So I'm playing a BST, currently level 109, with the 33k or so of AA that are autogranted. My biggest issue at the moment is just trying to level up. I can take on mobs in FM without too much trouble, pet is a great tank and I have a 110 druid or 107 Bard that I can box in the background. However, I would prefer not to need to box all the time. My issue is that I just kill so slow and the when it takes 10-20 kills or more for just 1%, this is just daunting for someone who is a casual player like myself. What should be my route to 120? Is there faster exp to be had? I don't have the time to waste hours looking for a group. (I'm on FV by the way, in a decent size guild, and getting a good exp group in ME or something is still difficult). Do I need to get something in the way of AA in order to kill faster? Should I buy kronos and get ridiculous gear? Should I just re-roll as a Necro lol? Looking for guidance. Thanks for the input.
Overseer for real xp or do partisans and such and when killing mobs i switch to aa xp. I PL my alts with my ranger but once i hit 111 was like hitting a brick wall not a goodthing.
Suffer to 111, then move to ToV for the prog based experience. You should be able to box the partisans and mercs fairly easily. Get someone to run the missions for you. Use overseers religiously to help get you to 116 and then repeat with the ToL progression and missions. Should get you to 120 without a ton pain. You can also go get the EoK and RoS collectibles too. Each collection set with worth 2% xp and the trophy slots will serve you well.
I was looking at the TOV progression. Is the exp rewards good? Because I did some of the EoK progression last nights and the exp was laughable compared to just grinding. I appreciate the feedback. I need to wait until 111 rather than 110 for the ToV progression as well? Thank you so much for this guidance.
The ToV progression rewards are big, it's how they want people to level their characters. If you wait until you are 111 the progression will ding you 115. If you do it before then it won't. Just make sure you read the quests before you do them. Will save you surprise deaths from ambushes etc.
They completely redid the process of leveling with ToV...doing progression tasks is now the only viable way to level post 110. I know there are a few players that say nothing is wrong with just grinding the levels like before, but they're...not being totally truthful. Yes, you CAN grind the levels, but after a couple of hours doing that, you'll understand why it's no longer a path most players can take. You have to do progression to level. The progression rewards in ToV, and in ToL, are percentage based...not a flat exp reward. If you do all the progression/achievements in ToV, you'll be at or pretty close to 115. If you do all the progression in ToL, you'll probably be around 119 or so. That's where you do Overseer to fill in the gaps. If you've maxed out your Overseer categories, you can get a minimum of 10% xp a day for 10 min of time from 111 onwards. For ToV missions, you'll have to ask/beg for someone to help you do them if you're not able to box them yourself. If you're just doing progression for xp/leveling purposes, you can skip CoV and NoS (the non-level increase expansions) as those rewards don't include xp (or at least not enough to help you level).
In my experience, a druid is not adding much to a beastlord's performance. A bard does. In fact - a bard box for a beastlord is probable the best box. Also, ToV is basically an undead expansion, so your beastlord without IVU will have a very hard time navigating in ToV. In addition, bards get massive chants upgrades in ToV (lvl 111+) and become a real dps characters in their own right. And that is in addition to a massive boost to your beastlord. FM is a trash zone for 105'ish characters. It has a very short respawn timer, so it lands itself to a particular use of massive trash slaughter with headshots, assasination, AE etc. But for single pull grinding it is an inferior experience zone. Just box a bard. It will boost your beastlords dps, add its own dps and will bring a melee dps mercenary along, which is a decent dps as well. You'll kill much faster. Your beastlord will run into a warder inferiority problem with group-level Enhanced Minion earring. You will need to get a raid-level earring. Don't do it now, it will not be very beneficil, but prepare to buy it (or earn on a raid) with a current-era EM focus (currently EM-30 in ToL at lvl 120). All other raid gear for a beastlord will just give an incremental improvement. Better, yes, but not a mission-critical. Bards do not actually NEED any raid gear, they can do fine with just group gear. Here are the numbers for you to consider: at lvl 111 there is a ery large increase of the amount of experience needed for a level up. Mob grinding becomes a boring and long routine. Think something like 0.04% to 0.06% of level experience per kill. Mercenary achievement in ToV and ToL give something like 8-12% of the level (it usually consists of 3 quests to kill so many trash mobs in the zone). Partisan Achievement in ToL and ToV give something like 18-24% of the level, those are group effort tasks in the zone. Hero Achievements in ToV and ToL give something like 22-40% of the level. Those are designed for a well-geared group from a previous expansion. Not really for a duo-boxing understaffed group. But those are usually offered for sale as TaskAdds or your guildies can help. You need just 4 missions per expansion, done just once each. Start slow in ToV, your warder gets upgrade at lvl 113, until then your 108 warder will suffer in ToV. Perhaps get Heroic TaskAdds to level up to 113 before you start doing Partisans in ToV. Meanwhile, your BST+BRD duo would do FINE in GMM with much better experience per kill comparing to FM.
this was amazingly helpful. Thank you. I'll stick with bard as the box and keep doing the GMM task until 110. As far as my pet tanking in ToV until 113. If I get the right EM ear will this alleviate that issue? I've been looking at one called "Beak" that would be an EM upgrade to what I have now but its 900k-1.5 mill on FV. Gonna have to get some funds, but willing too if it will allow me to do the content with lower stress. Or is there another one I should obtain at 110 that would do the trick? thanks again
Watching paint dry is more fun than soloing from lvl 109 to 120. It could take months in group gear. Making XP excruciatingly slow at the highest levels is a way for Daybreak to make lots of money from people using Daybreak Cash on Overseer.
I would also like to know your thoughts on if I switched it up and played the Bard as a main? How would that change the approach? My bard already has epics done and what not and I've thought about playing her as a main, but not sure how to approach it. Use a tank merc and set up some macros on BST for sending in pet and auto attacking, or would I need to box something else in that case? thanks again.
This is just ridiculous. If this where truly the case overseer quests wouldnt be capped at 10 a day. You cant really just spend DBC and crank through quests like you seem to think. I imagine heroics make them a ton more money than overseer does. The real reason they nerfed kill XP is because of botters... Hard pill for this community to swallow but its also why it will never be back. I dont agree with how they did it but i do agree with them trying to make people engage with the content instead of just parking their bots and going to work.
People bot because XP sucks and the average person does not want to waste their time killing tens of thousands of mobs to gain a level. If I wanted to play a game where I leveled purely with quests, I would play WoW. WoW's quests are engaging. EQ's quest system is terrible, the game was never designed to level by questing. The only thing EQ has going for it, is its combat. And if you're going to make XP progression through combat meaningless, what's the point of EQ. Drip feeding people minuscule amounts of XP each kill is not "engaging with content". People saying "just do overseer", because it is faster and less painful, than actually going out into the zones for dreadful XP, is not "engaging with content". When people are suggesting playing a boxed character because XP is so horrible, there is something seriously wrong. I don't care why or how they made XP excruciatingly slow. I think it was to sell XP potions and Overseer XP shortcuts. Regardless, I would rather watch paint dry than level a character beyond lvl 100. There are limits to the amount of time the average person wants to spend on this game, some people play other games, have a life outside of EQ, and don't want to spend months leveling.
All collections have a substantial amount of XP or AA the higher you are in level. Collections started in RoF and a substantial number of the collection bits can be obtained while invis, especially in the first 3 expansions with them. Some of the collection quests are drops and some are in heroic zones. For all of them, you can fill in the harder to get ones via Overseer. For the extras you pick up, give them to your other characters or sell them in the bazaar. You can pick up progression quests along the way, too, for the Hero's AA "backfilling".
I wonder how many threads like this it's going to take for the devs to get the message that the playerbase hates this model for experience.
They never will. They don’t even design the quests with incentives to repeat them. It’s like they can’t recognize how to build complimentary designs and systems.
Add a mage box. Every boxer loves mages. Mage pet will out tank the warder. Mage is easy to box. You don't even have to cast on the mage to get 1/3 the benefit of having the mage. And don't forget those campfires. Dual invis with the BRD, run and COH. Get BST pet in hit slow, tab to mage send in pet with taunt on and hit a 5 nuke hotkey, switch to bard with melody and position, switch back to BST and do you thing. If you want the extra DPS, tab to mage every 5 casts. I have found the easiest way to box is to waste the last line on text. I use /fsay, but tells, emotes, whatever catches your attention to let you know your mage needs another hotkey press works.
Sadly, this probably isn't out of incompetence. This is intentional. They like that people need to pay for multiple accounts, buy potions and station cash in order to succeed in the game. They probably believe a community of people, who only need one character to succeed, grouping with each other and having a good time getting reasonable experience wont be as profitable. This can be the only reason. They have seen us come to the forums for years and years complaining about this very thing. They know it, they just don't care, or at least the ones up top making the decision don't care. We live in a world now, where providing a great product isn't the goal, the goal is providing a sub par product that leaches as much money from the consumer as possible.
I've thought about doing that, just hate the idea that I need to play three characters to succeed in this game. I guess that's just where the game is now. Play 3 or 4 accounts, or just don't reach max level. That's our choices. Or, spend a ton of money on Krono and pay someone to power you through, which also isn't fun, because you didn't even level your character, someone else did.
