Fast-track 30-60?

[Noxin]

Hi there, new to the forum. My main is a 62 beastlord. He's hitting a peak in power, which means he can solo dark blue cons without much downtime at all. And from what I gather, the power slope is downhill from here. So I'm replacing him with a shaman (because I actually enjoy root rotting). But now I need to catch up to my friend's character so we can go get our kill on again. I'm looking for the fastest way possible to do that without power leveling. The shaman is 31 now.

30-40ish I can do with no trouble in the Great Divide, charming Bloodmaw. I can pull down a level per lesson this way, and with some practice and a little more gonad, I could probably sit on the robo-boar and chain cani and dots to make it even faster exp.

40+ though, I'm lost. It took me ages to get my beastlord to 54, then I shot to 62 and a ton of AAs in no time. I figure hill giants might be a good idea to buy gear for the shaman, but if there is faster experience to be had (especially to the degree I'm getting charming) I'll definitely trade the plat for faster leveling.

Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

[Naluken]

Maybe try Dulak's Harbor, may be tough solo, but since it is a hot zone atm, should be able to find a group.. I PLed a baby zerker from 45 to 49 in about an hour and a half there. Never fought in Stone Hive (the lvl 35 hot zone) so dunno what that zone is like.

[Veril]

At level 41 your shaman can group with your BL. So get your shaman to level 41.

Turn the BL to 100% AA XP and group them up. Kill the same DarkBlues (or even light blues) that you have been killing with the BL. With the shaman to Heal/Regen you there should be no downtime at all and the XP will just roll in. Use the shaman's pet for extra DPS. I'd goto Velks, Seb or Greigs for this. As your shaman gets higher in level get some more spells for him. At level 51 you can get puma (melee proc)

[Noxin]

^ Great idea, but I am an extremely casual player so I only have 1 account. I could group with my friend's 61 enchanter though, which would be about 4 hours per week playtime.

I may stick around in GD past 40 for soloing though. I borrowed my beastlord's Ribbon of Empathy so I can move my nasty little friend wherever I want now. Wonder how he'll do with shardwurms.

Still though, if there is other great experience to be had I'm all ears. I'm familiar with shaman spell lines and strategy and all, but I should get some more practical experience soloing before the stakes get too high. But with vet rez, that's a lower priority than catching up in levels.

[Andune]

I would say that anytime you have the opportunity to kill in a hot zone, go for it. The experience modifier can't be beat. A lot of times, the hot zones are where people that level gravitate, and if you get tired of root rotting, you'd probably have an opportunity for a group.

[Nawty]

Recently I have begun working on a shaman myself, mainly I look into hot zones, at 17 I went to Sol A, then around 28 went to Blightfire til around 37, then Dulak til 48, was very fast, then worked on my 1.0 and ended up in CoM, was fast til 50 but sure I would have hit 51 faster if I moved to higher level areas, though the mobs are light on xp per, the kills are so fast it more then makes up for it. Note I solo'd these areas and remian in Tutorial/Blightfire Gear. I went to Ahkeva at 51 and got 1 blue bub per kill but the kills were man intense and mademe think to head elsewhere, perhaps back to Dulak (curses flask) but try the area with the luggalds. Best of luck

Nawty 69 chanter
Kanvardar 51 shaman
Averinx 46 paladin
ALL Druzzil Ro

[Nawty]

Also to note for levelin the shammy with the bst, I worked my chanter (low 50s at the time) with my old BST (high 60s) doing the DoN faction tasks, just bind your shammy at "wayfarers" camp in Lavastorm, so he/she can grab a new task right after ya finish (Population Control is my favorite for this, because you have a constant idea of how much xp you are getting as you level), not to mention it was good oractice for boxing CC, because if I screwed up, the beast was there to bail the chanter out, Stillmoon seemed pretty good til almost 60

[Noxin]

Thanks for all the feedback so far. I tried Blightfire, but all of the newer zones bog my laptop waaay down, so I need to avoid them I think. I spent level 33 in Kaesora, raking in ungodly experience with a DS potion and maxing my defenses. Not enough mobs to pull without getting healers though. Now I'm putting a dent into 34 root rotting hill giants and understanding how to use the pet as a speed bump. But I seem to do so much running around to root rot efficiently (not getting hit so I have more HPs to canni while the DoTs work) that even rathe mountains is getting my wussy little computer to glitch and stuff.

Due to the wide open spaces killing my laptop, I work much better indoors. Which brings me to a new question. Later on, will I be able to root rot effectively indoors? Part of my reasoning for ditching the beastlord is that his lack of any crowd control makes it hard to explore too deep into most dungeons. But now without the chain stunning pet I'm starting to see how much of a pain all the cleric and shaman mobs I normally shred right through can be. Sure, I can use root to control pulls with the shaman, but that doesn't do much good around healers because I just burn through my mana too fast. Does that continue to be a problem later on? Or is your DPS so high later on that healing mobs still die relatively fast?

[Naluken]

Healers are a major problem, especially if you get more than 2 You can still kill them solo without too much trouble, but it will of course take a lot more mana since they seem to have a huge mana pool and can heal themselves a lot... Best thing to do without stun is DPS as much as possible. I really hate killing them because it usually takes at least 35% more mana / time unless I can continue to stun them with Bash.

[Cronikk]

Aye .. when I'm doing a solo Lesson burn in BoT on my gimpy monk, I weep when the only mob available is one of those damn clerics. I'm pretty much resigned to seeing 6 or 7 CHs go off due to my inability to reliably stun them

[Macnair]

I've always preferred Crystal Caverns for levels 30 to 40. First orcs, then geonids. Both types of mobs are social and will flee at low health, but are easily rootable.

There is a hallway between the bottom of the orc pit and the dwarf town. This hallway has two distinct parts; nearest the pit it is just a hallway with a drilled-through-rock appearance, nearer the town it opens up, has the river near it, and shows more ice. The part nearest the pit has one static guard and wandering miners; you can pull singles out of this area and root rot them easily. As you get more confidence, you can take over the pit area (root one, run, root another one, and drag the train to the dwarf guards to break the pit).

The geonids are in the ramp up to the exit, from the lake at the bottom of Crystal Caverns. They are spaced out enough that you can single them every time. Plow from the bottom; all but the first two flee downhill, so if root breaks early, they will limp into the area you have already cleared.

[Kennar]

Crypt of Naddox has been my spot of choice for the last 60AA's and 5 levels.

I'm still at a point where I can melee, cast four DoTS (Anathema, Bane of Nife, Odium and Curse), have puppy assist and easily hold the Courtyard (near the Campire) and keep it clear of mobs without having much in the way of downtime. It's been great experience: at 55 I was getting between 8-10%AAXP per kill (up to 20% with Lesson) or 2-4%XP per kill.

I shouldn't have leveled to 56, 55 seemed to be the sweet spot there for AAXP, but I was getting tired of grinding out AAs and needed a change of pace.

[Noxin]

[Naluken]

The tougher ships have higher level mobs, also in the caves, deeper in, you can find some higher mobs. I have been staying in Dulak's till early 50's, then heading to Crypt of Nadox for my alts.. Akheva isn't too bad if you can deal with the adds, but it is a long run.

[Vasei]

re: venom - you might be able to speed up xp a bit by using the magic dot for that level (Bane?) instead of poison, especially if it's not running full length. LDoN spell, should be researchable & droppable.

[Noxin]

[Noxin]

Well, I'm 56 now and starting to recognize the power of slow + HoT. I took down the 200-hitting foreman guy (yellow con at 55) in Nadox, and once he was slowed stoicism was plenty to keep me alive and even chaining canni to keep mana up... even when I got a light blue add when he was at 35%. My beastlord wouldn't have had much less trouble doing the same, and he's 65.

I picked up the 64 curse (Bane) in bazaar, along with the rest of the important pre-65 spells, so I'm good to go for a while now.

Question though. What's up with the 56 dot, Bane of Nife? More than double Ebolt mana for less than double the damage? I dropped 1kpp on this thing without researching it because I was excited for more poison dot goodness, and as far as I can tell it's just a mana sucker. Did anybody use this thing to get through the later 50s? Unless I'm missing something, I should just drop it and keep using Ebolt and Plague.