iDB Community Forum

First off, you don't need TWO Leaf Shields. At best, if used together, these will do no damage to your opponent but will stop all of the opponent's attack, thus ending up in a draw for the round. Unfortunately getting draws with no damage isn't a winning Strategy. Here I'll point out that the weakest of your stats is defense, and thus the shield(s) are currently of less value to you than they would be if you'd trained that stat more, and are of less value you to you, icon per icon than an offensive weapon would be. If you plan on training defense, and want a second shield, the Patched Magic Hat would expand your coverage a bit, while maintaining your strong defensive capabilities against the two icons duplicated by the two weapons.

A second, CHEAP, Scarab Ring, would be in my opinion a better thing to have a second copy of than the Leaf Shield, and you should have one on hand anyways. Then I'd have on hand to rotate in and out of my lineup, depending upon the opponent, the standard CHEAP situational items - Downsize! (for defense) and Purple Sticky Hand (for stealing).

Next, you have a few holes in your set as you have no freezer and a weak healer, both of which are weaknesses if you're going to advance in battle. Your budget won't allow a 100% freezer, but you might want to add a Black Frost Cannon. I won't mention species weapons here as it appears you lab regularly and what's good today might be useless when your pet is a different species tomorrow. The Greater Healing Scroll is something that you should have on hand, though you've already outgrown it. I'd view it as a situational item to rotate into your battleset.

IF (big IF) you get the Honey Potion from Illusen, you'll have a decent bomb for your level, but you'll still suffer from having not having a good freezer to set it up with. On a longer term basis, getting a 100% freezer and addressing your healing problem are much more important to your future success than having or not having a Honey Potion, thought both areas will be EXPENSIVE to fill, and will require much more than you have in your budget.

You should have a bit more offense, so given your budget you might want to try getting a Scuzzys Comb (10 icons) for a bit more pop, and an Essence of Esophagor (9 icons) for a better diversity of attack icons. I'd also dump one of the dual fighting fans, and replace it with a Golden Compass (also 9 icons but with a bit of dark defense). Lastly, you might enjoy adding a Winged Scarab for almost full physical defense, and a bit of air defense along with a minimal attack.

These items in whole, tend to be fairly inexpensive, and would give you a lot more flexability and would represent an upgrade to your set within your budget, but I can't emphasize enough that you're going to need to save for a 100% freezer and a better healing option if you're really going to more yourself up a notch in battledome strength.

Obviously adding the Honey Potion would be helpful, but not as much as it would be with a 100% freezer, though the Black Frost Cannon would be better than you have now.

Finally, you need to decide (QUICKLY) if your're going to train your pet or let the Lab Ray continue to unbalance it. You already need to spend A LOT of nps to get your levels up enough to train. If you decide you DO want to try to, I'd suggest pushing your defense up, and then training equally on defense and strength while letting the lab take care of hit points. If you're going to roll the dice with the lab, you'll find that you need either full blockers (generally VERY expensive - at least beyond the Winged Scarab), or concentrate on pure offensive weapons and forget shields entirely.

Either way, the freezer and healer upgrades loom in your future if you're going to become a battledome force.

Thank you for the great advice.

So far, I have altered my set to:
- Leaf Shield
- Downsize!
- Purple Sticky Hand
- Winged Scarab
- Essence of Esophagor
- Scuzzys Comb
- Golden Compass
- Greater Healing Scroll

Now, because decent healers for my HP are over my budget right now (as are freezers) I was wondering what healer I should aim for. Initially I was thinking I should aim for the Bag of Healing Dust, it seeming the more reasonable choice until I can afford a full healer. As for the freezer, I am leaning towards the Freezing Potion (which I have always been fond of).

I know I haven't added in a freezer yet, and I'm working hard to save enough to get that FPotion ASAP.

Also, I'm trying to find a decent way of bolstering my earning power because it comes from games right now and I really need something to speed it up (this is why we have a 6-year old vet that's poor =P).

One more thing, I decided to hold off labbing right now and focus on increasing my level so that I can even out my Strength and Defence (which I know will take very long with the huge spread I am facing... if only I had known about this five years ago.)

- PeckyP -

I thought I'd chip in with some comments about the Faerie Abilities:

Sink and Burrow are must haves; you can never go wrong with having both of them active. I'd argue that they're some of the strongest (and cheapest) defense in the game. I think the healing abilities (Restore and Regeneration) are mulit-use so you can just pick one. I probably never have a long battle without using Sink, Borrow and Restore.

Drain Life is a keeper also. At the most it will attack 100 hp and heal 100 hp; that's a pretty good trade off.

And that leaves the rest of your spots for full icon blockers like boil and quench; they're not always usful but you can pick the icons you need for specific opponents.

Diamond Dust is fun too if you can land a good freeze on somebody when they don't suspect it. I keep it active but don't use it that often.

Thank you. I was wondering about those Faerie Abilities.

I will definitely use Sink, Burrow, and Drain Life. I went with Restore for the healer. And I will now be alternating between Boil, Steam Shield, and Quench. Since I don't have a freezer yet, I'll be keeping Diamond Dust, then I will consider using something else in there when I get that sorted out.

- PeckyP -

Short of a full healer, the space between the Greater Healing Scroll is occupied by varoius 50% species healers, the Bag of Healing Dust and the Crisp Blue Tunic. Given that you're fighting to earn nps and that you have three MAJOR projects already to deal with (training, freezer and healer), I think your choice of the Bag of Healing Dust is a good one. The Tunic would require additional funds to bring your pet's intellegence up, and if you're in this for the long-haul, the Bag of Healing Dust will increase in utility the higher your hit points go, while the Tunic is fixed in its abilities. Species healers are definately MUCH cheaper and if you have a need to battle (example - TNT actually gives us the gift of a "real war", you could always go for a morphing potion and a 50% species healer (the Nimmo has a 50% healer, the Healing Ankh of the Nimmo, but it's not cheap - Kacheek is one of the better ones to go for in such a case). However, if you plan to return to using the lab once you've gotten your pet's stats in a more balanced fashion, the Bag of Healing Dust fits nicely once again, as it's not species oriented and will be useful to you no matter what species the Lab Ray makes your pet.

As for the freezer, I'd start with the cheapest 100% freezer (H4000 Helmet), to cover the weakness as quickly as possible and then move to dealing with the healing problem. You can always upgrade your freezer later, and 100% freezers have a fine record of retaining their value, so if you buy at a fair price, you should be able to get at least your investment back when you go to upgrade.

I can't help you on how to quickly upgrade your earning potential as I've always been on slow dial-up connections and have never figured out how to make nps myself. I HAVE however gone through the ordeal of trying to reblance a pet that labbed and had gotten uneven stats. It took me about a year and a half or so and a TON of nps, but I was eventually able to do it, and then went on and was able to get the 700 strength and defense boosts. It CAN be done, but it takes time, and you'll definately want to start trying Kitchen Quests in hopes of finding ones where the chef wants items that are relatively inexpensive, say 5,000 nps total or less. There's no penalty for NOT completing a quest if he asks for stuff with outragious pricetags.

Good luck, and keep plugging away!

Thanks VermontHermit, your advice has been great. One thing though, what price should a H4000 Helmet be going for because cheapest I see on the Trading Post is 7.75M and for the Freezing Potion is 7.8M which doesn't seem worth it to buy then sell when the price is so close.

I think that I really prefer getting weapons that aren't oriented for a species ATM because of the lab. However, with the amount of time I'm calculating to catch up from the spread, I might Morph for the cheaper weapons. I will start doing Kitchen Quests now as they seem more reasonable than spending 3 codestones for each stat (when all except HP really need increases).

Thank you again for your help.

- PeckyP -

I can't say that I'm current on pricing of either item, as I've had my freezer for a few years now, but you might want to ask for a price check in another thread. Also, in the IDB trading forum, under the heading "Lots of Awesome Weapons 4 Sale" someone had an H4000 asking 7.7. If the difference actually turns out to be that small, sure, go for the Freezing Potion as the two attack icons would be worth it.

The Kitchen Quests, if you're disciplined about which you do (only the cheap ones) are a great training boost. Also, even when you don't get a stat, I found it was about a break even deal overall on the prize items, though generally a loss if you got the neopoints award. All in all, a cheap additional way to train, particularly as costs at the training school rise with your pet's growing stats.

These days, I recommend bypassing the HH entirely, and going for F-Pot or Magical Marbles of Mystery. And if you end up needing a freezer while plot inflation is still running wild, then go for the MMoM, since F-Pot is currently inflated. Otherwise it's very much a personal/tactical choice since some don't regard MMoM as a F-Pot upgrade.

No reason for gamers to be poor. Easy earning games alone pay out quite a bit. Explore the option of WCs, get into Food Club/Stock Market, just keep your options open, really.

I will have to look into that... however, for some reason, I never seem to earn as much as I feel I should be. I tend to come out with about 30K daily after playing my Favourites and I can usually get that up to 50K in a day with not much more effort, but I always feel like I'm not earning as much as I should be, especially when I hear about people restocking UBs so frequently.

If I had significantly more time, I would be able to earn a great deal more, but it's also hard for me to start restocking which is what I hear has to be done to really earn NP quickly. (It's hard because I can't figure out which stores to restock.. I tend to want to stick with less popular shops, which is why I restock at the Ice Crystal Shop).

I need to figure out something more consistent method to keep earning a decent amount of NP...

- PeckyP -

Well, I just wanted to update anyone still interested in this post and helping me out or anything. I just completed Illusen's Level 35. So, I have the Honey Potion now. My goal ATM is to get another 6M NP to get the MMoM as that seems to be the best option for me. Mainly clearing out my SDB right now (over 3000 items, 1000 of which after being sold paid for my quest item (Yellow Peophin Morphing Potion 400K) so I'm hoping to get about 1M from the rest as I have some map pieces etc.) Hopefully it goes well.

- PeckyP -