Daring Death at the Everfrost Newbie tunnelFollow

This isn't a change, it's something I had forgotten was like this as it has been so long since I started a barbarian character: the mad social aggro of the level 1-3 critters just south of the zone into Halas. This is the area a newb barbarian is supposed to push those first few levels. Wolves and bears help just about everything it seems. It's fun and I suffered my first death on Lockjaw server when my little rogue couldn't make it to the guards.

How does this contrast with other super-low newbie areas though? I'm probably not running every combo to check but here's my recollections, perhaps warped by time:

Crescent Reach (modern zone) is cake. Not sure if anything assist until past level 6. Mountains of Rathe, Shar Val, areas just outside Cabilis, most of 1-5 Gfay are all easy to my recall. Gfay is all about picking targets and staying away from orcs you can't handle... that's when I have needed the guards there in the past.

Nektulos can be tricky if you get away from the Newbie log as their are nasty pockets all over the place. Trolls are almost better off getting a level or two in town before going to Innothule, but that's because of the runners in the water leading you to harder baddies really.

Hmm... is anything as "hard" as level 1-3 barbarian newbness? Granted I haven't got level 2 yet --that changes everything!

The human cities (Freeport, Qeynos) have newbie gardens that don't even require zoning. Likewise for Paineel's newbie garden which is so small that it's impossible to NOT be near the skeleton guards. Erudin, by contrast, sends your night-blind chump out into the dark forest to seek out bats and skunks. Good luck!

As I recall, Everfrost's challenges weren't just the aggro, it was getting disoriented in the canyons, in inability to take a wide berth around "tough" mobs (again, canyons) and the relatively long hike to guard safety. Plus it was "outside" -- no one was going to train a puma on you in West Freeport because those spawned past the zone line in EC. But an unlucky level 3 sap in Everfrost was vulnerable to getting a Soloist dragged over him -- in fact it was likely because, yet again, canyons.

Forgot about those. I only ever leveled two characters from Qeynos. Back when I started playing on Saryrn, North Freeport was the high end market zone and E. Commons was the newbie/mid tier market zone so Freeport was a bustling city in PC traffic versus the quiet of Qeynos. I preferred playing as a city mouse rather than a country mouse

Freeport just had that lame fake Orc Centurion who was level 4.

I remember GFay varying a lot. The Felwithe newbie yard area was pretty safe: you had to go pretty far to bumble onto the higher-level orcs, and if you did bumble into one, it was easier to drag it to the guards at Kelethin than all the way back to Felwithe. This meant that you usually wouldn't get trained by some unlucky sod who'd just found out the hard way that Orc Centurions were much more dangerous than Orc Pawns.

Kelethin, OTOH, was trickier: you were closer to danger, there were a bunch of lifts so it's easy to get turned around, and it's entirely possible to be under the city, steps from safety, and still unable to see your way clear. A lot more orcs roamed near there, and they were social as anything. Plus, if you were a half-elf, good luck actually seeing anything.

Edited, Sep 24th 2015 3:03pm by nekotenshi0

Probably just not as aware. I distinctly recall accidentally running into all sorts of things with my first character (like say a fully spawned goblin camp, which was where I learned the difficulties of corpse recovery). With later characters, I rarely died at low levels, and certainly not in the newbie areas. Deaths usually involved trying to move into areas that were more dangerous, but knowing they were dangerous, as opposed to just bumbling around like I did on my first character.

Oh. And a bit of trivia for you all. The original EQ rulebook that came with the game had a misprint in the con values. Yellow and blue were reversed. Which I'm sure contributed to my first character dying a lot (until I figured it out). Around levels 3 or 4, this meant thinking you were fighting something weaker than you, but actually fighting something that could be as much as twice your level. Ooops!

Surefall Glade's newbie yard could be a real interesting time as it's Qeynos Hills -- or a fun run to North Qeynos's newbie yard. How many lowbie deaths are Varsoon the Undying and Opal Darkbriar responsible for?

I did a crappy job of pitching just how good that item is (also most of the starter item quests are not active on the TLP).

This one gets you a neck with useful stats (+1 WIS +3 Mana 3 AC) when most of my TLP characters are wearing "Cloth Choker" (1 AC) and happy to have it (uphill both ways).

That enough would make it great, but it also summons a (norent) hammer (32/6) which is nearly Fine Steel Warhammer (30/6) good *and* Bane DMG: Undead +3 (*cough* Soloist *cough*).

So basically ideal for untwinked Level 1 Barbarian Shaman (who will be Level 2 for turning in this quest...).