Shattered Kingdoms

After the change to automatically outfit steel daggers to rogue NPCs, regardless of their level or purpose, several areas need revamping in my opinion. I am referring to areas whose primary purpose was leveling of course, and that are no longer viable leveling areas due to massively increased damage output of NPCs. As I see it, these areas simply won't see use anymore, as levelers will just find other places to do it, even if that means ignoring the familarity penalty and staying in the same area for 10 - 15 levels.

To start the list:

Caverns of Ayamao - the furbolgs there pretty much bleed exp, at least in my experience, but now they will absolutely shred any newbie that doesn't know how or where to pick up free armor after creation.

Chibunei - I haven't been here myself yet, and probably wont since I've heard it's all but completely impossible to level there unless you're a well armored heavy-armor user.

I'd hate to see these areas become unused and just get added to the list of areas that no one ever sees.

With a scout, merc, and swashie, I had no issues with the furbolgs in the outpost. It actually helped me get my parry/shield block to become better.

Chibunei, not sure, my swashie and scout went there and they have ways of dealing with it, but no issues with those two classes. I still head to both areas, depending on class/aura but still are viable places for leveling. Not sure about caster classes, though.

I just recently leveled a sorceror (squishiest of them all) in the Caverns, and Chibunei. All you need is a decent pet (in my case a black horse from Nerina) and dagger wielding NPCs aren't much of an issue. There are plenty of other NPCs to kill in the Caverns and if you run it dry then furbolgs are fine, you just might have to sleep a few ticks to regen pet HP (their HP regens pretty quick). I also leveled in Chibunei with the same pet, I don't know what class you're leveling so I can't elaborate on that too much, but as my sorceror I would kill 4-5 NPCs and then sleep while my pet slept so I could regen mana. Avoid killing Chibunei NPCs in front of the "chatty" ones because they assist anyone being killed in front of them. If you're going to kill the "chatty" ones, kill them first and make sure there aren't other "chatty" NPCs in the same room. Everything should be smooth sailing, though probably slower than what you're used to.

I'm getting my face loved off on a pretty decently kitted novice light armor priest. Not to mention the fact that after the first five NPCs, my scale armor was shredded to pieces, further increasing the damage I took. That is to say, second row isn't an option for me yet, given the insane price of vendorable pole-maces and the fact that I couldn't keep one to save my life.

Fact of it is that Outpost used to be a very damage, high exp area for everyone to get a nice boost out of novice/initiate. Now I bet the most efficient way is to not train your levels, and then stay in newb areas till like 16.

Well like I said: In the caverns there are plenty of other NPCs to kill aside from furbolgs and by the time you go to Chibunei you should have spear of faith which would make the NPCs there very easy to power through.

But as I said, there were specific reasons for killing the furbolgs, they've always to me seemed to be the ones that gave the most exp. So if they're not viable for leveling, the area isn't top notch anymore in my opinion, and won't see use as soon as the playerbase adjusts to this. However, if you and Galactus both used it with success, I guess the initial complaint is still somewhat irrelevant until the information about new efficient leveling areas propagate through the playerbase.

I never had the issue of killing furbolgs with any character, honestly. They stabbed through the armor depending on the class, but it wasn't huge.

If killing furbolgs is that important to you, then get a pet capable of rescuing and disband your group. Start the fight then have the pet rescue shortly after the start of the fight.

You could say that this is just me complaining that leveling isn't as easy as last time I played, and I have less than two logged, so you could even say it's somewhat unjustified and you'd be right. But the way I see it, SK is a pretty cool game, but leveling sucks pretty hard, so any change that inadvertently makes leveling harder, needs to be considered and possibly countered or it just makes the game less cool than it was.

Also, leveling needs to be as easy as possible or I'll never get Konge to play again. So a vote for furbolg rogues, is a vote against Konge!

Consider this the official launching of my Furbolgscouts 2013 campaign!

Hey I'm on your boat, I just am trying to give you tips for leveling! If anyone knows how terrible it is to level priests it's me! I know you know too, but I guess you haven't leveled one since the rogue change to NPCs.