Journal Entry #3

Hey everyone welcome to my third leveling journal!

Levels gained this session: 43-61 (I've got a lot of ground to cover).
Feat Spec Used: Click HERE for feat build.
Groupings: Solo


At level 43 I was off to Fields of the Dead, on our server it's also known as "Fields of the Disconnect" due to performance issues in the zone, but I was one of the lucky few to avoid them and enjoy the zone to its fullest. Upon entering I found a couple camps of NPCs near the beginning with some fairly basic quests, "kill 20 of these", "destroy 3 of these" etc... As I moved through the zone I began to mark on my map potentially good grind spots. Questing here is great and the best part of the zone is the amount of mobs on the road. As you run through just grab the wolves, humanoids or whatever you can then stop to put up storm field, and idol and HoT up and watch the XP flow! In the eastern region of the zone, designed for mid to high 40's, you'll find the lookout camp, a settlement with it's own rez point and quests. If you reach the area in the mid 40's as I did, all of the quests may not be open to you, but fear not, you are already nearby a lucrative grinding spot! Head off the back hill of the settlement (carefully) and drop down. You'll find a bunch of 47-49ish mobs named "Atzel Ranger" and "Atzel Thug". These mobs can be a little bit rough at 45-46 so you want to only grab 2-3 at a time. Make sure your heals are all applied before running in then set up quick because you can't outlast the damage forever. Although it can be rough to get the hang of, the re-spawns are quick and each mob can net you nearly or just over 1,000 xp. Tip: If the area is crowded switch instances and go back again for better xp. After I was in my higher 40's I gathered the quests I could from the lookout camp and headed south to complete them, which is where I stayed for quite a while. Here you'll find TONS of werewovles and undead mobs your level. The xp is simply great, between the quests you get here and the grind xp, you'll have no problem raising yourself up to 50 or 51, at which point you'll be ready for...

Eglophian Mountains (or something of similar spelling :))... You'll get to them by leaving via the east side of the FotD map. Once you enter, grab the quest or two at the first camp, do them, then head down the road to the main town. I'll warn you now some of this zone is simply mind numbing, you will grind, and grind a lot, but you're a ToS so who cares?! One thing to note about this zone is that while there ARE some decent quests, many of them are not standard in that they are repeatable, but only give 5,000 xp per turn in as opposed to the 15,000-30,000 one time turn in of other quests. At first I tried to repeat these but I soon realized travel time (or dying and rebuffing time) simply made it not worth the effort. The main rule of this zone: Grind as much as possible and just do quests if they're on your way. The only place I really WENT specifically for quests was the cannibal caves, which turned out to be awsome xp for the low 50's. Here you can complete a couple quests and kill AoE packs of mobs each dropping for 750-850 xp per kill (not including chain kills). For me this zone was a grindfest and as such I'm not going to document every kill but I'll outline many of the major grind spots for my for levels 50-58.

--> Cannibal Caves: mobs of level 54'ish
--> White hand camp just east of cannibal caves, mobs 53-55
--> Apes and random cannibals, mobs of anywhere from 54-59 in a ravine that runs north-south just west of cannibal caves.
--> HUGE Vanir Camp west and southwest of the "Mountain Hunting Lodge" rez point, mobs level 58-60.

These were the main spots I used to get myself up to 58, even though some parts were boring, XP is good and you can blast through this zone in 1 day or less of solid playing.

At 58 it was suggested I head to "Thunder River," and so I did :) To get to Thunder River you must first enter Poitain (I entered this via a teleporter at the outcast camp in the northwest corner of Wild Lands). After entering Poitain follow the main road all the way to the edge of the map to enter Thunder River. Once inside I found myself with only a couple red quests, but fear not, some of the best grinding I've encountered so far is coming up! You can complete these quests solo just by AoEing the mobs needed. After that you are going to want to grind the humanoid mobs near your quests all the way until 60, it may take you a couple of hours but it's worth it and at 60 you get an amazing spell which I'll outline in the highlights section at the end of this. After you are 60 you have 2 choices for this zone, either continue to grind the humanoid mobs, or kill boars. I opted for the boars since the human area was getting cluttered with other players and there was only one instance of the zone. The boars are found down the road from the humans and are level 63-64. They are tough so you'll only want to have a flow of 2-3 at once, any more than that will probably overwhelm you. These boars are excellent because there are several fields of them, the respawn time is fairly quick and they give you a whopping 1600-1700 xp per kill! After hitting 61 I logged off to write this journal, but I now plan to head to Atzel's approach to level up a bit there until more quests open up for me in TR.

HIGHLIGHTS: My spec obviously changed a lot as this journal covers close to 20 levels. My main spell rotation used is still to HoT up, run in before applying storm field, storm crown and dropping an idol. The strategy seems affective and with well placed heals you can manage a good sized pull of mobs above your level. I also received "Vital Shock" from my feats. This spell is a quick cast (1.5 seconds) and not only shocks your target for about 300-400 damage, heals you for a few hundred hp, restores your mana AND restores you stam. It has a 1 min or so cooldown so you can't use it a lot but it's awesome for a close save or finishing a mob off quick.

CALL LIGHTNING: At 60 you gain the spell "Call Lightning," this spell helps a ton and is great for getting chain kills (and thus increased XP). Call lightning takes a couple seconds to cast and is on a cooldown of about 40 seconds. The spell has a chance, (in my experience about 75% for each mob or higher) to hit anyone near you for 600-1500 damage. Wow! The spell is great because now you can take even larger AoE pulls, I use the spell both as a finisher and as a way toget big pulls down quick, making it much easier to keep my HP up above theirs'.

Hope this helped some of you ToS's out there and thanks for reading!

Settar