Getting to 70 has proven to be a tedious grind. It will be my first ever character (now characters since I have two accounts) but where to do this last level (currently 69) is a head-scratcher. Strange to the veterans I am certain since I first started playing in 2000. I have been using the Bastion of Thunder but each kill there is about 0.2% adjustment to experience. I checked out the old leveling zone, Wall of Slaughter, but that turned out to be no better. I found that strange. The highest level opponent there was 64. That surprised me. Franklin Teek gives The Hive as the level 70 hot zone, and Drunder, Fortress of Zek for 65. Experience in Drunder is a bit better than the Bastion, but not by much. I considered The Hive but getting there is deadly. The only entrance to Undershore is falling down a very high falls. Vhivi can survive it with safe fall, but levitation is removed so her partner is left in a dead heap somewhere above the bottom. Well, not the only entrance since Druids can apparently teleport there, but that is like Western Wastes in Velious which is a zone I never explored since I could never get through The Grotto. That leaves me in a quandary since this is all virgin territory to me. I have truly no idea where to go or how to get there to continue playing the game beyond Planes of Power.
I usually take my guys to LDON around 60-70 - these are not hot zones but the exp is pretty good. Need 3 players and mercs count. You will need to do you adventure stone quest which is really easy. https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=2641 Oceangreen Hills is another zone often overlooked. There are a ton of quests for armor and a super aug plus different armor drops. To get there you go talk to The Herald of Druzzil Ro in POK over by the baking guys and say "time" then he sends you to POT A and just a few steps around the rock is a blue swirly - click that and you zone into the Void. From there you have a choice of a lot of good zones to go thru but Oceangreen should be portal #1 You can look a lot of this up on allah and bonzz has a nice SOD (seeds of destruction) guide https://www.bonzz.com/sodprog.htm Use your map - click in upper right corner where it says zone guide. The zones are listed by level - pick one and maybe google it to see what goodies can be found there!!!
I am just returning from a 15 year break, but the guide I found suggested Dragon Scale hills, and doing a "Clean up the Farms" quests, getting both kill and quest exp. I am only 58 at the moment so I can't confirm how good it is, but the rest of the guide has been solid so it is probably worth trying.
You are right, I forgot about that one The Farm is a good spot. Make sure you get all those kill crows, beetles quests from the little guys on the hill
Getting to 75 is painful, imo the xp should be adjusted for these levels. At 75 the Gribbles HAs in Dead Hills will get you levels very quickly, especially if you pop a lesson before you complete the task.
Thank you for the suggestions all. I will have to look up those names since Plane of Fire is the only one I recognize. That and LDON that is. I will likely do some adventuring there since I never got my Adventurer's stone with any but a few points. Fully buffed it is better than any other augment that I own.
No matter where you go to get xp just remember that those levels are extremely painful. Personally I found the ~70-75 grind the worst in current EQ, to the point where I tried playing back in 2016 and ended up quitting after close to a year with 2 characters at level 73/74. This guide https://www.reddit.com/r/everquest/comments/5gyani/guide_to_leveling_on_live/ along with Almar's guide have lots of good ideas. I am pretty sure I have tried every level 70-75 zone suggested during those levels hoping there would be a quick fix and there isn't. Once you can start getting HA's at 75 the game really opens up as you can gain almost a full level per mission with LOTD running. Gear can be obtained using CotF currency from the HA's or you can gear up using TBM gear ( < guide on how to get it). For the TBM remnants to purchase the gear/augs you can find it in the bazaar but sometimes people charge a lot for them. If you ask in General people will typically give them away much cheaper or for free. What server are you on? I have thousands of remnants you can have if you are on the same server.
One slight issue with guides and some of the help elsewhere is the over abundance of initialisms and jargon. I did not understand them back then, and still do not understand them. What do HA, LOTD, CotF and TBM mean?
HA Heroic adventures Heroic Adventures are a system of missions that scale the difficulty and rewards to the level of the highest level player in the adventure. They were first released with the Call of the Forsaken expansion. They may be considered a more advanced version of Lost Dungeons of Norrath. LOTD - Lesson of the day or Lesson of the Devoted: The player is surrounded by a beautiful blue/white glow as they gain double experience for half an hour once every 20 hours. This is a Veteran Rewards which is listed under your AA - special. It is called either day or devoted since you can do it once a day. COTF Call of the Forsaken is EverQuest's 20th expansion. TBM The Broken Mirror (TBM) is EverQuest's 22nd expansion Most any initialisms and jargon in the game can be figured out by simply asking here, in chat, or doing a google like "what is tbm in everquest?"
HA is Heroic Adventure. They were implemented in CotF (Call of the Forsaken) and are essentially quests that involve an instanced version of the zone. In Dead Hills one of the most popular is from an NPC named Gribble Grobblenobber https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=7277 The HAs scale to your level from 75-100 and upon completion you get very high xp gains. If I remember correctly it is well over 20% per completion and depending on your play style, group, etc. you can finish them in about 1 hour or as little as 10 minutes with a full group. LOTD is Lesson of the Devoted. It is an AA that you get for free now that provides a 100% experience boost. If you wait until the final hail of a HA it will double your xp gain. If you get really good at it with Gribbles it is possible to pop LOTD at the end, grab the next mission, then finish it within the 30 minutes LOTD lasts to get double xp on two missions. If you are a casual player like me I would pop a LOTD the day before (it doesn't fade in Plane of Knowledge, Guild Lobby, Guild Hall, or when you are offline) then log in, finish a Gribbles HA, then pop the current days LOTD at the end of the second mission and it is possible to get double xp on all 3 missions. (full disclosure by this point it was me and a friend playing two characters each so if you are solo it probably can't be done) TBM is The Broken Mirror expansion. Check out that video above, but at level 75 you can purchase gear there after doing 3 quests (2 are run and hail quests, the last one is a mission in an instance that scales to your level). The gear has terrible stats, but has augment slots unique to that expansion that give it amazing stats and can be upgraded every 5 levels up to 105. You gain currency to buy the gear from TBM HAs, however the easiest way is to buy the currency from another player as it is tradeable. Edit: It should also be mentioned that Clayton Teek in Plane of Knowledge will give you daily HAs to complete for added bonus. He will port you straight to the quest giver, the downside is he can give you a quest that is part 2 or 3 in a chain and you would need to complete the prerequisite quest first. The xp gain from the bonus is very good too, my memory isn't great but I feel like it was around 50% of a level around 75-80.
Ah, that makes better sense now I shall keep trudging along to level 75 (after I celebrate level 70, hopefully soon) and keep these items in mind. I noticed the extra Alternate Advancement features but was never in a situation where they made sense to use. That virgin territory again it looks like.
Most of the AA you get in the special tab are worth using. They have long refresh timers (usually a day or more) but they are useful in a pinch. LOTD should be used when available to speed up the leveling process.
A slight nitpick: while almar's guide is useful, you should not follow his advice on thirdparty software. It will get you in trouble.
I always found the 70-85ish level range to be painful. Gribbles at 75 is a pretty serious gear check. It took me till 95 ish to two box them efficiently. You don’t get the big xp boost unless you can complete them. Perhaps that’s been changed as I haven’t run them in quite a while. Honestly, that level range is where the last exp bonus bump occurred so you are basically experiencing the game at the same level rate as when it was current. This is without all the groups too. I think they left it this way to motivate you to just buy the heroic and be done with it. Just my 2cp.
I remember kiting crocodiles(or was it alligators?) in loping plains, and spiders in Icefall a lot in the 70+ range . But that was before they introduced HA's
Lots of good suggestions here, and of course, you should do some exploring to find what works for you. To me, that's one of the best parts of the game, finding your own little niche. For the Undershore issue you are having- Levitate works in that zone, and so having any form of levitate on you before you zone in will keep you from falling down and going boom. Additionally, next to the waterfall is a cave that you can use to zone over instead, and be on dry land and a series of bridges leading down to the bottom. Other options are joining or making a guild and using the guildhalll portal to Undershore which will drop you at the bottom near the Malgrinor camp. And lastly, i believe both druids and wizards have portals to that zone that land in a safe spot. Good way to make a new friend.
i may have gotten Undershore and Stone Root Falls partly confused but either way, i don't recall it being a dangerous journey if a few precautions are taken.
At level 69 you may want to do TBS (The Buried Sea) progression. It rewards with a full set of lvl 65-70 Hero's gear (close equivalent to Elaborate Defiant, not related to heroic characters). The progression starts in Barren Coast (off Toxxulia Forest zone). Questline starts easy, kill this many of those trash mobs, collect that mnay drops off that type of trash etc. It progresses in difficulty and takes you on quests to The Buried Sea zone and islands in there, you take a boat off the pier. Mobs range is somewhere between low 60's in the entrance zone and mid-70's further beyond. Sometimes, Franklin Teek gives daily tasks in Barren Coast and The Buried Sea, so both zones are Hot Zones. I have level up my new characters in there when I've returned to EQ after long absence. At 75 or so consider moving to SoD - The Oceangreen Hills, progression in there gives the best lvl 75-wearable gear, called Paragon's. As it was mentioned before, TBM merchant sells the full set of lvl 70 gear for Remnants of Tranquility, which has stats very similar to Elegant Defiant, although it has Focuses capped at lvl 110, which are materially better that usual lvl 75 capped Focuses. All of the above is for you to level by yourself. If you have help from a high-level character, then Power Leveling from 70 to 75 takes under 2 hours without a bonus and less if there is some experience bonus going. If you are in a guild - ask guildmates if they can run RoF (Reign of Fear expansion) tasks "This Can't be Good" and "Wood You Help Me" - each gives about 1.5 level os experience at lvl 70, repeatable every 6 hours. Both can be done under 30 mins, so you could jump from 70 to 73 under 30 mins, and repeat it 6 hours later. The experience % goes down very quick though, at lvl 80 it's barely 20% of the level per task.
