Where to go from here!

[Stilton]

Hey all,

2 weeks here almost and I must say, one of the better freeshards I have come across, so KUDOS to you all!

As I stopped playing OSI in circa 2002, there's obviously many changes, and of course many custom things here that I need to get round to learning.

So far after plundering SnapOns shop, I managed to get the following wee suit:

All 70 Resists
60% Damage Increase - 35% on Crafted Yumi, 10% on Quiver
30% SSI from Headband of Power
12% HCI
18% DCI
10% RPD
85% LRC - not even aimed for, but nice anyway!
12% LMC
8% SDI
+21 Str
+6 Dex
+7 Int
2/0 FC/FCR
All fully medable of course!

Now I hear a lot of talk regarding Mules, so as I have some cash, apart from any massive upgrades you can see that I need from my stats overview, I may take the plunge and pick 5 Mules from a vendor. Assuming of course that this is a good idea, and I'm not just wasting cash.
At the moment I hunt with nothing but my [mediocre] dragon, she takes daemons down in 3 chomps, but 2 dragon can cause her a few issues as my Mana Pool isn't huge - only 50 INT Base as someone suggested I go 125/125/50 for now.

So essentially would I be right in grabbing 5 Mules - and if so what stats should I be looking for? 250Str? 1100Hits? This NPC Info thing is all very confusing!

Thanks in advance

[edit]
As a side note - the Yumi is:
15 Physical Resist
14 Cold Resist
35% DI
Hit Lightning 36%
HLD 48%
HSL 50%

Any advice on what to do with that also welcomed

[Lust]

My suggestion:
- Get / use 100k tokens and apply a level deed on your yumi. Add skill points to hit mana leech, then spam armor pierce (primary weapon special) to kill faster.

- By healing your pets, I hope you are using chivalry spell "Touch of Life" but it would help to get 100 LRC first so you will not run out of piety. Sacrificing a few other attributes to achieve 100% LRC would be fine. Also a cheaper alternative is using veterinary skill to heal pets. It is advised to max both chivalry and veterinary skills.

- Although I've never used them myself, a pack of nobles is preferred over a pack of mules. Nobles deal greater damage in numbers (pack instinct) and are very comparable to mules. However, nobles require higher animal taming and possibly higher animal lore. I believe 110 animal taming (which means you need a taming power scroll) and 100 animal lore is fine.

- As for hunting afterwards I'll leave it to you to experiment where to hunt.

[Ilsanor]

Pets are a very good investment, as they help you tackle the harder, more lucrative monsters (balrons spring to mind, among others). A pack of nobles will let you safely tackle 90% of monsters on the shard. The nobles vs. mules discussion has beendone over and over. A single mule is slightly better than a single noble (+ mules are poison immune and have a pack), but a pack of nobles can out-DPS a pack of mules by a large margin. It all depends on your pet fighting skills (ie. the ability to focus your pets on single targets to bring them down fast), but in most cases nobles are better, as you will be more likely to fight single tough monsters not masses of weak ones (and still, nobles do decent enough job at it too).

The other investment is gear. Check out the uber guide posted on the wiki by Devlin. But you will need about 20-30 million to complete that build. Your goal is to get to 220 dex (or as close as possible) - this is the cap at which bandage healing is instant. Ie. as long as something does not one-shot you (or you run out of bandies), you can kill it. Nifty and quite the game-changer.

A side note - getting your FC/FCR to 2/6 will let you heal your pets faster = smaller chance of them dying (statloss!). Lower mana cost also helps - no mana, no healing (LMC caps at 40% though). And while 100LRC is good, it is by no means a top priority, as long as you remember to drop a few k in tithe every now and then. (You can check the amount of tithed gold in your chiv book, on the first page) If you find you're running out of mana too fast you might consider: a) getting medable armor if you haven't (either Mage Armor plate or just leather), b) getting more LMC, c) getting 120 PSs for Meditation and Focus (only if you can get them cheap, the regeneration increase of 120 vs 100 is 2 mana pts/10seconds for Medit and 1 mana pt/10 secs for focus - nothing drastic). Best option is d) all of the above Or use a greater number of more powerful pets -> more DPS -> faster takedowns -> less damage to your pets -> less healing needed -> less mana use -> more mana to use on weapon abilities/buffs -> profit

[Kenekeo]

Hi Stilton,
Congrats on the nice gear. I bet that was a lot of work to get.

As for pets, yes the debate goes on and on. However, for a new player choosing mule over noble is a big investment. My advice to you is get a cheap mule. Here why.

1. Animal taming and lore only needs to be 85 to unleash it. However, need about 90-100 animal taming and lore to command it properly. So no need to invest into a Powerscroll
2. You may see mules/pet selling for about 80K+ and thats expensive for some newer player. Those pets usually have "maxed stats". meaning over 1k HP and all resistance is 75. You dont need a max pet right away. Find a 5k-15k non maxed pet of like 200hp-500hp with 75 in all resistance.
---here why, you are New. Sorry you are. Since you are new, you are bound to make mistake and your pets will dead. Eventually, they will die so much that their stats are cut in half and are useless. To investment 80k+x5 and losing the pets stats in one bad situation will frustrate you. Go cheap, learn to kill balrons with mules and save up to 1million gold instead for other investment.
3. As many said before, mules are immune to poison. One less things to worry about.
4. As for healing the pets, get your vet to 80 and thats it. Make pet res potion after that. But a better way to heal your pets is using Cleric spell. Access those spells by typing "I pray to the gods", use the spell called "Touch of life". You will need to set up a marco/hot key for that. the command is [cs touchoflife . best way to keep your pets alive. I think Blaze has a great pet healing script under codex you can use.

After you had made your investment with cheap mules, than feel free to go explore into Nobles, imprison pets, Cu shide (however you spell it), higher animal taming powerscroll, and even maxed mules. etc.

Have fun

Edit: to semi quote Adrias; "No need to drive around in a ferrari (5 maxed nobles) when you got your learner permit to only crash it. Stick with the used kia (cheap mules)".

[Ilsanor]

Well, actually you can ask around - many people sell low (or simply give away) their statlossed pets. While a noble which is 10% below max might be useless for someone it is still a powerhouse for you. I have 1 or 2 such nobles so if you're willing to invest in getting a powerscroll (110 taming is about 100k if you look around, you can sometimes even get a 115 for 150k), I can happily put them into the hands of someone who can still make use of them.

As for the price - it varies. An ubermaxxxed mule from Blaze is 200k AFAIK, while a noble is 100k or so. And 2 nobles > 1 mule.

Also, if you're willing to learn something new, then you can get EasyUO (a scripting program) and use Blaze's Pet FigtR - the best thing to keep your pets alive without much hassle.

To expand on Adrias' quote: I'd still rather drive a scratched ferrari than a brand new kia.

[Stilton]

Thanks for the details replies guys!
Give's me something to mull over for the next few hours between legs of my darts match!

[MKaros]

Pets are an awesome way of gearing up until you get to the point where you don't need pets anymore. Once you start getting some relayers, you'll understand why the strongest players on the shard don't use pets anymore.

At one point though, all of us did. You're not going to be meleeing Balrons when you've got 100 HP, and it would take you quite awhile to kill them. I remember a major milestone for me was when I could actually consistently stand vs. a balron (right after I got 220 DEX and could instant heal, and I had an SoT helm and 1 relayer so I was out of 1-shot range) and not die. You could get the same result with GoC gear, too.

Pets will still, in general, kill things faster - imprisoned pets particularly - but for your average hunt your goal is to use the pets until you can begin to stand on your own. In my personal opinion at my current gear level (or even half my current gear level when I still had 300 HP and no THs) it would be far slower for me to hunt using pets. Hitting for 180-200 base shots with a bow plus whatever spells proc (so total damage per shot can be 300) it's far better to just use that.

Another thing I really liked around that power level was getting a Balron Damnation crafted Yumi and using Double Shot - I'm pretty convinced I could kill those things as fast as someone with 60/60 fireball/lightning on their bow, if not faster.

[Shotta]

(right after I got 110 DEX and could instant heal, ...)

Insta heal is at 220 dex. I want to make sure that misinformation isn't passed along. Also, You don't need any relayers to solo a balron, but you will definitely need to do some searching for some good gear. He's right though, Pets will help you in the beginning until you get closer to the 220 dex/insta heal (if that's your goal) and start losing your mana pool to keep them alive alone.

Happy Hunting

[MKaros]

I meant 220. It's been a long time since I've been near that number. Good catch, though. I edited my original post.