Alright so I've just quite literarly reached level 80 with Vahkatu and I'm looking for a bit of advice. He's a Shadowcaster Faeling in the Blacktalon. I've influenced 98% of my way to 80 but now I am thinking whether or not it is worth it in terms of time vs experience to continue to influence towards 90+ or turn my hand to bashing. Bearing in mind I do not have my cudgel yet as I invested all my credits into influencing. If bashing does become worth it, where should I be hunting? I have a mission to get to Demigod now with all the spare time I have on my hands.

It should be noted that I like influencing for the esteem you generate, but right now there isn't a hugely terrible demand for esteem so I am finding I am selling it days apart so its not the best form of generating gold right now. I am now taking into account that I'm going to be relying on gold now to buy credits and increase my skills. Bashing any better?

All advice is welcomed and appreciated

Aetherhunt to Demi.

Your esteem market fluctuates widely depending on your organization, its Divine and whether or not the players are doing shrine defiling runs. Glomdoring probably doesn't have much place to sell, seeing as everyone in Glomdoring influences for their own esteem in the first place, and none of their enemies want to put up shrines to deal with the inevitable Excessive Synergy from combat clashes.

You could try influencing the Illithoid Prison and Kephera Hives. A lot of people go there at the higher levels. Kryden Valik may count as well. Some NPCs that may not be weak to begging can sometimes have decent gold on them regardless.

I don't have an aethership, nor is there many crews in Glomdoring that often go aetherhunting. A commune wide one does occur now and again.

... which sounds odd, because the only org that I know of that has more sophisticated aetherhunting doctrine than I do is Glom.

If you've invested most of your lessons into influence, such to the point that you don't have a cudgel yet, don't try hunting. It will only depress you. Druids aren't very efficient to begin with, and have wet paper bag style DMP.

Unless you're planning to obtain a large sum of credits to max out resilience and get cudgel, maybe also get really good robes, you're better off sticking with influence. Or learning aethercraft, if you see lots of aetherhunts going on.

Yeah I heard Druids do suck badly when it comes to dealing out damage. As a Faeling taking damage is even worse than the dealing. Seems like the concensus is coming to aetherhunt or influence, bashing is simply fail.

Let's just say there are reasons aetherhunts have stopped occuring... (*coughafkmoronscough*)

Guards are still good for influencing, though immune to begging. Agreeing that Undervault is good. Climb trees to avoid cave-fishers. Maybe Mother Night's aetherbubble?
If you're looking for a break from influencing but don't want to hunt, there's aetherhunting. Just need a good crew to siphon and draw out creatures one at a time.

Edit: Wow I so got ninja'd.

This. And a lot of us are either burnt out or tired of the AFK'ers. Or both.

And that people never slivven besides the same people.

Bashing is fine, even as a faeling it's fine. But you need trans druidry because that affects your damage. Damage sucks PvP. Bashing wise, cudgel damage is the same as moonburst, drawdown, symbol, mage staffs and other eq attacks.

Yeah that is definitely the next skill I plan on transcending and I'm already working on it. Nature curse really sucks, it almost powerless at my current rank. I think it looks like I'm just going to have to continue to influence until I have enough credits to transcend Druidry.

Edit: Influence, not bash..

This is not restricted to Glom. I am more than willing to offer a program whereby you pooka your afk people to stand at our archway and we pooka ours to stand at yours.

Our slivven refusals are usually because we fly with a ton of level 10 alts who can't slivven even if they weren't afk.

Well... it's a bit more serious. Most of our hunts ends like this:

"We need a new "
*cricket*
"Uhm... so... We really need a new one. Like now."
*cricket*
"Oh, and why are only one of you firing at the karibidean?"
*cricket*
"Oh for crying out loud..."
*docks*

Wow, if you're going to afk, at least get your damn triggers right. Ignoring karibs is ridiculous.

We usually have to dock for either a raid, or level 20 siphoners who are out of will and have no replacements, or equally dumb reasons. Xypher's hardcore all day hunts were nice, but he's demi now.

My dream hunt is still one that rotates people into empath in ten minute chunks or so to mitigate the will drain. Or just one that swaps siphoner and empath when the siphon gets low. But that would mean people have to suffer through collector exp for a bit and god forbid our special snowflakes do that. Also, empath is apparently really intimidating for some strange reason.

/rant

Well, you don't want the empath going "Oops" when you're fighting two gargantuans and a karibidean But yeah, it's far simpler than people think it is. Just that most crews have their set empaths, so they don't get the trainig (unfortunately). Would be better to make a training run with a bunch of young'uns in a small ship just to train them in empathing to the point where they kinda know what they're doing.

The Illithoid prison I think is the next step up from Tosha in terms of influencing. It's a weakening run, though, so you won't get rich off them.

Tosha and Clarramore kind of spoil you for influencing money, unless you want to grind charity on things that aren't weak to it.

And you haven't even seen TTSPFKGME.

I don't know what that means and I may never. That makes me sad.