The Broken Mirror Looks Bad - Change My Mind

On Phinny we're about 5 weeks from TBM. I have never done TBM before so I started looking over spells, gear, and progression. It looks awful.

From what I gather, I need a drop from a named for a piece of visible gear. That gear has little to no stats. I then need to HAs or other missions to get currency to buy augs that make that gear usable. I didn't deep dive on it but it looks like one aug is 1,000 of whatever currency TBM uses. That feels like a lot of HAs to completely gear up. I get that they did this so the gear scales for lower levels and on the surface that makes sense. As an added downside, I can't just compare TBM gear to T3 TDS gear.

And the spells. You get a spell that gets better as you complete progression? Ugh.

For those of you with experience on TBM, I'd appreciate your perspective on this expansion.

Its much easier than it looks. I also was like, this is lame armor and not worth it, but then I found this article (link below) and it became much clearer. Then I started doing some of the easy stuff and wound up with tons of remnants of Tranquility that are needed to upgrade the armor. You will get a lot more than 1 remnant per reward so its not like its hard to get them and they usually wind up for sale in the baz, at least on live, for dirt cheap.

https://www.almarsguides.com/eq/quests/TBM/GroupGear/

I played some during TBM when it was current and I remember absolutely swimming in currency. Most of the HAs give over 1000 currency per completion per player, and you have to repeat them quite a bit for progression stuff.

The Dicho spells are pretty good right off the bat (Monk's for example gets about 10-15% stronger going from rank 1 to rank 6), and naturally progress from group and raid progression. It's just something you'll finish as you do the xpac.

Thanks, that helped.

I wondered about that. Thanks for the info.

Currency is also tradeable.

So if you box a tank, you can funnel all your other boxes currency into your tanks inventory and finish up much faster.

Also important to note - by updating augs every 5 levels, that gear can easily last you until 105.

TBM is a great expansion. The gear-system is a bit goofy and was dropped in later expansions but it's a huge relief to people looking to catch up on live. Remnants of Tranquility drop plentifully enough that someone who does the collections/hunter will collect a massive surplus they can sell or gear alts with. New people trying to start out on the server can get a hold of a cache of remnants and gear themselves up with a full set of respectable gear as soon as level 75.

The expansion also adds the Dichotomic abilities which are huge game-changers for a few classes and important for almost all classes. My favorite part about TBM is that it comes with difficult group missions that provide an incredible and long-lasting aug for mastering them.

The art in the game is a bit different but I really enjoyed it, and the duality of the live/dead side of the demiplane of life/decay.

The worst part about TBM is navigating the different levels of the demiplane of life and decay. I've gotten pretty good at it, but whenever I bring a new person or alt through TBM that's the part I enjoy the least. It'd be better if they flattened it out a bit and didn't close off the wings in some of the missions, but that's more of a "third time through" complaint than anything.

It was a good expansion for the casual player because with the tradeable currency, it was super easy to gear up.

Other than that, as far as content, progression and HOW you actually geared up...it was a dumpster fire. It gave you one new zone (which was actually pretty cool), and then a bunch of retextured old zones. After it launched, I felt bad for having convinced guildmates to preorder it.

TBM missions aren’t actually pretty fun also.

One of the best ways to gear up on live now for awhile.

uhm we ARE already lvl 105? we are in TDS atm

Thanks everyone for your insights.

Ah man, you uhmd Protagonist, you are in for it.

You can get the TBM armor at 75 and upgrade with augs until 105 so 30 levels of use costing only Remnants for upgrades

Yes, the cap is 105. And you can equip it at 75. Thus, it will last you from when you can equip it all the way through 105. Which is what I said.

aye but did you read the OP? it's not like he is starting from fresh he is already playing, so that you can get gear from 75 doesn't make much sense since he would most likely be 105 already (all the other posts were more relevant)

Ugh, that slipped my mind as I read through the thread. OTOH getting a good gear path for new characters is a very good thing

He doesn't understand the concept of catching up new and returning players apparently - if he can't benefit from it then it must be worthless.

It just adds one more level of convenience when you're taking a heroic character up to raid-ready status. You can immediately grab a full set of TBM gear/weapons and just upgrade them every 5-10 levels as you go. No more wearing 800hp junk until you hit 100 and can equip CoTF/TDS T1.

Side-note for those who aren't on Phinny or are taking a break and thinking about coming back, it only took me 3 weeks of relatively casual hours to get my heroic bard up to 105 fully geared & 2.0 + SoB clicky, etc. It's a really great time to play catchup if you want to play on phinny right now.

this thread wasn't about catching up and such, apparently it was a player ALREADY playing on Phinny, having doubts about TBM... if a returning player wanted to know then he would make a thread about it no? ;-) (I know, it's a hard concept to grasp)