Grouped with a buddy have a full box group besides him War, Druid, bard, Mage, BST and cleric. We have just his 71 and are leveling in dragonscale hills. Is there a better area to level instead of barely getting .5% a kill or is this the average XP for this level range and up? If anyone can toss some ideas on 70 - 80 and 80 - 90 to keep us busy it would be appreciated.
Hive Instances are great xp in that range, also do consider Mechamatic guardian once you are all 75 Worth seeing What Franklin Teek offers too.
I recall hanging out in Dragonscale hills at that level as well. But at that time, when the normal mob grinding slowed down, I looked into quests/achievements. Hero’s Journey quest line for DSH offers some good exp and pretty decent rewards in the form gear upgrades. And with a full group, as Skuz mentioned, checking out the daily hot zones isn’t a bad idea. Especially if you can tackle the 75 zone. Get the 70 and 75 quests for easy/free exp (how much do you get nowadays for those quests at that level? 6-7%? So roughly 10-15% for 30 minutes of work?) And once at 75, you’ll be able to run into Heroic Adventures which are instanced zones with specific (straight forward) objectives. This is where you’ll hear the famous DH HA (dead hills heroic adventure) or Gribbles runs (one of the 3-4 who offer HAs in the Dead Hills zone, and arguably the easiest to complete). He offers 3 different ones (you have to go in order your first time to unlock the next one), and at 75, full group can clear in about 15-20 minutes and get 15% or so of a level per turn in. So nearly half a level for an hours worth of work. They’re on a 3 hour lockout timer, so you can’t abuse it and run them back to back. But there’s been times where I’ll run Gribbles, all 3, go grind/achievement hunt, and then come back and run them one more time (if I have that much time on my hands to play that long lol)
Thanks for the input. So what im taking away is that the sit and grind approach wont compare to these other options at this level?
At 71 you might check if its better exp to grind in older locations, too. Paw, PoFire C2, RSS, etc. I believe I didn't move to SoF until 75ish, but that will make 75ish there that much slower. I run worgs / wereorcs quests until upper 70s. Repeatable kill 20 quests that give bonus exp upon completion. The start / finish NPC is there next to the mobs you kill. After that, head to Gyrospire Beza. Plenty of single pulls around 79-81ish.
The old Camp/mob grind of the pre-65 game becomes less & less useful as you get deeper into the expansions & the "Group Progression" & "Heroic Adventures" systems will become the most rewarding way to gain level & aa XP. by 70 camp & grind is a lot less beneficial than a "plough" approach where you move between named spawn locations clearing mobs as you move between them for XP by 90 plough is ineffective & doing the group progression is the best way to level & aa by 100 group progression & HA are the only way of advancing in a reasonable amount of time, you will camp things like augments but the XP from doing that won't really be all that noticeable, once you get what you came for you will be onto the group progression/HA again.
BY far the best way to level 75 to 80 is gribbles missions. Wait until the last second of the mission and blow lesson of the devoted, complete the gribbles run and start a second one. you'll have time to complete two and you'll get like....40-70% of your level for each mission so you'll get yeah you got it, 80-140% of a level in less than 1 hour.
Leveling Guide More helpfull stuff at my website. The DHHAs (Gribble) combined with the Franklin Teek's daily tasks are by far the best experience but there are two problems with them: They are repetitive and boring and the zones are ugly. And you will miss most other expansions content that you could do alternatively which does mean that you will not see and experience much from the game.
This is great advice. Try not to get caught up in the rat race of leveling as fast as possible. Explore, quest, and try new things. That's where the entertainment value comes in. Not sure where the notion came that XP should only come from the mindless grinding of endless killing, but it definitely isn't the most fun option available.
I'm not defending that playstyle (I don't miss it at all), but where it came from is no mystery at all. That's how EQ started, for everyone. You grinded out your levels. Once SoF (SoD?) era came about, and they started with all the merc/partisan/hero missions in every zone, did that start to change.
Of course. Yes, indeed. I mean in "today's" EverQuest, why people default to grinding for levels? It's just painful.
I think it's mainly old timers who never made the transition to the new style. Though, another reason could be people who never made the transition to auto-grant, which has been around only since 2014. And even if that's not the case, if you're above auto-grant level, and you want to max your AAs, you do still need to grind quite a bit, even if you do all content/quests available. It may not be grinding for levels, but grinding is grinding, regardless of the reason. Me? I use Overseer, works like a charm Then I can focus all my XP on AAs. I do the quests/content as I have time.
The main issue with the modern game is you take so much longer to grind your way through the levels, but without boxing you will need to be carried through missions and finding people to do that will depend on how good your social engineering skills are, especially if you are planning on catching up to the max level players in any kind of reasonable time-frame - the more expansions we get with the ToV+ XP paradigm the bigger a pain in the backside that will become, right now it's not too onerous, but it will definitely only be getting worse from here on out. The way players "skipped" past the content for years was just power-levelling past it & going back to the progression system content after they had outlevelled it to make it much faster, but ToV onwards that option is going to be drastically slowed down compared to pre ToV and skipping the progression content becomes far more punitive. And there is no "catch up system" in sight other than TLP servers, and good luck with finding a guild on one that reaches live, or at the least be prepared to guild-merge/guild hop a lot on your journey and do your best to not burn any bridges along the way or you'll find it bites you in the backside later on.
And I thought that EQ is about social interactions with other players and not just a stand-alone PC game. Hmm, only my mains have done full EoK, RoS, TBL, CoV, NoS progressions. Though, all my alts have done ToV + TOL progressions and almost all done Paragons from earlier expansions as the reward-to-effort ratios are very nice. So, perhaps, more punitive or less punitive is very expansion-dependent both pre- and past- ToV.
As soon as you hit 75, be sure to do the Into the Temple (A) (Quellious' Request) and Seal of Approval tasks for some fast, easy (non-combat) major xp! (almost 1 level worth)
Excellent advice! Those are non-repeatable tasks should be done as early as possible (lvl 75) to maximize the level boost. Similarly, a friendly wizard or a druid can do a pair of task-adds: https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=6035 (actually, any class can) https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=6146 (porter is beneficial) about 15 mins of playtime for both tasks gives as much experience as your quests above and are repeatable every 5 hours. They give about 1.5 levels at lvl 70 and 25% of the level at 84. (recently used those to PL alts)
70-75 - The Hive: The Lost Notebook - Frost Crypts* - The Mechamatic Guardian (floors 1,2)* - Bloodmoon Keep* - Gyrospire Beza** - Fortress Mechanotus** 75-80 - The Mechamatic Guardian (floors 3,4) - Gyrospire Zeka* - Meldrath's Majestic Mansion* - Kaesora Library** - Kurn's Stronghold** - Rathe Council Chambers*** A couple of things to note, I used asterisk(*) to denote difficulty for the zones. The Hive: The Lost Notebook needs to be requested, and a few quests sit in front of it. Moreover the enemies do not respawn so when you clear it out just drop the mission and request it again. 'The Mechamatic Guardian' is an instance with respawns and its probably the easiest route to 80. [It's possible to level to 85 here too.] At 75 Defiant gear falls off, so I'd suggest looking into TBM group armor for your upgrades - it'll carry you through the next several expansions via augs.
Everyone always overlooks The Farm in Dragonscale Hills cause it used to be so camped you had to wait weeks or months to get a chance. Its super fast exp for levels 65-75 and not a boring zone like the old ones or Gribbles are. https://www.almarsguides.com/EQ/Lev...e map above, the,throughout parts of the zone.
At 75 a knight can buy with TBM currency: https://items.eqresource.com/items.php?id=146463&aug6=146672&aug9=147067 DMG/DLY 69/34 (ratio 1.97), 531 HP, 36 AC 1H sword. Meanwhile, in SoD at lvl 75 there is available: https://items.eqresource.com/items.php?id=89425 DMG/DLY 120/35 (ratio 3.29), 905 HP, 48 AC 1H sword. Similarly, Paragon's gear for other slots is superior to TBM until lvl 85 (when augs get upgraded by much to Extravagant level) For whatever reason people focus on SoF instead of bypassing it and starting SoD at lvl 70 (quests in there targeted at 65+) and qualifying for Paragon's gear at 75+, which is HoT Tier 1 equivalent (lvl 80), wearable at lvl 75. When I have returned to EQ and was leveling up my crew at 70's I had a blast in SoD until I hit 80 and moved to HoT.
