LEVELLING
The first dozen-or-so would be standard even for an unlocked character. Bashing skeletons until high enough to bash gnolls. The difference was that, while other characters would move on around the teens to more lucrative environs, I didn't have anywhere else. From gnolls to gnoll guardsmen to gnoll elite guards to gnoll commanders alongside multiple stacks of gnoll fangs, I got to level twenty, which was were Qeynalia the Paladin stopped. Much more would require constant reputation upkeep with the thieves and bad guards, due to how many turn-ins I'd have to do per level.
But this time, I was more prudent with studying. There was one other place to grind higher: Sharks.
In the Qeynos Aqueduct, there are a pair of sharks inside the pool one falls into from the thieves' guild above. The wiki states they are 13-17. They were always level 17. Between two spawns every six minutes, and the plethora of dolls to give to a grieving mother, I managed to get to 28 before the tap ran dry. And at 28 was where I ended the challenge.
There clearly exists further sources of experience, but all of them would kick in the "within sane reason" clause:
1. Doing repeated turn-ins. Aside from a handful, none of them give remotely enough experience to be worth the time invested. Not only that, but the sheer amount of reputation change would require me to spend half the time doing OTHER quests just to remain neutral.
2. Killing guards in Qeynos Hill. The only one I ever managed to kill was Guard Kellot, who was just weak enough for me to barely survive on average. Even if I did manage to get a pattern down and stomach the long rests between each kill, I would still have to kill 30 gnolls for every time I killed him.
3. Killing the Erudite traveler. They drop nothing of value to me, and each kill hits Deepwater Knights, which I'm pretty sure includes a handful of NPCs in South Qeynos. Even if I decided to not care about that, the traveler is a pet-caster. I wouldn't be able to run if things got bad, and I'd need to be able to kill him enough times to offset the deaths. Not happening.
4. Killing Mammoth. One spawn per day, craters Surefall Glade rep. No chance.
5. Killing Lord Elgnub. Rare Timed Spawn. I only ever saw him twice, and that was with hours of waiting between each instance. Only advantage would be the free 2 plat and the fact that all the Blackburrow Gnolls check for Qeynalia underneath their beds before sleep already.
6. Killing Donally Stultz. While he is part of a quest, I had enough trouble killing him just once. I don't think the guards would let me bail if I started losing.
Anything other than this list is no-bueno for the same sort of reasons as the rest, on top of probably being even higher level. The only way I could reasonably get higher level would be by grouping up, and at this point, that would be entirely on the charity of other players. No sane person is going to grant more than a couple hours of severely suboptimal grinding spots, like Guards-But-A-Hundred-Gnolls-Between-Each-Pull, and Spectres-But-I'm-Ten-Levels-Under.
As I write this, I did think of the idea of a group of similarly-locked characters partying together, but that sounds like even more of a nightmare than what I've already been through.
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