i was hunting kablammus, my war mage, around mayoi and picked a fight with a swarm of golems.
soloing mages is tricky. they can handle creatures well above their level, but only one at a time. they have to hunt out in the open and pick single targets. sometimes this works well, sometimes it ends in death. mages die a lot, that's just a fact of mage life. it's hard to hunt a young mage solo, especially in the high teens to low twenties because there are not many level 30-40 creatures other than olthoi.
mayoi is probably the best place i have seen to hunt mages, tho you will just havve to tolerate packs of level 26 luggies, monougas and ursuins. he was doing ok with the packs of drudges, luggies, low level tuskers, and even the occasional olthoi, but when he ran into 3 unstable magma golems, things got rough.
i call it rough becuse he managed to kill the first UMG rather quickly, and the third decided not to come join the fun. normally this would mean great success, however 3 granite golems who were off my radar ALSO decided that they wanted a piece of the action, and i ended up back at the lifestone. i made a second pass with no luck and when i dropped my third corpse and the last of my death items, i decided it was getting out of hand.
so i visited the buffbot at our mansion. i figured two pyreal motes was a good trade for a couple of sets of buffs and then i set off to recover my bods. this is where things go interesting:
on my way to my bod i ran across a pack of mattekars, one of which was of the tundra variety. it took a few attempts, but i finally got it yielded and vulned, and after drianing it's dire mattekar buddies, i managed to kill it and received a robe of the tundra for my efforts, which is al 100, very nice for a robe. with a round of level 4 banes, it's al 300 for most attack types, which is nice seeing as how he has really outgrown the crappy al140 chainmail he is wearing.
when i finally get to the bods, all the golems have been replaced with drudges, including the northern black claw raider. i have stumbled into this dungeon before, and it's a great place for low to mid level mages to hunt. i still needed to get the bods, ao i tied to the portal instead. i have heard that you can't tie to it, but i figured it was worth a shot.
so i clear the spawns of drudges and other critters, grab the bods, and the northern black claw raider and his friends respawn again. so i hop thru the portal and finish out the buffs hunting and looting the drudges. thanks to the buffs, he was able to take on raveners and managed to make a couple of levels, and looted enough cash to finish buying his level 4 buffs. with a little more cash he can buy level 5 wars and then it just a matter of grinding to 40th and spec'd creature magic. the new robe will do nicley until i can find him a set of hieromancer's armor or a set of olthoi gear.