Limo Desert First Impressions

So I got up this morning and waited rather impatiently for the patch to be ready, as it was not surprisingly behind schedule. Loaded it up finally and entered the game with a wonderful feeling of excitement and anticipation.

Started in Dalanis and noticed a new NPC exclamation mark near the Auction House for someone named Kuban. Unfortunately, couldn't seem to find the sneaky booger, so I quickly moved on. Not going to waste my day trying to figure out bugged quests!

Raced over to Rh'anka village to turn in some dailies that I had been saving up. Oh, it's SO good to see my XP bar moving again! Gives me a little shivery feeling inside. :)
There were a few new quests in Rh'anka Village involving that dude, Toni. They each gave at least quarter mill XP each, and led to a quest called Go To Limon that tells you to go into the new zone. Mounted up on Spazzy and galloped off to new adventures.
 

Limo Desert map - click to make big


As I went north out of NJF, I passed through a rock tunnel and came out in a bleached sandstone desert. Level 60 Sharp-horned Gulos were the first mobs I saw, then up the hill I found some unfriendly Rh'anka Wanderers and Thorny Sand Vipers.
The zone gave me 'oooh' feelings right away, mostly because of the moody sound of the wind blowing through the sand. I also love the look of the parched ground and the thorny trees. I was worried it would be a desert very similar to Ravenfell or Dust Devil Canyon, but it actually seems to be quite unique in feel and appearance. However, after exploring the zone for several hours, it did get really boring to look at.

First stop, Earthsprings Village, was a small town of adobe buildings and tented merchant stalls, with a variety of residents of different species. Found an armadillo with the most excellent name of Woolybully Deerhorn that was selling level 61 plus refining jewels. Made a note to revisit later.
Also found Miss Luluya Reptilia, general merchant, and Nemos Grey-Eye, potion merchant, both selling level 61 potions: Herbs of Omnipotence for HP and Elemental Stone of Omnipotence for MP. Earthsprings Village (now referred to as EV) also has all the crafting spots except tailoring and armor crafting. Not sure why they left those out.

Very important! The Black Codex dudes are up some stairs, on top of a building in EV (37.6, 74.6). Katharina Korman is the NPC who makes fusion stones. Syior Hoff sells level 60 Black Codex foods, nothing new, plus bags of level 60 mats for 20 mentos plus 37,040 gold. Karmung Shioth sells level 62 purple boots & belts for 420 mentos plus gold. The boots have a given stat; the belts have a random stat. The stats are all named "_____ of the Tomb". There are already some stones on the AH for sale. Some players are just too darn quick!
(Speaking of quick, saw a world message that Ohell reached level 62 already. Sheesh!)

Leaving EV, I came across a sight that made me pull Spazzy to a screeching halt. (Can a reindeer screech?) Off to the side of the path, giant worms with huge teeth were leaping in and out of the sand. They were called Adult Yasheedee, level 60 elites with around 62k HP. They reminded me of some scary worms from a sci fi movie, I can't think of it now. Maybe Tremors?? Anyway, I eyeballed one with a bit of trepidation, then fired up my Flame and...one-shot it! Huh. Not so scary after all.

Traveling on I passed a few more mobs that were not too surprising: some really big cacti, some sharptooths and desert scorpions. Beelined it for the Kingdom of Limon as the map showed that it was the major city in the zone. The entrance to Limon was quite spare and unimposing, not nearly as impressive as when you first enter Dalanis for instance, but the Egyptian style is nice. And I love to see those little yellow exclamation marks on my map that mean MOAR XP for me!

My first OMG moment came in Limon when I found the cutest little Anubis puppy. So sweet! Am I strange to want to pick him up and squeeze his tubby little puppy body? I guess I just love puppies, even little purple ones. What's wrong with that?  I think I posted a blog entry before about wanting to hug the little Angren kittens too.  :)

Limon didn't really impress me all the much visually, but I thought the names of the Anubi residents were very cool: Angerfang and Steeltooth and Shortleg and Bladetail. I skimmed through the back-story text in some quests and got the idea that there are two classes of dog-people that are fighting, with the Angerfangs being on the losing side.

Kawak's Tomb entrance


The only other interesting thing in Limon was Kawak's Tomb. It's the pyramid straight ahead as you enter the city. I stepped inside and checked out the mobs: 62 elites with 240k HP and up. Didn't attempt to hit anything cuz now that the level cap is off I'm going to be much more cautious about my death debt.

Moved on to Rock Salt Village and came across some new mobs along the way, nothing too spectacular but it's nice to see different things. They all die the same though, from eating too much Spiral-Fire.

Took a wrong turn around the Zanka's Nest and ran into the wormy boss, Great Throat, with over 700k HP. Backtracked very quickly but later on found out he's actually not that hard. In fact all of the mobs and bosses in this zone seem to be extremely under-powered. For me to be one-shotting mobs was a little bit of a letdown, to tell the truth. I was hoping for more of that thrilling hands-shaking, stomach-churnin, keyboard-pounding feeling you get when a mob is gonna kick your butt if you don't give it all you got and then some. Perhaps I should go back to Kawak's Tomb...

Few other quick things: mobs drop arrows and projectiles in bunches of 100. Caught a magic cavy, level 3 Amazing Egg dropped. Sigh. Was really hoping for something a bit more impressive. Only Snoop I could find was in Limon. No housemaids or mailboxes in the zone yet.