Yea! level 7 at last (of course, if I keep dying at the current rate I'll be back down to level 5 in no time). Still, given the fact that I hadn't played EQ since Sunday means that I'm not doing too bad, but I may be left behind by some of the players that I've grouped with so far. I played for a good bit on Friday night, but stopped at a decent hour after working with 3 different groups (each with different styles).

So I started playing just a little before 8pm (7pm Sat Dec 14 3214 in game time). It takes a few minutes at the start to summon all of the food & drink that I'll need for the next few hours (usually 8 pieces of food and 10 pieces of water), make sure I have a weapon (or two) to give to my summoned pets, summon my pet and then meditate to restore all the mana that I just expended. After that I headed up to the orc lift "waiting room" to see if anyone else was looking for a group to head back up to the orc camp and raise a ruckus.

I spent some time again hunting orcs along the path, and waiting for trains to come by so I could attempt to pick off one of the trailing orcs and take the heat off of the player being pursued. (This usually works well, but you have to be quick because the player is not going to stop running.) I managed to pick off on or two Orc Centurions this way, but my pet paid the price when I picked up an Orc Oracle. I think my pet stayed behind to take on another Orc while I hightailed it back to the guards at the "orc lift" of Kelethin.

The first group of the night started around 10:30pm, consisting of Knaxvos (Human Druid lvl 7), Tirston (Wood Elf Bard lvl 7) as the core group who went up to orc hill. Silvertung (a level 10 Bard) joined the group after we got up to the orc hill and were settled in. The only problem with having Silvertung in the group is that he wouldn't get experience because he was too many levels above us for us to pull in big enough critters. Zaledor (Half Elf Druid lvl 7) joined the group around midnight (just someone who was attempting to storm the orc camp by himself, heh). So it was (2) druids and (2) bards and myself (a mage) at this point. We were all doing pretty good at taking on all comers and even handling bunches of Orc Centurions (about 3-4 at a time). Charcon (Gnome Wizard lvl 4) showed up a little past midnight and joined our merry band. About quarter past 11pm it looked like everyone except Charcon and myself wanted to go up to Crushbone (the zone where the orcs live), so we left the group and I went back to town to sell the stuff that I had looted off of the orcs. The first group of the night was an okay group and it got me most of the way to level 7, but it wasn't a cohesive group (not enough communication, readiness checks, downtime to meditate while someone guarded you).

Coming back to the orc lift after doing my shopping, it only took a few minutes to join up with Ssennum (High Elf Cleric lvl 6). There was a moments confusion until we discovered that he didn't speak English very well, so we were limited to the standard "rdy?", "rdy", "60m" communications. We did manage to hook up with 1 other player at the orc lift, Grinchus (Human Warrior lvl 7) before heading back up to orc hill around 20 of midnight (we asked a few others, but they weren't interested). Charcon (Gnome Wizard lvl 4) showed up again and joined our group for about 20 minutes or so. Grinchus abandoned us around midnight, so it was starting to get lonely up on orc hill with just a lvl 6 cleric, a lvl 7 mage, and a lvl 4 wizard. The group broke up around 10 past midnight, although I think Ssennum stayed behind for a little bit. This group was a little better than the previous one, but we really needed to have 4 members to be effective although none of us died during the half hour.

I just walked over to the other group on orc hill and was taken in by Madyene (a ranger) and Elhar (High Elf Cleric lvl 7) about quarter past midnight. This group had a bit more focus, Madyene was the leader and as a ranger could spot Orcs with her tracking ability (even if you couldn't see them line of sight). We all seemed to be pretty well matched (even though Madyene had her account set to "anonymous"). It was pretty wild, because Madyene would just light out through the woods and Elhar & I would be running flat out to keep up. At first I though Madyene was just running through the woods like a wild woman, doing a random search until I remembered that Rangers have tracking ability. Madyene was having system problems on her end, so Elhar & I had to wait around in the middle of the woods for a few minutes while she logged out and reset her machine. We went back into town to sell stuff and restock once she came back online. Madyene then took us on another wild chase through the forest around the orc camp, ending up around the entrance to Crushbone in the north part of Greater Faydark. We were sorely tested in this section and couldn't keep the orcs off of us long enough to fully rest up (all 3 of us were between 50% and 75% on our health meters). Mana was starting to become an issue for Elhar & I too. So about quarter of 1am we tried to go up along the mountain wall to the right of the Crushbone entrance to find a place to rest for a bit and fix ourselves up, but we were followed by a pair of Orc Centurions and I went down for the count around a minute later. I could see Madyene shouting to Elhar, "Heal vorish", but Elhar was out of mana and was being set upon by one of the Orc Centurions and so I saw the dreaded "LOADING, PLEASE WAIT..." message again.

Madyene dragged my sorry corpse back to the orc lift, while I went through the process of rememorizing all of my spells. It took us until around 1am to run errands, loot my corpse, and get ready to set out for Crushbone (I was feeling reckless). So right around 1am, Madyene started leading us out to the entrance Crushbone, but I got separated and set upon in the middle of another group's battle (I lost track of Maydene and took a wrong turn and a couple of Orcs aggro'd on me and my pet). I was amazed at how much damage I took before going down (almost 160 hit points). Oh, I tried to run, yelling for help every few hits, and Kallend (the person who I think I aggro'd the orc centurion off of) almost managed to rescue me.

Madyene's reaction was classic when she saw me leave the group and then rejoin the group ("Um, what happened?", "died, got separated and set upon", "Oh dear."). Fortunately I was able to get a loc on my corpse from Kallend (who saw me die), so Madyene was able to drag my corpse back to the orc lift again. We all left the game shortly thereafter, but I think Madyene was feeling bad for getting me killed twice in a row like that. Ah well, such is adventure.