[Bov]

(Continued from above)

Some Suggested Gear for Den of Rancor!

For anyone journeying into the depths of the inferno for the first time, there are a few items I think any bst would benefit from, and a few which I think increase one's percent chance of survival until they can get into the swings of things.

Reraise Gorgets: It’s a pain to get here, you're most likely going to die at least once, just spare yourself the suffering. I’d suggest two, fully charged, just to be on the safe side.

Whm sub: You're going to be casting a lot of sneak here. Not "I just need sneak to get to the camp" kind of casting, I mean "unless I’m actually in melee combat I will have sneak on me 24/7 or possibly get aggro and die" kind of casting a lot.

Sneak Oils: Bring two stacks, I’m serious, even as /whm. Sometimes you'll get stuck between sound aggro and magic aggro, while sneak is wearing. This is your trump card for when that happens.

+mp pies: Again, I’m serious, until you get a hang of things having a really high base mp gives you a lot of room to mess up. After you get a feel for how to work things, you can stop using them (if you want), but up to that point they can be pretty handy. I did this camp with only about 124 mp without pies, so you don't need much total mp to survive and prosper, its just getting to that point that they can be helpful.

Apollo/Light staff: DO NOT COME HERE IF YOU DO NOT HAVE AT LEAST A LIGHT STAFF OR YOU WILL DIE MANY HORRIBLE DEATHS COVERED IN SLIME. The Apollo’s is a huge help since it’s basically a 5% improvement in your survival rating.

Tamers Ring: I thought this really rather handy when I was first figuring out the zone, since its not infrequent for jellies to beat you into a horrible slime covered mess. Once you get things figured out, maybe limit this to macro equipment if you still want to use it.

Beast Trousers: Wear these 24/7. Again, they represent a pretty substantial increase in your % chance of survival that vastly supercedes anything that R.K pants or any other piece of leg gear could provide.

Full AF: I thought the pants significant enough to warrant their own section. The rest of the AF is really handy to have down here. I spent more time in it then I did any other type of armor-the charm bonus and Hp+ is just really hard to beat. The body in particular is nice since it lets you get rid of paralyze from numbing breath.

Juices: EVEN IF YOU HAVE GAUDY HARNESS. Bring 2 or 3 juices, if you end up in a spot where you need mp, you will need mp as fast as possible or you will probably die. This can easily save your life when you start pushing the exp chain limits of the camp and the possibility to find yourself with very little mp and a need for a lot now becomes real. Do not depend exclusively on your gaudy harness. You will be casting a lot more then you normally do in other camps, and dependence on a 49 mp capped piece of body armor that nets you 1 mp/tick can get you killed.

Again, once you get used to things, it’s less of a big deal, but having 2-3 juices on hand can really increase your margin of error when you first arrive.

Pet Food: Usually I like to have some zeta no matter where I am, but in Den of Rancor even just a few stacks of alpha are handy to use in conjunction with the jackcoat to get rid of scorp paralyze.

Signet Staff: Since you're going to be down here a while, this is rather nice to have.

How you actually work the Camp (Finally)

If you are in the game, approaching the Alter of Rancor as you read this, you might be seriously wondering where this camp is, since all that’s on the horizon is aggroing death.

Bear with me; you’ve been great so far, just a little bit further.

Approaching the tunnel, you will see a cutlass scorpion, two or three slimes, and two succubus bats that hover around the area in question, patrolling every possible place you could fight. North of it is a small army of tonberries that like to walk down within aggro range of the delightful patrol network before you.

In the tunnel leading to the alter of rancor there is one slime, and two succubus bats that patrol the entire length of the tunnel (though it may not look like it at first). Upon reaching the actual alter, you will see two bombs happily floating around it, just waiting to aggro your magic or catch a glimpse of you. In addition they have a slime buddy there to keep them company.

You may have seen the tunnels at f-10 and g-9, which appear to be natural camps, but they lack good pets in the immediate vicinity and little prey to quickly pull (besides tonberry)-simple distance prevents good chains.

There is, in short, seemingly nowhere near the Alter of Rancor to camp: yet this is going to be your camp.

The trick is to kill in a way so that you can ride the local pops to create two temporary camps: one in front of the Alter, one in the tunnel leading up to the Alter. Your first task is going to be to break in the camp.

Breaking the Alter of Rancor:

1. Before, I mentioned a safe spot at F-10. Head there, and hit your reraise, protect II, exp ring, stoneskin/blink, food, and whatever else you need. Now rest to full mp and cast sneak and invis

2. Head down to the mouth of the Alter of Rancor tunnel and start looking for a prospective slime that you can charm without getting a ton of aggro in the process. It’s just sound aggro down here, so usually if you hug the wall you'll be ok. You aren’t starting with bats because you might want to chain those later, and the slime will kill the first bomb no question (as they will do to all bombs). If you fail charm, its ok, just tame it, if you fail tame you have stoneskin and blink so just take the beating until charm cools down. Once you land charm get sneak back up.

3. Head into the tunnel towards the Alter of Rancor, send the jelly after one of the bombs. If sneak starts to wear move along the tunnel (usually the mouth in front of the alter is pretty good actually) until you can safely remove sneak and either recast (if out of magic aggro range) or use a sneak oil if within magic aggro range. Let the jelly kill the bomb if there is no self-destruct. This is a good time to recast stoneskin and blink. Casting spells will not remove sneak and you can rest up your mp in the tunnel. The jelly and bats will not aggro resting so this is safe, and you can stay close enough to the bomb to leave when it starts to self destruct.

4. Ok, with the first bomb dead, its time for our first chain 1 by killing the other bomb. Leave the jelly and it will despawn. Now you have two pet options: the jelly in the alter room, or the jelly in the tunnel. You still have one live bomb and two sneak aggro bats not too far away. Usually I liked to keep the bats alive since it meant I wouldn't have to pet swap and they are great for chains if you work them right.

This now entails landing charm on a DC-em jelly in a tight spot. You have a few things going for you though. If you push right up against the posts leading into the alter room, you usually can avoid getting aggro from bats, jelly, or bomb until you land charm. Af pants, tamers ring (if hp is low-more a concern for later charms really), and stoneskin/blink should give you the time needed to land charm without losing much hp or dying. Typically I could land charm on these within the first or second attempt, so this wasn't nearly as hard as you would think. If this is before you are 67, you are basically mandated to charm the jelly in the hallway since you do not want these respawning as toughs if you can help it.

After landing charm, engage the other bomb and it’s the same deal as before-accept this time you can cast spells.

5. With the bomb dead you have secured temporary camp #1. Move in with sneak up and charm the jelly floating around the Alter of Rancor.

There is a neat trick to this if you fail charm. You can actually kite the jelly around the Alter while waiting for charm to cool. Once you get good at it you can go multiple mischarms without getting touched. I had one moment where I was actually kiting a tough bomb and a jelly (don't ask) for 5 mischarms in a row without getting hit.

Sometimes though, the jellies try to outsmart you and begin going the opposite direction, or they lose scent and wait for you to come around to re-aggro.

This is, in short, a great way to keep tame timer cool for when you actually do need it.

6. Now that you have your Alter of Rancor jelly charmed, you can either pull one of the bats in to chain off of, or sneak up and move out to pull a scorp. I recommend the bats as much as possible since they don't have a thing for 350+ AOEs and die a lot faster. Even em bats are great because you can kill them quickly. If you fight scorps remember to bring a lot of pet food along to cure paralyze from numbing breath and your af body and feet. Numbing breath paralyzes the jellies a lot, which can potentially create hate problems. In a 1 on 1 fight though, a tough cutlass is no match for a DC slime. Fluid spread takes off gobs of scorp hp.

Make sure you pull your prey into the Alter of Rancor room if you are below 67, so as to prevent slime depop.

7. After making your kill, you can leave your Alter slime and recharm it immediately to pull and kill the other succubus bats. Its good to reuse this slime since you can, again, kite it to avoid having to use tame. Just remember that fluid spread is evidently a ranged attack <.<

Other then that, you can head out into the hall and charm the hallway slime to kill and chain the 2nd succubus bats. Here you use tame if you have it up. If you fail charm on a jelly and tame it, you will almost always land the second charm. Now you have your second temp camp secured.

8. Grab one of the two jellies (if you mischarm the hallway one you can kite it up and down the hallways now) and pull something from the area in front of the tunnel-usually I preferred one of the succubus bats but you can grab the cutlass if you like. By the time that’s dead it should be time to go bomb killing. Rinse and repeat. Just adapt to different repop times and you’re set.

Notes:
(1)Try not to have your slimes depop, it’s hard I know, I had to convert 4 slimes from tough at 66. Somehow I landed charm the first time, each time, but I’m not naive enough to think that’s going to be the norm. The slime cons are why I don't think this camp would work at 64 and why you would have to know what you're doing to make this work at 65.

At 65 you would need to be able to survive converting whatever local slimes are tough off the start, and then be good enough to not have a slime die/despawn. If you could though, it would be awesome, since all the bats would be t and all the bombs vt.

(2)DC bats can ruin your chains. I'd suggest just slaughtering them anyways since they still give exp (86 a kill without ring) and I hated fighting the scorps.

Once you ding 67 though, the stupid things act as the chief chain limiter and I had to revert to some charm/despawn to set them up how I liked them. Usually this meant a change in the kill order: from bomb-bomb-bat-bat-scorp/bat to bomb-bomb-bat-scorp/bat-bat or whatever worked.

Its still really good exp at 67, it just can fluctuate a lot because it hinges on what the local bats spawn as.

(3) Write down the mob death time so you know when the next respawn will be. The variable of how fast the bombs can die can create opportunities for squeezing in another kill. If you want the big exp here you'll try to set yourself up a chain leading prior to the bomb pops.