I got 1-60 in about just a week from scratch as F2P and no multi boxing (I think its way more fun to claw my way through the levels, gives me more accomplishment IMO) I hit 63, almost 64 now but that took about 2 days now in barren coast. My gear is almost all elaborate level 70 recommended gear that I slowly bought from the bazaar farming coast. The plat gain in this zone is pretty damn good so I'm biased staying here gearing up for 70 in advance and switching zones at 65. My pulls are about 5-8 mobs at a time, all dots, let them all burn at once, gingerbread healer keeps me up at full health no problem. Tried other mercs and they fall short on my playstyle, pulling with dots. 10% is set to AA gain. I just wanted to make sure I'm somewhat leveling at an "Intended" pace and if this is indeed the first exp grind wall, I'm sure grind walls get worse later But I just need to know if this is a grind wall and if this is where levels start to slow down OR if I should be grinding somewhere else. I am having a blast, WAY easier when i used to play 10+ years ago. I'm playing this game as a break from other games and don't plan on going all access right now, I don't feel restricted as a F2P, I gave everquest 2 about 300$ bucks over the course of a year so idk how my account didn't get grandfathered into silver way way back when they switched that stuff around but Im not bothered by it enough to ask. Sorry for the long post!
The issue is a little more complicated than just level vs. mob level as far as experience calculations. "The Old World" mobs - from Original EQ, Ruins of Kunark and Scars of Velious expansions were designed for players at max level 60. *Most* of the Sub level 50 zones are contained in these and Shadows of Luclin and as such, the non raid level enemies you face have significantly lower stats like hitpoints, and attack and thus you can kill more monsters in less time and in safer conditions in this era than later ones. There were several expansions made with a few 60+ zones but only one (The Serpent's Spine) that went back and added content from level 1 on up. All the rest of the expansions were geared primarily at players who were at max level or within 5-10 levels of max for the time. As player power grew exponentially, general monster stats were increased to continue creating a challenge. Compare a level 60 monster in Kunark to a level 60 monster in Gates of Discord, for example and you will see a startling difference. And there has been this arms race going on for the better part of 15 years now where they increase player, and then monster stats regardless of level changes. Mercenaries only complicated the matter. While you certainly can grind to level 70ish in "the old world" era, you will be crushing large numbers of green and light blue mobs for long sessions in a very small number of zones. There is this weird spot during leveling in the 65-75 range where you can no longer get the easy xp of the old world era but can't power your way thru new era mobs fast enough to feel like you are making the progress you did during the previous 65 levels. Mercenaries get pretty bad for awhile. Gear upgrades get dramatic every few levels and the difficulty of zones with simliarly leveled mobs vary wildly. This is also near the spot where they introduced "easy con" mobs that give far less than average experience points. There are many ways to make leveling from 1-105 a breeze and i am sure you can find them posted all over this forum and others. Mostly what i am talking about here is the journey of trying to do this yourself without help or a ton of prior experience and knowledge. There are tricks and zones and quests that will make life easier, maybe a few people will pop in and mention some specifics. But this is generally the point in your toon's life where you really want a group, a high level friend, or a couple of boxes to make the game as enjoyable as it was before you hit this weird spot.
I just hit 66 on my first toon after a long EQ layoff (15 years) and I find the slowdown is for farming AAs. Up to 51 there was only xp grinding, which went really fast, but now I spend as much time getting AAs as lvls. AAs are just too important to ignore so I'm spending a lot of time getting as many as possible, which of course means I'm lvling a lot slower. Since it's hard to find groups on a live server at this lvl, it's pretty slow with just molo.
Allmost all AAs up to Rain of Fear are autogranted. One can sure get to level 105 without any additional AA nowadays.
Try Dragonscale Hills farm camp starting at 65+. It's great xp until like 74 or something iirc. Just grab the 3 kill tasks for bugs + crows + scarecrows and repeat. I haven't played on standard servers for a while now, but that was usually the first place I'd encounter a partner or two for some grouping when leveling a new character.
Putting any xp towards AA at lower levels is a complete waste. Only exception being tradeskill-related AAs which do not autogrant. The way it works is the moment you ding a level, you auto-get any ability that comes at that level unless it was introduced during last 3 expansions. Also, some quests later on flat out give you a certain amount of AA points. Again, don't spend those yet. (Except for tradeskills).
That's mostly true, but there are some exceptions. For example, at level 85 Necromancers can buy "Cloak of Shadows II" for 12 AA from The Broken Mirror expansion (so not auto granted). This changes our instant cast AA personal invisibility from ~12 minutes to permanent. I would advocate buying that at 85. I'll bet there are some other nuggets like that from the last four expansions for most (all?) Classes.
Thanks Scorrpio! AAs are so confusing right now. I was going by Almar's guide and the listed AAs for each class and lvl. I really thought I needed to do it that way and have been spending a lot of time doing it manually, but autogrant is sooo much better. Can't believe I wasted so much time. Well maybe not so much wasted, I did learn a lot about AAs and how they work so I guess I got caught up on education at least. When I turned on autogrant and dinged 67 the chat box filled pages of AAs acquired, so at least now I can look at just the AAs that don't autogrant to see if I want to spend time getting any of those. And of course spend time on hotkey AAs and how to use and arrange them. Gotta admit getting an extra 2k HP and 1.5K mana instantly was pretty sweet. I think a lot of the guides are really old and it makes it hard to catch up with EQ for us that are returning. Would you recommend keeping AA xp at 10% and banking AAs for the future or just put all xp toward lvling for now. Thanks for the advice and sorry to the OP for hijacking the thread
^ What Scorpio said. Unless you specifically want to take it slow and hang around the mid level game for eternity (or maybe just until youve mastered the art of grinding AAs) then i would recommend Autogrant. But perhaps you just enjoy certain characters or zones in a certain level range and putting all your experience toward AAs is a good way to freeze an era in place, so to speak. i would also advise you, if autogranting, to stop whenever you level, review the spam block of AAs gained and investigate anything you haven't seen before, read the descriptions, make some new hotkeys and experiment. This can be less overwhelming than trying to absorb all the info about AAs at once.
I also think most of the ranks of subtle casting are not autogranted. If you are a caster and wonder why you are taking a dirt nap every time you nuke this is why =)
This. Always search the yellow chat for "You have gained". Then scroll through your AA list and find it and read up on it. May be a passive, or an active. Either way, good to know what you got and how it works
There are various filters in AA window. The "can activate" option is useful to check any missed clickies. Can purchase filter has problem of only showing those non-autogrants for which you have enough banked AA. Oh, and subtlety is a toggle AA. Is it worth it to keep like 10% towards AA? Only if there are non-auto items you want to get early. Especially tradeskills stuff.
