Fail

I made a lot of mistakes tonight.  First off, I discovered that one of the coolest items I'd recently purchased -- a ring -- was level 65 and above only.  It let me wear the thing, but none of the stats had any effect until level 65.  Another item was level 40 and above, I left that one on since it will be useful soon enough, but I placed the other ring in my bank.  I'll have to find a replacement for now, but there was hardly anything interesting for sale when I checked.

Next I traveled back to Crescent's Reach via a gate spell, after doing research that suggested I wanted to hunt in Stone Hive or Goru'kar Mesa, two zones that connected to Blightfire Moor.  The reason that these were good destinations was something I found out that explained a lot of things for me -- these zones, and the ones I have been hunting in, are "Hot Zones" where experience is greatly increased.  I still suspect that the game has been tweaked since the old days, and I probably get more experience in High Pass or Everfrost Peaks than I would have in 2003, but in any case I get a ton more experience in these Hot Zones, which explains my insanely quick leveling.  It also explains why I keep running into massive slaughter parties that are clearly designed to PL someone's new alt or new guild member.

In any case, Stone Hive was geared for levels 35+ and Goru'kar Mesa for 40+, but I'd read that in Stone Hive it was fairly difficult to avoid fighting multiple foes at once, so I decided to head out to the Mesa.

My first mistake was not re-summoning my pet and my mercenary, who I'd gotten rid of the night before when I thought I was going to be able to set myself up as a trader/merchant.  I was attacked by a mushroom guy on my way to the zone, and then he spawned a bunch of smaller mushroom guys (something the other Sporiali I'd fought had never done), and then a wandering treant decided to attack me as well.  All of these guys were green to me, but I was alone and there were too many of them.  I wasn't able to recall my mercenary away from the city, and I didn't have my pet summoning spell memorized (which takes so long I probably would not have been able to cast it anyway).  I wound up running away and gating back to Crescent Reach again, where I was able to summon my mercenary.

I made my way back through the Blightfire Moors and found the entrance to the Mesa.  Here I was careful and looked around before deciding the wolves and bears were good targets.  The wolves were even deep blue cons to me, while the bears were white or yellow con (my level or higher).

But now I discovered my second mistake:  in my attempt to set myself up as a merchant I'd cleared my inventory, placing all the bags with junk I might be able to sell on me while placing extra bags of useful stuff into the bank for later.  I'd meant to swap them back several times, but ultimately forgot to.  Now I was out in a faraway zone hunting, and I had little space for storing the drops I got.

Meh.  I decided to live with it for the moment.

I stumbled across a fawn-like guard who immediately attacked me.  He was red con, and at first I tried to run away, but my mercenary was doing very well against him (the mercenary never runs), so I came back and was able to kill the guard.  I was worried another guard would show up at any moment, but things went well.  A bit later I found a named bear, a giant one called Ursula, wandering nearby, and I kept my distance. I looked her up online and she was level 45, well able to trash me.  I had to be careful not to kill any bears near her, or wander too close (the bears were all aggressive and attacked when I got near, and so would Ursula).

I made it to level 37.  I hadn't planned to play much tonight, but a level 51 froglok shaman happened by and buffed me, my pet, and my mercenary to the gills.  He spent some time cannibalizing to get enough mana to cast all of the buffs, so I didn't want to waste his effort.  I killed another bear, and then a wolf, and then a named wolf spawned on top of me and attacked.

This was Fantoma, who I suspected was at least level 42 or 43 (turned out he/she is 45 just like Ursula).  I really didn't think I had a hope to kill it, but I was uber-buffed.  I set in poisoning the creature and slowing it, and tried twice to disease it.  I wound up healing my mercenary until I ran out of mana.  By that point the wolf was at about 30% health, but was killing my mercenary too fast for me to do anything about it.  I decided to run.

On a whim I ran to the guard and quest guy near the zone entrance instead of straight to the zone border.  I wanted to see if they would protect me, though I knew if they didn't I was dead.  Well, they didn't, so I died.  So much for not wasting all those great buffs.  :/

That was the end of my evening, although I did remember to find the bank and swap out my packs so I'd be better prepared for my next outing.