Well, Everquest has become rather static.  With Uqua broken, all we can do
is Ikkiniz raids over and over, taking two days out for Time.  Enthusiasm
has been waning, since progress is stalled and any Ikki stuff requiring a
large investment of time and the near-certainty of multiple deaths.

This boredom has resulted in a certain laxity.  For example, in Phase 3 of
Time our monks routinely pull eight mobs at once.  This makes me pull out my
hair because I'm constantly having to rez and rebuff the people who
inevitably die.  This went to a bit of an extreme when twenty mobs from
Phase 5 were pulled to the raid, wiping it quite effectively.  The pulls
were a bit more tame after that.

This again just emphasizes how bored we are.  I've taken the time to try and
work on some GoD baking - in part to get skill-ups and in part to work on
the faction quest.  By handing certain slaves certain baked items, you can
increase faction with them, which helps with other quests.  I'm a little
fuzzy on the whole thing, to tell the truth, but I'm having fun making the
food and attempting to get skill-ups.

The GoD baking recipes are ones that require multiple subcombines.  I
managed to find *lots* of Tuna, Crab, Hynid, and Cragbeast meat for sale,
more than I'll ever need.  It takes two combines to turn a 15lb hunk of Tuna
to 15 Tuna Meats.  Then I hate to butter-braise them - and I was extremely
perturbed that butter has to be made, it can't be store-bought.  No one in
all of Norrath sells butter?  I could make a fortune in Freeport by opening
Monual's Butter Emporium.

Oh, and I also have to create many lumps of egg batter.  That's not a
problem, however, since they fixed the recipe - used to be that one egg, no
matter what size, produced one egg batter.  Now basilisk eggs will produce
15 egg batters.  And those are easy to get in Lavastorm.

So, I turn a tuna fish into tuna meat, make some butter, make garlic-butter
sauce, use it to garlic-butter the tuna, farm eggs, make egg batter, and now
combine everything... oops, need vegetables.  No problem, where do they sell
those?

Oh, you have to forage them?

FORAGE THEM?!?

How am I, a human cleric, supposed to *forage* ingredients?  I try the
bazaar but there are pitifully few vegetables for sale.  There's a froglok
forager in Gukta who will periodically (read: once an hour) appear and sell
10 vegetables.  I badger my guildmates but very few have been collecting
vegetables - I do manage to cajole two stacks of vegetables from the druids
in my guild, for which I express gratitude.  But that's not nearly enough, I
want to use this as a skill-up, to get over 200 in baking while at the same
time producing large quantities of the quest food to build faction.

Gosh darnit all to heck, how am I supposed to get vegetables?

Way way back when I was looking to get a human GM smith to make some
Heraldic armor for Monual, my continued frustrations finally prompted a
decision that was to consume my playtime for weeks to come: Monual would
himself become a human GM smith.  And he did, and it's been extremely
useful, but it sure took a lot of time and effort.  One simple decision led
to a chain reaction that significantly altered how I played the game.

But I don't regret it, so I decide to make another decision.  I'll just have
to create a druid and get his foraging up to 200 and forage the gosh-darned
vegetables myself.

So, decided, I bring up my second account, the one with Marrtuk on it.  I go
to the character creation screen.  I select a wood elf, male,
Tunare-worshipping druid, dump points into WIS, then put the leftover in STR
so he can carry stuff without complaining.  When it comes to selecting a
name I draw a blank.  I actually put time and effort into selecting
Marrtuk's name, but that was because I planned to play Marrtuk as a serious
alt.  This druid will be nothing but a foraging bot that I could care less
about.  But at the same time I am (very mildy) annoyed when I see names like
Drubot or Rezme or Phroak or any names that show a complete lack of
imagination.  However, I don't want to expend a lot of imagination myself.
=)  So I start with "MonDRU"  and rearrange the letters to come up with
Rudnom.  Good enough.

Then comes the shopping spree.  I seriously twinked out Marrtuk when I
created him but I don't want to do this with Rudnom - I just want him to be
able to get by.  So I set a spending cap of 2K per slot and try to aim for
much less.  I find that 2K can usually get you a halfway-decent piece of
gear, and if someone is selling it for 2K someone else is selling it for 1K.
It takes a long time going slot by slot, and I make a couple of bad
purchasing decisions, buying level-limited items.  But in the end I have a
level 1 druid with over 1K hitpoints unbuffed.

When I leveled up Marrtuk, he started on the same account as Monual so I
couldn't power-level him.  My druid bot will have my cleric's help, however.
It starts by running around Orc Hill casting Mark of Retribution, a 34-point
Damage Shield, on all the mobs.  They die quick and Rudnom makes XP hand
over fist.

Quickly I get him to level 9.  I buy all my spells - slightly staggered by
the number and variety, even at a low level.  Then we trudge together to
Paludial caverns, where Rudnom once again allows mobs to beat on him while
Monual casts the reverse damage shield and heals.  Rudnom shoots up to 14,
and gets (blaring sound of trumpets) Spirit of Wolf.

As Rudnom moves higher and higher, though, the mobs that are beating on him
get tougher and tougher.  And while Monual can cast HP buffs on him, those
buffs wear off after an annoying short amount of time.  I'd rather fire and
forget when it comes to buffing.  Aegolism and Virtue have spoiled me; one
cast, and hours of silence regarding rebuffing.

So, with the utmost reluctance, I decide I just have to do the Temperance
quest.  On the surface it's easy: get one drop, turn it in to one mob.
Monual, solo, heads over to Dulak's Harbor.  My first foray there is a
couple of hours killing mobs on one of the boats.  No XP, no drop.  I go
back a second time, a couple more hours, no drops.  Finally, at long last,
during my third expedition I get the drop I need.  Dangit, if only Monual
could solo better.

Now comes the turn-in.  The mob is a female Erudite spirit that is an
uncommon spawn at a certain point in the Gulf of Gunthak.  I head Monual
there, hoping he has the same luck Marrtuk had when doing the Light of Life
quest, and that the mob will already be up when I arrive.  Nope, just a
placeholder.  I kill it, wait twenty minutes - another placeholder.  I kill
it, wait another twenty minutes, placeholder.  I kill it, wait twenty
minutes -

This goes on for days.

It was annoying as all get-out.  Stupid spirit refused to spawn.  I ended up
binding Monual right at the spawn point so that after raids he could go
right there and camp the mob.  Sometimes other clerics would be camping
there and I would always defer to them or any other cleric that came up and
wanted the spawn - after all, I just wanted the spell so I could power-level
a twink.

I passed the time by getting Rudnom's skills up.  I spent all my training
points on foraging, so I had spell-casting skills, swimming, and tracking to
improve.  I parked him in the Plane of Knowledge and set up a macro that
would cast a bunch of spells one after the other, one from each school -
Divination, Alteration, etc.  A couple of times I got a chanter to cast
Clarity to help with mana regen, but mostly it wasn't worth it since Clarity
would wear off so quickly.  So I also spent a lot of time just medding and
foraging.  I would cheer every vegetable that came up.

Finally the stupid spirit spawned and I got Temperance.  Hooray, decent buff
that would last for a long long time.  I put in a stupidly large amount of
time getting this spell, all in the name of power-leveling so I could forage
so I could bake so I could get skill-ups and faction... man, the
chain-reaction was spreading.

I got back to business.  Rudnom hit 19 and the first of his transport
spells.  Alas the stupid spells were sold all over Norrath - there doesn't
seem to be one single place that sells all the druid spells.  So Rudnom went
through what would turn out to be a ritual of running far and wide getting
his new spells.

It didn't take me long to fall in love with the gate spells.  It's so
terribly convenient to be able to go wherever you want from wherever you
happen to be.  Also, Lesser Succor meant a quick and easy exit from any
dungeon.  That was very useful since we were now XP-ing deep in Sol A.

Levels were still flying by and, in an effort to find easy and plentiful red
mobs, moved Rudnom to SolB.  The kobolds near the entrance proved easy,
although the shamans were annoying.  The pattern I fell into was the same:
Monual would pull with MoR, root the mob, Rudnom would move up and start
attacking while Monual stood back and healed, sending in his hammer pet and
finishing off the mob with a nuke.  It's a semi-delicate balancing act,
since Monual couldn't do too much damage or Rudnom wouldn't get XP.

During one pull, Monual cast MoR on a mob, turned to run back to the zone
in, and got charmed.

*Monual*.  The 65 cleric in Time gear.  Got charmed.  By a mob in Sol B.  To
quote Ralph Wiggum, "That unpossible."

Turns out it is very possible, for staring me in the face is the Fabled
Kobold Noble.  Dangit, I'd thought the Fabled mobs were done with.  But no,
here he is, making my life miserable.  Eventually the charm wore off and I
was able to zone out without incident.  But now I had to avoid that area
while pulling.  Gosh darnit.

Still, the mobs were plentiful enough, and while Rudnom wasn't shooting up
in levels as fast as he used to, he was still making XP at a pretty good
clip.  I started using his track more, and noticed lots of Fabled mobs in
the zone.  Fortunately, only the Fabled Kobold Noble was near the zone-line,
and could be avoided.

During one of my power-leveling sessions, a cleric I used to be guilded with
back in Avengers of Honour asks if I could help them take down the Fabled
Kobold Priest.  I shrug and say sure.  I zone out Rudnom and accompany the
cleric, a 63 bard, and a 65 SK to the Fabled Kobold Priest.  The priest
turns out to be relatively easy, despite being immune to stuns and having an
annoying tendency to heal itself a lot.  I do have to use a lot of mana
helping the other cleric keep everyone alive, because the guy does hit for
about 1K.  When the mob finally dies, everyone cheers the bard, for whom
this kill was intended.  I look at the mob's corpse and the loot makes my
jaw drop:

Fabled Mithril Breastplate
AC 61  HP 90  Mana 75
Str 5  Wis 10  Int 10  Agi 15
Cold/Magic/Poison Resist 12

Holy cow.  Suddenly I'm very interested in this mob; Marrtuk could use that
breastplate.

I go back to power-leveling Rudnom, but now Rudnom keeps track open all the
time to watch for the Fabled Kobold Priest.  The next day, when I log in
Rudnom, there it is:  the Fabled Kobold Priest.  And, luckily, the zone is
empty, so I have no qualms about taking this mob.  I beg my guildmates for
assistance, and a paladin, druid, and bard all come.  I camp Rudnom and log
on Marrtuk and run him over.  The paladin arrives first and, noticing that
the Fabled Kobold Noble is also up, pulls it.  Alas the pally gets charmed
and begins attacking me.  Fortunately charmed melee do pathetic damage and I
simply keep myself heal until the charm breaks; then we kill the kobold.  It
drops a Fabled Staff of Writhing that can be used by int casters; we give it
to the 36 wizard at the zone line who the paladin accidentally killed while
charmed.  Nice way to make amends.  =)

Everyone arrives and we move in.  Again the Priest is easy, and with
everyone in Time gear Monual can keep up the healing easy.  Marrtuk is
actually able to make a contribution, too, with his melee.  The mob dies and
Marrtuk loots the breastplate.  In a way I'm jealous; Marrtuk has a better
BP at 55 then Monual had at 65.  Still, Marrtuk will never see a Time BP so
that will probably his BP for the rest of his life.

That may have been the last-ever Fabled Mithril Breastplate that dropped on
Drinal; a few hours later the Fabled mobs stopped spawning.  A shame,
because I had looked up Fabled drops and had a bit of an interest in the
Fabled Ghoulbane for Marrtuk.  =)  Ah well.

When the kobolds started turning yellow, I moved Rudnom to Lower Guk.  On
the way, I dropped down a ladder in Upper Guk and spied the guildleader of
one of Drinal's Elemental guilds just sitting there halfway down the ladder.
I waved at him, and he sent me tell asking me if I could shrink him.  He was
stuck.  I used my tinkered shrinking item but it was no good; he was still
stuck.  But Rudnom to the rescue!  I grouped him with us and cast Lesser
Succor.  The guildleader was quite thankful.

Getting to Lower Guk turned out to be more difficult than I thought.  Rudnom
had a *huge* aggro radius, and when I brought him to the safe hall a train
of twenty frogs came with us.  Fortunately the SH was empty so I just let
Rudnom die and used AE nukes by Monual to kill them all off.  I rezzed
Rudnom and experimented, and found that if he stayed in the center of the SH
he wouldn't aggro anything, but if he strayed too close to either end he
risked drawing in two or three frogs.

I began my usual routine of pulling a mob with MoR, rooting it, and letting
it beat itself to death on Marrtuk.  I experimented with casting Damage over
Time spells on it with Rudnom, and while it worked it drained his mana very
quickly.  So I abandoned that and went back to letting Rudnom be a
pincushion.

Rudnom got up to 34 and got his new spells.  This required more running
around than usual, as he had to go to Felwithe, Toxx, Thurgadim, and
Steamfront to get everything.  There's one useful spell I want to get -
Spirit of Shrew - but that requires doing an LDoN.  I'm not sure I want to
expose Rudnom to that, as he truly is a twink in the worst possible way.  I
have no idea how to play a druid effectively.  For example, I have yet to
charm a mob.

My druid noobness was highlighted after I got Rudnom back to LGuk and began
again.  Rudnom had been casting Bramblecoat on himself, which adds a 3-point
self-only Damage Shield.  That's all he had been doing.  This time I
accidentally cast Shield of Brambles, which I simply thought was a group
version of Bramblecoat.  Nope; this DS does *12* points of damage.  And
furthermore, it *stacks* with Bramblecoat.  All along I had been casting
only the wimpy self-only DS on Rudnom and not casting the meatier targetable
DS.  Combined with MoR, every time a mob hit Rudnom  they did 49 points of
damage to themselves.

This changed my whole philosophy.  Why just pull one mob when a lot more
could be beating themselves to death on Rudnom?

Well, I found out why not.  It's a lot harder to control the damage done to
a bunch of mobs.  The mobs would still beat themselves to death but Rudnom
would not get the XP.  Through lots of trial and error, which involved a
couple of deaths for Rudnom and close call for Monual, I found that three
mobs were all I could handle.  They could beat themselves on Rudnom and I
could arrange it so that Rudnom got the XP on all of them.

I went through 34 and 35 this way.  Finally I got to 36 and the mobs started
turning yellow and blue and only giving 2% XP per kill.  Not good enough!

So then I took Rudnom back to SolB and the Lava Duct Crawlers.  Alas, these
guys are blue to *Monual* and not really good power-leveling mobs.  It took
too much mana to heal Rudnom.  I did find one method: Monual could beat on
them until they were at about 5%, then root them and zone.  Rudnom would
finish them off with nukes and get the XP.  Using this method, I got Rudnom
half-way through 36.

That's where he is now.  I'll have to find some other way of getting his
levels up; I may give the Aviaks a try.  And I don't know how far I want to
level him.  At 39 his foraging skill will max.  But at 44 he gets the last
of his group gate spells.  And if I get him to 44, I may as well get him to
45 so he can have KEI cast on him.  And if I can get him to 45 where I can
KEI and Aego him, why not get him to 49, his next spell level?  And if I get
him to 49, why not 51 so he can cast componentless Levitation?  That would
be useful.  And if I can get to 51, why not 54 so he can cast Spirit of
Eagle?  And at 56 he can stop the rain.

Argh.

I'll probably settle for getting him to 39 for now.  But I may get him to 45
just so he can have KEI if nothing else.

We'll just have to see how far the chain reaction will take me.  =)