So... last night I went out hunting with my little lizard. (Greater Dragon, 4.2 on the pet calc - Thanks Kitiara!) Anyway, she wanted to play with squirmy little snake things, so I brought her out to the Terathan keep to let her paw at some of those snakes, and I figured hey! I can get some rations and snake skins also.

Well, when I got there I was wary at first, I remember the Ophidians being pretty nasty when they first came out, at least to my under geared char. So I started letting her play with only one at a time. Well... she quickly got bored with just one, and it wasn't even a challenge, so I started letting her play with 4-5.

Again, no challege, so by the time I was finishing up, I was letting her play with around 10-15 at a time. It was great, two to three swipes and they died. I just followed behind and healed now and then and blessed her. (The poison was a pain at times whe more than one knight errant was near.) I also looted, and in the 40 mins of being there I found about 60 rations and 5 snake skins. It may have been less than 40 mins.

Anyway, the point of this is that I think its far easier to get the rations and snake skins than it is to get the shields and swords, yet the snake skins are worth more than the sheilds/swords and the rations are the same.

Just my thought, but I think the balancing of the difficulty to obtain these items and their relative point value is a little skewed.

I personally think the swords and shields should be worth a little more than the rations at least, given the dangers of obtaining them, where as even with just my spellweaving skill(on a different exploring trip) I was easily able to kill Ohpidians.