My experimental blog about playing a newborn Ranger.

Ughh.. Just wasted about an hour and a half in TBM doing one of the HA's. The mission itself was simple enough. Basically keep killing mobs until they drop the quest pieces you need, turn them in, and kill a final boss. Easy right?

Well let me tell you, it's not that easy when he casts a single target DD that does over 90k. I made 3 attempts before just giving up. Basically the fight goes like this.

Engage.
Boss starts 1 shotting a random party member about every 10 seconds or so
The end.

The only character I have with over 90k hp is my warrior. My ranger is close with 88k fully buffed and I'm telling you that his gear is pretty good. I only have a couple of pieces that aren't at least level 92 I have augs in every slot and have really taken the time to make him as strong as possible. It seems that's a bit overtuned. Idk, I'm all for a challenge but that seems a bit excessive for a level 96 mob. Whatever.

It's unfortunate tho because I really do like trying the newest content. I love how good the new gear is but the exp is definitely slower than DH. I'm just not sure what's worth it. The mobs in TBM are waaaaaay stronger which I totally get. After all its 2 expansions ahead of CoTF but it is pretty serious. Even tanking 2 trash mobs the outcome is not certain. I do everything I can to get singles and the mob takes about 3x as long to kill.

Anyways I'll try and just keep it positive but encountering things like that just blows. If I knew what to stay away from that would be one thing but let me do a whole mission only to get to the last boss only to have no realistic shot at killing him. It's lame

Sounds like you did "We make our own rewards". I assume you've done all the others maybe and tried that pita for the first time. Just in case, tho I assume you've already visited this http://almarsguides.com/eq/gettingstarted/guide/tbm/boxer.cfm (scroll down some for HA)
I found that Almar had excellent summaries of the HAs in TBM. I post it primarily for anyone who has not found that link. Buck up lil camper, ya come a long ways in a short time, revel in that glory.

Edit: after some reviewing, I'm curious which HA it was precisely.

Definitely sounds like the Guardian Elle variation of "We Make Our Own Rewards." Guardian Strike is like a 147k DD, so with full spell shielding, 90k is about right.

Yes that is for sure Tha a-hole who ruined my night.

Today I had the day off from work and a good amount of free time. What better way to spend a fine spring day in doors hiding from the sun than playing Everquest?

After my frustrations with TBM I made a post on the veteran lounge forum sort of asking for advice and venting my frustrations. After hearing what people had to say I reevaluated my plan on growing up in the current expansion. While a couple of the HA's seem doable there are a few which are definitely either not box friendly or just not pre 105 friendly.

I still managed to do a couple different tasks there in TBM and earned a new sword and new earring for my warrior. He now has 6 pieces of TBM gear with level 95 augs in them. The ac on this gear is crazy. It's about a 100ac and 250 hp/end upgrade over the bazaar gear I bought just last week. Not to mention the insane amount of heroics. I really like this stuff. It's like crack lol.

Anyway, after that I went and ran some errands for my characters. I had to catch up on some spells, remake a few hot keys, swap out some augs etc... Once that was done I went into shards landing and did the stone of the crystal circle aug quest for all my guys. It was a pretty easy quest for a pretty nice aug. time well spent. After that I went and picked up the gribble daily quest and did all 3 of them. My warrior dinged 97.

Someone in the other thread I made told me to go get no time to bleed. That seems like a total game changer for me. I was tanking 4 even 5 mobs in gribbles without using discs. It was pretty amazing. I feel like the warrior might be trying to crawl out of the slump he was in. We'll see tho, I don't want to rush to any judgements just yet.

All in all it was a productive day in Norrath. See you tomorrow

The TBM gear is very good, my suggestion would be to look into some of the heroics that don't necessarily have nameds in them - Into the Temple (b) comes immediately to mind - and look into moving your characters into Crypt-Hunter gear. The modular nature means that you won't really have to look into armor upgrades as you level, you'll just need to get the new Sulstone for the level ranges.

Further, as you gain levels and headshot ranks, the group mission involved in progression from TDS in Brother Island can be one of those nice sit back and gain xp kind of missions. I'm sure I could think of lots more, but a tad scatterbrained at the moment!

Grbbles Gribbles Gribbles... That describes my Memorial Day weekend thus far. Things are right on schedule for me to hit level 105 by Monday night. I'm pretty excited to not do these tasks anymore. I mean I'm sure at some point or another I'll run them again, but I'm definitely going to take a significant break from them.

Just as I was getting getting started with my first adventure this morning, I was messaged by someone who reads this blog. He jokingly told me to quit slacking on my undates so here I am. Actually the truth is I haven't been doing much in the game for this past week except bouncing back and forth between TBM and DH and I've already written about that so there wasn't much new info to write about.

Anyway I invited this fella to join me if he wanted to. He said he was only 91 and at the time I was 98. No matter tho, I needed some company for the endless grind so along he came. He was a Beaslord named Redtuu. A nice guy and a competent player. I've always been pretty open to letting people join me and or helping people. Most of the time I don't really seek out other people while leveling because a lot of time you'll end up with group mates who are either more trouble than the are worth, or they are lazy and just want to do nothing while you power level tthem. I can't stand that. Luckily Redtuu was all over it. He assisted well, stayed out of trouble, and off agro, and dps'd his skinny little wood elf arms off. The couple of short afk's he had throughout the day I could see a noticeable difference in the groups kill speed. That's good considering he was 7 levels lower fighting deep reds.

He stayed with me most of the day and into the evening. We would run all three missions and then either afk for a bit or go gear up while waiting for the lockout timers to expire so we could go again. I'm starting to get pretty good and efficient at running these. We were able to get 2 missions done with our 30 minute exp pots every time we tried and that really helps move the exp bar.

After coming back from a break at about 8:30 PST the Beastlord had shut down his Beastmode for the night. He warned me after the previous round that he may not be awake for another run. That was okay tho. I did one more round with just my toons and called it for the night.

I spent a god amount of time and plat upgrading my gear and spells etc.. I sold a krono and was able to piece together a couple sets of Castawy visibles for the warrior and ranger. Then I went to ETWK and spent all my currency on off slots.. I was surprised that I could only afford a few pieces. I did buy a bunch of augs from there a couple weeks ago so I didn't quite have as many marks of valor as I needed. After that I picked up my spells and tomes and setup new spell sets for the current spells.

I made 3 levels today which put me at 101. That puts me right on pace to finish 105 by the end of the weekend. Really looking foward to it.

See you at max level!

If you're getting tired of Gribble, maybe try Marla Gaslow in ETWK for Heroics, we tended to like hers better anyway. She's a bit of a ho for abandoning her husband to party with a bunch of Qeynos guards, but that's another thing completely.

DING 105!


This past weekends exp bonus was a success. I was able to hit level 105 on my warrior and ranger. The shaman lags behind a little bit because his account doesn't have LoTD. Still managed to get him 103.

I must say its a pretty relieving feeling to be done with leveling. Now just a few thousand aa's to go /sarcasm. Going to spend tonight getting properly geared up. At 105 I was struggling a bit even doing just gribbles tasks. I guess shooting up from level 97 to 105 so fast will do that.

I drug my new Beastlord buddy along with me for most of it even tho he was probably getting sick of it too, and he leveled up to 97 I think. All in all the weekends goals were accomplished.

Now I have so much different stuff I want to do.

In no particular order because I honestly don't know what to do first I want to.

1. At least do my shaman epic
2. Start group progression in CoTF and work my way up to TDS and TBM
3. Say forget items number 1 and 2 and go straight to TBM and try to get better gear.
4. Camp a few augs in RoF zones while getting some sellable gear and collectibles.
5. Get all trade skill trophy's (I don't know why but I do)
6. Do anything else people might suggest that would be worthwhile.

I'm leaning towards getting a few of the easier augs out of the way. I really want to just try and beast my way thru a few TBM missions for more gear but I'm not sure my little squad is ready yet.

What do you guys think.

I'm pretty pumped to be 105. It took me a couple days under 2 months with an average of about 1 to 2 hours a day. Some days much more some days not at all. It was tough to get thru the 90's for sure.

I feel like a big weight is lifted off my shoulders now. There's so much more to do tho and I'm looking forward to all of it.

Gonna get a couple thousand more aa's and get my ranger a bit more ready over the next month and then really start looking for a raid guild.

I'll keep updating. Wish me luck. Advice wanted!

Congrats!

My buddy and I went heroic over the weekend as SK/shaman and are closing in on having all the aug tasks completed. Knowing what you know now, would you recommend diving straight into grinding Gribbles? Other than getting the 16th anniversary aug, did you really find anything else worth your time?

With regards to TSing, the only thing I can really offer advice on, just getting the trophies is straightforward, except tailoring which requires some farming. I got to 2100 on my enchanter (wasn't anticipating switching mains when going heroic) and max alchemy on the shaman, and it cost 700k total without maxing the trophies except the alchemy one. High level mats are vastly cheaper and easier to find than low level, so the best method is to pop a craftsman pot and go to town with 500 trivial combines. So far, I haven't found any use for them at all.

Congrats man! I need to stop slacking and start leveling myself so I can sniff the fresh air on top of the 105 mountain .

So is there any reason to do the tradeskill achieves or are you just doing it because you really want them?

I wish there was a clearer written path on where to find the best auga for someone leveling up. Its a lot of research trying to figure that all out.

I can't give any good reason for wanting the tradeskill trophies other than just having them. I don't even have the resources really to even start leveling up tradeskills. I'm sort of a completionist when it comes to things like that. Maybe I'll just do the fletching one for now since I need those class 3 wooden arrows anyway.

Theo that's a good question. After you finish heroic augs I would definitely add Grbbles into the mix of what you guys are doing. I would also do the prerequisite stuff for TBM. I didn't have any trouble doing those. At that point for gear you could farm the task. " In Defense of Health" . Check out Almar's guides to TBM for more information on that stuff. That task has never given me problems and I was able to kill the named in there without much issue. The TBM gear really is far and away better than anything else you will find so its worth it to do at least that if you ask me.

Not a bad idea to at least go to the hotzones for your level and at least get the augs there. Might be worth it to do the 6th anniversary scavenger hunt for the 10 potions that are basically the equivalent of 10 LoTD's. And definitely do the drunkards stein quest as well. It will save you a ton in gate potions. I think I've used 1 gate pot since I got the stein.

Productive. That's the word I'll use to describe my day in Norrath. I woke up this morning and just really didn't feel like going to work. So I didn't. What better way to dull the guilt of calling in sick for no reason than to stay inside and play video games all day? I can't think of a better solution.

I started my EQ day off by really focusing on properly gearing up my characters. I had really been neglecting the shaman since I made him really. I mean I took the time to get him augs and do the same stuff I did for my ranger and war, but his gear was atrocious. I'd say over half his gear was still the heroic gear that he spawned into the game with. I mean I didn't really have the plat to spend on him and any real gear upgrades go to the warrior first and the ranger second. He's about 65% into 103 and I'm sort of waiting until 105 to really try and get fancy with his macros and spell sets and stuff. I have a couple basic macros set up for slow/heals but eventually I'm gonna have him really try to get in on the DoTs and stuff because my group kill speed just seems a bit slow.

Anyhow, I actually bought a set of latent ether from the bazaar because it was so cheap. That way I could use all his currency to buy the off slots. When all was said and done he basically has a full set of CoTF T1 and 2 mix. Which is really not that good at all but compared to what he had before he's basically superman now.

After that I gave the warrior some TLC as well. I upgraded his augs for the TBM gear he has to the 105 stuff. I think I counted 7 or 8 pieces of TBM gear so far. Not too shabby I suppose. No visibles yet tho. He's still using the TDS stuff I bought a few days ago. Overall tho he's looking pretty good. I moved some hot keys around and cleaned out his bags and upgraded his important discs to rank II. The rest of his slots had to be filled with CoTF stuff but that will be the first stuff to be upgraded.

After that it was on to the ranger. I spent a good amount of time on him as well. I upgraded his gear as much as possible too. He's wearing mostly CoTF stuff with about 5 pieces of TBM as well as the TDS visibles. I really took some time with his spell lineups and buffs etc. Also made a few new hot keys and mash keys for easier dpsing. Ugraded his stuff to rank II as well. I could really tell a difference dps wise from before and after. Things should go a bit more smoothly now.

This took most of the morning, but it needed to be done. After that I decided to give some CoTF progression a try. I picked up all the mercenary quests in ETWK for my little crew and went hunting. It's times like these where I love being a ranger. Tracking made these quests pretty easy and I was able to knock out all of them for all my guys in under a couple hours. After that, I did the first partisan quest as well. This took a bit longer and auto follow was a bit lame down in the tunnels but I perservered. I was pretty surprised how little exp I got for doing all this. I mean I don't know how much it all was exactly, but I'm pretty confident that one gribbles task would have netted me more exp than doing all these quests. I did 7 or 8 total quests here in about 3 - 4 hours.

While I was in the zone I checked the daily heroic and saw "scouting ahead" on there so I figured I may as well do that. With lesson I got I think 33 aa's and the shaman got about 20% exp so not too bad for 30 minutes of work.

After dinner I couldn't resist the temptation any longer so I went to TBM and did "in defense of health" I'm really looking to spawn a named just to see how I fair against it but no luck. I did get a mask tho and since it didn't have echoing anger on it I gave it to the ranger. I quickly went and aug'd it out so I had to consider the TBM run a success.

In researching augs that are with in my reach I found a couple that I should be able to handle in RoF so I figured I'd go check that out. Not so fast... Apparently I have to attune to all these zones and run around all over the place to get to a lot of these zones. I went to shards landing to pick up all these stupid portal quests and started making my way thru them. The in game zone finder helped quite a bit here. I ended up getting them all done except 3 so I'll have to finish those later.

All in all I did a lot of stuff today and I'm setup to continue crushing things for the foreseeable future. I'm planning on camping augs, doing any daily gribble tasks if they come up, sneaking in a TBM mission now and again, and working on CoTF progression. Kinda leaves me spread out a bit but at least I won't be bored.

Hope you enjoyed reading. See you next time.

Thoroughly enjoyable read, DR. Thanks. Thirty minutes for a SA HA is good, especially if you didn't get the item in the first couple of kills in the ruins.

I have been told by a guild mate that tanking TBM is easier with visible gear and hDex augments. Not sure if that advice holds true after the May change, but thought I'd pass it along.

Had to put in some long hours at work the last couple of days so not a ton of time to play. Here's an update of what I did today. I finished all the stupid RoF portal quests basically so I could just get them off of my quest log screen. After that I went to Kael to pick up a couple of Dex augs for my ranger.

I remember Kael from my time playing years and yeas ago and it was pretty fun to revisit it and look around. I love how big and open the zone is because it was built for giants. It makes traveling around with auto-follow pretty nice compared to most indoor places. A few times I had to adjust my following buddies with levitate because of low or high ceilings or icy floors.

Overal things went pretty smoothly. I was able to get 2 appetite for destruction augs, 1 fjeka fang aug, and the 10 damage 1hander aug in just over 3 hours. I also got about 8 or 9 other pieces of attunable gear to sell on my trader, not a bad haul. At 105 the mobs are all pretty trivial including the named. All in all it was a nice low stress easy farm session.

When I first arrived I just looked up on EQ resource where to go for the aug I wanted and made my way there. After clearing the initial camp I just kept looking for other named spawns close by. After the first respawn I started branching out to the other nearby place holder spots. Before long I had a nice rotation of about 5 different spawns I was looking for and clearing.

That's all I really had time for today but I'm hoping tomorrow to get some more CoTF stuff done.

Well I tried to push the shaman to 105 this weekend but fell 1 round of gribbles short, tonight hopefully. Over the weekend I didn't really get much accomplished except the gear farming I did in Kael. I got a couple nice augs for the crew as well as almost 30 pieces of gear to sell in the bazaar. I spent probably 5 hours total. I also looked up how to make all the abstruse armor pieces I had laying around from when I was doing the HoT aug quests. So there was an extra 9 pieces of gear for the trader as well. Hopefully I'll be rich here in a week or so.

After that I just did a couple gribbs tasks to try and get from 103 to 105 . I ran out of steam last night but I'm 67% in to 104 so I should be able to get that tonight. After that I plan on really taking some time on the shaman macros to improve his usefulness. I'm still strongly considering adding a cleric to my crew. I've even created him and heroic'd him and everything. I just can't bring myself to start leveling another character at the moment. I might look to just get him up a little bit and then really try to hammer something out when we get an actual 100% double exp weekend sometime. Maybe 4th of July?? Eh? Eh??..

For now it'll be back to getting what groupable dex and agi ac augs I can get as well as pushing on with CoTF progression. Still have the dreaded epics to do. At least the shaman's, Theres just one small problem,I don't wanna! /jk. I am putting it off tho.

I'll keep you updated on how things are going!

So now that your running 3 and considerinf a 4th are you running any boxing software or are you just alt tabbing between all of them? I can barely keep up with 2. 3 or even 4 sounds like a nightmare lol.

Boxing 3 without software is not horribly difficult. It does, however, necessitate compromises in what character abilities can be used. It also took awhile to get the hang of it, about a month or two for me as I'm a slow learner. I practiced on Gribbles.

I have two three-box combinations that seem to work well: Bard 105/Ranger 99/Mage 105 and Bard 105/Rogue 104/Mage 105. (Also working on the Bard/Shaman/Mage) No software assist is being used, but the earth pet is a massive DS tank, the Bard does his thing and the Rogue + 2 DPS Mercs do battle or the Ranger DPS. In either instance, I chose two classes that do not require a lot of attention to play reasonably effectively and one that does.

Bard does not Selo's Kick and I'm often a little late with some of the discs. The Mage has two macros for initial engagement and burn. That's about it and I concentrate on the Rogue or Ranger. I don't alt-tab either. I just hover the cursor over the bottom of the screen and click on the one I want. Always log in with the same order on the three accounts.

The way I three box is I moved my task bar to the left side of the screen and set it to hide. Which I know is weird but I only use my computer for basically EQ and web surfing so it's not a big deal. Then when I want to switch characters I just move my mouse over to the left side, the bar comes up and I choose which character I want. This seems to be the best way for me to box. Alt tabbing was never my favorite way.

With good strong hotkey, auto follows, and spell lineups 3 or for boxing without software is not too bad. I'm able to keep multiple mobs with agro on my warrior even with 2 wizard mercs on burn while I switch to the shaman and get his macros going and then switch to the ranger and fully dos with him. When the first mob dies I switch back to the warrior and pick a new target. Then the process repeats itself.

The worst part about boxing is either really tight areas in dungeons or places where you need levitate. I already don't like levitate, but boxing makes it way you worse.

Levitate and shrink, always hated them with a passion anyone else?

It might also get easier at higher levels when mobs have more health or I have better gear. I run an SK/Shaman box and I spent 80% of my focus on the SK. Half the time in a gribble the mob is almost dead hy the time the shammy macros are done slowing and casting cougar on the group.

Sometimes keeping a merc or a pet from being idiots can be a pain or named mobs things can go to hell so fast thats taken some work to get used to. I have thought about including a mage as a box since I can create like 2 macros which includes sending in the pet and then generally ignore them.

Groups of mobs becomes a bit harder since I have to reinitiate those macros and pet attacks with each new mob. Guess its just getting used to running the group together and being accustomed to various situations.