Chewbacca and Gremlin take me to over 80% experience

Big thanks to Gremlin and Chewbacca who took Tarq from 62% to over 80% experience in the graveyard this evening.

I posted earlier that I thought leveling is slow but better outside the graveyard than in other spots, but it's a lot quicker with a couple of others. At level 81 going up a level is slow progress, but with Gremlin and Chewbacca I was getting about 13k experience/minute (compared to between 3.3k - 4.6k outside the graveyard).

The Wilderness around the graveyard

In large groups the graveyard is one of the best areas to rapidly gain experience. Quite a bit of Tarq's leveling in the 75+ range was done in the graveyard.  But as much as I enjoy knocking around zombies with a gang of other goons, I prefer doing things on my own.

Some characters in their 90's might solo areas of the graveyard, but even they run the risk of getting swarmed by too many zombies, skeletons, and lady skeletons. A few are easily manageable, but 8 or 9 end up being dangerous even for powerful characters.

Outside the graveyard there's lots of opportunity to fight skeletons and lady skeletons. Zombies don't wander outside the graveyard, which is probably a good thing since they tend to hit quite a bit harder. Perhaps one of the best creatures to fight outside the graveyard are Poltergeists, blue/cyan balls of energy in TMW. Poltergeists don't do the damage skeletons do (skeletons still hit me the odd time for 10-20 damage, Poltergeists), but they can be deadly in groups. At 81 I can manage 3 Poltergeists without suffering too much damage, but any more and I know I need to start running.

It's almost the same for skeletons, though today when I thought I was fighting 2 skeletons and suffering too much damage I learned there were 4 stacked together - I might as well have been in the graveyard.

Hanging out in the graveyard

Hanging out in the graveyard

Hello, my name is Tarq, and I'm a graveyard addict. It's a bad T.V. cliche, but hanging out in the mana world graveyard is a lot of fun. Each time I seem to meet new people stack fighting skeletons, zombies, and lady skeletons in the graveyard. This time we even spotted Jack'o outside the graveyard.

Helene, Milady, Cujo78, bops, Paris and I all swarmed the denizens of the graveyard for about 15 minutes (I had to get ready for work after - or rather write this quickly before getting ready for work). We saw KillerZ knocking away solo. I probably should do the same.

Stack fighting in the graveyard is great if your goal is experience. It's not so great if your goal is to get bones for the bone quest (or a heart), the problem is everyone wants a piece of the prize and if you're not high enough level, or optimized for graveyard fighting, you probably won't get the "drop." I managed to get 1 skull, but pretty much the who time stacking for me was about experience. In that 15 minutes or so I got about 14% experience. It's not bad considering the graveyard seemed a little more quiet this morning and I soloed for a little bit outside the graveyard before making it there (where I did get a couple more drops, but no bones).

Graveyard Time, leveling and the conclusion of the sea slime quest

Stacking in the graveyard

Yes it's gravy time (graveyard time), and wow what a difference the graveyard makes! In a relatively short period of time I shaved off 15% experience and leveled to level 69. About 40 minutes later I was 44% to the next level. Thanks to Jack Black who's not in this photo, but stacked for almost all those 40 minutes.

I think it was Mr. Demon Wolf who reminded me yesterday while we were stacking in the spider/black scorpion area of the mine north of Hurnscald that I didn't post about the finished sea slime quest. Yes, I killed 1,000 sea slimes. Of those 1,000 I only got 11 pearls. Much of the time I was by myself, but there's a possibility that others collected some pearls from their kills. Probably the biggest benefit would be the 500+ arrows, 300+ candies, and over 100 oranges and red apples I collected. I understand now why Monique and Dark Wind dropped oranges and candies when they celebrated their level 99 - they must have killed a lot of sea slimes!

After killing the slimes I set another goal, 500 Spikey Mushrooms. I completed that with surprisingly few iron potions dropping (around 25). I also spent some time in Nivalis killing Mogguns, but quickly grew bored.

Before hitting the graveyard itself I mulled around killing poltergeists, lady skeletons, and skeletons. Of the three skeletons being the most dangerous one on one because of the criticals they seem to score on me (taking as much as 300hp+). I've yet to assign me level 69 stats, but I doubt they'll make much of a difference in the graveyard. Even Jack Black, who was scoring 300hp+ damage on some of the graveyard minions was getting criticals scored on him by those nasty zombies (though he held his own without blinking and seemed to be taking the brunt of almost all the fighting) - thanks Jack!

It was good to see Knight again in the fighting. I wrote awhile back about Knight and I killing Mogguns when I was first able to kill them. Knight helped out quite a bit, so thanks Knight.

More pearls of wisdom from the slime yard

7 Pearls after 541 Sea Slime Kills

This evening I spent about another 30 minutes or so hunting sea slimes on the coast. My goal really was just to accumulate more oranges and red apples so I could heal when I ventured back to the graveyard to face Skeletons, Lady Skeletons and Poltergeists. It turned out to be a pretty good run. When you set artificial goals like 1,000 sea slime kills you sometimes forget you're also gaining experience (however little). In my case it felt like quite a bit for half-an-hour. I'm almost half way to level 69.

In the time spent this morning and this evening I racked up 541 sea slime kills. The total pearls they dropped were 7. This brings the percentage of pearls to kills up to 0.012939002%, closer to the 0.02% the web site suggests the drop rate sits at.

And for those with keen eyes, yes I have 53 green presents just waiting for next Christmas.