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Medullah
Aug 14, 2003

FEAR MY SHARK ROCKET IT REALLY SUCKS AND BLOWS
Sounds like the classic EQ Experience™ to me!

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xZAOx
Sep 6, 2004
PORKCHOP SANDWICHES

Love Crime posted:

Started a cleric on phinny and lasted about an hour before giving up. I know they want you to be grouping with people and not soloing but at level 1 you don't really have much of a choice, especially if you're playing at non-peak time. Soloing a white con would give me 2-3%, after about an hour I wasn't even level 2. Plus looting everything and vendoring it didn't even give me enough plat to buy a single level 1 spell that I didn't start with.

Thought I'd look at other TLP servers and I was literally the only player on Vulak. Like not even /anon people, /who all only brought up me.

:sad:

You should be randomly inviting anyone else in the newbie yard.

That said, yeah, the first few levels are really rough. You're a cleric though, you shouldn't have trouble getting groups as soon as you get out of your starter area, and make your way to Crushbone or something.

Evernoob
Jun 21, 2012
I was in the EXACT same situation when I started on phinny last saturday :

Try to get a Port to Gfay asap and bind yourself there (unless you're a Dark Elf).
Ask some friendly players to buff you, with thorns preferably, and get to level 4 or 5.
Then head into Crushbone and group up.

Getting to level 4 took me about 4 painful hours because I did it solo. Getting from 4 to 10 only took me about 3 more hours in a decent group.
Especially as a healer it is okay to be 2-3 levels below the tank.

xZAOx
Sep 6, 2004
PORKCHOP SANDWICHES
Holy crap, like 14 years late on this, but with the latest patch you can finally use mounts on the non-Luclin models.

khysanth
Jun 10, 2009

Still love you, Homar

xZAOx posted:

Holy crap, like 14 years late on this, but with the latest patch you can finally use mounts on the non-Luclin models.

Courtesy of our guildmate:

https://gfycat.com/DishonestPoshBurro

https://gfycat.com/DearestFreshHoneycreeper

xZAOx
Sep 6, 2004
PORKCHOP SANDWICHES
Yeah, looks stupid as poo poo, but still a better option than "not at all" IMO.

But really I think you could rename that to "everquest.gif". 16 years of half-rear end tacking on poo poo to an engine that should have been rewritten 5 times by now because it's so full of garbage.

Evernoob
Jun 21, 2012
I guess they rushed this in just in time for Luclin's release on the Phinigel TLP server.

Mayor McCheese
Sep 20, 2004

Everyone is a mayor... Someday..
Lipstick Apathy

I love this and would not ask for it any other way.

xZAOx
Sep 6, 2004
PORKCHOP SANDWICHES

https://streamable.com/uc5e

Evernoob
Jun 21, 2012
And even with all its flaws, EQ is still a much better game than almost all of the crap that came afterwards.

Ramulack
Oct 12, 2009
I was forcing myself to get used to Luclin models before Luclin in anticipation of being forced to for mounts.

Now I just don even know what i'll do.

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

Ramulack posted:

I was forcing myself to get used to Luclin models before Luclin in anticipation of being forced to for mounts.

Now I just don even know what i'll do.
Switch back to old models or be branded a heathen!

iNteg
Dec 17, 2007

Pilsner posted:

Switch back to old models or be branded a heathen!

I am a heathen, I love my heroes forge.

BJA
Apr 11, 2006

It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here
What better time than now
So a 4 box at level 83, SK, CLR, WIZ, ENC with CLR and ROG mercs (on test) was doing the level 80 hotzone, it got really slow at 83, the level 85 hotzone kicks my rear end. Where is better to exp that won't get me killed in one round? What is a good path from here to 100? thanks!

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

BJA posted:

So a 4 box at level 83, SK, CLR, WIZ, ENC with CLR and ROG mercs (on test) was doing the level 80 hotzone, it got really slow at 83, the level 85 hotzone kicks my rear end. Where is better to exp that won't get me killed in one round? What is a good path from here to 100? thanks!
I'm not sure which of the three hotzones are active (they rotate now), but I can see on Alla that the current level 85 ones are some nasty places.

Did you try Fortress Mechanotus, level 80 hotzone? It's tough, but shouldn't one round you, and it's a big easy open space to navigate with endless mobs.

For an easier time, try Ashengate. It's not a hot zone, but it's a very good zone still. Traveling there takes some time and some areas are very unfriendly to navigating a box army through (platforms and such), but if you stick to the center/north wing, it will be okay. As far as I recall, I grinded the poo poo out of that place until level 85 or more, joined by my shaman box back then.

From 85+ I can't remember where I went, maybe I squeezed more out of Ashengate?

Once you get to the high 80's, I would slowly and carefully try to dabble in Feerrott the Dream (House of Thule start zone). Basic mobs hit for over 4k per round, but if you baby your merc (have you gotten a Tier5 journeyman merc yet?) I think you can do it and slowly get some serious batches of XP and feel like you progress through all the solo and group tasks. Plus House of Thule is fun. :)

darkhand
Jan 18, 2010

This beard just won't do!
The void -> korascian warrens is ok exp. Set up near the orc you can talk to (the one you get one of the j5 quests from) and kill stone elementals. Even poo poo geared players should be ok there. KW is the only zone worth leveling in from the void, mostly and it's really easy to get to.

If you have ok gear, pellucid grotto is really good exp, Refilling the Repository quest is really good exp. The zone is kinda a pain to navigate because random elementals will see invis and they hit like a truck if you're not underfoot+ geared.

If your gear is pretty upto date then hit The Grounds. Don't camp the entrance, it sucks and will wreck you if you're not used to it. Levitate/invis over into a tunnel or just pull from one of the path entrances. (Dogs and the erudites see invis)

I don't know SK that well but after lvl70s you should have a lot of buttons to press, are you pushing a lot of buttons on him? Are your spells rk2? What gear does he have? Your sk should be the most geared of your boxes, honestly you should dump almost everything you can into him before even trying to gear another of your dudes.

Don't "save" cooldowns for later, just rotate them; you have lichsting, epic, zombie/damage AA, some other stuff. It's much better to always be using cooldowns and wait a few minutes for them to pop for a named, than to try to save them for a named. That seems to be a trap a lot of players do. When you're burning LoTD you should just grind/tank/dps as much as you can for those 30minutes, and cooldowns speed you up substantially.

darkhand fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Sep 23, 2016

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

I checked my screenshot archive after getting home, and I actually grinded Ashengate all the way to level 90. Not optimal, but I played solo back then, and only in the high 80's added a Shaman box. I have a very high tolerance for monotonous grinding :)

darkhand posted:

Don't "save" cooldowns for later, just rotate them; you have lichsting, epic, zombie/damage AA, some other stuff. It's much better to always be using cooldowns and wait a few minutes for them to pop for a named, than to try to save them for a named. That seems to be a trap a lot of players do. When you're burning LoTD you should just grind/tank/dps as much as you can for those 30minutes, and cooldowns speed you up substantially.
Amen, this is what I have been doing for the past couple years. Burn those cooldowns, when the big bad boss comes you are going to be too distracted to do a proper rotation anyway.

At level 100 with decent buyable gear, I ended up even doing a little swarming (30-40 mobs) on my Monk by popping every buff under the sun. Stupidly fun and it makes you use your cooldowns.

BJA
Apr 11, 2006

It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here
What better time than now
Fortress Mechanotus was the zone I did from 80 until 83, it was great until 83, then dropped off. Foundation kicked my rear end. I tried the Dream rotdogs, killed a few then got taken out by a few bad rounds before a heal could land. I guess I'll try Ashengate. As far as gear I'm in mostly lost rubicite and brells rest/silver token bought stuff, 28k hp, 4k ac. Soon as I hit 85 i'll be able to use the Rustic stuff.

BJA
Apr 11, 2006

It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here
What better time than now
Oh, and my mercs are J1, pretty sure the same ones I got at level 1. I have a rogue/healer, should I have a tank even though I have an SK?

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

BJA posted:

Oh, and my mercs are J1, pretty sure the same ones I got at level 1. I have a rogue/healer, should I have a tank even though I have an SK?
You should look into getting the J5 mercs, they are significantly better than J1. All it requires is a quest line that you can complete in an afternoon: http://articles.eqresource.com/mercoverview.php

You will be able to complete it at your level. After completing the final quest, simply ditch your merc and go buy a new one in PoK or wherever, and select the J5 option. They used to cost 10k, but these days they cost next nothing. Upkeep will be approx 100p / 15 minutes.

Whether you want a tank merc or not depends on how you want to play. I main a Monk (with Shaman, Ranger, Wiz box) and Monks are not good tanks primarily because they can't keep aggro well, so a tank+healer merc is obvious for me. I like that I can focus on pulling and DPS'ing while the bot-like setup of tank and healer merc keeps me safe. With single mobs you can theoretically just doze off and you will stay alive as the tank tanks and does damage (quite a bit actually) and the healer merc heals, which is nice, but of course I like to challenge myself and frequently pull 3 or 4 mobs depending on the place I'm in and how risky I feel being.

An SK is not a good damage dealer, but sure you can do some damage, and be less stressed with a tank merc. Do you use your cleric for active healing? It's a bit unusual to have a cleric these days as healer mercs are usually good enough. If you don't mind taking a break to do some power leveling and gearing of a new character, I would strongly suggest that you ditch the cleric and level up a shaman instead, the buffs are amazing and he will be a valuable secondary healer for when the healer merc isn't enough or when things go south. I love mine. :) Druid is another good option, but since you already have a wiz for ports and evac, I would choose shaman. You won't need his haste (since you have an Enchanter), but here are some of the awesome buffs:

* AA: Insta-cast group Spirit of the Cheetah, let you run around almost like a Bard
* Talisman group buff, giving ATK, hit chance, defense, stamina, HP
* Sick regeneration group buff
* Resurrection, both in and out of combat
* Ghetto feign death
* Temporary major max hit point buff (10k HP at high levels, lasts about 5 minutes)
* <1 second cast group heals
* Various AAs that majorly boost your group's damage
* The best melee epic 2.0 buff, giving major +crit chance

And more!

I can give you a good power leveling zone route to get the new guy up to speed if you like.

Evernoob
Jun 21, 2012
Putting aside Phinigel for a second as I am only to play 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there this week.
I can't seem to keep up with the cost of my lvl 20 merc as the mobs in crescent reach don't seem to drop coin.

I do get some crapdrops and defiant armor which I sell off but it's not enough. (and yes I'm killing mobs non-stop at a good pace)

Should I look into some old world zone or try the hot zones quests now?

Love Crime
Apr 4, 2016

Evernoob posted:

Putting aside Phinigel for a second as I am only to play 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there this week.
I can't seem to keep up with the cost of my lvl 20 merc as the mobs in crescent reach don't seem to drop coin.

I do get some crapdrops and defiant armor which I sell off but it's not enough. (and yes I'm killing mobs non-stop at a good pace)

Should I look into some old world zone or try the hot zones quests now?

You should buy a krono from third party sites like https://www.redguides.com for as cheap as $7 and then sell it for several hundreds of thousands (or millions if you play on FV) of plat.

Evernoob
Jun 21, 2012
Why is the FV server so inflated? (that's where I started)
There is so much more loot available in the economy so I would think prices are more reasonable. Is that the server where all the bot armies have done the most damage?

I agree with the Monk/Shaman combo mentioned above. That is the one I mostly played with my friend from 1999 to 2003. It's really strong and if played by two actual people has probably the smallest amount of downtime. (You also forgot to mention Virulent Paralisis is pretty much the closest thing you will get from a perfect mez, the duration used to be a guaranteed 2 minutes with a 2 minutes recast and it was never resisted)
But the cannibalize mechanic actually requires constant attention so it's not really optimal.

Also as I mained a shaman already in the past I was contemplating the Iksar Monk / Bard box combo. What it is obviously missing is a healer, but I am hoping the combination of Attack Songs and Debuff/Mez songs with some nice regen make it a versatile combo.

Yet to decide if I try it on Phiny or a Live server with mercs. I am willing to spend a krono or two, so if on phiny I would definitely buy a Fungi tunic for the monk.

Which server would you recommend on Live? I'm a euro but I already tried out AB and it seemed like pretty empty to me. FV and Phiny were by far the most active of the sample I checked out.

(are there any other reasons NOT to start on FV? things I might not be aware of that are a result of the special ruleset)

Love Crime
Apr 4, 2016
FV's economy is inflated because it's the server where things go to die. Loot and plat can be imported to it with server transfers in, but there is no exporting because you can't transfer off the server. It also used to have free transfers to it as well but it was changed a few years ago.

Also a monk/bard combo is not ideal. Bards are best paired with casters because they get a lot of things that increase a group's spell damage majorly, shaman are best paired with melee because they get a lot of group melee damage and avoidance buffs. You can still do a monk/bard but it's pretty dumb because you're missing out on a ton of poo poo.

Love Crime fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Sep 25, 2016

Stanos
Sep 22, 2009

The best 57 in hockey.
I think I'd rather shoot myself than box a monk and a bard. Besides things other people mentioned, you're stacking two pullers which is kind of dumb. Bards are a great lazy box don't get me wrong but there's a reason Monk/Shaman has been a gold duo for over a decade at this point.

FV might not be too bad if you're casual though, you could certainly do worse. At least if you level at a slow pace you can buy old raid gear cheap and use it longer to grind AAs.

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

Evernoob posted:

Why is the FV server so inflated? (that's where I started)
There is so much more loot available in the economy so I would think prices are more reasonable. Is that the server where all the bot armies have done the most damage?

I agree with the Monk/Shaman combo mentioned above. That is the one I mostly played with my friend from 1999 to 2003. It's really strong and if played by two actual people has probably the smallest amount of downtime. (You also forgot to mention Virulent Paralisis is pretty much the closest thing you will get from a perfect mez, the duration used to be a guaranteed 2 minutes with a 2 minutes recast and it was never resisted)
But the cannibalize mechanic actually requires constant attention so it's not really optimal.

Also as I mained a shaman already in the past I was contemplating the Iksar Monk / Bard box combo. What it is obviously missing is a healer, but I am hoping the combination of Attack Songs and Debuff/Mez songs with some nice regen make it a versatile combo.

Yet to decide if I try it on Phiny or a Live server with mercs. I am willing to spend a krono or two, so if on phiny I would definitely buy a Fungi tunic for the monk.

Which server would you recommend on Live? I'm a euro but I already tried out AB and it seemed like pretty empty to me. FV and Phiny were by far the most active of the sample I checked out.

(are there any other reasons NOT to start on FV? things I might not be aware of that are a result of the special ruleset)
Good news: Canni'ing is virtually a non-issue these days, at least for a supporting Shaman that isn't going nuts on a raid target. Shamans have an AA (Cannibalization) that does a mega canni (approx. 40% of your HP to refill approx. 30-40% of your mana) with a 3-minute cooldown (I forgot whether it can be shortened, perhaps to 2 minutes), and you can heal yourself to full a splitsecond after for little to no mana. I have never ever bothered with the regular canni spell on my Shaman box.

VP is still unresistable (barring unrootable mobs) and has a fixed duration, so it's really good. There is even a secondary VP AA now.

I've been playing mostly on AB for the past 7 years. I spent a year on Luclin to hang out with goons back in the great goonrush around 2012, but then moved back to AB. It's not completely dead, but of course only makes sense if you're European. Personally I find that the ping difference is big enough to warrant playing there, it really detracts from the game when your abilities feel like they have a half-second delay.

Evernoob
Jun 21, 2012
I know very well about Cannibalization. I used to cause some clerical hearth attacks when I first got it. So much fun!
I imagine those stupid healer mercs would also heal you up after, not letting Torpor do its work.

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

Evernoob posted:

I know very well about Cannibalization. I used to cause some clerical hearth attacks when I first got it. So much fun!
I imagine those stupid healer mercs would also heal you up after, not letting Torpor do its work.
They will, but there's no such thing as Torpor today (a self-HoT with a penalty). You have the following lines of heals:

1) Fast-casting group heal that heals a fixed small amount and puts a big HoT on everyone. Recast 24 secs.
2) Ultra-fast casting group heal that heals more, the less each person has current HP. Recast 3 minutes.
3) Big single heal, 2-3 seconds casting time
4) Big single HoT, 2-3 seconds casting time
5) Big group HoT, 4 seconds casting time
6) Insta-cast AA single-target massive heal

It's not really a problem that the merc will heal you after Canni'ing, it's unlikely to Canni in the middle of a heated fight (except a raid boss fight, and you can't use mercs in raids), and they have ridiculous amounts of mana anyway. When I Canni and don't have a merc around, I just instantly top myself up afterwards, often being lazy and using one of the fast-casting group heals, and I'm ready to go again.

Generally speaking, while mana costs go up as you level, it feels like you have a ton more firepower than back in the old days where you probably last played. You can cast so many spells, particularly as a Shaman, and not run out of mana, and combine them with AAs for mana-free power, both offensive and defensive. Heck, I've soloed a tough boss in a dungeon where the rest of my group died, just tossing out DoTs and healing myself. The days of very carefully planning your spellcasting and :lol: medding :lol: between pulls in groups is gone, thankfully. Hack and slash, and have fun!

Still, I recommend to anyone to bind easily accessible hotkeys to change the state of your merc, for example the Passive and the Balanced healer merc states. When running around pulling with feign death, it is vital to put your merc on passive so she doesn't accidentially heal you while you have aggro.

Pilsner fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Sep 27, 2016

Krazuel
Nov 23, 2004

Not doing that again!
24 hours until Luclin launch on Phinegal!

BJA
Apr 11, 2006

It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here
What better time than now

Pilsner posted:

You should look into getting the J5 mercs, they are significantly better than J1. All it requires is a quest line that you can complete in an afternoon: http://articles.eqresource.com/mercoverview.php

You will be able to complete it at your level. After completing the final quest, simply ditch your merc and go buy a new one in PoK or wherever, and select the J5 option. They used to cost 10k, but these days they cost next nothing. Upkeep will be approx 100p / 15 minutes.

Whether you want a tank merc or not depends on how you want to play. I main a Monk (with Shaman, Ranger, Wiz box) and Monks are not good tanks primarily because they can't keep aggro well, so a tank+healer merc is obvious for me. I like that I can focus on pulling and DPS'ing while the bot-like setup of tank and healer merc keeps me safe. With single mobs you can theoretically just doze off and you will stay alive as the tank tanks and does damage (quite a bit actually) and the healer merc heals, which is nice, but of course I like to challenge myself and frequently pull 3 or 4 mobs depending on the place I'm in and how risky I feel being.

I can give you a good power leveling zone route to get the new guy up to speed if you like.

This is actually one of my "alt" box sets, I have my main box group is a 100 bard, 100 shaman, 100 mage, and 93 druid (started 4th boxing late, trying to catch him up). I put together 4 box sets of 4 groups just to have all 16 classes without using the same one twice, of course my main box set is the best setup for me :) and the rest suffer from not having a bard or shaman lol. The other two are war/rog/ber/nec and rng/pal/mnk/bst they all have a puller/snarer this way, but the war box set lacks a slower and invis/group invis unless nec gets one later, which I don't think. The last two suffer from the obvious melee placement problems, but I don't really play either too much, mostly my main and SK set.

I would still like to hear a good zone plan for the other box sets, one is testbuffed to 25 and hasn't been leveled yet.

Stanos
Sep 22, 2009

The best 57 in hockey.
Go buy those pbae potions for your lowbies, load up a character with thorns (I used to use a druid), and pull huge trains on yourself. I used to do gunthak, nadox, bastion of thunder then the zone outside ashengate that I can't remember. It got dicey on that last one plus mobs started to jerk out and leash so you might want to grab a tankier class by then.

You could also use the zone where the crescent reach book is, the bixies and bees worked fine. I just preferred gunthak and nadox since there's a ton of mobs and you can squat in the corner to bunch them up nicely. Remember to hit the pbae potions a few times to be sure you got them all.

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

The PBAE stuff is a shitload of fun, but I don't know if BJA can use that method since he levels 4 boxes at once - I assume?

For regular leveling, here are some paths from my personal notes:

1-25: Crescent Reach, work your way from the city and up north through the canyon
25-35: Blightfire (pumas to the south, move to bees in the southeast)
35-45: City of Mist (start from entrance and work your way west)
40-60: The Hole (start up top, at level 50+ move down near the tunnels)
50-60: Grieg's end (all over)
60-65: Halls of Honor (not that good to be honest)
65-70: Plane of Fire
65-80 : Paw
75-80: Direwind Cliffs
80+ : Ashengate

Note that some of the higher level zones I listed are far from optimal, I just like to move around for the sake of variation, even if more optimal zones exist.

Spice it up with current hot zones and do the daily HZ task every day.

I also have a big list of Classic & Kunark only zones that I like to visit for the sake of nostalgia. Leveling is so fast at the low levels that it's completely tolerable, even if the TSS zones are faster.

pre:
* Classic / Kunark leveling
1-12 (max stretch: 14)	Steamfont.
	1 start west of ak'anon in the pit
	3 east near kobold camp / dragon skeleton, kill kobolds etc.
	4 move to windmills (+ go north) watch out for wandering high lvl scowling skeletons and crag aviaks. kill spiders, skeletons, kobolds, aviaks, etc.
	8 northeast to the pit outside mino caves
1-10 Qeynos + Qeynos Hills
	skeleton camp
10-15 Lavastorm
	mobs in the south
15-18 Lake Rathe
	aviaks, gnolls
18-25 Rathe Mountains
	giant skeletons + cyclopses @ Lake Rathe zone
16-24 OOT undead island
	gargoyles - 9p per eye
12-20 Unrest
	watch for high level named
	12 zone entrance, beetles, wandering undead
	14 left wall, pull from inside the castle (ghouls, mummies, skeletons)
	19 move inside, basement if you dare
12-20	Highpass Hold
	kith entrance, orcs at zone line. watch for SoW'd orcs/shamans
20-35	Mistmoore
	- snaring important
	20 entrance, move towards castle. When you see too many red cons, run/evac back to the entrance and repeat until lvl 25
	25 go deeper into graveyard maosoleum
	27 go near castle
25-30	South Karana
	aviaks. not very good but nostalgic. Snatch up wandering centaurs, undead cyclops, etc. centaur village northeast
25+ ?	High Keep
	goblins
30-40	Overthere
33-38	OOT spectres
	careful, come in groups of 4-5. specs at tower respawn in about 3 minutes, the ones in the group before are 20ish
	specs drop scythes - rusty (2g), bronze (3p) or "Scythe" (11p). used merchant at northern island to sell. weigth 12-13
	+ gargs for cash
38-44	OOT seafuries
	camp safe at druid ring
	lots of hp, but easy single pulls. can pull 4-6 at higher levels with tank merc
	watch for quag (lvl 45), tainted (50?). might find ancient cyclops.
	drop up to 7p each plus toes and rarely gems/vendor junk
40-55	City of Mist
	start at zone in area and work westwards. watch for black reavers chain spawning
45-60	Howling Stones
	north, west, south, east wing in that order
44-50	OOT elite isle goblins
	start on the northwest side of the island, where a dark elf lady named Nyuae the Cruel is located. If she's KoS, kill her. 
	Either pull to camp or wander around. very tiny agro range
	loot is not very good, a few plat and rusty
	watch for Allizewsaur (lvl 50). Ogre Gubblegrot is not KoS
50-	Old Sebilis
	start on top, move down to crypt at 52ish. exploit through doors
	make sure you snare (shamans sow) and pathing stinks
	at 55, do myconids, krups/reets, down to Trak

Stanos
Sep 22, 2009

The best 57 in hockey.
I dunno how much he can handle but I used to get a big dumb pile of lowbies in guild on test and plow it out. I think the funniest time was when a duo was in nadox already when kodaji and I showed up to powerlevel some crappy alts and crashed the zone trying to pull it all. He got one side of the bridge with the pigs and trolls and I had a pile of lizard fish guys and they did not like being together.

I think I grouped my druid and bard together and 4 boxed on my crappy computer. It wasn't pleasant but it worked. Grab a train, get in the corner, cast the pbae druid snare/thorns thing a few times, have the person getting leveled hit the bottle once or twice and then put up thorns and the super thorns buff when it pops. Easy and fast.

Evernoob
Jun 21, 2012
So after 2 weeks of hiatus (I was on a holiday abroad) I finally started for real this time on Phinigel.
After much deliberation I made up my mind I want to Main an Iksar SK, with a bard box/alt.

I am fully aware a shaman box might be a stronger and simpler alternative, but I already mained a shaman from 99 to PoP so I wan't to play something else. The bard is the one class in EQ I always think fondly off when playing a "jack of all trades"-class in another MMO, and I had a Bard Alt back then but never had to chance to play him in higher content as my Shaman was needed everywhere. So I really want him now.

Safest bet seems to me to start the bard today now that Luclin has opened as a Vah Shir. If I move my Iksar to the moon they can duo there safely without either of them being KOS to guards. I also never really explored Luclin back in the day as I was already max level way before. So I only remember the raid zones.

As my Iksar can't wear plate until much later on the bard will get those occasional drops. Later on I can possibly hand down the gear I upgrade on my SK if it's droppable.
Without a healer I'll have to keep an eye on the difficulty of the mobs I engage, but if i stick to yellows and below the downtime should remain minimal.

Hope the combo works out somewhat, leveling is slow on phiny but I have no desire to play on live because there is just too much content right now. I prefer for it to come in waves.

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe
My friend plays that sk/bard combo while I do druid/enchanter. We're both masochists for EQ.

Make friends is all I can suggest. You'd be waaaay better off with a shaman box with your SK.

Evernoob
Jun 21, 2012
Oh i know, i'm not debating that but I have different reasons to not go for Shaman.
I also require my classes to be able to Feign Death or something as close as possible to it as I often need to afk on a whim. Bard gets as close as anything with Fading Memories (PoP) and perma invis song.

What I want to achieve when I'm playing solo is dungeon crawling and dropping named for special loot. The bard and SK combo can get pretty much anywhere I want. I'm especially looking forward to killing the dragons in Western Wastes again.
When Velious was first released me and some friends found the exit of Sirens Grotto and we thought WW was the "uber dragon zone" we read about so we started hunting the dragons, not knowing which one was doable or not. (We wiped SO many times). For me this was the best time I had in EQ ever.

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe
Just a thought, but you'd probably be better off with a Necro/Bard combo for that purpose (at least, until PoR or SoF). Most things that you'd want the tankability of an SK for, you'd need a healer to compliment.

Whereas you can kite forever with a necro/bard combo, and you could probably even pet tank to a decent degree with bard slows and debuffs.

Evernoob
Jun 21, 2012
I think DBG screwed something up : with the release of Luclin on Phinigel mounts became available.
The DB store also opened up the cash-mounts. This means that for the low price of 995 SC (=having a subscription for 2 months or 10€ if you want to buy it directly) you can get a Snow Puma mount, which comes with a speed buff and a stat buff. The speed buff can be clicked away so you just keep the stat buff of 250hp 300mana 120AC and 30SVCold (buff duration 5 hours)

This buff is WAY too strong in Luclin era, and available from level 1. My newbie SK was pretty much untouchable with 120 extra AC below level 10.

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe
Apparently they've fixed that particular oversight. The available mounts now are 2500dbc and not quite as good stat buffs.

I'm slightly bitter that I missed that sale.

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Evernoob
Jun 21, 2012
Hah, am I glad I was just in time for that. Usually I miss this kind of things.
I have not yet created my box account so I didn't get the mount for my alt, but as I will be making a bard I shouldn't feel too bitter about it.

About bards at lvl 60 : It's pretty much impossible to find exact data on which spells will be available on Phinigel at level 60, and what their exact value will be, as their effect ranges vary from for example 54-105 with a huge net effect difference.

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