How ya' like them apples?

Geographically speaking, Yaraq was probably destined to be the hub of Gharun'dum activity on Dereth. Gharu lands are pretty much desert, so the Yaraq cove, a supremely fertile area on the coast of the Inner Sea, is prime real estate. The town itself has a very simple layout: one street, buildings on one side, the other overlooking the beaches, where newbies used to hunt skeletons back in the old days. Simple and straightforward, even if it does look a bit like a strip mall.

The town is somewhat more popular then Shoushi, as the buffbots milling around attest:

For those not familiar with AC: bots and third-party utilities are technically against the ToS (I think), but by long tradition Turbine turns a blind eye unless you're griefing or hogging spawns with unattended combat bots. Consequently, the game has a very strong community of modders and botmakers. Indeed, the in-game marketplace is built on the use of trade bots, and buffbots like this are a common sight in much-visited towns and locations.

Anyway, I left Neria in Yanshi, instead opting to rock this town with Elderwulf, the shield-carrier among my little adventuring party. I'm immediately disappointed in my starting gear: a 20 AL shield and tiny dirk. That's right, I'm a newb with a dagger. Hoping to find some better gear ASAP, I head over to the bar to meet with Mara al-Luq. Mara is the local rich bitch heiress very nice young daughter of Yaraq orchard baron Lubziklan al-Luq, who spends her spare time hanging around the bar and working for the explorer society. Surprising nobody who gives a bit of thought to it, my first job in Yaraq is to go to daddy dearest and get a list of stolen items to retrieve. (Favoritism, much?) The local drudge population has made quite an impressive living burglarizing his storehouse, and rather than hire some guards he'd have to pay daily wages, Lubby prefers sending bold adventurers like me into dungeons on scavenger hunts.

The drudges are holed up in the Sea Temple Catacombs, but for reasons that will eventually become obvious Lubziklan sends me to a Red Rat Lair nestled in one of his orchards instead. So, yes, I am now a newb with a dagger killing rats. I guess even the great MMOs can't resist the shtick.

The Rat Lair is a short and simple dungeon, just a hall with a few doors on either side and rats everywhere. So unremarkable I forgot to take a good screenshot, so you'll have to be satisfied with the one above. The rats don't put up too much of a fight, and I clear the place out with no real injuries and a few tails to turn into the Collector back in town. The main "treasure" here is a back way into the Sea Catacombs.

The catacombs themselves are a fairly simple dungeon notable for their use of rooms over rooms. Here you can see one path crossing another beneath. In theory, places like these can let you jump down for quick shortcuts, but in practice the items you need are scattered around all the levels, so you have to stay on the path. So I make my way slowly down, checking every nook and cranny for the items I need as I go. One of them is a pie left sitting out on the floor:

Somehow, I doubt this pie is still edible, but whatever. Down at the lowest level on the dungeon I find the drudges' treasure room:

Sheeeeeee! Well, no wonder they keep attacking the al-Luq stores. In a society where wealth is based on stolen human foodstuffs, this is a dragon's hoard. Anyway, I eventually find all the wanted items. Before /lifestoning, I take the portal out so that I can show you something:

This is the top of a mountain. Note the entrance to the Sea Temple Catacombs, on the radar just behind me.  Visible ahead of you is the Yaraq Cove. The town of Yaraq itself is out of sight. If you look carefully, you can just see the road going into town in this shot. This is the reason for the back door through the Red Rat Nest. In the old days, you had to actually run all this way, than up this mountain to get to the catacombs. It's quite a haul, and mountain climbing on Dereth is a dodgy prospect under the best circumstances. Lucky thing to all you newbs these quests were re-done after the starter towns changed.

Anyway, after returning Lubziklan's stolen property, I get sent to Ma'yad ibn Ibsar for my next quest. I'm getting pretty tired of beating up drudges, so I'm glad she's got something a little different for me: a missing persons case.

Sure enough, Akyafi is upstairs, enjoying the view. I can hardly fault him, it's a good view. You expect the first witness to stonewall you, but he's actually quite open about his business with Abmim. Which of course makes perfect sense: If I go off after Abmim, I'll probably wind up finishing the job he couldn't.

Since I've run this quest before, I know that it'll take me around the cove to the other end. So I set off to the south, remembering (falsely, as it turns out) that it will be the shorter way around. The trip is fairly uneventful. I encounter some low-level mobs and a bad guy whose cover is so hilariously obvious I had to take a screen:

No, no, nothing suspicious at all about that, Mr. in Town.

But that's another quest, to be run another time. I head onward, dodging around a somewhat out-of-place Tumerok warrior, until finally the Mad Star ruins are in sight:

Shortly thereafter, near those pillars off to the left, I find something else: the corpse of Abmim ibn Ibsar, being nibbled on by Shallows Sharks. I think I remember reed/shallows sharks are vulnerable to lightning, and fortunately I've picked up a cestus that will do the job. So I go to work.

Unfortunately, either I've got the wrong vulnerability, or these guys are tougher than I remembered, or four-on-one is just too much. Before long I'm chugging potions one after another while the sharks chew up my thighs like I'm a fried chicken. After a tense few minutes (tense and costly, those potions ain't cheap), I eventually prevail, looting sharks and Abmim quick and GTFO before the respawn hits. Abmim, if his blade is any indication, was not a terribly nice man in life. (Though not a terribly good thief, either, if he couldn't even pinch a dagger with some half-decent enchants.)

I /lifestone and turn the knife in to Ma'yad. She's crestfallen, but apparently not surprised. Mission accomplished, but I want to get to the bottom of this Mad Star business. (Also, I remember there was more to it from my last visit to Dereth.) So I head back to the ruins, going north this time to avoid the shallow sharks. Near the ruins, I scale a nearby mountain (the one with the festival stone on top) to get a birds-eye view of the area:

The Mad Star is clearly connected to the tower which, as Akyafi noted, is infested with drudges. Note also the pillars nearby, home to a water wisp, and the small bunker visible just behind the tower, which conceals a portal and an undead guard. I head on down to kick drudge tail, and the fight proceeds in two phases: One against the drudges that jump off the tower top as they approach, and then my counter-attack on the drudges in the tower. As they're mostly lower-level drudges, it's not much trouble, despite my getting smacked with a Frost Bolt for 23 damage due to underestimating the Water Wisp.

In addition to the usual loot, I find a Scrawled Note, untranslated, on one of the drudges. Near the bunker, which can't be opened except by a switch, I find a second note which is all too legible:

Poor Abmim. If he had made it home, he might have been able to turn over a new leaf. The second page of the note indicates that Abmim's heading to the Pillars of the Inner Sea, which is where I found him being Shallow Shark food. So it seems that I ran this quest out of order. But actually, I like it better this way. Learning of Abmim's death before learning that he wasn't such a bad guy has more dramatic appeal. Anyway, I drop back to Yaraq and turn in this letter to Ma'yad, and the other to Akyafi. The translated noted babbles some barely-coherent nonsense and freaks Akyafi the hell out. So, of course, he sends me to the crypt (the bunker mentioned earlier) to do further recon.

Since I know the switch opening the crypt is atop the tower, I know I'm going to be fighting the drudges again. But this time, I wise up and take out the wisp first, after which the rest are pretty easy. Inside the crypt, I get my first taste (with this character, anyway,) of combat with the undead.

Undead ("zombie" style, which includes Undead, Zombies, and Liches) are much tougher than most of the enemies I've encountered thus far, mainly because their magic is stronger. Worse, their weakness is fire, which I don't have. Upon portaling in I'm immediately set upon by three of them, fortunately I get lucky in that they left their war magic home. No fool, I amp up with my Lugian gems after dispatching the first three rather than push my luck further. Straight down the hall lies the boss monster, secure in a sealed chamber:

Level 30 and has at least Life Magic, probably War too. Low health, but pretty nasty otherwise. It's not clear from this screenshot, but the layout of this dungeon is basically: one big room, with a bottom floor and a balcony, which is what you're looking out on now. Stairs down at the other end of the balcony. From the bottom floor, several tunnels lead into the rock and wind around, through a few gates, eventually leading to the chamber on the balcony where the boss waits. Because Life Magic isn't blocked by walls, the Mad Star Marionette can harass you with debuffs the entire time that you're trying to get to him, in addition to siccing the other undead around the dungeon on you. Clever design on Turbine's part.

Unfortunately for Turbine, the old melee-through-closed-doors trick works just as well with thin walls:

Making the situation even more absurd, I can even loot the corpse through the wall:

This accomplishes my mission, but it's not all there is to do here. I head downstairs, fighting undead all the way. Then I work my way through the tunnels, encountering more undead and a slightly tricky switch-and-door puzzle. Deep in those tunnels, I find a key on one of the enemies. This key goes to a locked door on the lower level of the main room, behind which I find the dungeon's other boss:

I remember one time getting a Pyreal Mote off this guy. No such luck today, but I do earn some decent loot from the Runed Chest after clobberizing him. Then it's back to town, to turn in the severed head and sell the rest of my loot. Annoyingly, we don't get any conclusion to just what was going on with the Mad Star and the crypts, but eh, it was probably virindi. It's always virindi, especially when it involves inexplicable purple lights.

So, all in all, Yaraq newb is a lot tougher than Shoushi newb. Although I succeeded in all objectives without dying, I was not impressed with the Heavy Shield template's performance. I had figured that the shield would mean less damage, but the effect isn't noticeable. The effect of doing less damage due to having only one weapon is noticeable, and in fact I think Elderwulf takes more damage than Neria due to not being able to kill enemies as fast. But then again, Yaraq threw a lot of crap at me that Shoushi didn't. Undeads and Shallows Sharks are on a different level than drudges and shreaths, even in mass numbers. So maybe I should find a more comparable dungeon before giving up on Elderwulf entirely.

Before I call it a night, I stop to take a picture. Down in the tunnels I found a new bludgeoning weapon that helped me to beat the golem:

Yes. I've upgraded from "newb with a dagger" to "newb with a stick." Yay.