DONG! 13 DING! 14 - it's not a good thing to pull a pair of willowisps on Erud's Island and then go link dead before you can direct the battle (plus I was backing up at the moment I went link dead, so my mindless body kept walking backward until EQ decided that I was complete LD and killed the session). I still haven't tracked down why I get these 'bouts' of the machine locking up when playing EQ (it seems to be sound card related, because the sound will suddenly go into a loop), but I fixed it last night by reinstalling my audio drivers. So I spent 2 or 3 hrs last night at abortive attempts to play EQ because my machine would lock up after only a few minutes of play (I don't know how many times my body made the round-trip on the boat while I was off-line). Of course, the worst thing about dying is doing your corpse run, but it's even worse when you get back to where you thought you died only to find that your body has walked away somewhere else. If we had been in the woods, I'd have just run around until I found my body, but it looked like it was out in the ocean (backed right down the beach into the surf) and I'm still afraid of the water in EQ (sharks, nasty fish, drowning). I walked all around the edge of the water, using the summon corpse command (which has a range of about 50'), but was just not getting anywhere. Finally, a kind soul took pity on me and came over to swim in the surf with me looking for my body (she had better luck than I did, plus she still had all of her weapons and armor). I offered her 10pp for her time, but she turned me down.

So I need to work on my swimming in EQ so I don't get stuck in that situation again. It's not really that I mind swimming, but not knowing where my body was really the tough part. I figured I'd have to bribe one of the caster classes with a 'find corpse' spell to come out to the zone and help me find it.

The second problem of the evening came when I was making the run from Qeynos to N Karana to see the gypsies and turn in the 8 Greater Lightstones (GLS) that I had looted off of the wisps on Erud's Island. I made myself invisible outside of the city gates and started the long run, ready to recast invisible when it wore off. In fact, the trip out to N Karana was pretty uneventful and I spent almost the entire W Karana portion making a wizard nervous because he heard footsteps but didn't see anything. (I had tried hailing him early on, but he ignored my tell.) It was a 20 minute run (no Spirit of the Wolf) from Qeynos to the gypsy camp in N Karana. I had made it to the gypsy camp, turned off invisible and was dealing with the gypsy NPCs to turn in my GLS and get a Concordance of Research (which sells for about 8pp) when I got jumped by a grizzly bear.

Okay, replace the word 'jumped' with 'jumped, mauled, crushed, bitten, deaded' and that would accurately describe the event. I made a serious tactical error not immediately casting a pet when I got to the gypsy camp and was going to not be invisible and more. At least I could have aggro'd the bear on the pet while I casted Gate to evac myself. By the time I realized that the bear was attacking me, it had already got in a pair of 20+ hp attacks. I immediately yelled for help (but nobody was around) and tried to cast Shock of Blades or Gate or Invisible (if I could have gotten either of the last 2 off I would have been okay).

So began my second long corpse run of the evening (remember that it took 20 min to run all the way out there). This time I stopped at the bank to get some platinum, stopped at the jeweler for the Malachite to cast my pets and set off again for N Karana (running invisible all the way until I zoned into N Karana). As soon as I got into N Karana, I cast my pet, equipped him and myself with weapons, and started back down to the gypsy camp (trying to look 6 ways at once). There's a lot of 'random death' roaming the N Karana plain, like lions, grizzlies, gryphons, hill giants, so you have to zoom way out on the chase view and keep an eye on the horizon. When I got back to the gypsy camp this time, I was doing my business and watching a critter walk through the middle of the camp every minute (it was do a little transaction, see critter, move to safe spot, wait for critter to finish walking through the camp, go back and do next transaction). In fact, I still got jumped by another grizzly right when I got to the gypsy camp (this time I had my pet out and took the grizzly in a few short minutes). The scary part of N Karana is that there's no place to safely sit and meditate when you're low on mana and in the middle of the zone. So as soon as I finished trading in my GLS for the CoR I gated back to Qeynos figuring I'd sell the CoRs later (in fact I went to Erud's Island where I had better faction with the merchants).

After that I took the boat back to Odus so that I could meet up with Jarius at Kerra Isle which is my next hunting spot. I'm planning on hunting the wharf rats at the docks since I'm still 'indifferent' to the Kerran's, and theres a bit wharf rat that drops a tooth that you can turn in for increased faction with the Kerrans (which is good because I'm planning on killing some Kerrans for particular loot drops) but I don't want to be KoS by the Kerrans. Plus, there's a 20% experience bonus on Kerra Isle (because it's so far out of the way, I'm now as far from Ak'Anon as I figure I can be). However, the one wharf rat cons yellow to me (very risky battle) and I died the first time I took it on (bad tactics on my part). After figuring out a good plan of attack though, I've taken it down 3 more times before I logged off for the night (so it will be really good exp with the bonus and being a yellow).

Once I get up another level or two and have finished hunting Kerrans for the good drops, I'm going back to N Karana to hunt a certain NPC there (who has a good loot drop that I want) and then down to the Rathe Mountains to hunt 'Lizard Man Mystic' creatures that have a nice weight reducing bag. So it will be another week or two of real time before I figure I'll be back in Faydwer.

Vorish of Morell-Thule, High Elf Mage lvl 14