I was a little confused yesterday. The level 20 hot zone is Stonebrunt Mountains, which makes sense. You head there and the mobs are yellow and higher near the warrens at level 15, so level 20’s can easily gain experience there in groups, or with mercenaries.
The level 30 hotzone is The Overthere. At level 20, the entrance to the zone around PoK and heading up towards WW is pretty easy to gain experience off of. The mobs around these areas are blue at level 20.
Now the level 25 hot zone is currently Crystal Caverns. This zone is a huge pain in the arse to get to, for one. You have to run from the Great Divide, to the Eastern Wastelands, and then walk through a camp of VERY red and mean angry giants. If you’re not one of those lucky classes who comes with invisibility (or if you haven’t picked up your spells yet) and have no means to potions, this makes for a very difficult run. Thankfully my group managed to train there. We didn’t want to gain experience in The Overthere because – lets face it – due to the ease of the zone, everyone goes there. Yesterday there were 10 people in small clusters scattered through the zone.
So Ninga (also known creatively as Bardface in this scenario) and myself trained to Crystal Caverns – made it to the entrance, where the mobs at level 23 were bright red. They continued to remain red, and are still red at level 27. Zam even suggests the zone as level 30-45 rather then the level 25 hot zone that it’s become. It must have once been the level 30 hot zone because there are multiple types of augments that drop from mobs – and one of them is required level 30.
Now, don’t get me wrong here the experience was amazing. We also died a lot from wipes, being unable to snare the glorious Ry’Gorr creatures that pathed the hallways. Then there was one amazing wipe as I had my ranger on autofollow and she decided to randomly veer off of the edge of a cliff and fall to the depths below, I peeked over the edge to try to get an idea of where she had fallen, and promptly pulled up 10 more mobs onto the group. We decided to bee-line it for the zone out, but I couldn’t remember the way to get there since I had never even been to the zone before yesterday.
Ah yes, it was an amazing time.
That’s exactly why I’m playing EverQuest right now. It’s everything I love about the game.
We didn’t bother getting our corpses back from that foray, since experience is plentiful at lower levels. The paladin reached level 27 and about 70% into it while the ranger is just a little shy of 27, sitting at 26 along with Bardface. I have 7 levels worth of spells to purchase on both characters, thankfully paladins and rangers get significantly less then the usual casters I play.
It was a great weekend.
Before playing on the alts we did attempt another LDoN raid with our trio, and we decided to attempt the Guk one again. We did pretty well, making it past the 2nd named that sends you spinning out of control (often) if you have low alcohol tolerance. Of course Minxes (the necromancer) didn’t make it through that fight, but everyone else did which was great.
Then we attempted a yellow (at 74) con mushroom who gradually weakens in power the longer you fight him. The tank died pretty much on incoming, not his fault. It went down hill from there and we called it a day on those. Before we headed there we did spend a bunch of time in Dreadspire which is the level 75 hot zone – and completely empty. Everyone seems to hang out in the level 70 hot zone which actually has higher level mobs then Dreadspire. We camped the ballroom and farmed two names that spawned there, they dropped multiple glowing runes that I can turn in for my spells. The necromancer finally obtained all of her level 70 spells, and the enchanter has one of hers (so far). Next one will give group haste (woohoo!) and the one after gives group mana regen. Both of which I’m looking forward to. Aside from the glowing runes, we also managed to snag me another pet focus item! This one is a 25% bonus, 5% better then the previous one.
The enchanter hit level 72 and is about 50% into her level, the necromancer reached level 74! I’m almost (almost) only 10 levels away from the current in game cap. I decided to turn my achievement experience to 10% only for the next little while. I’d love to finally be at the level cap in game – I’ve never actually reached it before. Typically another expansion always comes out. I realize that it’s quite a climb to get to 85, but I’ve managed to hit 74 in two weeks so I think it’s do-able before the next EverQuest expansion comes out. We’ll see how it goes though. The enchanter doesn’t have Seeds of Destruction on her account, so level 80 will be her cap unless I can get myself a copy of that.
I’ll have to look up the spells for each of them, as well. It never ends! Hope everyone has an amazing Monday! See you in Norrath.
stargrace 
Yesterday was relaxing, and a great time to play alts. The paladin, ranger, and bard were all hovering around level 26-27 and so we decided to head to Crystal Caverns again to gain experience. The zone was great, except eventually I knew it would happen. One of the mobs would run off too fast for me to land a snare on, and before we knew it there were 50 (it felt like it at least) of the mobs on us and we wiped.