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The previous thread, which includes many pages nostalgia and stories about the "good" old days can be found here. EverQuest (EQ) is the legendary MMORPG that was one of the first big successes of its genre. Launched in early 1999, EQ set the standards that still to an extent live on today, with a class-based, level-based, monster killing and item-hunting game featuring massive timesinks. NEWS:  I have launched http://www.zlizeq.com which is basically this big OP in website form, with ten times more detail. It's a work in progress, so some content is not there yet, but it'll slowly be filled with more articles covering all the stuff below. EQ is the game that many goons have heard of, notably through SA front page articles, and thanks to the fact that old EQ players just won't shut up and keep posting stories of nostalgia and how glorious/horrible the early years were. It is the game where people (goons) literally shat their pants to keep a monster camp instead of going to the bathroom, and where real-life phone chains were set up to alert guild members of a boss mob that spawned in the middle of the night. It is the game where people (me) spent 100 real days of played time over the course of one year to hit the max level, and where 10 minutes of sitting down, waiting for mana to regenerate betweeen kills was acceptable solo gameplay. It was the game where actual girls roleplayed sex slaves that let other players poo poo on their face for in-game money. It was a game where travelling from one end of the world to the other could take hours on foot, and where pretty much doing anything worthwhile was a massive undertaking. It was a game where dying at high levels wiped out several hours worth of xp grinding, and where not finding your corpse again meant losing everything you had on you. It was a game of the most quirky and weird exploits and bugs, and unintended consequences of the laissez-faire development style the game enjoyed. EQ was a game that dumped players into a large world, in their race's home city, with merely a note in their backpack, suggesting they go see their guild master. From then on, there was no hand-holding. There were no in-game maps, no quest journal, and merely venturing out in the newbie area and attacking one of the weakest monsters might end up getting you killed due to an unlucky streak, or because another monster joined the fight. There was no set-in-stone levelling path, and no automated quest system. You had to work for everything: Getting your spells, travelling, looting and selling, training your skills, and working on tradeskills where you lost your ingredients if you weren't skilled enough or tried the wrong combination. It was also a game with a strong, small town like community, many friendly and helpful people, and a level of in-game patience, helpfulness and socializing which will never again be matched in a mainstream game in the future, due to changes in mentality and attitude.  Ancient screenshot of early EQ EQ has gone through a ton of expansions since its inception, and has changed substantially. Many of the above horror stories are no longer relevant in the current gameplay, and great improvements have been made especially to make travel faster, dying impose less of a penalty, and to make progression, grouping and raiding more readily available. Still, many fundamental aspects of the game remain the same, and returning players will feel at home.  Screenshot of modern EQ, House of Thule expansion (customized UI). Those wasps would wipe out a raid of 100 players from the early era. Here are the EQ expansions:
A quick rundown of the latest few expansions:
 Why play EverQuest?EQ is an old game with a huge amount of content to explore. The graphics are outdated, but the atmosphere and feel of the game is very different from newer MMORPGs, most of which EQ has inspired. A few main features of EQ:
 Free to Play, subscription model and how to download EQEQ is, as of March 2012, "free to play" using a hybrid model. There is a 3-tier subscription model, with the entry-level being free, the middle tier ("Silver") costing $5 to activate yet remains without monthly cost, and the top tier ("Gold") costing $15 per month as it always has. A gold sub is exactly like a regular sub has always been, with a few extra benefits. Go to everquest.com and click the PLAY FREE! button to download the EQ installer and get started After running the installer, you should be presented with the EQ LaunchPad application, which will, after creating an account and logging in, automatically download all the necessary content. This can take several hours due to the large amount of data. By starting a free account, you automatically get access to all expansions up to and including the House of Thule expansion, only lacking the latest expansion (Veil of Alaris). Expansion-wise, this is more than enough to get the full EQ experience. However, the free and silver models are fairly restrictive, and should not be viewed as a viable way of playing the game at higher levels. You will be restricted in the classes you can pick, your inventory size, allowed money amount and alternate advancement. That being said, you should still be able to explore and get a feel for all the fundamentals of the game, and should give you many weeks of free enjoyment at the very least. It will also be great for players who just want to get their nostalgia fix. Read all about the F2P model here Notable restrictions are (free/silver):
The system also works in the way that if you let your gold sub run out, it is converted to a free account, allowing you to keep playing your characters, regardless of race/class, with slightly diminished spell power and reduced inventory. You will keep access to all your AA abilities, but will be unable to earn further AA than the cap allows. You will never lose any items by downgrading.  New and returning players: Picking a server, class and raceThe official goon server is "Luclin - Stromm", aka. "Luclin", and all goons are welcome to join the <Ominous Latin Words> goon guild (was called <Guild For Guild Port Guild> before March 17th 2012 - Edit: Was called <Ascending Fearbonus> until April 9th 2012!). It is a guild with no forced requirements of any grouping or raiding, just a place to chill, chat, group if you like, and be able to utilize the benefits of the guild hall. As of posting this, there is a high level of activity every day, and we're all having a lot of fun. December 2012 update: We had a lot of fun during Spring and Summer 2012 on Luclin, but the goon population on Luclin is now very small. The guild still exists and people are welcome to join. A small goonrush has taken place on the Test server (see below in the "Other servers and ways to play EverQuest" section), where we enjoy playing for free, multiboxing, swimming in plat and just relaxing. There's no guild, but we chat in the /goontest channel. March 2013 update: The goon rush on Test is still alive and kicking, with lots of people on daily. Most box, but real groups take place often, and we help eachother out. The guild is called <The Roost Gave Me Harpies>, and all goons can join. The /goontest chat channel is also still going All goons, regardless of server and guild, are invited to join the serverwide goon chat channel, in which all goons primarily chat, even those in the guild. To join it, type: /join serverwide.gchat:fygm To set the game to automatically join the channel upon login, type: /autojoin serverwide.gchat:fygm (to autojoin multiple chat channels, type several channel names, comma-separated) While we're generous towards newbies, please do not just expect to be handed bundles of platinum and gear or to be powerlevelled immediately. Good things come to those who play regularly and are friendly! We are many people who are willing to help out with epic quests and such, and the guild bank has a bunch of newbie gear. Other servers and ways to play EverQuest EQ has branched out over the years. Here are other ways to play EQ that are different from the regular servers.
 The character creation screen  Choosing a classAll classes fundamentally play and feel like they did in ancient times. If you start a new character you will hardly see any difference, for better and for worse. The good news is that all classes have had a slight homogenization, meaning that other classes than warriors can tank, other classes than monks can pull, and other classes than clerics can heal well. Hybrids are also far from the crap they once were. It is nowhere near the homogenization that has taken place in WoW though, and classes still feel very unique. If you're a brand new player, here are some fundamentals of the EQ class system. The four archetypes in EQ are:
Pure melee have neither spells nor mana, but use a resource called Endurance to execute some of their special abilities. Think of it as melee mana. You will be able to do the majority of your damage and use most abilities endlessly without using endurance at all, and at high levels, you get abilities to regenerate your endurance. They can basically keep churning forever. Instead of spells, they get various insta-cast special attacks and self-buffs to increase their damage. Hybrids are a mix of melee and spell casting. They don't use endurance, but mana for certain abilities that either enhance their melee attacks, or make them a little closer to a spell caster, such as casting damage or healing spells while fighting, adding procs to their weapons, or casting buffs and debuffs. Bards are extra special in this category, as they have songs instead of spells, all of which apply effects with a short duration, but they can be cast over and over and mixed with eachother to do many things at once. Priests are fundamentally healers, but with varying side-roles and all have the ability to buff other players and to debuff mobs. They do not melee. Pure casters do not melee either and have the weakest defenses against melee, but have the most powerful detrimental spells and the best pets that fight along them. If you're familiar with the classes in EQ, many things have changed over the years that might help you decide for and against a class.
So, any class you desire should basically be good to go, although if you're looking to further narrow it down, goons usually mention the following classes when the topic comes up. I going to partly quote goons and post second-hand reports, as I haven't played all classes.
Here are some notes on the remaining classes, as i know it:
1) There are many bitter veteran players who won't stop posting on other forums about how their class sucks, hasn't gotten anything cool in the last several expansions and is crap compared to class X, Y and Z. In fact, I bet any class forum can contain these types of posts. Does not compute. 2) Many vocal people bitching about their class see the game from a raid point of view, and thus purely see class balance as a matter of having the highest damage output or "bringing something to the raid" via utility. End-game raiding in EQ is still not something you walk into with a pick up group; it's for guilds, and you'll need to apply to a guild and endure raiding hours and DKP and all that. This thread is based on the assumption that you will solo for the first many levels, and then do a mix of soloing, multiboxing and/or grouping at higher levels. 3) If you see damage parses (dps numbers), beware that people like to post bursts from a short battle, where they blow everything they have. Furthermore, they will be raid buffed to the teeth and be in a group full of synergizing classes. These number are pointless if you're trying to find the best class if you like damage.  Choosing a race and other character creation optionsRace Race and character creation matters very little today. In fact, no content since Kunark has had significant content where race really mattered. There are no race xp penalties any longer. A few races stand out:
Picking a neutral or good race (see "Alignment" column in this table) will allow you to more easily explore the old, classic cities, plus you will likely be visiting Freeport a fair amount for tradeskills and a few quests. A few old epic quests will also require some faction grinding if you're evil. Alternatively, if you like the evil cities, pick an evil race and go slaughter the elf guards. Iksars are hated almost everywhere in the classic world. Stat allocation Stat allocation doesn't matter. Even at medium levels, your regular stats (STR, DEX, etc.) will be massively capped, rendering your choices here pointless. However, for the sake of doing the best you can, put most points into STA and the remaining (if any) into your class' main stat. This will be INT for pure casters, WIS for priests and hybrids, and STR for melee classes. Yet still, it won't matter in the long run. Deity (religion) Deity (religion) doesn't matter much either; it can change your con (level of aggression) towards some of the classic cities and factions a bit up or down, and determines what kind of Cultural armor you can wear. However, all cultural armor is equal, so it's just flavor. The only deity that people still talk about is choosing Innoruuk if you're a troll shaman, as they can get a necklace with a snare via questing. However, it's not very useful at higher levels. Home city Here you can pick either Crescent Reach or the classic home town for your race, such as Ak'anon for gnomes. Crescent Reach is a city and zone from The Serpent's Spine (TSS) expansion, which added a new race (Drakkin) along with an entire slew of zones designed for more modern and focused levelling from level 1 to maximum. If you're a non-gate class, picking either home town can make a tiny difference, as it determines where you end up when you use your Origin (EQ's "Hearthstone") ability. The run from Crescent Reach's teleport spot to the nearest PoK port stone might be a little longer or a little shorter than the run from the teleport spot in your race's classic city to its PoK stone. At worst, you'll waste 30 seconds or so every time you teleport, so won't worry too much. If you're in doubt, I recommend picking your race's original city. Tutorial If the Tutorial button is pressed down (default), you will start off in a tutorial area which teaches you the ropes and gives you a focused, quest-driven experience from level 1-10. After enduring some awful RP and a simple quest that instantly dings you lvl 2, you are transported to a cave with bankers, merchants, spell merchants and quest NPCs that guide you through some of the basics of the game and send you on quests that give you good xp and a little gear and money. I recommend this to new players, as it's a relaxed area with easy xp. Pilsner fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Aug 9, 2013 |
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 Getting started and levelling The screen you'll see when entering EQ through the tutorial Entering the game and getting a mercenary When entering the game through the tutorial, go through the first quest to ding lvl 2, and get transported to the tutorial cave with all the NPCs. The first thing you should do is get a mercenary. If you are satisfied with a boring Human mercenary, you can hire it right there in the tutorial, from the Mercenary Liaison NPC (human in silver armor). If you want one of a different race, it's time for a slight detour. To leave the tutorial, Hail the barbarian NPC named Arias right where you enter and type 'ready to leave' in the chat, and you will be teleported to Plane of Knowledge (PoK). You are now in the main hub of the EQ world, where all players gather to bind, sell and buy, do their trade skills, teleport to other parts of the world, bank, or just AFK. Now open the Find window (Ctrl+F) and look for NPCs called 'XXX Mercenary Liaison', for example, 'Dark Elf Mercenary Liason'. Pick a race that you would like to have your merc show as (female dark elf w00t), then click on the NPC name, and a glowing path should lead you to the liaison. Right-click either the male or female version (determines the sex of the merc you buy), and a box pops up. First, pick the "Journeyman Tier 1" type merc, as they are the best. F2P players will only have access to Apprentice rank mercenaries - pick the highest tier you can. Second, pick the Tank role mercenary, as this will give you smooth sailing solo for the first 60-70 levels without requiring any healing on the merc at all. Tank mercs are immensely powerful and can solo 3-4 mobs at once for you. They can handle red con mobs without breaking a sweat. The stance (agressive/passive/etc) doesn't matter and can be changed later. Click Hire, and boom, you now have a killing machine at your disposal. A small thing to note is that they will not hold agro well at the beginning, and mobs will be hitting you. This gradually gets better, and at around level 30, the tank merc will be like a monster magnet. If you want to let the tank merc take the blows, simply step back out of melee range and the tank merc should be the one getting hit. You can only own one mercenary at a time (until much later in the game, or by paying real money for extra slots), but the tank merc will pretty much carry you to level 70. Note: If you've decided to skip the tutorial and start in Crescent Reach, there is a mercenary liaison NPC in Crescent Reach, in the big hut with all the class trainers in the starting area. All of the classic home cities also have liaisons. Note: A merc counts as a group member, and as such eats experience. When it's you alone with the merc, it will take approximately 40% of the xp (due to group bonuses). They are still worth it at low levels due to the overpoweredness of tank mercs, but at level 60+, start considering if the merc is actually speeding up your killing enough to be worth it. This will depend on your class. Keep in mind that mercs are safety nets that can prevent wipes and allow you to survive pulls of multiple mobs, so it's not just about xp per mob killed and kill time. At around level 65-70, the superpower of tank mercs start to wane as they can't survive as many mobs at once any longer without healing. Here, consider either going with a cleric merc (synergizes particularly well with a melee class), or look into the damage dealing mercs. If you can heal, a tank merc might still be a good idea. If you don't want to use a merc at all in your grinding, at least get a cleric merc and keep it stashed away for when you need a resurrection or need to fight a tough mob. Read more abouts mercs here: EQ Zam guide and Almar's EQ merc guide  Hiring a mercenary in PoK You're now set with the merc. If you want to go back to the tutorial, log out (type /camp or click the 'Camp (Exit)' button), then make sure the Tutorial button is pressed in at the character selection screen. Log in, and you'll be back in the tutorial. Now go through the tutorial as you please and start enjoying the game as a clueless newbie!  Levelling In spite of its name, EQ has never rewarded any significant amount of XP for questing until very recently, but quests have instead mainly been a source of certain powerful items. However, the TSS expansion as previously described actually does contain a full quest path from level 1-70 that you can follow if you wish. Most of them are basic kill, collect and explore quests and aren't really efficient. If you prefer to quest, go ahead and check them out. The path starts in Crescent Reach and mostly follows the zone path I'm going to recommend for mob killing.  Newbie (twinked and buffed) fighting in Crescent Reach. Who can name the twink items? EQ has a concept of Hot Zones, which are selected zones, rotated yearly or bi-yearly, which give additional xp for mobs you kill in them. The bonus is, I estimate, roughly around 30%, so they're often worth going to. View a list of current hot zones here At level 10, you will be done with the tutorial zone. You should now leave the tutorial (finish up the quests if you have any), and again say 'ready to leave' to Arias to get to PoK. Soulbinding Once you're back in PoK, go to the eastern side of the zone, find the (Soulbinder) NPC, and tell her 'bind my soul'. You are now bound here, and will respawn in the same spot when you die. If you're a spellcaster, you will get a spell called Bind Affinity later on, that will allow you to bind in any city you please. Suggested levelling path Here is a rough recommended path for levelling. Don't take it literally, explore other zones if you wish as there's plenty of easy xp to be had in many, many zones. Levelling at least up to 60 is so fast that you won't feel slowed down regardless of where you go. 1-10: Tutorial or the same as 10-25. Alternative: Steamfont Mountains near Ak'anon and the windmills, or any classic newbie area. 1-25 or 10-25: Crescent Reach (CR), the newbie area east of the city. Start in the southeast just outside of the city and work your way north up to the skeleton camp. Lots of fast-respawning mobs and a short path to a city. Alternative: Castle Mistmoore is good from level 20-30. 25-35/40: Blightfire Moors, just next to CR. Many camps with easy mobs. Alternative: The Overthere in Kunark is perfect from 30-40. 35-50: Goru'kar Mesa: Just north of Blightfire Moors, this zone also has some good camps and easy mobs all over the place. If you want a more classic experience, Karnor's Castle can take you from 40-50. 50-65: Grieg's End in Luclin is a mostly deserted dungeon with hundreds of mobs lined up for fast killing and a tight level range, good for 50-60. Alternative: The Hole is a dungeon with an innate experience bonus, good vendor trash drops and fairly easy mobs as it's an ancient zone. At level 50, start in the upper areas, and when you're level 60, you can start doing the lower tunnel/castle area for very decent xp up to lvl 70. Downside: Tunnel area may be camped and doesn't support more than a few players. 65-70: Continue The Hole lower area (great place for AA at lvl 70) or go to Sunderock Springs (hot zone), another outdoors TSS zone. 70-80: Paw in South Karana is a small dungeon with easy mobs all over the place that are very good grind material for non-kiting classes. Alternatively, The Steppes, another outdoors hot zone in TSS. Alternatively, Plane of Fire is an open zone with tons of mobs, ripe for swarming and headshotting for certain classes. 80-85: Direwind Cliffs, yet another outdoors hot zone, or Loping Plains next to Steamfont Mountains. Many more options here, and you are now eligible for grouping in House of Thule content. 85-90: Ashengate, a hot zone dungeon. Alternatively, HoT content. Somewhere in your 60's, you should be well versed in the game's basics and ready to take a little break from the XP race if you wish, and explore some of the other things you can do in EQ (see later section). As you level, you will get windows popping up with suggested places to level. Take these with a grain of salt, as they might be dangerous, crap xp, or way out there. If you want to level via an old school route, such as via classic Faydwer/Antonica/Kunark zones and dungeons, that will also be totally viable, just a tad slower. You will be able to handle the zones solo with your mercenary, and they will most likely be void of other players. The only downsides are greater level range of mobs and longer respawn times in some places. The upside is of course the nostalgia. I recently levelled two new characters up purely through older zones such as Steamfont, Mistmoore, Overthere, Karnor's and Sebilis, and I had no problems at all.  Three goons in their 40s levelling in an old school zone (Karnor's Castle in Kunark) For more inspiration, see Allakhazam's zone level chart here Getting more bags Already when you've saved up a few platinum, or have had some donated to you, you can easily buy some bigger bags. A gnome NPC in PoK named Nelin Signus, located in the northern trader building, sells Deluxe Toolbox, a 10-slot container, for a bit over 1 platinum each. You should quickly buy several of these so you aren't so restricted in your inventory space. Note that in EQ, it's a good idea to keep at least one base inventory slot free (just put a piece of food or whatever you want in it instead), as several quests throughout the game will give you a container to combine certain quest items in, and bags naturally can't be opened while they're inside another bag. But, in today's EQ you can store empty bags within other bags!  Buying bigger bags from the gnome merchant in PoK If you have enough platinum to spend (around 5k total), I would advise investing in the new 14-slot bags, that are all nearly weightless and have 100% WR. Search the bazaar for "Unexpanded Tailored Legendary", and buy any type that suits you. Now go buy Abu-Kar's Arcane Solution from any (Tailoring Supplies) merchant, combine the solution and the bag in a loom or sewing kit, and bam, you have a 14-slot bag. Obtaining spells Spells in EQ must be bought, quested for, or obtained as loot. Almost all essential spells from level 1-85 can be purchased from merchants in PoK. Go to the giant library building in the center of PoK and look for merchants that sell your class' spells. With the F2P patch, players can now purchase all fundamental spells from level 1-85 from merchants. This is a massive change, as before, there was a very large void of spells between level 60 and 85 where spells were very tough and time-consuming to hunt down. From level 71 and up, all spells have three ranks, the first being a solo/merchant-bought rank, the second group-obtained, and the third raid-obtained. As mentioned, you will only be able to buy rank 1 of the level 70-85 spells, but these will carry you just fine. A short rundown of the spell ranges, for historic purposes, if you want to save some platinum, or in case you want to look into higher ranks of level 71+ spells.
Search for your class' spells on Allakhazam here Skills Almost everything you do in EQ is skill based, from swinging swords to casting spells of various types. On your character pane, click the Skills button to see an overview of all your abilities. Certain skills can be hotkeyed - click on the skill, then on the Make Hotkey button, and place the button on your hotbar. There are both passive skills that enhance your fighting or spellcasting capabilities, and activated skills such as Disarm, Begging, Forage, Bind Wound and Disarm Trap. Most (but not all) of these are fairly useless. Monks base a good amount of their damage on their kicks, and all melee should use kick and/or bash when in combat. Melee will generally find it easy to keep up with skills, although if you get to level 30 with a 1H Blunt weapon then suddenly switch to 2H Blunt or 1H Slashing, you will spend some time working on the new skill. Spellcasters have it slightly worse, and some of the schools (Abjuration and Conjuration for example) will take you lots of practice casting to skill up. New melee combat skills are taught to you automatically as you level. Around level 30 or so, you should have all your fundamental skills, such as Dodge, Riposte, Dual Wield, etc., depending on your class. Dying Dun-dun-dunnnnn. LOADING, PLEASE WAIT... EQ was historically a brutal game to die in, not only losing a significant chunk of experience, but your corpse with all your items and inventory was left where you died, and you respawned naked at your bind point. You now respawn with all your gear and inventory, leaving only the experience loss (about 8% of a level) as the penalty. There are a few easy ways to deal with this on your own now, without having to pester a cleric: 1) If you have a healer (cleric) mercenary, you can travel back to your corpse, and providing you're not in combat, it will cast the best resurrection spell it has on you, which will restore 96% of the lost experience, from level 56 and onwards. At lower levels it will restore less xp. 2) If you are unable or unwilling to get to your corpse, you can go to the Guild Lobby, where Corpse Summoner NPCs can summon your corpse to you in exchange for a token that costs a little platinum. With the corpse at your feet, you can have it resurrected either by your mercenary, another player's mercenary, or a real player with the ability to res. 3) Use the "Expedient Recovery" veteran AA, which summons your corpse and does a 100% res. See later section about veterean rewards.  Improving the user interfaces, maps and common customizationUser Interface The default UI you are presented with when logging into EQ for the first time is a bit of an abomination. EQ has a simple UI engine with no scripting, merely a large set of controls that can be re-skinned, re-arranged, moved and resized. Some things can be changed via XML files in the EQ \uifiles directory, some things can be changed in-game. Notably, you can move and resize any window, which is nice. You can browse custom UIs (or just separate UI elements if you wish) on eqinterface.com. Note that EQ UIs break over time as the default UI goes through changes, so take note of the date on a UI before you go wild over it. Some pieces here and there will still function after several years, and you can also hack the XML files yourself to patch them up. A few complete UI packages: ZlizUI - My own UI compilation, Rain of Fear compatible. Minimalist and functional. WatUI - minimalistic and clean (partly broken with RoF) Sparxx VertUI AYA Ang's Sha'kahr interface - artsy.  Example of the WatUI. Note that all windows can be freely moved around, and hotbar row/column configuration changed in-game As of writing this, a major patch has just been released that breaks many UIs. It may take some time for UI authors to catch up, although some UIs will undoubtedly be left in the dust and never work again.View a guide on installing an EQ UI here Some UIs are more than just skins and recolors, and often rearrange the contents of many windows, such as the character panel. Some are for the worse, some for the better. For example, with the WatUI, I don't like his bazaar window, merchant window, bank window and several more. If you're unhappy with a UI window's changed layout, simply go to your everquest directory, then to \uifiles\<ui_name> directory (for example c:\games\everquest\uifiles\watui) and delete the .xml file that corresponds to the UI window. As an example, delete the file called "EQUI_BazaarWnd.xml" and reload the UI to make the default bazaar window show up (which will still be re-skinned to match the rest). Maps The game ships with simple maps, and fans have taken the time to improve the maps a bit, adding NPC names and locations of named spawns and quest objectives. The main site for EQ maps is Mapfiend. Go to the download page, select "ALL Maps", and click the Download Map Pack button. Extract the contents of the zipfile to a new subdirectory in the \maps directory (for example: "c:\games\everquest\maps\mapfiend"). Once logged in, choose the subdirectory you made at the top of the map window. The map window can be resized, and while the map won't really scale as you'd expect, it will allow you to zoom in and view more of the map without it being tiny and gritty to look at. You can customize maps yourself with the in-game map tool (click the icon with the sextant), or hack the text-based map files. Enabling the classic character models With the Luclin expansion, the main character models were remodelled, largely to the dismay of the community. Many feel they look out of place and have terrible animations. Thankfully, the new (also called Luclin models) and old models co-exist, and you can re-enable the use of the old ones. There are two ways to disable the new models: 1) In the EQ launchpad, after logging in, there's a little gear icon in the lower left corner. Click it, choose Game Configuration, and a box pops up. Click Next, and in the next form you can disable all the new models.  Disabling the Luclin models 2) Go to your EQ directory and open the "eqclient.ini" file. Here, you should see a list of lines like this: UseLuclinHumanMale=TRUE UseLuclinHumanFemale=TRUE Replace all TRUE with FALSE, save it, and (re)start EQ. Note: You will not be able to use most mounts unless you have the Luclin models enabled for your race. The only race I've found that isn't subjected to this rule are humans, and models made in newer times such as frogloks and drakkin only have one model. Alternatively, you can use certain illusion items (like AoN) to still be allowed to mount, but you'll lose the illusion and mount every time you zone. Particularly if you're a spellcaster, I recommend sucking it up and dealing with the new models, as mounts are extremely useful for you. If you use modern mounts (non-Horses), you can keep using the old horse and elemental (magician pet) models. Common UI niggles and FAQ The default key for opening the options window is O. Here you'll find a myriad of options and buttons to dig through. Q: How do I copy the UI layout and settings betweeen characters? A: Go to options, click the "Copy Layout" button in the top left corner, and choose the UI layout for another character to copy. It'll takes around 10 seconds for the copy to complete. Q: How do I disable the Voice Chat bar? A: Go to options, click the Voice tab, and click the "Disable Voice Chat" checkbox. Q: How do I customize the hotbars? A: Right-click the rim of a hotbar and options will show to create and alter the hotbars. You can also resize the hotbars by dragging the corner like a Microsoft Windows window, in order to rearrange it to have a different row/column layout instead of 1x12. Q: Help, I can only load 8 spells into my spell bar!: A: This is part of the challenge of being a spell caster in EQ, choosing your spells before you enter battle. You can invest in AAs to increase this maximum to 12 later on. You can also save and load sets of spells by right-clicking on the button at the bottom of the spell bar. Q: I accidentally pressed some button and a UI window disappeared. A: Go to options, Keys tab, and select the UI category from the combobox. Dig through the list to find the binding for the UI element you have closed by accident. You can sort the rows in the list by clicking the column headers, either sorting by description or keybinding.  Alternate Advancement (AA)At level 51, you can begin funnelling between 0 and 100% your experience gains into a secondary xp pool, which is called AA for short. This adds a whole extra level (metaphorically speaking) to the game, as you can continue earning AA experience even at maximum level. As you earn points, you can spend them on abilities that can either be passive or activated abilities that can do all sorts of stuff, like enhance your spell casting or melee attacks, allow you to cast new spells for no mana, give you more spell slots, extra hitpoints or stats, and much, much more. Most AA abilities are ranked (buy rank 1, then rank 2, etc.), some are tiered (must buy ability X before you can buy Y), and all ranks are level- and expansion-restricted. Google "everquest <class> aa guide" and you should be able to find some good starting tips. Beware of outdated info, note the date. At level 51, the first AA you should grind points for and buy is called Innate Run Speed (on the General tab), 3 ranks for 1 point each. This allows you to run faster without speed buffs, which is gold. From there, it depends on your class which is best. When to take a break from levelling and grind AA is a debated topic. You will not suddenly find yourself useless because you have levelled too high and not picked up enough AA, but there is at least a couple hundred AA for each class that are "mandatory", in the sense that they, for very little cost, greatly enhance your class and add immensely useful abilities or power. A good spot to stop a bit and grind AAs is level 59 (or 60 if you wish), as some of the first core AAs from the system's introduction open up. For example, monks can reduce the cooldown time on their Feign Death ability at lvl 59, rangers get Archery enhancing AAs, etc. Keep your eye out for essential AAs on the way, and at level 70, stop and go through the list and see if anything useful opens up. A very good opportunity again opens up at level 80, where you can, as earlier described, equip some of the latest, super-powered gear, which will make you very powerful against current mobs and allow you to grind quickly. At level 80 I would recommend grinding out at least 400-500 AA points, depending on your class, some may even want to grind twice that. There's no online calculator that I know of to get an easy overview of your class' AAs. The best thing you can do is to save up 12 AA points, then click the "Can Purchase" button in the AA window to filter out any AAs that you are ineligible for. Until very late in the game, no AA costs more than 12 points, so this should show you all available at your current level. You can also filter by expansion to get a rough overview of AAs available from certain level ranges, but some AAs are sneaky and require a lower level than the expansion was made for. AA has been made very easy to grind these days. There is a sliding scale AA xp bonus implemented that gives you a 500% bonus when you start out, and scales down to 0% bonus at 2500 AA points. 2500 points is a LOT, and perhaps with the exception of Shadow Knight, you should be able to utilize your class to its fullest potential at around 1000-1500 AA at high levels, some even earlier. Shamans for example have it really easy and can get by fine with 600 at maximum level in group content. For the same reason, be careful not to be too OCD about buying everything, because the more AAs you have, the slower the grind gets. There are many, many totally useless or borderline useless AAs that are a waste. All AAs in the General that increase your stats for example are fairly worthless. Search online before you buy anything.  PotionsPlayers can craft and buy an array of potions with effects of varying use, depending on your class. The main range of level-tiered potions can all be bought from the merchants Elwin Razorfur (low level potions) and Ralkor Stoneclaw (higher level potions) in the western trader building of PoK. Alchemist Adeben on the 2nd floor in the city of Crescent Reach sells ranks I-X (1-10) of all potions.
 Dealing with all the crap monsters dropMobs in EQ drop a lot of items, and your bags will quickly fill up. Loot from random monsters can be categorized as follows:
Pilsner fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Feb 5, 2013 |
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 QuestingFor some years, EQ has had a "real" quest system with a quest journal tracking your active quests (also called Tasks) and objectives. You still talk to NPCs via the [keywords] to get a quest, but once it's in your quest log, the quest evolves as you go through the steps. It's a pretty neat system as it allows for quests to contain many steps (some have 20+ steps), often without having to yo-yo back and forth betweeen the quest giver and the environment. You can also preview the final reward. All older quests (including the first epics) still follow the ancient system of merely talking to NPCs and trading them items. These quests can still be multiquested. Thankfully, NPCs no longer eat items that aren't useful to them, so there's no danger of accidentally handing an NPCs the wrong item or vice versa. You will get any item back if the NPC has no use for it. As mentioned in the levelling section, questing can be mixed in with grinding to form a meaningful way of levelling, but only the TSS zone path as far as I know it. Only at level 80, quests from the latest content start rewarding good xp that contribute significantly.  Example of a quest (actually a mission, same principle) with multiple objectives that unfold as your progress  GroupingEQ has no built-in group finding tool, so it's still a matter of either being in a guild, knowing people, or shouting for groups in /ooc or the serverwide general chat channel. Only zones from the latest two expansions (HoT and VoA) are truly populated, and otherwise people mostly level solo or by multiboxing in the easy hot zones. It's not worth it to spend a lot of time finding groups at low levels other than for the social aspect or if you're playing with a friend or goons, but on the other hand, go ahead and group if you can find one, because thanks to group xp bonuses, grouping does not significantly slow down your xp gain if you also mow down mobs faster. When you get to level 85, you might be able to find a group in HoT, your best bet being turning on the lfg tag (type /lfg on), and going to one of the entry-level HoT zones such as the new Feerrott or House of Thule, Lower. However, be warned that a lot of content is still done in-guild or by multiboxers, and it can be hard to find groups. The latest bunch of expansions have a rather clear-cut set of tiers of group content, where it's expected that you go through them in order, roughly. Each tier has increasing difficulty and rewards better gear along the way. A cool thing about modern EQ zones is that all zones are fundamentally like you remember dungeons in the old days: Lots of trash, and named/rare spawns with placeholders. Even the entry zone of the HoT expansion has many named mob spawns all over the place (with placeholders of course, and the named is an uncommon spawn), which will drops nice loot. Outdoor zones are thus no longer just for soloing gimps purely grinding xp. On a side note, items in EQ have been balanced/normalized for several years now. Gone are the days of a boss dropping either a godly item or pure junk. Haste seems to be the only stat omitted from this rule, and appears a bit randomly here and there. Also, spell focus effects are very beneficial to spellcasters and also aren't normalized.  MissionsMissions are instanced versions of zones or dungeons made for groups of 3-6 players. You begin a mission by talking to an NPC (which often have a (Missions) tag under their name), and there may or not be some requirements for being to request a mission, such as having completed a few quests first. One person (at least) must be eligible to request the mission, and the rest may or may not need certain requirements, such as a minimum level. Requesting a mission works just like getting a quest, you go through some RP chat and finally type the right [keyword] to the NPC to get it. After requesting the mission, everyone will get a quest (a "Shared Task") in their quest journal, which is the contents of the mission. Each person must then separately say a keyword to the NPC to enter, after which they get teleported to the instance. The quest objectives of the mission will typically involve explores a bit, killing several mobs, collecting some items, and killing some boss mobs. At the end, you typically get xp, money, faction and access to a chest with loot. Missions in HoT and VoA result in guaranteed loot drops at the end and, along with a decent chunk of experience and platinum. Missions are often what people do for loot, faction and, to a lesser extent, xp in the high-end group game. The mobs in missions aren't necessarily that much more difficult than equal tier open zoned and named. Note again that you must have a minimum of 3 players in your group in order to be able to request a mission, so you can't request them solo or with your mercenary. You can request them if you dual box and thus have 2 players and 2 mercs up, or you can ask another person to join your group while you request the mission. After entering, the extra player can leave and you can go do the mission on your own.  RaidingThe raiding game is completely separate from the group game, with its own instances, progression path and tiers of gear. I don't know anything about modern EQ raiding, so maybe someone else can fill in. What I know is that tier 1 raid gear is approximately as good as the highest tier group gear. True raids (not including really old ones like Planes of Power, Velious or earlier) require a minimum of 6 players in a group to start the instance.  MountsSince Luclin, EQ has had mounts. Mounts provide the following ups and downs:
All accounts, as far as I know, should be eligible for at least one free mount via the /claim window after you've bought the latest expansion. Look for the "Verdant Hedgerow Leaf"; this is a fast mount that also gives you a very nice AC, HP and mana buff.  The BazaarThe bazaar is a special zone where players can setup a real character to act as a merchant (trader), allowing other people to buy items from you. The bazaar is accessed through a gate in the northwest corner of PoK. Head towards the hub teleporter, and you are ported to the trading hub. There are bankers in the center, and the zone branches out into smaller rooms (for anti-lag purposes, the original bazaar was one huge room), where you will find people selling their stuff. To bring up the bazaar search interface, type /bazaar or press the assigned hotkey. You can now search for items by name, level, price and through categories. Click the item you're after, and then the Find Trader button. A path lights up that leads you to the trader. Right-click on them like a merchant and you can buy their items. Be careful with certain stackable items, that you don't accidentally buy too many and waste your money. To set up your own trader, you must first of all own a gold subscription. If you have that, you must buy one or more Trader's Satchel (note that they weigh a lot) from Merchant Tekrama, who is in the first round room of the bazaar as you enter from PoK. They cost very little. Put the items you wish to sell in Trader's Satchels. Now go to one of the smaller rooms in the bazaar, and walk onto one of the wooden floors. Type /trader, and a window opens up where you can set the price you want for each of the items you have in your Trader's Satchels. Now press the Begin Trader button, and you are now a merchant that other players can buy from. Note that while in the bazaar, you cannot become encumbered (carrying too much weight), and you do not consume food nor drink.  Tradeskills-> Click here for the ultimate tradeskill levelling guide EQ has the following tradeskill setup:
After you've learned a recipe, which you can also add to a favorites list for easier access, you merely need to have its ingredients somewhere in your inventory in order to perform the combine. Click the Combine button, and you either fail or succeed, the resulting item(s) being placed on your cursor.  The organized tradeskill UI (slightly customized), here shown with tailoring There are still trivial rates on all recipes that indicate at which skill level you'll be able to reliably craft an item. Generally, there is always a 5% change of succeeding any combine, and at the other end of the spectrum always a 5% risk of failing - except when your skill is more than 100 points above the trivial for a recipe. A while ago, tradeskill trophies were introduced. There are items that evolve as you craft and increase your skill in a tradeskill significantly. Read about tradeskill trophies here. Tradeskills as you level will be largely useless and a money sink, with the exception of Fletching, which is a cheap and easy source of arrows. Some epics also require a medium amount of tradeskilling. The state of modern tradeskills is sadly a bit predictable and spreadsheet-like, but there are good news as well. Some quick facts:
 MultiboxingEQ is a good game to multibox in, and will allow you to explore much more, and even high-end group content on your own. Multiboxing means playing two or more characters at the same time. Classes in EQ are still unique enough that the synergies between two different classes can massively enhance your ability to kill stuff and even complete missions on your own. EQ's slower combat pace and multi-spellcasting macro system (cast spell A, wait 3 seconds, cast spell B, wait 3 seconds, etc.) makes it a perfect fit for multiboxing, as you can combine a melee with a supporting spellcaster, without losing too much efficiency. Additionally, since each character can have a mercenary, going from one to two accounts makes you go from 2 to 4 characters, two of them being mercs of course. This allows you to start missions on your own (requires a minimum of 3 players in a group), and lets you, for example, pick both a tank and a healer mercenary. A classic setup is a melee class + shaman, which several goons run. Shamans are a multitool while the melee grinds mobs. Many other combinations will work absolutely fine, although I don't recommend boxing more than one melee, as they require positioning in order to do damage. The recommended tool for greatly enhancing multiboxing is ISBoxer (free trial available). You can however, get started without it. ISBoxer can also run EQ in true full screen windowed mode, which is very nice. With EQ being free to play at the base, I would recommend dabbling in multiboxing very early on, as it's a ton of fun. Doing it right from the start if you're a brand new player might add a bit of extra confusion, but if you're already an experienced player, it is very optimal to level two characters equally. Alternatively, wait until you've gotten a feel for the game on your own, then explore multiboxing. For reference, I currently box a monk+shaman with tank+healer merc, and I am going through the second tier of HoT group content with no big problems. It does take some gear, training and the right ISBoxer+macro setup, but it shows that it's possible. I also recently started a ranger+magician team, which is great fun too. Almost anything goes!  Mercenary advancementIf you read the earlier guide on starting out, you should have bought a mercenary early on. Don't worry, you can still hire them at any level, they cost a bit of platinum to hire. Starting around level 14, they will also cost a small amount of money to keep active, billed every 15 minutes. At maximum level, it's around 40 plat per 15 minutes for the starting rank, so it's not much. You may remember how you hired a Journeyman Tier 1 (T1) mercenary. This can be improved up to tier 5 (T5) through questing. The quests you need to complete are all in Korascian Warrens in the SoD expansion, and they are as follows, with no previous requirements. I think they require around level 75 to start. 1) Find Your Allies. Tip: You can pick up the items while invisible. 2) Whom Frogs Destroy. Tip: You can feign death to avoid fighting the mobs if they attack you. 3) The Wrath of Korascian 4) Disrupt the Siege and Champions No More at the same time. The first one is a tough quest to solo due to heavy mob density up north where the catapults are. 5) Retinue of the Frog-God These five quests should be soloable around level 85-90 with a mercenary and at least HoT T1 gear, although some help will definitely make it go faster. After this, you are eligible for a mission: Murdunk's Last Stand. In the mission, and endless stream of mobs, about one per minute, spawns and walks through a set path. After killing 35 of them, you have completed the mission and you can gate out. You are now eligible to buy a T5 merc. Simply dismiss your current merc and visit the mercenary liasion of your choice. Note that a T5 merc at high levels cost around 100p per 15 minutes to keep active, so don't keep them out unless you need them. They are worth it, though, and are godly in group content when seen in relation to how little effort they require.  Guild Lobby and Guild HallGuild Lobby The guild lobby is a zone accessed via gate in the southwest corner of PoK. The guild lobby is a small zone, with the following features:
The Guild Hall is a small, instanced zone for guild members only, that has a guild bank, merchants, a teleporter, an augmentation sealer, and tradeskill containers. Welcome to the goon cave! Most useful is the gnome Zelfmin Werlikanin in the southeast corner. He is a merchant that sells various stones, and after buying one, you trade it back to him. To your left, the sparkling blue teleportation device will then teleport you to the zone corresponding to the stone you gave him.  Player housingPlayer housing was introduced with House of Thule. I haven't used it much, but it's basically a bunch of instanced zones where up to around 70 players can each buy a house and fill it with items, both real weapons and armor, and dedicated decorative items. Read about player housing here The housing area is accessed off the Guild Lobby (via PoK); in the northwest corner is a gate to the housing areas.  Marketplace, claims and veteran rewardsMarketplace The Marketplace is an in-game store (essentially a browser window), where you can buy all sorts of stuff for Station Cash, which can be bought with real money, and which is also given to you monthly if you have a gold sub, plus during various special events and bonuses. Stuff you can buy includes:
Type /claim and a window pops up (might take a little while to load the first time) with a list of items your account is eligible for. Resubscribing veterans should find all sorts of random stuff that you get when buying an expansion, such as a mount, armor packages, teleport clickies, cosmetic items, XP potions, food, and some very nice bags (Dreamweave Satchel if you bought HoT and Traveler's Rucksack if you bought VoA). Some can only be claimed once per account, but might be flagged Heirloom so you can transfer it around to other characters. Other might say 999 quantity in the claim window, meaning that you can claim it on 999 characters on your account, so essentially on every character you ever make. Veteran rewards Veteran rewards are special abilities given to players, one per year they have been subscribed to the game, not necessarily consecutively. Returning players may find that they are eligible for some of these. First, type /played, and the last line of text output will tell you how many years and days your account is entitled to. The year figure indicates how many rewards you are eligible for, and also for how many characters on your account you may claim the rewards for. Note: For me, I initially had an entitlement of 2 years and change when I first resubscribed back in 2009, then a few months later it suddenly jumped to 6 years. Click here for a full guide to Veteran Rewards If you feel certain that you are going to play the character you're on a fair amount of time and want to spend a set of veteranrewards on it, type /veteranreward, confirm, and you now get an appropriate number of new abilities in your AA window, on the Special tab. Rewards vary in usefulness. The most prominent one is the 1st year reward, Lesson of the Devoted, which gives double xp for 30 minutes. Others are borderline useless, and some only situationally useful. Don't worry too much if you're not eligible for any.  Epic weaponsEpic weapons were released with the Kunark expansion and were at the time, immensely powerful weapons, one for every class. These old "1.0" epic quests are 99% unchanged, and many still involve insane camps, rare drops, getting drops off bosses and lots of travel. But, at least most of the zones will be empty and the content 100% soloable starting already at level 60. The clicky effect on epic 1.0 is mostly useless these days. They will send you on some long journeys and make you explore lots of areas you may never have seen before, so I highly recommend doing them for the experience itself. Start investigating your class' epic at level 50 (search Allakhazam for "monk epic" for example) if it sounds interesting to you. Epics evolved into two new versions later on, called 1.5 and 2.0, the two which are fundamentally the same, the difference being that the 2.0 is more powerful than 1.5 and requires a raid drop. Back in the day, I believe the 1.5 was meant for groups/casual guilds, and the 2.0 meant for raiders. Of course, most of the content is trivial these days, only the final quest item of the 2.0 epic still requires a bunch of people. All 1.5 and 2.0 epics have a clicky effect (inventory clickable) that is to this very day still useful for all classes, as they provide percentage-based scaling buffs of some sort, that stack with almost everything. As an example, the monk epic increases the monks hitpoints by 25% and adds a melee proc that does damage. The shaman effect is a group buff that gives everyone a 500 hp/tick regen and increases the power of their critical strikes greatly. Starting the 1.5 epic requires that you have either completed the 1.0 epic, or have completed a rather simple "1.5 prequest", which shouldn't take long. If you choose to do the prequest to get ahead, you can always go back and do the 1.0 epic later. You should start working on your epic 1.5 around level 65-70. Search Allakhazam for epic weapon quests  Stuff to do besides levellingEQ today is a game where you will experience no more than 5% of what the game has to offer if you just power through it and purely level. EQ has a rich history and many expansions, plus a level of character building many times richer than other MMORPGs. Here are some suggestions of things to do!
 Links and resourcesA challenge of EQ today is to find relevant, up-to-date information online. In general, google is your friend. However, remember that a lot of online EQ content is outdated, so always look at the date of a forum post, comment, website or article before you draw any conclusions. General websites Allakhazam (ZAM) - The original EQ database which is still the most widely used. Many guides for quests, NPCs, items, camps and such, even for recent content. A premium account is required for a tiny subset of features, such as performing an advanced item search. Notable pages on Zam: - Spell list - Find all your class' spells here. - Directions - Find your way to most zones. - Emotes - Various emotes and slash commands. - Tribute - The tribute system explained. - Current Hot Zones Lucy - A more raw database primarily of spells, but also items. If you want the technical details of a spell, search here. EQItems / 13th floor - Item database with advanced, free searching. Almar's EQ guides - Recently written, up-to-date and excellent guides to returning and new players. Covers a lot of things to get started. His class descriptions might be a bit out of touch with reality. The Magician's Tower Returning Player FAQ - Lots of general info for a returnee, mainly written with magicians in mind. EQ Traders's Corner - All about tradeskills. Their search on the front page is gold for finding the use of any tradeskill component or recipe, and the complete tradeskill guide on the forums is the go-to resource for levelling up tradeskills. Rasper's Repository - Player made guide for each of the many recent expansions. Includes the intended progression path, list of quests and missions, gear overview and more. Extremely useful particularly for the latest two expansions, HoT and VoA. EQ Resource - kind of like Rasper's, not quite as extensive though. Has better maps showing the location of quest objectives. Magelo - Online player profiles ("armory"), also contains a database of items, mobs and recipes to an extent, but not as useful as Zam. Fanra's EverQuest Wiki - General EQ wiki, some content rather outdated, some recent stuff is okay. EQ Clickies (goes down once in a while) - comprehensive searching of items with click effects, as well as augs. raidloot.com - Searchable loot database, primarily focused on end-game raid loot. Samanna's Reference Desk - Originally a shaman website, but has a bunch of general guides and data for various stuff, such as levels of run speed, spell stacking, faction, and more. EQ Newbie FAQ - Various guides and articles. EQ Players - SOE's offical EQ news and contents website. It's pretty lovely, as expected. The only neat thing is that you can search the armory for pretty much any character that has been logged in for the past decade or so, and see their level, stats and gear. EQRaidWiki and EQ raiding strategies - Modern raid boss strategies. EQ Commands - list of /slash commands, emotes, pet commands and more. EQ AA Search - database of all ranks of all AAs, for the majority of classes. UI customization and tools Mapfiend - Better maps. EQ Interface - Custom user interfaces, both complete sets and smaller elements of the UI. GamParse - The best dps-parsing tool for EQ. Forums (mainly class forums) EQ class websites and forums aren't the bustling hive of activity they have been. There are a few that stand out, though, and as EQ generally changes at a glacial pace, many old forums are well worth searching through for information. Tip: Use google's "site" keyword to search in a specific domain only, for example: "shaman spells site:crucible.samanna.net". Use the date filter on google to get more recent content. Official EQ forums - Fairly decent activity. Official class forums, Archived official class forums Bard: The Concert Hall (new) and The Concert Hall (old archives) Beastlord: The Beastlord's Den Berserker: GoBerserker Druid: The Druid's Grove and The Druid's Grove Archives Cleric: EQ Clerics and EverQuest Clerics Enchanter: The Runes Magician: The Magician's Tower, also see The Mage Compendium Monk: Monkly Business Necromancer: Necrotalk Ranger: EQ Outrider Rogue: The Safehouse Shaman and Paladin: The Spirit Realm (Samanna's) Shadow Knight: Evilgamer Warrior: The Steel Warrior. Wizard: Graffe's - Inactive/archived wizard forums. Random guides, nostalgia and fun stuff to look at Sites that will make you weep with nostalgia. EQ Stats, Heroics, Mods & Skills FAQ Boss respawn timers - Many still correct. EQ Atlas - The legendary hand-made maps of all zones up to PoP. Many of us veteran players had a binder of these maps printed, before the in-game map system was introduced. More maps Guide to Veteran Rewards Drexxell's Plane of Sky Guide - The ultimate resource for one of the most complex zones in EverQuest, or any MMORPG for that matter. Other Drexxell guides and maps Zen Archer - Mainly famous for its "Quillmane Spoiler" section. Guide to the EQ map system Complete zone connection map of the world Zam patch history - Try reading some of the ancient early patch notes for laughs. EQLinks - Big link collection Unsung Heroes - Various ancient quest guides, mainly for monks. Food and drink durations explained Old unsolved quests - Discussion forum about unsolves and later solved quests in Eq. Ancient. Plane of Fear guide Irontaail's Plane of Mischief guide Runengetums guides - Various guides Secrets of Ssraeshza Temple - Guide to the Luclin raid zone Tinkerbear's EQ page - Ancient, outdated EQ info about spells and skills Woodash's EverQuest gallery - Huge screenshot gallery of nostalgia. NOTE: If you're using Firefox, images will most likely not show up, as the URLs to them have some forward slashes in them instead of backslashes. View it in Chrome or IE instead. The Bow and Arrow - Primarily a ranger resource, somewhat updated Pak'Cafan - Various updated news and guides Pilsner fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Dec 15, 2012 |
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Mar 16, 2012 00:47
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Awesome! Very nice and thorough OP, too.
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Mar 16, 2012 00:50
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Holy loving epic OP dude. REALLY well done. I forgive you for goons2:1 now Oh also, might want to note that for the next 2 weeks, the character transfer tokens are on HUGE SALE to encourage people to come back and join their friends. Seriously they're like 2 dollars MrTheDevious fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Mar 16, 2012 |
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Mar 16, 2012 00:51
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GodIsInTheTrees posted:Holy loving epic OP dude. REALLY well done. I forgive you for goons2:1 now No my goon friend, those are not on sale for 130 SC(1.30), only 3 items are. Those are normally 25$, while they are on sale, the discount is not quite that big. Also holy loving OP.
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Mar 16, 2012 01:11
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Legendary OP man. Seriously awesome. This game is seriously fun and I'd say a good 80 percent of it for me is the goon community. It's the best I've seen in an MMO. There is no "get out" goon smugness when you get invited, it's a bunch of helping hands and welcomes as well as some 'press 1 for anal' thrown in here and there.
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Mar 16, 2012 01:23
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Great OP...answered every single question I had...see you goons on luclin
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Mar 16, 2012 01:27
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Pon de Bundy posted:No my goon friend, those are not on sale for 130 SC(1.30), only 3 items are. Those are normally 25$, while they are on sale, the discount is not quite that big. Oh, bust  Good thing I don't need any characters transferred then.This may be the single best OP I have ever seen on SA.
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Mar 16, 2012 01:28
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By the way, I play Zliz (94 monk), Orakul (93 shaman), Ranzi (mid-60s ranger) and Magizi (mid-60s magician) in game. Alas, it's bed time where I live, but I'll be F5'ing all day long tomorrow! I'm also going to try and post some of the most relevant news in the thread as they come. Here's a little something to get started: quote:To help celebrate EverQuest's 13th birthday, there will be bonus experience, an increased spawn rate on rare mobs and a special 13 themed marketplace sale. These specials will run 3/16/2012 through 3/31/2012. Patch Notes for March 16, 2012, click to read more quote:*** Highlights ***
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Mar 16, 2012 01:32
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Can we start a list of SA names and their characters? I know who some of you are, but not all, and I like knowing who I'm talking to. I'll keep editing this list as more people post Pilsner - Zliz GodIsInTheTrees - Kodaji Not Grover - Landric Beo - Beorce Ckwiesr - Sekhal Shrapnac - Mahssive/Solotiv Tolain - Tolain Dubious - Zapzan Urban Sorcerer - Sendrick Mayor McCheese - Mayor Pon de Bundy - Gnocolm Jotto - Darallan Dear Sergio - Facic Matt Of Montana - Gruffor torp0r - Torp MrTheDevious fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Mar 16, 2012 |
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Mar 16, 2012 01:54
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Might be time to resurrect my PoP / Velious era monk. It'll be a long time before I forget getting the last shroud on Xev. Edit: Ut oh, it's still installed.. DB05 fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Mar 16, 2012 |
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Mar 16, 2012 01:58
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Great OP! I'll be on Luclin at 3 AM EST ready to own some freshly spawned named mobs with you bros.
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Mar 16, 2012 02:05
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hey it's me, Torp
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Mar 16, 2012 02:07
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Best OP Ever. Unfortunately after 60 levels of playing a Bard, I think I might hate it. So I may start from scratch this weekend when I get some time. Though I do have several Alts in the mid 20s to mid 50s, so maybe I'll just pick one of those up again. Any suggestions? Character names are: Equivalence - Bard (60) Blackwaterpark - Shadowknight (54) Froggish - Warrior (35) Laceratedsky - Beserker (26) Daimonos - Shaman (46) laceratedsky fucked around with this message at 13:41 on Mar 16, 2012 |
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Mar 16, 2012 02:22
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It looks like you have mostly been playing melees I would try a pure caster like a necro or mage.
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Mar 16, 2012 02:27
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Just read it all - awesome job. I want to start a new toon, but I hate the free classes. I think I'll dust off my 65 monk that has like a whopping 5 AAs. Sounds like the first stuff I should do is get a merc, grind out some more AAs, get some defiant gear, then go pillage some old-world dungeons just to show them who's boss. Too bad he's on EMarr .Edit: moving some info I posted later in the thread to here, so I can direct people to it easier when the questions comes up. 14 Slot WR bag From OP: "Search the bazaar for "Unexpanded Tailored Legendary", and buy any type that suits you. Now go buy Abu-Kar's Arcane Solution from any (Tailoring Supplies) merchant, combine the solution and the bag in a loom or sewing kit, and bam, you have a 14-slot bag." However, before you can combine it, you have to go to the guild lobby. Go to the NW corner, click on the gate, and pick any of the things in that list, and hit "go". Inside there, look for Garik Nogflop, and buy "Garik's Secrets of Bag Expansion". Right click it, scribe it, then you can make the combine in the loom behind him. Parcels If you had an existing account and rejoin as a Free-to-play account, you'll notice you only have 4 or 6 inventory slots now, instead of 8+ that you may have had. To get bags / items that may have been in those slots, when in Plane of Knowledge, hit your "Find" button (on the map screen is one spot if you can't find it), and sort the left column. Find the guy labeled "Parcels", and you'll get a magical glowing path to take you right to him. There's also a Parcels person in our guild hall (go to PoK, Guild Lobby, go to the north wall, and pick the door on the north west). Legends of Norrath (LoN) LoN was SoE's attempt at a card game. If you're not interested in playing it, you should still check it out once to see what free things you may have in it. Most people should have at least 50 free "packs" of cards, and each pack may have a loot card in it. The loot card can be anything from "fun" items like illusions, to decoration items, to experience potions, to mounts, and other things. To use it, hit the big rear end EQ button in-game, and then hit "Legends of Norrath". Hit "Play". At the bottom, you'll see "Collection". There's a drop-down menu at the top - select "Redeemable Items". The first thing you see should be your packs of cards, and it'll say "50" under it. Right click and pick "redeem". Go through the screens. If you're not sure what pack to pick, you can see here what loot cards are in each type of pack to see if you want to stack one over the over (http://legendsofnorrath.station.sony.com/ - card sets on the left). Yes, you have to go through this horrible UI for every pack. Redeem all your packs first. Then use the left/right arrows until you see your packs, right click, and select "Open X packs". At least you can batch open them. After they're all opened, again put the menu to "Redeemable Items". When you find something you want, right click again and tell it "Redeem". Now it's in your "/claim" window, so type "/claim". You may need to hit the "Refresh" button. Then you got your free poo poo! Disciplines Even if you've played before, you may find all your melee disciplines gone. Hit Alt+C to bring up your Combat Abilites as they seem to be called now, and hit the little "S". That will show you what discs you have, and you can make hotkeys as you want. To buy your new ones (or rebuy your old ones that have disappeared for some drat reason), open your Find window again in PoK, and go to "Vivian the True". She'll be upstairs in the library. Hail her, and she will give you a quest to go to your disciplines vendor, or you can just run around and find it yourself. As a new played I found them overwhelming, but what seemed to work out best was sorting by cost, and buying the cheapest ones until I got the ones of my level (they get pretty expensive). Some will be out of order though, so you may want to check a few ahead (just right click to see what level it's for). Changes to gear Gear now has a "required" and "recommended" level. If you're under the recommended level (listed on item details), the item will not be at it's full power. Click the "Modified" button on the item details to toggle between it's "full" power, and it's scaled down stats for your level. Ever see stats with "+X" to the side? Like "Strength: 20 +3". The +3 is "heroic stats", and allows you to go over your stat cap. If you buy defiant gear, you'll probably notice you're capped on drat near everything really easier. So heroic stats, and the long list of mods on the right side, are what's important these days. Zone Guide and other new travel Don't know where to go, or how to get there? When you bring up the map, hit the Zone Guide button. You can sort by name (but remember some zones have multiple names - like The Hole / Ruins of Old Paineel), hit Set End, then Activate. That'll give you a window with a list of zones to travel through. You can also use it as a zone browser if you want to find new zones in a level range. It's not perfect though, but it's generally very useful. You can also go to the Guild Lobby, and see the gnome teleportation guy. He sells items - read the name to get an idea of where it'll send you. After you buy it, give it back to him, and step on the pedastal next to him. It'll remain active for a little while for anyone else. Sometimes going through him is much quicker than what the Zone Guide will tell you, so learn where he can toss you. You can also use the Priest of Discord to get to PoK quickly any time. Find one and tell him "wish to go". He'll send you to Dranik's Scar (Omens of War expansion I think?). Once there, turn around and find another Priest of Discord. Tell him "go home", and boom, you're in PoK in front of the library. xZAOx fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Apr 2, 2012 |
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Mar 16, 2012 02:37
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So I have this from when I played EQ2 (I think they give you 5 a month or something): What's a good booster pack to choose for EQ1 rewards? I know there's a site that lists them all, but any suggestions?
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Mar 16, 2012 02:44
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Legends of norrath official site lists all the loots for each "expansion" of cards. I would really recommend looking through it as I can't remember what ones are good at the moment. Whatever expansion gives you kiss of erollsi or whatever maybe one of the better ones. My names Darallan on Fippy. edit: Also worth noting that the free choose a packs you get, all give you non-tradable cards, while normal LoN packs let you trade the cards you get from them.
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Mar 16, 2012 02:57
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Am I correct in assuming that even if you buy the character server transfer tokens from the eq store you still loose all your gear sans epics when transferring? Or do you transfer naked only if you got a freebie off test/FV?
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Mar 16, 2012 02:59
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Jotto posted:Legends of norrath official site lists all the loots for each "expansion" of cards. I would really recommend looking through it as I can't remember what ones are good at the moment. Whatever expansion gives you kiss of erollsi or whatever maybe one of the better ones. Ya I knew that from EQ2. I was more just asking what's some cool loot I can get myself, not what's some sweet loot I can sell. I'll just have to poke through the website sometime later.
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Mar 16, 2012 03:03
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Okay so I played EQ1 from Velious til that godforsaken piece of poo poo Gates of Discord, and I'm not going to lie, I was probably the best goddamned enchanter on the entire server. So when I see things like monks get aoe Mez and such, what things do enchanters in particular get to make their class useful? Specifically, have there been nerfs to charm so that I could not, for example, charm a guy, give it a swiftblade of zek, a mage summoned weapon, haste it and send it to create a fine mist of blood in the direction I point it in? As for other classes having good sources of mana regen, great for them. I've always thought downtime in EQ was a horrible, terrible thing, and waiting around at a bank for someone to mass group buff C3 just so they didn't have to spend ungodly amounts of time waiting for that stupid blue bar to fill back up was awful. But to get back to my main point, you mention that it's a class for advanced players, and I'm just curious if you could kind of give me a frame of reference as to what an enchanter is expected to do in groups now with everyone else apparently having a bunch of utility spells designed to not let them get overwhelmed by monsters from EVERYWHERE. I primarily viewed my class role as ridiculous dps via charming and also keeping everyone alive when something Bad happened. Is this still the case here, or are enchanters more mez bots and buff bots? Sorry if this came off as a bit  I'm just curious
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Mar 16, 2012 03:05
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Oh god they took the terrible EQ2 F2P model and brought it here. I'll probably run around for a while out of boredom but SoE...SoE never changes.
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Mar 16, 2012 03:06
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Stanos posted:Oh god they took the terrible EQ2 F2P model and brought it here. As a rogue who played classic to PoP your name speaks volumes to me.
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Mar 16, 2012 03:12
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You get to keep your gear when transferring from Live > Live server, it's just Test and FV that strip you. Though apparently FV is Somalia and inescapable. Kiwi I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Ench is probably the most useless class these days. When he said "for advanced players" he basically meant raiders. Monk AE Mez is a pulling tool because it also memblurs when it wears off, so you can mez a pack, break mez on one, then forget the rest of them. All other mezzes are extremely rarely needed at best. Rangers, monks, bards, and SKs can all instantly single pull everything and I honestly can't remember the last time I saw something get mezzed. The one enchanter I've seen on Luclin begs for groups by attempting to bribe the group to let her join by offering to buy massive stacks of reagents and do nothing but chain rune the tank. She's LFG a whole lot Enchs are good to park in the guild lobby and MGB Clarity and Haste
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Mar 16, 2012 03:13
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GodIsInTheTrees posted:Enchanters blow Haha that's amazing. I mean to be fair, enchanter mezzes had memblurs attached to them. That went off maybe 20% of the time. Maybe. That's really funny though, thanks for your quick answer!!
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Mar 16, 2012 03:18
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Play what you want imo everything owns. I'd group with a chanter who was charming or chain pulling, plus they get some neat group buffs.
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Mar 16, 2012 03:19
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GodIsInTheTrees posted:Can we start a list of SA names and their characters? I know who some of you are, but not all, and I like knowing who I'm talking to. I'm your BFF (bard friend forever) Facic and frankly I'm a bit offended that you didn't know/add me to the list. PS sweet loving OP man.
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Mar 16, 2012 03:24
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Just realized that Journeyman mercs aren't on the F2P model. It's hard to tell since patching the server apparently means you have to shut down your entire website. How horrible are the Apprentice mercs? Do you have to do the same quests get them from Tier 1 to Tier 5 (is it even worth doing?)
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Mar 16, 2012 03:24
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Dear Sergio posted:I'm your BFF (bard friend forever) Facic and frankly I'm a bit offended that you didn't know/add me to the list. I only went like 4 pages back in the old thread Added now!App mercs you can get Tier 5 right off, but they're worse than the Journeyman 1 tier, so not really worth it unless you just want a rezbot once you hit level 60. Use the T5 tank then you're pretty much going to be best off going with a cleric for buffs and rezzes. The A5s are fairly crummy once you hit 75 or so
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Mar 16, 2012 03:26
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Probably going to fire this up for a blast of nostalgia sometime this weekend, and then make a  face when I encounter something that reminds me of why I quit so many years ago!
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Mar 16, 2012 03:27
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everyone might have already known this but in the f2p update notes it says classes not included in the free & silver subs will be a one time purchase so people don't have to sub to not play boring classes (wooooooo), price TBA (not wooooo)
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Mar 16, 2012 04:06
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Didn't do too bad. Was trying to get a spider mount.
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Mar 16, 2012 04:21
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FML, is there a way to redeem more than one LoN claim-a-pack at a time? I don't have the willpower to click through the menus 70+ times in a row. I've been redeeming them and then opening them 5 at a time, but this takes forever.
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Mar 16, 2012 05:05
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There is disgustingly not. When I came back all 3 of my accounts at 100+ packs. It was terrible 
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Mar 16, 2012 05:33
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I'm Gruffor, the bitching mage, slowly slogging my way to 71. Late 60s are a bitch for a mage as my merc is getting squishy but my pet still sucks too bad to tank anything serious. I read in the other thread, I think, that the EXP potions are multiplicative, and I noticed that they are on sale for cheap for the next couple weeks. With the best one, combined with the 30% exp bonus, how much would that be? I also saw that they are selling the extra merc slot for like $1.50, as opposed to the $10-$15 that they were charging. Screaming deal if that's the case and I think you might even get enough station credits for free to buy it outright. All-Beef Patricide fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Mar 16, 2012 |
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Mar 16, 2012 05:52
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Oh god if they're seriously $1.50 I am unlocking so many slots. As soon as you hit 71 on that mage, your world flips upside down and you can farm Paw for ridiculous AA with literally no effort. Zapzan's cranking it out. Do your 1.5 if you haven't, I think we got Zap at least a level and maybe 2 just via that quest, plus it'll make you extra stout in Paw 
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Mar 16, 2012 06:19
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Shut up shut up shut up the servers are down SHUT UP, I can't sleep and I wanna play this game I loving hate.
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Mar 16, 2012 06:22
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I have the game installed and was playing fine a few days ago, and have an active subscription paid through April 15. Now when I click to try and play it's asking me where to install the trial. Is this just a part of the servers being down? I don't want to have to re-download everything. Also, I have a few characters on Povar that I'm tempted to transfer over to Luclin. If I can transfer them and keep all the gear, I'll probably do so, especially if the items go on sale! 71 Ranger with a few hundred AA and Epic 1.0 80 SK with 650 or so AA and epic 1.5 57 Monk with no AA 50 Bard that I'm bored of playing So far I like the SK the best, as swarming is really fun now that I'm at 80. 75-80 was painful, and I basically just bought task adds to power through that range. I've never played any of these characters in a group setting, so I'm hesitant as I hear SK's are super gear dependent and I don't really know how to pull. =/ I played a high end bard and ranger during Velious so I'm familiar with those group concepts, but I have no idea how tanking or pulling have changed since then. Any quick guides on 80+ grouping roles and what to expect?
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Mar 16, 2012 06:29
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Mike1o1 posted:I have the game installed and was playing fine a few days ago, and have an active subscription paid through April 15. Now when I click to try and play it's asking me where to install the trial. Is this just a part of the servers being down? I don't want to have to re-download everything. Don't know about the EQ problems, since all it says for me is the servers are locked. Sk pulling is easy once you get the hang of it, all you do is use your AA snare and AA feign to lose aggro quickly. As far as grouping a SK, yes you will need a lot of AA, specifically all the ones that help you swarm, your shield ones are very important, but other than that it's keep aggro and don't die. Bard pulling has changed since velious with the inclusion the instant aggro wipe/invis combo known as Fading memories. Basically pulling as a bard is very easy and you would get the hang of it much faster than SK pulling. As a bard 80+ your main job is to type /melody 1 2 3 and play your 3(or 4) best songs nonstop. Those songs are so good that you will be loved. As far as rangers go, you need to put out a lot of DPS. There is a very specific ranger AA guide in the list of the OP, on one of the ranger forums. I'd tell you more but I'm a headshot ranger 
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Mar 16, 2012 06:37
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