I was eager to check out some Velious leveling when I logged back into the game. I put up LFG while in the CL tunnel, and prepared to get a port to the Great Divide and check out Velks. Right as I was porting, I got a tell asking if I needed my Sebilis key, and was invited to a key hunting group. I got a port over to EJ and ran over. I am not sure if they changed it, but there were froglok hunters and foragers all over the damn zone. They were actually pretty tough too. We had a ranger pulling for the group, and thanks to track we were able to bring the frogs in quite fast. I noticed that about half the group was light blue to me, and the frogs were yellow. Not sure how much help we got out of the lower level people, but I guess its all good. Anyway we all got our keys in short order. I did the turn in to the emperor for both characters, and zoned into Sebilis to get my keyring updated. After that, I headed back to the Commonlands to once again prepare for an adventure into Velious.
I sent out a LFG request, and was contacted by the ranger from the key group. We ended up forming a group, and decided to first check out the giant camp in Great Divide. The group quickly filled and we headed over thanks to a druid porting us in the group. Turned out the fort was a bit low level for us, with most of the mobs being light blue. We agreed to head to Velks, and off we went. We found that there were a total of 7 picks up, with pick 2 being nearly empty. We zoned over and headed up to the spider camp.
This zone is fricken annoying. With slippery slopes, random holes, and all around pain in the ass navigation, I was often frustrated trying to move about. Throw in some see invis spiders randomly spread out, not to mention the fact that they are invis until they attack, and it was a recipe for some cursing out loud.
Anyway, we still made it to camp without too much trouble, though I am very glad that falling damage was nerfed, or I would surely have died at least a couple times trying to get up the damn ramps. We started slaying away. The spiders here actually have very low dps, especially when slowed. Tanking was a breeze, and even my shaman could tank if he got agro from slowing. We ended up getting quite a few named, and I was able to upgrade to the SCHW for my SK and got a nice neck piece for my shaman. I ended up level 44 on both toons.
The next night I was away from home but had access to my laptop, so I ended up not boxing. I played my shaman solo, since I had not done that yet (SK was solo until 22, shaman has always been played as a box). I started off by grouping up with a number of guildies, most of whom were over level 50. We actually had a necro pulling with his pet tanking, and it worked quite well. We slayed spiders at a great pace for a good while. Eventually the group broke up as people headed to bed, so I attempted to re form the group. I got a 60 wizard to join up, which I thought was pretty cool. We had trouble finding a tank, so we had a mage lined up to pet tank. Unfortunately we had a very bad streak of pulling catastrophes. For some reason we kept getting trained. Three separate times we got trained by a group of 15-20 spiders. The first two I have no idea what happened, but it may have been due to bard songs or something. The third time the bard had a mob mezzed who fell off the ledge and trained back up.
After a somewhat downer of a time, the group got frustrated and headed out, except for me and a rogue. I re-formed up with a standard group setup, including a paladin tank and a cleric. We had a higher level bard for CC as well. This time the group went very well. We were very solid, and had no issues with pulls or trains at all. We ended up rotating out through the night, and I ended up with a completely different set of people. We still kept it solid though. I even managed to get a nice shield upgrade for my shaman. Although I was in the zone for about 9 hours, we only got three named. Was not a very good night for named, but it was good for XP. Ended up at level 46! Now I can enter the planes and cause a ruckus for sure. Will probably be playing my SK tomorrow in a similar circumstance to keep the levels evened out.