So how did I get down to Ak'Anon in mostly one piece. Well, it was a chance opportunity that I suddenly found a traveling partner (a little gnome called Charcon, level 8 Wizard) who was pining for his homeland back in the Steamfont Mountains. I had been spending a few hours running errands (killing critters, selling the loot, buying spells, going to the bank) around Kelethin and Felwithe, but two of my level 8 spells can only be purchased in Ak'Anon (the gnome's home city). Well, being new at EQ and knowing that I would have to pass through two good sized zones with unknown dangers, I was very hesitant to make the trip by myself the first time (I had never left Felwithe/Kelethin yet). There's nothing worse than getting killed in an unknown territory and having to try and recover your corpse by yourself.

The biggest problem for a caster under level 12 in traveling abroad is that you can't change your 'bind point' (the location where you return to when you are killed). So if you've traveled a long ways and get killed, you have a very long 'corpse run' with minimal weapons and equipment until you can loot your old equipment off of your corpse in the far away land. It's a strategic decision on your part as to how far you wish to attempt to go before finding a helpful caster to give you a new bind point at your new hunting location. (My preference is to travel to the nearest friendly city to my new hunting location and get bound before going hunting.) It's not that you're really running against time once you get past level 5, because your old corpse (or multiple corpses) will stay for about 24hrs of game time (or a week of real-life). So you have plenty of time to make the recovery, but you still have to make the long trip and then find a safe place to loot your corpse (can be difficult to do in some zones).

Anyway, once Charcon and I met up at the Priest of Discord lift in Kelethin, we goofed around for a minute and then made the trek down through Greater Faydark to the entrance to Lesser Faydark. I had reservations about attempting to pass through Lesser Faydark without stopping to recast and requipe my pet after we zoned, but I was assured that he knew a 'secret' path that would get us through Lesser Faydark without any nasty critters munching on us. So Lesser Faydark passed by very quickly and we were into the Steamfont Mountains within 2 minutes.

My first exposure to the Steamfont Mountains was 'wow! look at all the pretty colors!'. Greater Faydark is always clouded over, or misty, or the trees block out the sun (usually all of the above), so it's a lot of green grass, and brown tree trunks and you get very used to it being that way. Lesser Faydark is just a darker version of Greater Faydark (but I haven't seen much of Lesser Faydark). The Steamfont Mountains area on the other hand, has beautiful sunsets and sunrises and sky colors and geysers and gnomish stuff. It's pretty awe-inspiring for a sheltered High Elf who's spent his entire time in Greater Faydark and Felwithe.

Initially, we searched for a higher level player who would do us the favor of binding at the entrance to Ak'Anon, but after waiting a bit we gave up and started hunting up by the 3 windmills. This actually went pretty well, and we even added a passerby to our group so that we could hunt some larger things (like lesser drakes and elementals). We hunted in the open for about an hour before deciding that the two of us (we had lost our 3rd member earlier when he went link dead or LD) would go into the Minotaur Caves (this was not such a good idea with only two of us). Our first pull resulted in two Minotaur Slavers beating the stuffing out of us (to the death). It's funny, I think my pet was still alive, but the Minotaur's had aggro'd on me and I couldn't manage to get any licks in or back away to protect myself in the tight confines of the tunnel. Charcon's last shout was 'GET OFF HIM YOU FREAKS' (I chuckled when I saw that).

Sigh, another 'LOADING, PLEASE WAIT... You have entered Greater Faydark.' message (I ended up back at the orc lift in Kelethin where my bind point was). Charcon was pretty annoyed, I was more phelgmatic about it. So begins the corpse run... which went pretty quick due to my being able to make both of us invisible for a little while so we could travel safely (took us 30 minutes). Charcon did the dirty deed of dragging our bodies out of the Minotaur Caves and we tucked our tail between our legs and headed back to Ak'Anon to beg a bind.

So now I'm bound in a different city (my third so far) and getting ready to explore this strange underground city of Ak'Anon.