"Do not meddle in the affairs of magicians, for they are subtle, and quick to anger."

Took my first boat ride to the main continent of Antonica and back over the weekend. Charcon had this idea that the two of us could travel to the Desert of Ro or the Oasis of Marr to do some hunting, however a level 9 Gnome Wizard and a level 12 High Elf Magician is not a big enough or strong enough group to adventure there in anything that would remotely be called safely. We both perished with 30 minutes of hitting the Oasis of Marr zone before I decided to call it quits for the night and head back to the town Freeport to camp. When I logged in the next day, I immediately took the boat back to the continent of Faydwer where I was more comfortable with the surroundings (and the dangers).

I spent most of the weekend either doing the 'tourist mage' thing or keeping an eye on the young ones up on 'orc hill' in Greater Faydark (loc +1900,-100). In fact I spent quite a while on Saturday night up there rescuing people or helping out groups that had been overrun with 'adds' (additional critters that jump into an existing fight). The high point of the evening was chatting with Calasandra (a level 35 Paladin) who was also keeping an eye on the little ones attempting to take and hold the hill. She gave me a few pointers and then suddenly bestowed a give of 30pp on me for my good deeds (I had earlier explained that I was 'farming' orc hill when it was deserted in order to get loot that I could sell to finish buying the rest of my level 12 spells at 7pp each). So between selling the loot and the generous gift from Calasandra, I made about a 50pp profit (which is more money than I'd ever seen) in the space of a few hours (I made 15pp or 20pp just on selling Crushbone Belts to players who needed to do a faction quest).

The rest of the time, I spent wandering around Steamfont Mountains, Greater Faydark and Butcherblock Mountains looking for things that were worth killing for experience. As a level 12, there's not much left that a solo player can take for experience. Most of the upper level critters are in camps or in caves (like the Minotaurs) and it's too easy to pull multiple critters and get in over your head if you're not hunting in a group. The few good solo spots are usually camped (like the chessboard in Butcherblock Mountains).

The scariest moment in my poking around the dark corners of Butcherblock Mountains was when I stuck my head into a valley in the middle of Butcherblock Mountains and was immediately jumped by 3 Enraged Goblins (which con'd red to me). I didn't even know they were there before they started attacking me and my pet (my pet had one, I had two). As soon as I considered them and saw that they were way above me (which is what 'con red' means in EQ lingo) I started casting Gate to do a quick evac. It took 24 seconds of battle before I started casting Gate (very slow reflexes) but I was lucky and the spell went off without a hitch and I popped back to my starting location with only 20% of my hit points left (funny thing is, my pet was still alive when I gated). I then spent a few minutes sitting up on the platforms in the city of Kelethin catching my breath and bandaging my wounds.

I did meet up with Charcon when he returned to the mainland, but we couldn't find a good place to hunt in Butcherblock Mountains and I wasn't ready to go back to Steamfont Mountains. Charcon was also in a mouthy mood, doing zone wide shouts of 'GNOME POWER' which would tick off the local dwarves who would then shout 'DWARF POWER' (I was starting to debate disbanding the group and putting him on my /ignore list). However, Charcon went link dead while we were exploring the mountains so I spent the rest of Sunday afternoon soloing Butcherblock Mountains.

About 2:30p or so, I decided that it was time to wander back into Greater Faydark, and perhaps stick my nose into Crushbone and see what it was like. You have to understand, after a magician zones, it takes a few minutes of concentration to recast a pet, equip the pet, get my spells in order and make sure that I'm ready to travel. So I'm very much concerned with caster matters after I zone and don't pay attention to anything else for a few minutes. (Sorta like the time between I get up in the morning and I have that first cup of coffee.) I also have learned to travel in 'role-playing' mode which indicates that if you want something from me, you had better ask nicely and speak like the character that you are playing; also, the upper level caster classes tend to get begged to death by lower level players looking for buffing spells or asking to have their bind points set in the new location. As a result, upper level players tend to travel incognito in order to have some peace and quiet. (Come stand in the middle of Greater Faydark and listen for the shouts of 'I need a sow' or 'I need a bind' from all of the beggars.)

Sure enough, as soon as I got into the Greater Faydark zone (and I'm sitting in the entrance doing my new zone habits), I get accosted by a dwarf who says 'Leaving my mountains so fast?'. I sorta opened one eye to glare at him and went back to my meditation and flipping through my spell book. He persisted though ('Tired of the skunks?' ... 'Hey'), so without looking up from my spell book I said 'not much that still gives exp' (in answer to why I was leaving his mountains). As a High Elf, it's my duty to despise small mouthy dwarfs, especially ones who interrupt me when I'm going about my caster affairs (that mere mortals know nothing of). I saw that Qpdaj was travelling anonymously, so I did consider him but saw that he came up green (at this point, I had him pegged as a probable beggar and was looking to get rid of him). He continued to persist, 'Don't get too friendly, bro', (I'm getting more annoyed at this point). I replied 'what are you going to hunt here in our dark woods?' (trying to stay in character). He replied 'No, I'm still building up in my mountains. Though I'm sick of skunks.' to which I replied 'you may want to try orc pawns on for size (or even get into a group up at orc hill)' (again, I was still trying to get rid of him so I could finish my zone preparation). Then came the begging 'I'm only level six, and I need a decent weapon. I'm saving my pennies.', so I told him to hunt Orc Pawns and Orc Centurions who would drop weapons or stuff that he could sell. This whole conversation that I was trying to ignore went on for almost 5 minutes before I mentally translated the name 'Qpdaj' into 'Quilpuuxla Daj' which is my brother's online alias. (Finally, the light bulb clicks on ... told you I was not really paying attention. I didn't even know that he had started playing the game.) I gave him an escort to Kelethin and a bind at the 'orc lift' on the north side of town (for free, the normal donation rate is approximately the players's level divided by 3-6).

Later on that night I did some spotting (watching him fight, taking the adds when he pulled too many) and found his corpse once and taught him a few of the ropes (like knowing to have a hot key mapped to the /yell and the /loc commands so you can get help and find your corpse later, in fact it's best if your 'Yell' hotkey does both commands at the same time, just put the two commands on separate lines when you edit the social button). Greater Faydark has very few landmarks (mostly all you can see are trees and more trees, you never see the sky or distant objects) so if you don't know the location of where you died, it can be a long drawn out process to find your corpse (unless you can beg a cast who has corpse finding spells to help you search).

I did visit Crushbone, but my pet had serious pathing issues. Instead of sitting calmly in front of me, it would pace back and forth and when I would move from point A to point B it would travel through C, D, and E to get to me. Maybe it was just freaked out due to being so close to Lord Crush (the evil high level Orc in the castle), but a skitzy pet is not a good thing when you're wanting to solo an area that is crawling with Orcs who will gang up on you. I've already died once before because I started a fight, gave my pet the command to attack and then realized that my pet was taking a long detour somewhere else in the zone (I immediately concentrated on nuking my target as fast as possible instead of conserving my mana). So I won't go back to Crushbone unless it's part of a group who understands that I will need to have time when we get to the hunting point to cast and equip my pet because I can't travel with it through the zone.

It was dissapointing to watch the action up on 'orc hill' in Greater Faydark last night. None of the young ones had the common sense to form a group and sit on top of orc hill and have a single puller 'pull' the orcs up to the top of the hill. In fact, there were between 3 and 10 young players running all around creating trains and doing a good bit of dying (and losing experience) when if they had formed a group, most of them could have gained a level within and hour or two. My brother tried a few times to get into a group, but I don't know if he ever succeeded. The key point to remember is, if you don't learn good grouping skills at the lower levels, nobody will want to group with you at the higher levels (where you have to group if you want to gain experience at a decent rate). In fact, the first 20 levels are when you make all of your friends (or at least a list of people who will seek you out for groups). Doing a group up on orc hill is also the best fun that you can have as a level 5-8 player, the kills come quick (at 5:1 odds or even 5:3 odds with a pair of adds), the experience racks up fast, there's very little downtime because nobody is getting beat to death. The thing that usually breaks up a group on orc hill is having to head back to town because you're encumbered with all of the loot (the better groups start taking turns, sending one player back to town at a time while they stay and fight). Sigh I may need to spend some time up on 'orc hill' tutoring the young ones in the reasons to group.

Another thing that young players seem to not know is that upper level players will stand and watch you die unless you '/yell' for help (in fact, you may want to yell early and yell again in a few seconds). The reason for this seemingly cold-blooded 'stand and watch' behavior is not because it's fun to watch a young player die (in fact, upper level players have vivid memories of being on the wrong side of a 3:1 encounter), but because if they step in and kill those 2 or 3 critters that are ganging up on you they'll likely do the most damage and you'll get zero experience for the kill. (Less pleasant players will then berate the elder player for stealing their kill (or 'KS' kill-stealing), when the elder player was just trying to keep the younger player from dying.)

I was watching a fight back when I was a level 9, and this solo warrior was getting added on every few seconds. He was managing to take everything, but I was watching his health bar drop after each orc and it was looking like he was about to finally lose it (he was down to around 20%). I kept waiting for him to yell and finally just gave in and nuked the last Orc off of him so that he could catch a break in the action. He was not happy for the help and he did not have the courtesy to express his unhappiness in a considerate way. So now, he's on my list of people who I will watch die, even if they yell for help (I remember his character if not his name).

So now, I usually just stand by a fight, perhaps sending the person a '/tell' that if they need help that they just need to '/yell'. It's usually pretty easy to tell whether a player is going to pull it off or not by watching the health bar of the creature that they're fighting and the player's health bar. In fact, I've had better success with this method with the younger players because it lets them know that someone is watching but won't interfere and what they need to do to ask for help. The next time you're fighting something hairy, don't be surprised if you see a higher level player standing and watching, waiting to see if you're smart enough to know when to yell for help. I watched a lot of players last night that seemed to prefer dying than yell for help (or form a group to take on a camp). I would be willing to bet that either they will never get into a group situation, or if the do form a group with others like them that group will end in disaster more often than success. But then, maybe that's just my feelings on how to be a good group member.