Tips for the Intermediate Comber - by Vytte

This guide is meant for help with people who are familiar enough with the combs to survive in them, but maybe find they are not getting as many eggs as they'd like. It's just a few very basic, easy-to-follow steps that should help as far as getting your share of the eggs when everyone is rushing in. They are little things, but should improve your egg count significantly if you practice them.

Choose Your Targets: While it may be tempting to check every mob for eggs and make sure you're not leaving any, it actually is more effective to go through checking the weaker mobs only. This applies only if the combs are fairly new and untouched. The main mobs you should target, from weakest to strongest are: lichens, sprites (hidden, always l sprite if you see a hidden in a room), cave weeds (these first three are charmable, c charm weed, order followers drop all), centipedes (once they split pick up the eggs off the ground and flee, unless you want the xp), and bears. As the combs get emptier the next weakest are mud men and bats. Everything else either doesn't have eggs or has a lot of hp/kicks your butt. Watch for areas where mobs have been damaged by cave winds (like an earthquake). If you see a bunch of banshees and maelbreaths with 15 eggs barely clinging to life then by all means put them out of their misery.

Have a few extra containers: If you have a magical pocket you can ignore this section but if you find you're pulling more eggs than you can carry there are a few easy to get containers. If you use a bag of holding as a regular container I suggest getting a clear jar (from Crime Underground) as a secondary because it carries almost as much as a bag of holding and avoids the confusion of 1.bag, 2.bag. If you're filling up both buy a backpack from Medievia (5 e, 2 n from med recall, about item, 74 stones), and pick up a leather belt with many compartments from Allendora (waist item, 20 stones... 1 egg = 1 stone). If that's still not enough get keyrings from the palace in NaeraMae, neck items, 71 stones each.

Always Use Root: It may seem like it doesn't do much but it's a huge time (and sometimes life) saver overall and it's too easy to get to do without. Every time you see a hermit in the combs, l hermit, if he has root, steal root man. Remember it protects you not only from thought slugs but from those annoying cave corals too (so you don't have to remove your light all the time). This does assume you have steal. If not you can kill hermits for roots but they are very hard even as hero. Otherwise watch the auction root go for around 15-20k usually - definitely worth the price in my opinion.

Regarding Holo Sections: If you're lucky and find yourself in one, rejoice! I can't give you much specifics on them because I've only ever been in four, but there are plenty of eggs on the ground. From what I remember the mobs are fairly difficult but all have a chance of carrying eggs.

In conclusion, get prepared before you go in. Acquire those extra containers and get your roots out and ready to eat. Yes you should always use roots as each trip to the combs should replenish your supply. Speed, efficiency and luck get the most eggs. In general target only the mobs in this outline and you'll move much faster, meaning you get to the untouched pockets of the combs where all the eggs are first. Good luck and happy hunting.