My new favorite place.

[Necrite]

I've finally got a character that I feel is strong enough to brave the road to Remgard, so I stocked up on Bonemeal and set off. With frequent stops in safe places, I eventually arrived at the first place in a while to have new monsters. With a bit of trepidation, I approached a huge beetle and checked its info. Looks safe, so I kill it and keep going.

It turns out that my fairly balanced build is near perfect for the Scaradon Cave. With 55% BC, they don't hit me often, and 3 Resist means that they have a 75-80% chance of doing no damage. If I don't score a crit, it takes a few hits to kill them - their Resistance can get high enough to drop my damage to 3, but never lower. In the off chance that they damage me before I can kill them, Corpse Eater(1), Regeneration(1), and a RoLS bring me back to full almost instantly. And they have no annoying status effects!

The cave is so big that I rarely run out of bugs to squash, but if I do, there's a bed to respawn everything! And the XP is better than anything I've found other that Gornauds and White Wyrms - and I am NOT farming THEM, thank you very much.

I've got a couple stats I want a bit higher, and a couple skills I want to unlock. Until I get those, I think ive found a new home!

[Necrite]

The downside is the cash potential - or lack thereof. In one run through the cave, I earned a few thousand XP (I forgot to check before I started, but I think it was 3-4k), but only 77 gold and drops worth 38 gold, for a whopping total of 115gp/run! Fortunately, I'm not after gold right now. :p

Edit: 5718 XP and 111gp worth of cash and drops on the nect run. Definitely not here for the gold!

Edit 2: Looks like that was a lucky run. I'm averaging just under 5k xp per run from the bed to the door and back to the bed.

In case anyone wonders why I'm not against this cave, when I said the Snake Cave was out of whack: I can take a level 1 character and in half an hour be at a point where the snake cave is just as much of a pinata as this cave is; this cave needs a level 20+ character with certain build criteria to turn into easy mode - a high offense low defense build will cruise through but risks death with bad rolls. A high defense low offense build risks being unable to damage the bugs. Furthermore, the snakes give good XP, decent gold, drop venom sacs worth 13gp (vs 2gp for the bugs' shells and gems) AND meat that can be used to heal or sold. Farming bugs for XP comes at the cost of potential gold earnings.
Looking at it from a purely balance perspective, I would add something to the bugs though. Maybe make the Carrion Beetles a little weaker, but adding higher damage and/or a crit chance, or maybe a status effect.

[Mino]

Once you've leveled up some more there are some great monsters for farming XP further along the way to Remgard:
maonit trolls, Maonit brutes , and Arulir

They have high HP (over 250) but low BC, low AC and their attack cost is 5 AP and their AP must be less than 10 because they can only attack once per turn, and they're not immune to critical hits.

What makes them tough is they have damage resistance and critical hits which can take 50+ HP at a time. Some can also cause Stunned condition. But once you're strong enough they give out the most XP.

You also have to get past the spiders first and they have high BC and cause some nasty conditions.

[Pyrizzle]

That cave is on my grinding path.

I start in Loneford (after resting)
*First i go thru the Iqhan Caves (hoping to stumble upon a Chaosreaper)
*Then i continue to the Scaradon Cave.
*Head further along the path thru the spider caves (hoping for a Sikk robe of Valugha and Valugha's shimmering hat)
*I keep going until i get to Remgard (REST STOP)
and then head back (going from bottom to top of this list again)

No waiting for respawns! Grind grind grind!

[Mino]

That's very similar to my grinding routine. I usually go from just past the Iqhan caves (and sometimes into them) to a couple screens before Remgard. Or sometimes I just go one screen past the Arulirs at one end and the spider cave with the strider masters at the other end.

I got some extra ShaF and shimmering hats but no extra silk robe. Plenty of Irdegh poison glands and Arulir skin though.

[fiernaq]

Mino, the Maonits and Arulirs may give more xp but they also take more time to kill. With my stats, it's considerably faster grinding xp from the scaradon cave than from those trolls. And yes, I used the scaradon cave for lvling a bit after I attempted the spiders the first time and had difficulty... I could just stop back by the cave and roflstomp it with corpse eater and be instantly full health again. That and when I was fighting Irdeghs and the stacks would get too high I'd quick run back to the cave and power clear it making just enough HP with CE to not die.

[Mino]

Now that you mention it, the bugs do give out some of the higher XP among monsters that don't cause any horrible conditions, and with the bed right there, there's no waiting for respawns.

[Pyrizzle]

Some of the areas the grinding path and the XP rates for NPCs:

Iqhan Caves: 103 - 262
Poisonous Forest: 166 - 345
Bug caves: 105 - 158
Spider Cave: 192 - 311
Road to Remgard: 82 - 407


Side note: The 2 places i find my HP to drop the most in are Poisonous Forest and The Iqhan Caves. With a AC of 326 the spiders do not give me too much trouble anymore. =D

[Mad P]

A good suggestion, and just in time!
I had a build, level 38, grinding in the Iqhan cave but my potions went down sooner than expected. I was just wondering where to grind and couldn't think of a place with reasonably high xp monsters without fatigue, poisons or other nasty effects - only the Gornauds. But every once in a while they hit me very hard, and the scaradon never get so much as a scratch (with 4 DR).

Even if the though scaradon gets its remaining 1 point hit, it's gone with the shadow generation the next round. Almost too easy

[Tomcat]

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