I know its been a while since I wrote down what I've been doing in Aeden Aqueous, but that's because I've been having such fun there that I haven't wanted to take the time to quietly sit at at the tavern in Fairhaven and write about my experiences rather than having them! Ba'Naer Liffan finally convinced me to stop in when he saw me visiting the merchants around the bar as I was offloading some of the resources I'd gotten last night, so I'm sitting here with a pint and catching up on my correspondence, before going back to living my adventures.

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I've started each day by visiting the Liberty Lake Karavan Welcomer and getting the four missions that are part of the Karavan Fame Loop. It takes just ten to fifteen minutes to complete the loop, depending on if I get cocky and take more risks than I know I should. Usually getting cocky results in extra swim time after showing up at the Fairhaven recall point by the grace of the Karavan. The loop I've settled on as being the best experience for my level while earning this fame is to swim around to the Greenvale Trade Post, then run north through the gap with kipee and ybers. Threading my way up the hill past a couple cloppers and goari brings me to the top of the hill covered with a herd of messab and a small pack of yubos of which I need some samples of blood. Once I have those, its back down the hill and back out the entry channel where I turn right and follow the shore to the kipee infestation just before the stinga colony. There I gathered the samples of kipee blood required by the Karavan, along with the other parts needed, and then head back to the Welcomer to hand them all in. In the time since I last wrote to you, I've managed to get my Karavan fame up to 20. Once it reaches 30, I'll be able to make use of more of the Karavan teleporters.

Once the daily tasks were completed, I was left to my own devices. I've been invited along to several guild groups hunting in Dew Drops and Fount, where I've usually played healer if one of my other guildmates wasn't working on that skill. Healing consists of keeping track of who is being targetted by our opponents, keeping their health up, and periodically casting Stamina Gift on the melee fighters and Sap Gift on the casters to keep everyone topped off. Oh, and I've discovered that I only get experience for doing so while they are in combat. So I don't top them off completely in between battles, because the mob may go down before they need a heal and I get it cast, so the heal lands after the combat and I get no experience from it. By leaving them a little wounded, I can cast a heal or gift as soon as they start combat and be assured of my piece of the experience pie, not matter what else happens during the battle. I've managed to get my standard healing magic skill up to 61 in doing this.

I should mention, out of character, that macros are excellent for playing healer for a group. I've macro'd each of the numberpad keys 1 through 8 to target that team member and cast a heal spell. I've also set up the shift-numberpad keys to target that team member and cast Stamina Gift, and the control-numberpad keys to target that team member and cast Sap Gift. That cuts down on the mouse and keyboard coordination immensely, and lets me concentrate on keeping the bars full with my right hand while I control my position (not too close or I'll get agro) with my left hand. The 9 key on the numberpad does the same things, only with selfheal, selfheal stamina, and selfheal sap.

Sometimes, though, I've been asked to not play healer for these guild groups, as someone else wants to earn a bit of experience as a healer. In that case, I've usually switched over to casting offensive spells if we've been fighting stingas, or concentration-required afliction spells when fighting animals.

I've had several pick-up groups as well, the most notable being a day spent in the company of Karaden of Ballistic Mystix, where I was hard put to keep him full of sap as he blasted stinga after stinga in rapid succession up near the tunnel to Winds of Muse. Needless to say, that was some intensive learning as a healer.

I've also spent some time up in Dew Drops near the Karavan teleporter there taking on the blooming and dehydrated stinga all by my lonesome. I've discovered that the dehydrated stinga give the same experience as the blooming stingas at my current offensive magic and melee skill levels, but take longer to fight as they are tougher plants, so I've mostly been concentrating on the blooming stinga. It doesn't matter if others are fighting them too, because as soon as the patch is cleared, more grow. They are the fastest growing weeds I've ever seen! I focused on fighting these with magic for a while, but have lately been using melee there to up my skills enough that I can get extra health and constitution. Its probably about time for me to switch back to focusing on magic though, as I've gotten up to 56 as an elemental mage and 51 with my offensive affliction skill, and my sword and dagger skills have gotten up to 56 and 55 respectively.

Finally, I decided that is was sad that my foraging skill was stuck at 23 when the rest of my skills were over 50. So I asked around last night if anyone wanted a careplanner, that is, someone to keep the node happy while someone else harvests from it. It doesn't get me materials unless the person I'm with decides to hand some over to me, but it is really great experience. Last night Greymage took me to Enchanted Isle, and amazingly got me there without any deaths despite the trickiness of the run. Unlike my trek with Pero that was supposed to take me to the Prime Roots and only got as far as the cutes camp in Bounty Beaches before taking a quick return to Fairhaven. (No, Pero, I'm not going to let you forget that trip.) With a couple hours of careplanning for him, I managed to get my foraging skill up to 31.

Well, that's it for now. My stinga rum is gone, so its time to put the parchment aside and head out into the wilds again.