My experimental blog about playing a newborn Ranger.

When I pushed from 100-105 I went 100% xp, would do 95 daily then Gribble HA " into the hills" pop lesson of devoted before final hail by the time I zoned out dropped mission and was able to zone into Gribble HA " scouting ahead" I had about 27-28 mins left on lesson to complete it. I only missed it once , that's with single pulling. Obviously ignore the names and don't worry about loot when lesson is running.

Then I would do TBM HAs at a relaxed pace for however long I felt like playing, usually 1 or 2 a day.

I saved all my TBM currency for lvl 105 Aug's but I had already had all 3 toons COTF geared. It does look like yo can sell back the TBM items for half currency value so that's pretty cool.

Well im curious if the epics for your toons are even really viable or needed. Im not real familiar with all the classes that still get good value from their epics and which ones dont. I know my SK needs his 2.0 for swarming but ive heard very little about the other classes.

Is there a good list per expansion or level for augs to shoot for or am I stick with searching through zam and hoping to find something I can do. I really need to get some AC augs for my SK asap.

I recently returned to the game and pushed my box crew (ranger, mage, shammie) from level 90-105. I stayed in CoTF HA's until I was comfortable that I had re-geared everyone, and then shifted to TBM.

For me, that was at about level 101 or so. It was a hard transistion, as the TBM missions are much harder, with linked aggro mobs, lull-proof mobs, etc. I persisted with them, because the gear payoff is so much better. The difference between full CoTF T2 group gear and full TBM crypt hunter is stunning, in terms of AC / HP / heroics. (Lots of silliness on other gear stats, but I'll leave that for another thread.) Also, you'll find that your weapons will look kind of silly, but they are a significant upgrade (easy 1HS drop in partisan missions.)

Almar has a pretty good write up on leveling 75-105 via Gribble vs. TBM here: http://almarsguides.com/eq/gettingstarted/guide/TBM/boxer.cfm

Both Allakazaam and EQ resource have good guides getting started with TBM and partisan missions.

You'll need to get the mirror fragment, then run the partisan missions (which also help you complete lesser spirit armor achievement.) What I did, was focus on those missions first, then gradually branch out to mercenary tasks and other HA missions. There is variation in difficulty within the missions themselves, so if you get one that's particularly hard, don't assume that's the standard difficulty.

In TBM, generally the first HA mission each zone is doable, while the 2nd and 3rd missions are a challenge in a group-geared box crew, so you just need to experiment to see what you can handle.


So to answer your question, I would vote 'yes' -- move to TBM, suck up the increased difficulty and slightly slower leveling for the gear payoff.

Great advice I think I will definitely do that. Thanks for the links and solid answers. I figure if that is the current expansion and I can dip my toes in early why not. Gribble seems a bit too easy and boring anyway... If I pool all my resources I can probably get my warrior pretty squared away in the level 92 gear stuff so at least he'll be a little beefier.

I'm pretty busy this week at work because we are short handed so not as much time to play but my goal is to hit 92 and get geared up and go for TBM.

Gribbles are indeed easy and boring. But, they allow for the purchase of some nice augments that will last until 105 and can be used in TBM gear.

Ranger epic 1.0 is a must due to Earthcaller, its actually pretty easy and doable within a day depending on spawn of VSR. In the comments section http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=764#m1407492558147188760 you will find the absolute best write up of this. I've done it 4 times now without a single hitch. Sometimes I box 3 rangers yes. also I would like to mention http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=5833 for a headshot bow if you're daring enough to attempt the camp of this. I currently carry 4 of them since bow dmg doesnt reflect HS dmg etc. At least from what I've seen it doesn't. Anyway, best of luck, and I look forward to when ya get around 95. Thats where my mains are at now.

I hit 92 tonight. I did a round of the Gribs and headed off back to PoK. I did some selling and banking and hit up the loyalty vendor for some more platinum. I really do need to spend s few nights just farming plat and or setting up a trader to get some steady income. Is it cheesey to buy a krono to sell it for platinum? It kinda would be nice to have 1 less thing to worry about. Money is not really an issue. I figure the money I spend on EQ is entertainment, and if that's the case hour for hour it's probably the cheapest entertainment I can think of.

Also I'm considering making a wizard box as well. Mostly for teleport bind but also for DPS and named killing. Anyone think that's a terrible idea? Idk, I feel like with a fellowship and a teleport bind I might be able to camp named and do quests faster. Also I'd have someone to hand all my caster loot to. it's something I'm just kicking around for now.

Anyways after scrounging up all the platinum I could find, I took my warrior to the bazaar and got him as many pieces of 92 gear as I could. I'd say he has just over half the slots at 92 now. Also found some really cheap 90 gear that were pretty good upgrades as well, especially ac wise. Found a good shield and weapon too, so not a bad haul. Hopefully it'll keep him, and my entire group upright. I could tell his gear was starting to lag behind. After that I had to go and transfer all his augs over.

It's a bummer decking out the warrior instead of my ranger, but I figure I need to play it smart for now. Tomorrow I'll probably open with another round of gribs as a warm up and also to see if I can tell a difference with the warrior. After that I'm definitely heading to TB.


I just wanted to say thanks again for posting info and links to help me out, I'm sure it helps others too if they are returning. This blog has been fun to write and as far as I'm concerned is working out great as a place to both entertain and get help. Thank you all for reading everyday and please keep contributing!

Tomorrow we fight!

As long as the improvements your making up your warriors AC you should notice a difference. Im in the process of getting my mercs up to J5 mercs and then I think I might start farming for AC augs because I can tell at 76 in Oceangreen Hills if SKs werent lifetapping machines id be a dead little SK. Daddy needs some AC boosts for sure.

you mentioned you decked out your warrior some with lvl 92 gear. I'm curious what that is. At 92 I acquired "Fear Touched" items to make into Boreal gear. As far as I can find its about the best group gear out there that can be somewhat easy to get. http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=108973

Also you brought up adding a wizzy, i was curious if a wizzy would replace or add to the already 3 person team youre running making it a 4 box. details man! details!

Lastly I would add that if you wanted to do some merchanting, I highly recommend hitting the revamped Cazic thule zone and loading up on all that wonderous lvl 71 gear there. along with Glowing Othni. Turn that around and sell it in the bazaar while ya sleep and ya should make a tidy sum: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zone.html?zstrat=683

keep it up

Fear-touched gear is quite nice at 92, but fairly expensive in the bazaar when I checked this morning. Rustic is also going up as people are moving from those zones to TBM and TDS. I believe that you can use Rustic on the warrior until 95 at least, if you have all of the augment slots equipped at 30AC and higher. That is one reason to have done the Gribble HAs and HoT missions.

At 95, if you have enough Marks of Valor, you can upgrade to VoA tier 4 group (Grandiose). I did that with my Paladin and he tanked just fine as he acquired more Marks of Valor from DH HAs. Then at 100, depending upon how many Marks you have on the warrior, you can acquire either CotF group Tier 1 or 2 armor, or acquire TDS armor which should last until 105 and TBM gear/augments.

Or, you can go TBM and skip the whole Marks and TDS ideas if you have good enough gear for warrior. Never tried that at the low 90s.

Lastly, you might be able to join VoA open raids on your server and pick up the Elegant Natureward pieces (req level 90, rec 95), which are similar to CotF tier 1 group in AC.

Good luck and keep on posting!

DerangedRanger,

Like your ranger journal (blog). Finally got around to posting a reply to some questions you had (and may still have) about pulling/harmony. I've been playing a ranger for awhile and maybe some insights can help.

So, harmony. All harmony does is reduces your current target's aggro radius. Picture their aggro radius as a circle around mob. If mobs' circles intersect, and if social, they'll aggro - however many circles intersect. If harmony reduces that circle so it no longer intersects, then that one will come single with the following conditions:

• Pathing
• Tethering

Pathing. This may require some experimentation if the zone is crap. Don't take mob movement direction for granted - it will bite you at some point. Something that is an obvious single won't be when it decides to take an unexpected direction. You can mitigate this potential disaster by giving the mob a clear path. Don't stand behind stuff nor use winding areas, if you can help it.

Another aspect of pathing is angles. It should be obvious that you will want to position yourself, so that the mob will run away from his neighbors when you pull. However, again, sometimes this isn't obvious. Sometimes you can deliberately influence how a mob moves based on your relative position and taking into account current terrain between you and mob. I don't mean the obvious influence. I mean cleverly taking advantage of poorly coded terrain which you can discover through experimentation. No this isn't an exploit. If it bothers you that badly, then /bug it.

Tethering. If you haven't experienced this yet, you will in TBM. Pull one, they all come.

Preparation for pulling. At a minimum, have the following AA's maxed: ensnare, root (grasping?), combat ability and stability, cover tracks (with full hastened), nature's entropy (dispel mob on pull), Harmonious arrow. Recommended: max hastened weaponshield, brownie's blessing, self targeting healing macro to heal yourself during pulls and a root macro that has both your AA root (first) and then your spell book root on it. No pauses. Just hit it and if AA is refreshed, it will cast. If not, then spell.

Stop using warrior to pull if you know it's more than you can handle or if you know you need to burn discs. Use the ranger. If you know it's going to be a messy pull, just accept that fact and hammer it into a work of art with the ranger by methodically splitting it up.

Continued...

So, there you are, looking at a group of 4+ mobs all close together and you know they will all add. What to do...

First, scout the area. Are there roamers? If not, great. Now vinelash them. If one resists, that's what the root macro is for. If two resist, punt the first, fast macro root the second. If three, repeat same process, but just snare the third and buy time for the spell book root to go off. Re-vinelash if resists aren't going your way and both roots still refreshing. If all else fails, reset the pull with cover tracks.

Let's assume vinelash went off great. Treat the mobs like pieces of furniture and picture how nicely they would look if they are all spread out in the space available, without aggroing anything else and far enough away from each other so they won't add. To achieve this, punt one and snare it. Reposition your ranger and punt/snare the next, so on and so on...

Great thing about snare and blusterbolt? When mob mem blurs and is snared, the mobs stay put. They won't reset until snare wears off. If you use the available space wisely, your previous ugly group of mobs is now spread out and not on aggro table. Pull them at your leisure. You can also blusterbolt split unsnareable mobs as well, but you need the room for it. Just kite the group and blusterbolt like an idiot until only one is still following you.

Some tricks. Harmonious arrow. HA is more or less and AE harmony. Its radius is not very large and doesn't last very long, but if you're quick enough you can pull 2 or 3 from a large group instead of letting the ability ride and get one. Using snare, bring 2 or 3 and split them away from a larger group to make things more manageable.

Gorilla wrangler's staff. Look it up and get one for the ranger. Vinelash typically lasts around 30 seconds and places a short duration snare on targets when it wears off. If you have the room and are vinelashing smaller numbers (say, 3), use this clicky to break root on one, bring it to group, then run back and manage the rest. Otherwise, you end up having to use summer's line to break root which can get you dead due to the aggro associated with that line.

And about harmony: some mobs can't be pacified (rare) and others just happen to be outside the spell level range. Spell level range is listed on tooltip.

If you knew all this already, oh well. If not, hope it helps.

Shadow hunter thanks for taking the time to post all that, it's much appreciated. The hot keys for rooting and healing are great idea. I'll be making those right away. Lots of good info on pulling groups thanks again.

I hit 93 last night but didn't have time for much else. Tonight I'll be heading into TBM, sort of following Almar's Guide that someone linked a few posts back.

Looking foward to it and I'll keep you guys updated on how it goes.

I intended to read a few of your posts to help me drift off to sleep. I ended up reading all of them, and I am now sitting in a darkened room downloading Everquest. I am going to do something I said I never would, I am going to try boxing. Thanks for the great posts that have started the ole EQ itch once more.

Chandlersnubbin that is awesome, I'm actually excited for you. Please let me know what you decide to box. It was just about a month ago that I started this blog and now I'm level 93 and just busted my way into current content.

Last night I was in TBM. It was new and therefore scary. I followed Almar's guide and got the first three quests done so tomorrow I can actually start grinding the HA's. The mobs in this task were pretty serious business. Compared to gribble mobs they were significantly harder. Thankfully I only wiped once and it was totally my fault. I had autofire on and tabbed to a different group of mobs on accident and ended up basically training myself. No worries tho besides that things went pretty well.

Most of the mobs were yellow with a few reds mixed in. My ranger flat out could not tank them. Then again his equipment isn't quite up to snuff yet. Nearly all the mobs in this task were undead and since I have no invis to undead spells I pretty much just had to clear everything. The guide for this particular quest on EQ resource and on zam were not really all that specific so it ended up taking me much longer than it should have. That's okay tho because I got it done and am now ready to really start seeing what these adventures are about.

I'm excited to go thru and start some of these in current content. It makes me feel like I'm getting a head start. Can't wait to get my hands on some of this new gear and get a feel for it. I'll be keeping you all up to date on my progress here in TBM. For now I think this is were I'll be trying to play unless it just proves to be too difficult.

Nice to hear that your box group successfully completed the Mirror Fragment quest (Into the Temple b). What mercs did you decide upon to complete the group? A ranger pulling that mess . . . very nice indeed.

You can both HA or simply go into Decay and fight there. I'll be interested in hearing how your group fares. Keep up the posts.

So tonight was my first real adventures into TBM. I had a blast and I'll explain all about it as well as probably ask a ton of questions. I wish I could tell you the exact names of all the HA's I did but I can't really recall them. I did 4 different ones and they actually seemed relatively simple as far as the overall stuff you had to do to complete them. The mobs on the other hand are pretty tough. Like before they are pretty much all yellow and they take a good while to kill. A few times I tanked more than 1 on my warrior but it's not the preferred method here. 2 of them I finished so fast that I thought I was cheating or something lol.

One thing I don't really like about them is there doesn't seem to be a clear end to the missions. For instance at the end of gribble or any other HA in CoTF for that matter you'll always hail the guy at the end and get your exp. With these in TBM often time you get a chest and then get to pick what kind of exp you want and then loot the chest. Sometimes however there isn't a chest it's just like you finish the task and nothing. Did I get my exp? Is the mission over? What the heck do I do next? I've had those thoughts a couple times now. Anyone else feel that way!

I've gotten a couple pieces of gear and I think for the most part I figured it out. When you get a piece you sort of have that piece forever and you just keep upgrading the augs. Is that correct?

Items I've recieved so far:
1hb (ranger)
Shield (war)
Cloak (ranger)
Wrist (ranger)
Range (war)

Prior to heading out here in TBM I beefed up my warrior with new gear so I figured he can maybe wait a couple more levels before he needs all the new upgrades. Mostly I just spent all my money on him so it feels like a waist to give him all new stuff so soon. Of course any old old pieces he has will be replaced asap.

My next question is what route to take with the ranger gear. Should I go with the high ac gear for off tanking ability or his there a better choice? Obviously I'll be choosing dex with the heroic augs but just curious if there is a consensus type that rangers should be choosing. I kind of inspected them all and put them all up on my screen side by side and compared them. The high ac one just seemed like the most beneficial but idk.

Got my butt kicked by s couple different named. One time he punted my warrior back off of the edge of the map and then proceeded to pretty much round the rest of my party lol. Lesson learned, I fought him with my back against a wall the next time. A different names just had a larger agro radius than I was expecting so he charged me and basically rounded my unsuspecting warrior. There went a good 5 - 10 minutes. The joke was on him tho because I was waiting for my ranger burns to be up anyway. After rezzing and rebuffing he was vanquished. Lots of HP on him tho.

Sorry no time to edit, please excuse typos. More updates tomorrow

Not a lot to report today. Have to start work early tomorrow and have just not had a lot of time to play the last couple days. I did ding 95 tho. Still crawling along. I also set up a trader. Hopefully I can make at least a bit of platinum to help out.

Going to go back to at least doing a gribble or 2 every day especially if there is a daily quest for one of them. The daily plus lesson of the devoted is pretty insane exp and the Heroic adventures in TBM don't seem to give nearly the exp that gribble does, although the gear in TBM is waaaaay better.

Gotta continue my grind. Only 10 levels to go now. Hopefully I'll be close by the end of the month. I'll be looking for a good raiding guild on Bristlebane at that point. Don't everyone invite me at once

Still chugging along. I just did the gribbles tasks last night because I only had a couple hours to play. Setting up a trader has helped a bit and I have made a little bit of platinum back. Even selling things like defiant gear and Heros forge armed is helping.

I'm really hoping for a double exp weekend for Memorial Day weekend. I have to be honest, the grind is starting to get to me a bit. Especially now that auto grant is over.

What is the recommended method for keeping up with aa's? Should you stop every level and get 100 - 200 or just go to say level 100 and then stop and get 500+. Anyone know how most people approach this or had great success either way?

I'll keep plugging away tho. I will not be stopped. I was going to stop and maybe do some epic quests but I think I'd rather just hit 105 first and then go back and finish those. Hopefully tonight I'll have time to go back to TBM. I really like the gear there. It is far and away superior to anything I have equipped at the moment. I still need exp tho so I'm going to make sure I hit my gribbles first.

See you in dead hills!

Everything ive heard since ive come back is hit 105 with auto grant and then you can reasonably get 100AAs a day running HAs and dailies along with any zone grinding you choose to do.

I would suggest taking a break every now and then to go do an old zone or quest you would enjoy or always wanted to see. Constantly grinding against a wall by yourself will burn you out a ton so keep it fun and then go back to the grind would be my suggestion