Basically I'd hit them when elder brocket deer stop teaching. Or in your case, when caracals. I'd recommend having at least 2 defenses over 240s, one of them being evasion <and either parry or shield for the other>. Also, make sure you're multi is capable. As, in both Shard and Theren, fledglings gen along with baby gryphs.

Right now the character I fight baby gryphs <guilded barbarian> has the following skills, if you can gauge by her:

ME: 282
2HE: 247
HE: 192
Parry: 230
Multi: 279
Leather: 282
Shield: 257.

As far as shard vs rossmans gryphs go, you'll probably want to see which area you want to be in to be convenient to healers/skinning sales, gemshops, etc. <prime-side shard locks up at night so you have to go around the gates unless ilithi citizen, which personally i find a pain in the backside. Shard is probably less crowded, though, because there are more rooms in the hunting area. Once you get beyond young gryphs though, for some reason the elder/adult/ etc gryphs don't gen, or hardly ever gen, where they are supposed to, but then, DPs are just up the road. But if you can stand the falling down thing, and you use a ranged attack <you mentioned LT>, and being a cleric, you can use your TM on 'em as well - if you want to hunt the harder ones once you're able to do so - you'll pretty much have to do it in Rossmans.

As far as mana - i'm not sure where the good "holy" mana rooms are in either location, as the only chars I've done gryphs with are a thief, a barb and a necro <and hopefully soon i'll be able to do a WM there>.



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Oh and last one, DR at any given time has a population of weenies that will criticize at the drop of a hat, don't take things personally it happens to everyone.
Leucius

Fortunately for you, M'Riss is not required. Caracals are great, but not necessary. If you don't feel like you're up to gryphons yet, try night barghests for a bit outside Haven. I've also had similar fun with forest geni and rhoat moda(day only,premie). If you have the climbing, cave trolls are excellent too, at the bottom of the Wicked Burrow Mines. You can also try the higher ati'kets and westies in the Gate of Souls. All of the above critters will teach well in that range.

Can you post your exact stats? 240 parry vs. 210 evasion is a big difference when seeing if you can handle gryphons simply because they swarm so much.

If all of your requisite skills are 230+ (parry, shield, evasion, multi, the armors you use), then you should be able to safely handle them with Major Physical Protection.

also with those skills your a great fit to start greater shadow hounds and greater sluaghs. they are skinable, undead, great devotion sources right there and decent source of loot and boxes. use TM if you get in a bind and you will be fine with them just keep PFE up.

I might strongly encourage you to pick up another weapon or two? LT is ok, and brawling is too, but neither benefit from player made weapons like say heavy or medium edge. Plus you'll be in combat locking defense so working 3-5 weapons is just free tdps. But you didn't ask so sorry if I offend.

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Adding nothing to the conversation since 1834.

Thanks everyone for the advice, I will be heading to the mainland soon to try out all your wonderful advice.

For KROONERMANREVENGE/Diminishedangel; I have LT, Brawling, and HE weapons all at about the same skill level (240) and I keep TM training for the creatures I am in. I have often thought about picking up another weapon (maybe something 2-handed/ranged) but with DR3.0 around the corner I have been waiting to see what kind of changes to the combat system come about. I would really love to learn light crossbow on this character but LX is currently such a slow trainer... I have reviewed other clerics/high level characters and see most players tend to focus on 2-3 different weapon skills (usually a ranged, melee weapon, and brawling).. It's something I have had on the back of my mind, but for now I am going to wait until DR3.0 until I decide. I hope that doesn't sound nit-picky, because it's good advice! I would just hate to devote all that time to back-training only for DR3.0 to roll around and back-train another weapon I always wanted to train.

I really appreciate everyone's honesty and training tips (takes a lot to offend me!) Thanks so much.

"I actively hunt with a capped MAPP, MPP, MAF, and Benediction (providing +7 to str/agi/reflex). If the buff wears off I immediately retreat and stay out of combat until effectively able to get the buff back up."

Some thoughts as a cleric:

You didn't mention Eluned's commune(defensive commune). It will be going away soon- use it to your advantage now.

And why do you wait for any buff's to wear off? I often let stuff fall by accident, but try not to- rebuff while in combat- basically if you go through and rebuff everytime Ben wears off you should always stay buffed up.

and finally- and you didn't ask this- but I will just through my two cents in- just go for it. The best way to find out whether you can handle it is to try it. And if you go for the gryphons near Shard, if they don't work, play with some of the other beasties down there- explore- have fun.

Re: Gh buffs

There is a subsection for them but I have never gotten it to work.

I simply have a combat script which I run alongside GH, which preps mpp, pauses 30, casts, pauses 30, moves on to the next buff in rotation, repeats. Keeps my buffs up, and since GH has a 'echo last command not executed due to rt' function it works out. Also keeps PM locked. Only caution is if you have a TM line in GH they will error out and GH will die.

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Adding nothing to the conversation since 1834.