I just wanted follow-up on this as I've now spent like 8-10 hours grinding Sarnak berserkers and should have my hammer pretty soon. After listening to peoples projections on how easy it would be to take them down 50+, I figured I'd give some hands-on experience. Overall, I'm glad I'm going to grind the hammer myself as the EXP from the whip hands-in is actually pretty decent even at 51.
At 51, I can grind the berserkers with minimal downtime
as long as I have some form of regen and sow buff. The Sarnak berserkers tend to be the weakest of the monsters and frequently only infict 5-10% of my total HP worth of damage per fight. As long as I can run into the mob highway and snag a berserker or two, I can usually grind with minimal downtime. When I don't have chloro or regen, I can usually do 4 berserkers or so before I need to sit for a while.
That being said, the time handicap comes in the form of the damage inflicted by ads, especially Sarnak knights. Cockatrices and sabertooth tigers aggro and tend to deal substantially more damage, in the realm of 20-40% of my health per engagement. Guessing they're a few levels higher than the berserkers and as I mentioned, the lack of skill-ups between 40-50 makes my actual combat advantage more modest than you might initially expect.
In particular, the Sarnak knights are the most annoying to clear - while I don't have the data it seems to be the consensus in Overthere that they're on the same table as the berserkers, i.e. I have to kill them to get berserkers to spawn. They're also stronger then the cockatrices and tigers, so killing 2 of those in a row without regen can take me down to 20-15% health pretty damn quick.
All-in all, I'm still surprised by how much exp I've picked up turning in the braids. I will likely get 60% of 51 into 52 in OT almost entirely from questing - the mobs themselves offer little EXP.
Looking forward to getting the hammer and trashing my OT faction in Karnor's Castle 52
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