Most people pass through Echo Cavern without a second thought, on their way to Fungus Grove. Boy are you missing out on a sweet place to hunt that will undoubtedly be nerfed real soon. This walkthru probably won't help. :) So let's keep this as a Forest secret, ok?
Zone into Echo from the hidden entrance near the Soul Binder in Shadowhaven. Now, when you zone in, there's a T intersection, with the left hall leading to Echo and the right leading to what appears to be a dead end. It's not. Click on the right wall and the door will open leading you to a merchant area. The button opening the door from the inside is clearly visible on the left wall. Some of the merchants in the tents in the middle are neutral, although evil races won't get a warm reception. Now let's look at this place. Map segment taken from EQAtlas.
In here are merchants and trainers for evil wizards, enchanters, mages, necros and shadowknights. Killing in here will wreck your faction with them, so if you play an evil character who will need to buy from these guys, do your shopping before you kill, and get all your shopping out of the way because you'll be KOS real fast.
In the area marked 3 is a fort with several trainers. Here's a shot from the outside.
The Archers (tagged as so in the picture) will only shoot at you, you can hide behind rocks after nailing them with DoTs. I use my epic, ES Vambs, Winged Death and Breath of Ro to take them down one at a time. You will need to cast all four (epic, Vambs, WD, BoR) twice to drop them. Don't try doing both, you'll get hit too much. Med as the DoTs work. They drop 2 bows each, and you'll get 19 plat from the merchants right there in the zone for them.
That's 76 plat per kill, plus whatever you get off them. You'll make a mint here. After a while, when you are KOS, invis yourself before going in to loot the bows, and jump off the fort to the ground out front. Then kill the two Scounds outside the front entrance. They are far enough and their agro radius small enough that you can pull one without getting the other. The Scounds, like the archers, drop around 4-5pp per kill. Pulling from inside the fort is risky. If you agro a trainer you are dead unless you make it to the zone. You might be able to pull the two trainees on the left-hand side and the Bowmaster, but it's risky. If you pull the Marshall it's all over. Run for the zone or start looking for a rez.
The section marked 2 on the EQAtlas map has more Scounds and trainers. Only pull the two Scounds out in front. Anything else is suicide.
Now you'll notice there's a tunnel leading to an area with water. Swim to the area marked 1 on the map. When you emerge from the water there will be three skeletons called Arisen Soldier. Here's a shot of them. These skeletons were the old gold mine. They had 1100hp and are level 47-49. No joke. Engorging Roots (190 dmg) and Wildfire (1024 dmg) killed them and I got a huge jump in XP just from killing them. I killed them with my epic DoT. Root the two on the outside first, then the one in the middle. Up the stairs from these guys is a necro trainer, so don't go too far up the stairs or it's curtains.
Verant nerfed the hell out of them and made them more appropriate level 49 mobs. They now hit for 120 a lot more often and have around 5,000 HP. You can still do them, I have, but they aren't the joke they used to be.
Between these skeletons, the Scounds and Archers, I blasted through levels 58 and 59 in two weeks (58 in 5 days, 59 in 8 days) and made about 4k in plat. It happened because this area is totally unknown on my server. On other servers, like Sullon Zek, it's camped 24 hours a day. So be kind to your fellow druids. Or share. The XP isn't bad for grouping either. A tank, cleric and druid can own the place.
