There've been a few times I've posted on the boards about coming back to try the game again, and it is difficult for me to remember everything I've read about the game...
But anyways, tonight, I made a serious attempt to "come back" to Istaria.
The last thing I was working on, was trying to level a biped, my Saris.
She's currently 56 Warrior, 61-ish Cleric. I chose those two schools because I want a nicely-armored melee class that can heal themselves and use the full line of Gift spells (which require Augmentation).
Leveling Cleric by itself limits the kinds of armor I can wear, so I added Warrior to it for the Armor Use and extra Health they get (as well as 1HC/2HC).
Anyways, I remember why I 'failed' to come back to Istaria last time -- I took her out, trying to get levelups. I'm trying to get Warrior to 61 so I can make a whole set of Level 61 armor and not have to carry around two sets of armor, so I'd level one school to x1 and then level the other school to x1 and get a new set of armor and get rid of the old.
The last time I tried to play Istaria, my Warrior was 55, and XP was painfully slow. Mob kills take forever and it is dangerous -- with only two heals and very little defensive abilities, I don't last long if I get 2 mobs on me at once, and kills that yield trophies that I can currently turn in, give so pitifully low XP (not even a noticeable increase on the XP meter).
Tonight, I decided I'd try my old trick: grab my Level 90+ dragon, invite my Saris to a group and go to town on those fire opal golems near Saritova.
Well, that XP isn't much better. Faster kills, about the same XP as single kills that my Saris would normally get, though no trophies to turn in (trophies are a bit too rare to rely on them anyways).
But now... golems drop no Hoard items anymore, it seems.
That stinks.
For me to get any decent kill speed, I must spend Hoard. But if I keep using Gold Rage, Silver Strike, et. al, I'm going to run out of Hoard unless I kill something that drops Hoard. I don't get the reasoning for removing the HV drops from Golems (what DOES drop it now? Undead only? UGH), but suddenly, this leveling method won't work anymore.
So basically, I got a biped that is nearly impossible to level because the kills are too darn slow and too dangerous, unless I just drop the Warrior school entirely, but then if I do that, I have to use out-dated weapons and armor because Cleric doesn't get enough Armor Use or 1HC.
So now, I'm left with trying to figure out why the heck this is so hard to do. Trophy drops are much too rare to rely on unless they boosted the drop rate (based upon the golems I killed, I'm going to say, probably not. I got like 6 trophies out of 30 kills, which barely gave me 10% of a level).
I think I liked how the game was before more, when I could kill anything and keep my dragon going with the hoard drops that dropped off of anything.
Edit: I also tried leveling her by farming trophies with my dragon. After 50+ kills and not even enough trophies for 25% of a level, I gave up on that.