Yeah, I will agree with you on the fact that conjurers are a bit vanilla before getting to familiar/elemental/so on and so forth, but you need to realize this. At 35+ its hard to bring to the table what a conjurer can. Having played quite a few different classes, I will go on a limb here and say that played right they are ALMOST unbeatable/unkillable.

So the question is...how do you get through the mind numbing boringness that are the levels pre 17. Well I will tell you what I do, but before I do I want to suggest something to you:

If you haven't made it past level 10 yet, conjurers may not be the best place to start. They require a bit of finesse and patience with finding mana sweet spots for conjuring, dealing with sometimes hostile mobs, etc. I was very intimidated of the class before I rolled my first, and this was after three years of playing. I had heard the good, the bad and the ugly on things and was really worried I might not do to well. Well, lo and behold I did well and come to find out conjurers turned out to be one of my more favorite classes to play. Well let me rephrase that....Goodie Conjurers. Evil conjurers are a whole other ballgame and something that still intimidates me and is something I am working on.

Now. Would I have done as well with conjurers if I was fresh out of the gates on CF? Probably not. Thats not to say you couldn't be successful, but having never died to a bad conjuration/psychic vampire/lost soul, etc. Well, that was three years of game knowledge working in my favor. I guess to sum it up, conjies have a higher than normal learning curve. Alright, now to answer your question on how I do this.

First, I make sure and rank to around level 5 within the Academy. THATS SO BORING! Yeah, well...its some of the fastest and easiest leveling you'll ever do, so just consider it as time served. Plus with the recent changes, its a good way to rack up close to 3000 copper!

So now you're level five and ready to magic missile the world to death! Erm, no wait. Actually at this point I start doing quests. You would not believe the amount of low level quests that are out there for you to do! Don't know any you say? Well ask around, look around in the areas listed in Help Newbie3...at this time in my CF career, my little notepad now holds 17 quests I can do JUST as a newbie! And I am willing to bet I haven't even come close to finding them all. So I do these quests and get the exp/gold/gear from them. Now I find myself usually pretty close to being level 12. So what do I do? Well I go over to the guildmaster and discuss with him. At this point I'm usually about three hours into the char and have done enough walking around, questing, etc to get a good 1500-2200 additional in exploration exp, observation exp, and commerce exp. Now I'm almost level 13.

At this point, yeah I have to try and find a group and getting from 13 to 22 can be a bit tedious, but having walked around quite a bit doing my quests, I am pretty good about getting around. So I make the point to approach others about getting together. I lead them about, if they make mention about not having good gear, well, get them gear! Or go with them while they get it and take notes or do whatever it takes to learn.

Anyhow, at this point you might be saying I can't do all of that right now. Well here's my point. At one point I couldn't either. But by asking around, taking a few notes here and there, or just following around other people while they do the more medial tasks, etc. You can find the game knowledge you need to get where you want.

Alright, well this post has gotten a bit more long winded than I wanted, but my advice is this: Be a sponge right now. Absorb what you can from others and never be afraid to ask questions. It may seem like an eternity getting to where you want to, but before long you'll be in the position to where you can answer someone's questions.