Faction Questing vs Charm questing OT Hammer.
 

I remember a fairly recent thread discussing grinding faction for an OT hammer.

Although I've had my reservations about 'earning' a hammer I've decided to be open minded and dip my toe in.

After hitting 39 in the karanas on my SK I grabbed my spells in south qeynos and headed to rebind in The Overthere.

To my delight, Sarnak Berserkers (drop the quest item I need to faction up) are a nice and easy blue con, allowing me to grind XP and faction at the same time.

My strategy has been to flag hide on the hill to frontier mountains as I med up and simply grab berserkers as they path past to fear kite in the valley to FM. Eventually the pathers all get replaced by knights, in which case I will kite bersekers pathing behind the first hill or in the buildings there.

Once all these are respawned as non-berserkers I cheat a little bit by switching characters, murdering all the sarnaks and, if I find a berserker, Ill pull it to root/snare park at my SK's location ready for when I switch characters.

Xp wise, 44 braids and 68 berserkers made me around 4 yellow of 39 and one yellow of 40. The following 24 braids gave about half a yellow.

Cash wise: no weapons, armor or gems. Hand ins yield only 1-3 gold. Sarnak might drop 10 gold each.

Conclusion: the XP is passable, but the money is very poor. I'm convinced of my original position that the most expedient method to obtain an OT hammer is to simply buy one with plat gained while levelling up. That aside there is something to be said for acquiring your own hammer (and not having to go through the bother of organising a strings loan). I'll kill the remaining 56 or so Sarnak Berserkers to get the hammer and then give velious factioning a go, or go to work on Oasis Spectres and try my luck for J Boots every 9pm. My skills as a group SK are going to be VERY neglected by the time I hit mid 40s!

Yes, Troll Shadowknight started 11 quests away from indifferent. I updated the wiki page to reflect this.


I hope you are right about group SKing being easy to pick up. I did a couple of HHK and paw groups, so am familiar with fd/snare and a few other tricks. Thanks for the shadow vortex tip. Is rune worth using for aggro too?

Regarding bards:

A mixed blessing. The normal complaints apply.

However, there is the silver lining: some bards will include knights (the PHers for berserkers) in their kite, which can make it easier for me to consistently pull berserkers without having to get a high level toon to clear out the spawns or worry so much about pathers adding in.

Sounds like that quest is solid XP. It'll be a long grind, but hey, if you're getting XP too then that's a pretty good set up to save you some plat.

Do you plan to keep your standing after you get your hammer, or will you kill in KC and HS?

Venril Sathir wrongly considers himself an avatar of Innoruuk. Screw that guy. Everyone knows Hatespawn the half elf warrior of red99 is the true avatar of Innoruuk.

Not played Hatespawn properly in ages, other than occasionally kill a sonic bat or /ooc wtb runed blade :(

Point being I will happily trash VS faction as the outpost is a pretty crappy town anyway. No trainers, greedy vendors. Fail all the way down!

Should I prebuy my 50+ SK spells?

Did the quest for hammer on my warrior 2 weeks ago, was fair XP off the turn ins, ended up at lvl 49 when I finally got the faction needed for the hammer.

My regret is destroying my VS faction on my shaman ages ago, I didn't realize it was connected to the outpost so figure if I want a hammer on him, will have to buy the thing. :(

I found it a nice little quest, gave great XP and didn't have to rely on someone to get the hammer for me.

I did it the old fashioned way on my cleric, the trick was know where pathers are in the corner, then goto the ruins kill any zerkers that are up, then i would aggro the rest, gate to OT and they would slowly make their way back and the guards kill them, you can wait for respawn and med during that down time.

Good ol two birds one stone. Good post. Reminds of how I treated raster or pained soul. You're working smarter not harder I like it.

Did this on my Ogre Shaman. Made grinding out 37-42ish (or there-abouts) less painful since I had the goal of factioning to go along with XP.

Wouldn't do it again tho.

Well the sarnaks may not have dropped much coin, but you did save a couple thousand plat

Can't recommend the poor loot or the boredom of staying in one zone/camp for several levels, but the solo xp was pretty solid doing 34-39 there on shaman. Each braid was basically 1% bonus xp (4%ish total per turn in) for all non-hell levels, and there are plenty of DB animals to kill in between when berserkers are dried up. So in the long run if you're planning on soloing or duoing those levels anyway I'd say go for it.