I stopped playing not long after the release of Gates of Discord. I have a L65 DE SK who was geared in ToV reward gear, and has Epic 1.0, along with what used to be standard must haves like JBoots, invis ring, even have the Greenmist (from back when Cabilis was KOS to everyone, and needed insane faction grinding to get in there). This toon is also maxed out in blacksmithing (for the time anyway), and is able to make DE cultural armor (if that even matters anymore), and I barely had any AAs earned (because back then, the guilds were always like "Levels > AAs", so I spent all my time on earning levels instead of AAs in order to be able to keep raiding with my guild, thus am very AA deficient. I am guessing 100% of all my gear is now ancient garbage, seeing as how what, there are been like 10 more expansions since I was last in? Anyway, I am looking for some modern advice for an ancient relic of days past to jump back in (My fave mode of play was soloing, and small groups, raiding was something I did because, well that was what people did, and I just went with the flow...not much interested in that scene now). Its why I picked an SK, its immense soloability. So yea, looking for tips for an avid soloist to start filling up his XP bar again (and FINALLY fill out his AAs too). Thanks Amphitryon Alcaeus Dark Elf Shadow Knight
Defiant gear replaces all armor up to level 80. The drops are so random that for the most part, Bazaar is the best hunting ground. Mercenaries are immensely helpful. A wise purchase is to obtain at least three extra slots so you may have one mercenary of each of the four classes (tank, healer, wizard, rogue). Many AA are granted automatically. However, unless you pay to play you will have a numerical cap.
Yep, all you gear is gonna be obsolete. See if you have a heroic character upgrade available, if you do, that can level your character to 85 instantly. Also go to your AA page and click the auto-grant button. Probably the biggest change to the game since you've played is mercenaries. Grab yourself a healer one and have fun. A lot will depend on if you go gold (paying) membership. If you do, you can do the quest to get a Journeyman mercenary, which is much better than the basic one. Another thing, you don't have to buy all the expansions to get up to date, if you buy the most current one ToV, and it will include all the previous ones as well. In the Plane of Knowledge, Franklin Teek is a NPC near the guild hall entrance, who will give you tasks for your level, these are easy and will get you a good chunk of experience. Get Maps. one of the better places to get them is EQresource, download the mappack and unzip them into your map folder.
You're ToV gear is likely on par with the defiant for your level in some ways but inferior in others, due to it having been effectively Raid gear still back then. The Defiant gear you have will have more mod2s (which were rolled into a new set of stats you will see on gear; Heroic Dex, H Agi, H Sta, H Int, H Str, H Wis, H Cha) and likely have some mod3s. Your weapons are likely inferior to the Defiant weapons, but you might want to check ratios as you come across them for your level. You might come across some defiant gear for which you are on the middle or lower level range of the req/rec which will be outright better. Run Speed AAs nullify the useage of JBoots, the Invis Ring is still useful, till you get better invis spells/AA versions later. Your 250 Blacksmithing is still worthwhile, if you decide to make the DoN cultural armor for your race, have to do a few quests, but nothing too bad compared to what it was originally.As far as AAs go, the real question is whether you have an All Access subscription or not. If you have an All Access subscription (even for just 1 month) you can turn on the Auto-grant feature in the AA window, and it will automatically grant you (upon login or level up) all the AAs you can buy up to and including the 5th most recent expansion (current The Broken Mirror), the current expansion and the 3 before it still have to be grinded out and bought. What this means however is that if you subscribe you can just level up and not worry about AA'ing till you get into more current content (105-115). If you don't subscribe and do this then, due to your being from the days of full subscriptions, you will be Silver Access and be able to grind and spend up to 1000 AAs (completely F2P accounts are limited to 250). But if you choose to subscribe for a short time autogrant your AAs and then let the subscription expire, you will keep use of all the AAs you were granted but not be able to grind out or spend anymore until you subscribe once more. Once you get into the 70+ range Defiant gear stops being universally better than all level appropriate expansion armors. It is maybe T1 level. by the time you get to level 80 the SoF armor is better than it hands down, defiant is just considerably easier to get.
