Advice - OT Hammer Faction & Karnor's Castle

[Jimjam]

I honestly feel that it will be easier, quicker and at less opportunity cost to go join a hands group in KC, sit there for 3 hours collecting clicky armour and so on, vendor between sessions, and then spend the money on loaning out some puppet strings to complete the quest using charm.

I've seen plenty of warriors tank there at 50 without problem, even against the Drolvarg Warlord and Knight of Sathir (which are basically the non-raid bosses of the zone).

It is going to be unprofitable, time consuming and difficult to run around Overthere looking for berserkers to kill solo as a warrior. The time you spend doing that could be spent on a more fun quest, getting XP, making friends and boosting your plat balance.

I'd only suggest farming the faction with braids if you imagine you would find it to be an entertaining path in and of itself.

[Barrier]

Originally Posted by Jimjam [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I honestly feel that it will be easier, quicker and at less opportunity cost to go join a hands group in KC, sit there for 3 hours collecting clicky armour and so on, vendor between sessions, and then spend the money on loaning out some puppet strings to complete the quest using charm.

I've seen plenty of warriors tank there at 50 without problem, even against the Drolvarg Warlord and Knight of Sathir (which are basically the non-raid bosses of the zone).

It is going to be unprofitable, time consuming and difficult to run around Overthere looking for berserkers to kill solo as a warrior. The time you spend doing that could be spent on a more fun quest, getting XP, making friends and boosting your plat balance.

I'd only suggest farming the faction with braids if you imagine you would find it to be an entertaining path in and of itself.

I've done it and I'd probably agree with this. It's not that running around and killing is such a pain. It's the finding them part that was annoying.

[RDawg816]

I always bring my characters there and exp off berzerkers. I think the latest I ever got an OT hammer was level 42...

[Troxx]

For those that can actually do the quest, leveling in OT and hunting berzerkers is amazing xp. Xp from the kills is good, but the quest is quite stellar - and you get that faction hammer out of the way for (more or less) free while doing level appropriate content.

Agnostic human monk, all evil races (excluding iksar), and evil classes (excluding iksar) can do the quest. There might be some other agnostic race/class combos that start off not KOS at outpost.

Bards, necros, and enchanters can manage their own charm for turn-in, so no need to spend time there if you don't want to.

[Panicsferd]

Originally Posted by Troxx [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

For those that can actually do the quest, leveling in OT and hunting berzerkers is amazing xp. Xp from the kills is good, but the quest is quite stellar - and you get that faction hammer out of the way for (more or less) free while doing level appropriate content.

Agnostic human monk, all evil races (excluding iksar), and evil classes (excluding iksar) can do the quest. There might be some other agnostic race/class combos that start off not KOS at outpost.

Bards, necros, and enchanters can manage their own charm for turn-in, so no need to spend time there if you don't want to.

Also Necros (and maybe enchanters with their illusions?) when in skeleton form as an iksar necro I went from scowling to aprehensive and it allowed me to turn in the braids in skeleton form when I was leveling in OT... It even allowed to me buy and sell there at the various trainers who sold some of my spells.

But once I was 49/50 (since got my new undead charm, that can charm undead till lvl 51) then I just charmed the foreman, gave him a jade and I got my hammer.

But like others have said basically what you end up doing on classes that cannot charm the foreman himself you pay to borrow a puppet strings that anyone can use and it is for those people that want the hammer but don't want to slave away at getting the faction up from braids.

I think if you were leveling in OT earlier then maybe while you were leveling you could have turned in braids, I did that myself but I only turned in the braids like 10 or so times, it was good bonus xp but it didn't put me above scowling at all, so I think in your case it may just be better to save up and buy the MQ.

[evanderheide]

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 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]!!!!