I think the most serious contenders are:
- Ornery with War Saddle
- Ornery with Glossamer Saddle
- Rider with Glossamer Saddle
The Rider with Glossamer is the fastest transport in the game, but 25 damage is kind of pitiful. I imagine someone using this combination would park and dismount when they get where they're going, ideally a safe distance from any likely fighting.
On the Ornery, the Glossamer saddle is 24% faster than the War saddle: 10.85 vs. 8.75. A walking cane on cobblestones goes 9.75, about halfway between the two speeds. To me, this feels like the difference between easy kiting and hard kiting. Rider-Glossamer is faster at 12.5-ish, but 11-ish is pretty great.
For most mobs, the difference between 50 hp damage (Ornery without War saddle) and 66 (Ornery with War saddle) is irrelevant because it takes the same number of hits to kill a mob with 200hp or less. Spiders: 100hp, 2 hits either way. Hound: 150hp, 3 hits either way. Pig: 250 5 hits vs. 4 hits, so there's a 20% difference there, but how often do you need to fight a pig? And how important is the number of hits vs. ease of kiting?
I'm guessing for the Ornery, there are 2 ways to play it. 1 is to have a single all-purpose ornery that maybe has the Glossamer all the time, maybe switching to the War Saddle for specific boss fights (Antlion?).
The 2nd way to work the Ornery is to have 2 beefalo and carry both bells. Take the Rider-Glossamer to get where you're going, then drop that bell and mount the Ornery for the fight. Not sure if that would be the best of both worlds, or just extra complexity? It's certainly a big investment!
I've recently been playing Maxwell and just took the War Saddle off my Ornery beefalo and put the Glossamer back on. I used the Construction Amulet to make the Glossamer and felt pretty good about that. I kind of doubt I'll use the War Saddle again.
What do you do and why?
