I just bought the RoS pre-order, which gave me access to TBM and EoK. I have a pair of 105 characters that I box, WAR/WIZ. I've got them both geared mostly in CotF group gear with some Castaway thrown in there, as I haven't gotten to far through the TDS progression. When I did try killing some yard trash in Lceanium, the blue cons were quite tough. It was like tanking a named from a lvl 105 HA, with max hits around 18k even with Pain Doesn't Hurt up. So, long story short - I need to gear up quite a bit before taking on EoK content, I think. Where should I go to do that? Continue the TDS progression, or is it okay to skip that and work on TBM instead? I noted that someone said I'd still want to do TBM for the type 5 augs in another thread. Thanks in advance. My warrior's unbuffed stats - 102k hp, 3075 AC.
Farm http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=8081 for Remnants of Tranquility then buy the stuff off vendors in TBM. It is possible to pull almost everything single if you study how the things roam before pulling. You can keep the extra quest pieces for the next run through.
I 3 box and came back with mostly castaway gear. I did most tbm progression and it was a tad tough but doable and the augs are nice. The gear is easily replaced with Eok armor. Just go to frontier mountains so much gear rots, and check general chat for rotting items.
I'd try to get 2-4 pieces of rot gear on your warrior, then buy 2-3 slot 5 augs from bazaar(hDex focus), then try again.
Thanks for the advice. I did try that mission successfully, but it did take me around 2 hours with my Wiz/War + 2 merc healer team. I'll probably be able to cut that down some, but it is still pretty tough. I had to kill a lot of mobs, some of which conned red. This brings up a question for everyone about TBM group armor. There is a (group armor) merchant in the PoHealth, but he tells me I need to be more accomplished. Is it progression through the expansion that unlocks him or something else? Some comments on ZAM suggested that I would need to kill a ton of mobs in the PoFear or PoHate raids from the expansion to lower some faction, but that sounded either stupid or a bug.
See Lyndalin Delwadamain in Plane of Tranquillity for the T1 Armor for the expansion. No progression required that I am aware of.
He's talking about the augment vendor, not the main gear vendor. Olav is correct. You buy the main gear in PoT, but the augs for said gear can only be bought in PoH once you've beat Into the Temple (b). The aug vendor in PoT is unlocked from killing mobs in the new PoHate and PoFear. The vendors which carry the weapon augs in PoT and PoH carry the same items, and are both unlocked the regular way (or not locked at all). It's all kinda confusing, and the ZAM and EQResource pages for all this never really spell it out very well.
My personal opinion is, sit near bi faak in frontier mountains and wait for people to shout out rot drops. If it's anything like Povar that place is loot central!
The problem is that you're only boxing in a group-orientated game. Ask 5 people in-game and I'm sure at least 1 person will give you good direction. Or, Stick with TDS and TBM, have fun, enjoy yourself, gain all the achievements and progression, and stay behind with the current expansions. If you're not raiding, there isn't really a reason to buy the latest expansions in the first place.
The gear system was changed significantly in TBM. You have a standard item with very low stats you can equip, then you modify it with various augments to increase its power. This system was again revised in EoK (and subsequently RoS), and the only augments that were carried forward were the type 5s. You're going to need a set of these augs for whichever gear set you get (TBM, EoK, RoS). Depending on what you want to do, you can progress entirely through TDS, then TBM, then EoK, then RoS and be fine. Since the gear in TDS is going to be twice replaced, it's not entirely necessary to fully gear up with it. The gear from TBM can be purchased with Remnants of Tranquility, which are obtained from the TBM HAs, which can be traded / sold by players. I wouldn't expect to pay more than 15pp per remnant, and I think you need something like 60k remnants for a full set of TBM gear. That 15pp number is from when TBM was current. I have no idea what the price of them is now. Maybe you can set up a buyer and buy them for 8-10pp each. EoK gear you're going to have a difficult time getting on your own. Keep an eye on General chat for rotting gear. As others have mentioned, the Bi`Faak camp in FM is a good place to find rotting gear, as it's a good spot for boxers to quickly level up. Again, type 5 augments from TBM have been carried forward and will fit into the EoK gear - having a full set of type 5s from TBM is a good idea. The EoK type 5s are more cumbersome to acquire - the HAs are less forgiving on the amount of currency they reward. Plus, they're only slightly better than the TBM ones. EoK is a difficult place, and you would have a very difficult time surviving there if you're not using at least TBM group gear.
I see RoTs in the Bazaar on Tunare for 30pp each. You'd have to go /buyer to get them cheaper. If you wanted to do every last slot and aug with RoTs, you'd need 2500 * 21 +1000 (weapon takes 3 augs) = 53,500, plus the RoTs needed for the base items, which run 5-10 each, so add another 130-140. At 30pp each, that's ~1.5Mpp. Which is a lot, but if you want to get there in a hurry, and have some spare cash, that's less plat than the value of 1 Krono. Now, if you're considering buying RoTs to gear up, remember that there are type 5 augs which drop, and are tradable/sellable, and have better stats that the TBM vendor-sold type 5s. Some of these can be had in Bazaar for less than the RoT cost of the TBM vendor-sold. So, shop around first.
And if you actually start running TBM HAs at 105, you will acvumulate RoTs at huge pace. One problem I see in your setup, however, is lack of support. You would probably have much better results using a chanter instead of wiz.
Thanks again for all of the advice given here. It has been very helpful. I'll give you all an update on how it's been going so that others in my situation might benefit as well. I have tried to get some EoK rots, particularly in FM. I did get a Bi'Faak's Silence and T1 arms, but I haven't seen any other rots in a few hours of hanging out. There have generally been 15-20 people in FM when I was around. Could be that most were gearing up their own alts or friends and didn't have much rotting. I've done about 5 HAs in TBM now, I think, and as Scorrpio pointed out, the RoTs come pretty quick at 105. Since I'm not worrying about gearing up my wiz nearly as much as my warrior, I am giving the RoTs my wiz gets to the warrior to double the rate of getting gear. I have been getting 1 item + type 9 aug + a type 5 aug per HA run, more or less. It's also been handy getting essences of life to get rk II spells and abilities. I've gained almost 500 displayed AC on my warrior, so I feel like this path is making real progress, and the type 5 augs should still be usable after I do start getting more EoK gear. On my server, the tradable type 5's that are better than the TBM vendor-bought ones are going for around 100kpp and up, so I'll probably be sticking with the vendor-bought ones. Although, I did get a dropped type 5 myself in the last HA I ran. It was a +40 hcha one, though. Not sure if that will be worth as much as the ones with +40 to some other stat that were selling for 6 figures. As for boxing with the wiz - it's true that I don't get any real utility out of that, aside from ports and dps. I didn't start out boxing, having played from Oct. 99 to 2005 with just one account. It was during DoN that I split off my wizard alt from my main account (Olav is my first EQ character). I then played other games (mostly EQ2) for a while, before not playing anything until last spring, when I came back here. Boxing means not having to wait for a group, but there is a trade off in having to divide my attention between characters and not having a full balanced group. Once I'm not hopelessly behind in tanking and/or dps with my warrior, maybe I can start looking for regular groups for him and leave my wiz alone for a while. He's my Master Artisan, so I'll always have at least some use for him.
I would like to say thank you for the info shared on this post. As a future returning player I will be facing this situation. Questions I would have, have been answered and shared. Being happy that I will have more than one option to jump start the gear gap projects along with focusing drops to key toon within my 3 box set will helpful. Like others maybe more than others I will have a set up roughly based around a 3 box team.. but with 8 to 9 different sub options. Tx again Account A .. War . mage Enc Nec Account B Brd shaman mage wizzy clr Account C Clr Zerk wizzy Not all are ready but 8 or 9 of them are 105. Feels like ideally I will need to cut down to 2 sub sets. Who knows.. if I find that HA that I enjoy and can rerun.. I could see 3 subsets. Sidenote if barter is still similar as pass.. betting I could gear 1 toon a day.. massive farming at 1.5M per.. Then again repeating HA adds to spells.
