of terranites.

Cave snakes at level 49

A couple of posts ago I said it took 400 cave snakes to level. At level 49 I noticed it takes about 8 cave snakes to get 1% of experience, meaning it takes approximately 800 cave snakes to go from the beginning of the level to level 50. I should mention that at this stage you might have more success as an archer targeting skeletons in a group or working over green slimes (which brings both gold bags and better experience).

So why cave snakes? It's partly about the grind, and partly about daily quests. As a warrior cave snakes are no trouble, you barely even get a scratch. Archers have to run around and constantly get killed by skeletons even when they're careful at lower levels (of course a warrior would fare even worse at this stage). As you're killing cave snakes you're also picking up cave snake tongues and cave snake lamps both of which are quite useful. The cave snake tongues are one component of one of Auldsbel's quests. The cave snake lamps are used in the Doug's cave snake lamps daily quest. So why does this matter? Well at lower levels 40-50 the daily quest can really help you level. Say you have 20 cave snake lamps, each 5 give you 5000 experience and 5000 gold. This means each day you're getting 20000 experience and 20000 gold pieces.

To get 20 cave snake lamps it takes approximately 150 kills. The lower level character I tried this with took 143 while Tarq did it in about 170 (though much faster). You could store up cave snake lamps with a higher level character, but why bother, use them for bones (skeletons), and coal (mogguns).

Over the years I keep going back to cave snakes for leveling in this 40-50 range, they just seem really beneficial in the end.

Level 47 archer versus level 46 warrior

A couple of posts ago I posted some progression statistics on a warrior that leveled from level 42 to level 46. When that warrior reached level 47 I decided to switch classes briefly to see how he faired as a ranger. General wisdom in the forums suggest maxing dexterity before any other statistic. So as such his stats were as follows:

str: 1, agi: 4=1+3, vit: 1, int: 1, dex: 87=84+3, luk: 2=1+1

The pluses are because of the ranger outfit and a four leaf clover. This concentration on dexterity makes the character pretty unbalanced. Where the archer excels is the attack statistic, 221, compared to the 166 of the archer (based on his 40 dexterity). The accuracy is also higher at 134 compared to 86 on the warrior.

However one statistic stands out as particularly bad, and that is the attack delay which is 808 compared to 495. Of course on higher level archers this number will drop like a stone as agility is ramped up.

What I find interesting is that agility seems to affect more statistics than dexterity. It's also worth noting that both dexterity and agility seem to have an effect on accuracy (meaning you're more likely to hit monsters putting points in both agi and dex).

Hit points were also lower than the fighters though this is likely a result of vitality.

Looking at overall statistics the warrior actually looks better doing 335 damage per second compared to the archer's 273 damage per second. And keep in mind this is a level 46 warrior vs. a level 47 archer. As this character approaches 48 I'll switch back and stat him similar to before to give more even warrior statistic.

How many cave snakes does it take to level from 46 to 47?

I noticed it takes around 4 cave snakes to get 1% towards a level. This is an approximation because cave snakes are one of the monsters that can be worth more or less experience, the experience you get from them doesn't always remain consistent. Given 4 snakes it would take approximately 400 cave snake skills to reach 100% or level 47. Perhaps an hour and a half of playing given my stats.

Cave snake tiles may be hiding drops

Look carefully just under the tile

The cave snake cavern may be hiding drops on you. I noticed this morning an instance where tiles were overlapping drops. The first drop was a cave snake lantern, much harder to spot than the tongue pictured here. Look carefully when killing cave snakes around gravel tiles, you might be missing drops.
In this screenshot you can see half of the cave snake tongue is tucked under the gravel tile.

Some mid-to-lower level agility progression statistics

Since the Hitchhiker quest I've been working on an alternate lower level warrior. I spent a bit of time documenting some statistics leveling from 42 to 46. The only statistic I changed when I leveled was the AGI statistic. I'm documenting below how other statistics were influenced by the AGI increase. Keep in mind this is a warrior yet to do the speed quest.

From level 42 to 46 I increased AGI as follows:

21, 24, 28, 31, 24

% Accuracy increased as follows:

83, 83, 84, 85, 86

% Evade was as follows (including a +3 for ranger clothes):

67, 70, 75, 79, 83

Attack delay decreased as follows:

526, 519, 509, 502, 495

Damage per second increased as follows:

315, 319, 326, 330, 335

Hit points increased, but this was due to level and not AGI, but for the record I'll document them here:

n/a, 292, 298, 304, 310

I plan on continuing to document this character as he progresses to give players an idea of how AGI affects a character (warrior) at each level.

Raging with a Bull Helmet vs. Tanking

There can only be one!

After a little help from some in-game friends I finally defeated Valia for the first time, and my prize was a Bull Helmet and a few hundred thousand experience points.

To answer the burning question some of you might be having, is the bull helmet any good? More accurately how is having a bull helmet plus the raging skill better than being a tank?

The answer is that being a rager with a bull helmet is better in some ways and worse in others.

If you like being able to solo a couple of fallens stick with being a tank. However, if you're tired of everyone always getting drops on you, you might want to look at becoming a rager. In the candor session shown in the screenshot above I consistently got between 24k-32k experience killing jack'os and I helped make short work of fallens.

The problem I have with ragers is they need support. That bull helmet takes a chunk of defense out of you. I tried readjusting my statistics, investing more in vitality and Luck, but I still ended up getting hit hard by monsters due to the big negative the helmet gives to defense.

Understand that this is at level 95. Levels make a huge difference, a few extra points, or an item or two can make an enormous difference. For example, with the Heart of Isis and a Ruby Ring I would probably make a totally different statement about Ragers. But a Ruby Ring is 1 million and the Heart of Isis is an extremely difficult drop to get from Valia.

For now I'm enjoying the rager, he works great in groups where you have mages to heal and awesome for lesser monsters like red slimes (who die like a knife through butter).