Ding 100 -- Absorbed in King Xorbb

And thus Stingite the Beastlord managed to level to 100 in Everquest. Tada! 

Thanks high-elf healer merc! you're the best.

Just 15 more levels, and I'll be capped. So if I kept at this at the pace of one level per week (not accounting for any more power and internet outages), we're then looking at, what, 3-4 months? Seems like a lot. I don't know if I'm gonna make it to be honest.

This level has been all about two zones really:

1- Good ol' Sarith for the daily level 95 hot zone quest.

2- The Valley of King Xorbb

If, when you read number two you had a knee jerk reaction of "whhhaaaaattt????" because when you used to play Everquest you remember a zone called the "Gorge of King Xorbb" aka the Beholder's maze, then yup! This is the same King Xorbb, just a different, much higher level zone with his name.

Also home to Dabbin Sneakfoot -- a halfling in a bush is better than two in Rivervale

Lemme explain: As it turns out, when all those shards exploded from Cazic Thule being overloaded with power, ol' King Xorbb got a big ol' fear shard of his own and made himself a new valley full of elementals, minotaurs, and snakes . . . and I've been killing them for exp and fun!

Don't be fooled this is no ordinary snake -- it's a yellow-con forest snake!

I haven't even really left the front door of the zone either. I zoned in, grabbed a ton of quests, and just started killing everything around me.  It was pretty great too. All the enemies were white or yellow to me, and, unlike a few of the zones in the Rain of Fear expansion, I could handle these just fine . . . as long as the adds didn't pile up.

Part of the problem was that my cleric two-box, Mr. Bigdeal, was just a few levels too low for this nonsense and his aggro radius was unbelievable. Bigdeal faced many deaths, but it was no matter. He always popped back up and managed to make it work.  While I was dinging 100, he was dinging 97, so just a few levels behind . . . all is well.

There were two particularly nice camp spots that I found at the entrance. The first was off to the right of the zone in just past the wall.  From here it was snake tail, whirlwind goo, and bear butt for days!

Stingite punched sooo much bear butt this level 

The second camp was off to the left of the zone in and in a little pocket behind a tree. From here it was mostly mud golems and minotaurs.

Minotaur Butt . . . it's what's for dinner.

Most of the quests were of your typical "kill 10" variety and would give just an extra tad of experience and gold for completion.  Easy stuff.

I need to go exploring to see what else is around the zone, but when the exp is amazing, why leave!  Especially when I pretty much had the entire zone to myself. Seriously, I never saw another soul in this zone with me.

At some point I'm going to need to be social again, but for now my soloing game is on point. An interesting thing that happened this level was realizing that I should just let the pet tank.  It's a shift for me. Back in "the day," I was pretty raid geared out and sitting pretty, so I was taking the tank role for my moloing group, but now I'm realizing how under-geared I am, so now I just really need to let the pet tank.

So here's how my typical mob kill goes:

1- If there are clusters of mobs, pacify with the cleric, then pull with a slow debuff.

2- if there's a single mob,  pull with a slow debuff.

3- As soon as the mob bites me once, the pet grabs aggro.

4- Cast a damage absorbing ward.

5- Recast the Slow debuff if it didn't stick.

6- Get the Beastial Evulsion and Growl "songs" burning to keep the pet nice and healed.

7- Cleric merc does her thing.

8- Tap my two melee damage skills and turn on attack.

9- Cast up a Howl at the moon mini-pet to do some steady damage.

10- Swap over to my cleric and cast a mark debuff on the enemy and a hammer pet.

11- big nuke, stunning nuke, big nuke.

12 - Swap back to the Beastlord and re-tap all the melee skills.

13- If aggro is high in comparison to the pet, Chromatic strike or roar to lower aggro.

14- Cast a couple nukes from the beast or tap a hotkey AA skill for kicks.

15- Back to the cleric for another big nuke, stunning nuke, big nuke combo.

16- Burn the mob down on Beastlord.

Seems to work great.  If I get a second mob, then there's a bit more dancing around as I get the slow debuffs placed on both mobs and join the pet in focus firing on one mob while the cleric mercenary off tanks and takes some hits for us.  It's surprising how durable she is.

That's a butt that's old as the hills and twice as crusty

Wash, rinse, repeat.

If I'm lucky, I don't get bored with this and get into the game's flow. If I'm unlucky and I am bored, I just collect the overseer tasks and log out.

I'm going to need to explore a bit more this next level. Valley of King Xorbb entrance was easy peasy, but I either need to head in deeper or I'm going to need to escape the monotony. I hear there's some good goblin hunting further in . . . maybe that's my next stop.

Happy Dueling!