My experimental blog about playing a newborn Ranger.

Ding 86!

Fatalshots is back on the rise. I spent a good probably 8 - 10 hours over the last 2 days finishing the heroic aug quests from HoT. I had a couple days off from work and it seemed like a good way to get used to my new box crew.

It took awhile to get a rhythm down but I definitely learned 2 really important things. One, Pulling is everything. If you get overwhelmed as a new boxer it's pretty much over. The second thing I learned was after a wipe. My group consisted of Warrior, Ranger, Shaman, Healer merc and 2 rogue mercs. Feerot the dream can be an unforgiving zone. If you aren't careful you can get swarmed with roaming adds and things get out of control in hurry. After a wipe I ended up rebuffing, and I engaged a fight and started getting adds again. This time I ended up with 3 yellows 1 being the named gorilla and a white con. By clicking my defensives on the warrior and AE taunting as much as I could I ended up surviving the fight. After it was over I realized why. I had 2 healers up instead of 2 rogues. It made a huge difference and because of the nature of that zone having so many roamers as well as it being hard to see in, I decided to keep the 2 healers up for the rest of my adventures here.

Overall the quests in Feerott I found were much more complicated than the ones in lower floors. I'd say between the 2 zones finishing all the partisan quests for all three characters I probably wiped 6 times over the 2 days. 5 were in Feerott. And I only wiped once after switching to 2 healers. I'll probably leave 2 healers in the group until I become a pro boxer. It's hard to control agro sometimes with so much going on and double healers makes it so if I make a mistake it's usually not the end of the world.

Overall I'm enjoying my new setup. I'm sure day by day I'll keep improving things and learning more and more. I feel like getting all those augs for 3 different characters was a pretty solid accomplishment.

Tomorrow I'm looking to do the piestro's day off quest to score another nice aug.

Exp did seem slow.. I killed a ton of mobs and finished over 10 quests, used a lesson and was overall pretty consistent and I still am only about 15% into 86.

More updates coming. Stay tuned l!

On pulling more than one, concentrate all aggrieved on tank. Hate AA, Hate equipment . . . These will save you by buying time. You have VP for CC as well as the bluster bolt line, although that may not be your best strategy. With heroic augments, you should be fine in HoT now.

In retrospect, at what point do you think you should have gone heroic? Would it have been around 75 when leveling started really slowing down? Would you have started boxing sooner to get the hang of it if you'd known you'd go that route when heroicising?

I don't think there would have been much benefit boxing any sooner than 75 or so.. However keep in mind that my ranger could headshot from 60 so a group would only have slowed things down. I wouldn't see any issue with heroicing anytime after level 65. That's just my opinion tho. I didn't play the game past that level originally so the nastalgia was kind of gone past that level. I still had fun tho.

One thing I've read here is that searching thru all the aa's for new characters can be overwhelming. My solution to that was to go to the class tab in the aa window and sort the aa's by timer. This gives you a list of all the aa's that you actually activate by clicking them. Sort out all the ones that seem offensive and put them together on a hot bar. Do the same thing for the defensive sounding ones. Also if you have combat tombs you can sort them by timer as well, and then find the highest level of each different ability, and read them and figure them out that way.

Once you have that figured out just try to do some reading back thru the posts in the class forums to get an idea what the ideal burns and stuff you should be using. That's how I approached it anyway.

Hard to keep from wondering if I've chosen the right boxes tho. Part of me wishes I had just made a bard box for /melody and s tank merc and called it good. Who knows tho, having the shaman buffs and eventually a beefy tank I'm sure will be nice.. Especially if I want to run any old raids or event for clickies or whatever.

As for my adventures today i spent them doing the 14th anniversary group missions to get some nice augs. Piestro's day off is pretty easy to box except for the very beginning which is extremely annoying because it's a totally random mechanic that is just completely luck. You have to open 4 of 5 chests randomly and make sure you don't open the one with the jester inside. If you fail you have to fight the jester and he's actually pretty tough. Then the room resets and you have to try again. I've done the mission twice and the first time I got it on the 3rd try but when I tried the second time no exaggeration it took me 24 tries to get it right. It was extremely infuriating.

I also do the big gnomes big problems mission this would be an easier Mission possibly than the piestro's but there is a bug that makes it a real pain in the @$$... Anyways both times I did piestro's day off I didn't get the aug but I ended up with 4 pieces of pretty good level 95 loot. The big gnomes mission did give me an aug however of the 5 possible augs of course it gave me the one that I don't really want. It's really nice at 40ac 250hp/mana but the heroic on the one I got was +8Hstr. I would have preferred pretty much another heroic stat besides strength but o well I guess that's Everquest for you.

I also want to do the brick of knowledge quests to get a free port to PoK once per day. As well as the 6th anniversary quest which is pretty easy. It ends up being ten 30 minute 100% exp potions which wil come in handy for pushing from 100 to 105. I'll probably spend the next 2 or 3 nights getting these things done before I really get back to leveling.

I'll try to work in s lesson and some hot zone tasks too if I can spare the time.

Anyone else here doing any of the anniversary quests? Do you have to be 105 to do the shimmering black pearl aug quest?

Thanks for reading!

Thanks for the advice! At 56, the nostalgia is starting to wear pretty thin for me - I quit when 70 was the cap, so I spent an awful lot of time in the 50s and 60s, and didn't particularly enjoy it unless I was grouping or raiding.

I'm right there with you on agonizing over which classes to box. I've been thinking about it all week (basically since I started up again) and still haven't reached a decision. Do you think an /autofiring ranger would be a decent pick? My enchanter can't really do jack for DPS in zones where he can't charm (though I think that changes at higher levels, with more dots and whatnot), so I'm curious about how fast you can kill at 85/86. I think I'd burn out if I played something that required a lot of attention along with enchanter, though.

One last question - did you bother to /trader the defiant and other saleable loot you got while leveling? I'm having severe money issues because spells are costing almost 1k pp every level now and the levels come fast, only staying afloat from a bag of plat I bought with veteran crowns (which of course I could buy like 10 more of).

Thanks for posting, you have at least one regular reader.

I have not bothered to set up a trader yet but I will probably at some point here in the next 2 or 3 weeks. I ended up discovering that the loyalty vendor sells bags of platinum for 400ish loyalty tokens. They give around 15k plat so that's how I stay above water for now.

I think as far as boxing goes for the enchanter you might be kind of limited if you really enjoy playing the enchanter. They are a high maintenance class similar to the ranger but even more so I think. An autofiring ranger could work but I think there are better options for you. If you were going to use a ranger and fight headshottable mobs then you would most likely just have your enchanter autofollowing him around. The other way to get decent damage from autofiring is if the mob you are shooting is standing still but NOT rooted you get double damage bow shots. So if you had say a tank and healer merc the tank would keep the mob in place and the ranger could be autofiring for double damage.

Keep in mind tho since the ranger is melee they are much more expensive to gear up than a caster so that may be a factor as well.

I couldn't find the post again but a couple months ago I read about a guy who boxed mage enchanter shaman and said he just melted group content. He was saying he sort of used the Mage as the main while he followed with his enchanter and shaman. Enchanter would play spell damage and twincast auras and the shaman was there for extra heals on pet when needed and buffs. He said he used a healer merc and 2 casters when he felt lazy and 3 casters sometimes while healing the pet with the shaman when he felt like trying harder. He made it sound pretty amazing and relatively low maintenance as far as boxing went. I would think any 3rd box could be useful as well if shaman doesn't sound that great. Wizard, Druid, Bard, even a second Mage could all work. It sounded like he really loved it but I was more interested in melee classes.

Hope that helps. Choosing the boxes was really hard for me as well overall I'm happy with my choice but it certainly is a little high maintenance playing tank with my warrior.

I wouldn't recommend archery Ranger as DPS support. Ranger is pretty high maintenance, both in gear and when played (if you want to put out good DPS in support of your Enchanter.) There are other solid DPS options that you can set up in support of the Enchanter--Mage, Wizzie, etc. You should be looking for a class that you can have stand in one place and blast for max damage (that's the autofire Ranger, without the max damage.) Not a Ranger hater--my main is a Ranger.

Thanks for the advice again. I was thinking Enc/Mag/Shm, but I've been fretting over the Shm pick because the haste and slow would overlap with the Enc, so maybe Dru instead.

I would think Druid for a bit more utility, wiz for even easier killing.

I'll start this post off by saying that I've always been a grinder by heart in EQ. Nothing was more fun for me than dungeon crawling somewhere deep into a zone to find some obscure named mob and clear the camp out and wait for rare named to spawn. Few other games can give the satisfaction you feel when you're picking up that rare drop from that rare spawn. That to me is what makes EQ so great. That and raiding. I always loved raiding and I can't wait to see what raids are like in this day age, but I digress.

I think that's what has made these last few days so tough for me. I spent a couple days agonizing over what characters I should as well as if I should even box at all. The next couple days were spent in HoT getting the heroic augs for all three characters and that was fun. It took some persistence and trial and error to get my new crew running somewhat smoothly but overall I'm happy with my choices and I think it will prove to be a solid 3 box.

This weekend though, while productive was certainly not in my EQ wheelhouse. I finished the 6th anniversary quest for 10 100% exp potions for all 3 of my characters. I also finished the 9th anniversary quest for The Brick of Knowledge for all 3 characters even though the shaman didn't really need it I figured what the heck right? I did Piestro's day off monster mission 5 times for the stones of power which I'm angry about because the EQ gods gave me a 2nd red stone of power with heroic strength on it. So now my warrior and shaman both have it lol.

The good news is I mastered that mission and can run it in just over 30 mins now. The bad news is I've done it 5 times and only gotten 1 aug. the other one I got from big gnomes big problems. I might try to master that one if Piestro's continues to not drop augs for me.

My last hope for all the anniversary stuff is to get shimmering black pearls for all three characters so that is going to be my project this week. Whatever time I have left over from running and learning these missions will be spent trying to fit in a hot zone task or 2 as well as maybe a lesson run. I still fully expect to still be level 86 by the end of this week though which is hard for a grinder like me to swallow.
(That's what she said). Sry....

At any rate at least I can feel good that I'm getting some quality augs and some ease of life items taken care of during this short anniversary time.

Here's to a bullseye headshot!

I feel you on the dullness of the anniversary quests - almost not looking forward to boxing because I'll have to start them right away afterward.

.Do you think it's worth the frustration to grind out those anniversary augs (not counting the Shimmering Black Pearl) when you get a pretty decent set from the heroic quests? I'm not sure what groupable augs are available after the heroic ones.

I think the shimmering black pearl is a must because it's the best aug in the game for your charm slot (I think). The stones of power are pretty good for also. I think most people still have them even at level 105 whereas you'll outgrow the heroic augs eventually. I think if you are planning to go to 105 and raid it's worth it. If not you can probably do without them. I just did another piestro's and no aug so I think I'm going to end up doing big gnomes again. But first I'm going to try my hand at the black pearl.

That is an excellent question, especially as it relates to plate class characters who receive 30 AC heroic Augments in HoT. One can supplement those by spending Marks of Valor with EWTK merchants and doing the PoWar War Games mission to get a 45AC and TDS BI to get a 50AC.

Assuming an average increase of about 7-8 AC overall from a 30 AC base, how much mitigation advantage would a tank receive after getting all 30 AC augs from HoT, upgrading for PoWar and BI named (50AC) and purchasing the 30+ AC augments from EWTK for running a mind-numbing host of Gribble missions? How much advantage would there be after upgrading group gear to TBM Tier 1 plus Resplendent Sulstone of the Sturdy in all available slots (and likely Dex multiple stat augs - and staying at 35% mod 2)? After upgrading again to Crypt-Hunter gear? Somewhere along the line, I suspect the math conforms to some law of diminishing returns. Correct?

BTW, I totally agree with getting the Shimmering Black Pearl. Just have to find the time.

I'm not at all familiar with the war games mission so I'll have to look into it.

That being said to answer your question about diminishing returns my personal answer would be to ask what your goals are for your character and also what class do you play? A melee character would benefit more I would think from a full set of nice ac augs than a say a caster might with a full set of int/wis augs.

If the end goal is to raid and be able to survive that extra AE damage and/or that extra hit from a raid mob then I would say yes it is worth it. If however, the end goal is just to have a character strong enough for the group aspect of EQ then I would imagine your character might be just fine without going for the high end augs.

I've personally always liked building a strong character. The mindset I like to have for my characters is better is better... One of the things I like so much about EQ is that it's a game where even the small things matter. Sure will one or 2 nice ac augs make or break your character? Of course not, but 18 of them might. I like to think of it as a full set of quality augs is almost like being able to wear 2 or 3 more pieces of gear.

That's just how I like to look at it tho. I'm in no way implying everyone should do it this way or that it's the right way. It's certainly NOT the least time consuming way lol.

I'll be interested to hear if you can box the shimmering black pearl. One of the comments on the allakhazam page for the mission says:

I just finished it. Easily boxed at level 86. No issues at all. For the final boss make sure you keep him out of the orange ring or you will not receive the loot at the end. I just snared him and bow kited him with my ranger.

This mission was not hard. Boxed in about 90 minutes. Should be faster next time. I recieved 1 shimmering black pearl. 2 more to go.

Just boxed big gnome big problems again. No aug. sigh

Don't forget about getting the Drunkard's Stein. Super easy and 30 min cool down for pok gate.
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=123362

Kodjak, thank you for letting me know about that. I now have a stein for all 3 characters. What an amazing and easy item to get. Trust me, if you have a character that can't gate, you NEED to do this quest. Thanks again.

Tonight's adventures consisted of another black pearl run. Now my shaman is the only one who needs it still. Will get it tomorrow.

I took a little time for exp and went to do the 80 and 85 hot zone quests. I started in fort mech and tracked my way around to find the reavers. Since going heroic, boxing, and getting J5 mercs this zone has gotten a lot easier. I ended up with 6 mobs at one point and was still totally fine.

After that I headed to the Foundation. Small side note here: I'm learning so many places what with all the anniversary scavenger hunts, and new hot zones etc... I'll either use the zone finder feature on the in game map, or go to zam and type the name of the zone in, and work my way backwards by clicking on all the connected zones.

So I once I found my way in to Foundation I invis'd up my party and was carefully making my way around trying to find the types of mobs I needed for the task. I would slowly creep up and /con any mobs to make sure they didn't see invis. I got decently far in and started to see a couple monsters that fit the description I needed. As I worked my up slowly to find a good spot to make camp...agro... 3 dark blues pop up on extended target and rush me. No matter, I stay calm hit bracing defense on my warrior and hit AE taunt. Out of somewhere a fourth mob adds in. I switch targets to the 4th I decide to hit full defensives on the warrior and gain control. I click maelstrom blades for a bit more AE agro, this is going to be tough but doable. Switch to the shaman, cast group HoT, cast viral slow and counterbias heal, star casting Lynx and switch to the ranger. Ranger assists warrior and starts dpsing, click my dot hot key and switch back to the warrior. The first mob dies. 2 more adds jump us. Not good. I hit rampage on the warrior as my last AE taunt attempt. As I try to gain control a couple mobs start to stray and attack the healers. I'm trying to manage agro but all AE abilities are on cooldown and the mobs and mercs are moving all over the place. Soon the first healer merc dies followed shortly by the second. It was over from that point. A clean wipe.

I was a little disheartened, but I vowed to turn things around. I headed back and once I was back in the zone I rebuffed and got my self ready. In order to turn a negative into a positive here I decided to hit lesson and just clear my entire path back to my corpses. It worked out great. I was able to keep control of pulls and adds much better this way and earn some pretty good exp back along the way.

I fought my way all the way to my corpses. Once there I rez'd up and finished out the hot zone task. All said and done things turned out pretty good. I ended up about 75% into lvl 86 and was satisfied that I had earned some okay exp for the day.

After that it was another Piestro's with no aug and another big gnomes big problems with no aug. So that was not the happiest ending to the evening but I'll live.

See you in Norrath!

Ding 87! Been a week or so it feels like since I last leveled. It feels good to be getting some exp again.

The box crew started off the night going for the last shimmering pearl that I needed for the shaman. That was a success. Although the mission is pretty easy to box I'm happy to be leaving it behind. After that it was on to Piestro's Day Off again. I'm getting really fast at this mission now. It takes me just over 30 mins to run it now, including travel time etc... The shaman was in for a treat tonight because I got the blue stone of power. That is the int/wis version. I had to destroy his Hstr one in order to loot it but that's fine.

I was happy to finally get at least 1 of those augs I was happy but of course it had to be for the shaman. Not that I don't love my shammy friend but he's kinda in last place as far a gear priority goes. I'm getting pretty tired of hunting for those augs so I just decided I'll do one mission a night until I either get the ones I want or until time runs out.

After the shaman was done bragging about all his triumphant victories and glorious treasure we headed out for out daily 80 and 85 HZQ's. Fort mech went off without a hitch but I cannot say the same for the Foundation.

This was hilarious. Okay, buff up, run thru brell's rest to underquarry, zone into Foundation. If you read yesterday's post you'll remember I sorta ran around invis looking for the mobs I needed and ended up catching agro and wiping. When I came back I just sorta started from the entrance and cleared my way through to where I had died and rez'd up. I also hit lesson on the way because I knew I'd be clearing lots of mobs.

So today as soon as I zoned in I set down a campfire and clicked lesson. I figured I'd just start clearing from the zone in again and get another good amount of exp. Well things started off okay, I killed off a few bugs and a gentai and moved in just a little bit. After clearing about 6 or 7 mobs a sand gentai popped up out of Internet and attacked me. He conned yellow to my now 87 warrior. I thought that was a bit strange since all I had seen around here were blue mobs but his name was not capitalized or anything so I didn't figure that he was a rare spawn. Right off the bat I knew things were different within a few seconds after the fight started "a blue sand pile" spawned and attacked me. A minute or so later another blue sand pile. Another minute and a third one spawned. So now I'm fighting a yellow and 3 dark blues and my warrior just cannot handle all of it. He dies. We all die. Whatever.

Respawn in PoK. Wait for merc timers and revive them, rebuff, and click the fellowship campfire thing. While waiting I had looked up this little sand gentai a-hole and found that he actually is a rare spawn and he spawns those little sand pile PoS's at every 20% health such as 100% 80% 60% etc... No matter. I figured I would try again and just Flusterbolt the adds away.

So I'm back in there and we re-engaged. Things were going okayish until again the 3rd add spawned and I just could not properly cc the adds. They ended up jumping the mercs and killing the healers and that was that. Dead again. Okay new strat. This time I'll kill the adds as the spawn so every 20% just switch to those adds and kill them and then switch back to the boss. Okay I buff up again and we go back for a 3rd attempt. This time things go great. We are chopping him down, killing adds and then switching back. The problem occurred around 33% when my mercs ran out of mana. Another slaughter lol. I managed to get him to 26% before we bit it.

At this point I had left a trail of 9 dead bodies at the entrance to Foundation. I wasn't really mad or anything but I just kinda figured I needed some help. A quick holler for some assistance in PoK and I found someone willing to help. Turns out he was a 105 warrior. Needless to say he dispatched the evil sand gentai easily and was able to rez myself all 9 times. My warrior buddy stuck around for about 15 more minutes murdering everything in sight and helped me complete the task. I thanked him s bunch and he told me if I ever needed any help to look him up. He was a real nice guy and I thanked him again.

After all that excitement I hung up the bow for the night and came here to tell you all about it.

Sleep tight!

(Sorry for any errors tonight. Falling asleep..)