New ZEM thoughts?
 

Just checking back on p1999 after some time and saw that the last patch modified exp for quite a few zones.

It looks like permafrost, runnyeye, beholders maze, Cazic thule and Splitpaw all got a exp boost to be on par with Kurns Tower.

Are these zones populated now? or still as dead as ever?

Much more pleasant to level up in the shire now. Honorable mention to nektulos and feerrott. I try not to go above level 20 or so so this patch is really catered to me and all my characters

Lower level zones are now more actively populated outside of the typical grind spots.

Higher level zones continue to be a bottleneck, with the 40-50 grouping experience being fairly awful, and the few places you could occasionally get lucky with a pick-up-group are now giving even less XP.

It's been really lovely. I decided to level up the other alt. Been a blast checking out "new" exp zones. Like.. I can't remember the last time I went to Runnyeye. Maybe I zoned in once accidentally on live? Well the King camp in RE is really amazing exp now, and lots of fun.

I hear good things about Gorge and Permafrost as well. HHK gobs are still great, which I guess is fine. It's so boring though.

Well leveling Qeynos hills is faster for me.

Took my new ranger to Qeynos Hills at level 5 and started doing mail quest from Surefall Glade to Qeynos. Along the trips back and forth would kill blues i would come across and of course any Gnoll scouts i would encounter for some extra Experience from Gnoll fang quest in south Qeynos. Was very surprised at how much Experience i was getting from just the mail turn and the fangs. soon was level 6 in about 4 to 5 round trips.

The Shocker was the Putrid Rib bone quest it was a bit over a yellow at level 6 doing the two turn ins (one in qeynos hills second to priestess in rodcet nife temple northen Qeynos).

Between xp from blue kills , Gnoll fangs , putrid ribs , Mail i have reached level 9 quicker than i remember do same on a pallladin and a mage alt i had started a while back in Qeynos area. All from just running back and forth turn in quest and some blue kills.

Putrid rib bone first turn can take a bit as the turn guy wanders the zone but once you figure out his path its not to hard.

Obviously tracking helps here since i can find the wandering putrid bone skeletons and gnoll scouts faster.

Zem Changed has diffidently helped.

Level 9 ranger

2 Giant bat kills , 1 rib to niclaus, 1 bag of evidance to jahnda , 1 mail to qeynos and 1 gnoll fang all Equals to just under 1 yellow of expierence for a short run.

My ranger is now lvl 10 and half way to 11 just from doing this simple route for about 2hrs.

Leveling a new character is certainly faster, that was somewhat of a side-effect.

I find nearly every outdoor spot camped to death. Before it was 5 people holding down scryer in uguk, now it's one person camping lake rathe arena, one person camping hermit etc and no one doing scryer for XP.

CT is the new HHK, maybe with less salt.


edit:

Aren't these ZEM changes going to devalue Kunark? If CT is the new Kurn's....?

What quest is this?

That sounds more like a feature than a bug to me. Kurn's was never supposed to be the Paludal Caverns of Kunark (ie. the place everyone goes to to level up their character because it's faster to do it there than any other zone): it was just supposed to be the Iksar starting dungeon, like Blackburrow for Qeynos folks.

I'm not sure if it was player knowledge, bad emulated ZEMs, or both, but Kurn's on Blue was never really classic in that respect.