I played twenty something years ago and quit just before Luclin released, and I've made the trip home and began on the FV server. I'm currently running through the tutorial and was hoping for a little direction. There's some serious gaps in my knowledge since there's been so many expansions since I left. I play on the P99 as well, so my knowledge stops with the Velious expansion. I have googled and stumbled upon Almar's guides which proved useful, but was wondering if there are other resources out there I could read. For example, I started a Shadowknight and with my limited knowledge thought that a fungus scaled tunic would be a great twink item to buy, but I wonder how many items like that had been released over the years that might be better. I'm not necessarily looking for the best items, just something to help along the journey, and not sure where to start. Thank you.
Just read the posts in this newbie forum which you obviously don't had and you will find the answers that you seek. Defiant gear does make most twink gear obsolete. Fungi tunic is still great... for a few weeks.
Chances are if you take a few days to level and get your feet on the ground you will end up leveling and easily finding gear better than a fungi and what not. The defiant gear is realllllllllllllllllllly good for quite some time and there really is no need to waste plat buying gear from the bazaar. I'm sure if you weren't being obnoxious about it people will hook you up if you ask. As far as guides go: Almars are great but also there are NPCs in Plane of Knowledge that provide tasks for you to complete as you're leveling. I don't remember the names of them off the top of my head but that should be easy to Google. If you like the oldschool classic > Kunark > Velious progression: you can easily handle those zones in today's age. If you want to try out new stuff: Look up The Serpent's Spine progression. It will take you 1-75 and by then you should get a sense as to where to go next. This content is actually sooooooo enjoyable.
Standard nag from me: Recover your old account by any means necessary if you haven't already. Contact customer service with any info you have like your email account you had at the time. The perks for being a returning customer are HUGE! As people have stated, the drops in game now are great and level appropriate for fast leveling. This really starts with the tutorial. Run all the quests in it and stay until level 12 or so. You can come out to do some minor quests and return. Two of my favorites are in the group https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=5592 and the charm you get just for doing the tutorial. I've found I'm ofttimes still using the loot from the tutorial at level 50+.
The standard leveling path is something like Tutorial (until 10-12)->Crescent Reach (until 15-20) -> Blightfire Moors (until 30-40). Leveling is much easier than when you left, so don't worry too much about that. They added Defiant gear and weapons which pretty much blows away gear you knew from before. It's like raid gear. It drops pretty frequently along the way from normal mobs. No need to buy anything for now. Mercenaries have been added, which are like player bots. A mercenary will make soloing very easy. You will pretty much have to solo your way to top level as there isn't really any grouping in the lower levels. But the mercs are great help, so it's no big deal soloing until you get to 70-80. After that it gets a little more challenging. The tutorial shows you how to use mercs. The disadvantage is that they take a share of exp like a group member, but they are so useful that it's worth it. As said above, you should reactivate your old account. It will likely be Silver status, which means it will have more capabilities than a standard free account. One of the biggies is that you can have 1000 AAs on a Silver account versus 100(?) on a free account. There are also things like goodies from the /claim command as well as items from the loyalty vendor in the Plane of Knowledge. Silver accounts also have access to the General chat, which is where pretty much the whole server chats. You can learn a lot from the chatter there and ask questions. Most people are surprisingly helpful with newbie questions. One difference now is that there are pretty much no grouping opportunities before you are at top level. You are going to be pretty much on your own. With the mercs and Defiant gear it's doable, but you need to be pretty self sufficient. SK's are a pretty good solo class, so you'll be good with that. But if you want to try a different class, make sure you pick one that's good at soloing rather than a support class like enchanter or something.
There's a bunch of stuff in the /claim window for older accounts. Here's a list of the stuff which might be there: http://www.paullynch.org/tnzfaq/?page_id=355 There's a loyalty vendor who sells items for loyalty tokens. A returning account will likely have already gathered many tokens. A silver account will gain a higher level of tokens each month. Here are the items you can buy with loyalty tokens: https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=35557. My returning account had 5000+ tokens just sitting there. More character slots. A silver account has 4 character slots. If your account already has more than that, you can still access those existing characters. May not be an issue if you intend to subscribe. Some of these benefits are from having a Silver account, which your returning account should be. It's a free account with some nice benefits over the standard free account. A Silver account is pretty good until you get into the upper levels and need tons of AAs and the extra power of the high-level mercenaries.
I think the biggest benefit to Silver accounts are being able to be in General Chat and the max loyalty token award each week.
Welcome back! I come and go and am still trying to find a way to get to level 70. The others have excellent advice so the only thing I would mention is watch out for the crafting gotchas. Some such as Research is now extremely expensive, and before you could actually make an item here and there to use. Some, like Jewelry, no longer do that with the skill raising methods. You need items from way beyond the level you can make them as you are learning. There are other avenues for gear so it is not a hindrance, but it is most definitely a change that may cause a stumble here and there. Good Luck! I have characters on Firiona Vie as well, although I have many on other servers and spend far too much time on new characters rather than just grind, grind, grinding a pair (two accounts) up. That is the part of EverQuest where I always stumble -- The Grind (tm).
Thank each of you for your replies. I haven't had as much time to dedicate since posting, but I have managed to get an SK and Shaman to level 10. The tutorial has helped me become re-aquainted to EQ, and I'm on the lookout for Defiant. Thanks
Glad to hear you're making progress. If you're leveling multiple chars anyway, you may want to consider having them on separate accounts. Even if you don't adventure with them at the same time, the ability to use one character to buff another is very helpful. In case you're not aware, you can port from Tutorial->PoK and from PoK->Tutorial. To port from the Tutorial to PoK, tell Arias in the Tutorial 'ready'. To go from PoK->Tutorial, tell Secalna Galnor in PoK 'send'. You can find them by using Ctrl-F to bring up the Find window.
