EQDiva

ANYONE PLZ HELP ME!!!!!!!!!! am i the only person who finds DL incredibly, impossibly, stupendously, retardedly, boringly, tediously, stupidly, smelly, purpilishly, and not fun after 7-10 lvls there!!!!!!!!!! Soooooooooooooooooooooooo if any of you friendly neighborhood bards have any good ideas on a great place to go on the rath then plz let me know cuz Dl is well..... you get the picture!!!!!!!!!!!! :p Hey kids im just your friendly neighborhood bard! }:) Songweavar Souldrifter bard of the 45th song I reign supreme ina world of fried Brocolli

:mad: i wish i could type, oh well ! Do you like chips?

Try eastern wastes, faction boosts with CoV and Thurg to boot.

A good way to avoid DL altogether is ulthorks in EW. However you will begin to feel the same way about EW rather quickly. Grab your levels and leave as soon as you can. Cobalt scar is another wonderful place to see. Pull the wyverns down to the beach, you will have awesome faction with the othimirs after a day of ulthorks so you will have 0 add issues while there. Only problem with CS is the quad kitting druids/wizards who will run around to aggro mobs with low mana (if they have kei) just to keep others from pulling. Check the hunting guide for other great suggestions on where to be for your level.

I for one have 9 chars and ALL have avoided DL like the plague. There are always alternatives (especially since DL didn't come out unitl the Kunark expansion, and every expansion is meant ot be self sufficient, except PoP). Bards are lucky in that we have SOOO many alternative hunting tactics at our disposal. Here is what I did to go from 1 to 52 in roughly a month of regular playing (I found I love bards). 1-9ish, newbie area, I chose BB, Gfay and CB as I know the area well and wanted to cruise in these levels. Primary fighting style: solo tank 10-14, tried Oasis, but quickly found it difficult fighting over mobs, so I moved to WC and hunted bears, dervs and wisps. More tanking with buffs thrown in, some grouping. 14-20, duo'd with a cleric friend in Paudal Caverns which was uber exp. Did these six levels in about 2 days. More tanking and twisting. 21-28, Marus Seru, is a bit tough to get the hang of, but I did fine duoing, grouping and later soloing. Primarily tanking and fear kiting. Tried to swarm when I could but found Luclin lag impossible to learn to swarm. 29-38, Dawnshroud Peaks, good exp, nice grouping potential but tons of adds, which lends itself to chainpulling. Here I honed my grouping skills and fearkited early on (duoing with a rogue for backstabbing is uber exp). Then learned to chant kite and cranked out a few levels that way when I got chant of flame to go with futils. Very good learning zone. 39-46, started out in EW to learn how to swarmkite, since that's where my druid learned to quad so I knew the ulthorks on a first name basis already. Fast leveling when I learned how to take 8 or so at once, get sow if you are lazy. Then I paused to work on CoV faction killing giants in EW and GD, even swarming the EW giant fort near GD, which was fun. Then I moved to TD to swarm spirocs at around 44 (very late IMHO as bards can easily go there at 39 to learn to swarm). This is where I got a cool guild rep and theme song of "Chariots of Fire" from the train of 15-20 spirocs chasing me around the beach. 47-52, moved to Raptors in TD. Sought after camp by mid 50s quaders, but if you can get it you are set. I did 47 or so til 52 in a week, including 4 AA points. These suckers were UBER exp. With a FT1 earring I had no downtime at Rings (large island) other than respawn time, and minimal downtime if I took both camps cause nobody was there. Now very easy to get to with PoP books and the Translocator Gnomes. 52- I plan to head to PoD to swarm flies, or maybe ME to do toilers, or maybe the Grey to do undead. Right now I'm busy being the only 50+ bard in my guild and PLing a cleric on a second account so I can have a rez'er at my disposal. I know this is a long post, but I thought I'd share my experiences with whomever wants to use it. Yes, I focused more on soloing and swarming than grouping, though I have gotten great experience and weapon-skillups grouping on guild raids. I guess I like planning my own schedule and hate pickup groups for their typical immaturity. Hope this helps someone. I LOVE BARDS! Sinfonian

Yes anyplace can get boring after 7 levels Yes DL can suck sometimes and get tedious Yes Ulthorks are good, I like charming a manticore and ripping them to bits with it (Manticore GOOOD pet) Yes, Raptors in TD can be nice (tho sometimes crowded) At 45 you should be able to entertain the idea of going into KC if grouping is on your mind (and you aren't turned off by KC aftr having been outside it so long) But I can't believe noone has mentioned my favorites for solo in the 40s: Oasis Spectres - solo ALL of them for amazing xps and loot They are levels 33-37 so you can use Song of Siren's for all of them LOIO Bloodgill goblins - pull them in singles or doubles or quads, its all good (tho relatively slow in my experience compared to the miracle that is spectres) OOT - Seafury cyclopses or more spectres (YAY), with Seafuries you can get a side order of Quag Maelstrom with Alluring Horn for epic I haven't tried it myself yet cause I have been having too much fun at all of the above, but there are potentials in Jaggedpine too.