List of Epic Time Sinks and Bottlenecks

Feel free to simply post "actual" timers and I will update OP

I don't agree that all of the things listed by the OP should be changed but many certainly should have timers reduced or drop rates increased.

Bard Epic
-Kedge Backbone – The drop rate should be increased to 50% chance.

Cleric Epic
-Shmendrik Lavawalker (Lake Rathetear) – 3h Respawn to 1h (Current meta is to spawn a pick)
- Lord Gimblox should spawn much more often.

Paladin Epic
-Lich of Miragul (Everforst) – 24-26h respawn to 1h. Current meta is to spawn a pick of Everfrost and wait 2-4hours.

Shadow Knight Epic
-Marl Kastane(Toxxulia Forest) – 7-9h respawn to Always up.

Ranger/Druid Epic
-Giz X`Tin (Kithikor Forest) – 4h respawn to 1h
-Althele (East Karana) – This entire quest chain needs to be reworked, it is very easy to have someone else brick your quest or fail the quest. Item that starts chain is Worn Dark Metal Coin.
-Venril Sathir’s remains (Karnor’s Castle) Respawns 20h after Venril Sathir is killed to 1h.
-Dolgin Codslayer (Timorous Deep) 12h respawn to 1h

Rogue Epic
-Book of Souls (Plane of Hate) – 10h respawn to 1h (Current meta to grab on raid night)
-Gigantic Zweihander – Increased drop chance to always drops. (Friend and I had to kill 10 times before 1 dropped)

Monk Epic
-Brother Zephyl (Rathe Mountains) – Removed from current cycle of PH (Hasten/Grizzly Bear/Drake ect…) and put on another PH or be a 1h respawn or spawn more often on current cycle.
-a presence (Plane of Sky) – 2h? respawn to 1h (Current meta to kill on raid night in DZ)

Enchanter Epic
-Vessel Drozlin (East Cabilis) - 7h(+) respawn to 1h
-Verina Tomb (Neriak Third Gate) - 7h(+) respawn to 1h
-The One Key (ground spawn in Overthere) – 6h respawn to 1h
-Lost Scroll (ground spawn in Dalnir) – 6h respawn to 1h
-Wraith of the Shissar (Plane of Fear) – 7h(+) respawn to 1h also spawns at DZ start.
-Essence of a Vampire (Plane of Hate) – Increased drop chance.
-The Tangrin (Field of Bone) – 7h(+) respawn to 1h.


Magician Epic
-Staff of Elemental Mastery: Water – Increased drop chance or always drops or has a chance to drop from rares/mobs in zone.
-Increase spawn rate / spawn locations of Quillmane.

Necromancer Epic
-Black Silk Cape – Increased drop chance or always drops.
-Spiroc Feathers - Increased drop chance or always drops.
-Slime Blood of Cazic Thule – Increased drop chance or always drops.

Wizard Epic
-Blue Crystal Staff – The drop rate should be increased to 50% chance.
-Broken Golem (Plane of Fear) – 6-8h respawn to 1h, always spawns on DZ start

a shady goblin
Warsliks Woods – 24h respawn to 5m respawn

It would be much better if Epics were rolled into a system like LDoN. You screw up knocking off Phini? AoC Locked out for say 24 hours before you can try again would seem about right. Current system is you stand in line and win, lose, or draw, you are still in line for much of the Epic. Ground spawn just doesn't work for Epics. Anything without an AoC should be the instance and a fight.

From a historical perspective, some game designers did not want the system as it works now. I don't know if Brad was part of that but I suspect he was. Their original model was a bell type distribution of players i.e. only maybe 4 players per server that would reach maximum levels and only 1 or 2 that would get their Epic. They even thought people would quit when they reached maximum level as they would think they were finished. Reality was a rude awakening. Everyone wants to be king and hang around for 10-20 years. Epics are a real life fantasy in that they don't exist in their intended manner or conception. Still people cling to them as originally conceived. Maybe their reason for being and implementation were based on false premises? Should they be changed? Well they could have some of their implementations modified to reflect the way the game is actually played. Sheesh! $40 in Station Cash as an option?

1 - You are wrong, the backbone is the choke point on TLP. Right now the trak guts drop from any kunark dragon, venril, etc. They are pretty common, all things considered. The backbone only drops from 1 mob, uncommon-to-rare of a drop, and the static zone is camped 24/7 by one box army reseller. So, you need to spawn DZs every week for the unforeseeable future in hopes that a backbone of a mob is included on his corpse.

2 - Bard epics are a class defining item until defiant gear comes out with instrument mobs on the armor.

You didn't read my post.

Teek started in kunark, and has special rules.

Epics shouldn't be changed for 1 server.

Think more critical.

12 weeks is plenty of time to farm one.

Edit... Also Defiant is like 10 expansions away. PoP has Instrument mods on armor. Epic is really only important for the singing mod. You still want to use drums.

These issues are not appearing for the first time and it isn't because Teek started in Kunark that people have them.

I think Epics should not be able to be Sold! ()

The hardest part of the epics on teek is the other 5000 people doing them at the same time as you.

But then you would know the actual spawn timers and it would make it more difficult for me to complete the quests. Knowledge is power my friend.

On free trade enabled server epics are being sold from player to player every day via the multi-questing technique. I think epics should be tradeable from player to player on a free trade server. Due to the nature of the EverQuest loot system of certain rare items found on rare NPCs, many players don't have the time to wait for hours or days at a boring camp.

Waiting hours and days for a rare mob to spawn doesn't require any skill. It requires endurance and a high pain threshold. It's a wonder they don't force Navy Seals to get epics in EQ as a test of mental toughness.

Camping an item and waiting for a rare mob to spawn is not considered a best practice for modern MMORPG design. Even Blizzard made sure that bosses would always spawn in their instanced dungeons in WoW. The only scarcity and rarity involved was if your item would drop and if you had the means to vanquish the boss.

I realize the horse has been out of the barn for 24 years, but there are many things Darkpaw could do to reduce the artificial scarcity problem of epic quest drops. Make all the quest items tradeable, increase the spawn times and drop rates, and give nearby similar mobs a chance to drop the quest items.

This sounds like a good reason to fix the bottlenecks for all servers instead of letting people trade an item that was never intended to be traded in the first place.

Yeah this crap of waiting in Toxx for Marl Kastane is getting on my nerves lol
Some SKs are just straight up cheating and clicking the dude in under 2 seconds. Never even see him appear, just the text.

There needs to be a change with how epic spawns work. Teek really exposed how awful it is, people will be sitting on certain mobs all day just to sell loot rights. It's lame and unnecessary and makes me not really want to continue working on epics..

The way to fix this is to let anyone spawn an private instance of any zone whenever they want. Some will cite technical excuses on this but way too many years have passed. Those excuses are expired. It's time to make it happen already.

When players have an opportunity to earn things themselves, and the Krono lords will quickly find their demand drying up.

The lets play on a tlp without anything being tlp

I'd be in favor of this as long as they eliminate all the outstanding bottlenecks. I guarantee you the entire EQ player community would give a resounding cheer if the Darkpaw devs removed the bottlenecks once and for all. Having happy players is better than having angry players.

At least on free trade enabled servers, all quest items should be tradeable. Right now, some are and some aren't. Having them all tradeable would demonstrate philosophical consistency.

Those items have all been like that for close to 25 years, instead of complaining about well established free trade rules it would be more helpful to help identify all the bottlenecks in order to get them addressed.

As I've mentioned in another thread, those "well established free trade rules" were arbitrary and never made any sense. This is the appeal to tradition or argumentum ad antiquitatem logical fallacy:

Appeal to tradition is a claim in which a thesis is deemed correct on the basis of correlation with past or present tradition.The appeal takes the form of "this is right because we've always done it this way", and is a logical fallacy.

The rules that make one epic quest item no trade and another tradeable are illogical and have been a constant source of player angst for over 24 years. Either make them all non-tradeable or make them tradeable. Or provide legitimate reasons for exceptions.

I urge the Darkpaw developers to do the right thing and make all epic quest items tradeable on free trade enabled servers. I also urge them to address the needless bottlenecks that have been plaguing the EQ player base for 24 years.

Just because you consider them arbitrary doesn't mean that the 25 years of the free trade rules being in place don't matter. As I stated in that other thread if you have problems with induvial items you should create a list to be reviewed as they are not going to review every item that is marked as no trade on those servers after 25 years due to complaint from a singe person.

If you have issues with some items being bottlenecks for quests or think they should be tradeable on a free trade server create a list of those items for the devs to review. Complaining about it and saying that all items should be tradeable won't help you get any changes done.

The Marl Kastane NPC for required turn in on the SK epic is on an 8 hour spawn time. SK's need to turn in to him twice to complete their epic and 3 times to obtain epic and BiS chest item in era. On Teek from launch till Velious we have 12 weeks or 84 days. If people started turning in on launch (We know that's not true) and if an SK was there to turn in the moment he spawned since launch (we know that's not true) and assuming 0 SK's turned in a third time for BP (we obviously know this isn't true) then that means MAX 126 SK epics on the server in era and that's MAX 210 SK epics by the time Luclin launches. As it sits there's half a dozen SK's camping him at every expected spawn and twice he's spawned and despawned so quick I never even saw the graphic for the NPC fully render in game. How is this in any way shape for form fair for SK's? Why the eff would any of us want to waste the hours and hours of time completing that quest prior to OOW? Can you imagine the same kind of bottleneck for the Cleric, Warrior, Monk etc epics? Very Very few SK's will obtain their Epic in era while it's still a viable weapon. Why? These TLP servers are your money makers but you just screw the SK's year after year with this asinine NPC spawn time? Make it make sense.