AA auto grant, should I use it on my very first character?

So I've read about AA auto grant and want to make sure that I understand this correctly. AA auto grant gives you AAs automatically when you reach the level requirements for them, right? Is there a limit on the amount of AAs you can choose from, or do you eventually get them all (for your race/class combo)?

As a new player leveling up my very first character, would you recommend using AA auto grant and why or why not? I'm just curious to see what others think about this that have been playing for a while and have leveled characters with and without it to help me understand what the difference would be if I did not choose to use it. Thanks!

EQ has no limits (you can earn every AA that your class is eligible for).

You are correct, autogrant means as soon as you hit that level (may have to zone for it to sync up with the game and take effect), it will grant you all the AA's (minus a few specific ones like tradeskill related and spell casting subtlety if that is an AA your class can have).

EQ also gives you a massive boost in earning AA experience the fewer amount of AA's you have. If you have zero AA's you earn them really fast ... once you hit the max for the boost (it's around 4500 or maybe 5000 today), then you start earning AA's at the same level that every other player does.

Because of this, there are two schools of thought over your question (in general):

• If you can powerlevel fast, one group of players say earn your AA's the natural way, to take advantage of that AA boost, then autogrant the later ones.
• The other group of players say taking the autogrant will help you level even faster (why put off earning DPS AA's if you are playing a DPS class for instance).

With the fact that the Autogrant AA's now go all the way up to and including level 90, I fall in the 2nd camp and say go for it. AA's are just one obstacle you'll have - the others are leveling a character (since max level is 105) and gearing, augments for the gear, progression quests if you go that route, etc.
You can toggle the autogrant on/off any time you want if you decide you want to do some AA naturally.

No need to zone, you get them all as you ding level.

Last I heard, the boost went up to 4kAA, but it could have changed.

Personally, I would always turn on auto-grant. I can logically follow the other argument, but it's just too much hassle for what has to be a very minor gain.

Remember that auto-grant doesn't give you SCS (Spell Casting Subtlety), tradeskill AAs (including forage), or AAs from expansions after VoA, which includes some lower level AAs.

Let me ask this; if I were to say gain 1000 AA at lvl 60, THEN turn on auto grant, would i recieve all the auto AA and still hold on to my 1k? Pushing that forward I hit lvl 90, would I then still have 1k left over that I could spend? Or would some of the auto AA be left out?


*EDIT ADD* Also, from what I remember in doing AA, you recieved AA xp as if you were to have killed the mob at lvl 51, has this changed? like a lvl 90 killing for 100% AA would they get the xp as if theyd killed it as a lvl 51 getting a massive AA jolt? I only ask because I read people complaining about zones and getting only 1% of AA per kill. I assume of course thats because of the amount of AA they already have, but I am not sure.

AA exp was reworked a number of times, so the old "level 51" doesn't apply.

You can bank a number of unspent AAs, 50 at level 51, 55 at 56, and so on up by five every five levels. So you could build these up as you level with auto-grant on, and then spend your saved AAs when you hit 91. The auto-grant just fills up what you haven't already bought.

As Borek said, here's an example.

Say your class could earn a total of 235 AA's at level 60. 35 of those are the tradeskill and eliminated ones (spell casting subtlety, etc.).

Scenario 1 - You have 0 AA's and turn on autogrant. You would receive 200 AA's.
Scenario 2 - You had earned 20 AA's on your own (none of them were tradeskills or the other eliminated ones) before you turn on autogrant. You would receive 180 AA's.
Scenario 3 - You had earned 20 AA's on your own (all 20 were tradeskilll increases). you would receive 200 AA's.

Does that make sense?

The banking of AA's never gets touched by autogrant (you'll still have what you had banked, after you earn autogrant AA's).

The Idea here is to buy all the AA that you will NOT be auto granted or willl but up to a lvl that you would rather have it overided the expansion (HoT) autogranted limit. Like CS/CA for tanks, Heals focus for healers or nuke crit for casters etc..There is also some AAs that need to be unlocked with a certain amount spent into some other one.

Useless to buy this and that with your earned AAs when, once claiming the lot these AAs would have been included.

Unfortunately, it doesn't happen that way. I don't think zoning works anymore either. You have to log out and back in and then the autogrant takes place. I had a character hit 51 just yesterday and saw it first hand. When I dinged, nothing happened, logged out and back in, and he was awarded 80 AAs.

so what would suggest? bank all AA until lvl 90? then just fill in the blankspots? I assume what a person would want to do then is to max out all AA at every lvl before moving towards the next lvl but not spend any...is there a list somewhere that covers what the autogrant doesnt put points in to? I know the tradeskill and subtelty lines, but I'm sure there are others.

See above.

Autogrant doesn't give you tradeskill AAs, SCS, or AAs from expansions after HoT. That's it.

My suggestion is to just turn on auto-grant and not worry about it. If you like, turn on AA exp every five levels until you have the max banked, but 90 AAs (as you hit 91) isn't a great deal when you have something around 4,000 AAs.

I'll have to check that; although I just had two characters hit 100 in the last couple of days .

Zujilli, as with others, I'd recommend turning them on, that will get you grouping with me faster, just make sure you pick up spell casting subtlety, as it's not given for free. Welcome back, and if you need anything don't hesitate to ask.

Awesome. Congratz.

My druid should hit 51 later today. I'll check again. Maybe I forgot to turn the autogrant on before I levelled (the message does say it will take effect when you enter the game from character select or when you level.) It's on for the druid, so I'll let you know.

Yup, that was my mistake. Thought I had turned it on before hand, but I guess I didn't. Made sure it was on for the druid and he just hit 51 and it worked just like you said.

If I remember correctly, the last bonus AA patch did something to the effect of..I'm guessing at these bonuses, mind you, like 500% bonus from 0-4000 aa's, then the bonus decays to 0% bonus at 6000.

at 51 set your EXP to go 90% into normal and 10% into AA. that should give you enough "normal" aa's to purchase the non auto granted AA's as you level up to 90.

Once at 91 i usually change it to 50 - 50 so i level and get aa's at the same time.

I would say it depends on a few things.

1.Do you have support to help you level if you don’t take the aa’s grant?
2.What class are you?
3.Do you have the patience to wait?

The main reason I typically advise people to NOT take the auto-grant has nothing to do with “leveling the true way” or “cheating” by taking the grant. It’s much more pragmatic than that. I tend to not take the grant for one reason: you kill the exp bonus you receive for aa’s when you take the auto-grant.

To explain – you get a bonus to experience (or an equivalent to, if that’s not quite the exact mechanic) for your aa’s up until the point that you hit 4k aa’s. This bonus diminishes as you approach 4k aa’s, too. If you are able to grind aa’s until you max out your aa exp bonus BEFORE you take the grant, you can then take the 4-5k aa’s right after, and get to 7-9k aa’s much quicker than if you took the aa grant right away, and then tried to grind the extra 4-5k on top of it.

Now there is one extremely important caveat to all of this. You have to grind aa’s that are NOT part of the autogrant to make this worth it. Certain classes seem to have a better time with this.

You want to grind aa’s that are RoF+ (I believe it’s RoF+ now that we’re in TDS) only. The trick here is that there are only so many aa’s that are attainable that you can level that don’t require a prerequisite that is pre-RoF. Some require you to have spent a few aa’s in the range that you get in the auto-grant, so you have to weigh these few burned aa’s to get the RoF+ ones, against the benefit of keeping the exp bonus.

An example of all of this:
A friend and I leveled the same class two different ways. I leveled my toon 100 (this was pre-TDS) with literally 0 aa’s. He took the autogrant at every available level increase. By waiting until 100 to get a single aa, I unlocked all of the CoTF aa’s that required level 100. Then I selectively grinded out 3-4k aa’s, only taking a couple of aa’s that would be included in the autogrant if it meant it unlocked a significant number of NON autogrant aa’s.
My friend took the autogrant and by 100 he had ~4k aa’s. After grinding exp with me, he was getting significantly less exp per aa than I was, because I was still getting the bonus. By the time I had 3-4k aa’s, he was at ~5k. I then took the autogrant, and jumped up to almost 8k aa’s.
For roughly the same play time, I was able to get a big boost in total aa’s.
All that said, it was a huge sacrifice to not have any aa’s, and basically be useless in a group until I finally took the grant. Since taking it, I was always 2-3k ahead of my friend until we both maxed out aa’s.

It’s a huge tradeoff, so I go back to my original questions. If this is your first character, and you are learning the toon, and don’t have people that can carry you, I would say take the autogrant.

Correct, you destroy the bonus on useless junk aa's, I was quite worried about this too, but I found that even at 100+ with 10000+ aa I was still getting 17-20 aa for a Gribble. So I would just do 3 boring Gribbles and get my 50 aa in about an hour, and spend the rest of my time running around having fun. Seriously, don't worry about it, turn the auto on and get to grouping with your higher level friends faster. She is in a good guild, with lots of support, but not having to worry about aa makes it so much nicer.

Just for reference - at 100 with no aa's, you could expect 50-60+ for a Dead Hills heroic.

Maybe it's only a problem at 51? I haven't tested it out lately, but it used to work as you have said; just leveling and zoning after turning it on.

Nevermind, it was answered at a later post. I should read all instructions before starting a project / reply.

Yther Ore.