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I thought Hattan's guide was a good idea, so I decided to post Zilly's experiences starting from complete scratch, untwinked, since an untwinked toon may not be able to solo everywhere a twinked toon can.
1-5
Nek newbie area. Got a list of what I needed for the newbie armour quests and started looking for stuff early. Did the Firebeetle Eye quest repeatedly until firebeetles went green (it also doubled as a free 10 slot container to hold firebeetle eyes) and killed any decaying skelly that had a weapon on it, wolves and spiderlings & saved the non ruined pelts and silks and wolf meat to sell in the bazaar. (Note: Wolf meat is used in Halas Meat Pies and isn't buyable from any vendor so there is usually a market for it in the bazaar. Bear, lion or rat meat is just vendor junk)
Narex T'Vem, in the warrior's guild, offers 1gp for leatherfoot raider skullcaps. It takes killing bunches of halflings to get your newbie armour pieces, turning them in is just a bonus.
This quest is also a nice way to make a little money early on.
By level 5 I had all my level 1 & level 4 spells as well as a full set of backpacks to carry stuff in.
6-8
Puttered around working on the newbie quests in Nek. Killed spiders and bears and skeletons. Sent the pet off to kill any green decaying skeletons, wolves or spiderlings I saw while I was medding to keep collecting pelts & silks. Spent a lot of time at the minor spires in Nek Forest using Numb the Dead to split the 3 mobs there. Started saving zombie skins to sell in the bazaar. Around level 8 I went to Befallen for a little while, but I kept getting my untwinked arse handed to me by the necromancer NPCs and after about the 3rd run from Nek to Befallen I decided it wasn't worth the downtime and left.
Save any halfling footbones you happen to get. This quest which takes 4 of them provides an not bad upgrade to a newbie dagger: Fine Antique Poniard.
Ran into a minor windfall twice when people were slaughtering Nek & Neriak guards and leaving the corpses. Fine steel (or even better the 2 handed swords) is a small fortune at this level.
Bought my important level 8 spells and invested in a couple of traders satchels to sell pelts, silks and zombie skins, but I was completely broke after that.
9-10
I had my newbie legs, boots, sleeves, gloves and robe and moved down to the undead monolith in Nek Forest near EC and continued using numb the dead to break the camp. PP was pretty lean tho, and I was beginning to worry about my level 12 spells and how I was going to afford them, especially since I'd had no luck getting the 2 embalming dust from any mummies for my newbie robe and had to buy them off a vendor at 1pp5gp each.
Made friends with Vaos, a wizard a couple of levels above me, who was hunting at the undead camp in North Nek (a camp that kicked my arse from the adds when I tried it) and he was kind enough send me a tell when pages for the Writ of the Fallen Quest dropped.
Spent my last PP on Sarnak blood and bravely did the The Magic Pool quest for Finecut, Diamond Inlaid Mask. Note: You want to do this quest before level 10 so that if you die doing it, you respawn with all your stuff and don't need to worry about CR.
Took sidetrips to The Qeynos Aquaducts and Shadeweaver's Thicket to get a undead froglok tongue and a tiny rockhopper eye in preparation for doing Holly Longtail's Replacement Parts quest for a Fine Antique Ring when I could find a cockatrice beak and a HQ cougarskin cheaply in the bazaar.
10-12
Completely my Writ of the Fallen quest, thanks to Vaos and a nice warrior and moved down to East Commonlands to fear kite lions, bears and spiders for pelts & silks. There is a lot of miscellanious stuff that sells for around 3gp and is stackable so I was making a little money again. Best of all, other people solely hunting pelts & silks were leaving corpses lying around so I could scavenging a little extra money by cleaning up their leavings.
Found a coctatrice beak for 1pp in the bazaar (note: do not buy from an NPC vendor, a vendor will charge 26pp) and a HQ cougar skin for 5pp and got my Fine Antique Ring.
12-16
Bought all my relevant level 12 spells (minus the very limited use ones like sight graft) and bound myself on the dock in EFP in front of the boat gnome and headed off to Sister Island in OOT.
I stayed along the shore and pulled with heat blood, sent the pet in, tossed on poison bolt, engulfing darkness, then leach and tanked till the mob was dead. If I got too many adds or pirates, I gated and sold in the tunnels then went back for more. CR is simply a matter of asking the gnome to go back to OOT, then casting invis so you can run past the KOS mobs on the docks and get your corpse.
Purity Belts were the big money maker at like 1pp 3gp each. The rusty halberds sold for 3gp each but weighted 14.0. The wood elf parts are used in alchemy potions (and in a high end quest for an illusion wood elf crown) so I was getting 2pp each for them in the bazaar and selling them as fast as I could get them. The elven blood is used in temper for Tier`Dal cultural smithing and has a market (since only a handful of mobs in the game drop it which makes it very annoying to get the quantities needed in smithing) but didn't sell nearly as quickly as the woodelf parts.
I shopped the bazaar regularly looking for bargains on gear and made it a point to buy nothing until I'd priced it for a couple of days to make sure I couldn't get it cheaper later.
At level 16 Zilly had all her spells, a couple of hundred in the bank and is wearing better than cloth in all but 2 slots, so I think she's doing darned well for herself. B)
16-19
Started 16 at Sister Isle, wanting to snag all the pp I could from it, but the XP was slowing significantly, so I decided to move. I got my arse handed to me in U Guk a couple of times and decided UGuk had too many casters for my taste, so I headed to West Karana to Misty Storyswapper.
Warning, this spawn is not for the easily bored. (I usually set a timer for 6 min and went and did housekeeping or websurfed on my other machine) She's on a 6 minute timer and even when she was yellow, I usually ended up casting darkness, heat blood and meleeing her along with my pet.
She drops a mandolin worth 1pp 4gp 2sp with maxed CHR (I invested in 2 opal steins, figuring that the return on investment would put me ahead in the long run) every time she spawns. Better still, they weigh 0.0 so there's rarely any issue with encumbrance. She also occasionally drops raw hide armour and research components .. including a copy of Words of the Spoken, for Voice Graft.
Found a decent robe in the bazaar for 20pp (Robe of Tears) and filled out her ear slot with a second obsidian bead hoop and wrist slot with a serpentine bracer, so she was covered with major foci (spell haste, mana pres and burning affliction) thru level 49 and still had 500pp in the bank.
19-20
Misty began going light blue, so, alas, it was time to venture onward. I checked out the Warrens but wasn't confident on my ability not to get adds so I checked out Stonebrunt Mountains. I found a camp of 3-4 Kobalds that I seemed to be able to single pull. (coming out of the entrance, on the right there is a Kobald camp... continue past the first set of tents to a second grouping of tents where there are 3-4 kobalds (IIRC 3 by the fire and one in a tent) These ranged from blue to red to me. I'd tank the blues and evens with my pet and fear kite the yellows and reds (which were usually shaman) Loot was so-so, but nothing like the Sisters or Misty. I got some soft wicker armour that sold for about what raw hide did and a couple of bronze weapons...
I was antsy to hit 20 and decided that if loot was going to be adequate at best, I might as well go for the pure XP and braced myself for the elementary school playground that is Paludal Caverns. Deep in (go past the bridge (not over it) and look for the tunnel between 2 grime tunneler spawns) I found a tunnel that wasn't being camped. I could manage the first 3 pops in the tunnel (2 fiends and a mushroom) comfortably, tho both I and the pet were taking a decent amount of damage. Banshee Aura and Endure/Cure Disease made this possible. Loot, predictably was pretty poor.. I think I made 10pp in half a level there.
I got my relevant 20 spells and after securing the level, I headed over to Warslik Woods to the Brute Caves, only to find that I was still a little low for them untwinked. They range from 21-25 and after a couple near death experiences from not being able to get ANYthing to stick on a red con mob, I decided that I didn't have any more exciting options so I headed back to Paludal to finish the level.
21-23
My pet and I were lucky enough to be buffed by an Elder druid (who I suspect had SCRM from as long as his buffs lasted) right before I dinged 21 so I just stayed in Paludal and dinged 22 as well. The next AM I went to sell to empty out my packs and upon going back to secure the level, I found myself as the sole inhabitant of Paludal, so I solo'd bandits to ding 23 and netted about 50pp in the process.
24-26
Level 24 rocked. The new pet and Screaming Terror made it a whole new world of possibilities, and Allure of Death was a big win too.
dinged 24 doing named sisters on Sister Isle. They still drop purity belts, but even being yellow cons, XP was pretty darned dull, so I moved on to Warslik Woods.
dinged 25 at the Brute Caves in Warslik, but kept finding them being camped (or worse, being farmed) so I ended up dinging 26 at the lizard pyramids in Feerrott.
The first pyramid as you come from the PoK book has 2 lizards (single pullable) on one side and 3 on the other side. 2 at the base and 1 on top. I'd ST one of the 2 on the bottom and not aggro the one on the top when the other one ran at me. (Tho the one on top would heal if he was a healer) Fine Steel weapons were relatively frequent and CR is much faster since I keep a bind in PoK, but the wanderers (and the healers) are pretty annoying. All in all, I liked the brute caves much better.
I tried both FD splitting & ST splitting the guards in Queynos Hills near the SFG entrance, but between their insane MR, succeeding on FD and still getting hit by the mobs and my relative lack of HPs, after about 5 deaths I gave up and left them alone.
27-30
found a better spot to hunt in Feerrott. There are 2 lizards guarding a bridge just before you get to the pyramids. further off to each side is 1 more lizard. I started on the far end (away from the pyramids) single pulled the near lizard, ST pulled the pair on the bridge and then pulled the far lizard. Was MUCH safer XP.
But I finally found the brute caves uncamped and settled in for the next 4 levels. Its mindless XP in the upper 20s, but decent coin and its all stackable and relatively light (except for the brute hides) which is a bonus. Keep Banshee Aura up, Pull with your best dot, send pet in, toss on second best dot, darkness, then melee to let Banshee Aura's DS add damage till its dead. Wash, rinse, repeat, medding & healing up as necessary. Made 6-800pp over those levels and have 14 HQ brute hides I've yet to sell in the bazaar that should bring in anywhere from 1400-2450 depending on how low I want to undercut the bazaar prices.
31-32
XP at the brutes was slowing at 30, but I had pet toys on the pet and housecleaning to do, so I stayed and just cleaned house since I was now having 10 min or more down time while I waited for repops. 31 became too slow for me, tho, so I decided to explore other options...
Twilight Sea seemed like a good option, but adds were pretty frequent, even fighting down by the shore and since you can only bind in melee bind spots (even as a caster) on FV, the CR thru FG (or having to pay for a port) didn't seem worth the XP and tradeskill components to sell in the bazaar so I moved on. For someone that could bind there or easily pay for ports, this might be a nice place to hunt. Swirling Mist, Windstones, Essence of Wind, Lava Rocks, Iron Oxide and some drops from the named elementals that go for a couple hundred pp in the bazaar.
I tried the druids in EC, but never managed to get one killed so I decided non casters (and non healers) might be a better bet & moved over to Tollbooth Guards in WC. XP from the Tollbooth Guards was good, but loot was beyond awful. While they're supposed to drop fine steel weapons, in 1/2 a level all I got was rusty and I wasn't quite able to keep the spawn broken with my gear so I moved on to look for something that offered a little better loot with my XP.
Treants in SK proved to be the answer. Keep Allure of Death up at all times & buy a girdle of magi kot and 2 hands of Ixi for your pet. After doing Brutes, Treants seemed to have surprisingly few HPs and went down quickly.
ST one 1 to split, Darkness the other, Fear, send pet in, toss on your best dot, life tap it and sit down to med.. you'll need every bit of mana & health you can regen because these things respawn quickly. I ended up having to rebreak the camp multiple times because I needed a little more med/HP regen time and the second treant repopped on me before I was ready, but in 1/4 of a level I made about 160pp in loot and dinged 32 without a death. Its looking like 32 is doable here too, tho the occasional treant is light blue so far.
32-34
After dinging 32, I explored a camp I'd read on RPGexpert.com and checked out the halfling guards in Misty Thicket too. There's 4 on the wall. 2 level 25 & 2 level 30. They all drop a minimum of a spear (10pp to a vendor) and a shield (1pp & change to a vendor) so its good money. The problem is they're kind of MR and at 32-33, if ST or darkness is resisted, I found I couldn't handle more than one at a time. After chewing thru 1 pet a kill for a while when I had to FD when I got all of them coming at me on a resist, I decided that since Treants were still about 80% dark blue at 32 I'd just go back there.
But after dinging 33 on treants it was definitely time to move on. I'd been shopping the bazaar for a chipped bone bracelet (AE2) but hadn't seen any of them for sale, so I decided to camp it myself and headed out to Timorous Deep to the Great Oowomp. (I chose the Oowomp over Chief Goonda in WK because (believe it or not) it was faster to get to. Zilly keeps a PoK bind and Ogre Isle was a matter of OT book to OT docks, boatgnome to Ogre Isle)
level 34 shaman mob on a 6 min spawn. IMPORTANT NOTE if you are DE: The Oowomp is not a negative VS faction hit. Any other ogre on that island is. So don't kill anything but the Oowomp if you care about your OT outpost faction.
Darkness, Fear, send pet in, toss your 2 best dots on him and hope he stays feared and dies fast. It was doable at 33, but definitely not a guaranteed win... I died a number of times when he got off a couple of his 200ish nukes on me if he resisted fear.
He drops the batfang headband (+3 wis/int extended enhancement II), batskull earrings (+5 int) turtleshell helm (Imp healing 1), Sheer Bone Mask (+3 int), giant snakespine belt and bone arm & legplates. Of all of the stuff I got, to date I've only managed to sell a batfang headband.
Note: The bone arms & legs are generally considered trash because of the negative stats on them.. but they are 90 & 97 tribute points each which sure beats the couple of pp you could get for them from a vendor.
I decided to come back to the Oowomp after I dinged 34 & got new spells and finished off 33 at the basilisk caves in JPF. Good XP, but no loot to speak of other than the basilisk eggs & the (very) occasional uninteresting research component.
34-38
34 spells opened up a lot of doors for me. The Oowomp became much easier to kill and since I really wanted that bracer, I spent most of the 34 & 35 camping it. Either I had bad luck or that bracelet is super rare because I had 3 vendor satchels of his other drops and only got 1 CBB.
I went back to MT to the halfling guards and the new fear and spells made them a piece of cake to take down, but for some reason the pathing on the level 40 guard that had never bothered me before was now aggroing me every a couple of mobs and it was too annoying to be worth the pp I could get at the camp.
Once I finally got the Oowomp to drop a CBB for me, and was level 36, I headed over to WC to the druid rings. This camp is like taking candy from a baby. ST one druid, Darkness, fear the other, pet in, best dot on, Vamp Curse, sit & med till you can loot up. 6ish min spawn and they can drop multiple FS weapons as well as minor (jade & mithril) jewellry and minor gems (topaz, flame agate etc)
Best of all, no matter how many druids you kill, you'll still be able to sell to the druid merchant at the rings, so you can kill till you're encumbered solely by coin and only then have to leave camp to bank. The length of a temperance was just about enough for me to get so encumbered with pp & gp at 101 STR (I was burning silver & copper) that I'd need to bank anyway.
You really don't NEED Temp for this camp, but I liked keeping Call of Bones up since it was a relatively fast respawn and Temp was a help in not losing too much health.
Also killed Zilly's first HG in WC. Was yellow to her at 36, but wasn't particularly resistant to anything so fear kiting it wasn't a big deal. He was kind enough to drop 30pp for her troubles.
A friend a couple of levels higher is doing druids too and said initially that, tho they're still dark blue, XP slowed way down at 40, but after exploring other options ended up back at the druids.
39
The new pet seems to regen a lot faster than the old one. Druids are still 1% a kill and even easier, tho I'm still using the same spell. Darkness, fear, pet in, venom of the snake & wait for the XP. Once the camp is broken I usually sic the pet on one then when the other pops, I dark, fear & dot him and let the pet finish him after the first one dies. Usually end up with 4-5 min between spawns. No need for Temp or even Call of Bones anymore. Can heal & med to full by the time the next 2 spawn. Mindless XP & sort of dull, but you can't beat the coin at this level and the ability to sell without going anywhere. Consistantly surprises me that I've never seen the slightest bit of competition for the camp.
40
XP is slowing down a trifle at the druid, but not enough to make me think about leaving, since I can't think of another camp with this kind of coin that's so convenient to sell at.
41
Still doing druids... they're all still dark blue, but XP has slowed. Trying to eke 1 more level out of them for the money just because I'm going to have to think about replacing my spell foci in a couple of levels and *shudder* 50+ spells. Have nearly 6K in the bank, tho, which makes me feel pretty good.
42
At 42, the druids went light blue on me, so it was definitely time to find a new camp. So far, I'm at the docks in Butcherblock. Pulling the 2 dorfs on the docks & the 2 on the shore by the docks, as well as the elf chick in the hut by the merchant.
The Wood Elf NPC in the middle of the shore was dubious to me but didn't seem to aggro if I pulled the dorfs past him.
Pull with darkness, toss on Venom of the Snake, send pet in (taunt off), run a bit, toss on Scourge or Boiling Blood then aggro kite the mobs in circles near the shore till its dead. With just over 2000 mana, I use about a bubble per mob and can med up between repops. Try to stay away from the huts on the wall. The 2 dorfs in them seem to come as a set and I ended up with aggro from the mage in the other hut too. Because of this (and the fact that there are 2 guards on the other side of the wall, I've been kind of reluctant to fear kite (even with the level 4 fear) but aggro kiting seems to work quite well.
Every dorf drops an Axe worth 4pp, but they're heavy and as a DE I can't sell to the merchant on the docks, which makes the camp a little less convenient than I originally anticipated, but 10 mobs netted me 13% XP so I'm pretty satisfied overall.
The axes got kind of heavy to collect, so I checked out echo caverns. Aggro kiting seemed to work pretty well here (Darkness, Venom of the Snake, Scourge) and I could manage to kill Trillcor if he popped pretty regularly, but Fireclaw would usually kill me, so I decided to look for a better option, since loot was pretty awful in Echo Caverns.
43
I got a lev in PoK and headed over to Crystal Caverns. (A lev will make running thru EW and dropping down the pit in CC much easier.. if you're 44+ you can cast DMF on yourself) Geonids were very very occasionally light blue to me at 43 (I think maybe 3-4 in an entire level's worth of XP) but it was still quite nice XP.
I started by clearing the terror at the bottom, then started pulling geonids down a bit & fear kiting them with the level 4 fear. (Darkness, pet in, Venom of the Snake, fear, Vampiric Curse) The first couple of rounds I misjudged a bit and occasionally had 2-3 if the feared mobs moved up the tunnel since they'd aggro any they passed (even tho I could sit in front of them to med & not aggro, so it wasn't a faction issue) but darkness & fearing the adds managed to keep me from dying (tho the pet was a casualty from time to time) but once I got the pathing down, it went like clockwork, tho I usually had to Nice XP, the chipped gems from the named brought in some OK pp and it was (usually) perfectly safe to afk to med. (I found that a 9 min afk usually brought me back to full mana & the first couple repopped)
Note: occasionally some twit that gets a bad pull from spiders or terror hall will try to train out up the geonid hallway so I never went too far afk while I was medding if I knew people were camping those camps.
44
a few more light blues, but still quite nice XP. The new pet seemed to make a nice difference in durability, but after a little experimentation, I decided that Aystole didn't make enough of a difference to warrant the extra mana and swapped back to Venom of the Snake. With Temperance, I only needed to toss on Vampiric Curse every couple of mobs.
45-46
XP slowed a little at 45, but I'd heard old school people say you could camp geonids till 50, so I figured I'd stay in CC for a few more levels. 45 was OK XP but 46 was a bit of a struggle, a decent amount of the Geonids were light blue, and I was usually taking part of terror hall in the down time between geo spawns. Still, the cash was nice.. I think I got over 3K in gems from my time doing geonids, which puts Zilly's bank account at 10K, not bad for a level 47 toon that started with nothing and everything she's wearing she camped or earned the money to buy herself.
Zilly's current magelo
47-48
Started 47 at Dulak zone in. Decided quickly that I didn't much care for it since sometimes the mobs that spawn there are shaman mobs and they > me far too often. So I got Virtue and C3 (the late 40s are the only time I'd recommend C over the lich line for a necro... C3 is better mana regen than Call of Bones. But once you hit 49, Lich beats C3 hands down) headed in further and settled into the Stormwave.
I'd clear the 2 mobs on the dock so I could fear kite and then I could pretty easily get single pulls from the boat and would fear kite them on the dock. Pet would be parked near the top of the ramp, out of aggro range of both the dock spawn and the mobs on the street. Pull with Darkness, start running towards ramp of boat, Chilling Embrace, pet in, Aystole. By this time you should be pretty much where the pet was parked. Level 4 fear, Scourge, re-Darkness to be safe, then sit & med, reapplying fear as needed. I was seeing about 1 diamond/BD for every Virtue I got and was ending up with maybe 500pp after paying for fresh buffs. Not bad for really laid back XP.
I tried the Lady D when the Stormwave was camped, but didn't care for it nearly as much. For 1 there's 3 dock mobs that you need to clear, one of which was light blue about 1/3 of the time. The mobs also seemed to resist my spells more often, which was odd because they're were a couple of levels lower than the Stormwave mobs. Both boats were comprable XP & loot, but over all I liked the Stormwave better. Haven't seen a Captain to date on either boat, tho I did pickup a Sea Worn Ring that was rotting.
The Medallions of Service (silver, bronze, gold & platinum) are for the quest for the Charm of the Brotherhood. They were a pretty frequent drop, but I got no XP for turning them in for the charm. The Trunk of Missing Tomes that drops on the Stormwave, is for this quest I was seeing at least one of these drop every hour or so. While the reward isn't much beyond 7pp at a vendor, turning the trunk in is worth about 3% XP, so I usually made a bypass to OT on the way to refresh buffs & turned in a Trunk if I'd had one drop.
49-50
The 49 pet was a wonderful upgrade and was much sturdier than the 44 for Dulak boats. And Lich was a whole new world over Call of Bones for Mana Regen. Its still a camp where Virtue is an nice bonus because fear can get resisted repeatedly and I was still taking some damage.
I tried out the Dandolak and the Oceancrasher... I still like the Stormwave the best. XP seems to be similar on all of them and the named are silly rare... I've seen a total of one that dropped a barnacle covered axe. Its not astoundingly exciting XP but its steady and the cash coming in from the camp is definitely nice, since I made a huge dent in the bank account buying a Band of Twilight for AE3. Zilly now has AE3, BA3, Spell Haste 3 & ER3. Have been thinking about farming to buy a Skull of Decay for AH, but I like my primary, secondary & range items so I've put it off.
51
XP seemed to slow a little in Dulak, so I went exploring other options. I was pretty broke after buying the Band of Twilight, so I decided to try HHK. To be blunt, the XP there sucked. Was taking 2-3 kills to get 1% XP and it was tedious enough to not be worth it to me.
I tried the Fire Elementals at zone in of Crypt of Nadox but the pathing made it pretty difficult to fear kite, it was too tight a space for aggro kiting and the respawn time was too long to make it worth my while. This might be a good camp in the upper 40s.
I went to LowerGuk but a good number of the mobs were light blue.. and while I got a Bag of Sewn Evil Eye out of the trip, I didn't think it was really viable as an XP spot. So I headed back to Dulak.
Darkness, EBolt, pet in, fear, BoD, reapply fear as needed seemed to work the best, I was now clearing the Stormwave and the dock and still a short time to med before repops.
Splurt is going for 1K-1500 on FV, so I'm doing without for the moment and hoping to find a bargain on it.
1-5
Nek newbie area. Got a list of what I needed for the newbie armour quests and started looking for stuff early. Did the Firebeetle Eye quest repeatedly until firebeetles went green (it also doubled as a free 10 slot container to hold firebeetle eyes) and killed any decaying skelly that had a weapon on it, wolves and spiderlings & saved the non ruined pelts and silks and wolf meat to sell in the bazaar. (Note: Wolf meat is used in Halas Meat Pies and isn't buyable from any vendor so there is usually a market for it in the bazaar. Bear, lion or rat meat is just vendor junk)
Narex T'Vem, in the warrior's guild, offers 1gp for leatherfoot raider skullcaps. It takes killing bunches of halflings to get your newbie armour pieces, turning them in is just a bonus.
This quest is also a nice way to make a little money early on.
By level 5 I had all my level 1 & level 4 spells as well as a full set of backpacks to carry stuff in.
6-8
Puttered around working on the newbie quests in Nek. Killed spiders and bears and skeletons. Sent the pet off to kill any green decaying skeletons, wolves or spiderlings I saw while I was medding to keep collecting pelts & silks. Spent a lot of time at the minor spires in Nek Forest using Numb the Dead to split the 3 mobs there. Started saving zombie skins to sell in the bazaar. Around level 8 I went to Befallen for a little while, but I kept getting my untwinked arse handed to me by the necromancer NPCs and after about the 3rd run from Nek to Befallen I decided it wasn't worth the downtime and left.
Save any halfling footbones you happen to get. This quest which takes 4 of them provides an not bad upgrade to a newbie dagger: Fine Antique Poniard.
Ran into a minor windfall twice when people were slaughtering Nek & Neriak guards and leaving the corpses. Fine steel (or even better the 2 handed swords) is a small fortune at this level.
Bought my important level 8 spells and invested in a couple of traders satchels to sell pelts, silks and zombie skins, but I was completely broke after that.
9-10
I had my newbie legs, boots, sleeves, gloves and robe and moved down to the undead monolith in Nek Forest near EC and continued using numb the dead to break the camp. PP was pretty lean tho, and I was beginning to worry about my level 12 spells and how I was going to afford them, especially since I'd had no luck getting the 2 embalming dust from any mummies for my newbie robe and had to buy them off a vendor at 1pp5gp each.
Made friends with Vaos, a wizard a couple of levels above me, who was hunting at the undead camp in North Nek (a camp that kicked my arse from the adds when I tried it) and he was kind enough send me a tell when pages for the Writ of the Fallen Quest dropped.
Spent my last PP on Sarnak blood and bravely did the The Magic Pool quest for Finecut, Diamond Inlaid Mask. Note: You want to do this quest before level 10 so that if you die doing it, you respawn with all your stuff and don't need to worry about CR.
Took sidetrips to The Qeynos Aquaducts and Shadeweaver's Thicket to get a undead froglok tongue and a tiny rockhopper eye in preparation for doing Holly Longtail's Replacement Parts quest for a Fine Antique Ring when I could find a cockatrice beak and a HQ cougarskin cheaply in the bazaar.
10-12
Completely my Writ of the Fallen quest, thanks to Vaos and a nice warrior and moved down to East Commonlands to fear kite lions, bears and spiders for pelts & silks. There is a lot of miscellanious stuff that sells for around 3gp and is stackable so I was making a little money again. Best of all, other people solely hunting pelts & silks were leaving corpses lying around so I could scavenging a little extra money by cleaning up their leavings.
Found a coctatrice beak for 1pp in the bazaar (note: do not buy from an NPC vendor, a vendor will charge 26pp) and a HQ cougar skin for 5pp and got my Fine Antique Ring.
12-16
Bought all my relevant level 12 spells (minus the very limited use ones like sight graft) and bound myself on the dock in EFP in front of the boat gnome and headed off to Sister Island in OOT.
I stayed along the shore and pulled with heat blood, sent the pet in, tossed on poison bolt, engulfing darkness, then leach and tanked till the mob was dead. If I got too many adds or pirates, I gated and sold in the tunnels then went back for more. CR is simply a matter of asking the gnome to go back to OOT, then casting invis so you can run past the KOS mobs on the docks and get your corpse.
Purity Belts were the big money maker at like 1pp 3gp each. The rusty halberds sold for 3gp each but weighted 14.0. The wood elf parts are used in alchemy potions (and in a high end quest for an illusion wood elf crown) so I was getting 2pp each for them in the bazaar and selling them as fast as I could get them. The elven blood is used in temper for Tier`Dal cultural smithing and has a market (since only a handful of mobs in the game drop it which makes it very annoying to get the quantities needed in smithing) but didn't sell nearly as quickly as the woodelf parts.
I shopped the bazaar regularly looking for bargains on gear and made it a point to buy nothing until I'd priced it for a couple of days to make sure I couldn't get it cheaper later.
At level 16 Zilly had all her spells, a couple of hundred in the bank and is wearing better than cloth in all but 2 slots, so I think she's doing darned well for herself. B)
16-19
Started 16 at Sister Isle, wanting to snag all the pp I could from it, but the XP was slowing significantly, so I decided to move. I got my arse handed to me in U Guk a couple of times and decided UGuk had too many casters for my taste, so I headed to West Karana to Misty Storyswapper.
Warning, this spawn is not for the easily bored. (I usually set a timer for 6 min and went and did housekeeping or websurfed on my other machine) She's on a 6 minute timer and even when she was yellow, I usually ended up casting darkness, heat blood and meleeing her along with my pet.
She drops a mandolin worth 1pp 4gp 2sp with maxed CHR (I invested in 2 opal steins, figuring that the return on investment would put me ahead in the long run) every time she spawns. Better still, they weigh 0.0 so there's rarely any issue with encumbrance. She also occasionally drops raw hide armour and research components .. including a copy of Words of the Spoken, for Voice Graft.
Found a decent robe in the bazaar for 20pp (Robe of Tears) and filled out her ear slot with a second obsidian bead hoop and wrist slot with a serpentine bracer, so she was covered with major foci (spell haste, mana pres and burning affliction) thru level 49 and still had 500pp in the bank.
19-20
Misty began going light blue, so, alas, it was time to venture onward. I checked out the Warrens but wasn't confident on my ability not to get adds so I checked out Stonebrunt Mountains. I found a camp of 3-4 Kobalds that I seemed to be able to single pull. (coming out of the entrance, on the right there is a Kobald camp... continue past the first set of tents to a second grouping of tents where there are 3-4 kobalds (IIRC 3 by the fire and one in a tent) These ranged from blue to red to me. I'd tank the blues and evens with my pet and fear kite the yellows and reds (which were usually shaman) Loot was so-so, but nothing like the Sisters or Misty. I got some soft wicker armour that sold for about what raw hide did and a couple of bronze weapons...
I was antsy to hit 20 and decided that if loot was going to be adequate at best, I might as well go for the pure XP and braced myself for the elementary school playground that is Paludal Caverns. Deep in (go past the bridge (not over it) and look for the tunnel between 2 grime tunneler spawns) I found a tunnel that wasn't being camped. I could manage the first 3 pops in the tunnel (2 fiends and a mushroom) comfortably, tho both I and the pet were taking a decent amount of damage. Banshee Aura and Endure/Cure Disease made this possible. Loot, predictably was pretty poor.. I think I made 10pp in half a level there.
I got my relevant 20 spells and after securing the level, I headed over to Warslik Woods to the Brute Caves, only to find that I was still a little low for them untwinked. They range from 21-25 and after a couple near death experiences from not being able to get ANYthing to stick on a red con mob, I decided that I didn't have any more exciting options so I headed back to Paludal to finish the level.
21-23
My pet and I were lucky enough to be buffed by an Elder druid (who I suspect had SCRM from as long as his buffs lasted) right before I dinged 21 so I just stayed in Paludal and dinged 22 as well. The next AM I went to sell to empty out my packs and upon going back to secure the level, I found myself as the sole inhabitant of Paludal, so I solo'd bandits to ding 23 and netted about 50pp in the process.
24-26
Level 24 rocked. The new pet and Screaming Terror made it a whole new world of possibilities, and Allure of Death was a big win too.
dinged 24 doing named sisters on Sister Isle. They still drop purity belts, but even being yellow cons, XP was pretty darned dull, so I moved on to Warslik Woods.
dinged 25 at the Brute Caves in Warslik, but kept finding them being camped (or worse, being farmed) so I ended up dinging 26 at the lizard pyramids in Feerrott.
The first pyramid as you come from the PoK book has 2 lizards (single pullable) on one side and 3 on the other side. 2 at the base and 1 on top. I'd ST one of the 2 on the bottom and not aggro the one on the top when the other one ran at me. (Tho the one on top would heal if he was a healer) Fine Steel weapons were relatively frequent and CR is much faster since I keep a bind in PoK, but the wanderers (and the healers) are pretty annoying. All in all, I liked the brute caves much better.
I tried both FD splitting & ST splitting the guards in Queynos Hills near the SFG entrance, but between their insane MR, succeeding on FD and still getting hit by the mobs and my relative lack of HPs, after about 5 deaths I gave up and left them alone.
27-30
found a better spot to hunt in Feerrott. There are 2 lizards guarding a bridge just before you get to the pyramids. further off to each side is 1 more lizard. I started on the far end (away from the pyramids) single pulled the near lizard, ST pulled the pair on the bridge and then pulled the far lizard. Was MUCH safer XP.
But I finally found the brute caves uncamped and settled in for the next 4 levels. Its mindless XP in the upper 20s, but decent coin and its all stackable and relatively light (except for the brute hides) which is a bonus. Keep Banshee Aura up, Pull with your best dot, send pet in, toss on second best dot, darkness, then melee to let Banshee Aura's DS add damage till its dead. Wash, rinse, repeat, medding & healing up as necessary. Made 6-800pp over those levels and have 14 HQ brute hides I've yet to sell in the bazaar that should bring in anywhere from 1400-2450 depending on how low I want to undercut the bazaar prices.
31-32
XP at the brutes was slowing at 30, but I had pet toys on the pet and housecleaning to do, so I stayed and just cleaned house since I was now having 10 min or more down time while I waited for repops. 31 became too slow for me, tho, so I decided to explore other options...
Twilight Sea seemed like a good option, but adds were pretty frequent, even fighting down by the shore and since you can only bind in melee bind spots (even as a caster) on FV, the CR thru FG (or having to pay for a port) didn't seem worth the XP and tradeskill components to sell in the bazaar so I moved on. For someone that could bind there or easily pay for ports, this might be a nice place to hunt. Swirling Mist, Windstones, Essence of Wind, Lava Rocks, Iron Oxide and some drops from the named elementals that go for a couple hundred pp in the bazaar.
I tried the druids in EC, but never managed to get one killed so I decided non casters (and non healers) might be a better bet & moved over to Tollbooth Guards in WC. XP from the Tollbooth Guards was good, but loot was beyond awful. While they're supposed to drop fine steel weapons, in 1/2 a level all I got was rusty and I wasn't quite able to keep the spawn broken with my gear so I moved on to look for something that offered a little better loot with my XP.
Treants in SK proved to be the answer. Keep Allure of Death up at all times & buy a girdle of magi kot and 2 hands of Ixi for your pet. After doing Brutes, Treants seemed to have surprisingly few HPs and went down quickly.
ST one 1 to split, Darkness the other, Fear, send pet in, toss on your best dot, life tap it and sit down to med.. you'll need every bit of mana & health you can regen because these things respawn quickly. I ended up having to rebreak the camp multiple times because I needed a little more med/HP regen time and the second treant repopped on me before I was ready, but in 1/4 of a level I made about 160pp in loot and dinged 32 without a death. Its looking like 32 is doable here too, tho the occasional treant is light blue so far.
32-34
After dinging 32, I explored a camp I'd read on RPGexpert.com and checked out the halfling guards in Misty Thicket too. There's 4 on the wall. 2 level 25 & 2 level 30. They all drop a minimum of a spear (10pp to a vendor) and a shield (1pp & change to a vendor) so its good money. The problem is they're kind of MR and at 32-33, if ST or darkness is resisted, I found I couldn't handle more than one at a time. After chewing thru 1 pet a kill for a while when I had to FD when I got all of them coming at me on a resist, I decided that since Treants were still about 80% dark blue at 32 I'd just go back there.
But after dinging 33 on treants it was definitely time to move on. I'd been shopping the bazaar for a chipped bone bracelet (AE2) but hadn't seen any of them for sale, so I decided to camp it myself and headed out to Timorous Deep to the Great Oowomp. (I chose the Oowomp over Chief Goonda in WK because (believe it or not) it was faster to get to. Zilly keeps a PoK bind and Ogre Isle was a matter of OT book to OT docks, boatgnome to Ogre Isle)
level 34 shaman mob on a 6 min spawn. IMPORTANT NOTE if you are DE: The Oowomp is not a negative VS faction hit. Any other ogre on that island is. So don't kill anything but the Oowomp if you care about your OT outpost faction.
Darkness, Fear, send pet in, toss your 2 best dots on him and hope he stays feared and dies fast. It was doable at 33, but definitely not a guaranteed win... I died a number of times when he got off a couple of his 200ish nukes on me if he resisted fear.
He drops the batfang headband (+3 wis/int extended enhancement II), batskull earrings (+5 int) turtleshell helm (Imp healing 1), Sheer Bone Mask (+3 int), giant snakespine belt and bone arm & legplates. Of all of the stuff I got, to date I've only managed to sell a batfang headband.
Note: The bone arms & legs are generally considered trash because of the negative stats on them.. but they are 90 & 97 tribute points each which sure beats the couple of pp you could get for them from a vendor.
I decided to come back to the Oowomp after I dinged 34 & got new spells and finished off 33 at the basilisk caves in JPF. Good XP, but no loot to speak of other than the basilisk eggs & the (very) occasional uninteresting research component.
34-38
34 spells opened up a lot of doors for me. The Oowomp became much easier to kill and since I really wanted that bracer, I spent most of the 34 & 35 camping it. Either I had bad luck or that bracelet is super rare because I had 3 vendor satchels of his other drops and only got 1 CBB.
I went back to MT to the halfling guards and the new fear and spells made them a piece of cake to take down, but for some reason the pathing on the level 40 guard that had never bothered me before was now aggroing me every a couple of mobs and it was too annoying to be worth the pp I could get at the camp.
Once I finally got the Oowomp to drop a CBB for me, and was level 36, I headed over to WC to the druid rings. This camp is like taking candy from a baby. ST one druid, Darkness, fear the other, pet in, best dot on, Vamp Curse, sit & med till you can loot up. 6ish min spawn and they can drop multiple FS weapons as well as minor (jade & mithril) jewellry and minor gems (topaz, flame agate etc)
Best of all, no matter how many druids you kill, you'll still be able to sell to the druid merchant at the rings, so you can kill till you're encumbered solely by coin and only then have to leave camp to bank. The length of a temperance was just about enough for me to get so encumbered with pp & gp at 101 STR (I was burning silver & copper) that I'd need to bank anyway.
You really don't NEED Temp for this camp, but I liked keeping Call of Bones up since it was a relatively fast respawn and Temp was a help in not losing too much health.
Also killed Zilly's first HG in WC. Was yellow to her at 36, but wasn't particularly resistant to anything so fear kiting it wasn't a big deal. He was kind enough to drop 30pp for her troubles.
A friend a couple of levels higher is doing druids too and said initially that, tho they're still dark blue, XP slowed way down at 40, but after exploring other options ended up back at the druids.
39
The new pet seems to regen a lot faster than the old one. Druids are still 1% a kill and even easier, tho I'm still using the same spell. Darkness, fear, pet in, venom of the snake & wait for the XP. Once the camp is broken I usually sic the pet on one then when the other pops, I dark, fear & dot him and let the pet finish him after the first one dies. Usually end up with 4-5 min between spawns. No need for Temp or even Call of Bones anymore. Can heal & med to full by the time the next 2 spawn. Mindless XP & sort of dull, but you can't beat the coin at this level and the ability to sell without going anywhere. Consistantly surprises me that I've never seen the slightest bit of competition for the camp.
40
XP is slowing down a trifle at the druid, but not enough to make me think about leaving, since I can't think of another camp with this kind of coin that's so convenient to sell at.
41
Still doing druids... they're all still dark blue, but XP has slowed. Trying to eke 1 more level out of them for the money just because I'm going to have to think about replacing my spell foci in a couple of levels and *shudder* 50+ spells. Have nearly 6K in the bank, tho, which makes me feel pretty good.
42
At 42, the druids went light blue on me, so it was definitely time to find a new camp. So far, I'm at the docks in Butcherblock. Pulling the 2 dorfs on the docks & the 2 on the shore by the docks, as well as the elf chick in the hut by the merchant.
The Wood Elf NPC in the middle of the shore was dubious to me but didn't seem to aggro if I pulled the dorfs past him.
Pull with darkness, toss on Venom of the Snake, send pet in (taunt off), run a bit, toss on Scourge or Boiling Blood then aggro kite the mobs in circles near the shore till its dead. With just over 2000 mana, I use about a bubble per mob and can med up between repops. Try to stay away from the huts on the wall. The 2 dorfs in them seem to come as a set and I ended up with aggro from the mage in the other hut too. Because of this (and the fact that there are 2 guards on the other side of the wall, I've been kind of reluctant to fear kite (even with the level 4 fear) but aggro kiting seems to work quite well.
Every dorf drops an Axe worth 4pp, but they're heavy and as a DE I can't sell to the merchant on the docks, which makes the camp a little less convenient than I originally anticipated, but 10 mobs netted me 13% XP so I'm pretty satisfied overall.
The axes got kind of heavy to collect, so I checked out echo caverns. Aggro kiting seemed to work pretty well here (Darkness, Venom of the Snake, Scourge) and I could manage to kill Trillcor if he popped pretty regularly, but Fireclaw would usually kill me, so I decided to look for a better option, since loot was pretty awful in Echo Caverns.
43
I got a lev in PoK and headed over to Crystal Caverns. (A lev will make running thru EW and dropping down the pit in CC much easier.. if you're 44+ you can cast DMF on yourself) Geonids were very very occasionally light blue to me at 43 (I think maybe 3-4 in an entire level's worth of XP) but it was still quite nice XP.
I started by clearing the terror at the bottom, then started pulling geonids down a bit & fear kiting them with the level 4 fear. (Darkness, pet in, Venom of the Snake, fear, Vampiric Curse) The first couple of rounds I misjudged a bit and occasionally had 2-3 if the feared mobs moved up the tunnel since they'd aggro any they passed (even tho I could sit in front of them to med & not aggro, so it wasn't a faction issue) but darkness & fearing the adds managed to keep me from dying (tho the pet was a casualty from time to time) but once I got the pathing down, it went like clockwork, tho I usually had to Nice XP, the chipped gems from the named brought in some OK pp and it was (usually) perfectly safe to afk to med. (I found that a 9 min afk usually brought me back to full mana & the first couple repopped)
Note: occasionally some twit that gets a bad pull from spiders or terror hall will try to train out up the geonid hallway so I never went too far afk while I was medding if I knew people were camping those camps.
44
a few more light blues, but still quite nice XP. The new pet seemed to make a nice difference in durability, but after a little experimentation, I decided that Aystole didn't make enough of a difference to warrant the extra mana and swapped back to Venom of the Snake. With Temperance, I only needed to toss on Vampiric Curse every couple of mobs.
45-46
XP slowed a little at 45, but I'd heard old school people say you could camp geonids till 50, so I figured I'd stay in CC for a few more levels. 45 was OK XP but 46 was a bit of a struggle, a decent amount of the Geonids were light blue, and I was usually taking part of terror hall in the down time between geo spawns. Still, the cash was nice.. I think I got over 3K in gems from my time doing geonids, which puts Zilly's bank account at 10K, not bad for a level 47 toon that started with nothing and everything she's wearing she camped or earned the money to buy herself.
Zilly's current magelo
47-48
Started 47 at Dulak zone in. Decided quickly that I didn't much care for it since sometimes the mobs that spawn there are shaman mobs and they > me far too often. So I got Virtue and C3 (the late 40s are the only time I'd recommend C over the lich line for a necro... C3 is better mana regen than Call of Bones. But once you hit 49, Lich beats C3 hands down) headed in further and settled into the Stormwave.
I'd clear the 2 mobs on the dock so I could fear kite and then I could pretty easily get single pulls from the boat and would fear kite them on the dock. Pet would be parked near the top of the ramp, out of aggro range of both the dock spawn and the mobs on the street. Pull with Darkness, start running towards ramp of boat, Chilling Embrace, pet in, Aystole. By this time you should be pretty much where the pet was parked. Level 4 fear, Scourge, re-Darkness to be safe, then sit & med, reapplying fear as needed. I was seeing about 1 diamond/BD for every Virtue I got and was ending up with maybe 500pp after paying for fresh buffs. Not bad for really laid back XP.
I tried the Lady D when the Stormwave was camped, but didn't care for it nearly as much. For 1 there's 3 dock mobs that you need to clear, one of which was light blue about 1/3 of the time. The mobs also seemed to resist my spells more often, which was odd because they're were a couple of levels lower than the Stormwave mobs. Both boats were comprable XP & loot, but over all I liked the Stormwave better. Haven't seen a Captain to date on either boat, tho I did pickup a Sea Worn Ring that was rotting.
The Medallions of Service (silver, bronze, gold & platinum) are for the quest for the Charm of the Brotherhood. They were a pretty frequent drop, but I got no XP for turning them in for the charm. The Trunk of Missing Tomes that drops on the Stormwave, is for this quest I was seeing at least one of these drop every hour or so. While the reward isn't much beyond 7pp at a vendor, turning the trunk in is worth about 3% XP, so I usually made a bypass to OT on the way to refresh buffs & turned in a Trunk if I'd had one drop.
49-50
The 49 pet was a wonderful upgrade and was much sturdier than the 44 for Dulak boats. And Lich was a whole new world over Call of Bones for Mana Regen. Its still a camp where Virtue is an nice bonus because fear can get resisted repeatedly and I was still taking some damage.
I tried out the Dandolak and the Oceancrasher... I still like the Stormwave the best. XP seems to be similar on all of them and the named are silly rare... I've seen a total of one that dropped a barnacle covered axe. Its not astoundingly exciting XP but its steady and the cash coming in from the camp is definitely nice, since I made a huge dent in the bank account buying a Band of Twilight for AE3. Zilly now has AE3, BA3, Spell Haste 3 & ER3. Have been thinking about farming to buy a Skull of Decay for AH, but I like my primary, secondary & range items so I've put it off.
51
XP seemed to slow a little in Dulak, so I went exploring other options. I was pretty broke after buying the Band of Twilight, so I decided to try HHK. To be blunt, the XP there sucked. Was taking 2-3 kills to get 1% XP and it was tedious enough to not be worth it to me.
I tried the Fire Elementals at zone in of Crypt of Nadox but the pathing made it pretty difficult to fear kite, it was too tight a space for aggro kiting and the respawn time was too long to make it worth my while. This might be a good camp in the upper 40s.
I went to LowerGuk but a good number of the mobs were light blue.. and while I got a Bag of Sewn Evil Eye out of the trip, I didn't think it was really viable as an XP spot. So I headed back to Dulak.
Darkness, EBolt, pet in, fear, BoD, reapply fear as needed seemed to work the best, I was now clearing the Stormwave and the dock and still a short time to med before repops.
Splurt is going for 1K-1500 on FV, so I'm doing without for the moment and hoping to find a bargain on it.
... others/majority are going to be LB and DB. It makes for some fun to temp the fates working through this area - and the xp per kill is worth the effort.
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