I made my way to Unrest via a druid port to BB. The run isn’t that bad, which I was a bit concerned with at first. Gotta get used to these old world runs to exp zones! I made it to the zone without incident, simply by following the edge of the map. I do have to be careful about the cliffs, if I simply auto run I will most likely end up entering the zone with half HP, or running into a train and meeting my demise. I found at level 13 I was still in the low end of the spectrum, and there wasn’t much in the way of open group spots. However, after soloing some of the zone in mobs, I was able to piece together a group and camp the gazebo, the lower level camp for the zone. The exp was actually pretty good, despite there being mostly blue con beetles and zombies. The respawn is fast and usually we had a few mobs being killed at once in camp. In an hour or so I hit 15, and we moved into what I found to be called the “MR” or main room camp. I stayed here a solid block of time, slaughtering with a myriad of people. I find that at this point, the camp spots are usually fully taken, with people simply being replaced as time went on. I ended up with a completely different group at the end of the day, having rotated through probably two groups worth of people. I did hit level 20 with about 60% into the level though, so the xp was flowing nicely. I found that it started slowing pretty quickly due to the mob level difference at this point, but we still managed to get a few yellow and red cons. I ended the day a happy camper, and returned to Commonlands via my origin (love being human). Stocked up on a few new gear pieces, and was ready to go again.
I logged in the next day and spent some time starting up a boxed character. I decided to go ahead and give it a go, using my wife’s laptop as my second box. Fits nicely on the desk and I don’t have to hassle with another desktop (though getting used to a second mouse and not hitting my main keyboard is akin to learning to juggle). I started an Iksar shaman, hoping to benefit from the added regen. I jumped over to Emerald Jungle, which I found to have wizards running a taxi service most hours of the day. Scored a port to commons, bound in the tunnel, and loaded up on some gear from my waiting SK.
While this was going on, I put LFG up on my SK just to see if I would get a bite. A cleric I had grouped with the day before invited me over to Mistmoore, which I had not been to for a long time. I decided to let my shaman hang out for a bit and got a port to BB once again, and headed over (LFay is huge!). We camped near the zone in, which was great for me since I don’t know the zone very well. I found that the mob levels were around even with me, but took a huge jump just a little way in at the graveyard area. Spawn times weren’t too bad, and I banged out a couple levels, ending up at 22.It went pretty well while there, though we did get trained twice and only lost one member, who was bound outside the zone. I would like to try the zone farther in when I get a couple more levels, seems like a fun place. Many trains though, from what I am told. After I headed out from MM, I started bringing my shaman up to speed. After grabbing a regen and DS from a guildie, I waltzed into Befallen and began slaying like a madman. After the DS wore off, I brought my SK over and helped by killing mobs once they hit 49% or less, which is surely not as fast as the old DS/Regen trick. However I got the shaman to level 7 in short order. I am probably going to get the shaman to a level that he gets XP with my SK, then group up and try to even out the levels so that we can hit up camps together and keep near the same level. I figure its going to be easier this way, rather than maxing out the SK and trying to level the shaman after the fact. On a side note, I am really happy that they included Origin as an innate AA you get at level 5. Using Origin to gather new spells and gate back to the Commonlands is leaps and bounds better than having to port over and run into town every time I need to stock up. I usually buy the next 5 levels of spells so I can focus on the exp grind as well.
Welcome Back to Norrath 