Well, last night we took a little trip in to the Lair of Infected Paw (hey,
you old beta guys, how come so many zones have 2 names? SplitPaw/Infected
Paw; Lower Guk/Ruin of Old Guk; Beholder/Gorge of King Xorrb; others?
Didn't the terrain art guys talk to the monster AI guys?) Anyhow it was
pretty much fun!

First, I like dungeons that I know the geography pretty well and I have been
getting killed in Paw since a very young age and done many a CR - even
before self-invis. Trains - man that place can train. We zoned in to be
greeted by a mega train. We were 2 groups of 5 & 6. And another group had
just fled for the zone. There were at least 20 gnolls - it was the kinda
scene where you go "zone zone - its not worth it" but stay cuz you are
fascinated by the sheer number of gnolls.

So our tanks and casters started fighting them and our enchanters started AE
mezzing - at least I sure hope they were AE mezzing. But everyone was
fighting a different gnoll and switching gnolls to taunt off the casters.
In short it was a total mess! So, I figured wtf??? Lets see how these dogs
like screetch with a horn. I equipped my brass horn and let fly with some
truly blood curdling notes - at least the doggies thot so and off they went.
Start a train? Hell, this was a mega train already. But it seemed like a
good idea and did clear the area out for a while. They did of course come
back and it took us a long time to kill them all - wave after wave after
wave of gnolls. But none of us got killed and only 2 had to zone. Had we
not been at the dead end by the zone - I certainly would not have used the
fear song but at that point it was about my only option with the songs I had
memmed.

Later on, we were trying to clear the first bridge and got another train
pulled onto us. This was definitely not the place to be fearing things off
so I stepped out and memmed in Lullaby. Our enchanter was either not Ae
mezzing, our tanks and thos in the melee were not /assisting or there was
too much gnoll switching going on - whatever - it was kinda last ditch
effort but I chose Lullaby with the lute and I think I tried pulsing it
even. Even with its reduced abilities there were enough nodding gnolls that
I think it helped. Hopefully it was interrupting the gnoll casters who were
healing the gnoll tanks. On this one we did lose 3 of our lower level
members (all casters) but we dragged them a bit deeper into the dungeon and
our cleric rezzed them back (its pretty sweet to have a lev 50 cleric in
your guild and in your expedition ;). At least for us baby upper 30's.

So then we decided to take the age-old short cut and we hopped off that
first bridge for the lower level. Be carefull and hop onto the ground
because there are blue (to me at 38) snakes in the water that will aggro on
you. We cleared some more gnolls and worked our way to the old shaman's
rooms (the 2 rooms at the top of the small staircase.) Each party took a
room and mine drew the one with the necro - with a bit of help from the
others who finished early - we killed these guys too. Only PH's - no named
bosses were up. We sat thru one more spawn and then decided to fight our way
out.

Fighting into a passageway, I tarried too long in a door way and got trapped
on top of the door when it came down. Door comes down, Sylly gets on top of
door, door goes up and Sylly goes up and is stuck inside the terrain. With
visions of falling thru the world for 10000 dmg like happened to me in Upper
Guk - I did not wriggle around too much but sent in a petition. I thought
of Melifious motion but did not want to zap the others nor disband at that
point. So, they got out and our druid came back or stayed back and we gated
to NK. And within 20 mins of getting stuck - more like 15 my petition got
answered - they do seem to be getting better.

So all in all - New Paw was quite fun. It was lots different even though
most of the old AI is still there. Healers placed out of immediate area
healing the tanks you fight, etc. It was fun to have more "grown up" magic
and somewhat better party manners (good weps, assist the tanks, mez, etc.)
to fight them. And trains - - hehe - its still got trains.

Sylly