Well, I for one know that I skipped over these guides since they all say ROS which I took to mean Ring of Scale so since I was not looking for Ring of Scale guides I figured there was nothing in them of interest. However this time I clicked your link and found it is not all ROS/Ring of Scale but all expansions and some nice info. Thank you for all the hard work you do!
I don't have a problem with the difficulty. I have a problem with the insane grind. I've been playing since release and my highest toon ever is 85, and it was all I could do to get through 80-85. Every year or two I come back, get a new toon to 70 or so, then quit. The number of kills I hear it takes for 1% in the 90s and 100s is completely insane. And that's not even counting the thousands of AAs. I'm currently trying to get a toon up to 85 on Phinny. Maybe it will be better if I only have to get 5 levels and some essential AA's every few months, but I'm probably fooling myself.
How is this even a debate? Leveling all the way to 110 is very easy if you know how to play your character. Some are more challenging than others, but EVERY class is given countless tools to play with as they rise in levels. Boxing and mercs make it PAINFULLY easy to level. Am I missing something here?
And just from personal experience in the last couple weeks... if boxing... be rolling LDoN's to spice things up from like 20-65. So underrated these days. It was a lot more fun than static camps and provided like 20-25pp per kill at times along with defiant drops of the level. Once you hit 65, though, both the xp and plat(talking the straight drops from mobs, the vendor loot is still decent) go off a cliff.. so you'll need to find elsewhere. Even then, LDoN can still be sick fun. And as stated, I highly suggest FV to be able to get key ideal gear for the level. The game is a lot more fun the faster content drops and the more you feel like a vacuum cleaner, rather than trying to kill that perfect mob. Also factor in if you highly ramp your killing, you also get a lot of tradeskill mats. As an example, I did the spiders on the lake in Vald for 75 and looked in my inventory and had 230 Silk Swatches that I simply fed into Tailoring for free. So one thing can feed the other so you don't have to Bazaar that stuff up.
Nice comments, but I'll disagree with a couple points: 1 - Defiant is just fine up to about 80, where you can start using stuff from HoT, which isn't too hard to get. I had no trouble leveling using Defiant. (Caveat: I wasn't leveling any tank classes, that may be an exception to this). The main problem with Defiant is, you can't always get all of the pieces you need once you hit the required level for the next tier. For folks charging silly prices for Defiant in the Bazaar, please stop. Let the scrubs get their gear and level. 2 - Plenty of people soloed to 60 or 70, back when those were the max levels. Of course, that's highly class-dependent. Even today, certain classes can solo/molo pretty effectively. Obviously, some classes can't. As to 6+ months of 12 hours a day to level, I think that's an exaggeration. That's roughly 90 days played. Looking over my notes, going back 90 days played takes me back to level 72, in 2009 (I'm 110 now). However, I spent ~26 days /played in 2011 PLing a TON of alts. I spent ~15 days /played at 105 when that was the max, and couldn't level. So, that's ~49 days /played to go from 72 to 100, but you also have to take into account, most of that was before auto-grant, so a LOT of that time was spent getting AAs which could now be gotten right away. And I also don't tend to play super focused on leveling (obviously). If a player is focused on playing smart while leveling, you can do it pretty quickly, even molo. I made a LOT of progress using the hot zones and daily Teek quests, those make it go much quicker. One big beef here is the current choice of hot zones. In the past, they tended to be much more accessible and usable. Lately, they seems to be chosen because of their difficulty to get to. I do like your emphasis on older expacs. I did utilize that. The best thing to look at is, XP/hour, not XP/mob. And that's usually done by hunting the lowest/easiest dark blue mobs you can find.
Many of the returning players we lose have no interest in boxing. Not true to the OP, but true for many. Single character... your tank merc easily carries you to 50s. Then you have to actually start being careful. If you have no heals or CC your solo options/efficiency is pinched. Many classes change dramatically 70+... so many abilities farmed out to other classes (i.e., crowd controls, feigns/evasions, etc.) so there is learning curve to play effectively if you previous high was a level 65 in GoD era. Many veteran players have a kit and routine for boxing up a new set of characters. Many others use a high level character to powerlevel themselves (certain SoF zones come to mind. Not something a solo player can do to themselves). Plus veterans have items & plat. Some of the freebies aren't obvious (/claim, loyalty, buy krono and gear up, use hotzones, enable autogrant, pay for at least one month sub, marketplace, /veteran, etc.) if you quit before any of them were in game. Many returning players plink along alone... getting into a casual friendly family guild really helps you catch up. There is a catch 22 of doing it alone in an empty world, sure you catch some spawns up but other times it is taking you longer to do something. The learning curve on the item/stat/ability/feature bloat in the game is a deterrent. Once you get to 65 you are into content many returning players never played, or never played well (some return multiple times). Plus the game is more bursty/twitch vs. the tactical combat you remember being level 21 at Miller's Farm in Karanas (which is rose-coloured... so much downtime sitting at that farm...) Overpowered gear is readily available for under 70 (defiant and twink gear), there's things like skinspikes, etc. --this tapers off in overpoweredness. Even with autogrant and/or accelerated AA curve you are doing a lot of grinding to catch up to the population. Heroic characters should probably be level 100 or even 105 (thinking ahead) now. Arguably there should be a character creation option on live servers to be level 50, level 75, level 85 (retired heroic) and eventually level 95. (useful for future Quarm) Because then you are saying "do the full grind if you want, or testdrive a bunch of things at some different ranges"
There are so many good ideas in this thread. It relates to EQ's embarrassment of riches. The diversity and depth of experiences in EQ is astonishing but can be difficult for even veteran players to remember. One thing has been fairly constant, following quest arcs can be very rewarding both from Exp and from gear standpoints. Just sitting in camps to kill mobs is not the only way to level up.
https://www.reddit.com/r/everquest/comments/5gyani/guide_to_leveling_on_live/ Is a pretty useful guide also. HA's after 75 is probably the fastest XP, deadhills one are easy the mobs don't give a lot of XP but the mission turn in does.
Without a solid group, box or powerlevel it's a pretty tedious journey that probably could be easily fixed by decreasing the amount of XP needed until 100 and add a couple more tiers to defiant. It's also silly cotf remains one of the best xp spots 75-100 without a powerlevel. I'm actually glad they left us that though. It's such a nice bump it feels like a cheat. I 2 box and am one of the lucky ones that plays with real life friends nowadays so it's been awhile since attempting the lonely molo non-box path but I remember it's a pain in the . Yet, I guess it's still far easier than the early days being restricted to only a few classes capable of realistically soloing to cap.
The grind is a big turn off. For the six boxing Max Level character this is not a concern, but if the desire is to get anyone new into the game or bring anyone that use to play to come back, forget about it. I have been playing off and on since 1999 and my maximum level character is only 95. I have a bunch of characters in the 60 to 90 range. For the player that thinks they might skip the grind by buying a heroic character slot are they ever in for a shock when they see how long it takes to go from 85 to 86. If they showed actual Exp numbers and not a bar, no one would play at all. Now admittedly EQII doesn't bear much relation to EQ other than the name, but they must have recognized the pace of leveling was a problem, as the difference is like night and day. You sail through the levels in EQ2. I don't think we can expect anything to change though. It seems like there is little developer support for this game beyond releasing an expansion every year that isn't going to attract anyone new at all.
Defiant definitely can take you to 80 but it starts to really get bad the higher you go past 70. Especially with, as you said, a tank class. They need the Heroics to take the damage from the harder hitting mobs. If you're going to remain in defiant until 80, I would recommend you stay in a PoP zone so the enemies don't hit hard.... If you tried a TSS zone at 70 with full defiant... well that's where things are going to start getting into the realm of too difficult to be worth while. Also 6+ months of play time is actually an understatement. Most players won't be able to gear out quickly, most will have to hunt relatively weak mobs for a few levels while the bazaar is repopulated with gear... Some won't even prestige their characters so they can't use augs or prestige gear... yadda yadda. If you do EXACTLY what you said, hunt dark blue + light blue enemies and do daily teek quests - you're looking at 6 months @ 18hrs a day minimum. I've leveled up many times 1 105, I have 70 + characters on FV and like 30 on Trakanon. I've leveled by PLing, I have leveled without a bazaar at all and only being able to gear myself with my own strength... I have done it basically every way you can think of and I timed it each time. Everyone disputes my claim of 6 months though, but the math is actually an understatement. Go out there and try it one time and actually stick to ONLY SOLOING. You're not allowed to group, not for 5min not even once - just like your claim states. You, soloing with Bazaar bought gear on nothing but Dark blues and light blues. See how long you can grind in one location and still maintain your sanity. There's a reason everyone quits when they hit this leveling wall - if it could be done in under 6 months it wouldn't be such a wall =P
Sorry, that's just plain wrong. A single Teek can give about 10% of a level, between the kills and the quest bonus. Kill a bit more in the hot zone under Lesson, and maybe do another Teek if you can get there easy enough, and 20% of a level in about an hour isn't out of the question.
For the OP thought they are 3 boxing, and easily do Dead Hills HA with 2-3 people and mercs. The real Solo player by themselves? Yeah...this game sucks for leveling. Assuming his math is for an account that can't pop a lesson, mission turn in for big XP bonus then finish off in hot zone. No clue if it's correct or not, but not having lesson on my 3rd box definitely levels slower than the other two (I have to stop them and just bank a couple hundred AA for that box w/out lesson to catch up). Hey now...grinding in PoFire for 20min/aa for months used to be a big deal. That was good xp and your reward for flagging lol.
GET TO THE TABLES! Quite true. I knew necros that popped a tent and lived there. Plane of Earth ZI was like 1 AA an hour in group for reference. Now you get like 90% of an AA a kill in Sathir's lol. --- Also.. decided I might as well take my own advice and level up the shaman's avoidance. LDoN easy... simply pull 3, get enough agro on them... and then let the mercs heal on efficient as needed. Go get dinner. Moves fast and takes around an hour. Oh... and turn on attack for the 1hb and offense bumps just for fun.
I don't know much about the Teek xp, but I think that the six months plus is fairly accurate. I was on Fippy and I had a falling out with my guild, so I went back to Bertox, my old server, but I had a different account so I started all over. My friends were on Fippy telling me how selfish I was, and I spent months alone leveling a bard. It really sucked playing alone everyday when my friends were having a good time. I quit on my original cleric at 67, because the xp was so bad. I almost quit again at 67. Then I almost quit at 68. But the levels slowly came in. I learned that it was just easier to find a place I liked and ignore the xp. It was safer and I could put in more hours. Sometimes I was in the hotzone, and sometimes I just took less xp to grind somewhere I liked. Most of the hotzones were TSS at the time. I quickly learned to just melody some defensive songs, 4 dots, and just tank things while reading/watching tv. After a few minutes I would look at EQ to see the mob died and pulled again. At around 75 I guess, I was in Direwind Cliffs a lot. We didn't have autogrant or even bonus AA xp I think. I spent everyday grinding and grinding, then afterwards I went to Korascian Warrens and almost everyday I was one shotted. My wife hit my level then and played a bit, but 95% of the time, I was soloing. She really hated my camp spot. Finally one day I went to Warrens and didn't die immediately. There was talk on the forums about adding like a 500% declining bonus for the first 2000AAs. People on the forums hated it. They were like we play this game cause it isn't easy like WoW. If it is too hard, they should quit. They added that bonus in. I wasn't happy because I just had grinded it out over a few months. The game was a souless grind. Everyday I didn't think about xping, or dinging, or anything. I just knew if it was moving, I would get there eventually, and I did. The cap was 95 then. Around 90 I was getting more groups and my Fippy friends finally joined me. But like 90%-95% of the journey was me tanking a mob while my cleric healed. I don't really play other alts, because I don't want to do it again. I would guess the entire journey was around 9 months to max level, with around 2 months in Direwind wasted on AAing. I kinda knew what I was doing. A lot of people don't. Their journey will take longer. Of course now there is autogrant, Teek, Gribbles, and other things, but without those, from my experience, I think it takes over 6 months to molo. Autogrant would speed things up, but there are 25 more levels now. Everyone will have their own take on the math. I am glad I did it though. I really like my 110 bard now. All the moloing I did has turned me into what I believe is a pretty well skilled bard that plays his character in a pretty offmeta style. I learned to be self-reliant and to focus on my dps while somewhat ignoring my groups dps, and I can sometimes tank when required. I learned to be pretty happy playing EQ even if the entire playerbase was gone tomorrow. I have seen a lot of people fly through the levels boxing. I get jealous sometimes, but I won't put in the effort to box. When you molo, something generally has to tank and something has to heal. A lot of classes require you to do one and the merc to do the other which guts your dps. If you add another toon, suddenly you can add 2 dps spots which is way faster than a tank/healer setup. My advice to OP from my experience is just find a spot you enjoy, try to keep your boxing simple, and watch tv or something. Your xping should go at least twice as fast as mine did boxing three toons. Or just distract yourself by doing achievements so you don't focus on xping. If I had to do it again, I would farm what I could xping for the tradeskill aug and 90+ I would grind the Tears of Alaris aug fragments until I was done. It will slow down your xp, but you will probably want to do it anyhow and it takes forever. I still don't have mine done and I hit max level when VoA was current.
"My advice to OP from my experience is just find a spot you enjoy, try to keep your boxing simple, and watch tv or something." That pretty much sums up post 70 EQ to me. It's the main reason I don't play anymore. The grass doesn't need me to interact with it to grow. I will say that the game is pretty fun before then, but 30 levels of Gribbles has me jaded. The leveling curve can be adjusted so easily. It's just a data field to alter. I had a private server and tested out the exp ratio I gained 9 levels killing 1 rat... It's working as intended I guess, but it turns away so many players before catching up to the herd. I would spend an afternoon making the mid levels more fluent/rewarding, but who am I to judge
Lol... btw... once you hit like 75, do the initial TBM quest(Seal of Approval)... you'll get like 68% of a level at like 78 and all it is, is running around hailing. Then if you think your boxes crew can handle it(it probably can't, prob best to get help if available), go do the hilarity that is Into the Temple (B) to open up the remnant vendors. Two-boxing that with a war/shm was an adventure.
You're not the first person to dispute my math. Everyone comes up with a similar story like you did, trying to remember how good you leveled in 2009 - a decade ago to try and prove the math wrong that I have done multiple times on multiple servers in multiple scenarios. =P I understand why - no one wants to hear that it'll take 6 months to level to max. But, if I were wrong - this wouldn't be such a massive wall and so many people wouldn't get stuck at it trying to overcome it. I'm positive I am right, it's the whole purpose of me writing my leveling guides to try and help people overcome this massive wall that they hit. *IF* your server has gear (like FV) it's about 3 months to get to 105, then you have to grind thousands and thousands of AAs which is about another 3 months, then you also have the last 5 levels now. During RoF it was similar, even after autogrant was introduced. The hardest part - the part 99.999% of people don't think about is how little gear is sold in The Bazaar. If you're playing one character it's hard enough to gear them... TWO characters you're almost guaranteed to never have enough gear for both of them every 5 levels in your servers Bazaar. ESPECIALLY at 80 - 100 since so few items are droppable. No one does the math to see how much slower you go when you can't gear your character, they don't account for every variable. It's the same mistake everyone makes when "estimating" how long it takes to level. Without gear, you can't kill difficult enemies, you end up having to hunt relatively weak enemies. That DRASTICALLY slows down your EXP I'm not going to try and sit here and convince you though, I have gotten into this argument dozens of times with other people like yourself and no one has the experience I do leveling the amount of characters I have and writing leveling guides. I typically hate arguments from authority but I also get really disappointed when I see people getting totally burned out while doing this leveling grind because someone told them not to listen to me and you can do it!! in under 6 months. If you think you can do it, then prove me wrong and create Tatakana's Leveling Guides.
