Hi, I've played EQ for many, many, many years as most likely many of you have. I have been gone for several years (I left a little after GoD, played since Kunark) and I have spent an occasion or two logging back in and seeing whats going on many years later. I am so overwhelmed by how behind I am that I don't even know where to begin. It really seems like a completely different game and there is so much I don't understand. I want to give it a shot again and try to return. I have a monk, ranger, and bard. I will post magelo profiles once I can get them updated. Where can I start? How do I learn to play this game again, and what should I work on in-game to get back up in competitive ranks?
Easy, especially if you have played EQ before (well, easy to get back in). Start a new character, on any server but the new TLP (no tutorial), and play through the tutorial. A couple of times, if you feel up to it, and READ ALL THE WALLS OF TEXT . Do some research on Allakhazam for quests and gear. When you feel ready to come back to your old characters, or when you want to level a new one, plan your route: which will probably involve Defiant gear through to 80. Take a look at the rewards section of the Hero's Journey achievements. Check what /claim items you have due to you: probably some bags, mounts, and possibly some Gift of Legacies Lost Defiant gear upgrades. Hint: 80+ levelling will involve scanning through eqresource.com; you'll want to pick through the first one or two Mercenary and Partisan achievements for each expansion from HoT to current. Lower levels you will want to use daily quests from Franklin Teek to help you get through. From 75+ you can start to do Heroic Adventures to both level, and earn currency for gear upgrades, although try to save up until you are 100+ for the best value. Remember: have fun, it's not work! And join a guild sooner rather than later, they are great support resources.
Borek-VS kind of nailed it. Also, Almar's Guides is an valuable free resource that helped me when I returned in 2010. http://almarsguides.com/eq/ Two things to note, depending on how long you've been gone: Defiant gear has been mentioned. This is gear that drops randomly serverwide. There are specific tiers of gear. Intricate Defiant Plate Leggings, for instance, would be War/pal/sk/bard/clr usuable legs with outstanding stats usuable at level 37. Intricate gear would drop from about level 50ish (give or take) mobs. Also, there are now server-wide standardized tradeskill drops. Furs, ores, marrows, silks...to name a few. Save all of these for later. If nothing else, you can sell them in the baz if you're not going to use them, but hold to them just in case. Secondly, the medding system is completely changed from several years ago. When you aggro a mob, you go into combat mode. When the mob is dead or you escape from combat (outrun/zone/fade etc), there's a 30 second cooldown from Combat to Out of Combat. When you are Out of Combat, you will med 3% mana per tick. This is fixed, so no longer will you have 30 minute down times waiting for your STUPID MANA TO REGEN YOU STUPID IDIOT #(*&$()@&$(#I&(#*$& Sorry, I digress. Bad memories. Some spells and abilities (these are few) only work when out of combat and it will say so in description. In your player window, you can see the icon change to either a yellow-ish pinwheel to crossed swords to an hour glass. Any Red Boarder debuffs you have on will prevent OOC from occurring and you'll need to cure it before you are allowed to be in OOC. Yellow boarder debuffs (if you're tashed, for example) do not prevent OOC. Some mobs /con slightly differently from normal mobs. The first time is "This enemy seems weak" or something rather to that effect. They have lower hit points and basically are over-cons. They give about 1/3rd of the xp as a normal mob. Almar covers that in his 80+ leveling guide linked above. The second time, raid flagged mobs, or "This creature would take an army to defeat!" For example, Naggy would be a raid flag mob, as are all Plane of Hate and Plane of Fear mobs. Instead of a 30 second cooldown timer, it is a 5 minute cooldown timer. Welcome back to everquest =)
Here is my profile to help give some perspective of where I left off/when popped back into game on and off. http://raidloot.com/Profile.aspx?id=3771
Both posts have been helpful so far, but I don't really know what to do at my current state @ 89, where to go to try and level and what if anything I need to do to make sure I can solo effectively.
Try your hand in Field of Scale which is in Plane of Time --> Void --> Field of Scale . If you struggle there, you can go someplace easier. If it's too easy, try Dream Feerrott. If that's too easy, try The Grounds. (CTRL + F is your friend). Additionally, you can press the zone guide button on the map window to help you out a bit. It's like EQ GPS as well as level list.
Get better augs - lots of the camps might be green or light blue mobs so still give some exp especially SoF zones which are good exp even as far as 95 if you are killing fast . Some good augs you can also get from using currency from heroic adventures, that might save you some time. http://www.evilgamer.net/forums/showthread.php?t=4870
So you are in mainly Rustic and HoT gear (monk). Easy solo spots: weak animals in Field of Scale, Tosk centre, Feerrott snakes. If you can handle all that easily, try the HoT courtyard with the Mercenary quests using a merc. And you might as well do the J5 mercenary solo quest in the Feerrott - and if you have a sub, upgrade your merc to J5. Turn on AA auto-grant. If you don't have a sub, level to 90, then sub for one month, and turn on auto-grant then, you will get a full (almost) set of level 90 AAs. Otherwise, it's the usual Everquest grind, but with dailies and HAs. Stick to Bazaar gear and rots - the Grounds may have some rots you can use. There's not much point doing progression for gear until you can hit TDS, assuming you want to level into raid range as soon as you can.
There are two very inexpensive AC augs which are summoned by magicians and useable at 75+. You can find them in the bazaar for under 1k each and they're worth about 34 AC with 120 HP or Mana.
Thanks. I failed to realize that. I know that there are restrictions on which armor slots they can go into.
