Lately I've found myself returning over and over again to Turtle Island. After soldats and a few others here had mention that these fearsome beasties dropped off a high number of mentor pots, Schot and I used the island as a part of the experience run where we got his toon from sixty to level 100 in a glorious weekend.
The turtles seem docile enough, their damage negligible, their speed laughable. It's only when you begin attacking them that they turn into....
Killer Turtles!!
The turtles can be rounded up easily,
and make great ashtray holders when they belly up in death throes (oooh, there's Barris there in the background collecting some to sell )...
Two types of champs. The green ones are anathema to any ranged build. They have been nerfed for this last patch, but even though the amount of your damage they reflect has been reduced, very quick concurrent attacks can have dryads with significant damage redline before they know it. When their spikes are showing, it means their evil buff is in action and is waiting to take you out ^^ When you see one of these turtles, if you don't have anti-reflective weaponry in use and your build is very damage oriented ...run! (Pic below is of me running away from a very big one ^^)
Rawr!!
Or... another strategy if you're too lazy to have a weapon for these reptiles... pump pots while you're throwing damage, and hope your timing is right
The second type of Turtle Champ is the brown shelled one. It will throw bolts of blue energy that crackle, make you dizzy and look like you're suffering from a hangover. The freeze the bolts will put your character in is complete, and you will not be able to use any other Combat Arts or even more while so immobilized. On turtle island, this is not so dangerous, as only other turtles will come and attempt to nibble at you. In the swamp, or other areas of the game, this complete freeze can lead to traps being set underneath you. They also have a prodigious number of HP as champs, and are very very difficult to draw a bead on...
Be careful.
I was hesitant to use any strategy different from that of spamming my blowpipe (I'm lazy ). However, the attraction of such huge number of creatures with enormous amounts of HP all clustered together in a nice little package with a great chance to drop mentors was too much of a draw. A week's worth of shopping netted me my gem. A throwing star with
-Significant Chance to Hit
-Huge Anti-Reflection
-Huge Base Damage
-Percentage Life Leech!
I call it... Soup Makah!
Soup Makah creams flesh off armored bodies almost instantly, while reducing these armored denizens' ability to give me a near heart attack to more manageable levels. Drawing the turtles into groups helps conserve the precious Mentor pots, while increasing the yield of experience gained while the pots are in use.
My trips to Turtle Island are more frequent now, with that new trusty weapon at side.
There is soup for every meal.
gogo