Question: How much is this going to cost?

For many reasons, including wanting more health and wanting an unlock achievable in less than years, I am thinking of switching to melee and climbing the SIB weapon tree. I intend to stay either maxed or in the last level of the SIB range throughout. The unlock I'm after is Melee Damage Assessment, at least to start with; Martial Arts is probably a bit more difficult as my damage skills are higher than hit (so far I have mostly been using guns).

How much is this project going to cost me? Level at the moment can be assumed to be something like 10 damage/9 hit for swords, for example.

Any guesses?

just a couple of days hardcore style

iancampbell said:

How much is this project going to cost me? Level at the moment can be assumed to be something like 10 damage/9 hit for swords, for example.

Any guesses?

Click to expand...

If you hit a big HoF it will cost you nothing.
If every mob is a no-looter it will cost a small fortune.
It will probably cost you about the same as you pay in ammo+decay at the moment, all other things being equal.

If I understand correct, from lvl9-10 to 18-20 in one melee profession?
Hardcore hunt it should be done in a few days, 2-3 perhaps. And on the right mob it shouldnt cost that much.

Can take a look at my melee hunting test here from 0 points.

https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/hunting/177287-5-melee-professions.html

Should give you an idea about the cost and time.

If you hit a nice UBER on your way, it may be for free

Depends a lot on your loot

Well, as for which mob I have often used small berys for skilling. The occasional small global, usually at least once in 60-70 PED worth of ammo one near global (25-35 PED) and reasonable amounts of some reasonably easy to sell items. At MU too, although not much of one.

So whatever is the cost of all the used-up weapons along the way should be reduced by about 80% if I use these mobs for skilling - but unfortunately the best spawn of small berys I've found is at Swamp Camp and I am beginning to hate the sight of the place.

Argos are quite good skilling mobs too, for much the same reason. Any other suggestions, anyone?

get a good SIB UL weapon or two...

get a good SIB UL weapon or two if you want to go melee a long time... beats having to waste time waiting for auctions or going window shopping to find your next blade or club so you can get to hunting again. Some of them, like Embra C1, some of the clubs, etc. can be had for fairly cheaply. Those are probably what you'd want to aim for - something that does a descent amount of damage but does not break the bank.

when you stay away from L stuff above 106% for melee it should be fairly cheap

i don't know your level nor what weapons you max, so i can't give a useful idea of what to use
but since unL comes most easily from tt, i would suggest some tt shortblade as main weapon, tt power fist as finisher and then go berserk at the daikis at swamp


generally, i would advice to stay away from melee though, cause the L stuff is too expensive and often enough not enough swords around for decent skilling, especially not ~106% (a 110% melee weapon is around as eco has a h400 at 180-200%, just to compare it)

skilling SB will have the advantage to increase the SB profession, allowing you to use a kesmek slo L, which is the only blade (which is often crafted) using the cheap animal oil residue to increase the tt while crafted, thus the % stays fairly low
which would allow you to get a kesmek slo as main weapon for low mobs or as finisher, if you want to skill more melee "by the way"

Here's a suggestion, it's not backed up by any serious testing but is purely my impression/experience of what happened for me.

Get a Katsuichi Honor and hit every mob just a couple of times with it while you do most of the damage with whatever maxed weapons you usually use.
You will get skillgains when you swing at the mob, but you usually get at least one bonus skillgain when the mob dies. This way you skill up reasonably quickly but without the cost of using the melee weapon to kill the mob from start to finish.

That was how it appeared to go for me - but, as always, YMMV.

Going by dps/damage per pec, my guess would be that it will cost you about 2-4X as much as the same skill gains with any ammo-using weapon. Btw, I think fists have the worst stats.