It’s not so much the mastodon but the swarm of storm beasts around them. I think it has become unreasonably hard to kill them. I took a fully leveled dog with 100 food and had epic medium armor on. (roughly equivelent to standard heavy, where a leveling player would be at going in) And bailed because my dog was down to 30 food when I had only killed two mastodon getting 29 hides. There was a swarm of npcs on me at that point. It takes 50 hide to make an epic set. Later on I geared up with epic armor and an epic geared thrall. I made a reasonable run at it coming away with 75 hide. It just seems circular to need epic armor to farm the mats to make epic armor. I don’t think most people have that much game time to spend grinding away to get a toe hold on their first set of epic armor and advance in the game.
There are quite a few ordinary elephants in the newer lands in the South. Mastodons were toughies even without all those storm beasts and with powerful pre-3.0 Thralls so I preferred to gather lots of goldstone, make lots of coins and just buy elephant hides for our first epics. Now I just try to keep clear of the Strom area because of strom beasts under clear sky. Personally I do not like this “novelty”.
The armor pen on your weapon matters ALOT when dealing with Elephant type creatures. They have ~90% damage reduction. That means a 50dmg 0% armor pen axe does only 5 damage.
Fought three at the frozen lake with one follower, and two sabertooths jumping in, was not tough at all. Apparently you do not have the right spec set up.
Seek the elephants on the south, they give easier elephant hide and they fall pretty fast!
Careful harvest is a mandatory!
Apply sunder, among poisoning and these beasts will fall pretty quick! Unfortunately in Siptah the memory of oils is a lottery thing and the black blood skinning knife, so I harvest more elephant hide with the eldarium pickaxe, believe it or not 
.
Last but not least fix a Garrison armor bench to make huge economy to your materials!
You’re referring to mammoths on EL. The mastodon is exclusive to siptah and looks like a bigger elephant with additional tusks. It’s health bar is stupidly larger and the amount of elephant hide it drops is pitiful for the time it takes to kill.
My bad, I havent played Siptah in over a year. Loved the graphics, hated the storyline and grind.
Two points.
-
As mentioned above, armour pen is extremely utile against elephant type critters.
Funny that, one is likely hunting them to make heavy armour from their hide because they are heavily armoured. -
Why are you hunting in the storm? Especially with the current bug that storm spawns don’t go away when the Storm clears. There are easier elephants down south. Or, better yet, take those useless scout reports up to Valeria, she pays 25 ish gold for them. Then buy elephant hide in her camp. It’s about 5 gold a hide. Coins are extremely easy to get on Siptah. Just ride a little farther north and buy the stuff.
This comes down to weapon choices as well. If you give your thrall a high damage weapon like Telith’s Sorrow or a Grey Ones two hander and you use a 2 handed mace and just heavy attack to keep up sunders you can pretty much destroy high armor targets very quickly. The issue with the inverse is giving the thrall the mace does not guarantee they will spam sunder and you need to keep 5 stacks up all the time to churn through the targets hps.
On Siptah this is made much easier with the inclusion of the Outer Dark vault weapons, which all apply sunder on each hit.
lately on siptah i have been playing with a authority build with 2 thralls Dalinsia and Sonja the Accursed. I give one Aja’s Bane and the other a grey one great axe and just roll around alternating heavy attack with forgelight or single target and a combo of heavy and light on aoe groups to keep some sunders up and staggering the group. My damage is pretty much meaningless but the targets just get destroyed by the thralls and aoe damage.
I suggest the ghoulish club on your thrall and you use the feroxic daggers.
Ghoul club is THE thrall weapon. It’s the only thing I really, really wish I had access to in the EL.
Yeah, i managed to bring one over, as well as a coup de gras and some feroxic weapons when we could still transfer. I’m gonna try to stockpile a few to bring over if/when it gets reactivated.
I use goulish club on 1 and Grey ones mace on the other while I use diseased daggers for 4 total dots + sunder from the maces
Works pretty good on just about everything
But avoiding the storm area is like saying ok game devs, I’m not playing your game anymore, it’s too hard. Precisely my point. A game needs to be reasonably winnable for poeple to want to play. This is not all star poker where you stand to make bank. We are paying THEM.
Exactly my point. When you are starting out you have little trying to get more and it becomes exorbitantly hard.
Again, exactly my point. The spec set up to do this is too high for a player starting out with low level gear.
- I am talking about the difficulty with low level gear starting out.
- Not hunting in the storm. There are storm creatures in the area 24/7 now.
You do not have to aviod this area when you are 60 and have decent armour and weapon, and they gave us several other ways to get all this by now.