Thursday, May 29, 2008

The Leveling Plateau (Part 2) - (60-72)

Let's see here, we left off at level 60. You just grinded your heart out in Eiglophian Mountains and are finally feeling the freedom that is level 60.

You're 20 levels away from 80 and only 10 levels away from your top feats, FYI.

When you hit 60, regardless of class or spec unless you saved your points up you should probably respec and take full advantage of all of your newly accessible feats and you can spec towards your end-game build as the level 70 feats are one pointers.

Level 60-63: Thunder River (West Side)
To start off, do the initial quests on the west side of the zone. Once you've completed the few delivery quests I would suggest grinding on the 62-63 humanoids that have a repeatable quest (Scoundrels and Brigands) in the first two camps south of town. Unlike my previous guide in Eiglophian where dying to re-obtain the repeatable quest was profitable, the repeatable quests here require you to kill too many mobs (20 of each) that are inconsistently placed. Here I want you to simply grind out those 2-3 pulls with chain kills and *when* (not if) you die, grab the repeatable quest if you have it completed. At 62 move a little further south to the 63-64 boars or if you're feeling saucy the 63-64 humanoids (Chaplains and Occultists) which are slightly more difficult.

There are wanted posters for each of these initial 3 "grind spots" (Scoundrels & Brigands, Chaplains and Occultists, Boars), so when you pick them up you can see clearly on your map the progression of grinding going from northern to southern.

Level 63-65: Thunder River (East Side)
Head to the east side of Thunder River, to the second town there, pick up the quests and head out to kill Picts. Your primary source of experience here will be grinding Picts while doing the quests in this area. As an alternative you could head to Atzel's Approach and I would strongly recommend it once you finish the first line of quests, but you *can* grind to 65 on the eastern side of Thunder River if you can handle the archers and casters.

Level 63-65: Atzel's Approach - Quests
The alternative to the eastern side of Thunder River (which can be brutal with the archer/caster mobs) would be the beginning quests in Atzel's. They yield a fair amount of experience and involve killing level 61-67 mobs which are right around your ballpark. These quests along with some grinding which you can do on the Troglodytes, Worms, or Atzel humanoids, should take you to 65.

Level 65-70: Atzel's Approach - Grinding
The real grinding in Atzel's starts around 65-66 and can become quite tedious and boring. I would suggest grinding where you find the Atzel Watch/Warden mobs for the appropriate wanted poster. This area is the western/northern part of the zone and I believe the teal dot is labeled Skrammestein or something along those lines.

Huge tip: Get the resurrection point near the bridge of blood as you will die often here whether it be from roaming players or over pulling archers and casters..

Here you'll be killing level 66-69 melee, caster, and archer mobs. If you're at the lower end of this spectrum I would avoid multiple pulls with casters or archers unless they are right next to each other. Go ahead and pull those melee and keep grinding it out. The mobs respawn fast and if you go in the fort slightly north of the rez point there is a quest and relatively quiet grinding compared to the "outside" camps.

Level 70-72: Atzel's Approach - Atzel's Fortress
At level 70 you want to head to Atzel's Fortress. Here is where you'll find level 73-75 mobs and they'll give you a lot of experience. Like all of the other areas in Atzel's Approach you're looking at multiple mob pulls, using potions often, and line of sighting archers/casters to get them close so you can kill them.


AOE Grinding:
If you know people who want to level with you, especially AOE/healer classes, INVITE THEM! From 68-70 I was literally earning *double* the amount of experience I was earning solo farming in a group of 5-6 farming Atzel's Fortress. It's not difficult to find a group and you can always have the highest level person apprentice the others. Looking at around 1 million+ experience per level going to 80 with quite a bit of grinding, having the company helps as well.

Competition:
Just FYI, there will be competition for spawns and you will get killed if you're on a PvP server, at some point. Check the top right corner / instance selection and look for a new instance to pop up. Last night on Tyranny we had two and a lot of heartache was saved just by switching instances.

1 comment:

Pzychotix said...

How do you reach these two zones?