If someone wanted to begin bashing Astral what advice would you have?

Where should I start, what skills and items will I need to bash there, what should I look out for?

The only must-have skill is conglutinate.
You'll also need health potions, sparkleberries and a scroll of healing.

Stick with some of the weaker unlinked creatures first. Fesixes come to mind.

I must add though, just hunting unlinked creatures isn't very productive.

Hmm...alright I have conglutinate. I guess I should work on a auto sipper, auto sparkle and auto healing scroll reader huh?
Unlinked Fesixes sound good, what if those are gone or someone is already doing them what should be my second choice?

Hmm...well I'll try my hand at unlinked for a little while then move on to linked I guess. Linked creatures are much harder right?

It really depends what class, race and how much health you have.

But goats and lobstrosities would be fine.

Linked creatures vary, but just to be safe, yes, they are a lot harder.

Rundown of the basic astral creatures:

Parasites- Drain power, entangle. Very little exp/gold, avoid. (Pisces)
Bulls- Mainly physical damage, can prone. Has a critical attack. Be careful. (Taurus)
Eagles- Can knock off balance or deafen. Be careful of deafness, it'll give you an eq/bal penalty. (Gemini)
Mitrans- Mainly physical damage, but they've got a poison attack that's nasty without resistances. (Libra)
Virgins- Lots of bleeding, can cause blackout and fear. Very dangerous if you take them when they're adjacent to another- use caution. (Virgo)
Fesixes- Pretty easy. Physical damage, occasional fear or deafness. (Leo)
Abhorrences- Bit stronger than goats, but not worth much xp and gold. (Aries)
Lobstrosities- Pretty much physical damage. Since they're on Celest's sphere, you'll rarely be able to link any. Generally easy if you take them one at a time. (Cancer)
Scorpions- Physical and Poison, occasionally afflicts with Charybdon. Be very careful of Sensitivity, take them only one at a time. (Scorpio)
Urns- Poison, electric, blunt damage. Has some VERY painful attacks. Better off to avoid. (Aquarius)
Obesefessors- Easy if unlinked- poison, blunt, fire damage. Linked ones are very dangerous. (Sagittarius)
Goats- Blunt, heat damage. On Mag's sphere, so there won't be much to link and you'll need to be careful of getting jumped. Occasionally prones or knocks off balance, the offbal stacks, so be careful of any groups above 2ish. (Capricorn)

And, yeah. Only take on linked things one at a time. (Note: Sometimes you might just spawn 2 instead of the usual 1, so don't get too comfortable.)

Obesefessors also have an unblockable attack, which gets nasty.

Hmm...I'm Trill, Celestine and have 3720 health. I know not the best choices for bashing. Would it be a big improvement if I went human?

Oh thanks for the rundown Furien!

Think I'll stay away from Obesefessors for now then, Salvation.

Anything else?

A good idea would be asking someone to go up with you, so you can get an idea of how tough it is for you, without as much risk.

Yeah I tried that Rika, no one seemed to want to do it. Maybe they where just busy or thought I would get them killed.

I like virgins.



Okay that was a bad joke, but I do bash them alot with putre up

I'd suggest taking things that don't really cause bleeding/afflictions as much as the other things on Astral that could. Virgins make you bleed quite a bit more than say....Mitrans (Libra) who just whack you with their scales and make you smell a bit with their vomit. Fesixes and Bulls are good too; Bulls knock down but at least don't break limbs. Just watch out for the bleeding most everything up there has the capability of stacking up quickly.

Oh, and watch out when you enter the neurotic phase of things in your stat. Once you start kneeling or licking your vials instead of sipping them might end up with you in a bit of trouble.

Bleh, this is sounding difficult and complicated...

Nah, it's real easy. A lot of it is just trial and error, though, so it's a good thing you can conglutinate.

What she said. Conglute is awesome.

Being a new astral basher myself, I'll give you what I know.

Always make sure to have all available health regens up that you can; this is critical as the damage varies on each attack.

Make sure that you have a trigger set to stand up whenever you get knocked down or an alias to do so quickly, otherwise you'll find yourself typing 'stnad' 'sntad' 'stadn' etc. and eventually get stacked balance loss.

Remember that these creatures chase you when you run, only going back through your nexus, or switching onto a sphere that's not theirs will you be able to avoid their wrath.

Remember that, to my knowledge, all the creatures can break shields. Without the ability to reflect, you'll need to be careful when you get low on health.


I'm level 67 mugwump Geomancer with splendor robes and a tad of resilience, and about 2780 health. I can solo most unlinked creatures easily, but have to be cautious when they team up. I hunt once linked creatures with my sister easily and all the time. I die frequently, but I conglut, so it's not too big of a deal.

Good luck!

Fesixes and eagles are winners. I'd stick with those. Being trill, you have the advantage of flying, but amusingly enough, thats not too helpful on those two spheres, half of leo (fesixes) is indoors, and the eagles can fly too (though linked ones usually don't). The eagles that do fly only stay up in the air for a few rounds before landing and giving you a chance to heal and puella once or twice, before coming back to attack more.

Keep in mind that all astral respawns will chase you. Not all linked ones will.

If you aren't going to link, fesixes and eagles have always been my favorites to bash, just carry oodles of myrtle. Bull respawns are easy, but the linked ones always had an annoying tendency to kill me as a Celestine, and I've never tried them again after the first two quick and bloody failures. Might want to stay away from urns. Lobstrosities are good to kill, though you'll get the occasional linked one that's rather nasty. Respawned obesefessors and mitrans are good too, but linking them seems to have a greater chance of getting 2 instead of one then other spheres. Then again, that could be my imagination because they track you down really really fast and I usually find myself in a room with 3-5 obesefessors quicker then I'd prefer.

Mitrans and Obesefessors are the only really aggressive chasers that I know of, and they'll track you down no matter where you are on the sphere. Obesefessors also do fire damage, which I think trill are weak to. All the other things I've linked mostly keep pretty still if I run away to heal, though I recommend running two rooms away (make sure there's nothing there waiting for you!) before using balance-taking healing skills.

I'd also keep away from goats, they do fire damage as well, and knock you off balance. Not to mention that sphere is how Mag gets to astral, and thats bound to end poorly.

Kind of disorganized, but hopefully helpful.

Eagles are lethal, ignore Acrune.

Also, all linked mobs chase and track, some just take a while (couple minutes) to start.

Virgins chase you fast too, but I find them easier than most other astral mobs except fesixes.

Lobstrosities are also awesome, but Celest is a bunch of noobs () and drains that sphere so you won't be able to link many if any.

Fesixes, mitrans and lobstrosities.

Mitrans are good, besides making you smell like Eau d'Mitran and the poison stuff that was mentioned... no idea what they meant. Haven't had any problems what so ever...

Fesixes can be a little bit tricky. If they manage to scare you in a room where another fesix happens to sit and wait for you to join in on his lunch, you could find yourself in trouble since this one will attack and the one who scared you away will track.

Lobstrosities. Well, those hit harder than mitrans or fesixes, but doesn't do funny yhings with you, like deafness or fear. Good thing is that even if no other sphere is linked, you can still get them if you're lucky (as it has been already said they are on Cancer). True about linking, hard to do it since the node is almost alway overdrawn, though I wouldn't blame Celest here. Often enough some upset person decides to draw as much as they can just to summon tons of lobstrosities to make trouble for Celestians. Haven't seen/heard someone from Celest overlinking Cancer.

Besides all that, you'll need reflexes... and also... there is a certain city scoll in Celest with all information about Astral.

Cheers

EDIT:
Just a quick note. Memorizing the layout of the spheres helps a lot. For example with fesixes, if you know where you can fly, you could save your life every now and then...

You'll probably get a lot of seemingly contradictory advice here, as everyone's astral experiences are a bit different, but here's what I think is most important:

1. If you find an unlinked mob and it hits you, it will try to track you if you run away. Running into other unlinked mobs on the same sphere after getting others to track you isn't a good idea - retreat to rooms you know are empty or fly to avoid this.

2. When linking to an astral node, all mobs on the sphere will eventually begin to track towards you. Some will start immediately (mitrans and obesefessors) while others will only start after an extended period of time (urns, parasites, etc.) A lot of big time astral hunters generally don't figure this out because they can kill everything they link quickly enough for it not to matter, but for you it could be a genuine concern. I'd recommend against ever doing more than two surges at once - mostly only one at a time to start.



Parasites can also paralyze, and have one room wide attack, which is also their most damaging attack. They aren't the strongest astral mobs, but they can lock you up and force you to tumble more than any other on the plane. Never underestimate a small pack of parasites and their ability to prevent you from attacking.



I'll disagree partially. Linked urns can dish out some of the highest amounts of raw damage you will see on the astral plane. However, they have some of the lowest levels of health, so if you need to do hit and run, you might as well go for them. They will die to hit and run a lot faster than other linked mobs. Their sphere has no indoors rooms, and the only thing they do apart from damage is knockdown. Unlinked urns are actually fairly impotent compared to other unlinked mobs. And finally, the most powerful attack they have - the one you have to worry about the most - is electric based. Which I believe you as a trill have some resistance to. I say give unlinked urns a try at least.

Eagles were one of the first thing I bashed on astral. 1v1 they're quite easy.



All true, but I figured as a trill with low-ish health and Celestine with low damage, they'd be rough.