I see a lot of demi-gods and titans running around, but I'm wondering who the best of the best in the world of bashing is, and how they've come to claim the spot.

Is it an encyclopedic knowledge of bashing locations?
A combination of race/class geared for monster mashing?
A secret method for overcoming the mind melting boredom of bashing?
What gives them their edge?
And who is the King or Queen of Crushing NPC's into a fine gooey paste?

I don't think anyone bashes traditionally to demigod these days.

The answer to all those questions is Murphy

I did.

As an Ascendant with a buttload of artifacts, I do very well with the hunting these days, too.

Check who has the mob killing achievements, and you'll see that Ragniliff is probably the number one hunter at this time.

Is it an encyclopedic knowledge of bashing locations?
Yes there's a hunting guide on the Lore wiki and possibly the old Scrying Pool wiki. You basically want an endless supply of things that can be killed quickly and don't afflict too much. Kephera in the Undervault fit the bill. Muud might as well but it's out of my league.

A combination of race/class geared for monster mashing?
High level warriors hunt really quickly. I think the preference is for classes who recover balance/eq quickly like faeling.

A secret method for overcoming the mind melting boredom of bashing?
You write scripts to autotarget and swing.

What gives them their edge?
High chance of critical coupled with fast swing speed and high damage. Then there are artifacts.

And who is the King or Queen of Crushing NPC's into a fine gooey paste?
The Ebonguard as a whole are all pretty insane. Everyone is demigod and artied out. I don't think I'd be exaggerating to say we have the best hunters in the land. I think Xenthos, Sidd and Ardmore have all won some sort of hunting or death challenge. Shuyin and Ragniliff probably could as well if they cared enough to do so. We're tough and stuff, rawr!

Permit me a brief whistle followed by a

Then what, aetherbashing?

*does not really enjoy it*

I'm not even level 80 yet (76 at this point), but your character's rank in Lusternia indicates that you can benefit from my methods, so I'll share some of what I've learned.

First of all, yes, knowing where to bash and how to get there is quite important. I've memorized routes to Castle Djarrakh (krokani), the aslaran camp, Shallach Ruins (orcs), Caverns of Muhanlesh (nagas), and the Upper Peaks of the Razines (rocs), and can reach any of them in under a minute. I also have speedwalk aliases to reach these areas, but I don't really need them at this point. Those are all good places for you to bash, except for the Upper Peaks. All of them other than the Upper Peaks offer gold for corpse turn-ins, which is why I nearly always skip rocs.

There are also some bashing areas I've never tried, such as gorgogs, lucidians in the Observatory (lucidians fight socially), and (?) in Tosha Monastery. Additionally, creatures on whatever elemental planes you have access to should yield decent experience, but you'll get essence and shrine karma in place of gold turn-ins.

Now, the main problem with nearly all Prime bashing areas is that everyone and their mother knows about them. During peak hours, you can (and will) find that most or all of these areas are completely devoid of monsters to bash, pretty much continuously. This is because Prime hunting grounds are extremely well known, the monsters in each take about an hour to respawn, and it takes just one hour for one player to clear out half a dozen areas. Thus, one player can lock down five or six areas all by him or herself.

My solution to this problem is to bash in the wee hours of the morning when only 40 people are online, rather than 120. During these times, I can sometimes complete three or four bashing circuits nearly uninterrupted. From 6 PM to 1 AM EST, I pretty much refuse to bash, doing other things instead.

Finally, as for boredom, I set goals for myself, like reaching level 80 and not having to sleep for 5 RL minutes randomly, or forget to eat, forget to restock platters, and barely reach a shop before starving to death. Plus, I'm just grateful to have full hunting grounds that aren't cleared out constantly.

EDIT: Also, proper equipment, targeting aliases, auto-attack script/triggers, and curing triggers for what you're fighting are very helpful, yes.

EDIT 2: Even now, in fact, with 40 people online, the krokani and aslaran have very recently been cleared out by someone else, since I delayed my circuit by writing this post.

Aetherbashing is the first and the best. Stick fodder (lowbies) or fuel (demigods) on siphoners, proficient people on grid, turrets, and pilot. You can design (Viynain), work on a system (Sidd), plan comm-hoarding schemes (Talan&Ragniliff), etc. etc. all while you're aetherbashing. If you're on siphon duty you're also responsible for entertaining the poor bloke who has a slivven shift.

Your aethership sounds remarkably cozy, like one of those old-fashioned after-dinner evenings with the whole family gathered around the fireplace and knitting and reading newspapers or something. It would be great if it were like that. Only I'm the pilot, heh. It's more like being drowned in spam than a quiet evening for me! (Though I'm oddly glad nobody still remembers the days when I used to go around exploding all the aetherships while learning to fly.)

Apologies, I haven't been back long enough yet. What's Aetherbashing?

You sit in an aethership and shoot things.

Apparently it's possible to not-really-pay-attention while doing it, and it's also fast. (I didn't notice this last, but then I'm not a very proficient aetherbasher yet.)

Presumably, once you get a little mini-system written for aetherbashing, it becomes more-or-less automated.

Siphoning, at least, should be fairly easy (siphoning is all I've done so far): Trigger that siphons as the ship flies by the whirlpool thingy (?), which toggles on when you have fewer creatures than the target number summoned, and toggles off when you have as many as you need. I suspect turrets are even easier, just make triggers to attack whatever you're supposed to be shooting and you're good to go. I could be wrong about this, of course, but that's what it looks like to me so far.

I should probably ask a knowledgeable person about how to create these systems at some point.

What happens if/when you run into random aetherbeasts? And aren't you supposed to move around to avoid getting hit by them? Or did they change that too? My mind is still full of old aetherspace.

I'm not sure. I've only been on one aetherbashing trip, and on that trip we did nothing but tightly circle one of those whirlpool thingies in a four-square pattern, and fought nothing but some sort of forestal creatures summoned due to siphoning.

Meh. I kind of hate abashing anymore. Slivvens and scripting have sapped most of the fun from it. Also, a lot of aether-demis bail pretty quickly after getting it. I suppose it comes so easily it's not fulfilling as an achievement. It's well known that abashing is the best xp around lately if you've got a good crew, but the guy is asking about regular bashing so.


Is it an encyclopedic knowledge of bashing locations?
--No, it's finding your niche of places you prefer to hunt.
A combination of race/class geared for monster mashing?
--warriors
A secret method for overcoming the mind melting boredom of bashing?
--Give yourself a reason to bash besides just xp. (Gold-bashing, quests that require bashing, offering goals, achievements, power totals if you link/cone)
What gives them their edge?
--Some people just like to bash.
And who is the King or Queen of Crushing NPC's into a fine gooey paste?
--Ragniliff and Sidd

Aetherbashing is basically where you fly around in circles shooting monsters. Nowadays, many crews use shockwaves, so you don't even have to fly all that much, you just sit and shoot the stuff, and it's got the best XP in the game if you're not a warrior.


EDIT: Oh, and as anything besides slivven-hunter and captain, you can basically sit there and let scripts do all the work for you.

No, it really is better than everything else. Perhaps at certain tiers of bashing compared to aetherbashing, it differs, but top tier aetherbashing beats top tier warrior bashing by leaps and bounds. Even after all the nerfs and changes. I can make more than double the essence I would on astral by siphoning/slivvening with a 50/50 time split between those two tasks, and that's one of the worst exp outputs you can get on an abash.

And that's abashing gargantuans, not dragons or tendrils (though whether the latter is superior to the former is not for me to say, due to lack of experience with the latter).

Yeah, astral is far more punishing than aetherspace, for far, far less reward. And I'm pretty damn well equipped to handle astral.

Don't bother with tendrils, they are harder than dragons and worth relatively the same exp/essence.