When is enough.... enough?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Cicelee, Aug 27, 2020.

  1. Verily Tjark Augur

    I did most of last level in GD dorf caves... that big room in the back is really good. 2 mages (one I boxed), enchanter (me) and mercs/other guild members was our group usually. It goes really quick surprisingly.
    Yinla likes this.
  2. Flatchy Court Jester

    I love TOV earring quest, thought Cretas was great too! Thank you DBG for puttin work and thought into this. Hell it even got my buddy excited about working TS finally after 20 years.

    I have not ever been one to finish hunters or collections treatments (on purpose) My goal has always been just to gear up the endless supply of alts you collect with 4 accounts. Lately my play time has diminished to maybe 4 hours on the weekend and a few sprinkled here and there during the week. I have still managed to be on the next to the last stage of the earring. Mine is only bloodied 84% before I can go on to the last stage. Of course I have to finish hunters and that is what I am workign on now. TOFS sucks for some named but ill get there. For me I usually just take a few ph in some floors and keep em down and hope since they are so far apart (mummies ) so in maybe an 8 and a half minute spawn I get what 3 mobs to kill. (Yeah I know you raiders would go bonkers at my pace.)

    I guess I am agreeing that the grind is long on this one but it seems very much worth it. So much thought put into this one, again applause Devs!

    Oh and Duder, thanks ya made me spit me soda out when I caught that.
    Duder likes this.
  3. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    :rolleyes:
  4. p2aa Augur

    As it has been said, nothing forces you to do it.
    To get the best things in game, you need to put the effort into it.

    Also, you have plenty of time to finish your earring. The expansion lasts 1 year, so casual players have time to max their evolving items.
    I'm glad there are evolving items in the game since TBL, because it allows the content to last longer.
    They don't have the staff to make progression content that would last 6 month +, so this is a solution.
    As to grinding being the way to level it, well this has always been the EQ trademark way.

    I've seen some people (not necessarily the OP) complaining that there was too much xp when completing content progression for the first time, and not enough grind the old way.
    Now when people have some grind option, you have still some people complain that it's too long lol.

    To the people that complained they rushed the expansion and finished all ToV / maxed all AA before the earring quest appears, and then were loosing their time grinding mobs, nothing forced you to rush it to end all in 1 month.
    I have taken my time here, and I finished maxing my AA at the end of February. My earring was probably leveled in half overall at this stage

    As for the amount of xp needed to level it, I also took really my time for the last 60 % of the level of the earring quest. As a warrior, I soloed with my cleric merc some T1 named camp killing trash mob and possible named spawning (not the best way as the time it took me to kill the yellow / red con named was not making me win time on leveling the earring), and I spent like 3 hours per week, winning 5 % per session. 3 hours grinding playtime per week, not more.
    It took me 3 months this way, and I finished the last 60 % needed it at the end of June...
    I could have done it faster if I wanted, but decided to take my time.
    As a magician, you should solo much better than me, and winning more xp than this, as yeah 5 % of earring xp every 3 hours is awful rate...
    I remember that I needed like 20 dark blue con mobs to level 1 % of the earring at last level, not 30.

    So in conclusion, I suspect that you overestimate the time it will take you to complete it, and also you have still 4 months to go before the next expansion....You have plenty of time to finish it and not having to worry.
  5. Whulfgar Augur

    Best camps I've seen so far..

    Tower of Frozen Shadow Floor 6.
    This camp consists of the Val`sara named camp (7 mobs) .. plus the 7 other spectors in the other room. Then can simply pull the entire 7 (plus 2 doggies that roam) to complete the camp for a total of 23 mobs which should start to spawn just before you down that last mob.

    Great Divide.
    Enforcer cave this camp (grabbing from up above it as well) easily has 30+ mobs. Should easily be able to down all mobs in the actual enforcer cave (+/-) 5-10 mobs (depending on your grps dps) before the cave starts to respawn.

    These two camps are far and away thee BEST spots I've personally seen in ToV expansion for pushing xp on the earring . I for one do not think anything else even comes close to them.
  6. Conq Augur

    I've finished the earring on two characters, complete with raid drops. Completed everything but the raid drop on one more character. Finished the earring up to but not beyond the collections requirement on 3 more characters. The earrings pretty much leveled themselves while I camped hunters, helped guildies camp for their progression and earring tasks, only swapping in alts when no other guildies were around to fill out the groups. So my first 6 box crew has them all as finished as I'll take them without ever having to "level" the earrings on their own. Now I'm running another two alts through the earrings. I'll have to redo hunters for them and will only finish one of their collects, but so far, the earrings are progressing quite nicely without having to grind anything I wasn't already going to kill - named PH's mostly. While it's a time sink, I don't think it's over the top to level them to max.
    Conq
  7. Cicelee Augur

    Wow. I did not expect this thread to reach two pages, and it is at three. And the discussion, for the most part, has been civil. Thank you all for that.

    A lot of what people are saying about the quality of the quest, I completely agree. I want to clarify that I am not anti TOV earring quest and the amount of time it takes. And as someone who does min/max and who has spent hundreds of hours back in February and March going through Planes of Power hunter for my gloves, I accept and understand the grind part of the game.

    I think my whole intention of the thread, whether I communicated it effectively or not, was that thinking about the next 75 hours (maybe not that long of course with a mage/bard combo) flipping GD wurms caused me for the first time that I can recall to not want to do something in game. And it was the first time that I can recall when I thought of the potential time investment and considered what other games or forms of entertainment I could be doing with that hypothetical 75 hours. I have spent hours camping that augment for an extra 20 mana, or hours in a zone for some TS items and so forth.

    I guess I will know better this weekend as I try a couple spots and realistically see how long the next 100% is going to take. Hopefully my rudimentary math of 75 hours is on the high side for my playtime and how I plan on accomplishing the task...
  8. Zamiam Augur

    and just curious how much "TIME" did you put into lvling the Earrings on those 6 alts and 2 current alts that your working on now ? my guess is your a hard core player that plays 8 to 10 hours a day 7 days a week ?

    People that play a max of 10 to 15 hours a week prolly will take alot longer to complete 1 Earring let alone on 6 different toons ..

    also ToV has only been out for 9 or 10mo .. so if casuals 15 hours/wk would take 2 to 3 months to complete 1 earring , you having 6 toons and a few alts going thru it means you play alot .. jmho ..

    Time is relative to each individuals perspective ..
    Skuz likes this.
  9. Conq Augur

    I raid M/T/W - after working 10 hour days, so I don't effectively do anything xp or earring wise on those 3 days. I also casually login on Thursdays for about an hour to chat and do guild maintenance, then off EQ. Fridays and Saturday evening, I raid again on alts with our pickup raid force on Tunare. So realistically, I have a couple hours on Fri night, Sat day and all day Sunday to do earring/xp stuff. Once the NFL season starts again, I won't even login to EQ on Sundays other than traders - and maybe now to do Overseer during commercials of the 3 NFL games. There's still a ton of time where I do ToV mission runs with guildies or friends - so my boxes aren't leveling anything during those runs. While it's a lot of EQ (Hardcore? Maybe. More like cheaper for one month of entertainment than one night at the strip club), it isn't 8-10 hours a day 7 days a week.
    Conq
  10. Petalonyx Augur

    I leveled the earring to max almost completely incidental to other desireable objectives (hunter, mob drop collections, missions, etc).

    My opinion is that the earring strikes a good balance on exp required. I wouldnt mind it requiring a tad more exp because at max AA, i like to have a reason to continue to group up with others to slay mobs. That is by far the most fun part of EQ for me. It sucks when the slaying doesn't provide any progress, even if small.
  11. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    This thread is everything the sadists want.
    1. Confirmation that THEY share a common bond with other sadists.
    2. Confirmation for the developers in charge that at least two people other sadists enjoyed their content.
    Everquest has always been about the top 0.01% who will go to any length, commit any amount of time, to accomplish any task in game. For the rest of us schlubs who have but an hour a day to commit things like this are FAR out of reach. Especially if we took breaks along the way.

    I started my Earring and have gotten fairly far (working on Strategic Results right now), but these are the easiest of the quests. The difficulty (and subsequent time commitment) ramps up once you start reaching the raid-level stats.

    Folks, the earring is not mandatory. It's not required. It's there for the 0.01% of players who: a) can commit to it, and b) are sadistic enough to follow through with it.

    Personally, I like that the quest is available. But I hate that it requires more than I can give.
    Skuz likes this.
  12. Pawtato Augur


    Are you really asking, if you're hardcore?
    Zamiam likes this.
  13. Conq Augur

    Nope
  14. Sobmre Augur

    do this---------

    kill more faster problem solved
  15. Zamiam Augur

    your not hardcore or dont think you are :p although you play or are online in EQ 7 days a week .. maybe not 8 to 10 hours a day but still 7 days a week ..

    if you ask me and its just an opinion that sounds like hardcore ..
    Skuz likes this.
  16. Windance Augur

    When the earring went live I had completed the heroic, merc, partisan quests, but had not bothered with hunters or the collects.

    I was able to do the bloodied evolution while doing hunter/collects and it worked out almost perfect. I think I got to about 80% of the required XP while doing those things. Once we got toward the end though everything is done and you are left with a holy hell of grind to get the last two levels done.

    Overall I felt the earring quest was tuned really well done. Couple of annoying bugs like the ores for the type 18/19 augs being super rare at the beginning and the recipes for them should have been learnable when you first get the slots but that was fairly minor.
  17. Mazame Augur

    It about the same over all but the TBL had fewer level so level vs level it not the same. If you were to look at total kills from level 1 to max I believe the ToV is just a little more.
  18. Rolaque Ancient

    EQ is like life, it's full of choices. You might feel like you never get to make any (quoting C. Brown there), but it's still your choice. Just depends on what matters to you.
  19. Smokezz The Bane Crew

    I'm done it on all 5 chars that I get raid gear on. I've been done the non raid part of it for a long time now. As for the time it takes... people that play a lot should get things faster! Why is that even being brought up?
    Duder likes this.
  20. The real Sandaormo Augur

    The Earring for the most part is wearable after the 2nd or 3rd level by some raiders and by most causual players. Once you get it to that level, relax, wear it when your playing EQ, its not a race to get it done. When you get to the next level, do a tradeskill combine or 2 and then put it back on with new stats. Rinse repeat.

    Yes the "hardcore" raced to get it done but its not required.