Cleric Finally Hits Stonefield #Rift
stargrace 
I’ve been leveling really slow. I mean, REALLY slow. It’s for a few reasons, the main one being that I haven’t actually played Rift a great amount in any one sitting. It’s a few hours here and there in between playing a lot of EverQuest. As such, I just hit level 25 last night, and myself and Ogur (pictured above) just hit Stonefield when I reached 24. Someone asked me how I managed to stay in Freemarch for so long, and it was quite simple. I did a LOT of rift fights when the game first released. Now they’ve slowed down a considerable amount, I haven’t seen the map crowded like I once did and I find the large invasions have become a bit rare. Whether this is due to my server specifically (I play on Deepwood) or because everyone is crowding the higher level zones thus leaving mine barren, I’ve no idea.
I wanted to make sure I finished all of the quests in Freemarch before I moved on, and I think I managed to complete all of them but two. Those I deleted because I was tired of the same zone, I’ve been there since release, after all. Stonefield is pretty and the quests I’ve done so far are enjoyable. One had me battling gigantic trolls, which really made me feel incredibly small and powerless – which was great. In the same chain I then had to turn myself into a troll and read some glyphs scattered throughout the area – towering above everyone else was a fantastic feeling (until an invasion landed on my head, combat morphs you out of the transformation). Crafting supplies seem a bit sparse compared to Freemarch, but it could be that everyone else has been collecting (except plants, those I found in abundance). I’m finding a new difficulty with playing a priest in Rift fights. When everyone first started the game this wasn’t an issue, because there were no level 50’s running around completing level 20 rifts. I was healing a LOT, and there for contributing a lot. As time goes on I see more and more players above the level of the rift participating in the events – which is fine except that my personal contribution goes WAY down because no one is taking any damage for me to heal.
My only solution has been to switch to my DPS spec (Justicar / Druid / Shaman) and wail away at the mobs. Then when the invasions are over I switch back to my heal spec so that I can keep my tank alive as we plow through our quests. I’m not really surprised at healers having a harder time, the same happens in EQ2 public quests as well, healers are second rate citizens (especially lately, there have been major issues with heals not counting towards contribution) and making a contribution to what is going on always seems hard. My tank friends on the other hand is always way up there in contribution. I would really love to see some sort of magical ‘easy answer’ to this problem but I doubt very highly that one will come.
In the mean time I just try to participate in every single rift and invasion that I see. I’m toying with changing my spec’s around a lot. I find myself not using warden (thinking of switching to druid for the pet but I’m unsure) and on that same note, I’m not fond of the shaman build either. Perhaps that’s a goal for today, to play around with my builds some what and see what appeals to me on a greater level. I love playing justicar for DPS, and I love sentinel for healing but I would enjoy branching out a bit. Then there’s also my 10 scout and 10 mage to level up eventually. For now they’re acting as crafters, I have Stargrace (25 cleric) who is my Artificer / mining / forager – then Kameeko (10 scout) is my Outfitter / butcher / armorer, and Velours (10 mage) is my apothecary / runecrafter / misc (I haven’t decided yet). It’s one more thing that makes me truly appreciate EverQuest where I can focus on ONE character, and work on aa to unlock every craft that I’d like to work on. I wouldn’t have the alts if I could do it all on one.
P.S. WRU player housing. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!