I'm pleased with everyone's progress so far, and I think we're
poised for even greater success this month.

There's a few things I want to talk about.

First, official Source levelling grounds. Banderling Hill from LV
5-18, Lugian Citadel from 19-40, Olthoi Horde Nest from 40+, or, if you want
to hit the BSD (if you're a mage) , that's fine too. The Lugian Citadel has
everything you need to level from 19-40, no joke. XP is fairly good even
for a LV 39 character. Once you hit 40, I have a great place for you to
rack up the $$$ and XP: an anti-only Olthoi Horde Nest which you can tie
to. I can summon it any time any wants to go. :)

These are not concrete rules for levelling (esp. for mages, the
levelling of which I know nothing about), but just my recommendations.

How to get your first LV 5 and 6 loot, and 5k+ death items? Once
you hit LV 38-40, you can probably solo Banderling Thrashers if you buff
enough (and you can do it sooner than that if you have Life Magic). These
things leave the best high-quality weapons and armor in the game and you'll
often get 20k+ in loot off of one Thrasher. You can find them in large
groups with Banderling Enforcers to the South of Fort Tethana in the
Direlands. Also at about the same level you can solo the Noble with a
stamina potion or two for some more high quality loot...the easiest place to
find an Olthoi Noble is at the Lair Of Death, just north of Arwic.

I hunt Thrashers almost exclusively for my ph@t l3wt needs. So how
do you do it, you ask? Let me tell you :) First you must find a Thrasher
spawn. Once that is accomplished, you have to do what I call "a preliminary
draw" to seperate one Thrasher from the others. Simply vuln the Thrasher
you want to kill, and the whole pack of Thrashers and Enforcers will take
off after you. Run! Once they have given up the chase (the Enforcers will
debuff you all to hell, hope for Weakness, Slowness or Clumsiness before
Imperil VI or Cold Vuln V). Now it's time to run up to the spawn and buff.

The amount you need to buff depends on the number of debuffs you
have on you. If you have no damaging vulns on you, you can Imperil your
armor, throw a Frost Bane on your shield (it is already Above Average
against Bludgeoning, one of the Thrasher's two attack types) and go to town.
With the appropriate Life Magic protections you will take only 1-5 damage a
hit.

Remember that there are two types of Thrashers...frost-wielders and
bludgeoners. The frost-wielders are harder for me but you Matty Coat people
can probably laugh in their faces with your Unparalelled vs. Frost body
armor.

If you have Cold Vuln on you, make sure you Impen and Bane your
shield vs. Frost.
If you have Imperil VI and Cold Vuln V, you will need to Bane all of
your armor vs. Frost. Even then you'll take a fair amount of damage.

Anyhow, vuln the Thrasher again. He will come running out ALONE,
and as he approaches, you can check to see which damage type he uses. If he
has a Frost Club, throw on Cold Protection. If not, Bludgeon Protection.
(If you have Life Magic, just cast both before you draw them.)

Kill him. Depending on your weapon skill, it make take a
while...they have fair evade and a TON of HP. Like, a TON. 600 HP if i"m
not mistaken.

Collect your loot :) Me, Druss and Sister C found some great stuff
during our little hunting session :)

Why are Thrashers better than Nobles and Umbris for the Melee
fighter?

No spells of any kind to fight through.
Not camped.
Faster spawn and greater numbers.

Against, let me reiterate that these guys drop ONLY weapons and
armor. You will find only the best axes, shields, swords, spears, armor on
these beasties. So you mages, go drain some Umbris :)

Finds from Thrashers include AL 300 Heaumes, Platemail Hauberk worth
29k (the most expensive item I have ever found, heaviest too) lots of 5k+
Helmets, 9-18, +7% Attack Silifis, 8-15 swords of all types, ridiculously
high AL armor (all metal though), and armor and weapons enchanted with up to
level VI spells!

Next, re-org of the tree. As soon as we have 6 LV 30+ people (not
including myself), I will be reorganizing the three according to level, with
anyone who is not 30 and is below Fletch's level swearing to him. Currently
we have:

Sister C LV 38
Druss LV 36
Drake LV 33
Dhali LV 32
Chinook LV 30

That's it. Looks like Mizu-No will hit 30 sometime in the near
future, so I want to bring this up now.

The tree will be created according to level, and though some changes
might be made to accomadate any special "Can he be my patron?" requests, I
want to keep it as close to the ideal 7 person tree as possible. It will
look like this, ideally:

The Silent Spearman
Sister C
Chinook
Drake Draco
Druss
Mizu-No
Dhali
Fletch McGee
(everyone else, until LV 30)

This is going to require some co-operation.

Druss has to make a choice here. He can either have Sister C as his
patron or Mizu-No as his vassal, but not both, because then we'll have Mizu
three levels down and I don't want that. I want the higher levels as close
to the top of the tree as possible.

Sensai is low enough level to swear to Fletch McGee instead of
Drake, and that's what I'd like done. Sensai, would you object to this?
Ideally it's what I'd want, and once you hit 30 you can go back under Drake,
but for the time being I'd like to get you under our alchemist. Fletch is
starting to hit his stride.

Once Mizu hits 30, the tree will be just as I envisioned it...all
the LV 30+ in the tree, all the lower levels sworn to Fletch, and they jump
into the tree with the patron of their choice once they hit LV 30. Sensai
was the only other person besides Mizu who is not sworn to Fletch and if he
switches over, everything will be fine.

Dhali, I want an exact List of Fletch's vassals, please, I think we
need to carefully examine which ones are producing and which aren't.

If anyone has any thoughts on this reorg I'd be glad to hear them.

Thanks for listening.

TSS