Turtle

The average turtle's base stats. The high defense is their flare.

The Turtle guild was the one to have pioneered the Defense build, being the first vertebrate to incorporate a shell into its builds successfully. However, the idea that all Turtles have the same gameplan would be far from the truth. As they're a diverse guild with many low tier and high tier members.

Turtles are divided into two main groups, the side-neck Turtles and the hidden-neck Turtles. This refers to the way the player positions their head when they activate their Defense mode stance. Hidden-neck Turtles retract their head and neck directly into their bodies, while side neck Turtles tuck their head to the side.

## Side-Neck Turtles

### Side Neck Turtles

Side-necks are at a huge disadvantage because putting one's neck off to the side leaves their weak point very exposed. The neck is one of the most well known weak points in the game. Every DPS main knows to go for the throat if possible. So by leaving it exposed, side-neck players place themselves in serious danger. Side-neck players are aware of this drawback and have two different ways they try to compensate. The first is by putting more points into the shell skill tree, extending the shell forward. This makes it much less likely that an imprecise attack will land on the Turtle's neck. The second is to invest their points into the neck itself as opposed to the shell. This grants them an impressive tether grab and allows them to reach around barriers while hunting. A common strategy for this build is to bury oneself into the lakebed and use the build's snake-like neck to attack any fish that enters the player's zone of control. However, a lot of counterplay options exist, and the player's neck is even more vulnerable than the regular side-neck Turtles.

## Hidden-Neck Turtles

Hidden-neck Turtles can completely conceal their weak point by retreating into their shell. This grants a massive Defense bonus, making it difficult for aggressors to deal any damage to the Turtle at all. Along with the isopod and armadillo, this is the best offensive move any one player could use.

### Softshell Turtle

Softshell Turtles are a very unique take on the Turtle build. Most of the time, Turtles have high Defense and low Mobility. But Softshell Turtles have average Defense with above-average Mobility. Their bodies are extremely flat, granting them a powerful Mobility bonus in water. While they definitely don't have the strongest bite attack out, a soft-shelled Turtle can deal a solid amount of damage with their bite, enough to pierce the defenses of snails, fish, and crustaceans. Freshwater Turtles, such as softshells, tend to have great matchups against other aquatic builds, so their biggest enemies tend to be builds from outside the river or pond, such as a heron or a raccoon. And so, the longer a Turtle can stay underwater, the better off they are. This is why many of the current builds put a few points into the Oxygen Extraction ability, allowing them to absorb oxygen from the water through the tissue on the inside of their mouths. This extends the time a Turtle can remain submerged, increasing it from only about a half-hour up to potentially weeks. All these abilities are great, but it's impossible to overlook the massive sacrifices to Defense that the soft-shelled Turtles have to deal with. As a result, they are placed on the border of C tier and D tier.

### Tortoise

Next is a Turtle that abandons the aquatic playstyle for a terrestrial one, the Tortoise. Tortoises take the characteristically high and low traits of a Turtle to the absolute extreme. Their Defense is through the roof to the point where blunt force is almost completely useless. It can even block attacks from all types of cats, which are some of the most overpowered builds in the game. It's for this reason that these players dominate the high scores for total game time on a single character. This level of Defense comes at a cost, and in this case, it's a severe reduction in Mobility, but even more so a reduction in Intelligence. Because of this, most can't do well as hunters and have to go for the herbivore playstyle, but they still have the same powerful Bite attack that other Turtles do, and they can do a surprising amount of damage to any player who underestimates them.

### Snapping Turtle

The Snapping Turtle build is one of the few Turtle builds that can deal massive damage. They break into A tier by opting for a high Power level. They aren't as slow as Tortoises are, but they are not speed demons by any means. So in order to eliminate their targets, they opt for the bait and punish strategy. They have solid Stealth, but what really helps them is their Lure ability. This rare and powerful ability allows the user to disguise themselves as loot. Because they function as ambush predators with great offense but have low to medium mobility, they occupy a similar niche in water as Vipers do on land. And so, they earn the same rating of low A tier.

### Sea Turtle

And now for the real standout, the Turtle who's brave enough to take a build normally only viable in ponds and rivers, and takes it out to a much more competitive server, the Sea Turtle. Sea Turtles are proof that even in a server full of Power and Intelligence peers, Defense tanks can still be a completely viable option. By specking into the omnivore playstyle as opposed to obligate herbivore or carnivore, they never need to pick fights they can't win. They can always just eat plants while waiting for the next easy opportunity to score a high EXP kill. This kind of build is survivalist scavenger build, which would already be solid on its own. However, where Sea Turtles really shine is their additional Defense points placed not into Physical Resistance, but into Toxin Resistance. The venom of a jellyfish has the potential to one-shot just about anything, but Sea Turtle players have recognized that aside from venom and Stealth, they are almost completely defenseless. And by taking resistance perk, they have an almost completely uncontested source of EXP. However, Sea Turtles are not on easy mode. Because they live in the ocean, there are players with a high enough physical attack force to pierce their shells. The tiger shark' serrated teeth are specifically evolved to cut through armor. So a Sea Turtle needs to rely not on their armor, but on their size and shape in relation to the shark's mouth. Shark players can only pierce armor if they secure a grab, and so by facing the ungrabbable face of their shell towards the shark, it can repel a strike that would otherwise be a game-ender for them. The fact that Sea Turtles have any good defensive options at all is a testament to the excellence of this build, and it earns the rank of A plus tier. Sadly, many human mains grief sea turtles for their EXP and shells, which are used for jewelry in the East Asia server. Some human mains, like the Vsco subclan, take to protecting sea turtles and participate in PvP with humans who grief sea turtles.

## Counters

The Turtle's main weakness is Intelligence-based strategies. Using creative and critical thinking to bypass armor is the best way to crush any Defense build. For example a tortoise might be resistant to any physical strike, but even they can't defend themselves against the physics engine of the game. And so an experienced Bird player won't waste any time attacking it but would instead carry it high into the sky and let gravity do the work. In the case of the Sea Turtle, while one Shark might not be able to land a grab due to the Turtle's defensive posture, any form of coordinated multi-directional attack would be unblockable for solo Turtle mains. This major counter keeps Turtles from reaching S tier.

## Gallery

Young tortoise, aww how cute.The Big boy Galapagos tortoise.Hidden-Neck TurtleSide-Neck Turtle