Forgiven Druid/bard is a great combo, you just don't get better mobility. I've always casted cheetah and selos on the bard and my druid has always been the leader of the pack due to having lowest movement speed. I completely forgot about instrument modifiers since gear these days spoils me (yet I still have a drum bandolier)... 260% sounds correct from what I remember reading long ago. The cap as said is well below this but Bards have an AA which lets them go a little beyond cap, which is what allows them to be faster than anyone else. Having said that, there is no reason why a druid/shaman whose cap is lower should be able to outrun a Bard...there are a few circumstances in which your client is bugged (you'll notice buffs ticking down extremely fast too). Of course, I'm not the type to refute a claim without trying it. Druid with Form of the Howler + Communion of the Cheetah + Selos; Bard with only Selos, correct?
Had my Druid Race my Bard (ungrouped so their individual abilities would not bolster one another) Druid - Form of the Hunter + Cheetah (I know Howler has a Mana regen to it, where as Hunter is Atk boost. Hunter tops out 5% faster than Howler though according to spell data). Bard - Selo's Sonata Druid inched ahead of Bard and could stay ahead as long as Cheetah remained on. Use the same Key binding tricks to attach the Group Cheetah AA (instant cast / 10sec refresh) to Left and Right arrows as one might do for Selo's for the Bard. NOTE: Not sure if it might have been caused due to Windows working in background (ie. Defrag, Updates, etc.etc.) but this has happened to my Bard at least 3 different occasions and Bard is on a better system. EDIT: As to the gear comment for Bards 260%, I thought that current foci on the armor acted in same capacity as the foci from instruments, no?
Couple of things, forgive me if they were already mentioned but TL;DR. First, mount speeds, chart on this page: http://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Mounts Movement rate (includes bard song, etc.): http://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Movement_rate All info on the wiki subject to correction, let me know if you spot any errors, or better yet, just go fix them there yourself, that's what wikis are all about. Next, until Wednesday, April 23, you can get Whirligig Flyer Control Device which moves at the fastest mount speed. Get it by doing http://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Parts_is_Parts_and_Maximum_Capacity Now, admittedly, the quest is a PITA. Heck, my monk had the quest in his Quest Journal for two years! But it is much easier now than when it first came out in 2011. One member of my guild had trouble getting his final piece on his shaman, so I dragged out my monk and gacked some mobs for him and we got lucky and got the piece in under an hour. As for needing the robot to go down in hit points, park your toon overnight somewhere safe in the zone, anywhere in the zone works. I used the tower you arrive in from the guild portal, just went up top. Hopefully, enough people dps down the robot for you to get the updates. Of course, it's a great time to get together with a bunch of friends (especially new Heroic Characters) and work on it together.
Ive tried. You cant. He just gives the bridle right back. Ive killed emp a couple times and seru probably a score and still cant figure out why other people camp them. I camped them for the bridle and some trophy twinkage. The emperor drops a nice hp clicky and seru is easy to get to. Other than that, not really much to permacamp. Id guess its just many people looking for mounts as I see both of them often enough that I dont rush if I have something better to do. By the way, most mobs retain their timer on planned server patches but not emergency patches. I dont think they have to shut down and reset the server on the former.
Side Note: Many of the LoN mounts where raid speed mounts and they are Heirloom so a player could have only 1 on a particular account and flag every bot on the same account. Also the Essence of Speed needed to turn the Roboboar into Class V is pretty easy to grab these days also.
Thats the exact type of mounts (1 Onyx and 1 Jade Hydra) that have become fudged by the patch, still waiting to hear back on petition escalation. For whatever reason the patch forced these mounts to ignore their Flagging and reset to a Mount Movement 1 speed.
its insignificantly more if i remember right a raid mount is something like 146 and bard speed is 150 1 gold ticket may not cause more than a mill, but unless you are lucky, you wont get that drum first go. someone else pointed out that a gold ticket only costs 20k now... last time i was in the market for one it was closer to 100k. a 3-4 day timer is a rare spawn, you may be able to time it within a 24 (or 12, i dont know how how you worded your +-) hour period of time, but its still a rare spawn, and then finding that its not a locked down camp... yea... ghost rider is probably the easiest one to obtain, but you still need dps, which use to be handleable by a berserker, but not sure anymore... however if not, you now need to worry about /ran being a problem if you dont already have a pre decided loot order, which again is part of a 3~ day lock out on it, and the one in solteris requires you to do 2 balance fights, and one that has annoying hand in mechanics, you may be able to solo your way through if you are a class that already has a raid speed mount through aa's, but other than that, you are looking for people who are willing to go through those raids, one of which can easily take over an hour because of how balance fights are, just for a chance at a raid mount... personally i dont even want a mount, i just want base movement speed to be faster. if im not in combat or on a combat timer, what is the purpose of making me so slow? when we did deathknell, i was still using a magic class, we had a tank, and one other i think magic dps i forget, and a berserker. we had to split up and even then, the magic users were not putting out enough dps to handle the statues, as they were still advancing. however the zerker outright killed them, and we waited... if not for the zerker, the dps issues would have ended in a fail, im not sure if zerkers can still do this on these mobs anymore though sense the revamp on decap. last time i went to kill seru specifically, some was afk killing him.
Here are a few solutions to some of your problems: Raid speed is 150%. Speed limit is 158%. There is a way to guarantee a drum on the first go. All the droppable casino items are lore - find a friend, guildie, or maybe even a helpful stranger (!) to lend you the bag of droppable goods to turn in your ticket. Now, you may note, that there are two no drop items from the casino - Guise of the Deceiver and Mounts (while they are several, the Casino doesn't seem to give you more than one). Worst case, you have a 50/50 chance at your mount. Oh, but there's another trick! If you go get the current Dark Elf Illusion mask from LGuk, the Casino script recognizes that, and it acts as a "Lore Group" type item as far as Casino winnings are considered - now you have a 100% chance of receiving your mount. Now, I know not everyone is going to stash a bag of casino goods, but I imagine there are quite a few of us (I'm one of them!) that keeps them all around just for this very purpose. I can /almost/ solo Deathknell Event #1 as a monk in group gear. My DPS is about 75-80% good enough to win. Find a friend or two (notice a theme? EQ is a social game!), maybe some guildies, etc. and it should be doable with less than a group. Regardless, I really wouldn't advise Solteris, because of the exact issues you mention; I love running Solt, it's incredibly fun, and is filled with goodies, but some of the mechanics unfortunately aren't farming friendly. It's an extra option, but really requires a whole extra level of commitment. Largely, zones have gotten smaller and ports ever more available. Runspeed is, perhaps more than anything, a legacy issue. The problem with making everyone fast is mobs have to become faster as well, which brings along with it a host of balance issues. There aren't too many times when I personally have thought "Gee whiz, I'm moving quite slow here." My best response is, slow is the pace of EverQuest.
When the players move faster, the world seems smaller. Everyone wants a huge world, but nobody wants to move slowly.
As previously mentioned, you can get yourself a roboboar by doing anniversary quests right now and essence of speed from several soloable/moloable(since they're in static zones) TSS raid bosses.
