Faction Questing vs Charm questing OT Hammer.

[Jimjam]

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!