On a Dark Desert Highway

Firstly sorry for the gap since the last piece but my inspiration was on holiday so I just played. However I want to talk about the Desert aka Demon Sands. This is a level 11 wilderness with Quest inside and a raid. I will talk about the quests in another piece but want to discuss the wilderness which is realistically three wildernesses. You have the undead to the right as you enter with 5 rares, straight ahead you have the Gnolls with 7 rares and to the left you have the Scorrow with 4 rares but they have a sting in the tail. There are 25 explorers 9 of which are dungeon entrances so plenty to keep you busy. Also it feels like a much bigger space than say the Red Fens but because you have 3,000 slays of each type you will run into a lot of work if you want to complete all 3 types.

Cool Wind in My Hair

 Most of the explorers are relatively simple but there are a couple that are worth mentioning, the Submerged Road is obviously under water and as there are only two lots of water it should be easy to find but the number of times I missed it at first tells me that unless you are glancing at a map you may well miss it by inches, on the upside you don't have to be submerged yourself to get it. The Dead End is a little off the beaten track and involves jumping which you will find as well with the Paragon plunge. The need for reather falling is obvious and I doubt many people who are exploring this area are missing a FF item.

Warm Smell of Kobolds rising up through the Air

The undead are the most difficult as far as I am concerned simply because the different monsters and the annying issue of constantly changing weapon to suit monster. The eternal wizards are particularly annoying if you don't have fire and electric resistance, lightning bolts and walls of fires are their two many attacks. Of course rule of thumb is always take casters down as quickly as possible and at least they don't heal themselves. Annoying mephits will pop up and there are mummies all over the place. If you can hit them before they cast resistance spells you will find those wrappings seem to burn remarkable well, which is why I guess they cast resistance first. The fact that the Skeleton are not that bothered by piercing or slashing does mean that either bludgeon or harder work are required to finish them off.

You can never leave

The Gnoll area is the largest of the three sections and if you are going to only complete one set of 3,000 the Gnolls are the obvious choice. Once again I would suggest fire resistance as the casters amongst them do like fire spells especially ball of fire to follow you round. Like the Hyenas it seems some Gnolls are resistant to cold, and fire. This makes the selection of weapons important if you are using elemental bonus type weapons, which as I am working with burst type as a preference Acid seems the best choice. But if you are well prepared they fall very easily except for those archers set in inaccessible positions. So a ranged weapon is a sensible option unless you intend to run past the archers. It is a pain for melee builds but most characters will have options to combat situations that are not what you are built for.

My Head grew heavy and my sight grew dim

The scorrow are a mixture of drow, little scorpions and Vulkoorim. Once again acid seems a good choice to take these down. The run I take in this area picks up the explorers but does involve a set of 3 jumps to reach the dead end, which if you miss you have to go back and try again! Not a quick run either but does take a couple of minutes and you still have to get your jumps right, worth saying having a massive jump ability won't make much difference here. Also you have Paragon Plunge which is a drop down and then you have 2 options either two jumps to the other side or drop down and run across an area devoid of life to get back to the slaying. So obviously I take the two jump option which sets me up to finish the slayer run relatively quickly compared to the second option.

As a rough guide my runs give me Undead 95, Scorrow 92 and Gnoll 187 which you can increase a lot if you are using slayer boosts. As I saod earlier you can finish the Gnoll quicker if you are only planning on hitting 3,000 with 1 of the slayer types. And having just finished this area with 9,000 slays for Grouseman with a major slayer boost I spent just over a week with a few runs every day to complete the lot.

Happy Slaying

Grouseman