Sokpop S07 Chatventures: Mid Game Tips

Note that when you die, you respawn in the last “town” you had visited. So if you are barely strong enough (or lucky enough) to reach a town, you may get stuck there as you repeatedly die trying to leave and respawning in that town.

You can get to the island by boarding the docked harbor ship in bigtown and waiting for it to leave. Once you are in the open seas, octolings will spawn. You only need to survive the trip, not defeat the octolings, so dodging is a good strategy here. After staying alive onboard the ship for a certain amount of time (2 minutes?), you will reach the island.

The island camp counts as a “town” for the purposes of respawning.

Bogtown is on the other side of the marshlands, which can be difficult to reach. You are automatically poisoned as soon as you enter the marshlands and cannot leave until you are no longer poisoned, so you must bring and use antivenom. The marshlands also make it difficult to travel as there is a chance to fail when using the “go to” command due to being “stuck” in the marsh, so you’ll probably need at least 2 antivenom or more just to traverse the marshlands, and then the same when leaving.

Gobtown is found at the bottom of the mineshaft area. The difficulty in getting there is purely due to the strength of the monsters along the route.

Uses strength. Caused by punch and kick (with kicking dealing slightly more damage) or using whack while having the right weapon type equipped: a stick, mace, or crabhammer. Yes, you’ll want to keep your lowly stick until you can get one of the others. You can also whack if you are wielding a magic staff.

A mace requires iron, which drops from an enemy weak to blunt damage (see the section on iron below). The crabhammer is a potential drop from the ‘boss’ of the beach cave. The crabhammer and mace are not that different in terms of damage.

All of these blunt weapons (minus magic staffs) are one-handed, so you can wear a shield. Author’s note: I’ve yet to find a stronger blunt weapon than the crabhammer as there are no weapons of this type for sale in bogtown or gobtown. Even so, they are still extremely useful weapons against golems so you’ll want to have one around.

clobber is a useful skill that uses blunt weapons and can temporarily confuse an enemy, preventing them from attacking you for a short while.

Uses strength. Caused by the slash command while having the right weapon type equipped: shortsword, brand, backsword, or claymore. “Rogue” weapons (rapier, ironclaw) can also deal slashing damage. Due to the limited number of blunt weapons, if you are going down a “fighter” route with high strength, you’ll probably go for these.

Note that switching between one-handed to two-handed weapons is very annoying (shields must be unequipped first, they are not automatically unequipped).

Uses dexterity. Caused by the stab command while having the right weapon type equipped: knife, rapier, ironclaw. Most weapons of this type can also be used for slashing. Since these weapons use dexterity and tend to come with an accuracy bonus, your damage output is likely to be more reliable even if the weapon’s base damage is lower.

poisonstab is a useful skill that can poison an enemy, but also deals more damage outright.

Uses intelligence. Caused by the magic bolt command while having any magic weapon equipped. You need a nature magic weapon specifically when using other nature magic skills, like firebolt or chill. You’ll probably want to skip buying the fairy staff as fairy dust is an extremely valuable item for the wizard tower quest.

***This means you are still dealing only nature magic damage with the crystal wand and other weapons that list light/dark magic, unless you are using a specific skill that states it deals light or dark damage.

firebolt is a skill that can temporarily burn an enemy for extra damage, but the mana cost to use it is high and it might be better to just use magic bolt on repeat. chill is expensive on mana but might freeze and enemy, preventing them from attacking you for a short while.

Uses intelligence. Caused by the smite command while having a light magic weapon equipped: crystal wand or starstaff. You unlock the smite command at intelligence 50, which is still fairly mana expensive to use. Otherwise, using magic bolt with your light magic weapon still deals nature damage. The enemies that are weak to light magic are very high level and likely to one-shot a player that’s specialised in intelligence over defence, which limits the effectiveness of smite.

A light magic weapon is required to use healing skills (like heal, which is unlocked through scaling constitution, or commands from the Tome of the Cleric).

Author’s note: I’ve yet to unlock a skill that deals dark magic damage besides confuse.

For someone just getting to bigtown, you’re probably wondering where to find these.

Iron can also be found by checking old crate in bigtown plaza, so this the easiest way to get iron at first. Other materials can spawn there that are useful to sell for money.

Iron is dropped from golems. The weakest golem is the rock golem, which can be reliably spawned in the tunnel up the mountain trail. Since iron is extremely useful just to survive the trip to the tunnel and defeat rock golems, this makes it a pain to collect. Getting a blunt weapon is a high priority (either using the iron to buy a mace first, or getting the crabhammer).

Maple is dropped from treants, but the easiest way to farm maple is by checking hollow tree in evergreen forest as it can drop more maple than killing a treant. Treants are somewhat commonly found in the deep forest. Once you enter the deep forest you can’t go back to the evergreen forest, so don’t bring much coin there as your exit is probably via death.

Required for reforging. Note: I do not fully understand what causes power stones to be dropped. Some people say it has a chance of happening when you defeat monsters that are a higher level than you. I’ve also never had power stones drop from using scrutinize. Boss monsters seem more likely to drop power stones, but that could be because they are likely a higher level than you.

Boss monsters spawn in a specific area after defeating enough monsters within a certain time span. It can be hard to spawn boss monsters as a solo player as look will only spawn one additional monster (and the monsters respawn for you to find every minute or so). If there is more than one player in an area, look is likely to spawn multiple monsters (and its easy to spawn bosses accidentally).

Here are some known boss monsters:

King Slime – spawns in central plains. Can drop emeralds, but you’re better off farming emeralds elsewhere.

Captain – spawns in docks (next to smalltown). Can drop emerald, ruby, sapphire, diamond.

Gemstone Golem – spawns in secret glade. Drops multiple emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds.

Yeti – spawns in mount glacy. Can drop crystal shards and sorbet, which are easier to get elsewhere.

This is where the scrutinize skill shines (unlocked at perception 20). While mana expensive (50 mana and a chance of missing), it allows you to get more drops from enemies. This is incredibly valuable to use on ememies that spawn rarely, or to get drops from enemies that are too strong for you to defeat. After 3 successes, scrutinizing a monster won’t drop anything else. “Weakening” a monster doesn’t seem to increase the chance of scrutinize working.

summon is also an incredibly useful skill, unlocked from a quest. While mana expensive, it allows you to summon a random number of enemies in your current location. This can allow a solo player to spawn and kill enough enemies to spawn a boss monster. It can also be used to speed up farming.

If you look at the game achievements you’ll notice there is one for Hero and one for Dark Side. These quests are mutually exclusive. Here’s the details:

Mephram can be found in the holy temple in bigtown. This leads to the long quest Entering the Palace, which requires you to prove yourself to the royal guard by defeating a bunch of enemies (poison slime, satyrs, giant spiders, ice golems). Once you prove yourself and talk to the king, you lock yourself out of the Villain Route as Mephrak will no longer talk to you.

This is where you can get stuck if you talked to the ranger and started the werebear quest. The werebear can spawn in the evergreen forest, blocking you from hunting spiderlings. You can leave for now and hope the werebear despawns once everyone logs off of the server, or continue running into it over and over, dealing damage and dying, until you do slay it.

Mephrak can be found in bogtown. If you talk to him twice, you start his questline and lock yourself out of the Hero Route as the king will no longer talk to you. You can still finish the entering the palace quest, but that’s as far as you get.

Mephrak’s quest entails killing 10 players, so it helps if you can find a willing player for you to repeatedly attack.

Mephrak’s quest is easier if you can find a willing player to help you out, and it gives a lot of xp. However, Mephram’s quest will lead you to an enemy type that can drop shadestones (otherwise, you won’t be able to get shadestones until level 50). See the Wizards Tower in the questing section for more details.

Completing this quest unlocks the ability to summon, which spawns a random number of enemies in the location you are in. It costs 100 mana to activate and is valuable for farming and spawning boss monsters.

To start the quest, talk to the summoner in Bogtown. She will ask you to defeat a mamba in the wayward quag next to Bogtown. Unlike the marshlands you do not get automatically poisoned for being there, but you’re likely to get poisoned by the enemies (and the poison damage seems indefinite?) so antivenom is needed. There are no special conditions for spawning the mamba, so if you are lucky it’s there as soon as you enter the quag.

Completing this quest unlocks an extremely valuable skill: teleport. Here’s how to do it:

Go to the wizard’s tower at the never ending prairie to start the quest. The password is in the deep forest. Once there, continue using the command go to deep forest to continue travelling deeper into it. After repeating this command over and over, you’ll eventually reach the secret glade. Check the inscribed boulder at the secret glade to get the password to enter the wizard’s tower.

Once you talk to the warlock in the wizard tower, you’ll start a quest to gather some rare items. Return with the items to complete the quest.

2 fairy dust – perhaps the most annoying, fairy dust drops from fairies that spawn very rarely in the thicket next to smalltown. Fairies are weak enemies, but due to their rare spawn AND rare chance to drop fairy dust, you will DEFINITELY want to scrutinize them when they appear. This can take an hour+ to obtain, even with the summon skill and a lot of mana.

2 greenroot – dropped by treants in the deep woods. Treants are somewhat common there. Scrutinizing treants is a decent strategy, though a player with a good slashing weapon can just slay treants repeatedly until they get the drop.

2 crystal shards – perhaps the easiest, dropped by ice golems on mount glacy. As you’re likely to be farming ice golems for the Entering the Palace quest, you’ll probably get these without additional effort. Ice golems are a reliable spawn so they’re no trouble to find.

2 dragonscales – dropped by wyverns in the sand gorge / gorge funnel. If the wyverns are too strong for you, you can still run in there and scrutinize them to get the dragonscales. Wyverns are a reliable spawn so they’re no trouble to find, and dragonscales drop at a decent rate.

2 shadestone – dropped by shadowman in the dark dark depths, an area only accessible to players level 50 or higher. If shadowman are too strong for you, you can still run in there and scrutinize them to get the shadestones.

This is where Mephram’s quest and the Hero Route shine. Along this route you will spawn a lower-level version of shadowman in big corporation hq. If you talk to the president before all the monsters are defeated, he will spawn more of them. So long as you avoid defeating the monsters and moving on with the quest, you have a reliable place to farm shadestones early.