OTF Ithzir or Rift Plane 5

[Ryku]

So as a caster Ranger I am currently hunting gremlocks, taints, and beings in the OTF aqueduct. I can pwn the ithzir in the OTF but they are scattered all over the place in there with War Griffins and Constructs that are either too high for me at 87 or just no damn good for me as a caster. I'm looking at the Rift plane 5 and the level of those creatures seems nice, low 90s. I've never tried The Rift however so I was wondering if anyone has done both and can recommend one or the other for whatever reasons.

[crb]

Plane 5 will not bring you to cap very easily, you'll end up underhunting vaesps. But for you right now it is probably richer....

However, the rift is boring, and isolated. OTF is a 30 second walk from town, the rift is not, the rift is fucking far, with climbs and swims and puzzles. If you like doing bounties, you have to go all the way back to icemule to turn them in, have to go back to pinefar to do any banking or selling. Granted, go2/sloot makes this a wee bit less annoying if you use those. Rescues are also more difficult, to rescue someone on 5, and its been about 10 years for me so I might not remember exactly, you need to go to three, climb to 4, climb to 5, push the body down to 4, leave the rift, reenter, go to 4, toss the body to 3, leave the rift, reenter, go to 3, drag the body out. PITA.

[everan]

Plane 5 will not bring you to cap very easily, you'll end up underhunting vaesps. But for you right now it is probably richer....

However, the rift is boring, and isolated. OTF is a 30 second walk from town, the rift is not, the rift is fucking far, with climbs and swims and puzzles. If you like doing bounties, you have to go all the way back to icemule to turn them in, have to go back to pinefar to do any banking or selling. Granted, go2/sloot makes this a wee bit less annoying if you use those. Rescues are also more difficult, to rescue someone on 5, and its been about 10 years for me so I might not remember exactly, you need to go to three, climb to 4, climb to 5, push the body down to 4, leave the rift, reenter, go to 4, toss the body to 3, leave the rift, reenter, go to 3, drag the body out. PITA.
Join Voln and by all means do not die. I'll raise you in the field, but who has enough time to do all that pushing, grinding and dragging?

[Originate]

Dying in the rift sucks. That said, I took my ranger from 66 to cap in the rift and didn't mind. I like being self sufficient though. Also, I was afraid of being looted by ithzir.

[Androidpk]

How the heck did you survive there at level 66 and what were you hunting? Survival tips would be great.

[Originate]

I died a lot, but plane 1 wasn't that hard as a ranged ranger, honestly. Also, being able to use assume aspect to negate the spirit drain is a nifty bonus to being a ranger.

[Ryku]

The travel time wasn't that much of a pain with scripts?

[Originate]

I didn't mind. In fact I started with a script I made from IMT to the sands, getting back is easy with 130. I imagine it is even more tolerable now since the pool doesn't melt your spells.

[Androidpk]

Is there anything on plane 1 that doesn't cast spells? My TD is terrible.

[Fallen]

How is the IMT community of late? Are there active storylines and such? Is that of any concern to you, Ryku? Do you have anyone you hang out with that hunts near either area? You can likely make the hunting work at either location.

[leifastagsweed]

OTF is amazing. The gremlocks in the aqueduct don't cast but they use interesting maneuvers. So much better than the Bowels. I guess I'm living in Illy until Teras is ready for the Leif.

[Ryku]

How is the IMT community of late? Are there active storylines and such? Is that of any concern to you, Ryku? Do you have anyone you hang out with that hunts near either area? You can likely make the hunting work at either location.

Nah I wouldnt consider any of that a concern for me. I'm much more interested in grinding out exp as quickly and smoothly as possible. I prefer to hunt solo. I think I'm going to give the rift a shot and see how it goes with my particular skill set. If it sucks, it sucks.

[Allereli]

Nah I wouldnt consider any of that a concern for me. I'm much more interested in grinding out exp as quickly and smoothly as possible. I prefer to hunt solo. I think I'm going to give the rift a shot and see how it goes with my particular skill set. If it sucks, it sucks.

unless you're playing in very off times, you'll get rescued in the rift most of the time. It's especially easy for Voln masters to get up there now

[whiteflash]

I'm a big fan of the rift personally and can't stand the thieving Ithzir. The easiest way to five for you will be to drop to one, by going north in the sphere. Once you drop you'll find the maw and go through it, you can set an alias to just go2 a random room on plane5 and it will do all of that automatically for you. If you like treasure you will want 50-60 ranks of climbing, since to leave plane 5 you must climb the thread to plane 1 and exit via a door/mirror, climbing the threads is quite difficult if wounded or encumbered. Falling with a 10-15s RT on five is not advised.

There is a small community up there hunting the rift and since your death cries will likely get a rescue, Kaedra and Annorax are really good about it if they are around.

If you find someone up on five you need to drag them into the box (organ grinder), turn the crank(resulting in r3 scars everywhere). Run to four, find the chute, drag them into the chute, go to three/two/one wherever they landed and drag them through the moving doors.

Vaespilons and n'ecare will likely be very easy for your thorn, not sure how you will do against souls (non-corp). Unfortunately the n'ecare are on five now and won't really provide you much experience. The souls and vaespilons implode, the vaespilons will do it on the 2nd or 3rd cast. Let us know how it goes!

[Methais]

Everything about the Rift sucks except the Rift area itself.

They should move it to the Landing, with a portal to the Cavern of Ages in TSC.

[Archigeek]

The lunatics don't cast spells, but it's difficult to isolate critters on plane one. On the other handm it's very easy to navigate.

For a square, plane 2 is the place to be when you are level appropriate. Plane 2 now has lunatics, cseraceris, caedera and vvrael warlocks. It takes a while to get used to the layout of plane two, but once you do, it's much easier to isolate and crunch the various critters. The witches and warlocks are always a challenge at like level, but they're worth it in terms of loot.

I've never considered the rift boring. It's a lot of things, but boring isn't one of them.

[Methais]

It's especially easy for Voln masters to get up there now

What changed that made it so easy for them now?

[Allereli]

What changed that made it so easy for them now?

with the voln revamp they are now able to transport straight from mule to the cavern of ages, no pool, no pinefar

[Archigeek]

I'm a big fan of the rift personally and can't stand the thieving Ithzir. The easiest way to five for you will be to drop to one, by going north in the sphere. Once you drop you'll find the maw and go through it, you can set an alias to just go2 a random room on plane5 and it will do all of that automatically for you. If you like treasure you will want 50-60 ranks of climbing, since to leave plane 5 you must climb the thread to plane 1 and exit via a door/mirror, climbing the threads is quite difficult if wounded or encumbered. Falling with a 10-15s RT on five is not advised.

There is a small community up there hunting the rift and since your death cries will likely get a rescue, Kaedra and Annorax are really good about it if they are around.

If you find someone up on five you need to drag them into the box (organ grinder), turn the crank(resulting in r3 scars everywhere). Run to four, find the chute, drag them into the chute, go to three/two/one wherever they landed and drag them through the moving doors.

Vaespilons and n'ecare will likely be very easy for your thorn, not sure how you will do against souls (non-corp). Unfortunately the n'ecare are on five now and won't really provide you much experience. The souls and vaespilons implode, the vaespilons will do it on the 2nd or 3rd cast. Let us know how it goes!

Some clarifications:

Plane 5 is easy to navigate, just continually head south and you'll cycle through all the rooms.

The crank will result in scars wherever you had wounds. The scar ranks will match the wound ranks. The chute from 4 will always drop the corpse onto plane 2.

It used to be getting vaporized left you on five, which was onerous, since that was when you'd end up with rank 3 scars everywhere after someone dumped you into the box. Now days you land in Icemule Town Center. You might imagine how much of a pain in the ass rank 3 scars everywhere is... just drinking all the potions to get rid of the scars probably takes 20 minutes. Fortunately that's not so bad any more.

Lost Souls do not implode, only the vaespilon do. Speaking of which, if a vaespilon preps to implode and you leave the room, they will open implode. Since so many of the rooms on five are interconnected, this is a PITA, as you and anyone else on the plane will get hit with the implosion. So try to stand your ground if at all possible. The best solution is to head shot vaespilon as soon as you see them.

Don't forget to turn the crank.

[Methais]

with the voln revamp they are now able to transport straight from mule to the cavern of ages, no pool, no pinefar

I never even heard about the Voln revamp. When did that happen? Do you have a link with a summary of it?

[Allereli]

I never even heard about the Voln revamp. When did that happen? Do you have a link with a summary of it?

it happened with the monk/UAC implementation

http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_voln

[Methais]

it happened with the monk/UAC implementation

http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_voln

Holy shit that's awesome, especially since it'll also take you straight to Nelemar on Teras, which is an annoying trip because of all the hard RT during the swim.

Not that it really matters because it takes 10 seconds to script to it, but does it work for OTF too?

This has me considering switching back again, though I really don't know if it's worth dropping warcamps and free hcp for.

[Danical]

If you ever want to hunt on plane 4 you'll encounter enormous rift crawlers (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Enormous_rift_crawler). They will burrow and burst upon you like a vicious pain-train of horribad. However, once you see a rift crawler has burrowed on you, move to a room with no creatures in it (to ensure your cast of 213 will take effect) and cast 213 (minor sanctuary). Stay in the room until the rift crawler harmlessly unburrows in the room; proceed as per usual. Now, you may be thinking, but I'm a ranger, how the hell am I supposed to cast 213! Alchemy (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Milky_blue_oil)! This trick should still work unless they changed it. As a bard, you can perform something similar with 1011 (Song of Peace).

[Allereli]

you can also use 213 scrolls in the rift

[Danical]

you can also use 213 scrolls in the rift

Good point! I always forget about scrolls.

[Methais]

Not worth making a thread for, but is spending 500k bounty points the only way to do a society reset? Or does it come in a potion like fixskills to where you could buy one off someone else?

[Danical]

Not worth making a thread for, but is spending 500k bounty points the only way to do a society reset? Or does it come in a potion like fixskills to where you could buy one off someone else?

I didn't even know you could get something from AvG that allowed for society resets, it doesn't appear to be on the Krakii page (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Adventurer%27s_Guild#Rewards) unless I missed it.

That said, while the Voln rework introduced quite a few quality of life improvements, I don't think it's worth leaving funfist for unless you plan to exclusively hunt the Rift. Even so, you can get to the rift easy enough using Lich. The loot you get from clearing out warcamps can be much better than even the southern scatter, depending on warcamp hunting pressure.

[Methais]

I didn't even know you could get something from AvG that allowed for society resets, it doesn't appear to be on the Krakii page (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Adventurer%27s_Guild#Rewards) unless I missed it.

That said, while the Voln rework introduced quite a few quality of life improvements, I don't think it's worth leaving funfist for unless you plan to exclusively hunt the Rift. Even so, you can get to the rift easy enough using Lich. The loot you get from clearing out warcamps can be much better than even the southern scatter, depending on warcamp hunting pressure.

I just like being able to instantly teleport to places. Even Nelemar, despite how easy both they and the Rift are to get to. The swim to Nelemar is annoying. I'd much prefer pressing a button and being there, but yeah I still don't know if that's a worthy trade off over what Sunfist offers.

I'd like to hunt the Scatter more, and probably would if I went back to Voln, but none of that would have an effect on what a pain in the ass that place can be. Between the high TDs and having to dispel shit half the time, it usually eats my mana up quick. Is that just how the Scatter is in general at least for wizards? Or is there something I'm doing wrong here? I haven't really spent much time up there because it was usually pretty annoying like that.

As for warcamp loot, I've never found anything worth a shit in the chest or off any Grimswarm. Not saying it doesn't happen, I've just never found much of shit.

[Asha]

Plane 5 was my favourite place to hunt, after Shan.
Lots of treasure, good little community up there and easy as fuck.

[Methais]

How is Scatter loot compared to plane 5? Plane 5 was always cake.

[whiteflash]

How is Scatter loot compared to plane 5? Plane 5 was always cake.

Always found scatter way richer, my brother and I often take loot vacations there, though we only hunt south of the barrier. We also have a few tricks for getting our phatty lewts off more casually than the average bear.

As for the hunting itself, I've found as a CS hunter a fully maximized CS is a must. I'm talking 3x spells, fully enhanced, so 560 CS with no quartz orb as a DE sorcerer. With this set up i'll only miss the occasional lich and since everything stuns but for destroyers if you get a cast off they are disabled. We did some testing and found that the TD's are very even across the circles and no one has a particular advantage/disadvantage. I'd only say the liches might have a higher elemental TD from 430 being up, which can screw with wizards pretty hard since they also have huge bolt DS, and are immune to spells 10 and under.

We typically just post up on a 418 node in the 'lower' most region of the southern barrier. It is swarmy enough that plenty of creatures abound and you will likely still have to run occasionally, keeps it fun. Helps having Dhairn swing his big ass lance though, for pures the destroyers can be very obnoxious. Haste + a bow seems to be the win for well post cap wizards.


I could have sworn the souls would cast implode, albeit rarely. Makes me wanna go stand in front of one to try it out. Also, I'm just about 100% sure the grinder gives you r3 scars on every spot no matter your wound status, any volunteers to check that one as well?

[Methais]

Always found scatter way richer, my brother and I often take loot vacations there, though we only hunt south of the barrier. We also have a few tricks for getting our phatty lewts off more casually than the average bear.

What's the difference north and south of the barrier? I'm guessing the 110 stuff is north? I never knew it was divided. Don't know much of anything about the place actually other than it has stuff up to 110.


As for the hunting itself, I've found as a CS hunter a fully maximized CS is a must. I'm talking 3x spells, fully enhanced, so 560 CS with no quartz orb as a DE sorcerer. With this set up i'll only miss the occasional lich and since everything stuns but for destroyers if you get a cast off they are disabled. We did some testing and found that the TD's are very even across the circles and no one has a particular advantage/disadvantage. I'd only say the liches might have a higher elemental TD from 430 being up, which can screw with wizards pretty hard since they also have huge bolt DS, and are immune to spells 10 and under.

I have like 5-6 spell ranks to go before I'm fully 3x spells. I cast at 553 without an orb now, and should be at 555-556 by the time I'm done. Never bothered with enhancives, but I'll probably look into scoring some Aura stuff at some point. I'm pretty sure the liches are what gave me the most trouble like you said.


We typically just post up on a 418 node in the 'lower' most region of the southern barrier. It is swarmy enough that plenty of creatures abound and you will likely still have to run occasionally, keeps it fun. Helps having Dhairn swing his big ass lance though, for pures the destroyers can be very obnoxious. Haste + a bow seems to be the win for well post cap wizards.

I don't think I've ever bothered casting 418 and camping but I'll try that out this weekend when I get there too. It's been a while since I've been up there so it might go more smoothly anyway.

Thanks for the info I appreciate it. If anything else pops in your head, let me know.

[whiteflash]

You should be good on CS then for most everything, maybe I'll rift over and see what type of TD they have against elemental magic and post up.

The southern scatter is the only place you will find liches, they don't cross the barrier. Solo they are an epic pain without haste since it takes around 20s to kill their phylactery. Doesn't matter if you use a smaller weapon, you just have to hit it more. They take 2-3 10s hits from a lance or a runestaff, and maybe 10 hits at 3s each from a dagger.

[Archigeek]

I agree that solo the liches are a pain in the rear. Plus, as a square they're really a pain in the butt to hit before they get a cast off on you, and they cast some nasty stuff. They're very fast, and carry runestaves that they'll often block shots with. This didn't used to be the case, but they were uptweaked along with the fetish masters so that they get quite a number of blocks with their staves now. Generally this means I start off with a disarm attempt to make them easier to hit and put them in RT.

[whiteflash]

So took me a little trip, seems pretty even to me with the extra ele cs you get from 425:

Sorc TD:

You gesture at an infernal lich.
CS: +552 - TD: +493 + CvA: +25 + d100: +71 == +155
Warding failed!
... and hits for 20 points of damage!
An infernal lich is suddenly engulfed in flames of pure essence!
... 40 points of damage!
Hand freezes solid before falling off! Who needs a left hand anyway?
The infernal lich is stunned!
... 50 points of damage!
Hideously bright electrical bolt sends right leg into another universe. Happy traveling.
An infernal lich falls to the ground grasping her mangled right leg!
... 25 points of damage!
Strong blow to left leg breaks it!
You feel 4 mana surge into you!
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

MnE TD:

>415
[voodoo]>incant 415
You trace a simple rune while intoning the mystical phrase for Elemental Strike...
Your spell is ready.
You gesture at an infernal lich.
CS: +522 - TD: +510 + CvA: +25 + d100: +54 == +91
Warded off!
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

I also stood in front of a lost soul for a long time and it did not cast implode at me. So uh, yea not right on that one!

[Methais]

So if I'm doing my numbers right, I'd have just over a 70% chance to hit with Immolate without a quartz orb.

Could be worse I suppose. I wonder what their bolt DS looks like. I'm gonna be heading up there later today, guess I'll find out soon enough.

As far as loot goes, what do you think is the overall best if you factor in efficiency?

Also kept meaning to ask, what do bounties up there typically consist of besides herbs? I don't recall getting much of anything but herb tasks, the few times I did do bounties there.