StuntyStomper (Choppa) back in business

It's been quite a while since i played my Choppa. Initially i started him to try out the Choppa (yeah, i like Orcs in WAR) and to set him up as a proper AoE Butcher-Collector. During the last three days i played him again. The initial setup (hotbars etc.) was a pain and after weeks you feel quite "rusty", but its easy enough to get back into the proper fighting style again. I started him again after we realized we don't really have an active Butcher in the guild anymore. Less talking more chopping i fired up my Choppa and a guildmate dragged me through LotD where i quickly advanced from 160 to 200 butchering. Talking about butchering: Anyone got a good spot to butcher high-lvl hero/champ mobs for 200 armor ingredients? Poke me. ;) I leveled Stuntystomper up to r31 so far. Its fun for a while to be able to quest again and have something to do (not so much on my main since there is zero solo content for high-levels once you reached a certain threshold). Playing the Choppa is fun, but after some time it feels like a grind to go through the content again - which basicly is the same in every MMO. Of course you see a few new things every now and then or take a different approach.

I tried to quest/kill as high above my level as possible for the additional challenge. Depending on the mobs i can easily kill 2-3 that are 4-5 ranks above me. I'm surprised how much rested XP my Choppa got... seems to be a few levels worth all in all. Very nice, speeds up things a lot. If you are rank 30/31 here is a hint for you if you want to grind mobs for XP: Inside the Sacellum Arena are lots of 34-38 mobs with a very fast respawn timer. Many of them fight each other inside the arena. The XP given from them seems to be a bit shaky tho: If you kill mobs that are already damaged by another NPC - usually (not always dunno why) you get the full XP as if you'd have killed it all by yourself. Since the mobs roam around you have to be very careful and look behind you, but its a great place to grind a few levels. Also I'd like to mention the rank 31 weapons from LotD are uber for that level. Grabbing a few silver scarabs is very easy (you get bolstered in LotD to r36) and the weapons have high DPS plus talisman slots. Grab those, its cheap! Overall its been fun to deal with my Choppa again since it feels like you can develop your character and are eager for the next skill or the next gear upgrade you can use.

This weekend is another beta event for the Aion MMO. I'll try to play some more to get a better feeling for a few things and the game in general. If you're waiting for the beta to start, check this status page to see about servers. There is also a nice trailer for the new 1.5 content. In addition, should you have problems with the download speed for the latest patch, here you can find some mirrors to speed things up.