Alright so: I’m not new to gaming and not new to survival games. I’m in medium armor with iron weapons. I could upgrade my weapon to steel if I farmed enough Brimstone from mobs - (Because I can’t get to where I can mine it.)
But I don’t think the steel weapon is going to help me to keep from -dying- so quickly to mobs. I’m just trying to get thick leather and from what I’m reading and seeing, it only comes off of three mobs: All of which are up north.
The tigers 5 shot me, the white tigers one shot me and there’s no way I’d even be able to KILL a bear. I’m level 41 with damage reduction and my strength as high as they can go at this level basically. I just don’t understand how I’m supposed to get better armor if I can’t kill the things that drop the hide I need to make th eheavier armor.
Maybe try to get a Greater pet? Hyena whelps are numerous and they eat feral flesh that is not hard to get. 20% getting Greater Hyena and it’s strong enough to help you killing some bear. And yes, steel weapons. There is enough brimstone in the “Noob area”, namely in the Gallaman’s Tomb and in the Sinner’s Refugee as well, not far from the entrances. You have to kill a couple of crocs or three Tier 1 thralls to get to some 3 nodes of it.
What weapon/fighting style are you using? You say medium armor–is this basic medium armor, or the flawless version? Have you upgraded your armor with plating? How about healing–what do you use? Food/aloe potions/aloe soup? Are you using your combat rolls, or are you blocking with a shield?
IIRC, the white tigers that aren’t player pets are actually world bosses. They’re meant to be tough. Hell, I can’t last more than 10-20 seconds against one solo. I use mace/shield/heavy armor; for tigers, I bring my shield up just before they pounce, then lay into them. For bleed effects, use an antivenom potion from the Set religion–stops it instantly.
Three easy-ish sources of Brimstone, in increasing order of difficulty:
Go east, into the jungle, until you’re just SSE of the Derketo shrine. Underwater there you’ll find these volcanic-looking spires w/rocks all around. These are brimstone. Pick up as much as you can carry before you drown. Rinse & repeat.
To the WNW of the Unnamed City, there are salt flats with poisonous gas. Equip your Sandstorm Mask. The stone spires there are brimstone. Bring a pick/pickaxe. Mind the rocknoses.
Towards the middle-bottom of the map, near the Sentinels, there’s a round oasis where a crocodile world boss hangs out. Go north from there; in short order you’ll see a massive stone arch above and to your right. Roughly beneath that is a cave chock-full of T1 & T2 thralls…and a metric assload of Brimstone. Again, bring a pick/pickaxe.
When you fight the tougher animals, take a fighter thrall with you. Use sword and board, put some points into vitality and monitor your stamina cause you don’t want to run out during the fight.
While east in the jungle for the brimstone under water, kill the gorillas…they drop thick hide for heavy armor. PluS, on officials they are a boatload of XP from the flamingos, gorillas, and sasquatches. I ran a circle on the pagoda/witch queen area at about your level, and came out 4 levels higher in an hour and a half. If you have the Aqualonian DLC, build the Medium Armor and try this build
STR - 20
AGI-0
ACC-0
VIT-25 (+5 FOR THE DLC ARMOR, SO YOU JUMP TO 30 AND REGEN)
GRIT-11 (MORE STAM FOR SWINGING)
ENC–19 (CAPACITY 203 LBS (IF YOU ARE SKINNG FOR THE THICK HIDE, OR GRABBING BRIM
STONE. SHOULD BE ABLE TO CARRY 5 STACKS–1000TTL))
SUR—0
If you arent’ going to skin/farm ,then reduce enc down to 15, and use the 16 points to fill agility to 1st perk. to get rid of running stam loss.
while leveling, concentrate on getting agility to first perk if not there, then grit to add stam. once grit is level 2, then str to kill quicker.
The short answer, practice. Many here can live in the north right off the cross. I’ve been able to go there right after a server wipes with a brand new level 1 naked character with nothing but a stone spear and killt he mobs you are having issues with.
However I’ve got a little more time played I’m sure.
You need steel. For that you want brimestone. Here’s some easy spots to get it from:
From Left to Right it is Sinner’s Refuge, Galaman’s Tomb, and Executioners Entrance.
Sinner’s Refuge is the unofficial Exile Capital City. Its a small cave loaded with Exiles. They are the weakest human NPCs in the game. Even with stone weapons they should go down quickly. You can mine brimstone off the ground.
Galamans’s Tomb is a similar cave, but instead of humans, it has Crocodiles. You’ve probably been handling crocs for a while now. These shouldn’t be an issue. There IS a mini-boss croc in the back of the cave. Don’t try to fight him unless you’re savvy. But if you’re sneaky enough you can take him on just fine.
Finally Executioners Entrance is full of spiders. These spiders are the weakest in the game, however they come at you in groups of 3-5 so be prepared for swarms. Try to get them in chokepoints so they don’t surround you.
That tells you how to get steel. But doesn’t tell you how to get ‘better’ armor. That’s a bit trickier, because even at max level currently, I use a set of Flawless Light Armor for the most part. Its literally the cheapest armor you can make (its the light armor you make at level 10). I just have a decent armorer to make it flawless.
Reason I use it is it gives +9 ENC. Coupled with my build, it allows me to have 41 + 9 ENC which gives me the 50 ENC perk. That allows me to carry up to 20,000 stone at a time and move normally. Its not really a combat build though.
I bring this up because you will need to put thought into what armor you are using, and why. This is one of those games that there is no -best- armor. Each has use. Each has a purpose. And 80% of all that comes down to personal preference. I could give you a list of situations on when to use what. Someone else will chime in and tell you to do something entirely different. Neither one would be right or wrong.
Hopefully steel will help you get better equipment and hardened steel is right around the corner at 50 which will help a bit too. Keep at it. This game takes practice, and alot of it.
Elephants can also give thick leather, just set up two archers on different foundations that are high enough so its over the elephants head and far enough apart that one archer can always shoot at the elephant. I also use two hyenas to slow him down and make him a easier target. Sometimes your archers will glitch and not attack, but manually equipping their bow fixes that.
Like Ko6ka said, plus you can get brimstone from rocknoses with a pick, just dodge then hit 2-3 times and repeat.
You can also get a little bit of thick leather from the darfari camp at the dregs at the far west end of the river. You can also get a little bit of steel there. But, how much vitality do oyu have?
OK, get steel and increase your killing strokes by 20%-ish. Unfortunately that will not keep you alive.
The key to survivability is dodge. Don’t let them hit you
Each critter has an attack pattern that you can learn. same moves, same timing. Anticipate.
It took me (at your level) at least 10 deaths to learn to avoid all hits from a leopard. Poke, poke, dodge right or left, poke, poke. Repeat til he is dead. Once you are comfortable, two or three are no problem, just a bit more complex.
If you have to, accept that you are going to die, get nekkid and calm, and study your opponent’s patterns. Once learned, figure out how to avoid them.
Stick with it and you will get that sense of satisfaction when you skin that sucker.
Edit: As @Chaonike says, the above was written from a pikesman viewpoint. If you prefer sword and shield, just substitute “block” for every “dodge” above.
Disclaimer: PvP is another game altogether. The above applies not.
Pikes are probably your best bet for most critters as they allow you to stay more out of harm’s way. That and dodging. Hit a couple times, then dodge back. Make sure to keep an eye on your stamina too.
Elephants can be killed easily in this way with a pike. Avoid their charge attack by running in a circle around them (they don’t seem to turn very quickly). Close in, hit twice and dodge back. If they rear up on their hind legs for the stomp attack dodge back twice (has a big AoE). You can usually kill them without being hit with a bit of practice.
Also, don’t bother with heavy armour. You can’t dodge, and dodging is the best way to survive.
This game will really troll you hard if you blunder aggressively into a new area at night. This prevents you from seeing the creatures that are about to mob you. It’s all about picking your fights and controlling agro (creature aggression and attack radius). Patience is key here and sometime you may need to let the creatures move away from each other and then you draw agro with one of them by hitting it with bow fire without drawing the other creatures agro. Picking your battles will prevent a lot of deaths.
You did not mention if you use dodge or evasive tumbling maneuvers. These special moves are necessary but will quickly sap your grit in a hurry. Use them sparingly and then walk toward the creature but just off to the side of it so your grit recovers. They will charge you but you can casually side step them and they will continue to charge past you. Same thing if the creature rears up to trample you. Just casual back or side step out of their attack range. This give you time to line up your own special attack to sunder or cripple them.
Personally for the way i make characters I prefer light to medium armor at best and rely on dodging, evasion skills. Also I rarely load my character up to maximum encumbrance as it will add a dodge penalty. Heavy armor is only a benefit if you have specifically invested into attributes to unlock a couple of perks pertaining to armor and heavy armor and then invest in only certain weapons that work best with your fighting style.
Given my light to medium armor builds I will also use bows and specialized arrows frequently to take on the creatures at a safe distance. If they do charge me, I will have already worn them down for easier killing. I am not a shield user and rely on extensive acrobatics to evade attacks.
A few things that will help you out. You can get thick leather from several mobs some better than others.
Best mobs to get thick leather from.
Elephant
Rhino
These two animals drop loads also where they are found you can use a bow to take them down making it easy to gather just stand on a cliff or rock and shoot them otherwise you will have to tap them a few times and circle them and tap again.
Also be sure to put points into vitality its huge in this game also keep good food on you to heal like roasted haunch.
Ok thought I would chime in and offer what suggestions I can. Im certainly not new to gaming, but this is my first survival game and I love it! Ordinarily I am a die-hard Survival Horror player. Like yourself I started off a bit rough, got hammered a lot, but came good in the end. I play singleplayer offline. I now have all the pieces to remove the bracelet, have defeated three world bosses. But like yourself struggled up until about lvl 50 or thereabouts. So my suggestions:
Brimstone: as others have said, in Gallamans Tomb or Sinners Refuge.
Thick Leather: because youre getting killed easily and struggling to find your groove in combat, the safest way to get it is from Supermeru. There are numerous chests all over town, which you do NOT get in trouble for looting. I see thick leather in them almost every visit.
Combat: as others have said; dodge and counter all the time, even on low level enemies. Its all about building good habits for more difficult battles to come!
Now the two most important suggestions: ATTRIBUTES: it sounds like you have invested too heavily in Strength. Vitality is your single most important attribute to sink points into. Take it to at least the third perk. Strength comes in second. Because lets face it, if your character cant ‘take a hit’ youre going to struggle. Which brings me to point two.
ARMOUR: I may face some scorn for saying this, but so be it. Forget the standard versions of armour; including their exceptional/flawless variants. Instead invest Feat points into better sets. For example, at lvl 40 you should be building and wearing from the ‘Nordheimer Armours’ set, then at lvl 50 the ‘Great Civilizations Armours’ set, and so on up to Exile Epics when you hit lvl 60. Although their armour rating reads slightly lower than regular flawless, I just seem to withstand more damage with them. This was the single biggest factor in turning around my own fortunes. I now outlast enemies through sheer endurance and staying power, and have little to no difficulty outside of boss battles.
Hope this helps. Let us all know how you get on hey.
My first stab at the game was single player and I focused on strength. Boy I sure could do some damage, but I could not take hardly any hits. I wasn’t skilled enough to properly dodge, nor did I know all the tactics of each enemy (like I do now).
My cousin saw me playing and bought a copy, so I created a dedicated server. I scrapped my single player and hopped into the server with her. This time I went with vitality as the main and she chose survival. One of us survived nearly every encounter and it wasn’t the one with survival.
So the #1 thing for me is Vitality. Once I reach self healing, I grab a mix of Str, Agil, Enc and Survival for the extra materials in harvesting.
I told my cousin about vitality, but she had other plans. Even now, a month into our server, she drops like a rock in battles that barely dent my health.
One more thing… there is a way to respec attributes, but you need to discover the (something something) to figure out how.
Indeed.
Thankyou sirvink it sounds like we have walked a similar path. Well done my friend. Need WE say any more? No condescension intented; only a genuine desire to help those doing it tough.
Vitality is indeed the king of attributes. Certainly in PvE, probably PvP too but I claim no expertise there. Go up o 30 in Vit, put the rest in Str and a bit in Grit, and you can’t go all wrong.
Personally I play almost exclusively in full Enc spec, and I can still take on everything short of World Bosses (and with patience even some of those are doable).
Vitality is hte reason the aquilonian (and all the others as well) dlc is a bit op. You can start almost immediately with +5 vitality from your aquilonian infantry armor. With any tier 3 armorer you can get +7 vitality and +9 with any named armorer.
When I was noob, I also had a hard time finding Thick Leather, until I discovered the Elk to the north, along the highland wall. They are easy to dodge and kill because they have a rythm to them.
I stayed alive by climbing walls as a de-aggro.
After that I felt a bit more adventurous and tried fighting rhinos. Trees are remarkable for breaking elephant and rhino charges. I use trees like shields.
After that, I captured my first Black hand Thrall, and that one did most of the work for me.
After I had a basic supply of thick leather, I traveled north. Back then exploration gave a crazy amount of XP and I blew past levels up to cap, and got the Silent Legion recipes around the same time I managed obsidian weapons.
But I imagine progression is different now, with XP being a proper grind.
