I had been playing a beastlord up until DoN (2005) and then took a ‘break’ until SoD (2008). Added SK and Mage from SoD until House of Thule (2010). Moved characters to FV during a 2 moth period in RoF, but a return it was not. Re-installed yesterday…90 SK / 87 BST / 85 Mage / 85 BARD who is a Heroic Character who is anything but heroic - stands in the corner /melody, and 2 mercenaries to make me feel like a pathetic group. Gear? I don’t know what the numbers should be now… it’s bad is safe to assume. Once upon a time I used to be good, but then again I used to be young. I’m not at all concerned about min/maxing results as I know that hastens my departure, 3rd party programs or parsers make me feel like its a job. What I would like to ask of you all is, what is the one item that each of my characters ‘need’ and what should I see to get from (if anything): House of Thule / Veil of Alaris / Rain of Fear / Call of the Forsaken / The Darkened Sea / The Broken Mirror / Empires of Kunark. I don’t want to try to get to 110 fast, as I am content to get there out of necessity after going through the expansions I’ve missed. I seem to enjoy cluttering up bank slots with old quest items, and clickies (even if they are never used). I’ve spent more time away from the game than I have in at this point, if you don’t count sorta-annual visits to new progression servers looking for nostalgia. Now I want to see what I’ve missed. I look forward to reading what you all have to say. Also, what is a good out-of-the-box laptop, for as few dollars as possible, to tab between a /pet attacking beastlord and mage?
With that crew, I would look into doing 'The Dead Hills' Gribble quests. I haven't really metered it, I would guess something like 25% of a level per completion. They are fairly simple/straightforward and don't take a lot of time to complete. You only get experience on completion. As was pointed out to me by someone in the forums, if you have Lesson of the Devoted, finish the quest right up until that last Report to Gribble and pop your LotD to bump your experience to maybe 40% of a level. The quest takes over 30 minutes and the killing MOBs doesn't more the bar, so wait until the end to click LotD. I'm kind of transferring my effort to FV so I am currently working on characters there. I do the Teek Dailies too, just not as often. They are pretty good for getting some almost decent equipment and Augments. Any of your characters that are on Gold accounts, do the J5 Merc upgrade quest in the Feerrott. Once again, stay there a while and run a few quests there even after you finish the J5 Merc quest. You get some pretty decent Augmentations. Remember if you get the Heroic characters like your Bard, they come with no Augments on their equipment. You really need to fill out those Augment slots to get the character functional. I'm the same way with bank slots. I still have quest items there from my original characters in 1999! Totally worthless aside from nostalgia. I can't think of any quest back in the day that rewards you as well as doing a Teek quest today. Summing up, Feerrott the Dream, Gribble, Teek.
Thanks Fluid, I was leaning that way and I couldn't help but think that is kinda what I did with Old Man Mackenzie whenever that was.... I just don't want to miss out on something by logging on doing 'dailies' and camping.
For the Mage and Beast, you'll want to get a decent Enhanced Minion item, that is a focus effect in your ear slot. You'll want to make sure you keep the focus effect pretty much at your current level to get the most out of your pets. I would probably download parser simply to see what you are doing group wise and if it's making sense damage wise, it's super simplistic to setup and takes around 20 seconds after download. You can find it via the veteran's lounge in this forum. Since you aren't using any boxing software you may see you get better results running less characters. The Bard is great for melody, but having the SK and BST, I can forsee maybe some issues? If you really aren't worried about being super efficient, it'll be a nice box setup. You'll have pets in case the SK takes a dirt nap, slows and utility buffs from the bst and rods from the Mage( Air pet stuns ftw, or Water for DPS ). I suggest doing the Bards epic, it's still worthwhile, if you haven't already. To level I would probably go to hot zones. If you bring up the map, there is a zone guide to the top right. They are older zones that you may remember, and have decent drops gear wise/aug wise to get you started. Good luck!
When I came back to live I was really under geared. I had mage/mage/enc and went to oceangreen village. I did all the achievements there. Then it rewarded me with some pretty good gear and a nice pet focus. Not sure what you have gear and pet focus wise but it helped me out and it was fun doing all the achievements. I know the achievements came out in SoD but they didn't give you anything. I think maybe 2 or 3 expansions after that it gave you items for everything you did there. You can also get the aug i think. The crest just can't remember.
Heroic Character ONLY AUGS Altogether there were 19 30AC augs, 1 35AC aug(shield) plus 2 +6 dmg augs(one prestige, one non-prestige, maybe the prestige was a random drop) out of 20 solo tasks in HOT and Feerrott covering all slots. http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:Progression_Through_House_of_Thule http://www.paullynch.org/eqguide/guides/heroic-characters/ like Heroic Algid Ice Cube http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=116671
