New Upcoming Hotzones - Nov 08Follow

What do you think about the new hotzone list? As I peruse the list a few things come to mind.
1. 35 - Trakanons Teeth. A relatively difficult zone to get to, it has no good camping spots without a tracker to pull mobs. You can certainly roam your group around but plan for all the frog adds literally coming out of the woodwork. You could pick a small camp area like undeads or something but nothing stands out as a nice area.

2. 75 - Dreadspire. This one isnt so great for players who dont already have a Formal Dinner Invitation. Even then, its a little problematic needing ITU to run past mobs. Luckily you can set a campfire for your usual fight team, but that means you wont be able to bring in others. When your play time is done, its done. This means that usually always, when one player has to leave, it's quitting time for the entire group. You just cant manage getting a non-invitation'd person there without an escort and a LOT of spent time showing them the way and doing rez's if the named spider is up in his tower by the zone in.

This almost cancels out any LFG'ers at that level who are not already flagged for Dreadspire (with an invitation)

For those who have not done the quest to enter, it just says 'You force your way into Dreadspire' instead of saying 'You feel a welcome to Dreadspire'. You can still come in, either by guild banner, invitation-statue, or running up the Hive to the door.

3. The rest of the hotzones I find as fine for exp grinding. There are spots to pull to and mobs to kill.

Trak's Teeth is ***.

TT is not too bad, undead spots are great camp sites, and anywhere along a wall is great, but some spots require long pulls, but they are safe, and if your puller accidentally gets a train, they just out run them till they lose aggro and try again.

I've soloed or duoed TT many times for the DoN Cultural Symbol quests. It's really not that bad. When they first introduced the new fog system, and TT had 0 visiblity, it was very bad, but since it's been fixed, it's not so bad.

I'll give you, it's not ideal by any means, but too hard. Now if they'd just fix the zone time on EJ and TT, which are the main reasons, I hate EJ / TT / CoM / Seb .. 30 mins is ridiculous travel time to Seb even with Druid port to EJ, and because the zone time is so long, I often lose U-chat in both EJ and TT.

The dinner invitation by far is a pain to not have for DSK, but it is a cool zoen to xp in. You only need IVU for one short area. Most mobs are non-kos, but very social. IVU potions are cheap, and you should only need 1 or 2 (or maybe 3 or 4 if you get lots of failures) to get anywhere in DSK.

But if you plan on spending any time in DSK, the first thing to do, is get a group to camp Dinner Invitations. They're not rare, but don't expect to get a whole group a set in an hour.

I'll most likely be spending quite a bit of time in DSK hoping for some good AC augs to replace / upgrade my RSS ones.

So overal, TT can be a pain, and takes some time to figure out good camp spots, but they are there, they're just not Orc # in Commonlands :D and getting to DSK without a Dinner Invitation is more than a pita :( I can't even float over to the living bridge any more since the (better?) levi implementation. I drop like a rock now! :( Thankfully, the last toon I needed one on, I got a CoH across and stayed in DSK until I got one.

Just my take on those two zones,

Yther Ore.

Ssraesha Temple as 55 hotzone?

Never liked the indoor zones all that much, I struggled past the Old Sebilis hotzone for the 50-55 zone, mostly by going to the 55 hotzone Blackfeather Roost.

Might try to move to the Crypt of Decay, finally a hotzone with lots of undead!


I've hunted in Trakanon's Teeth a bit some levels ago, although aggro is swift, if not too many people are in the zone, a group should do rather well in it. Either by just taking out the undead that are found in ruins near the zoneline, or on the other side of the zone, or just a camp at the sides and pulling lots of froggies there.

No idea about Dreadspire, never been higher than 56.

I didn't mean to imply that TT was difficult. It's just a visually boring, tedious zone with annoying geography (lots of steep hills). I don't know where the lack of set camps is a bonus -- sitting at the zone wall and pulling frogs & chickens isn't really more interesting than sitting at Orc2. And it does seem to have abnormally long zone times. If folks like it, great. It's just one of those zones that makes me shudder to have to hang around in.

I'll admit that at least TT has named mobs which makes it better than Emerald Jungle (my least favorite zone in the game).

Sorry I misinterpreted your point on TT, Kirby. I'll agree it is boring. And visibility due to landscape is terrible, but most outdoor Kunark zones are that way, with the exception of FoB and particular areas of some zones, like near the KC in DL. When they added the new fog system, it made TT impossible for visibility.

Yea, the Levi issue only happens to some people. Wife's computer is slower than mine, but she has no problem .. I think it's a timing issue, as I have the weird run speed alot more than she does, and I run at least 4 apps all the time, sometimes as many 10 or more, and this is not a fast or up-to-date computer. And, I can make it no problem if I log on the wife's slower computer and try to do it.

Wierd part is, before the fix (this is the fix before the no-bobbing levi, where supposedly improved levi), I had no problem on this same computer. /shrug

The zone times for EJ and TT vary by person too, but most people notice that it's longer than normal, but on really fast computers, most ppl only take 60s or less for those zones, my general zone time is 5min for each and sometimes more .. on a rare occassion, I'll zone in under 2min into those 2, as compared with <60s for most zones, other than TSS and newer ones, but even lots of those are fast, with the exception of Valdaholm, which always seems to take 2mins or more for some reason.

Ssra is a terrible pick for a hot zone imho, but that may be due to how much time I'd spent there, getting the Dusty Soriz Pouch for my wife's Druid, getting 5+ of my toons, plus dozens of friends toons, the Emp key. Although some spots aren't too bad, like skellies are fairly easy, although they come in trios, and some of the other mobs int he basement aren't too bad, but the snakes are fairly difficult for their con. They seem to hit like PoP mobs but with twice the HPs. I'll still probably end up killing there for my toons on Tunare to get my Shammy the rare spell from the Shissar Mystic which I had been planning on doing, but didn't want to venture there till misd or upper 60s so I could slaughter rather than have to work for it for little experience and lots of danger. With the xp bonus it might be worth trying for in the upper 50s.

I am glad OT is hot zone again, I leveled my first monk from 20 to 40+ there solo, altho I should of left before 40, but I didn't like the other hot zones at the time.

Stonebrunt should be nice too, it has a wide range of mob types and levels, which should make it viable for many levels.

CoD will rock! Back in the day I thought it was a bit tough for the level, but after having tried it on some newer toons, I really like it. It was probably low dps back then, as PoP was still new.

Stoneroot is at least better than Illsalin, which I only tried a few times, due to the severe graphics lag there. Never really had too much trouble in Stoneroot with lag, despite all the water. But I'll probably skip it, unless I re-discover some worthwhile drops or quests to do there. Although the Starfish would be nice to get for a few toons.

I've always liked Unrest, but never liked having to run across DC to get there for a 20-30ish zone. Seemed too much work, and back before PoP, a long corpse run.

Vald is a great pick also, and DSK should be fun with more people there. It's hard to get a whole group to want to go to DSK, and some camp spots work much beter with a whole group, due to the number of pathers, mobs, and respawn times.

The rest of zones I'm indifferent about, they're ok, not bad, but not great either.

Yther Ore

Did they finally decide on CoD? Last I read, in that long thread on the official boards, Elidroth said they were replacing CoD with something else once it was pointed out how relatively small the zone was (i.e. not enough mobs to support 6-8 groups). I'd love CoD since I'd take my Paladin there as a change of pace from Arcstone.

Ssra Temple is a decent hotzone, but not spectacular. I'm guessing nowadays it might be possible for a single group of 60ish to do some of the former "raid" mobs there (Rhag 1 & 2 come to mind) so there is additional challenge available for those who seek it. The mines and basement should be awesome xp given their low hp residents. Nowadays with ATK on seemingly everything (defiant gear), Luclin mob mitigation shouldn't be much of an issue.

TT will continue to be skipped, which is why I don't understand why it's been chosen again.

Valdeholm should be pretty good, assuming folks do more than just the Pit.

Just to balance my TT ********* I'll say that Stonebrunt is a great place for a hotzone in my opinion. You can stay there from levels 20-45 if you want to. Good characters can sell in the Kejak village and evils can hoof to Gunthak. Good mob density, a few static camps (kobold camps), a few named mobs (which don't drop anything valuable these days but oh well) and plenty of room. And, if you get bored you can do the Kejak monster mission!

And it'll be a great time to take up tailoring.

I have always been a fan of arcstone. I haven't seen people go there just for xp in a long time. It would be a great hotzone and would allow players to gear up with the armor quests that are there. It's not a terribly big zone and that would be the only real set back i could see. The plane of innovation will be great fun though. I'll definately be leveling up my mage so i can mess around in there.

Dreadspire for 70? Good luck! That place is a death trap. LOL