Pestilent Soul, Level 19 Hero

Found this horrible thing near Icefist Warren in Troll Country, surrounded by trolls. Having beaten down a level 19 Champion, I figured this would be difficult, but not that difficult. After all, Kipling dinged level 35 and has a shiny new cloak leftover from the Heavy Metal live event! Um. And then it beat me down to the floor, and I fell off a cliff and died. Fail.

Coldsnap

Got him! It's a Snap is now unlocked for Kipling.

Troll Country Exploration

Last night I finally got to game with my boyfriend, but instead of doing productive things like scenarios or quests, we went out in search of a few unlocks and to see what we could see in Troll Country. I'd spotted these Yetis a week ago, and wanted to kill some. So we did:


Close to the Destruction warcamp, we saw an AFKer. Aside from a band of RVR flagged Destro, this was the only other person we saw in the two hours it took to traverse the landscape.



Hung out in some water. I took all my clothes off to see if we got an unlock for skinny dipping. Alas: no. So back on they went.


You have encountered a Wareagle!


Take a look at this monstrosity, it had an eerie "trapped souls screaming" soundtrack emanating from it:


After this, we moved west into what came across as a very unfinished, barren landscape of trolls and icy caves:


I was a little disappointed, because I was hoping to find some history & lore unlocks, or something a little more random, but only came out with encounter/world/25 kill unlocks. And then we found Coldsnap, the champion that would provide the unlock for "It's a Snap!"...


...but only to the person with the killing blow. My boyfriend isn't as bothered (ie: he has a sane mind) about completing his tome. So you can guess who got the killing blow right? And he's a Rune Priest! Dammit! He has the best luck at the moment for drops and whatnot.

I'll be back Coldsnap! Don't you think I won't! And after blitzing through a quest cave (ie: mobs only, nothing interesting at the back) our journey had come to an end. This chap lies beside a large rock outside the cave to the south of Coldsnap:


Would have been nice to have an unlock telling his story, do you think he's a Slayer? And what's a Dwarf doing so far from home?

Through a door, down some stairs...

...hit some red-level Destro NPCs, turn around and run for your life. But stop to take screenshots, because it's a beautiful game. All in the Troll Country oRVR area.

Icepick: Still in Troll Country

I'm still playing a maximum of 2 hours a day at the moment, which sounds like a lot, but isn't really - it's enough for a few scenarios, INF gathering, quests, crash to desktops and a trip to Altdorf to unload my bags in the bank/auction house. The above picture is from the first stage of Chapter 6's Public Quest The Blighted Farm.

Thanks to all the zombies you can pick up a lot of Apothecary water* while you're grinding out INF/doing the three or four quests available in this area. For people who have yet to get this far into the zone: if you've got a group of around 3/4 people, head south a little further, there's an easier PQ there. Why not just do this one? Because at the end, the Hero comes with a Champion and adds that are easily pulled along with him, and it's just a massive headache unless you have two tanks and a decent healer. The recommended number of players is nine, but I think you could do it with six.

[Oh, and while we're here, I need to give a massive shout out to Kyris, who orchestrated some of the finest healing in one of the PQs the other day - if you're on Monolith, watch out for him and feed him treats, his heals are worth more than gold can buy.]

I'm almost ready to move into Ostland, I have to scout around the oRVR area and finish off a quest, but I dinged level 14 so (as with Kipling) I am well on track for levelling. Scenarios don't pop often in the afternoon (which is morning on the East coast), but I was happy to see Pheonix Gate twice today. I think I might spend some time in there + filling my bags with loot to sell before I actively do some more questing. If you're not careful, you can level too fast in this game.

*One of my impossible aims at the moment is to force down the price of water/soil on the auction house, as it's ridiculously high. I don't think I'll be able to do it, but at least undercutting others by several pieces of silver/gold means that I'm guaranteed sales.