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Solo surface drop hunting advice


Dime

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im looking for tips or advice on running the surface for drops solo. I just raised two 243 ravagers and plan on using them for loot drop runs. I do not own a rock drake or raised one yet. 

Ive been think about raising the movement speed on one possibly to around 160-170 to possibly out run reapers while using the rocks to my advantage. 

If anyone has any tips for me to become more consistent for doing solo surface loot drop runs please comment I am tired of losing ravagers lol.

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I have ran a few time with ravager during the Christmas event (stopped after the event since drops aren't that decent). I can suggest a few things if you are running from the North-west Surface:

-Run immediately when you see a Reaper King emerges. Do not wait, esp. if your ravager has low health. Its tail swing and projectile are punishing even though its bite is not.

(they take a few minute to actually become active once they emerge out. Watch for dirt movement)

-Bring a (disposable) light pet with decent emission capacity and recharge. You need it if you have a few nameless around and no kings and you can't jump out. Just tell it to turn off in presence of seeker.

-Use the "loot all" at the crate, and run the hell out. Don't bother being picky; Reaper Kings can appear in front or behind you suddenly.

(Focus on the ones already dropped, and return to those still dropping later. Don't wait out on them because of what I just said)

-Turn on your volume loud enough. If you hear a large dirt unburrowing, that s a good sign to gtfo from the position.

-Always get out of surface if you see an alpha emerging (If you don't know what an alpha is... wat.). Don'task why, just don't stay around.

-Always watch the % everytime 00:00 hits. If it says 90% day, don't stay in surface for too long, esp. with a Ravager.

-Watch out for people with Reaper Kings on its tail. Reaper King tends to go after the nearest player-owned dinos or players if their current target is too far for them to care.

 

I would recommend mostly relying on speed for Ravager, but that will leave them vulnerable to Reaper Kings as I stated above.

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You can do surface drops with Ravagers, but there's a few things you need to know:

  • DO NOT have a Ravager on follow. It will only get you killed. You need to avoid fighting, as you will almost always die.
  • You cannot outrun reaper kings unless your ravager is at least 180% speed. Even then, it's touchy.
  • Reaper kings will kill your Ravager VERY quickly.
  • You can outmanoeuvre the reaper kings but trapping them in the rocks around the edges of the paths. If one is chasing you, run in and around these rocks and the reapers will follow and get stuck, most of the time. But be warned, you can also get stuck, so be careful.
  • Because of the different levels (heights) of things, it can take you a lot longer to get from A to B than you think. Leave plenty of time to get back before the sun rises, no matter how enticing that last red drop looks.

Good luck :)

 

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We go for surface drops with one Rock Drake per person joining us.
As soon as we hit the surface, we stick to the rocks and try to avoid the ground and flat surfaces at any cost to ensure that no nameless or reapers spawn.
This also negates the troublesome seekers as you can have your light-pet off the whole time.

Also keep an eye to the time cycle of Aberration. You want to time your excursion with the long night cycle to maximize the time you can spent on the surface.
More time hunting drops, means more loot to collect.

When on the surface, jump to a nearby rock and fit a spot where you can sit without grip.
This keeps your stamina full, and allows you to survey the area around you.
Based on what you're hunting for, certain areas might be better suited.

The approach we follow:

  • Stay on the rock till the drop you want has landed
  • Wait till you see the touch-down animation play so you can immediately interact with the drop. You don't want to hit the ground the second it lands cause you cannot interact with it, increasing the chance of getting ambushed by reapers and nameless.
  • Once the animations played, enable stealth and glide down, use the soar attack to immediately land next to the drop, dismount loot everything with transfer all, and mount again.
  • Jump up and pin to the nearest wall, find the flat surface again to sit without grip and then check your treasure.
  • Drop whatever is useless
  • repeat

 

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If anyone bothers to look back at this thread I ran my 243 raised ravager up there with 160 ms 5k hp 2k Stam last night. 

Had a lot of luck with it I managed to get 7 drops during the long night. Reapers were barely able to hit me what so ever as long as I rode the side of the terrain and used the narrow rocks to my advantage and got them stuck so they'd lose aggro. 

When I was in a safe rather open location I'd wait for a drop or two to land and hit the ground before making a run for it. No time to mess around take the loot and leg it. 

By no means am I saying I'm going to or should myself or anyone rely on a ravager forever when doing surface runs. It's a option that took me a few tries to get used to. 

Nothing was more terrifying than hearing three kings come out of the ground behind me with my hyper x head sets lol. *butt clench*

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1 hour ago, Dime said:

If anyone bothers to look back at this thread I ran my 243 raised ravager up there with 160 ms 5k hp 2k Stam last night. 

Had a lot of luck with it I managed to get 7 drops during the long night. Reapers were barely able to hit me what so ever as long as I rode the side of the terrain and used the narrow rocks to my advantage and got them stuck so they'd lose aggro. 

When I was in a safe rather open location I'd wait for a drop or two to land and hit the ground before making a run for it. No time to mess around take the loot and leg it. 

By no means am I saying I'm going to or should myself or anyone rely on a ravager forever when doing surface runs. It's a option that took me a few tries to get used to. 

Nothing was more terrifying than hearing three kings come out of the ground behind me with my hyper x head sets lol. *butt clench*

very impressive approach, would be awesome if you record it next time, that thrill must be shared!

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59 minutes ago, Jibsey said:

U can easy beat reapers, even two at once, with ravager, which have near 5-8k hp with stock saddle, and sword, just don't afraid em, run around and fight like a small manouevre knight)

This was true before the reaper buff patch a week or so ago, I would suggest otherwise now.

Honestly, while you can "get away" with it on a ravager, it's a bad idea in that it also makes it very ugly for other people on the surface with drakes; you're spawning the kings and then they chase you together, and if you run into someone else or off the surface cliff to "regular" aberration you can ruin an innocent person's day.   

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  • 1 month later...

We try'd this with 10 ravagers with 50 armor saddles and got almost killed after 3-4 drops. Its very difficult to organize that big group.

The most effective way to solofarm surface loot:

Build metal cliff platform right next to surface (NW), so close that you can jump on the surface from platform without ravager (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6GezgLLAuQ). Day does not destroy it since its not on the surface. Build small metal house (optionally with generator and air conditioners) and 5 or more beds. Also 2 auto turrets but i found out that killing seekers is not worth it. Then place one Vault outside of the house with 40 parachutes and 200 meat jerky. Respec your character to 210+% movement speed and the rest to stamina (stamina 200+ is enough). I run the surface naked with 2-3 parachutes and 10 meat. I return to the house on cliff platform after 1-2 drops to quickly put all my inventory to vault and then jump down taking everyone following with me. Then respawn to bed and go again.

You need the parachutes to safely take some of the drops. It also helps you to get rid of the Kings. 210% movement speed is not enough to completely escape from the king but is enough to run to the vault to place loot inside and then die. You can run without meat and parachutes also but you will find them good later on.

The food is for healing, since the beginning of the night (17:30) is super hot and some point it gets too cold. Remember that you only heal while eating IF you are hungry, this is easy to achieve since you run all the time so your are all the time not in full food.

If you die while running you only lose parachute (or loot) which is quite easy to recover usually. You die a lot but you get a lot of gear and if you die with the gear its free to try to recover it since its only running to your corpse. If you find VERY good loot but you are unable to get it to the vault, just go there again and wait for the King(s) to spawn and guide them another direction and let them kill you. Then return to the loot.

When you run use the Orbital Camera mode (K is the default binding) to look around you where the kings spawn so you can take a direction to lose them. The area is so small that you can always use the corners to "trap" the kings behind. Or the cliffsides to make them drop down.

If you manage to survive for too long (3-4 runs) then you need to use the bed to get back to your base, drink, and go back. Or just die and spawn again with full health/food/water.

After running 2-3 nights i got 30-40 blueprints and 30-40 items (saddles, guns etc). You learn very quickly how the terrain works there and which way you can access which drop. There is one drop that is difficult to reach, i always skip it. 

Running the surface naked is VERY intense even when you know you have nothing to lose, I don't know why it is like that. I got the same feeling searching deep sea loot crates with manta. One of the best part is that you don't need to prepare in anyway after the first preparations. You can even do it without the parachutes. Imagine you are doing normal base stuff and realize its 10% day 90% night, you hit the bed and spawn on the cliff ready to run.

Later on , I come with rock drake to collect the loot from the vault, this has actually been the most dangerous part in this, since there are some kings in the bottom, but climbing the walls effectively avoids them.

The biggest problem with this method is the repseccing, since you cant do other stuff while 210% on movement speed if you are lvl 90-100. So make sure you are in a place where you can be with this character for a week or two and run the surface every time possible, then respec back to your normal build. With lvl 130 character you can manage this build and still put some points to health + weigth.

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As I mentioned a few months ago, unless you're on a private server ravagers just aren't that viable after the patch buffing the surface reapers.    Not only do you risk losing ravagers, you can easily screw over some innocent guys if they chase you can clump, or if you run back to regular aberration and they follow you (don't be the arseface doing this).

A couple other notes:

1) There seem to be "trap" beacons.     We've cleared areas of reaper kings before getting a beacon, had a new beacon spawn in the same spot later, go down and suddenly 3-6 reaper kings spawn.    Either there's been multiple really bad RNG moments with the King respawn or there's "Trap" beacons that are guaranteed to have a lot of kings spawn on them.

2) Another thing to watch for is when the time turns 00:00.    It can totally go from 10% day 90% night to the reverse, and that means you have time measured in a couple of minutes to get off the surface.     Whenever we see the clock approaching that mark we go toward the surface entrance and wait, ignoring the beacons till we know it's safe.

3) There always seem to be more reaper kings near the obelisk.

4) 99% sure that aside from buggy times, there's never more than one beacon at a time.   So yes you have to go after the crummy blue ones to make a new one spawn.   

5) Never, NEVER go to the surface when there's a maturation bonus or holiday event causing your server to stutter.   It's simply not worth the risk.    Even during "Clear" times we have expendable drakes for the surface (170-180) and save our best/imprinted drakes for other times.

 

Sidenote: If there's lurking WC people I'd suggest strongly buffing the charge machines further, still not worth using them there.     Maybe give 6 elementium per use?

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5 hours ago, Migol said:

As I mentioned a few months ago, unless you're on a private server ravagers just aren't that viable after the patch buffing the surface reapers.    Not only do you risk losing ravagers, you can easily screw over some innocent guys if they chase you can clump, or if you run back to regular aberration and they follow you (don't be the arseface doing this).

A couple other notes:

1) There seem to be "trap" beacons.     We've cleared areas of reaper kings before getting a beacon, had a new beacon spawn in the same spot later, go down and suddenly 3-6 reaper kings spawn.    Either there's been multiple really bad RNG moments with the King respawn or there's "Trap" beacons that are guaranteed to have a lot of kings spawn on them.

2) Another thing to watch for is when the time turns 00:00.    It can totally go from 10% day 90% night to the reverse, and that means you have time measured in a couple of minutes to get off the surface.     Whenever we see the clock approaching that mark we go toward the surface entrance and wait, ignoring the beacons till we know it's safe.

3) There always seem to be more reaper kings near the obelisk.

4) 99% sure that aside from buggy times, there's never more than one beacon at a time.   So yes you have to go after the crummy blue ones to make a new one spawn.   

5) Never, NEVER go to the surface when there's a maturation bonus or holiday event causing your server to stutter.   It's simply not worth the risk.    Even during "Clear" times we have expendable drakes for the surface (170-180) and save our best/imprinted drakes for other times.

 

Sidenote: If there's lurking WC people I'd suggest strongly buffing the charge machines further, still not worth using them there.     Maybe give 6 elementium per use?

I run the surface near the lake and there are always two drops. The other surface entrance nearer the blue has a single drop. I prefer the two even though there are more reapers. Double the drops.  

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Its possible to use a ravager but its extremely risky in my opinion, I tried it once and the reapers can out run you at base speed and even with some levels its still risky if they manage to hit you. Getting the actual drops is also a challenge because ravagers can't jump over the mountains and most of the time its blue drops that take up the one surface drop spot. I would advise waiting till you get a drake because they can easily keep away from reapers and rotate loot. To get a drake egg you can tame a decent mega 120+ and drop it down into the entrance to drake pathway. Megalosaurus are extremely strong when ridden and will make short work of any drakes and even reaper reaper queens.

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Using a ravager means there is a chance your gonna die. Not because you weren't carefully or anything but because an alpha could spawn and just two shot you. Get a drake. 100% don't waste a day possibly getting drops when you can spend a day possibly getting drakes. 

Put all or mostly stamina into a drake. I have a drake with 3001 stamina. I can, at the start of entrance, turn invisible fly to a drop, dismount while still invisible, pick up the drop fast af, hop back on the drake and fly back to start without full stam drain. Super easy. Only way I'm dying is if my game crashes. Don't even need a good saddle for this strat. I know people want to use ravager but they just arnt  good at anything other than being living storage boxes. 

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1 hour ago, Rhinenorr said:

Using a ravager means there is a chance your gonna die. Not because you weren't carefully or anything but because an alpha could spawn and just two shot you. Get a drake. 100% don't waste a day possibly getting drops when you can spend a day possibly getting drakes. 

Put all or mostly stamina into a drake. I have a drake with 3001 stamina. I can, at the start of entrance, turn invisible fly to a drop, dismount while still invisible, pick up the drop fast af, hop back on the drake and fly back to start without full stam drain. Super easy. Only way I'm dying is if my game crashes. Don't even need a good saddle for this strat. I know people want to use ravager but they just arnt  good at anything other than being living storage boxes. 

I beg to differ. They can move around certain spaces with reduced carry weight. Its true they are vulnerable, but at least they have some usefulness in it.

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2 hours ago, Rhinenorr said:

Using a ravager means there is a chance your gonna die. Not because you weren't carefully or anything but because an alpha could spawn and just two shot you. Get a drake. 100% don't waste a day possibly getting drops when you can spend a day possibly getting drakes. 

Put all or mostly stamina into a drake. I have a drake with 3001 stamina. I can, at the start of entrance, turn invisible fly to a drop, dismount while still invisible, pick up the drop fast af, hop back on the drake and fly back to start without full stam drain. Super easy. Only way I'm dying is if my game crashes. Don't even need a good saddle for this strat. I know people want to use ravager but they just arnt  good at anything other than being living storage boxes. 

The thing is that people are hell-bent on using one of the most early-game mounts to do the most endgame things instead of spending a little more time and getting the hands down better alternative.

P.s. Ive also seen someone on here inquire about using ravagers for Rockwell.

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9 hours ago, Wazzamaniac said:

The thing is that people are hell-bent on using one of the most early-game mounts to do the most endgame things instead of spending a little more time and getting the hands down better alternative.

P.s. Ive also seen someone on here inquire about using ravagers for Rockwell.

This is even more focused especially since Aberration was released close to Christmas with quite a lot of Ravagers running around from loot to loot, with the Lio's buff being given every 00:00 Hour in game.

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