Hi
As a newb, its hard not to feel a little intimidated by the
discussions here. I am in AWE of you people even though I don't
understand half of what you say. I long for the day when I can talk
about the finer ponts of EQ like you guys.

For the moment I have a love/hate relationship with EQ after playing
for about two months or so. Its a type of game I have never
experienced before - I am totally fascinated and mildly (well, at the
moment!) addicted. The game boths thrills and scares me. I find
myself nervously approaching the PC every night mentally preparing
myself for the dangers ahead. Once I'm in, I am immersed. GET THAT
LEVEL UP is my only goal.

When I levelled 10 I knew that I was going to have to deal with REAL
dying and corpse retrieval. Boy, that was - and still is - a
learning experience. The first few times I got so depressed that I
vowed to give up and cancel my subscription. But I crawled to lvl 11
and am much more careful about conning.

By nature I am not a team player so grouping is still a bit alien to
me although I realise its the only fast way to get xp. But too often
I find myself in groups that just gung ho for everything in sight
hitting anything that moves (= Excelsis having to retrive his corpse
ONCE more in some weird, out of the way loc).

Can I ask you guys some questions? I reckon a 1/5 bub a night is
pretty average to aim for. That would lvl me up once a week. Is that
the norm? How long did it take you in the beginning?

I have tried to solo in Black Burrow but that is well nigh impossible
on your own. Grouping is the only way but I HATE that place so much
it makes me so nervous to go there. I am soloing in West Kerana but
grizzly and giant spider spawns are pretty rare so I spend a lot of
time hanging around and trying to avoid the bandits (by the way, they
seem to be walking all over WK recently, not just around their huts.
Is this new?)

Any advice and encouragement you can give me is greatly appreciated.
I know I'm not alone, but sometimes it feels as though I am! I use
the English server Venril Sathir (I live in Amsterdam) and sometimes
the zones are completely deserted. Is it like that on the US servers
as well?

Hope to hear from some of you anyway, especially your experiences and
feelings about EQ when you first started. I'm off again now to that
HUGE VAST world that we all know and love (and sometimes hate...)

Excelsis
Erudite Paladin 11