The Way of the Snurtle!

This an in-depth guide about farming lots of Snurtles for Snurtle Shells and then using them to solo several endgame bosses, such as Ancient Fuelweaver and Bee Queen.

I posted the Way of the Snurtle on the Klei forums [forums.kleientertainment.com] and Reddit sometime back and I'm finally posting it on Steam.

Breaking Misconceptions About Snurtle Farming

You see this adorable little thing?


This mob with the round shell is called a Snurtle, and has a 10% chance of spawning from a Slurtle Mound found in the caves. Upon death, it has a 75% chance of dropping a Snurtle Shell. The Shell has 735 durability, has a 60% armor protection when worn normally, and 100% armor protection when you hide in the shell.

Now, that 100% armor protection may sound interesting, but it sounds difficult to acquire given such low spawn rates, right? Don't they only come out after earthquakes or when you the player punch the mound, increasing the risk of you thus accidentally killing the mound eventually?

Well, no! With a Fire and Ice Staff, all you'd need to do is light the mound with the Fire Staff and then dowse it with Ice Staff. Keep repeating that, and eventually you'll get a Snurtle! Just make sure that the mound doesn't stay on fire too long, else it'll blow up (like 20+ seconds). It also doesn't take any fire damage when it's lit, so no worries about destroying the mound via HP loss!

A basic chest with materials for staves can maybe net you 5-7 shells every day or two, depending on how many Slurtle Mounds are in your world, where they are placed, and your RNG for the Snurtle Shell drop. A better setup with ideal Slurtle Mound placement, roads, easy stave production, unlimited food, and decent RNG can probably net you 6-10+ shells a day. Make sure you're not carrying any rocks or gems, else this won't work as the Slurtles will attack you instead of going back into their mound. But what to do with all these Snurtle Shells you've collected?

Allow me to enlighten you on the Way of the Snurtle.

Killing Antlion!

3-5 Snurtle Shells are needed. Hold F and right click on the shell when she's about to attack to take no damage. You could probably use less shells if you kited her!

Killing Ancient Guardian!

You'll need to be close to the Guardian or else he'll do a double horn attack. The ice staff is used to get into position.

3 hits and shell is a safe pattern. My pattern is that I go for 4 hits, but if the shell breaks or if he does a little taunting animation, then it's 3 hits before you have to shell. It'll depend on how comfortable you are with the pattern.

I think it's an alright method if you're struggling to get your first Ancient Guardian kill, though I have learned of better methods lately.

Killing Bee Queen! (With about 4 Perogies)

Resources used:
~2 Beekeeper Hats, ~ 4-5 Snurtle Shells, ~4 Perogies and a Fire Staff.

The Beekeeper Hats are used to increase the durability of the Snurtle Shells and to reduce the damage taken if you don't Shell Tank in time.

Bone Armor was only used until I got the minions down to one bee for phase one. That was so I did not waste the durability of the Snurtle Shells on just setting up phase one. I recently swapped the the Bone Armor for an Ice Staff so that I can freeze Bee Queen and easily setup phase one.

The cobblestone arena is a 15 wide by 5 high area on each side of the Bee Hive.

Bee Queen Strategy:
Phase 1: Leave one grumble alive, drag Bee Queen so you don't waste the Shell's durability when being attacked by both the Grumble Bee and BQ. Use the Fire Staff for DPS when leading her and Shell Tank when attacking her.

Phase 2: Bee Queen is faster than the Grumble Bees. Light her as you drag her to the other side of the arena and then Shell Tank till the bees catch up.

Phase 3: The Grumble Bees get a speed buff when she screeches. Upon her screech, the bees will chase you. During the chase, count to 6 or 7 and go back to Bee Queen when you hit 6 or 7. Get as much damage as you can, but don't use the Fire Staff since you risk burning her loot. Shell Tank just like in phase 1 and 2.

Killing Ancient Fuelweaver Of Course!

Eight minute fight, only 1 full Weather Pain and the proper amount of Dark Swords were used. About 7 Snurtle Shells were used, which is like a day or two of farming them.

I'm right clicking on the shell whenever I can, including his bone cage attacks when possible since they also do damage.

I used a Garland cause I needed a head slot item that wouldn't break so that I could easily keep reequipping the Bone Helm. Had it been armor, it would have kept breaking, meaning I'd need to rebind the Bone Helm and the new head armor. You can use a 0% Miner's hat (which is what I currently use) or a Bush Hat, but the Garland was the only item I could think of that wouldn't break during the fight at the time.

And if you're an Overcharged WX and kill the hands as soon as they're up, you can kill him in about five minutes.

Why Snurtle Shells Can Be Better Than Double Bone Armor

Double bone armor just doesn't suit some bosses just because they attack too fast for double bone armor to take effect. I'd say Snurtle Shells are a great and viable alternative!

I really recommend using the Snurtle Shells for Ancient Fuelweaver, especially for Bee Queen (4 perogies is insane), and Antlion if you even kill it in the first place.

General Snurtle Mound and Snurtle Shell Tips

• If you hide in a 1% shell, it will take all the damage done to a player when it breaks, meaning that no damage gets pushed to the player.
  
• The animation where the player is pulling on the Shell to hide is the same as if you're hiding in the shell. You can use that to your advantage as an animation skip, ie, hide in the shell at the last second.
  
• The Snurtle Mounds take zero damage from both Earthquakes and when lit on fire (aka fire damage)! Just don't let the mound burn for too long, else it will blow up.
  
• For some reason, the Slurtle Mound is considered to be a hostile entity, meaning you may accidentally attack it with your weapon via regular attack. Thankfully for me, eXiGe's client-side mod Advanced Controls added the feature of making Slurtle Mounds to be considered neutral, requiring a click-to-attack rather than a regular attack. Thanks!

Snurtle Mound Spawning Mechanics and Farming Technique

• There are two types of Snurtle Mounds: some mounds are only capable of housing one mob, while other mounds are capable of housing two mobs (ie. Mound A can only spawn one mob, while Mound B has the ability to spawn two mobs). This seems to be randomly selected.
  
• This is important for efficiency reasons. Suppose two Mounds: Mound A (which has only one chance of spawning a Snurtle) and Mound B (which has two chances of spawning a Snurtle).
  
• Farming Mound B is more efficient since for that same Fire and Ice Staff, you're getting two chances of spawning a Snurtle rather than the one.

This means you're going to have to mark which Mounds are bad (ie. only gives one mob), as that would reduce the efficiency of the system. That logic is also why I stop farming a Mound when it starts giving only one mob and simply move on to another one. The mounds themselves repopulate a mob rather quickly too (about 120 seconds a mob if I read the lua correctly).

Snurtle Mound Max-Mob-Cap-Reloading Issue

Every time the server is reloaded, a new mob cap is reassigned to every Snurtle Mound . That means a Snurtle Mound that had two mobs when you farmed it the first time may now only give one mob the next time (similar to how you could change the Gem in an Ancient Statue in DS).

Not only does this make planning my routes for the Mounds very annoying, it also means that a world where you thought you had good Snurtle spawning RNG now has the potential to become a world with bad Snurtle spawning RNG.

It's particularly painful on worlds where the server will be constantly relaunched when playing with friends, since its would be very annoying to ask them to restart the server (if at all) just for good/decent Snurtle spawning RNG. I'd rather have that value be fixed to reduce this annoyance that I learned about, but nothing I can really do about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Snurtle Farming Example

This is an [url]twitch highlight[www.twitch.tv][/url] of me farming Snurtles using essentially everything I've learned about Snurtles to farm them, in case you're interested in how it looks like.

Thanks for reading!

Thanks for reading and thanks to whoever came up with the concept of the Snurtle Shell in the first place at Klei!

[AbyssalBeans]

Incredibly helpful

[nudle]

DUDE YOU'RE A FUCKING GENIUS

[lakhnish_monster]

Thanks! I'm actually bad using the hotkeys (I'm nowhere near JoeShmo's level), so I find myself just keeping my mouse on the shell for the majority of the fights so that I can easily hide in the shell.

I normally just use the hotkeys to switch b/w my weapons and cane, but even then, I find myself using the mouse to do that as well from time-to-time.

I'm not aware of any hotkey mods unfortunately that does what you're asking for unfortunately.

[Retrolicious]

This is why i prefer bone armors, not because they are more effective, but getting them is harder ( like brag lol ) and using them is super easy and smooth, just hotkey number keys 1 and 2 in return. Hide controls in snurtle armor are attrocious :c

[Retrolicious]

great guide! I know snurtle armors were OP and are in fact. But most people don't use it since manual farming them was tedious ( without this awesome farm in this guide ) and most important they are not comfortable to use. Is there actually a hotkey to auto hide in snurtle armor? Cause i always hated the fiddely controls to need to AIM at your small armor slot and right click it constantly to use it for a split second. Is there option to assign "S" key to hide in armor or anything? Or are there hotkey steam mods?
That's just a pet peeve, but regardless a great guide, farms are always fun!

[Yahweh]

nice guide! thanks for influencing the community with your snurtley way!

[BeasteBeat]

ah that makes sense

[lakhnish_monster]

Hmmm, the torch and flingo method is extremely slow in comparison to the Ice/Fire Staff method. You have to manually light the Mound on fire, wait for the Snowball to put out the fire, which then freezes the mobs and then you have to wait forever for them to defrost.

Now if you wanted to use a starcaller to unfreeze them, then maybe that speeds it up. But then you'd need a star and and some flingos at each mound, and it would still be slower than the stave method. But its not a terrible alternative if you really wanted to.

I find using the staves to be more convenient and faster though, since I typically have the mats for them on hand.

[BeasteBeat]

yah ill have to get some shells at some point. also could a more permenant set up be done with just a torch and a flingo

[lakhnish_monster]

Yea. It's difficult to use the Snurtle Shell the first time for FW because you need a Nightmare Amulet in order to induce insanity (unless you do the fight insane, to which I say good luck). However, inventory management between the Shells and the Nightmare Amulet becomes downright impossible for me with how fast paced the fight is.

It's why I used the Bone Helm; so that I could manage my inventory. I'd say its a neat method for killing FW after your first kill.