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).

How to make 1,000,000 GP in a short time

Did the title of this post get you excited? Sorry to disappoint you but the title is a question? I've tried several strategies: farming red slimes, farming green slimes, selling different items (without pitching all the time in town), even selling most of my stash, and I always end up in the poor-house.

What do you do to become rich? Selling rare items? Just grinding until it hurts? What's your strategy?

Terranite Cave

Double trouble Terranites

Lately I started spending some time in the Terranite cave again. I'm usually in one of a couple of places for you PKers, either the red slimes or Terranites. If you see me at the red slimes spot I'm likely gathering cash to host Candor. Lately it seems the best way to gain the most experience in a short time. Kill me if you will, but if you like Candor you're shooting yourself a bit in the foot.

The Terranite spot is all about experience, though I'm also trying to get the components for the Illia Sisters quest again. My last bit I gave to another player so they could attempt it. I still haven't completed the Illia quest once and I'm quite close to level 95 (69.7% as of this morning). It's not for a lack of trying, made it once to Valia with Veryape, but two warriors alone were not enough to beat her.

One down, one to go

So my strategy in the Terranite cave has been to try to take on two at a time. Normally I have concentration potions and iron potions stocked for when there are three Terranites, but I find it mostly unnecessary when taking on two Terranites.

Still far away from a beanie. For some reason I never saw Candor as being much fun, though lately I have to admit it really is. Perhaps it's the wait period, but it's nothing compared to waiting for the Illia Sisters quest, so Candor has become more fun.

I still usually don't get drops (mind you I don't try too hard, I'm usually concentrating on experience and don't even bother pressing z most of the time) in Candor, though a few weeks back I picked up several while I was on the raging stint (didn't like it much, hit too often).

My last word is on the glove quest, which I haven't forgotten, but kind of sidelined. I stopped counting the number of mountain snakes I killed. I'm up to 7 sets of gloves (1 from Candor which makes me wonder because I didn't think Mountain Snakes showed there).

Yes, I was a developer once...

Under My Projects: TheManaWorld

What happens when you use a search engine other than Google, sometimes you find surprising results: apparently I had developer status in The Mana World back in April 11, 2004. All I remember contributing back then were ideas for monsters, still it's cool to see that I wasn't imagining things and that I have been a part of TMW since 2004. So where did the 2004 come from - an XML file I found here: http://sourceforge.net/api/project/name/themanaworld/doap