I'm impressed with Guk.

Last night I decided I'm going to stick my head into Lower Guk (LG) and see
if perhaps I can't loot a Shin Gauntlet or set of Shin Greaves for the
Lambent Armor quest. At 28th I have no intention of fighting in there, as
we've all heard the horror stories from the folks that are 40+. Having
worked a monk up to level 23 prior to joining the One True Path of bardness,
I thought I had a pretty good feel for Upper Guk (UG) having hunted there
for mesh. Boy was I wrong.

UG is freakin' huge - much bigger than my poor misinformed monk had ever
thought it was. It also holds a wealth of mobs that gave great experience
for me at level 28 and my other party members up to 32. My 32nd Necro
friend was impressed with the amount of experience he was getting. The real
kicker is that none of this stuff was camped. We walked right into a great
little camping spot and proceeded to make great exp and decent cash
(occasional 2pp drops) and never encountered another soul. Died only once
when a train of 20 or so frogs sprinted into our room for no apparent
reason - we had had NO runners, no AE songs/spells, nothing. In fact we
hadn't even been fighting for several minutes. We all decided that they
must have been agro on someone else and come to us, or a bug or something.
It was weird. Even still, thanks to bard power I was the only casualty.
When they sprinted in I immediately fired off a Screech and 20 of them
turned and fled. The monk feigned, the Necros gated and the frogs came back
and killed me. Mission accomplished.

LG was surprisingly fun too. I zoned in and /ooc'd "How often to Shin
Greaves and Shin Gauntlets drop and can a humble 28th level bardess please
loot them for a quest?" The response was the they dropped "Too damned
often" and that I should have one of each in around an hour. So I sat in LG
hugging the zone like a little schoolgirl, waiting patiently and /ooc
reminding people I was looking every 10 minutes or so. I saw a 35th Druid
hurt and sitting near the zone so I grouped with him to heal him up.
Surprisingly we stayed grouped and started killing undead froggies near the
zone - and it turned out to not be that hard. They were yellow to me at
28th, and green to just about everyone else in the zone, so he and I had
them all to ourselves. I gained a bubble of experience and killed for and
looted my own Shin Guantlets and Greaves! Even better! I didn't even come
close to dying.

I guess the moral is "Don't forget Upper Guk" and for those in their mid or
high 20s, "Go into Lower Guk with a friend or two and kill the lower level
stuff near the zone for your own Shin Guantlets and Greaves."

Crier Sharpsong - 28th song bard on Fennin Ro