A priest with problems pre-teen.

[MongoJerry]

Can Priests use staves? I thought it was not in my skill list when I looked. ONly maces and wands was there I think.

Ah, bingo! We have found the problem. One of the first things I did with my undead priestess after finishing Deathknell was run over to the zepplin, go to Kalimdor, and hoof it all the way to Thunderbluff to get the staff weapon skill from the weapon trainer there. (Make sure you have 10 silver in your pocket). Using a staff makes questing at the early levels *so* much easier, because you can get almost twice the dps out of a staff versus a comparable mace. And as you've realized, you're going to be melee'ing a lot when you're soloing as a priest.

At level 12, you should have both Inner Fire, which improves your armor and attack power significantly, and rank 2 PW:Shield. If you're finding yourself run out of mana in fights, you might want to cut back on your use of Smite once the mob gets in melee range. Save the mana for renews, shields, and SW:Pains.

Regarding Silverpine Forest itself, I found that it has a nice cluster of quests to do in the low teens, a real dearth of quests to do in the mid teens, and a nice cluster of quests to do in the high teens. That is, after doing a bunch of the quests in the north part of the forest, I found that all I had left in my quest log were red and orange quests. So, at that point, I went to the Barrens to level up a few times, and then came back. It's worth coming back, though, because there are some nice caster quest rewards in Silverpine Forest.