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indiscriminate_hater
10-30-2013, 07:35 PM
what's your favorite outdoor zone in classic EQ? there is a lot of untouched outdoor content on P99 – good spots to level, interesting lore and quests, and generally cool things that aren’t seen by many people who stick to the more common zones. in the name of exploration, let's hear about some secret or interesting spots found in your favorite outdoor zones. i'll start:

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Why I Think Rathe Mountains is the Best Outdoor Zone
by Antonin Dvorak, age 27

For starters, Rathe Mountains has a sweet landscape and location. It’s situated between Ferrott and Lake Rathe and is one of the 3 connections between east and west Antonica. It’s also got a great layout – several isolated cells that are connected by a main thoroughfare. It’s easy to get lost at first but you feel like a fucking boss once you’ve learned it.

It’s an excellent place to level. You can level up from 15 to 51 without ever leaving the zone. Tons of shit to kill and never anyone around to kill it. Lots to quad kite as a druid and wizard. I used to murder giant skeletons here with my troll SK on live.

The zone is filled with all sorts of interesting crap, and a variety of merbs for even the most discerning outdoor-hunting candyass. In my annotated map, red shows regular mobs, green shows nameds, blue denotes epic mobs, orange is for significant quest givers, and purple denote mobs associated with the most intense sibling rivalry in EQ – more on that later.

http://i.imgur.com/HuCfqYQ.jpg

There’s a shitload of loot to be had. See the list on the map – several items worth 200-4k that can all be farmed at once. There’s also hill giant mountain – enough said. If you blast the basilisks around the mountain while killing hill giants you can usually get a granite bracer every 2 hours or so. Use one of the named level 50 unkempt druids as a pet to absolutely demolish hill giants if you’re looking for easy PP farming at higher levels.

There are vendors for both evil and good races, so you can just buy rubies or something instead of having to bank your enormous loads of platinum every couple of hours. I filled 1.5 handmade backpacks full of ruby stacks while leveling my bard from 47-51 on hill giants here. Gettin’ that paper.

Some awesome quests can be had here: the 49 shadowknight life leech spell, J-boots, and red and white dragonscale armor. Shit’s so classic it makes my head spin.

There are countless other things that make this zone interesting and badass, but my favorite is the feud between the two named griffons, Zazamoukh and Ankhefenmut. These two little fuckers sit on opposite sides of the zone and spend all day thinking about how to take down the other. They don’t drop any loot, but goddamn can you feel the tension. They are on diametrically-opposed factions and each have a troop of named beetles to do their bidding and attack helpless noobs trying to reach the lake. It’s fairly easy to improve your faction with them – they hate each other so much that killing one sibling a mere 10 times will bring you from KoS to kindly. Some crazy times have been had by pulling each griffin and their named beetles to the same spot and watching them struggle in an epic fight for life.

Tikker
10-30-2013, 07:39 PM
outdoor zones should just be paths to get to dungeons

loramin
10-30-2013, 07:40 PM
As a Barbarian I'm going to have to go with Everfrost. It supports a wide range of levels, has interesting quests (like the one with the Vengefull skeletons), has a "secret" area (under the river), plus a vendor (the shaman dot vendor) out in the plains. Oh, and there are even guards you can run to if you're lower level.

Great zone.

zanderklocke
10-30-2013, 08:01 PM
Lake of Ill Omen and Oasis.

Lake of Ill Omen has lots of indoor dungeon types of stuff in an outdoor zone.

Oasis is just badass as a new player. Spectres and shit.

webrunner5
10-30-2013, 09:37 PM
I know it doesn't feel like a outdoor zone, but City of Mist has to be one of my favorites. Pretty good loot also. A turd to get to though.

KC has to be next on the list. Same thing, doesn't seem like a outdoor zone but. LCY has to be my favorite spot. Can pull from about anywhere from there. Damn good loot if you are lucky with rolls.

Velious if it ever comes out, is just filled with killer outdoor zones. :)

SamwiseRed
10-30-2013, 09:41 PM
Ek giant waterfall is a good med spot

Servellious
10-30-2013, 10:02 PM
But not outdoor zone can compare to that first time zoning into unrest

Telin
10-30-2013, 10:04 PM
I love the autumn trees in Dreadlands. I also love Rathe Mountains and Oasis!

K|mm Barely
10-30-2013, 10:17 PM
Timorous Deep

Lojik
10-30-2013, 10:18 PM
Really enjoyed Highpass on live, as well as South Karana. I generally like Lake Rathe and Rathe too, the whole area is pretty cool

justin2090
10-30-2013, 10:27 PM
EC!! Tons of loot everywhere!! And I love loot!

In all seriousness Oasis would be my fav because it was the only zone I could describe in detail from live. Everything else was fuzzy but Oasis was imbedded into my brain. Maybe it was because of the danger of getting face rolled by a SG. Nothing says "Welcome Noob" like a giant fist to the face.

Estu
10-30-2013, 10:30 PM
Great post, love it. You can actually start leveling in Rathe Mts starting at around level 4 or 5 - start on brown and black bears, then move on to the named scarab beetles (can run between the two camps if you can kill them quickly) at level 8-9ish depending on how beefy you are. I've just started EXPing in Rathe in earnest for the first time on a troll shadowknight, and it's pretty cool how much different stuff there is. On the other hand, some things are a turn-off, like not being able to get to lower-level undead because they're right next to giant skeletons, guards and giant skeletons patrolling around where I might want to otherwise EXP; sparse areas with not a lot going on. But it is a cool zone.

My personal favorite outdoor zone is Butcherblock Mountains. I know it's not exactly obscure, but I just love the zone and I have heavy nostalgia for it since I used to hunt there on my very earliest characters on Live, who were mainly dwarves. The newbie yard is amazing, with huge monster density and a ton of skeletons whose bone chips you can use for crazy EXP in Kaladim or sell to necromancers.

The part of the zone between the crossroads and GFay has a ton of largely non-aggressive wandering monsters you can hunt to great effect from level 3-4 to 9 or so. Then you have the great goblin warrior camp by the crossroads - three goblin warriors, single pullable (kind of), with two single-pullable dwarven bandits nearby (not at the camp itself but wandering nearby) and a stationary giant scarab if you can handle more monsters.

Then you have the dwarven bandit camp between the crossroads and GFay, which is amazing because it has four bandits, all of whom patrol in such a way that you can single pull all four of them. On a standard short respawn time (~6 minutes), this is a great and reliable spot to EXP. And once you graduate from there, you of course can try the chessboard, assuming you have tools to deal with the tough non-warrior monsters there.

Finally, there is the lone static level 3 orc centurion standing right by GFay who you can always hit up for a couple of extra Crushbone belts. He is like a great best friend or family dog, always there for you, always willing to help out (by getting murdered - OK, the analogy isn't great).

indiscriminate_hater
10-30-2013, 10:52 PM
Really enjoyed Highpass on live, as well as South Karana. I generally like Lake Rathe and Rathe too, the whole area is pretty cool

i really wish there was more to do in lake rathe. it's a beautiful zone with so much potential, but there's just not much going on. still fun to pass through -- great for leveling swimming when i was running my SK from grobb to south karana aviaks and back

Yumyums Inmahtumtums
10-31-2013, 09:04 AM
i really wish there was more to do in lake rathe. it's a beautiful zone with so much potential, but there's just not much going on. still fun to pass through -- great for leveling swimming when i was running my SK from grobb to south karana aviaks and back

I remember soloing at the 3-bird spawn on live with my 19 warrior. Nothing made you feel more poweful than levelling to 20 with an executioners axe. Shit got real.

Favorite outdoor zone has got to be Nro - great place to get to 15 at. Derv camps are classic as hell and... Dat music.

eqravenprince
10-31-2013, 09:18 AM
There are certain attributes that are common in most of my favorite zones. Small zones that have a bind point nearby, vendors in the zone, bank nearby, and mob density.

Misty Thicket - there isn't a better newbie zone. Honorable mention goes to Everfrost.

High Pass - Can bind right there, easy to zone if you get into trouble

North Karana - Can bind, although the bind point is kind of risky. You can sell there, it is a relatively small zone for a Karana zone.

Overthere - normally I can't stand Kunark zones due to their size, but if you just stay on the one side of Overthere, you have a couple different zone lines. You can bind, bank and sell there.

Mandalore93
10-31-2013, 01:21 PM
Everfrost Peaks is where I spent way too much time as one of my several Barb characters on Live. I still hear the winds in my sleep...well, not really. that would just be a bit sad.

SyanideGas
10-31-2013, 01:42 PM
Unrest counts! I did a bit of leveling here at lower levels. Fun place.

Aerar
10-31-2013, 01:44 PM
Unrest counts! I did a bit of leveling here at lower levels. Fun place.

^^^^^BEST SIG EVER^^^^^^^

Bronia
10-31-2013, 02:30 PM
I always loved East Karana. Silk and pelt heaven if you're a tailor, small enough for a zone line to run to if things go bad. :)

myriverse
10-31-2013, 04:08 PM
Mistmoore is outdoor.

So is CT.

indiscriminate_hater
10-31-2013, 04:32 PM
cazic thule is my favorite pre-kunark dungeon. some great potential for farming all of the named mobs at once on this server because it is so empty all of the time (also potential for some low-hp AOE kiting around the avatar pyramid -- been meaning to try this).

plus you can get illusion: earth elemental and cazic gate potions here.

Vladesch
11-04-2013, 06:23 AM
My personal favorite outdoor zone is Butcherblock Mountains.
Finally, there is the lone static level 3 orc centurion standing right by GFay

Finally would for many be the various dwarven women who are level 35.
Great to quad and the faction hit doesn't affect anything much. Absolutely nothing around that will agro you (except the mobs you are killing)

Sadly the spawn timer is a little long.