A necro, shammy and mage walk into a zone...

[Necroboogy]

What zone should that be?

My main is now an 80 necro with 300 AA. I dusted him off a couple of months ago and love it. I will box an 87 shammy and 87 mage, both with ~1400 AAs, with the necro once I transfer the shaman to another account. (Currently PLing necro with mage in Beza/Zeka instances when LotD is available.)

I'm looking for suggestions on where to efficiently hunt with this crew, as I have limited play time. Will I be better off staying in SoD (or even SoF) zones until the necro is 84/85, or should I take the crew to tier 1 HoT zones right now?

Any and all suggestions welcome!

[Tweelis]

I'd suggest doing this quest and porting straight to beza and zeka for while.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4906

Even after the zones go green it's a great escape device. Zeka will be light blue through level 96 and the mobs go down very easy in beza and zeka.

[Necroboogy]

Yes, I have that quest on my to do list. It gets recommended a lot on the magician's tower web site - to the point actually where I'm not so certain I'd ever get an open rooftop! Visiting the old zones would be rather cool.

I returned to EQ about 9 months ago after a long absence (left around PoP) so I'm eager to adventure into HoT and beyond. I've been to Feerot and Lower House already, but I'm itching to visit tier 2 zones. Guess I need to find out if my crew is ready for it

[Necroboogy]

Just thought I would give an update to my thread.

I PL'd my necro to 85 in Beza with my mage. Air pet tank everything with ease. Didn't need to give away xp by using mercs. It didn't take too long and my mage earned a fair number of AA.

Grouping with a headshotting ranger guily catapulted my necro to 87 in a single session.

I've been hunting with my 87 necro, 89 mage, and 88 shammy crew in the Grounds. I just continually do the repeatable kill tasks from Giladan the Botanist. The XP isn't phenominal, but it'd relatively easy single pulling the various mobs in the Grounds.

I've been using rogue pets on necro and mage with a tank merc and 2 healer mercs. Named sometimes give me trouble with this setup, so I'm toying with the idea of using an earth pet to tank and use a couple of wiz mercs and healer merc instead. Seems promising.

[mrya]

IIRC the Hot lower KT's and first one in AlKabor give quick good XP

[Necroboogy]

Thanks for the suggestion. I still need to do Alkabor's and the other t3 zones for progression. Only went to Alkabor's once and left after 15 minutes cause it was too busy.

I perfected my hunting in the Grounds to a fine art by running those kill tasks over and over. The trick to the Grounds with its fast respawn rate is staying mobile rather than pulling to a single spot.

Near the Well zone line there is a variety of mobs (troublesome snakes, wasps, bixies, rot dog) that will let you finish up 3 of the kill tasks. I would run my crew in this little spot and kill as follows: snake, cube, bixie, snake, wasp, rot dog. By the time I was done killing the lone rot dog near the double nixies on the hill, the first snake near the Well had respawned. As I got faster and more powerful I started to include more mobs in that little area. I would do this rotation 6 times while burning a lesson - enough to complete dog and hive tasks & nearly complete the snake kill task.

Next I run down to the area along the path with 2 treants. Stay on the side closest the zone wall (near the humanoid called Lackey). Rotation: snake, treant, treant, and whatever else until they respawned.

Next run into lake to kill Faernoc or whatever his name is. Then run over to pepponites and kill the closest five to the tree quest giver.

I always moved invisible thanks to Mage's group perfected invis. You only need to watch out for the bone caster humanoids and tree stumps, as some of them see invis.

Of course I did this before the Grounds was a hot zone. However, since there are no named mobs in the kill spots I described, you may still find them open.