Welcome to a new project, experiment, challenge or whatever you wanna call it. Normally experiencing the content with well-geared toons, I figured it would be quite interesting to approach the game from the perspective of a casual player. How does it feel starting at item level 1,600 and build up a character without the help of your mains? How long does it take until you are geared enough for T1/T2 and where do you get all the RPs from? Welcome to the Lowbie Diaries, it should be fun!

Mon 6/29

After competing Spinward Rise I started to continue the Sharandar campaign. From my earlier experiences I expected it to be very manageable and got confirmed. I still like to team up for the daily lair, because bosses are a pain and it’s generally simply a lot faster. I have to be most careful with those Powries… they can hurt. They also come with Witherers, which I can’t always kill fast enough before they heal. That combo is annoying. Overall I like the campaign. It’s slow but steady and drops a good bunch of RPs for my enchantments.

Tue 06/30

Since I reached 100 NCL tokens and drew an Elemental Burning Duelist Cowl out of the box, I decided to upgrade the character across the board with the 200k AD I had saved up. I bought SCA gear for my Dread Warrior and Gemmed blue underwear including Rank 7 Enchantments. I’m close to 2k item level! Pumped up I wanted to show Kessell who’s the boss now and, well, I still can’t run 1.6k content… We eventually managed to beat the skirmish with a pug, but it wasn’t pretty.

Wed 07/01

On the last episode I spend a whole paragraph talking about the new changes to difficulty and now I might have to take some of it back. Mobs in Spinward Rise definitely have more HP, but I’m no longer sure about the 71+ areas and mobs. Sharandar doesn’t feel any different, both in mob health points and the damage I take, but that could also be my progression offsetting the changes. Weird. I also started mixing in Jewelcrafting tasks to level the profession, mostly the Mass Gathering/Crafting ones.

Thu 07/02 – Sun 07/05

The week had been pretty successful up to this point, but then the Lliira event started. To be honest, if not for this project, I wouldn’t have participated. I just would have grabbed the Panther off the AH for my collection, got some coupons to make money with ZEN items and moved one. But since I have my lowbie and the Starry Panther is a great opportunity to get some ADs north of 500k, I decided to do the grind.

Although I completely ignored my time quota for the character, I normally play no longer than 90 minutes per day and rest on the weekends, I had to buy additional Favors in the form of Professions Fireworks off the AH. It’s still a win, because I invested like 40k and will get at least ten times that much for the mount, but I have absolutely no clue how a casual player can even come close to this reward. Not only did I do some farm runs in Reclamation Rock, I also frequently logged over from my other chars to participate in the contest. It was a true pain and I severely though about aborting the event at least twice…

Since it’s been a while here’s how the character currently looks (ilvl 1,961):

So long!

The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 1: Setting Up The Char

The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 2: The First Week

The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 3: To Kessell Or Not To Kessell

The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 4: Rethinking & New Patch FTW!

The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 5: Events

The Lowbie Diaries Vol. 6: Difficulty Changes

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