influencing illithoids does not provide worms, worms add to the viability of prison as high end bashing ground.

It is normal bashing is faster, as influencing is safer.

edit: Also begging the prison is not viable at all as the majority of illithoids are immune to it.

I somewhat disagree here. Worms take away from high level bashing in that area mostly because they're low level and low experience worth (and don't drop gold besides). I just used the prison as an example since it's pretty ideal in that it doesn't require much movement, drops gold, doesn't give insanity, and relatively safe if you take the right precautions (spores and scent would do wonders here). The increase in bashing areas in the years since I've gotten demi have just made it easier to find places that aren't bashed out.

Also there also are a number of high level influencing areas outside of the hives/prison, not sure what folks are talking about.

What high level areas? All I do is astral and undervault, although I must say that sure astral gives more xp but only if you can take the damage they dish out. It's a slow process if your running from them in which case Kephera or Illithoid would be the fastest way to do it.Also I tried Mudd at one point I might of been 94 or 95 and I was only receiving .1 or .2 experience per if that.

So what are these high level influencing grounds? I'd like to find them myself, it'd be really nice.

If the results from the last influence challenges are any indication, the places to go are bubbles (esp. Moon/Night), Chancel, Tosha, Undervault. Maybe more, it's been a while since I did a whole round.

PS: Hives are not a high-end bashing ground.

Not for burst xp, but for nice sustained bashing solo with good gold output, it's hard to beat (and better than illithoids!).

You do hives for gold, not xpz. They drop several hundred gold and can be sold for a bit more.

Highest-level accessible influencing ground is probably Chancel. There's a fair few friendly mobs in there too, and they do nice gold.

I still gained like three experience quicker then id gain three xp on astral.

Chancel is really good yeah. Tosha isn't exactly high level influencing. You can start there pretty early with just supplication and decent ego, but it's very worthwhile.

Astral isn't going to be faster for a solo basher since link pulses really don't spawn enough critters at a time to keep up with the same rate even if you don't unlink. Then you're adding the annoyance that is astral insanity and it's quick to see why it'd be easier for someone solo to prefer sustained bashing sprees like what you'd get out of the kephera hives or other similar areas (especially in the hives since you generally have multiple exits with no special entry).

Now group astral bashes are a different monster since you usually can spawn enough to keep the xp flowing well and if done well, it can end up producing the fastest xp gain rates out of all the methods (yes, even faster than aetherhunting).

I find that it's tough to beat Muud though. It's big, it's plentiful, you can bash something 'easy' in the downtime recovering sanity (adoraths, sharks/mantas in the Prison, maybe a few kephs if you get bored or preferably Dio after you've gone from neurotic to slightly). This routine works especially well if you have a pyramid puzzle to get around to your circuit locations.

With the right kind of rotation that includes enough downtime for sanity recovery you can get a whole lot of income from that circuit. I'm just kind of burned out on that level of bashing still. But I did pick up about 120,000,000 solo essence doing pretty much nothing but that loop.

That's what I consider 'high end' bashing, Muud caliber. Kephs are pretty decent in the 80s and early 90s still, but for high-end they're lacking in the experience / essence department.

I'm kinda shocked at what you consider 'easy'

Oh, I agree. I was just making the assumption that we're talking about bashing to demigod and not bashing for essence. I specifically left out Muud since it's somewhat annoying for non-demis to leave from unless they have a pyramid artifact.

You can puzzle out of Muud?

I tend to put a puzzle point at Muud's entrance and one at Muud's exit. This makes it easy to get in (for someone without pathfinding) and easy to get out. Directly to Adoraths / the prison, no less! Saves on a pyramid spot there, too.

Thus there are 2 free pyramid spots to other bashing areas after adoraths/sharks/mantas for sanity recovery, plus whatever other transportation a person may have.

(It's possible to just run straight through from Muud's entrance to the exit in under a minute, I've done it before timing with DivineFire. A little bit slower without it but getting that point to begin with really isn't much of a problem if you have decent health)