Flourishing's Guide to Leveling in Wild's End

"[toc]\n\n\n## Introduction\n\nMany of you will not know who I am, so this will serve as a simple “hello”. I’m Flourishing! Formerly played UO, EQ, EQ2, WoW, and other such old-school-esque MMOs, as well as practically all MMOs that had a relatively decent showing up to and including New World. Since then, I tapered off (wife, 2 kids, career) and have been enjoying P99 Green, PoE2, and of course now Pantheon.\n \n\nAs a disclaimer, this was made during Early Access for Pantheon and will be updated as I get the time to do so in order to reflect any patches that might have an effect on this guide. I have no affiliation with VR, this was entirely made of my own free will with my own free time to help the community. The purpose is quite simple - I am trying to give the players a reason to venture into Wild’s End rather than avoiding it seemingly at all costs. I will cover solo and grouping aspects, camps, and strategies to help speed up the leveling process and to help you get your feet off the ground with a brand new character by highlighting what mobs will drop coin, bags, and gear that will be useful to you. **Let’s get started…**\n\n\n## Soloing Vs Grouping\n\nSo, as we all know there are many ways to play our favorite games, and particularly in MMORPGs that lean into the social aspect of gaming, this often will become the question of the hour… *Is it better to solo or group?* Well, that will depend on your personal preferences, how much time you have in each session to play, and what your goal is during said session. You can do both relatively easily, but right now it is much faster to level as a solo player. If you’re looking to catch any of the rare drops from named monsters, you will HAVE to get a group going unless you are highly over leveled.\n\n\nThe benefit to soloing is that you will learn your class better and level quicker, but you won’t be able to catch many of the special item drops. Benefits of grouping include the social interaction, learning grouping mechanics (raiding mechanics/setting up macros for abilities), and a chance at getting the local area item drops. Keep those things in mind and do what feels best for you. I’ll cover options for both in Wild’s End and provide a simplified table at the end for quick referencing. Remember, for grouping, you will only gain experience if you are within (roughly) 1.5x your level of the players you’re grouped with.\n\n\n## Level 1-4\n\nThis is unsurprising to many of us, but if you are relatively new to MMORPGs, there are typically very few options that require grouping in the first few levels. As I said above, it is much easier to learn your class if you are soloing - you aren’t relying on others to aid in dps or healing, and you can move at your own pace. This doesn’t mean that you can’t group in these levels. You can, and oftentimes it will actually be faster than soloing… but then your drops are split and you might not get everything you want or need to give your new character a foundation to improve upon (bags, enough coin for new skills/spells, etc…).\n\n\nIn these early levels, Wild’s End has a great layout that is very easy for a new player to understand. The town has a lift that goes up, straight into the bank and quest givers. That will be your main hub. At the bottom of the lift is the bind stone, which you can right click to set your soul release point to. You can’t miss it - this is a giant blue, glowing stone that makes a bit of noise. If you die, this is where you will respawn, assuming you set it there. This is commonly referred to as your bind point. Directly in front of the lift starts a path that leads across a small bridge and into the forest. Stick around that path or the lift and you’ll find the monsters in this level range to kill.\n\n\nMonsters that will benefit you the most in this level range would be the [Twigshade Skeletons]( https://shalazam.info/monsters/313-twigshade-skeleton), [Corrupted Sproutbones]( https://shalazam.info/monsters/453-corrupted-sproutbone), [Corrupted Feralbones]( https://shalazam.info/monsters/500-corrupted-feralbone), and [Forest Foragers]( https://shalazam.info/monsters/129-forest-forager), which will potentially drop you coin, bags, and initial gear to use that is better than the little bit that you start with, however in this level range you will want to kill whatever is white or dark blue when considered. **To consider a monster,** target it by using either pressing the **“TAB”** key (by default, this will target the closest monster directly in front of your player character that you can see), or left-clicking on the monster, and then press the **“c”** key. Taking on yellow cons is fine, especially if you’ve got a group going or are at least a duo.\n\n\n**Something to note** - there are a few *hostile* monsters wandering around, and there are *social* monsters (which means if you attack their friends, they will go help them) as well. The Hollowroot species is social, while any of the large cats and all skeletons will be hostile (also known as KOS/kill on sight) and will attack you if you come into their aggro range, for instance. *You will be able to tell when a monster has targeted you in two ways* - combat music starts, and your screen will start to glow with a faint red outline.\n\n\nThere’s a skeleton camp that is more accessible in the 3-4 level range that will provide you with plenty of coin and gear drops. To reach it, follow the path until you see the large tree and some geckos on your left as the path veers to the right and further into the forest… On the right side of that path as you take it away from town there will be **two large gray rock formations** that you can walk up a fairly steep hill to get between that also has a large tree nearby. Go up that hill and you’ll see a grouping of skeletons, and that’s your camp. They stick to this area, so you can just sit here and fight only these skeletons if you’d like. There are 3 different colors you’ll notice that they glow during night time…\n\n\n**As a rule of thumb** green indicates easiest, blue is the middle ground, and red is harder to kill, in terms of difficulty. The red glowing skeletons ([Sinister Feralbone]( https://shalazam.info/monsters/116-sinister-feralbone)) are higher level, are more rare to spawn, but have a guaranteed gear drop every time you kill them, so doing this is quite beneficial if you need to fill out your gear slots still. That may not be an option in this level range, you might have to wait until 5-8 for that. The blue skeletons (Corrupted Feralbone) have a DD spell that deals a LOT of damage for their level, so I recommend either having a healer at your side or being full health when you take them on, even if you are slightly over-leveled for them. The Sinister Feralbone also has this DD spell, and that can deal even more damage. If you’re looking for the easiest route to gain exp, killing the [frogs]( https://shalazam.info/monsters/308-bogbellied-hopper) that spawn along the riverbank is by far the quickest way to do this as you hit level 2-3. They don’t move from their spawn point and they have static spawns. Just follow the line of frogs down the riverbank killing them all, and repeat process as they respawn/you reach the end of the line. At the end of the line you’ll find the geckos I spoke about earlier, which do the same thing and provide the same kind of leveling experience, just for a bit higher levels. If your main concern is coin and gear, the skeleton camp between the last two rock formations is by far the best place to go, and this can continue into the 5-8 level range as well.\n\n\n## Level 5-8\n\nHere we start to get a lot more options of where we can go and what we can kill in order to get decent exp, so you can tailor from now on much more what you will camp and/or farm in order to meet your specific needs/wants. This is the first of the levels which there are viable *chevron* monster camps that you can group up and encounter for a bit more experience and better chances at drops that might help you and your groupmates out. When you target these monsters, they will have a chevron **(^)** next to their name, and when you consider these monsters, their description will read that **it will take a group of adventurers to take on that encounter,** and it is *NOT* a joke. You *will* need a group. If you’re looking to group, there are Goblin camps directly to the north of the area where many of the level 1-4 monsters are. You’ll notice some **totems/statues with torches** near these villages. They are small villages with a few huts, some wandering Goblins on the outside, and there are two [named Goblins]( https://shalazam.info/monsters/101-maraki-ki) that can spawn at any of the Goblin spawn points within each village (not the outside wanderers). The previous link will take you to Maraki’ki, and the other one is [Krex]( https://shalazam.info/monsters/102-krex).\n\n\nIf you are grouping, keep in mind that you will probably need at a **minimum** a healer and a tank. However, if you are soloing at this point, I found that staying where the skeleton camp and [geckos]( https://shalazam.info/monsters/454-wildwater-gecko) are is the best “bang for your buck” in terms of quick exp while maintaining good coin and gear drops. The geckos are along the riverbank as you continue down the path from the city on your left, just like the frogs are, but be careful because the geckos are **both** social AND hostile. In addition to the skeleton camp mentioned above, there is another place further to the northwest where a lot of them roam around in between a Feraling camp and a Goblin camp. It’s the same skeletons as the 1-4 skeleton camp, just with many, many more of them and they roam a bit wider of a vicinity, but they all spawn in relatively the same area and do not move from that area and are all on their own spawn table for that area, meaning if you kill them, only more skeletons will spawn there. I was able to fully clear the skeleton camp and then move to the geckos with nearly 100% combat up time in this level range as a solo Ranger.\n\n\nIf you are interested in killing a soloable [named skeleton]( https://shalazam.info/monsters/120-thrixar-the-bonehowl) in this level range, there is one that spawns only at night **(starting at 1900 game time)** and patrols around the banks of the river and pond just northwest of the lift for town, who glows red just like the Sinister Feralbones, and has the same spell set. He or his placeholder are guaranteed to spawn when night time hits in game time, and they may even spawn a second time if cleared before 0200 game time, but I have not personally verified this. I am unsure if he has any drops specific to him, but he was just like the Sinister Feralbones and *always* dropped some form of gear for me when I’ve killed him, typically caster gear.\n\n\n## Level 9-12\n\nYou can continue to group and farm Goblins practically through this entire level range, but they start to fizzle out in terms of exp rate near the upper range. I would recommend going to the Feralings with a group at this point. They will continue to drop gear, bags, and coin for you and your group. There are camps to the **north-northeast** of the starting monsters for both Goblins and Feralings, and to the **west**. The Feraling camps, just like the Goblin camps, can all spawn a [named]( https://shalazam.info/monsters/117-vaelris-the-deadheart) at any spot surrounding one of the bonfires within their camps. The Feraling camp to the west is just beyond the Goblin camp to the west, so you may have to traverse either through it or around it to set up shop. Go slightly northwest where the path from home veers to the right and those rock formations are that have the skeleton camp and you’ll be able to find both camps.\n\n\nTechnically there are also the wasps in terms of “chevron” monsters to fight for at this level that are decent exp, but they have a mechanic that kills them and deals MASSIVE damage to their target. It said the ability **dealt 360 damage**, and our tank literally went from full HP to being knocked (but not dead dead) and the wasp died… You **CAN and SHOULD** interrupt this ability at all costs. It is called **Sacrificial Sting**. Needless to say, my groups didn’t continue to kill them after discovering that mechanic, since none of us understood that at the time. **Solo monsters** in this level range are roamers that are in the **northwest on a horseshoe-shaped cliff** (and in general to the north just beyond the Goblin camps), near the western Goblin camp. These include raptors, **Large Gleam Gliders (bugged currently to only deal very little damage)**, gas bats, and panthers, all of which have unimpressive, mostly vendor trash drops.\n\n\n## Level 13-15\n\nThis is where things start to slow down a bit, but we still have options available to us for both grouping and soloing. The **Moor’vaki** and crocodiles seem to be most fitting in this range and are soloable content that are also good exp while grouping, and then there’s the **Goblin Temple to the southwest**. You can do the Goblin Temple earlier than this, but you’ll want to be in this range ideally so that you can more easily clear the **named area at the top** to get those drops. There are multiple named goblins that can spawn here. The gear drops from both the Moor’vaki and goblins are *very* nice upgrades. Focusing on grouped content in the Goblin Temple is the way to go for drops, while soloing (if you are capable - some classes are just better at it than others) can still result in gaining exp *significantly faster* than group exp may get you. Other soloing options include the set of monsters just below the orcs, across the stone bridge beyond the chevron wasps far out west. During night time, many of the monsters near this stone bridge landing will despawn and skeletons in this level range will spawn, for Necromancers looking to get some bones for their skellies.\n\n## Level 15-20\n\nRealistically, the monsters near these orcs can take you as high as 20, *but that would take a literal eternity*, so I highly recommend NOT doing that. However, the orcs in this area **are** good exp up until you hit level 20, but they DO require a group to fight, seeing as they are chevron monsters.\n\n## Locations Reference Table\n\n| Level | Solo/Group | Mob/Camp | /loc | Drops | Coin |\n| ----- | ----- | ----- | ----- | ----- | ----- |\n| 1-4 | Solo | Foragers, Hollowroots, Twigshades | 3904, 474, -2723, 37 | Bags, Gear, Vendor Trash | No |\n| 3-8 | Solo | Skeletons (rock formation camp) | 3581, 522, -2789, 357 | Gear, Vendor Trash, Bones | Yes |\n| 3-8 | Solo | Skeletons (northern) | 4243, 478, -2335, 40 | Gear, Vendor Trash, Bones | Yes |\n| 5-8 | Solo | Geckos | 3420, 489, -2863, 241 | Vendor Trash | No |\n| 5-11 | Group | Goblins (northern) | 3939, 474, -2533, 307 | Bags, Gear, Vendor Trash | Yes |\n| 5-11 | Group | Goblins (western) | 3088, 504, -2473, 270 | Bags, Gear, Vendor Trash | Yes |\n| 7-13 | Group | Feralings (northern) | 4116, 473, -2358, 1 | Gear, Vendor Trash | Yes |\n| 7-13 | Group | Feralings (western) | 3088, 504, -2473, 270 | Gear, Vendor Trash | Yes |\n| 8-14 | Solo | Horseshoe Roamers | 3062, 514, -2270, 355 | Vendor Trash | No |\n| 12-15 | Solo | Moor'vaki, Crocodiles | 3037, 483, -3014, 292 | Gear, Vendor Trash | Yes |\n| 11-16 | Group | Goblin Temple | 3246, 458, -3555, 216 | Gear, Vendor Trash | Yes |\n| 12-15 | Solo | Stone Bridge | | Vendor Trash, Bones | No |\n| 15-19 | Group | Ironroot Orcs | | Gear, Vendor Trash | Yes |\n\n\n## Ending Notes\n\nIf anyone has additional information they’d like, or suggestions/corrections for the guide, feel free to reach out to me via Discord (Flourishing is my tag on the official Pantheon Discord server, the Fallen Crusaders guild server, and the Dark Trade RP server) and I will get to it as I can. This isn’t all-inclusive by any means. This is an ever-changing world and will be updated as my spare time allows and patches necessitate. Any suggestions for future guides you all might want are also accepted and I will work on those as I can as well. Thanks for reading! Hope it helps, and happy hunting everyone!"