Tica the alternate, leveling between 20 and 40

Tica the alternate pounding on some cave snakes

Tica is an alternate player I started on the main server about 2 weeks ago. I've played Tica for a few hours here and there. Playing Tica instead of Tarq lead me to a few observations, some I've noted before, some new.

Cave snakes are good for leveling between levels 20 and 40. Find them by going north in Arkim's "Bat cave." Why are cave snakes so good? You only need 20 cave lamps to do the Doug quest which adds 5k experience and 5k gold. Cave snakes also occasionally drop jean shorts. Jean shorts are one of the components needed for jean chaps. And here's the kicker, you don't need to fight mountain snakes to get skins for jean chaps - just be sure to visit Aidan and Ishi when you start your character to collect monster points. Trade in monster points and sometimes you get snake skins (and other goodies like Iron Ore).

As long as you don't create a new login your stash is shared between characters. This means your level 1 character can have decent armour, helmet and perhaps weapon if you've not traded everything away with your main character. I equipped Tica with chain armor and a crusade helmet.

When you reach level 40 make sure you do the Bone Knife quest, even if you already have one from another character. The bone knife quest is worth 50,000 experience. At level 40 this is almost half a level for you. Probably your other character already has the components (black scorpion tails and mushrooms), Tarq did (actually he needed a couple of scorpion tails).

I also noted that at level 40 there are significantly more points available to be put into stats. I think I had something like 60. Be sure to use them wisely.

Mogguns with Knight

This evening I had some big help from a player named Knight who joined me hunting Mogguns -- though it was more like I was joining him, he was much more powerful. Knight dropped 3 Coal for me, which was the same amount I managed to get on my own. He was using lightning, which requires ore. I have lots of iron ore, but only had 3 ore on me. I dropped 3 ore for him. Ore isn't quite as valuable since it's easier to get, yellow slimes are easy to kill, even for me (level 52 now).

Earlier in the day I mentioning being inches from getting chaps. I sold enough from my stash and got the chaps.

Shortly after a player named Mistakes held off spiders, snakes and other monsters so I could visit the chest to the north and obtain the short sword for the future Setzer quest.

Thanks Mistakes and Knight!

Just about ready for chaps

I've now accumulated 10 snake skins, enough for the Patchua chaps quest. The next step is coming up with the 10,000 GP. I do have quite a few daggers and hats in stash, so I'll probably make a few thousand, but I doubt it's quite enough. This means a few more log head kills to make up the rest. Going to keep the post short today and the screenshot irrelevant to the topic, I'd prefer just to show who was hanging around Hurnscald the moment I got back.

Gems in a row and other quests

Last night Tarq spent some time in the mines north of Hurnscald. Still a little too weak to take on Mogguns without aide, I figured it would be good to collect up on the Iron Ore for ingots. TMW has gotten a little loopy since I left and the demands for the Blacksmith quest are extremely high. Lets take the warlord helmet for example: it requires 9 iron ingots and 18 coal. Since each ingot consists of 10 coal, 5 iron ore, and 1,000gp the ingot cost alone is: 90 coal, 45 iron ore, and 9,000gp. Add the other 10 coal and 10,000 to make the helmet and the cost is: 100 coal, 45 iron ore, and 19,000 gp. For warlord plate you're looking at 15 ingots, 30 coal, and 100,000 gp or an ingot cost of 75 iron ore, 150 coal, 15,000gp for a final tally of: 180 coal, 75 iron ore, 115,000 gp. At level 51 I've managed to draw out enough mogguns to get 1 coal, but I took an awful beating.

The problem is that at level 51 I seem to be stalled. I've completed most of the lower level quests, except for the expensive and annoying noh mask quest (which involves going back and forth between Hunrscald and Tulimshar). I had decided to stick to the northern mines looking for iron ore. The problem was that it appears other people had the same idea and the mines were crowded with people looking for ore.

I remembered that iron ore is also dropped by the yellow slimes in the mines south of Tulimshar. So I ventured to Tulimshar and started mining for ore in those mines. There I found both Kinichi and Moody (at separate times) also doing the same. It occurred to me that at this point it's almost a better thing to do, here's why:

The monster points master Ishi is located in Tulimshar. Black Scorpions, Giant Maggots, and Snakes all give a fair amount of monster points. Some of those monster points can potentially translate into snake skins.  This means potentially not having to tackle mountain snakes later for the jean chaps quest. As a matter of fact I'm now 1 skin shy of that quest...